00:00 - Now, please help

00:01 - me welcome our summit speaker, Lisa Hughes, who is driving

00:05 - digital transformation as publisher and CEO of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

00:10 - In March, Lisa was awarded the National Press Foundation's 2025

00:14 - chairman's Citation,

00:16 - stating, quote, under her leadership, the company has undergone

00:19 - a major transformation focused on sustainable profitability.

00:24 - Prior to The Inquirer, Lisa worked as publisher and chief business officer

00:27 - of The New Yorker, where she successfully transitioned that iconic brand

00:32 - into a multi-platform business with long term viability.

00:36 - Please join me in welcoming Lisa here.

00:48 - Morning, everybody.

00:50 - Such a pleasure to be here on such a beautiful summer day.

00:53 - I don't know what happened to the spring, but we're now into summer.

00:56 - I'm going to talk to the next, 15 minutes or so

01:00 - about the secrets of our success.

01:02 - And we're fighting the good fight, like all of you.

01:04 - And I'm going to touch on some of the things that we're doing,

01:08 - not everything that we're doing, but to some of the highlights

01:11 - and happy to hang around after and answer questions.

01:14 - You know, the break, etc..

01:15 - So the first thing I would say is understand your value proposition.

01:19 - Who are you?

01:20 - What do you scratch in the media landscape?

01:23 - What can you do that nobody else can do?

01:26 - And we really zeroed in on that.

01:27 - Of course we say, we're from Philly.

01:30 - Nice to meet you.

01:31 - And I'm going to show you a video that I think encapsulates

01:34 - what is so different and special and unique about Philly.

01:38 - And we always say, if you want Philly, do not pass go.

01:41 - You got to go through the inquirer, go near the deep end of the water.

01:45 - Like that doesn't even sound normal to me.

01:48 - So I be like, go, go, go.

01:50 - In the deep end of the water,

01:51 - you add a vowel or you where you add a letter that's not there.

01:55 - I discovered that I had an accent my freshman year of college, and it was

01:59 - the first time that I was doing laundry, so I had to go out

02:03 - and ask the people on my floor about my towels.

02:06 - I wasn't sure what setting to set it on, so I asked the group,

02:10 - you know, what water setting for my towels?

02:13 - And they said, were you what are you trying to wash?

02:17 - I'm trying to wash my towels.

02:18 - And so there was a whole bunch of back and forth with that.

02:21 - And that's when I realized I had my accent because they wanted me to say

02:26 - that I was washing my towels, which I can't even pronounce properly.

02:32 - Like, to me, that sounds really well. We're not worried about being proper,

02:35 - we just want to get the point across quickly.

02:36 - Water is part of Philadelphia and if that goes away,

02:39 - it will be just like everybody else.

02:41 - Saying the word correctly.

02:44 - Yeah. So it kind of makes a point.

02:46 - And that's an example of vertical video, which we're also leaning into.

02:49 - And that went crazy viral with our audience.

02:52 - The other thing I would say is not only know your value proposition,

02:55 - what's your unique thing that you offer that nobody else does, but don't assume,

02:59 - even if you are like us, 197 year old brand with 97% awareness

03:05 - that people understand and are familiar with your brand.

03:08 - You know, most people think we're a newspaper and for 187

03:11 - years of our 197 years, that's pretty much what we were.

03:15 - But now we're so much more so understanding the full footprint.

03:18 - And we say this on every single sales calls with the business community.

03:23 - We say it to readers, we pump content through all these different channels.

03:27 - We say it to funders.

03:29 - And again, people are kind of shocked when they see this.

03:32 - So again, don't assume people know your brand and the breadth and depth.

03:37 - So I'm going to

03:38 - I'm going to highlight some things that we think work for us.

03:41 - Great, great compelling content.

03:44 - You know, we've been talking about that harnessing storytelling.

03:47 - I just heard this on the panel before. We're good at that. Okay.

03:49 - How do we, monetize that?

03:52 - How do we think about that in a bigger way?

03:54 - And then demonstrating our impact.

