Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Gerrol Mazer from Bloomberg Radio. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser. Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week. It's week thirty three, working from home still
Speaker 1: for so many of us, this is the second wave
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen was sweeping the world once again, facing shutdowns,
Speaker 1: rising virus cases and hospitalizations, and a lot of stresses
Speaker 1: again on our economy. Well, this week, we've got several
Speaker 1: leaders of companies that have had to juggle supply chains,
Speaker 1: They've had to create zones. They've also had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to help those impacted by the coronavirus among them.
Speaker 1: It's just been an amazing seven months as we're all
Speaker 1: trying to return to what we believe will be the
Speaker 1: new normal. I don't think we're there yet, but we're
Speaker 1: we're a big part of becoming part of that. That's
Speaker 1: Judy Marks, Presidency of OTIS Worldwide. She's been dealing with
Speaker 1: the pandemic from day one of the global outbreak. Same
Speaker 1: for Whirlpool chairman and CEO Mark bits Are we check
Speaker 1: in with him. He sees a lasting change in consumer
Speaker 1: behavior caused by the virus. We begin this week with
Speaker 1: the race for a vaccine. Dr Anthony Faucci, the US
Speaker 1: government's top infectious disease expert. He said vaccines won't be
Speaker 1: available in the United States until January at the earliest. Well,
Speaker 1: this week Bloomberg's Business Week cover story it is all
Speaker 1: about Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's mission to accelerate
Speaker 1: development of a COVID nineteen vaccine, and this story talks
Speaker 1: about what might be the ultimate Operation Warp Speed company.
Speaker 1: The story written by Bloomberg News Financial Investigation senior writer
Speaker 1: Stephanie Baker, along with Bloomberg News US healthcare reporter Cynthia
Speaker 1: Coon's Bloomberg's Kaylee Lines, and I caught up with Stephanie
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber. We talked about
Speaker 1: vaccines a lot um in this program, and obviously, I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the things that everybody is, you know,
Speaker 1: watching in addition to this, you know, election next week.
Speaker 1: But the you know, obviously the big thing here with
Speaker 1: the vaccine is, you know, how do we get to
Speaker 1: a viable vaccine and then how do you distribute it?
Speaker 1: And one of the big unknown sort of in our
Speaker 1: coverage has been what role Operation Warp Speed actually plays
Speaker 1: in this and that was sort of the mission that
Speaker 1: we put Stephanie and Cynthia on with this story and
Speaker 1: what we what we learned in the processes UM is
Speaker 1: really told and they told the story through a company
Speaker 1: called UH Emergent, which is in Baltimore. That's a company
Speaker 1: I've never heard of, and yet they're one of the
Speaker 1: many players that are sort of in the Operation Warp
Speaker 1: Speed ecosystem. So so, Stephanie, what what is that company
Speaker 1: Emergent tell us about Operation warps feeds approach in the
Speaker 1: vaccine development. Yes, well, you know, Operation Warp Speed turned
Speaker 1: to Emergent when they were looking for surge capacity to
Speaker 1: make vaccines. Emergent had been a supplier to the U.
Speaker 1: S Government for years UH making vaccines against anthrap and smallpox,
Speaker 1: and so they were in a prime position to be
Speaker 1: able to sort of set that aside and start making
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccines and had the sort of the manufacturing
Speaker 1: suites and the technology. And it turns up that there
Speaker 1: now they had worked with three of the six vaccine
Speaker 1: developers that Operation Warp Speed had has publicly backed UM
Speaker 1: and you know, really turned themselves into a sort of
Speaker 1: key node of production for COVID vaccines and are gearing
Speaker 1: up in the process of making what will eventually be
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines of
Speaker 1: various candidates. Now, obviously there are two things here. There's
Speaker 1: one is which vaccines will get approved, and then there's
Speaker 1: manufacturing them and making sure there's enough supply when that
Speaker 1: approval does come. And I think that's what Operation Warps
Speaker 1: who's really focused on, is making sure that the supply
Speaker 1: chain is there, that the all the manufacturers have what
Speaker 1: they need and can use, for instance, the Defense Production
Speaker 1: Act to gain priority in in in the supply chain
Speaker 1: to make sure that those doses are available if and
Speaker 1: when an approval does come right, something that surprised me.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it should have, considering they are
Speaker 1: intending to have this process happen at warp speed, but
Speaker 1: they say their goal is to start delivering a vaccine
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours of its approval. That's a really
Speaker 1: quick turnaround. Have they succeeded in kind of doing having
Speaker 1: that infrastructure set up for when a vaccine is ultimately approved. Well,
Speaker 1: they are trying to prepare the groundwork by doing things
Speaker 1: like building an integrated computer system to track where every
Speaker 1: dose goes. UM they've outsourced distribution to a company UM
Speaker 1: that has historically worked with the Centers for Disease Control
Speaker 1: on vaccine distribution. But of course this all depends on
Speaker 1: which vaccine gets approve and when, and there's just so
Speaker 1: many uncertainties around that. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: front runners fiser Um, which is developing a vaccine together
Speaker 1: with Germany's BioNTech Um. You know, it has very challenging
Speaker 1: UH storage requirements. It needs to be kept at minus
Speaker 1: seventy five degrees celsius, which is I think as a
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve degrees fahrenheit, and you know that just
Speaker 1: creates huge challenges in terms of trying to farm those
Speaker 1: doses out across the country. And so I think you know,
Speaker 1: they they're they're working with individual states to try to
Speaker 1: come up with a plan. I think some of the
Speaker 1: states have pushed back saying, you know, you guys, you
Speaker 1: haven't provided enough detail on things like storage or funding.
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of unanswered questions. So
Speaker 1: you get some bullish predictions from the people working within
Speaker 1: Operation Warp speed UM, and it's it's unclear until the
Speaker 1: time comes come January, you know whether or not they
Speaker 1: will be able to effectively form this out um. It
Speaker 1: is a massive challenge there. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about lack of transparency in whether or
Speaker 1: not you know this was um wasted taxpayer money. But
Speaker 1: when you when you think about it, the scale of
Speaker 1: the economic fallout is so enormous. Trillions of dollars. In
Speaker 1: a way, eight billion is very little UM and that
Speaker 1: they ought to be throwing more money at it, and
Speaker 1: we'll probably have to throw more money at it in
Speaker 1: reality when it gets down to the distribution. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out that full story online, on newsstands and
Speaker 1: of course on the Bloomberg. That was Bloomberg News Financial
Speaker 1: Investigation senior writer Stephanie Baker, along with Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: editor Joe Weber. Coming up next, we've got more on
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen with the Dean of Boston School of Public Health.
Speaker 1: We are and everybody is on the edge of their seat.
Speaker 1: He is bracing for winter. This is blue Berg. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Business Week with Gerrol Mazer from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week we saw COVID nineteen cases surging again France
Speaker 1: and Germany announcing new restrictions. The US seeing a jump
Speaker 1: in cases and hospitalizations. One of our regular go to
Speaker 1: voices on the virus, Dr Sandro Gala dinan professor at
Speaker 1: Boston University's School of Public Health, his author of Pained
Speaker 1: Uncomfortable Conversations about the Public's health. He told Bloomberg's Kayley
Speaker 1: Lines and I that like many others around the world,
Speaker 1: he and his city, they're on the edge. Boston right
Speaker 1: now is a little bit anxious. I think I feel
Speaker 1: like we are, and everybody is on the edge of
Speaker 1: their seat. We're seeing cases slowly creep up. They're going up,
Speaker 1: they go down, but the general slow increase in trend.
Speaker 1: And I think the mayor and the governor have been
Speaker 1: appropriately increasingly cautious, and the and the urging all citizens
Speaker 1: to be careful, and I think businesses have been doing
Speaker 1: the same. So I think it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a balancing act between knowing that cases are slowly trending up,
Speaker 1: but taking precautions to double down on the on the
Speaker 1: things that we are all doing, wearing masks and being
Speaker 1: careful with testing, with contact tracing to avoid these cases
Speaker 1: from becoming another surge, and that's in the greater city
Speaker 1: of Boston. Dr Glea. But what about at Boston University?
Speaker 1: How is the university? How are your students, How are
Speaker 1: you handling this? Yeah, it's actually quite quite remarkable how
Speaker 1: well we are doing in the university. And obviously the
Speaker 1: university is it's vulnerable to changes in the city around it.
