Herb Allen’s Sun Valley Conference – 2014
I hate buzz words.
I don’t use them. I make fun of those that use them.
I didn’t go to business school so I didn’t learn how to speak cliches in meetings.
I went to drug-taking-son-of-movie-mogul school and we didn’t use buzz words except for “far out.”
It seems that everyone you hire from Ivy leagues schools has lost their ability to express themselves in a natural way.
Yet we keep hiring them because there are only so many drug-taking sons-of-movie-moguls in the talent pool and we can’t take a chance on someone from Arizona State (seriously).
But today, a buzz word is apt.
Manka Bros. and Hollywood MUST PIVOT!
Last night, as I got hammered with my old media buddies and talked about the houses we own and the places we’re planning to go for the summer – I noticed over in a corner a bunch of the young tech heads who weren’t getting that drunk and who weren’t talking about anything other than the products they create.
We have NO CHANCEÂ against much younger people who want to do nothing but talk about their work.
There are too many distractions in Hollywood.
We are rich men living rich men lives.
We drink a lot of expensive wine and scotch.
If we’re just going to concentrate on our work all the time we may as well live in a fleabag apartment in Pacoima and take the bus to work.
The spoils are the reason we got in this business.
So here I am with Rupert (who is not allowed to buy my company at any price. I’m a real mogul – not a hired mogul) and Haim Saban and a few other old media guys at the bar getting lit.
Over in one corner, sporting various wearable devices (Google glasses, Oculus viewfinders, GoPro cameras, etc.) are Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and the Pinterest guy and the GoPro surfer guy… and they’re freakin’ talking about the shit they make!!
And then I spot Bob Iger wearing that virtual reality helmet.
What?! Bob Iger?!
You see, Bob is no idiot.
He knows what the Hell is going on.
Though he does look ridiculous in his high collar shirt with the Oculus thing on his face pretending to be skydiving.
All this change has been happening and we have been so ignorant and so resistant!
I left my old drunk friends at the bar and squeezed my way into the hacky-sack circle of tech punks and I learned a few things.
First of all, according to the Google guys, we need to get a YouTube channel and probably buy some multi-channel network (called MCNs) of some sort.
There is a MankaBrosStudios YouTube channel, but surprise surprise, we don’t own it.
I think we should buy it back for whatever it costs and maybe one of those gamer channels where dumb asses pay to watch other dumb asses play video games on the internet.
YouTube is buying something called Twitch and I think we need to get into that as well. Some Twitch channel that dumb asses will pay us to watch.
I have ordered my assistant, Vicky Adler-Modry, to give these instructions to the Manka Business Development group to make all of this happen immediately!
(Note: She shouldn’t have to do that because, as you know, reading my blog is mandatory and subject to termination if you don’t!)
Manka Bros. must PIVOT, DISRUPT, LEAN IN and EXECUTE!Â
CAPISCE?
Today, there is an endless stream of horrific PowerPoint presentations that I said I would attend. There is break this afternoon before our dinner tonight and annual variety show. FYI, Harvey Weinstein and I are doing an old Cheech & Chong bit which should surely kill in that room.
If anyone needs to reach me – the afternoon window is your only chance.
Make this shit happen or all of you are toast and I’ll restaff with new recruits from Arizona State!
Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company