03:56 - We matter in Philly, in the region.

03:58 - How do we constantly show that and deliver on that value prop?

04:03 - So three tenets great content people are willing to pay for.

04:06 - Sounds easy, really hard.

04:07 - But that's always at the center

04:09 - of our thinking to how do we tell our story to the consumer,

04:13 - to the business community, to the philanthropic community and three,

04:17 - how do we create a compelling business proposition for the business community

04:21 - and the philanthropic community to want to continue to support us?

04:25 - Because you think about the classic business rules, who's your customer?

04:29 - Who's your competition?

04:30 - How do you make your money?

04:31 - All of that is changed.

04:33 - So creating content people are willing to pay for,

04:37 - what do we think about when we think about this?

04:40 - Put the consumer at the center.

04:41 - We used to be an advertising driven business.

04:43 - We are no longer advertising revenues important for us,

04:46 - but it is not the main drive our consumer revenue is.

04:50 - So how do we think about our business always putting the consumer?

04:53 - That means web design, anything we do, the consumers.

04:57 - The first consideration, really important.

05:00 - We have three key sort of key load stars that we load our content through.

05:04 - It must be useful, it must be revealing and it must be responsive.

05:08 - What is useful mean?

05:09 - You know the best dive bars in Philly.

05:11 - Great mapping functionality.

05:13 - Super fun. Went crazy with our readers.

05:16 - Revealing we did a great investigative piece

05:19 - of course, the entire I-Team investigative piece has to be revealing on a, bar

05:25 - that was owned by police officers that was responsible

05:30 - ultimately for a lot of DUIs that were then covered up by the police.

05:35 - And, and no great investigative piece or responsive.

05:38 - Okay, big snow

05:39 - event that we all in and, you know, are my streets closed is Septa running.

05:43 - So you know that's always the way we think about it.

05:45 - Evolve and expand your content.

05:47 - Nothing is precious.

05:49 - And everything has to get tweaked and evolve and move

05:52 - with the consumer at all times.

05:54 - I'll show you some examples in a second.

05:56 - And that includes new platforms, new distribution.

05:59 - How are you connecting with audience?

06:01 - The cliche of meeting people where they are. You do.

06:04 - You have to meet people where they are consuming

06:06 - and create content that is bespoke for that platform?

06:10 - It's not just create a print thing, which we're really, really good at

06:13 - and then wedging it into digital platforms.

06:16 - Create a new we're doing a lot with vertical video, for example,

06:20 - that's really, really working with that new generation of readers for us.

06:24 - And, and, ultimately create a culture

06:28 - within your organization where you can try new things and fail.

06:32 - And it's okay.

06:33 - Right?

06:34 - As a data point, it's not the end point.

06:36 - You know, that was hard for us.

06:38 - You know, it's hard to sort of make a big bet.

06:41 - And then what if it doesn't work?

06:42 - Well, we don't we can't afford to be so, so safe.

06:45 - Let's go know that everything's not going to work.

06:48 - Some things are going to work wildly.

06:50 - Well, we have this vertical video series with, one of our reporters,

06:55 - called WTF with Tom, and it's all about Septa and transportation.

06:59 - He is the least likely video star

07:02 - you would ever imagine, and he is absolutely superb at it.

07:05 - And audiences are just going bananas.

07:08 - We never thought this would work.

07:09 - We just tried something new and whoa.

07:12 - So again, create that culture.

07:14 - And then a data informed decision making.

07:16 - And this is this is a really important piece,

07:18 - you know, what are we going to measure?

07:20 - One source of truth.

07:21 - Everybody agrees.

07:23 - Everybody has access to the dashboards.

07:25 - So this isn't a big black box that people don't know.

07:28 - And then it takes the emotionality out of making decisions.

07:31 - When somebody says, well, everyone loves this.

07:33 - You're like, no, they don't.

07:35 - Let's look at the data. It's not really working.

07:37 - What do we need to do differently to make it work?

07:39 - And that really transformed us across the whole house.