Speaker 1: But we have had a fairly low case positivity in
Speaker 1: tool right now, which about point two percent, which is
Speaker 1: two per thousand, while in Brookline around it we're about
Speaker 1: two percents, almost tenfold more. And I think the reason
Speaker 1: for that is that within the university, we have a
Speaker 1: very big university, but you're able to control things a
Speaker 1: little bit more. We test all our students twice a
Speaker 1: week or once a week, depending on their contact. We
Speaker 1: a very sophisticated and robust contact tracing that if somebody
Speaker 1: tests positive, we talk to them right away, we isolate them,
Speaker 1: we isolate their contact. So in some respects of universities
Speaker 1: like a city within a city, but one where you
Speaker 1: have a lot more control. So we have been so
Speaker 1: far Touchwood doing well. I think there is a lot
Speaker 1: of anxiety I have and a lot of us have
Speaker 1: about whether the larger city will end up affecting the university,
Speaker 1: and obviously if it does, will have to change course
Speaker 1: as to what we're doing. But so far, the university frankly,
Speaker 1: it's a safer place to be than the than the
Speaker 1: city around it. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, right, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, center that as we've opened up all kinds
Speaker 1: of educational systems, um, you know, from K through you know,
Speaker 1: of course going into colleges and universities, I think we've
Speaker 1: had some success stories and then we've had certainly some
Speaker 1: problem areas, especially when it comes to college sports reopening.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you still feel like it's important that
Speaker 1: we continue to reopen educational areas and keep them open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think the answer is yes. But it's a
Speaker 1: it's a qualified yes, it's a it's qualified by two things.
Speaker 1: Number one is that I don't think opening simply means
Speaker 1: opening and sort of going back to business as usual
Speaker 1: like it was October. Opening means having a lot of
Speaker 1: precautions in place. Everybody wearing masks, people are being careful
Speaker 1: not to go into work if they're sick. Self attestation,
Speaker 1: everyday systems of testing, simple systems of isolating people who
Speaker 1: have positive tests, isolating their contact and the entire really
Speaker 1: the entire range of efforts to mitigate the virus. So
Speaker 1: I think yes, with those measures in place, I think
Speaker 1: the second caveat to the yes is that we simply
Speaker 1: need to have the humility to say, which is a
Speaker 1: bit unnerving, of course, as as you can both appreciate.
Speaker 1: But I think simply if the data change, we should change.
Speaker 1: And I think we as a university, I think we
Speaker 1: as a city, as a state, as a country should
Speaker 1: have the humility to realize that that the virus may
Speaker 1: become bigger than us, and we sing we need to
Speaker 1: change what we're doing. Well, I have to look ahead
Speaker 1: then further into the fall, into the winter. Dr Elia.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty bad right now we're seeing record cases,
Speaker 1: and then when it is dark and cold, no one
Speaker 1: wants to be outside. Everyone is forced inside. Are you
Speaker 1: bracing yourself for that? M hm yeah, I am, man.
Speaker 1: I suppose the big question for the winter is as
Speaker 1: people are all forced inside, will they continue to congregate inside,
Speaker 1: which is which we know is what's driving most of
Speaker 1: the cases. And here in Massachusetts, analyzes show very clearly
Speaker 1: that a lot of the case spread comes from indoor
Speaker 1: house parties and gatherings where people are not being careful
Speaker 1: with protective equipment. So the question is are people going
Speaker 1: to go inside and in the congregate, which is then
Speaker 1: going to result in viral spread. The truth is, Carol
Speaker 1: and Kayley, if if each of us stayed inside, just
Speaker 1: on our couch without contacting anybody, then there will be
Speaker 1: no spread of coronavirus. So it really depends on what
Speaker 1: we do by being inside. If we are inside taking
Speaker 1: pack autions will be fine. But if being inside means
Speaker 1: congregation broadly, what we saw happen in the Southern States
Speaker 1: in the summer, right, so happen in a Southern states
Speaker 1: in the summer it As things got hot, people went
Speaker 1: inside where there's air conditioning, and there was all sorts
Speaker 1: of congregation which resulted in the spread of the virus.
Speaker 1: So I think it really depends. But but the answer
Speaker 1: to your question, am I looking at apprehensively is unqualifiedly yes.
Speaker 1: You know, we've often seen people come out and say, well,
Speaker 1: there's more cases of COVID nineteen because we're doing more testing. Um,
Speaker 1: is that true or that's not the case. No, it's
Speaker 1: not the case. I heard non Professor Sharpstein talk about
Speaker 1: this in the clip, and he's still right, it's not
Speaker 1: the case. I mean, there's no question we're doing more
Speaker 1: testing and as a result, you do find more cases.
Speaker 1: But there's plenty of evidence that this is a real
Speaker 1: rise in cases, if not just due to testing. We're
Speaker 1: seeing a rise in all age groups. And as a
Speaker 1: professor Scharstein noted that we are seeing a rise in hospitalizations.
Speaker 1: If it was simply due to testing and due to
Speaker 1: testing of healthier people, there would not to be a
Speaker 1: rise in hospitalizations. Well, and that's a really smart point, right,
Speaker 1: And I also think about the cases that do end
Speaker 1: up in the hospital. Are they how severe are they
Speaker 1: and how are we or what we have we learned
Speaker 1: about treating those cases because we have been fighting the
Speaker 1: virus now for six or seven months, well we've learned
Speaker 1: quite a bit actually, and when you look at mortality,
Speaker 1: you'll see that mortality per person is quite a bit down.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're about one quarter of the case mortality
Speaker 1: that we had in the first way, which was in
Speaker 1: March and April. Largely that's because we've gotten better at
Speaker 1: treating the disease in hospital. We've learned how it manifests.
Speaker 1: We've learned when to oxygenate went to north so we
Speaker 1: are getting much better at dealing with an hospital. Mother
Speaker 1: doesn't change the fact that if there is a really
Speaker 1: big surge, it may overwhelmed hospitals and I see, which
Speaker 1: is what one always worries about. But on a case
Speaker 1: by case basis, COVID is now much less fatal than
Speaker 1: it was when we first learned about it six seven
Speaker 1: months ago. That's dr said Joe Glea. He's dean and
Speaker 1: professor at Boston University School of Public Health. We like
Speaker 1: talking to him because he understands the medical side of
Speaker 1: this and also the educational side, which has been impacted
Speaker 1: big time because of the virus. Is also author of Pained,
Speaker 1: Uncomfortable Conversations about the public's health. He reminded us once
Speaker 1: again that we have made progress when it comes to
Speaker 1: treatment and keeping coronavirus patients alive. Catch that full interview
Speaker 1: on our podcast feed at Bloomberg dot com. Still to come.
Speaker 1: We have been out working around the clock really to
Speaker 1: keep the world moving, helping to reopen buildings around the world.
Speaker 1: OTIS Worldwide CEO Judy Marks. She's coming up next. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg is Bloomberg Business Week with Garrol Masser from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. We're bringing you highlights on some of our
Speaker 1: favorite interviews from our daily radio show. That includes this
Speaker 1: half hour a pair of CEOs from two well known
Speaker 1: companies that have kept us up and running during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Both business is, by the way, have been around for
Speaker 1: more than a century. First up, Judy Mark She's presidency
Speaker 1: of OTIS Worldwide, which you might recall was spun off
Speaker 1: from United Technologies. Back in April, blue Bergs Kaylee Lines
Speaker 1: and I talked about the company's re entry to becoming
Speaker 1: a public company again amid the pandemic. We could have
Speaker 1: never imagined starting this journey in the middle of a
Speaker 1: global pandemic, but I've got to tell you we are
Speaker 1: so excited to return to our roots as an independent,
Speaker 1: publicly traded company and our sixty nine thou colleagues, who
Speaker 1: are mainly essential workers keeping the world moving, maintaining obviously
Speaker 1: elevators and hospitals and infrastructures, and just as importantly in
Speaker 1: many residential buildings where people have been locked down but
Speaker 1: still need the use of their their elevators. Couldn't be
Speaker 1: more proud a hundred years to the month we first
Speaker 1: listed on the New York Stock Exchange. We listened again
Speaker 1: on April three. It's unbelievable, such an incredible historic company
Speaker 1: and we are we're moving into the future. We're excited it. Well,
Speaker 1: you talk about how all of these places that need
Speaker 1: your elevators, hospitals in the lake uh here where I
Speaker 1: am at Bloomberg World headquarters in New York. When I
Speaker 1: come in in the morning, when I leave in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: I just get an elevator. I don't have to touch anything.
