Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Mazer and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. All right, so as we start
Speaker 1: the final hour of this Monday edition, let's check in
Speaker 1: with Stan Pavlovsky. He is the CEO, newly minted of
Speaker 1: shutter Stock. He joins us on the phone just up
Speaker 1: the road from me in Westchester. So stand first of all,
Speaker 1: congratulations on your new job. Nothing like taking over as
Speaker 1: the boss during a pandemic. So remind us kind of
Speaker 1: give us a stay to play for for shutter Stock
Speaker 1: right now. Absolutely, so thanks for having me. Very excited
Speaker 1: to talk to you. UM. Shover Stock is a technology company,
Speaker 1: a two sided marketplace where we have two million customers
Speaker 1: of all sizes, whether it's a small or medium business
Speaker 1: or a large enterprise or agency that comes to us
Speaker 1: to get their stories told. We have the freshest, most
Speaker 1: diverse content um and services, and we have over million
Speaker 1: contributors worldwide that make our content library best in class.
Speaker 1: Talk to me a little bit and we'll delve deeper
Speaker 1: deeper into the business. But I'm just curious. You know,
Speaker 1: you took over in April as president and CEO and CEO.
Speaker 1: You were you were previously already the CEO. But did
Speaker 1: you have like a dream that then you had to
Speaker 1: adapt or put on hold because of the pandemic. Like,
Speaker 1: what is that like as someone in the C suite
Speaker 1: that has to pivot really quickly to sort of stay alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great it's a great point. So interestingly, I
Speaker 1: started on April one, so as the CEO. So it
Speaker 1: was very uh, you know, very very telling for what
Speaker 1: the journey would be for the next couple of months. UM.
Speaker 1: The good news is, you know, because it's a global company, UM,
Speaker 1: we have uh, we've been used to using video for
Speaker 1: a long time, so we continue to, you know, to
Speaker 1: to leverage that. UM. You know, a lot of my
Speaker 1: sort of aspirations of visiting all of our offices and
Speaker 1: really uh having that in person connection kind of had
Speaker 1: to go by the wayside at least for the short term. UM,
Speaker 1: but we were able to kind of move quickly into
Speaker 1: how do we keep employees safe? UM, how do we
Speaker 1: pivot around our customers and what they need from us? Um,
Speaker 1: not just from a content perspective, but you know a
Speaker 1: lot of our customers, uh, you know, are struggling in
Speaker 1: the small and medium business space. A lot of agencies
Speaker 1: are are struggling at this point. How do we support
Speaker 1: them and the messages that they want to give, how
Speaker 1: do we support them from a from a deal perspective, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So we pivoted very quickly to UH sort of our
Speaker 1: our COVID UH swat teams UM, and I think you know,
Speaker 1: over the last couple of months, we've we've now found
Speaker 1: at least some level of the new norm UH and
Speaker 1: operating in the new norm. So tell us more about
Speaker 1: your customers and how they're doing now, you know, five
Speaker 1: six months into this pandemic, Because, as you say, you
Speaker 1: deal with a lot of small and medium sized businesses
Speaker 1: and we know that they have been hit very hard
Speaker 1: by this in general. What are you hearing from them
Speaker 1: at this moment? Yeah, So on the small and medium
Speaker 1: business side, what's interesting is there's kind of a tale
Speaker 1: of two stories here. One UM, You're right, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of businesses that are just struggling UM. And so
Speaker 1: we definitely hear from customers that you know, come to
Speaker 1: us that still want to be able to communicate with
Speaker 1: UH with their clients UM during this time and need
Speaker 1: solutions that UM, you know that fit not just their uh,
Speaker 1: their creative needs, but also their their budgets. Um. The
Speaker 1: other side of this, and you know, you know, you
Speaker 1: guys are probably seeing this as well, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of small and medium businesses that did not have
Speaker 1: a digital presence are now uh sort of really learning
Speaker 1: what it means to have a digital presence. So interestingly
Speaker 1: for our business from a revenue perspective, the small embedient
Speaker 1: medium business segment has been one of the stronger segments
Speaker 1: during the pandemic um and you can think about it
Speaker 1: as kind of the Wix effect or the Shopify effect,
Speaker 1: where a lot of these businesses are really looking for
Speaker 1: solutions of how do how do I how do I
Speaker 1: sell my product online? How do I talk to my
Speaker 1: customers digitally? And we sit, you know, square in the
Speaker 1: middle of that and just quickly and we're going to
Speaker 1: take a break and come back and delve more into it.
Speaker 1: But how did you keep morale up? Because that was
Speaker 1: that's a lot that you just listed and whether it's
Speaker 1: your clients or your staff, like, how do you do it? Well,
Speaker 1: we did it in a number of different ways, um.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of converging themes over this, you know,
Speaker 1: over this time. First and foremost, we started to do
Speaker 1: a lot of virtual events. UH so a lot more
Speaker 1: communicating with our both with our employees as well as
Speaker 1: with our clients. So we send a lot more communications
Speaker 1: of things that are happening UM, how they can participate,
Speaker 1: how they can take advantage. With our employees, we have
Speaker 1: a lot of virtual happy hours. We do a lot
Speaker 1: of virtual events that each of the teams can take
Speaker 1: advantage of. We gave them a budget to be able
Speaker 1: to do that UM. But also, you know, uh in
Speaker 1: dealing with the realities of what's happening from a diversity
Speaker 1: and inclusion perspective. We've also made a lot of strides
Speaker 1: UM in getting both our community UM as well as
Speaker 1: our employees involved in how we can make a difference.