07:42 - I'm not just talking newsroom.

07:43 - It's every decision we're making about marketing, about sales, about,

07:49 - newsroom decision and content.

07:51 - So, you know, on the notion of keep things evolving.

07:54 - Are newspapers still really important part of our business?

07:57 - There's our, front page from 2022.

08:01 - We, you know, it looks very different now.

08:03 - Much more modern, not radical.

08:04 - We're doing this over time.

08:06 - But, you know, way more consumer friendly, right?

08:10 - Our old news, our old cover was really, you know, hadn't been touched in 50 years.

08:15 - How do we make that more dynamic?

08:17 - Adding the sky boxes, you know, changing the fonts and so on.

08:20 - Ditto with our section fronts.

08:22 - So here's I'm going to show you sports and food.

08:24 - And you see that evolution over time.

08:27 - Way more content.

08:28 - Quote above the classic fold.

08:30 - You see if you want to follow your teams you can easily on

08:33 - the right side easily clickable or your columnists.

08:36 - You have your breaking news on the right, you've got

08:39 - trending news, just, you know, look at the just the volume of content.

08:42 - You've got your scores across the top way more efficient use of space.

08:47 - Ditto food.

08:48 - You know, this looks radically different.

08:50 - You know,

08:50 - we realize that our food prowess, we've got a big food desk is restaurant.

08:54 - And where can I go eat now are mapping functionality.

08:58 - Now is incredible.

08:59 - If you want to go in a certain neighborhood or just go to dive bars or,

09:03 - you know, just eat a certain type of food, or, you know,

09:08 - any number of ways you might think about, how do I pick my restaurant?

09:12 - We've got you, and it's all there.

09:14 - So we're looking at this stuff all the time.

09:16 - We're looking at performance.

09:18 - What could be better? How do we, repackage?

09:20 - We just repackaged our whole weekend content

09:23 - to give people a different reading experience.

09:25 - We're testing, we're learning, and again, goes back to the data point,

09:28 - which is you can see pretty quickly, what's working and what's old is new.

09:34 - I was hearing about email and the importance of that.

09:36 - We couldn't agree more.

09:38 - It's really important to have that direct relationship with consumers.

09:42 - And we've been using, our email

09:45 - to great effect to launch hyperlocal newsletters.

09:48 - And this is newsletters focus on transportation is my street

09:51 - clothes on really hyperlocal politics, food.

09:54 - What's happening in my neighborhood?

09:56 - Not this opening in Center City, necessarily.

09:58 - So we launched with four, and here's a example of a news

10:02 - event where we can really tailor it to each market.

10:05 - These are going bananas.

10:07 - We'll do ten more this year, another ten next year.

10:10 - So it will have, you know, close to 30 by the end of, two years from now.

10:14 - And we're seeing subscriber retention.

10:17 - This is a subscriber retention.

10:19 - And engagement tool.

10:21 - Is just through the roof.

10:23 - And, you know, you can also use AI tools.

10:26 - We built our own tool, scribe, which can help us listen to and monitor,

10:30 - you know, up to 30 municipalities or as many as we want in education boards.

10:35 - And then flag, things for reporters

10:38 - to go and report on, you know, aggregate, summarize.

10:42 - It's just been game changing.

10:43 - Readers have gone bananas over this.

10:46 - And these are just great verbatim that we're getting so much emails

10:50 - from readers saying, I love this is is, you know, it's doing

10:53 - what it was built to do keep us sticky, keep us more engaged,

10:56 - make their Inquirer subscription really, really that much more valuable to them.

11:03 - Another thing that we're leaning into is experiential.

11:05 - This is not news to everybody in the room.

11:08 - The big bet we made was on Food Festival Philly is a food town.

11:12 - We have the biggest desk covering Philly food in the world.

11:15 - I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it's true.

11:18 - So we launched a big, ambitious, full day long food festival,

11:22 - really bringing our content to that experiential realm

11:25 - programed by my editors in the on our news desk.

11:29 - You know, we really engage the Philly food community.