Speaker 1: They're running automatically so that they can reduce touch points.
Speaker 1: Can you give me some insight into what kind of
Speaker 1: touchless technology or procedures you've had to implement in your
Speaker 1: in your elevator systems because of this. Sure, let me
Speaker 1: answer that, and then let me take a step back
Speaker 1: and share with you a little bit about just our
Speaker 1: business model. But but innovation is core to who we
Speaker 1: are at OTIS, and we had a lot of touchless
Speaker 1: um innovations and products available, but they have absolutely come
Speaker 1: to the forefront now because of COVID, and I'm really
Speaker 1: pleased with how agile and fast our team has been
Speaker 1: able to bring these to market throughout the globe. We
Speaker 1: have gesturing technology. We have the ability for for voice
Speaker 1: interaction where you say, hey, Otis, take me to floor five.
Speaker 1: We have the ability through an app on the iPhone
Speaker 1: are Equal app to be able to before you ever
Speaker 1: leave your office, call the elevator and so it'll be
Speaker 1: there for you. We have traffic management and a dispatching
Speaker 1: system that's intelligent traffic flow that allows us only to
Speaker 1: put four people in an elevator to have them safely spaced.
Speaker 1: You know, our customers, these building managers are telling us
Speaker 1: that they want help, they want our guidance, they want
Speaker 1: our partnership. And it's just been an amazing uh seven
Speaker 1: months as we're all trying to return to what we
Speaker 1: believe will be the new normal. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: there yet, but we're we're a big part of becoming
Speaker 1: part of that. I mean. So that's really interesting, Judy.
Speaker 1: So the things that maybe are changing right now and
Speaker 1: you talk about the new normal, they're here to stay.
Speaker 1: In your view, No, I consider we're in an interim
Speaker 1: normal stage or a centerim um. I really do. I believe,
Speaker 1: and we see it even within our own company. So again,
Speaker 1: sixty colleagues UM, almost seventy of them didn't have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to work from home from the day that started
Speaker 1: in Wuhan. Our service our field professionals are service mechanics,
Speaker 1: were in the hospital first and foremost protected by PPE
Speaker 1: because their health and safety is critical to us. But
Speaker 1: we have been out working around the clock really to
Speaker 1: keep keep the world moving. And so you know, we
Speaker 1: have a work from home for some of our organization,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing that we've been able to start the
Speaker 1: company this way, really to do our board meetings remote,
Speaker 1: to close the books, to do our earnings, to to
Speaker 1: really get to know our investors, UM. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: we've been out there to serve the rioting public. And
Speaker 1: what most people don't know is that, you know, over
Speaker 1: half of our two million unit portfolio, we maintain over
Speaker 1: two million units, larger than the next closest competitor globally,
Speaker 1: and over half of those are in residential buildings, condominiums, apartments.
Speaker 1: People need to go down to get their food, even
Speaker 1: if they're not leaving the building to pick up things right.
Speaker 1: So you know, again for us, our passengers are so
Speaker 1: critical and we want to keep them flowing safely and
Speaker 1: and in a healthy way. Judy, We've talked about your business,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, it is a
Speaker 1: business that has people. And we know that the way
Speaker 1: companies have been approaching their diversity and inclusion efforts has
Speaker 1: has really been put into focus in and you are
Speaker 1: just launched a social justice initiative. It's called our Commitment
Speaker 1: to Change. You've joined the Paradigm for Parody coalition, committing
Speaker 1: to achieve gender parity in your executive leadership by thirties
Speaker 1: ten years from now. Does that feel like it's too long, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's not too long. And I would be delighted
Speaker 1: if we could beat the goal. And and that's what
Speaker 1: we try to do with all expectations, Judy, Why does
Speaker 1: it take so long? Takes so long? Well, we're already
Speaker 1: at just over thirty third right now. And when you
Speaker 1: think about it, you want to create an opportunity and
Speaker 1: and um really opportunity for everyone to excel from all backgrounds,
Speaker 1: including gender, but really create an opportunity as we grow
Speaker 1: the company for everyone to excel. Our vision is to
Speaker 1: give people freedom to connect and thrive in a taller, faster,
Speaker 1: smarter world and that means all people. She talks about
Speaker 1: creating opportunities for all people. Really important, especially for a
Speaker 1: company that's in over two hundred countries and thinking about
Speaker 1: what it means to be diverse in all of the
Speaker 1: places that it operates. That's Judy Marks, Presidency of OTIS Worldwide.
Speaker 1: Check out that full conversation. It's on our podcast feed.
Speaker 1: Still to come. Another CEO that's been dealing with the
Speaker 1: virus from day one because of its global operations. We
Speaker 1: check in with Whirlpool CEO Mark Bitzer. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Garrol Mazer from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Shares of Whirlpool. Check it out. They have rally big
Speaker 1: time this year as consumers, especially those in the US,
Speaker 1: hunkered down and invested in their nest for talking about
Speaker 1: their homes. They were buying up appliances, everything to do
Speaker 1: with the home during the virus. Now, Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney
Speaker 1: and I had an in depth conversation with Whirlpool chairman
Speaker 1: and CEO Mark Bitser. You had to manage a lot
Speaker 1: and then includes its supply chain from day one due
Speaker 1: to its facilities in China. I think we're a little
Speaker 1: bit in a different positions and most other domestic companies,
Speaker 1: because we have a pretty big China operation which actually
Speaker 1: happened to be a hundred fifty miles away from Wuhan,
Speaker 1: and we have our European headquarters in northern Italy. So
Speaker 1: you remember, you know when when you first had a
Speaker 1: China message. Initially it felt like China contained and we
Speaker 1: were worried about manufacturing supply for China. But themb A
Speaker 1: really decisive element was when UM, our president of a
Speaker 1: European business called me over weekend and said, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of cases in the Lombardy and that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of when you realize business big. UM. So again
Speaker 1: it feels like it's really this memory, but I think
Speaker 1: that's what when everything for us changed UM, and we
Speaker 1: were kind of by mid March, you realize everything which
Speaker 1: we thought about twenty twenty will just be upside down
Speaker 1: and we don't know how deep a cannon is into
Speaker 1: which we're looking. UM it's about was a pretty dramatic impact,
Speaker 1: and then you kind of keyboards in mind with unfortunate
Speaker 1: COVID didn't come with an instruction for use for management playbook, right,
Speaker 1: nobody had a playbook on that somewhat annoying and when
Speaker 1: you you know, you get all these emails from consultant
Speaker 1: to tell you how to measure crisis, but problem was
Speaker 1: all right, but always six weeks late. So so it
Speaker 1: was an interesting experience because you we's got to improvise,
Speaker 1: you gotta pull the troops together. And of course the
Speaker 1: first focus was entirely but you know, how do we
Speaker 1: secure health and safety? Because you know, we always talk
Speaker 1: about economic dimension of his crisis, but there's a big
Speaker 1: human dimension, and you know, we're all humans with our fears, um,
Speaker 1: and you've got to manage of big organization with people
Speaker 1: who have also fears, and so managing your health and
Speaker 1: safety of our people that obviously was the first one. UM.
Speaker 1: But then of course you talk about all the business
Speaker 1: implications and at least as the CEO of was quote
Speaker 1: quote a milucky situation, but even a two a week
Speaker 1: to or nine, I was in the US and I
Speaker 1: wasn't running the company, but I called it a front
Speaker 1: seat to what we experienced back then. So you you
Speaker 1: took take some lessons from back when. And um, of
Speaker 1: course first focus was how do we secure liquidity because
Speaker 1: we don't know how bad this is going to be, um,
Speaker 1: and then you start taking all the decisions. Um. So
Speaker 1: it was pretty much a rolling up aliefs event back
Speaker 1: when in March and April. Yeah, so Mark, give us
Speaker 1: a sense of kind of where you are now, how
Speaker 1: is your business change, What are the big issues you're
Speaker 1: focusing on right now? You know, Paul, I mean it's
Speaker 1: first of all, I never heard you earlier talking about visibility. Um.
