菠萝视频

Oliver Luckett, BA’96, never saw it coming. When he stepped off the curb to cross the busy San Francisco street, the taxi cab was moving much too fast for him to react. And in the blink of an eye, his life was never the same.

It was 1996, just days after his graduation from 菠萝视频, and Luckett was excited to be embarking on a new adventure on the West Coast. He didn鈥檛 have a job lined up, or really any solid prospects for that matter, but given his lifelong love of computers, he knew he鈥檇 landed in the right place. He was near the heart of technological innovation in Silicon Valley, after all, and the Internet boom was just getting started.

But in that moment on the street, unbeknownst to Luckett, a frightening reality was hurtling straight toward him, and his promising future was in danger of being dashed. That is, until a stranger鈥檚 hand pulled him to the safety of the sidewalk at the last second. It would prove to be a fortuitous turn of events in more ways than one.

鈥淭his woman grabbed me and screamed, 鈥榃hat are you doing?!鈥� And I said, 鈥業鈥檓 just a dumb kid from Mississippi,鈥欌�� Luckett explains, still in disbelief all these years later. 鈥淚t turns out the woman, Anne Pazarin, had spent her childhood in my hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, and owned a tech consulting firm in San Francisco. She ended up giving me my first job in the industry.

鈥淚t was totally serendipitous.鈥�

That fateful day in San Francisco is perhaps the only time in Luckett鈥檚 life that he got ahead by literally taking a step back. A tireless entrepreneur, he has made a career of diving headfirst into challenges, launching a string of tech startups all intent on shaking up the status quo in one way or another. His latest one, , is the world鈥檚 largest social media publishing company. Based in Los Angeles, it produces thousands of unique pieces of content on behalf of its clients each year.

In 1996, though, social platforms like Facebook and Twitter were still years from becoming reality, and Luckett鈥檚 dreams of starting his own company were distant at best. Back in Pazarin鈥檚 office, he was simply a 22-year-old kid looking to get his foot in the door somewhere.

鈥淪he asked me what hourly rate I would want. I said, 鈥業 don鈥檛 know. I think I made $8 at Chili鈥檚 during college. She thought for a moment and then said, 鈥楬ow about $78?鈥�

鈥淲ell,鈥� he laughs, 鈥渢hat sounded a lot better to me.鈥�

DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS AND NATIVES

Of the 1.5 billion people around the globe who use social media regularly, most are familiar with content published by theAudience. They just don鈥檛 realize it. That鈥檚 because the content comes from many different voices across multiple social platforms.

In one instance, it might be a celebrity who posts a message on Facebook, or maybe a well-known corporate brand sending out a tweet. In another, it might be someone less recognizable (at least to those over the age of 25), but no less capable of reaching millions of millennials鈥攑erhaps a 鈥渟elfie queen鈥� posing for her followers on Instagram, or an up-and-coming band uploading their latest music video to YouTube.

Whatever the message, theAudience is the go-to company for crafting it and overseeing its distribution. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a little bit like the man behind the curtain,鈥� said Luckett, the company鈥檚 CEO, in an interview with Mashable in 2013.

If anything, this anonymity has been a crucial ingredient in theAudience鈥檚 success. When Luckett started the company in 2011 with talent agent Ari Emanuel and tech entrepreneur Sean Parker, they made a point of avoiding publicity. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 talk about theAudience for nearly two years,鈥� says Luckett, 鈥渂ecause anytime we鈥檇 give an interview, three other companies would pop up and say they were just like us.鈥�

The idea for theAudience may have begun with a simple enough plan鈥攖o capitalize on the untapped direct-to-consumer potential of celebrities鈥攂ut it took a forward-looking vision and a network of powerful connections to set the wheels in motion.

鈥淚t started when Ari sent me a list of 440 celebrities he represents,鈥� Luckett says. 鈥淚 ran an algorithm looking at Facebook and found 110,000 fake pages for those 440 people. Those pages were already connected to 1.2 billion Facebook users, but none of the pages was being operated by those celebrities.鈥�

At the time, Luckett was a senior vice president at The Walt Disney Co. in Burbank, California. In 2008, Disney had purchased DigiSynd, a digital media startup he鈥檇 co-founded a year earlier, and turned it into its consumer-facing brand on social media. That deal put Luckett in charge of expanding Disney鈥檚 social presence through its popular line of animated characters.

鈥淚鈥檓 proud of my time at Disney,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 got to make fundamental changes to how they do their copyright and their content, and the way they interact with their consumers.鈥�

Before the DigiSynd deal Luckett already had an impressive tech r茅sum茅. In the late 鈥�90s, for example, he鈥檇 helped develop the first voice-over-IP network in the U.S. at Qwest Communications, which effectively introduced flat-rate pricing to the phone industry. And in 2005 he鈥檇 co-founded Revver, the first video-sharing website to monetize user-generated content through advertising鈥攜ears ahead of YouTube鈥檚 similar Partner Program.