Speaker 1: Let's dive a little bit into story your last quarter,
Speaker 1: what was doing really well? I mentioned earlier that video
Speaker 1: downloads were doing quite well. How are you structuring your
Speaker 1: business for the back half of the year and even
Speaker 1: based on where the demand is? Yeah, so you're right,
Speaker 1: there's definitely the industry tell lies behind what's happening with
Speaker 1: video on demand as well as social media use UM
Speaker 1: where that's really helping us UM and you know, we've
Speaker 1: launched several new subscriptions to respond to that, both for
Speaker 1: the small and medium business segment, which we just launched
Speaker 1: UM as well as additional subscriptions that we're going to
Speaker 1: be launching later this year within our music segment as well. UM.
Speaker 1: So the way I think about our strategy going forward
Speaker 1: is obviously there's a lot of industry tail winds digitally
Speaker 1: that are helping us, but also UM. When you think
Speaker 1: about the use cases for UM. For us, it's it's
Speaker 1: very diverse, whether it's social media, websites, video creation, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, movie creation, but also some of the more
Speaker 1: traditional media like print as well as merchandizing or direct mail. UM.
Speaker 1: And we want to move from a company that is
Speaker 1: entirely content focused UM to really being more solution focused UM.
Speaker 1: So what you'll see from us is the ability for
Speaker 1: our customers, not us to uh kind of get the
Speaker 1: raw assets, but really to be able to achieve what
Speaker 1: they're trying to achieve by simply running you know, being
Speaker 1: able to publish two social media or to run an
Speaker 1: ad UM. We're also launching creative services for our larger
Speaker 1: customers going forward. Video is a big one for us.
Speaker 1: UM you know, especially right now when there's no uh,
Speaker 1: it's hard to produce uh, you know, large format videos.
Speaker 1: What we're finding is what our customers are finding is
Speaker 1: that we are a company because of our huge contributor
Speaker 1: base as well as global reach, that we are a
Speaker 1: place that they can come to to develop video assets
Speaker 1: during this time. UM. So between between the content, the tools,
Speaker 1: and ultimately a complete solution, UM complete marketing solution. That's
Speaker 1: our focus going forward. So when you look across the
Speaker 1: entire media landscape stand and you worked at Meredith for
Speaker 1: at times, you understand both the digital and the and
Speaker 1: the more traditional side. Having run the digital portion of
Speaker 1: that well known publishing company. I do wonder. We hear
Speaker 1: from Guess a lot that the pandemic has accelerated certain
Speaker 1: elements of businesses, things that might have been underway. We
Speaker 1: know that the media business we know firsthand, has been
Speaker 1: under incredible pressure, a lot of disruption going on. What
Speaker 1: has it accelerated in your estimation and where do we
Speaker 1: sort of come out of this? What are some things
Speaker 1: that we may see that are just utterly different when
Speaker 1: it comes to the broader media landscape. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great question. You know what I think about it UM
Speaker 1: and Meredith is a perfect example of this. UM. I
Speaker 1: see three kind of primary trends that are shaping media
Speaker 1: and advertising. UM. First, you have UM. You know, more
Speaker 1: than ever, consumers want content on demand UM. So that's
Speaker 1: first and foremost UM. And you're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: that through uh, you know, mobile usage, through social media
Speaker 1: usage UM too. Because of what's happening right now, media
Speaker 1: companies are realizing they can't just rely on advertising for
Speaker 1: their business model, so particularly because you have the large
Speaker 1: platforms like Google, UM and Facebook that are capturing a
Speaker 1: disproportionate share of those revenues UM. And then the last
Speaker 1: with the consumer privacy issues that are happening UH now
Speaker 1: it's forcing you know, publishers and media companies to completely
Speaker 1: rethink their data strategies. So what I see happening is
Speaker 1: publishers and media companies are gonna really it's going to
Speaker 1: force them to take back control over their first party data.
Speaker 1: It's going to really make it's gonna force and it's happening.
Speaker 1: Companies are developing subscription models because they need to have
Speaker 1: that direct relationship with the consumer. They can't keep relying
Speaker 1: on the platforms as intermediaries. So I think you know,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna see is actually, UM, while it's very
Speaker 1: challenging right now, companies that do that well and develop
Speaker 1: those relationships well are going to end up coming out
Speaker 1: much stronger than they were before UM and and have
Speaker 1: much more sustainable business models. So interesting. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, eight years ago, no more than that, ten
Speaker 1: years ago, I worked at an internet company. It was
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite. It was like subscription model dead. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a really like nitty gritty, fun question to ask.
Speaker 1: I'm just really curious as to what UM your clients
Speaker 1: are downloading, Like, what isn't high demand right now? Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: over the last couple of months, it's really been, uh,
Speaker 1: it's really been fascinating. There's a lot of you know, historically,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of fun with this category because
Speaker 1: you have a lot of fun memes and a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, fun stereotypes that you can make fun of, UM,
Speaker 1: you know as part of uh you know, creative images
Speaker 1: and and creative video clips, etcetera. UM. Over the past
Speaker 1: couple of months, we've kind of moved away from a
Speaker 1: lot of searches around face masks and covid uh too
Speaker 1: much more work from home and home office. Now we're
Speaker 1: moving into fall and back to school um, and different
Speaker 1: types of yearly celebrations like graduation, um, etcetera. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we're we're moving a little bit, I would say, more
Speaker 1: into the norm around kind of the seasonal content that
Speaker 1: that people are, you know, looking for. But as you
Speaker 1: guys sort of had on the update around some of
Speaker 1: the Zoom results, one of the one of the constants
Speaker 1: for us is fun zoom background. So that, uh, that
Speaker 1: looks like it's not slowing down anytime soon. Absolutely, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: congratulations on the promotion. It's a big job, and eager
Speaker 1: to see what happens with your business because, as you say,
Speaker 1: you're right in the center of some mega trends and say,
Speaker 1: at least standup. L off Ski is chief executive officer
Speaker 1: of shutter Stock.