Speaker 1: You know back when in April or March, and we
Speaker 1: had visibility for a week. Um. I know it sounds silly,
Speaker 1: but you had a visibility for a week and you
Speaker 1: just don't know what when as Q two evolved, you
Speaker 1: had a visibility for maybe a couple of weeks or months.
Speaker 1: By now we see three months, maybe four months, which
Speaker 1: is unusual. By least you see a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: so you see a little bit more from perspective. The
Speaker 1: way I look at it right now from our business
Speaker 1: in our industry is kind of and and assuming out
Speaker 1: a little bit. As you all know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of talk initially about it is it's going to
Speaker 1: be a U shape recovery of V shape or W
Speaker 1: shape or whatever shape. And by now I think most
Speaker 1: people realize that's increasingly irrelevant discussion because what matters is
Speaker 1: in which cycle is your industry um because everything every
Speaker 1: industry goes for a different cycling. You know, initially it
Speaker 1: felt like our industry is the Corona loser, but now
Speaker 1: I think it now immediately immediately becomes more and more
Speaker 1: apparent we're a long term maybe Corona winner. And what
Speaker 1: I mean with that is it's a simple fact. Our
Speaker 1: business is in the home. It's about improving life at homes.
Speaker 1: It's about washers, dishwashers, and ovens. People are spending time
Speaker 1: at home. And what we see now increasingly vets where
Speaker 1: were now more and again I'm leaving the human side
Speaker 1: of it a way, which is still a big issue,
Speaker 1: but from business side, we're more and more opportunity side
Speaker 1: of his Corona cycle. And that's good news. Because people
Speaker 1: are spending time at home, we're investing in the nest
Speaker 1: as we call it, and very you know, just think
Speaker 1: about yourself. Do you know a single friend of a
Speaker 1: neighbor who didn't paint some room in the house or
Speaker 1: didn't buy something new. Everybody's improving the house and it's
Speaker 1: not it's more than just kind of a short term improvement.
Speaker 1: People are rethinking the purpose of the home and that
Speaker 1: play is in our favor. Yeah, you know, when did
Speaker 1: you realize that that was starting to happen, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating I think, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: Paul you concur with this, but like as journalists, because
Speaker 1: I think initially everybody was afraid to talk about the
Speaker 1: pandemic and the impact and not having visibility. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we started to see different companies.
Speaker 1: You know, of course, nobody wished the health crisis on anybody,
Speaker 1: but whether it was in Netflix or some others, you
Speaker 1: know that we're benefiting because of the crisis. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you started to see the numbers and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yeah, I thought everybody was going to
Speaker 1: lose in this crisis and that wasn't the case. When
Speaker 1: did you guys start to see that in your numbers?
Speaker 1: I mean, Carol Is, it's tough to pinpoint exactly when
Speaker 1: we go it, but I think it became apparent pretty
Speaker 1: much around the summer period. First of all, I gotta
Speaker 1: step back a little bit. It's and and we're certainly
Speaker 1: not the health experts and are probably already enough self
Speaker 1: declared health experts around here. Probable, but it's we have
Speaker 1: to but you know, it became pretty apparent in April May.
Speaker 1: But despite all the talk, we have to learn to
Speaker 1: live with this crisis and a coronavirus and it's not
Speaker 1: going to go away short term. And that's when we
Speaker 1: also realized that will change for consumer behavior and the
Speaker 1: way we look at it right now, you know it's
Speaker 1: UM hopefully it with corona Christs at one point will
Speaker 1: be behind us. I don't think the consumer behavior will
Speaker 1: go back or normal because think about it, you know
Speaker 1: most consumers are not most, but many consumers will by
Speaker 1: the time this is over, probably have spent more or
Speaker 1: less a year at home UM. You don't erase a
Speaker 1: year of consumer behavior from the memory. It's not a
Speaker 1: flash memory that will stay. People will invest in the
Speaker 1: home UM and that's becomes it just becomes every month
Speaker 1: more parents and we see as in our own business,
Speaker 1: you know, the initial demand was a lot what we
Speaker 1: call crisis appliances, you know, the freezer of the microwaves
Speaker 1: or the rest product which just you know broke down
Speaker 1: because they ever have been used certa intensively. But we
Speaker 1: now see more and more people spending money, and it
Speaker 1: goes more and more to big ticket items like what
Speaker 1: you know, I'm you're talking about the higher and fridges
Speaker 1: or you talk about the higher and others. People are
Speaker 1: really investing. It's not just with the rest and the crisis.
Speaker 1: They're investing and they're upgrading, UM because they all see, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got to spend a lot more time at home
Speaker 1: going forward. I don't think certain behaviors like you know
Speaker 1: we you know we have statistic fifty of the people
Speaker 1: even now they spend significantly more time in the kitchen
Speaker 1: and cooking. The men ever before that will no go
Speaker 1: that will not go act to zero. It will not
Speaker 1: UM and I think that again place in our favor.
Speaker 1: Hey Mark, you initially mentioned something about the supply chain
Speaker 1: and the shock there give us a sense of how
Speaker 1: your supply chain is looking now. Um, in short part,
Speaker 1: were still supply chain constraint. Now let me expand a
Speaker 1: little bit more on this one. You know, we early
Speaker 1: in miss crisis, you know, remember around springtime and people expectating,
Speaker 1: well is it over by easter, and a lot of
Speaker 1: industrial companies shut down the factories. We didn't not shut
Speaker 1: down the factories UM, which was a little bit both decision,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad we did UM, which on the other
Speaker 1: hand was very demanding our people because we asked them
Speaker 1: to come to work where a lot of people very
Speaker 1: extremely uncertain and nervous. Having said that, it gave us
Speaker 1: a lot of lead time to learn how we can
Speaker 1: reasonably safe produce and have an environment in the factories
Speaker 1: which kind of maximize the health and safety of our people.
Speaker 1: Because in a big industrial factory, and keep in mind,
Speaker 1: if you would go to one of our factors, some
Speaker 1: of them are a mile long. These are not condrom
Speaker 1: more buildings. We are massive, big factories where steel comes
Speaker 1: in and the washer comes out in the every side.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to get that in a safe environment,
Speaker 1: you know. And these again, these are industrial complex with
Speaker 1: two or three thousand employees in one factory, so you
Speaker 1: have line distancing mask wearing, stanchilization, temperature check. UM. It's
Speaker 1: a massive effort. And and the fact that we started
Speaker 1: that early allowed us at least to get much faster
Speaker 1: in producing reasonably safe. Now having said that, today, fast forward,
Speaker 1: you know, the fact is if you have a if
Speaker 1: you try to keep a factory safe you will not
Speaker 1: get it to the same yield as pre COVID because
Speaker 1: you have to reduce the paces of speed on the line,
Speaker 1: because you have to have a social social distancing. You
Speaker 1: will have disruptions with components, you have challenges logistics, So
Speaker 1: no matter how hard you work, you will not get
Speaker 1: it to exact the same output as pre COVID. And
Speaker 1: that's why our supply sha Aim today UM is constrained.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're not fully able to keep up
Speaker 1: with demand, which I know from financial perspective would say,
Speaker 1: what's a good problem to have? True, But of course
Speaker 1: i'm your hand. We're frustrated of letting consumers down and
Speaker 1: having memoried six weeks for a product. So Mark, if
Speaker 1: since you anticipate that, as you said, you know you
Speaker 1: can't erase a year of consumer behavior from memory, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think I'm rethinking my expenditures
Speaker 1: going forward, even when things get back to normal. You know,
Speaker 1: it's very easy, especially in a city like New York,
Speaker 1: you can just kind of money just kind of falls
Speaker 1: out of your pockets, you know, But you can kind
Speaker 1: of rethink your focus. If you think that consumers will
Speaker 1: continue to focus on their homes and spend. What kind
Speaker 1: of capital expenditures do you need to potentially do to
Speaker 1: meet that expected greater demand or can you do it
Speaker 1: under existing facilities? Um let, under normal circumstances, we could
Speaker 1: do it undering network. But again, as long as COVID
Speaker 1: is around us, and you put you give me whatever,
Speaker 1: and did you think it is? But you know, as
Speaker 1: long as it's around us, it will be somewhat constraints
Speaker 1: and you will have on and off, and you will
Speaker 1: have a supply who has some challenges because they had
Speaker 1: to shut down the factory. Whatever else. There was Whirlpool
Speaker 1: chairman and CEO Mark bits Er talking about strains on
Speaker 1: his supply chain. It's something we've heard from a lot
Speaker 1: of CEOs, understandably during the pandemic. What really stood out
Speaker 1: for me that was what he had to say about
Speaker 1: the consumer. People were investing in their home, investing in
Speaker 1: their nest, as he said, everyone improving their home. And
Speaker 1: he thinks that that's not going to necessarily change that
Speaker 1: consumer behavior, that it's not going to go back to
Speaker 1: where it was pre COVID. He says, you just don't
Speaker 1: erase a year of consumer behavior from memory, at least
Speaker 1: not that quickly. That entire fifteen minute discussion, by the way,
Speaker 1: it can be found on our Bloomberg business Week podcast feed.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up the first hour of the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser.