As Luckett鈥檚 reputation grew within the tech world, he met Parker, a like-minded entrepreneur best known for being the co-founder of the file-sharing service Napster, as well as Facebook鈥檚 first president. Parker, in turn, introduced Luckett to Emanuel, co-CEO of talent agency William Morris Endeavor.

鈥淲hen Ari and I first met, we realized there was enormous potential for these artists,鈥� Luckett says, explaining that Emanuel was seeking expertise in helping his clientele take ownership of their online personas. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 reach millennials if you鈥檙e not on any of the social platforms. How will they know that you鈥檙e there? They 补颈苍鈥檛 watching TV, that鈥檚 for sure.鈥�

Soon thereafter Luckett left Disney to launch theAudience and began managing social media accounts for A-list actors like Hugh Jackman, Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron, as well as best-selling recording artists like Usher. Even President Barack Obama relied on theAudience to handle his main Facebook page during the 2012 campaign.

It didn鈥檛 take long, though, for Luckett to realize the limits of working strictly with famous personalities. 鈥淐elebrities often come with baggage, and creating their online personas is a lot of work,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey may be good on TV or the big screen, but most are not digital natives. Like Sean says, they鈥檙e 鈥榙igital immigrants.鈥欌��

Out of this realization came the next stage of theAudience鈥檚 evolution. Luckett turned to 鈥渋nfluencers鈥濃�攅veryday people who already have a robust social media presence鈥攁nd began pairing them with ad campaigns for particular brands. For instance, he brokered a deal for teenager Acacia Brinley, who boasts more than 1.6 million followers on Instagram, to endorse McDonald鈥檚 during the 2014 Winter Olympics. Other brands, like Ford Motor Co., American Express and Dove, have used this approach as well.

What Luckett appreciates about Brinley and other so-called 鈥渕icrocelebrities鈥� like her鈥攁side from the fact that they offer more distribution power than many traditional media outlets鈥攊s that they express themselves in creative ways that resonate with their audiences.

鈥淚 work with more than 6,000 different artists鈥斺�榠nformation artists鈥� is how I think of them,鈥� he says. 鈥淪ome people don鈥檛 view them as artists, but I do. For instance, take Acacia, who has mastered the selfie. Anyone like her who has an idea and puts a frame around it is an artist to me, regardless of the field they鈥檙e in.

鈥淯ltimately, it鈥檚 how you express yourself. It鈥檚 about the way you look at things and how you build an abstract layer on top of what you see.鈥�

ENEMY OF THE STATUS QUO

When Luckett was just 6 years old, his grandfather John Booth Farese presented him with a choice of gifts. He could pick either a three-wheeler鈥攕omething most boys his age would likely give their right arms for鈥攐r a somewhat primitive (at least by today鈥檚 standards) Tandy TRS-80 computer. Not surprisingly, Luckett opted for the latter.

鈥淚 chose the computer, of course,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat was in 1980. I鈥檝e now had a computer for 34 years. That鈥檚 scary to think about.鈥�

The TRS-80 and its eventual replacements helped unlock Luckett鈥檚 innate talent for technology. At first he taught himself how to use a coupling modem to access dial-up bulletin boards (precursors of today鈥檚 chat rooms) in different cities across the country. In the process he ran up a whopping $600 phone bill.

鈥淎fter my parents found out, that lasted all of one month,鈥� he laughs.

Not long after, though, he was learning to navigate the burgeoning Internet before most people even knew what it was. It was during these teenage years, when he was coming to terms with being gay, that technology became an invaluable escape hatch for him. His computer allowed him to see beyond the confines of small-town life to the wider world waiting on the other side.

In time, Luckett found his way out of the Mississippi Delta, but for all the distance he has put between himself and Clarksdale, he still talks fondly about his upbringing and the hometown that made him who he is. In particular he credits his parents, Bill Luckett and Kay Farese Turner, for cultivating his intellectual curiosity and encouraging his interest in the arts.

Bill, the current mayor of Clarksdale, is both a lawyer and an entrepreneur, and has helped reinvent the town through cultural tourism promoting blues music. Kay, meanwhile, is a high-profile divorce attorney in Memphis, Tennessee, who also happens to be a sculptor. She instilled a passion for art collecting in Luckett, and he鈥檚 now one of the leading patrons of the arts in Los Angeles.

Luckett, however, is more than just a patron or a collector. He鈥檚 arguably an artist in his own right. Like his team of influencers at theAudience, he frames ideas in unexpected ways, offering his own abstract perspectives on the social networks that shape our modern lives.