11:31 - And what's so gratifying about this is the tickets

11:35 - we sold was, I think 65% were new audiences.

11:39 - So people who are following our content but not yet subscribing, or

11:43 - maybe they're not following our content, but they're foodies and they should be.

11:46 - Readers are coming to this and you know

11:49 - that over time, they're going to start to get engaged with our content.

11:52 - We believe if you do that, you will ultimately subscribe.

11:56 - And we got great, a phenomenal audience, exactly who we target

12:00 - that are out and about and engage in community affluent

12:03 - and and it's going to happen again in November of this year.

12:08 - Importantly, this also allowed us to have a new value prop for advertisers.

12:12 - We brought in eight really big sponsors, that, you know,

12:16 - were in the process of renewing.

12:17 - And, you know, that's important for our business model too.

12:20 - And then another thing that we're doing and here's

12:22 - a good example of it, is really enlisting the creator community.

12:25 - You know, that's something we're doing more and more of

12:27 - of course, we're precious about our brand.

12:29 - We control the Inquirer content.

12:31 - You're taking a leap of faith by handing over the keys

12:34 - to the horse, to somebody else.

12:37 - And it worked.

12:38 - It's worked beautifully for us, particularly in food.

12:41 - But we've got an amazing creator community who really understands

12:45 - what we're trying to do.

12:46 - And again, you're you're letting them do what they want.

12:50 - And it's really working for us.

12:52 - And again, harnessing their audiences, and then of course, always showing

12:57 - that you have content with that, that's creating change, that's creating impact.

13:01 - That's the heart of what we do with our news report.

13:03 - Of course, here's a shining example of this, where we wrote

13:07 - about an anonymous donor who donated $1 million to, relieve the

13:13 - the loan burden for 179 nurses in Philly.

13:17 - Our article spurred another million dollars.

13:20 - We wrote about that, and then another and another.

13:23 - And we're now up to over $4 million from a single act of local journalism.

13:27 - So being able to, and I have hundreds of these kind of stories,

13:31 - I mean, this is pretty amazing, but it's big and small of our impact,

13:35 - and we make sure that we're

13:35 - constantly pushing that out to show this matters in community.

13:39 - This is not just food and sports, although it matters.

13:42 - There for the health of those industries and the arts.

13:45 - But but also for, you know, changing legislation and effecting change.

13:50 - I think the second tenant that we have is tell your story.

13:53 - We believe in paid marketing.

13:55 - We are loud about our story.

13:57 - Don't assume that everybody knows how well you're doing or what

14:00 - you're doing, even for 197 year old brand

14:03 - that's almost as old as Philadelphia with 97% awareness.

14:08 - We, came out with a big brand campaign,

14:11 - not something that local a local newspaper typically does.

14:15 - And it, you know, was bold and we came out swinging

14:20 - because we felt like we had a story to tell.

14:22 - And we have been really successful with this.

14:26 - All the metrics are there.

14:28 - I'm going to show you a quick sizzle reel.

14:30 - It's really working.

14:31 - And we've inspired, the Minneapolis Star Tribune

14:34 - to do the same and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to do the same.

14:38 - And many others.

14:38 - So, I'm going to show you this quick video.

14:42 - I know I have to click twice,

14:45 - get it?

15:30 - They were thrown out.

15:31 - They weren't allowed to watch.

15:33 - You know, why does bad things happen in Philadelphia?

15:36 - Bad things.

15:40 - Thank you.

15:40 - Philadelphia forever.

15:42 - We shall all share the bond of being Philadelphians.

15:45 - Three Nobel Prize has gone to two scientists

15:49 - whose work played a critical role in the fight against Covid 19.

15:53 - It's gone.

15:55 - Harper, with a rain maker.

15:57 - You don't win.

15:59 - Or, you know I love my kids.

16:01 - I love Abbott Elementary.

16:02 - Thank you so much.

16:38 - The idea and, of course we use the press.

16:42 - We pitched hard, we got a ton of press.

16:44 - We won a ton of awards.