Speaker 1: We're coming up in our next hour, including from managing
Speaker 1: the virus to K pop Fans super fans, that is,
Speaker 1: managing Q and on get ready for the K pop stands.
Speaker 1: That's all coming up on Bloomberg business Week. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Is Bloomberg business Week with Carol Masser from Bloomberg Radio. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser. Coming up in the second hour of
Speaker 1: the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Highlights from our
Speaker 1: daily show, our daily radio show, including one with the
Speaker 1: former head of Paramount Pictures. We're talking about Adam Goodman.
Speaker 1: He is disrupting the Hollywood production model, figuring out how
Speaker 1: to make movies during the shutdown. We begin though with
Speaker 1: a story in the magazine and you just might want
Speaker 1: to stop dead in your tracks take this all in.
Speaker 1: This story is about how no one can handle Q
Speaker 1: and On like the global army of K pop super fans,
Speaker 1: which by the way, are called stands Bloomberg's Kayley lines,
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot by talking with Bloomberg News
Speaker 1: technology reporter Olivia Carville, she wrote the story. She joined
Speaker 1: us along with Bloomberg business Week editor Jill Weber. Prompts
Speaker 1: for Olivia for for seeing through um its story about
Speaker 1: K pop stands. If you don't know what the stands are,
Speaker 1: it's the super fans UM and K pop has legions
Speaker 1: of them and really got a sense of what they're
Speaker 1: capable of over the summer when Trump's Tulsa rally ended
Speaker 1: up basically being for as far as we know, basically
Speaker 1: taken over by super fans who who helped buy a
Speaker 1: bunch of tickets and then didn't show up, And it
Speaker 1: was this glimpse into the power of their fandom of
Speaker 1: the stand And you know, it's another thing also that
Speaker 1: you know, if you follow k pop before it and
Speaker 1: its especially on the commercial side, you can see what
Speaker 1: influence like bands like bts have when they let their
Speaker 1: provinces know about brands, that immediately moves the needles for brands.
Speaker 1: So Olivia dug into this for us, and Olivia like,
Speaker 1: why is this so relevant like right now at this
Speaker 1: day and age with uh, you know, an election just
Speaker 1: around the corner. Yeah, I felt like researching the story,
Speaker 1: I had to learn a whole new language, capos and
Speaker 1: stands and bets and army and you know, there's so
Speaker 1: many layers to the story. That was just fascinating as
Speaker 1: I was researching it. And I think you're right Joel
Speaker 1: that like over summer we really saw the K pop
Speaker 1: stands kind of we saw the full force of just
Speaker 1: how powerful they can be at mobilizing and rallying online.
Speaker 1: And they've become such a significant force in the US
Speaker 1: politically speaking that you've got political consultants actually taking notice
Speaker 1: of K pop fans. Now, there were some democratic grassroots
Speaker 1: organizations reaching out with Biden to K pop means after
Speaker 1: that that Tulsa rally, and if you'd read the story,
Speaker 1: you'll see that. You know, the reaction they got from
Speaker 1: the K pop fans wasn't exactually exactly warm. They responded
Speaker 1: with comments like hell to the nose and we don't
Speaker 1: like you either, can't even a thing. Yeah that these
Speaker 1: guys are. You know, they're not a monolitht um fear
Speaker 1: leader lists. It's hard to harness them from any any
Speaker 1: side of the political spectrum, but there's a deep connection
Speaker 1: with African American music culture because the genre borrows liberally
Speaker 1: from them. So there was, you know, that strong connection
Speaker 1: with Black Lives Matter, which we saw earlier in the
Speaker 1: summer Olivia. I find it so interesting that key pop
Speaker 1: in theory is supposed to be unpolitical. Band members are told,
Speaker 1: you know, don't wait into politics, but it really has,
Speaker 1: at least for the fan base become political. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we actually saw Bats tweet out support for the Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter movement earlier in June, and I think that's
Speaker 1: largely because they do borrow so much of African Americans,
Speaker 1: you know, in the music culture. Was the way they dressed,
Speaker 1: the way the song sound, the way they sing, and
Speaker 1: when Bats waited into Black Lives Matter, which was seen
Speaker 1: as a political movement, they also donated a million dollars
Speaker 1: to Black Lives Meta charities. That's when the bandom really
Speaker 1: ramped up and started to um, you know, and one
Speaker 1: day they raised a million dollars to match Bts' donation.
Speaker 1: So you can see just be a sheer fource plane
Speaker 1: to kind of hijack white supremacist hashtags and also push
Speaker 1: out the message for the alien and let's let's talk more.
Speaker 1: Also just about the commercial side of this that I love.
Speaker 1: There's a reference to Downey uh and sort of a
Speaker 1: BTS member commenting on his preference of Downey and what
Speaker 1: happened when when when that went down, there was a
Speaker 1: drunk cook. So he was commented on how he used
Speaker 1: the Downey fabric softener and the adorable scent, and within
Speaker 1: a day they sold out of the two months global
Speaker 1: supply of the particular fabric softener. We've I've heard examples
Speaker 1: of like another one of the band members the he
Speaker 1: was photographed holding a book in the airport and it
Speaker 1: sold out online. Or they they spot was sponsored by
Speaker 1: Hyundai Palisade and the suv was on back order for months.
Speaker 1: So the buying power, the commercial power of army, which
Speaker 1: is what the bt S spands are called, it's just unparalleled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like the story is about just a reminder,
Speaker 1: especially in a week where a big tech and the
Speaker 1: CEOs are haled before Congress or before the Senate specifically
Speaker 1: and you know, being kind of questioned I think for
Speaker 1: their might. It just shows you what can be done online,
Speaker 1: the power of this, what's what's kind of your key
Speaker 1: takeaway from from this and reporting this story out. I
Speaker 1: think my key takeaway is really the fact that when
Speaker 1: when you look at what's going on online right now
Speaker 1: and you look at the rise of these old right groups,
Speaker 1: these conspiracy theorists like Q and on, is that you
Speaker 1: speak to the experts who cover these groups, and really
Speaker 1: the only one who can go up against or beat
Speaker 1: a group like Q and on at its own game,
Speaker 1: as K pop sand was. You know, the sheer volume,
Speaker 1: the number of them online and effectives you're so digitally
Speaker 1: savy and cheeky and creative with how they or engage
Speaker 1: in mean warfare or takedowns of particular hashtags, whether it's
Speaker 1: Q and on or White Lives Matter. You know, we've
Speaker 1: seen them do this time and time again over summer.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be really interesting to see what
Speaker 1: happens over the next week and even after the election
Speaker 1: as we see the rise of Q and On and
Speaker 1: K pop kind of trying to um to filter that
Speaker 1: out or trying to even it out by taking over
Speaker 1: their hashtags or or getting involved to demobilize them. It's
Speaker 1: like such a common misconception of who BTS fans are
Speaker 1: or who K pop members are. That was Bloomberg News
Speaker 1: Technology reporter Olivia Carville and Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up nest to
Speaker 1: u S President Jeremy Bean's on the role of climate
Speaker 1: change policies when it comes to a COVID nineteen recovery.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. Is Bloomberg Business Week with Garrol Mazure
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. This half hour, We've got two guests
Speaker 1: who are thinking big time about our climate. This next
Speaker 1: company working closely with the transportation and aviation industries. They
Speaker 1: work on renewable diesel, renewable jet fuel, and renewable and
Speaker 1: recycled plastics. We're talking about Jeremy Beans. He's president of
Speaker 1: Nesty US and he had a discussion with us about
Speaker 1: how climate change policies are essential part of the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen recovery. He talked with Kaily Lines and I it's
Speaker 1: been a very tough year UM, not not only for
Speaker 1: Nest Day but for for business in general. UM. And
Speaker 1: we as a company, we have done We have done
Speaker 1: better than than maybe others. The renewable space has remained
Speaker 1: very strong UM. But and all of our employees have
Speaker 1: now been working from home for at least since the
Speaker 1: end of March. So we've really had to adjust to
Speaker 1: this new situation, right as so many of us have
Speaker 1: as we come out of this, and obviously we are
Speaker 1: far from out of it. We still have a long
Speaker 1: way to go. But you make the case that the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen recovery is really going to need climate change policy.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk me through that, thinking, Well, if
Speaker 1: if we look at COVID nineteen, we look at California wildfires,
Speaker 1: you were mentioning Hurricane Zata for this Atlantic hurricane season,
Speaker 1: they've all been made so much worse by climate change,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really costing life and it's caused its
Speaker 1: massive economic damage. And if we think about it, at
Speaker 1: the root cause of this climate change is really the
Speaker 1: burning of fossil fuels. So so now as we start
Speaker 1: thinking about coming out of this really massive economic downturn,
Speaker 1: we need to put sustainability at the heart of the recovery.