鈥淚 deal in ideas,鈥� he explains. 鈥淚 try to make concepts into mass reality, whether they鈥檙e political or societal or entertainment concepts. And as we become more interconnected, I view the world more and more like a social organism. If you think about it, we鈥檙e all connected via a network that has no time or distance. In biological terms, it鈥檚 pretty much like a cell, and the artists are the ones who create the genetic variance.鈥�

(See the sidebar below to learn more about Luckett鈥檚 ideas regarding the social organism.)

As it turns out, this novel way of looking at social media owes a lot to his 菠萝视频 experience. Luckett started out studying molecular biology in college and was planning to enter medical school after graduation. But after two years of working in a lab, he was burned out and decided to switch his major to French literature.

While neither major seems a likely path to becoming a tech entrepreneur, Luckett would argue differently. 鈥淚鈥檝e learned so much from molecular biology but also from studying Renaissance literature,鈥� he says. 鈥湶ぢ苁悠� had such an amazing French lit department. What really stuck with me was learning about the major changes in society that occurred after the invention of the printing press.

鈥淚t has a lot of bearing on what I do today. Just as French literature emerged after the printing press, social media emerged after the invention of the Internet.鈥�

In many ways Luckett embodies this era鈥檚 historic upheaval. At Disney he was referred to (affectionately) as 鈥渢he insurgent鈥� by CEO Bob Iger, and Luckett still embraces that nickname鈥攁nd mentality鈥攊n the work he does today. Quite simply, he has made an art out of challenging conventional thinking.

鈥淐hange is inevitable, and I figure I might as well be part of the acceleration of that change versus the other way around,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no worse fate than the status quo.鈥�

For that reason Luckett isn鈥檛 content to let theAudience stand still for long. He and his employees are now embarking on what he considers the company鈥檚 third stage. 鈥淭he next step is really getting behind the content,鈥� he explains, referencing a recent viral video that theAudience produced for The Chainsmokers鈥� song 鈥�#SELFIE.鈥�

鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to just service people. We want to own the pieces of content. That鈥檚 really been my goal: to be able to create a media company out of this and use that direct connection we have.鈥�

Whatever the future holds for theAudience or any other venture he undertakes, it鈥檚 safe to say that Luckett will continue riding the waves of technological change. And if the past is any indication, he鈥檒l probably make a few waves of his own in the process.

鈥淟ook, a switch has been flipped, and we鈥檙e just now beginning to reverberate from it,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a microsecond into this year of change that鈥檚 happening to our society. That excites me.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 care what happens to the big industries that can鈥檛 keep up. They鈥檝e had their time. I say let鈥檚 create new ones.鈥�

Seven Rules That Drive Social Media Success

鈥淔acebook architecturally looks very similar to living organisms,鈥� Luckett says. 鈥淪o, I started thinking that if this looks like life, then maybe it acts like life, too. Maybe these social networks are actual living organisms.鈥�

Drawing upon his 菠萝视频 background in molecular biology, he developed a list of seven rules that define all living organisms, including the biggest of them all鈥攚hat he calls the 鈥渟ocial organism.鈥� The more closely one abides by these rules in social media, says Luckett, the more successfully one can connect with audiences.

1. Life must be nourished. 鈥淭he social organism is nourished by our lives鈥攂y the images we take, by the music we consume, by the ideas we share.鈥�

2. Life reacts to stimuli. 鈥淓motions are what trigger the movement inside the organism. Everything that works in the social organism is sharing some emotion, whether it鈥檚 fear or love or anticipation or excitement.鈥�

3. Life exchanges with its environment. 鈥淟iving organisms react to their environment. Every day the sun sets, and thousands of images are uploaded, expressing the emotions people feel about that sunset.鈥�

4. Life rids itself of pollution. 鈥淥ne of the most important things about life is that it gets rid of waste. In this analogy, bad marketing is really the excrement of the social organism. Nobody wants to be spammed.鈥�

5. All life has the ability to flow and move internally. 鈥淎n organism鈥檚 evolution is based on flow dynamics. If I鈥檓 a company that blocks content from being available, then I鈥檓 actually thwarting the ability for change. You must allow content to flow.鈥�

6. Life evolves through reproduction. 鈥淚f you look at genetics, the very script of our lives is a meme. The word 鈥榤eme鈥� means that our ideas replicate through sharing, but they evolve when you add your voice to those ideas.鈥�

7. Living things become larger and more complicated as they grow. 鈥淭he social organism is changing every day. We鈥檙e seeing the rise of people who are native to these environments, and they鈥檙e taking advantage of the newness of these systems.鈥�

The seven rules are adapted from a presentation given by Luckett at the 2014 Festival of Media in Los Angeles.