16:46 - We won the gold at the inma.

16:48 - And the campaign's flexible to go into different verticals,

16:52 - so we continue to spend that.

16:54 - What we launched in 2020 to the end of 2022, 23.

16:58 - And we are still at it.

17:00 - You'll see an execution, of course, for the fliers.

17:03 - Penguins. Right.

17:04 - Unsubscribe from shut out subscribe to shoot out.

17:08 - And, you know, you see how we use it flexibly

17:11 - for the sports vertical for food.

17:15 - So for any big initiative, we have a framework to then

17:18 - really promote.

17:19 - We're launching, South Jersey later this year, actually in June,

17:24 - we'll see a campaign that's, you know, evocative of this for that.

17:28 - And again, we really believe in this.

17:30 - We will measuring it constantly.

17:33 - It works.

17:34 - Next, the third tenant really is have a compelling story

17:38 - for your advertisers and for your the philanthropic community.

17:42 - And going back to that

17:43 - first point I made, which is how do you harness storytelling?

17:46 - We do that really well.

17:48 - We realized that that's something that we can really bring

17:50 - to the business community in Philly.

17:51 - There's so many stories to tell about what companies are doing in Philly.

17:55 - That's great.

17:56 - We know how to storyteller.

17:57 - We have the audience, we have the convening power, and we have the brand.

18:01 - So how do we do that?

18:02 - On the right here for ibex

18:04 - is an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about that runs

18:07 - multi-platform, really compelling drives audience, incredible stats.

18:12 - I'm going to talk to you about,

18:14 - sort of corporate responsibility and reputation work that we're doing.

18:18 - And then what we're doing also for the philanthropic community.

18:22 - And then how we really bring Food Fest to life for clients.

18:26 - So, you know, the Inquirer studio is something I launched

18:28 - when I got to the Inquirer in 2020.

18:32 - And again, our prowess in creating stories for clients.

18:35 - This was a year long series for Jefferson.

18:38 - That really was an institutional play about their innovation

18:41 - across Jefferson Health and Jefferson University.

18:45 - Thomas Jefferson University, you know, beautifully done, multi-platform.

18:49 - Just huge stats.

18:51 - Won again, the goal at the Inma, among other awards.

18:55 - And again, I think this really signaled to the community, wow,

18:58 - look what's going on at the Inquirer.

19:00 - Look at how they're bringing, you know, their brand storytelling to clients.

19:04 - And this is really, you know, helped us grow that part of the business.

19:08 - Another thing that we're doing is really on the corporate reputation front.

19:12 - So one of our franchises is our change maker Spotlight,

19:15 - where we profile a C-suite executive at a company.

19:18 - Very distinctive illustration that looks great on social.

19:21 - It's a Q&A format.

19:22 - Again, this is a branded content play.

19:25 - And has now become the go to for every single new CEO in town. Hi.

19:30 - I want to do a change maker spotlight.

19:32 - It runs importantly on A3.

19:34 - So you have the paper, which still goes to the C-suite and movers

19:39 - and shakers and boards in Philly still read print

19:43 - very avidly, as well as across all digital media.

19:46 - So that's really working for us.

19:48 - And then we do a lot on, what companies are doing in Philly.

19:51 - That's interesting.

19:52 - Here's a great, multi-platform branded, piece

19:56 - we did with Lincoln Financial on their 20 year investment in Philly.

19:59 - And what they're doing, obviously, they're a national brand.

20:02 - Philly is a key market for them.

20:04 - How can we help them tell their story in Philly.

20:07 - So this is really working for us on the sales front.

20:10 - And then on the philanthropy front, we, you know, of course, are owned

20:14 - by the Lymphocyte Institute.

20:15 - We have a unique ownership model where a nonprofit owns a for profit newsroom.

20:21 - So we have access to philanthropy and Jerry Lynn Fest in his vision.