Speaker 1: And and if we talk about fossil fuels, one of
Speaker 1: the key areas where we see that importance is in transportation,
Speaker 1: and where it's especially critical is in those hearts to
Speaker 1: abate vehicles, those those big weeks, those trucks on the roads,
Speaker 1: there's planes in disguise, there's vessels on the seas. These
Speaker 1: are these are industries. These are sectors where the emissions
Speaker 1: are continued to grow and which is so difficult for
Speaker 1: us to reduce. So we need to be smart in
Speaker 1: terms of policy. We need to put a price on
Speaker 1: carbon that that in that is technology, technology and feats
Speaker 1: of neutral and have have policies in place that really
Speaker 1: encouraged the use of low carbon fuels. And I'm actually
Speaker 1: quite encouraged because it was about this time last year
Speaker 1: that mist they had the opportunity to testify in Congress,
Speaker 1: and we are now starting to see really much more
Speaker 1: talk about renewable fuels in d C and the world
Speaker 1: that it must play in the future for a sustainable recovery.
Speaker 1: Do you think that changes depending on who is in
Speaker 1: the White House, who is in Congress. Well, I think
Speaker 1: climate change is it's not going away. We really need
Speaker 1: to we really need to fight this, and it's it's
Speaker 1: not It's not only from what happens in Congress. We
Speaker 1: also see it from the industries. We see the CEOs
Speaker 1: of companies um who are making these business decisions, they
Speaker 1: see which direction the market is going. If if we
Speaker 1: think about the millennials, the gen z, they are now
Speaker 1: starting to enter the marketplace, they are starting to make
Speaker 1: those decisions, and for them, the environment, social justice, and
Speaker 1: climate change are important issues. So if you, if you're
Speaker 1: CEO of a company today, you really want to make
Speaker 1: these choices, and regulators any DC is starting to see them.
Speaker 1: So I think, regardless of who will be in the
Speaker 1: White House, this becomes an important topic. But Jeremy, I
Speaker 1: think it does make a difference in that part of
Speaker 1: Biden's platform is clean energy investment and infrastructure. Couldn't that
Speaker 1: make a difference in demand for a business like yours?
Speaker 1: It would do, And I think it's clear that that
Speaker 1: the pace of change would be difference depending on what
Speaker 1: policy choice you make. But I think it's the question
Speaker 1: about making a policy choice has already been made, yes,
Speaker 1: so then it's just the speed of the implementation and
Speaker 1: how quickly as as other country, as a society we
Speaker 1: can actually start tackling climate change, but also how quickly
Speaker 1: we can build a new, better, more sustainable economy. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny, my seventeen year old said, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that your generation or even you know, older generations
Speaker 1: don't really care because they're not going to be around
Speaker 1: and they're not going to be in the world that
Speaker 1: I'm growing up in. And you know, just talked about
Speaker 1: climate change in terms of policies. We we talk about
Speaker 1: it a lot. And listen, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: companies doing great initiatives, uh and and so on. But
Speaker 1: I do think just look at the world, we're not
Speaker 1: moving fast enough. So I'm curious what hopes you have
Speaker 1: that we pick up the speed when it comes to
Speaker 1: these policies that take care of our environment. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you raised an interesting point about children asking
Speaker 1: it My children, they are they are going to live
Speaker 1: for decades in this world, So it's what what I
Speaker 1: do also impact their future, and it's from and it's
Speaker 1: I think it's from that perspective that we that we
Speaker 1: even even if we're not going to be around for
Speaker 1: that long, they will be what kind of world do
Speaker 1: we want to leave for future generation? Right? So, so, yes,
Speaker 1: you are correct that it is important who comes into
Speaker 1: the White House, but it's it's really the policy clarity
Speaker 1: at the end of the day that is going to
Speaker 1: drive to change, and the policy clarity is going to
Speaker 1: come from people who vote and people who care. Jeremy,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how sticky you think this is. People pay
Speaker 1: all out lip service to it now, But has covidentine
Speaker 1: really brought about a sustained, meaningful push toward better climate policy?
Speaker 1: I think so. And I think so because people people
Speaker 1: are at home, people are spending wartime speaking about all
Speaker 1: the times that they were stuck in traffic. People are
Speaker 1: looking at what's happening of environment of random much more
Speaker 1: closely than so. Yes, I do think this is going
Speaker 1: to be sticky. Um it is, and they want something
Speaker 1: you they want They want to have some hope coming
Speaker 1: out of this crisis, and I think it's sustainable. The
Speaker 1: covy is that hope that we can bring. Jerry. One
Speaker 1: thing I want to get into for those who might
Speaker 1: not be excuse me familiar with what you guys do,
Speaker 1: I mean it is about renewable fuels. What specifically tell
Speaker 1: me what the process or what what you do, and
Speaker 1: how that reduces the impact on climate on the climate. Yes,
Speaker 1: so mistay is the is the Well's largest producer of
Speaker 1: renewable fuels. Renewable diesels specifically and what is it. It
Speaker 1: is a fuel. Um it is a diesel fuel that
Speaker 1: you can drop into any diesel engine today using all
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that's available today. But often than putting new
Speaker 1: carbon into the atmosphere, it's actually using carbon form the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: That was Nesty u S President Jeremy Bain's coming up.
Speaker 1: It's time for content creators on a professional side to
Speaker 1: understand that traditional is shifting. Invisible Narratives co founder and
Speaker 1: former Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman and how the film
Speaker 1: industry is evolving amid our new world order. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Gero Mazer from Bloomberg Radio. Well,
Speaker 1: we know the content industry has been disrupted big time
Speaker 1: by COVID nineteen. It's also been impacted by the increase
Speaker 1: in digital streaming services and how consumers consume content. Right,
Speaker 1: we know that. Well, some new understands all of this
Speaker 1: big time. It's a team behind Invisible Narratives, a digital
Speaker 1: content studio co founded by Adam Goodman, former president of
Speaker 1: Paramount Pictures and Andrew Sugarman, former Walt Disney Executive vice
Speaker 1: president of Global Digital Media and Publishing. Bloomberg's Kaylee Lines,
Speaker 1: and I caught up with Adam who talked about why
Speaker 1: this is both a stressful and creative time. It is
Speaker 1: literally turned everything that we know about how you make
Speaker 1: something and turned it upside down, shook it and around
Speaker 1: and uh and turned it all around. It is. It
Speaker 1: is the most disorienting and most exhilarating at time I
Speaker 1: think that I've ever been in the entertainment industry. Well,
Speaker 1: and you were producing a movie at least through part
Speaker 1: of this. The pandemic, of course, is an over and songbird.