20:26 - You know, in 2015, when he bought the paper

20:28 - out of bankruptcy, set up this unique structure,

20:31 - and we really lean into it so we can go to foundations and pitch,

20:35 - the content areas that we're interested in, in underwriting and funding for,

20:40 - we obviously have an individual donor,

20:43 - whole plan and, and we work that hard.

20:46 - And then we do something like this.

20:48 - This is a whole program called Philly Gibbs, where we work

20:50 - with the William Penn Foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation.

20:53 - They pick ten nonprofits annually.

20:57 - We write about them.

20:58 - We do about 20 pieces of content and really drive donations

21:01 - to these really important nonprofits that are doing huge work in Philly

21:07 - and the region to, you know, address pressing needs.

21:10 - So this is an example of a whole program that we set up, that didn't exist.

21:15 - That really puts us, you know, really in direct touch and doing great work

21:21 - and using our up again, our power audience and our convening power.

21:24 - And this year, which was year two for this,

21:28 - we raised $1 million for each of these ten organizations, which is pretty amazing.

21:34 - You know, another thing that we're doing this

21:35 - a little different on the on the, how do we how do we change

21:39 - our value proposition to the advertising community is experiential.

21:44 - So this is at the food festival.

21:45 - Peanut Chews was one of our sponsors, a proud Philly candy.

21:51 - And, we partnered them with Jen, Carroll, who's a Philly chef,

21:57 - and she created two dishes using peanut chews, a curry

22:01 - savory dish, and a sort of pecan pie type of, sweet dish.

22:06 - And you can see the people went nuts.

22:09 - You were harnessing social media here.

22:11 - This is an experiential activation at the festival.

22:15 - So that viral was happening outside the room.

22:17 - And ongoing, is really important, not just impacting people in the room.

22:22 - And we had a lot of fun.

22:24 - It was, you know, appropriate to the ethos of the brand,

22:27 - the playfulness of the brand.

22:28 - And then when we look at the hard facts, no, the recall putting it

22:32 - top of mind, making sure that this beloved candy that people hadn't thought of

22:36 - for a while was front and center and thought of in a fresh way,

22:39 - huge social shares and so on.

22:41 - So again, being able to, you know, bring something to life in a fresh way

22:45 - with your storytelling capabilities, but then actually having concrete,

22:49 - measurable impact, I think, is, is mission critical for any business, right.

22:53 - You we're not going to just do this to do this.

22:54 - We're going to do this because we're trying to move the needle on our brand.

22:58 - So that's my quick pitch on how do we.

23:02 - Five minutes. Great. Fantastic.

23:05 - Well,

23:06 - I tried to power through that so we'd have a little bit of time.

23:09 - Yeah. Great.

23:11 - Can we have a round of applause? That was outstanding.

23:13 - Thank you so much.

23:17 - Especially touching me because I'm from Philadelphia.

23:19 - My dad's favorite candy was Peanut chews.

23:21 - And, yet no Jew was set in our house pretty much every day.

23:25 - Translation. Did you eat at.

23:26 - No. Did you get no Jew?

23:28 - I love it, right.

23:31 - And I could give you

23:31 - all kinds of compliments about the paper, but the best thing and the digital,

23:34 - the best compliment I can give you is that you

23:36 - somehow extract $20 a month from my bank account.

23:39 - For that wonderful product you got going to a big sports fan, too.

23:42 - But anyway, Q and a.

23:46 - You're a.

23:49 - Well, I can come give you my microphone.

23:55 - Thank you.

23:55 - That was, really great.

23:57 - I was wondering if you could talk about.

23:58 - I know that the the Enquirer has a phenomenal product and design team.

24:04 - And that is a bit of a new capability for newsrooms

24:06 - to start thinking about product and design and sort of this way,

24:10 - can you talk about how you've got it structured

24:12 - and how you have it set between your business and your editorial?

24:14 - Definitely. Yeah, that's a great question because you're right.

24:17 - That was not traditionally a strength for newspapers.

24:19 - So, you know, we spun up our PD product design engineering team.

24:24 - So we have a design team in

24:28 - within that group, which is really UX design.

24:31 - And they're building things. Right.

24:34 - And for, for digital properties, not really print but building for digital.

24:39 - We also added for the first time a design director,

24:42 - and she's amazing is at Moyer that we recruited from the Washington Post.

24:47 - We never had that role.

24:48 - That was looking at design writ large across the entire brand.

24:53 - Right.

24:53 - So we had the newspaper design,

24:54 - which was kind of doing something, and then we spun up our inquirer.com.

24:58 - And when I got there, I was like, this don't look like they're related at all.

25:02 - This is super cool.

25:03 - But here's our paper, okay.

25:05 - Our paper needs to come along.

25:07 - And that's really was that decision, which was we really need

25:09 - paper redesign because this is feeling really old.

25:12 - And that's a bad brand experience.

25:14 - And that's sitting in people's

25:16 - you know there's your brand sitting on their coffee table.

25:18 - That's not good.

25:19 - So Suzette looks at everything editorially across the brand.

25:24 - And then we also have an entire brand studio.

25:27 - And they are the support department for sales and for consumer marketing,

25:32 - but they're also sort of working with me on brand.

25:35 - So things like the food Festival or the brand campaign,

25:39 - I did that all with my studio brand campaign.

25:42 - We work with Red team was an amazing, amazing, agency in Philly.

25:46 - But I do that work with my studio head, so it's a little bit matrix

25:51 - and they need to be, you know, we're not a giant organization.

25:54 - They need to be talking

25:55 - and we just always have to figure out, alright, what bucket is that fitting in?

25:59 - And, just making sure people are talking all the time.

26:02 - You know, we also have interactive designers that sit in the newsroom

26:05 - and they would be under the, under susette and that role and,

26:09 - and that's important that they're talking to PD

26:13 - because you want to build stuff that you can use for other things.

26:16 - So for example, we might build, and March Madness bracket.

26:20 - Well, now we want to do a hoagie bracket,

26:22 - and now we want to do a cheesesteak bracket. That's super fun.

26:25 - And maybe sales

26:26 - wants to package up a bracket to pitch to a client as a branded thing.

26:30 - How do we replicate that?

26:32 - So again, we had a lot of pain.

26:34 - And connecting those dots.

26:36 - It's a long is a great question because it's something that we struggled with.

26:39 - I think we're there,

26:40 - but it is something we think about all the time

26:42 - because it's kind of lives in different spots.

26:45 - Last question.

26:46 - Sorry. Yeah.

26:47 - What's next for your relationship with external creative?

26:51 - Oh, we, actually think about it all the time.

26:55 - So we work with creators and marketing.

26:57 - We definitely work with them in food.

27:00 - You know, sports could be up there to,

27:03 - we so, you know, it's it's definitely a continued growing and we,

27:09 - we vet

27:10 - and we kind of look at someone's profile and see what they're doing

27:12 - and who they're reaching and what their vibe is.

27:14 - And they have to be, you know, we have to feel like we have a, a synergy there.

27:20 - But, I think that's only going to get bigger.

27:22 - We love it.

27:24 - And more one more that it

27:28 - for sure.

27:31 - So it's okay.

27:34 - A quick follow up question to that.

27:36 - Who made those choices?

27:37 - Was that done on the new side on the brand studio side, who who looked

27:42 - at the creators and and determined that, yes, these are folks we want to work with.

27:45 - We looked at them.

27:47 - It was actually the CMO, the marketing side first vetted,

27:52 - and then we do a smaller list, and then we sit down with the food team.

27:56 - But, you know, it's a little more organic than that.

27:58 - The food team also had people that they follow and they think

28:01 - are really cool, because that's just part of how food happens in now.

28:06 - So I think it was a little bit more collaborative, but we have a person

28:10 - in marketing that actually owns that and has expertise in that.

28:14 - So and that's important in terms of what you pay and you know, blah blah blah.

28:18 - How do you evaluate.

28:19 - So it's owned by marketing but it's definitely consulting newsroom.

28:25 - Thank you everybody

28:28 - has been around. And.