Speaker 1: Your film that's coming out was one of the first
Speaker 1: to go back into production after full lockdown. Can you
Speaker 1: just tell us a little bit about what that was, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of protocols did you have to put in place?
Speaker 1: Give us some insight. It was imagine an operating room
Speaker 1: and uh. And the system that our co producers and
Speaker 1: and and us created in the situation was to try
Speaker 1: to mimic the amount of people and resources that were
Speaker 1: needed directly in the operating room or people that were outside.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're a little bit um less essential. They were
Speaker 1: tested a bit less frequently, They had less access to
Speaker 1: our cast. Movie crews have great rhythm and great speed
Speaker 1: and efficiencies at which a hundred years of making movies
Speaker 1: has nearly perfected. And this kind of scrambled that process
Speaker 1: because now all of a sudden you couldn't get to
Speaker 1: a certain place on a set. You had to pass
Speaker 1: things along, You had to invert literally the way in
Speaker 1: rhythm of how everything was done. So it was it
Speaker 1: was really challenging, but thankfully we got through it and
Speaker 1: made a great movie in the process of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really fascinating. I mean to hear you know kind of
Speaker 1: how you figured out how to get it done. And
Speaker 1: we've talked to some other people who have done some
Speaker 1: some filming too, and that's what it all came down.
Speaker 1: Who is really creating these zones to make it make
Speaker 1: it happen? So so where are you are you able
Speaker 1: to get new productions going? Give us an idea of
Speaker 1: what the flow is like. The flow is actually starting
Speaker 1: to get back to normal. I think smaller, more nimble
Speaker 1: productions are having more success and more safety on the
Speaker 1: set just simply because it's less people coming in contact
Speaker 1: with each other. I mean, we're back in a different
Speaker 1: sort of way. The movie theater businesses upside down. But
Speaker 1: but everything else is starting to starting to move in
Speaker 1: more normal ways. Again, it's unparalleled, and it's time for
Speaker 1: content creators on a professional side to understand that traditional
Speaker 1: is shifting. So we're really trying to blend a trae
Speaker 1: digital mode, which is take the best of storytelling and
Speaker 1: h and content creation through years of practice and experience,
Speaker 1: but do it in ways that are specific to audiences
Speaker 1: that really are underserved right now and give them big
Speaker 1: events that can the things that are different than what
Speaker 1: they would get because the movie theaters aren't open in
Speaker 1: their towns they there. This is the first generation that
Speaker 1: that has no gatekeepers in front of them. When they
Speaker 1: want to tell a story or they want to publish something,
Speaker 1: they can distribute directly to an audience of friends, and
Speaker 1: sometimes those friends become fans, and sometimes those fans create superstars.
Speaker 1: And this audience is is used to watching things in
Speaker 1: a different way and they're used to consuming things in
Speaker 1: a different way. So we decided that what made most
Speaker 1: sense was to go after stars that were not stars
Speaker 1: in a traditional sense, but we're stars for our kids
Speaker 1: and and young people. So we partnered with Phase Plan,
Speaker 1: which is one of the biggest gaming lifestyle groups on
Speaker 1: the planet right now and made a movie with Phase.
Speaker 1: Rug is one of their biggest, one of their biggest stars.
Speaker 1: He's got over thirty million followers across the various social platforms.
Speaker 1: But we paired him with a guy named Greg Pokin,
Speaker 1: who I made all the Paranormal Activity movies with. And
Speaker 1: so I was really trying to combine, you know, great
Speaker 1: storytelling but also next generation storytellers, to put those two
Speaker 1: together and try to do something a little bit different.
Speaker 1: And what kind of stories do you find that they're
Speaker 1: most interested in? I noticed Songbird, the movie you have
Speaker 1: coming out is a thriller Crimson. The other one is
Speaker 1: a horror film. Is that what's hot right now? It's
Speaker 1: storytelling and storytelling. And if I knew what was going
Speaker 1: to work in storytelling, I would I would be on
Speaker 1: my yacht from this song called not Second Office right now.
Speaker 1: I think that's the one thing. I think, the one
Speaker 1: thing I do feel strongly about, though, is the way
Speaker 1: content is consumed is different, and therefore the way we
Speaker 1: make things have to be different. You can't make things
Speaker 1: and try to reach as broad of audiences as you
Speaker 1: used to. You need to make things that are much
Speaker 1: more local in terms of their scale and spirits. So
Speaker 1: you're making things for a small audience of highly engaged fans.
Speaker 1: And additionally, it can't be created with so much artifice
Speaker 1: that you have a food stylist who's putting sasami seeds
Speaker 1: on the bun to make the bun and the hamburger
Speaker 1: look delicious. Instead with kids that they're used to reel now,
Speaker 1: and so we spent a hundred years in the movie
Speaker 1: business trying to make everything look perfect. And now when
Speaker 1: kids can shoot things from their backyard, they just wanted
Speaker 1: to look real and authentic, but they still need storytelling
Speaker 1: running throughout it. I gotta agree authentic and real works. Well,
Speaker 1: that's Adam Goodman, co founder of Invisible Narratives, former president
Speaker 1: of Paramount Pictures. That full conversation, it's on the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week podcast feed at Bloomberg dot com or at
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts still to come. She is fighting to protect
Speaker 1: something we cannot live without water, the CEO of Thirst
Speaker 1: for Water dot Org, Mena Gooley, on personal and global struggles.
Speaker 1: That's straight ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser from Bloomberg Radio
Speaker 1: let's wrap up this week. I gotta say I'm a
Speaker 1: total fan girl of our next guest. She is devoted
Speaker 1: to drawing attention to the conservation of water and reminding
Speaker 1: us that not everyone has the luxury of turning on
Speaker 1: a tap and having a seemingly never ending supply of
Speaker 1: clean water. She's a water advocate, environmentalist, she's a marathon runner.
Speaker 1: Her latest initiatives It's a Global Handwashing Day, which provided
Speaker 1: soap and hand washing stations for those who needed it.
Speaker 1: The connective tissue, of course, is all about combating the
Speaker 1: global water crisis. Blue Works Paul Sweeney and I caught
Speaker 1: up with me In a Googley, founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: Thirst for Water dot org from Australia, whose world, like
Speaker 1: so many, has been completely changed because of the virus.
Speaker 1: It's been quite a challenge. Actually, we've basically been in
Speaker 1: lockdown since much so that's what now eight months of
Speaker 1: very restricted movement. We've got a five we've had up
Speaker 1: until very recently, a limit on movement of five kilometers
Speaker 1: from home and one hour of exercise outside every day. So,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, that is challenging to deal with um,
Speaker 1: particularly since it's been going on for so long. All
Speaker 1: our borders are closed. You have to get permits. We've
Speaker 1: got a ring of steels, that's its name, the ring
Speaker 1: of steel around the city, so we can't even go
Speaker 1: out to the rural and regional areas. It's um, it's
Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty severe, and there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism of that, obviously, but the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: here have just knuckled down and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we can either hope for change or we can adapt
Speaker 1: to this being the new normal, and we can just
Speaker 1: get on with life and know that at the end
Speaker 1: of this there will be life. And life has come.
Speaker 1: We're down in very, very low single digits at the moment,
Speaker 1: down from hundreds, and we had I think eight hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty cases a day, which I know in your
Speaker 1: language is not a lot, but for us it was
Speaker 1: an enormous number and we were all shocked. But now
Speaker 1: we're down to literally one or two cases a day,
Speaker 1: so the pain and the suffering has been worth it. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting story because here in this country we
Speaker 1: have a difficulty having people, you know, maintain social distancing
Speaker 1: or even wearing a mask or even wash their hands.
Speaker 1: Talked to us Mina about that aspect of you know,
Speaker 1: trying to protect yourself and others through hand washing. I
Speaker 1: know that for a lot of people that is not
Speaker 1: how how could that be a problem. But if you're
Speaker 1: our water uh deprived ergo there's the problem. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting because I think through this pandemic, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all looking at ourselves and going we've got a
Speaker 1: really tough time. But around the world there are three
Speaker 1: billion people who don't have access to adequate handwashing facilities.
Speaker 1: And you think about how many times we all sit down,
Speaker 1: stand up in front of the tab, wash our hands,
Speaker 1: grab a bar of soaps, and to think that there
Speaker 1: are three billion people who don't have access to that,
Speaker 1: it's quite horrifying. I had an enormous privilege to talk
Speaker 1: at the u N in the middle of lockdown from
Speaker 1: my home. That was a bit of a weird experience
Speaker 1: where the Secretary General and all these of view and
Speaker 1: agencies and I'm like, you know, you're talking to these
Speaker 1: people from homes like your bedroom. It's a bit weird.
Speaker 1: That's what you want to make sure the dog doesn't bark,
Speaker 1: Mina or in the shot, right, Well, how lucky lucky
Speaker 1: for me at that stage, it was two am in
Speaker 1: the morning, so you think, you know, eight thirty years terrible,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to stand up and sounds sensible. But the
Speaker 1: thing about that is that this is not a talking problem.
Speaker 1: It's been an action problem. And so two weeks ago
Speaker 1: and started for my fifty years birthday made me feel
Speaker 1: so old. Um, I was going to do something to
Speaker 1: try to solve this, because, as you know, my philosophy
Speaker 1: is that people can help people, and so we ran
Speaker 1: a campaign called Switch to Soap where we asked people
Speaker 1: to go out and run or walk kilometers and every
Speaker 1: kilometer that they ran or walked for the period of
Speaker 1: a week, we donated a bar of soap to communities
Speaker 1: in need, and to every hundred kilometers we donated a
Speaker 1: hand washing station. So it sounds like no, one kilometer
Speaker 1: or five kilometers is not very much, but we had
Speaker 1: thousands of people from over sixty five countries participating in this.
Speaker 1: We donated over eighty thousand bars of soap and four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty hand washing stations just in one week.
Speaker 1: Getting involved is easy, so this, um, they became very
Speaker 1: This was kind of a project that I did because
Speaker 1: I wanted to give back something, and my birthdays shouldn't
Speaker 1: be about receiving, they should also be about giving back.
Speaker 1: And so that my birthday combines with global handwatching game.
Speaker 1: Mambe go, we've got to do something, and to do
Speaker 1: something has turned into we've got to do something even
Speaker 1: more because, as you said, the problem is so big.
Speaker 1: So we're going to run another campaign in December and
Speaker 1: a couple more next year. But if people want to
Speaker 1: get involved, they can sign up to stay up to
Speaker 1: date with our plans. The best thing to do is
Speaker 1: to go to my website MENA googlie dot com, m
Speaker 1: I n A t U l I dot com and
Speaker 1: then you can sign up and we'll keep you posted
Speaker 1: with with the next project. So I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, how has the pandemic made the global water
Speaker 1: crisis even worse and more painful? How has it impacted it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great question. I think. Um, it's intacted in
Speaker 1: it in a couple of ways. First of all, it's
Speaker 1: put it front and center for billions of people around
Speaker 1: the world who don't have access to the hand washing
Speaker 1: facilities that we take for granted, you know, water for
Speaker 1: all of us actually is everything, but many of us,
Speaker 1: most of us treat it as if it's nothing. We
Speaker 1: really don't pay attention to how important it is. And
Speaker 1: for the billions the three billion people who don't have
Speaker 1: access to adequate handwashing facilities, remember many of those are
Speaker 1: women and children, and for them, this pandemic has made
Speaker 1: things ten times worse because it's not just diarrhea and
Speaker 1: other water borne diseases all of a sudden, it's coronavirus
Speaker 1: as well. So I think that's that's one element. The
Speaker 1: second thing is pollution is a major problem. And of
Speaker 1: course we're all using more plastic, we're all using non
Speaker 1: a lot more disposable materials, and I think we forget
Speaker 1: that there are implications for that in our waterways, in
Speaker 1: our oceans, um and that that's going to have long
Speaker 1: term implications as well. So I am shocked at how
Speaker 1: water blind companies, policymakers, investors are that we have forgotten
Speaker 1: that it's not just water that comes out of its taps,
Speaker 1: that water is required to everything we use, and we
Speaker 1: find we consume every single day, from the food we eat,
Speaker 1: the clothes that we wear, the power that goes into
Speaker 1: our computers, all of those things take water. This is
Speaker 1: not a problem in some fast long place of the world.
Speaker 1: This is a problem even in America and for companies
Speaker 1: and for organizations in the United States. And I think
Speaker 1: we need to do something to shake this up. That's
Speaker 1: not talking, that's actually action, and that's driving change. And
Speaker 1: the only way we'll succeed in making changes by putting
Speaker 1: water onto the agenda. Again, not just the places like
Speaker 1: the UN but in boardrooms and in policy and amongst
Speaker 1: local and national governments. We need to change how we
Speaker 1: think about water. So, you know, this kind of brings
Speaker 1: to mind some an adage we all kind of know
Speaker 1: to think globally but at locally. Are you seeing any
Speaker 1: local success stories that we should emulate or learn from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there are a number of localized success stories
Speaker 1: where people have turned things around, where cities that have
Speaker 1: been on the brink of running dry cities like Cape Town,
Speaker 1: for example. We all watched Cape Town space down day
Speaker 1: zero and they implemented very very significant water restrictions. They
Speaker 1: get a big public awareness campaign that say, don't waste water. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that you've classified as a as a
Speaker 1: success story because they almost ran out. UM. But as
Speaker 1: it is, a success or in terms of them being
Speaker 1: able to turn it around at the end. I think
Speaker 1: more broadly speaking, there are huge number of commercial success
Speaker 1: stories in terms of recycling and reusing materials. There. The
Speaker 1: reality is when water goes into everything, the more things
Speaker 1: we waste, the more water who we waste. So creating
Speaker 1: the society focused on developing circular economies, on reducing food waste,
Speaker 1: on looking encouraging people to look for recycled materials in
Speaker 1: the in the in the clothes, and in the foods
Speaker 1: that they're looking at. UM, looking for recycled packaging, and
Speaker 1: just asking questions about where did this stuff come from
Speaker 1: and what was the level of responsibility amongst the companies
Speaker 1: that made it to produce it and deliver it to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just you want you want to have companies increasingly
Speaker 1: talking about this because they can really move the needle
Speaker 1: when it comes to doing things better. UM. I mean
Speaker 1: we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you. You know,
Speaker 1: when we talked to you, I think about I think
Speaker 1: it was was it back in late it was just
Speaker 1: as you were beginning, um, your plan to do a
Speaker 1: hundred marathons and hundreds in a hundred days. It was
Speaker 1: all about a raising awareness of the global water crisis.
Speaker 1: So this was back in you got through about two thirds,
Speaker 1: I think to your sixties. I get marathon and I
Speaker 1: know then you had a really tough injury. How are
Speaker 1: you doing physically, Yeah, I, um, I've broke my leg.
Speaker 1: I mean I've got an honestly turn you. Was one
Speaker 1: of the darkest moments in my life. UM. I sat
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair in the hospital in Cape Town, which
Speaker 1: is where we were at the time, diagnosed with this
Speaker 1: absolutely massive stress ructure. That wasn't just a little break.
Speaker 1: It was my bone almost broken through, the biggest bone
Speaker 1: in your body. UM. And I sat down all life
Speaker 1: to think of was I've let down our community, I've
Speaker 1: let down the water crisis. I've let down the next generation. Um,
Speaker 1: this is all a disaster, and sometimes you need to
Speaker 1: go into the darkness to be able to appreciate the life. Well.
Speaker 1: She certainly understands that firsthand and gives us some hope.
Speaker 1: On this weekend when so many of us are facing
Speaker 1: challenges and stress on many levels. I got to say
Speaker 1: love men a goalie, founder and CEO of Thirst for
Speaker 1: Water dot org. And that wraps up the weekend. Edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. I'm Carol Masser, joined this week by
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Kailey Lines and Paul Sweeney. Be sure to tune
Speaker 1: in daily to Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting
Speaker 1: at two pm Wall Street Time. You can also hear
Speaker 1: more of our Bloomberg Business Week conversations download them at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can also watch us on YouTube just search Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Global News, and be sure to check out our Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week Extra podcast. This week, the President of the
Speaker 1: Rockefeller Foundation, Rajiv Shah, on a big announcement and investment
Speaker 1: aimed at disrupting the inequities widened by the pandemic. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week is available on newsstands and it's online and
Speaker 1: of course always on the Bloomberg. Have a safe weekend, everybody.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg