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OhHello - Adam Hua
76 Plays2 years ago
For the past 20 years, this 'Hello' has had an active role in market development and business innovation across the #advertising , #publishing , and #socialmedia industries. Early in his career, he helped transition Haymarket Media Group, from print to digital, and has improved monetization strategies across the social advertising space. His thought leadership and ability to bring to market new solutions, has enabled him to contribute to 3 M&As across #adtech and publishing.
Most recently, he was Head of Industry for Media and Entertainment at Firework, a scale-stage startup backed by SoftBank Investment Advisers, focused on evolving the way consumers experience video commerce. Prior to his time at Firework, he spent 6 years leading the Condé Nast owned social and data innovation lab, CitizenNet, A Condé Nast Company to nine digital agency awards, a successful pivot during the pandemic, and revenue growth of 180% YoY during an economic slowdown in 2020-2021.
A Rutgers University alum, this 'Hello' is grateful and humbled by his family, friendtors, and mentors that have helped him develop over time, including:
Matt McGowan
Charlie Cole
Sumant Yerramilly
Dan Benyamin
Alex Martini - Lo Manto
Outside of the office, this Oh Hello, Inc. mentor is a die-hard New York Jets Fan, enjoys a good ‘dad joke', and is on the never ending search for the perfect slice of Pizza'.
Thank you, Adam Hua --> we're excited to have you on the platform and as part of the community, when we officially launch OhHello.io (post Beta).
Catch Adam Hua as our guest on Episode 26!
(Friendly reminder to please subscribe/follow and REVIEW our pod wherever you listen --> type "OhHello" into Apple podcasts, Spotify, etc)
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Transcript
Introduction and Setting
00:00:15
Speaker
Oh, hello, Adam. How's it going, my man? Oh, hello, Jeremy. Good to see you again. Good to see you. Great catching up. We're catching you live in Tulum, Mexico. It's nice to see you. It's nice to see that beautiful scenery behind you right now. For those listening, you can you can feel the sunlight, you can feel the vibrance coming from Adam.
Career Overview
00:00:39
Speaker
Adam
00:00:40
Speaker
I know you. I know who you are. Why don't you tell the viewers and the listeners who you are? Sure. You know, I've been an industry veteran. I've been in the space for about 20 years now.
00:00:52
Speaker
worked 10 years in publishing, 10 years across ad tech, the agency world as well. And most recently, I spent time leading business development at Conde Nast and then moved on to be the head of industry for the media and publishing category at Firework, which is a live commerce solution with a strong backing by SoftBank.
00:01:15
Speaker
And now I'm just in the consulting space and living my best life here in Tulum. You are absolutely living your best life. You've worked at some amazing hot companies. You've done some great things. It was fun working with each other in the past. Tell me and tell us, the listeners, a little bit more about what defines you.
Personal Values and Influences
00:01:38
Speaker
Well, there's a lot of things that define me. I think there's always good and there's bad. But the biggest thing, I'll start with the bad. I'm a Jets fan. But it's also great because it's helped me build resiliency, loyalty, understanding what it feels like to have failure in your life. Cubs fan before 2016. Chicago Bears fan. I get it. I get it.
00:02:02
Speaker
But no, in all seriousness, I think what defines me is just work ethic, hustle, respect, humility, being humble. You know, I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to about five to six different startups in my career, one of which I pursued myself. You know, the startup didn't go the direction it needed to, and then thinking that experience alone, I experienced
00:02:26
Speaker
feelings and emotions both mentally and physically that I didn't think I would ever be exposed to and not only comes to failure, but I wouldn't trade the learnings and education in that experience for anything else in the world. I've also been fortunate enough to be part of about two or actually three exits. So I've seen both tests and both failure across the landscape. So I think
00:02:50
Speaker
What defines me is just being able to understand there's always some learning that come out of every situation. So essentially, what you're going to be able to give back to the Oh, hello community as one of our Oh, hello.io mentors is resiliency. The fact that you should always keep on learning and stay curious. Precisely. I think that's it. I think you hit it on the nose.
00:03:14
Speaker
So we're going to switch this up a little bit in comparison to some other pods and bods we've done. We're going to change up a little bit of the flow, a little bit of the structure. Let's talk about some of the mentors that have had a profound impact on your career, that have made you who you are today. We're able to say, you know what? I'm going down to Tulum for a while. And then after that, I want to hit on some of the industry topics that you and I talked through.
00:03:38
Speaker
just getting your perspective, your take specifically on the future of commerce, brands becoming retailers, retailers becoming brands, and anything else that you want to talk through. So hit on the mentors that have had a profound impact on your career. For sure. There's so many people who've had an impact on me. Both people I know personally, people I know professionally, or people I don't even know at all, right?
00:04:05
Speaker
I'd be amiss if I didn't at least start with my family, my parents. I mean, you're impressionable at a very, very young age. And my parents instilled a ton of hustle and work ethic in me, taught me respect, which is something that's really important across the board. I've got two older brothers. My oldest one has great financial literacy and being reliable by himself, right? My middle brother, he's taught me accountability and reliability.
00:04:35
Speaker
He's taught me family. He's shown me, you know, he's got a beautiful family himself. My cousins, they're all serial entrepreneurs. So, you know, each one of them have contributed all their best qualities and kind of bestowed those on me. I am the youngest out of all of them. And so I do have the fortunate benefit of seeing their success and their failures, but I also, you know, have the, I would say responsibility of carrying on their legacy in the right ways.
00:05:05
Speaker
Now, from family from from a from a personal level, you know, I have a friend, his name is Jack Kim.
Mentorship and Career Impact
00:05:12
Speaker
He's just an all around great friend, overall great human, you know, I consider him a mentor because he has wealth in his life, which is comes from family and love and, and being able to make good decisions. And so he's helped me keep me humble. He's been a great listener. But from a professional standpoint, there's probably, I'd say,
00:05:33
Speaker
maybe three, four people that really have found impact on me. I'll start with the gentleman I've known the longest. He was one of my first clients. He ran incisive media. I was selling him advertising space back when we were selling like print ads, you know, like where we had to actually cut out and do the layouts yourself. His name is Matt McGowan. Yeah, his name is Matt McGowan. He's currently the country manager.
00:05:57
Speaker
on GM for Snapchat in Canada. Nice. He started off as a client, became a friend, and ultimately what we call as a friend tour. I just saw him recently in Toronto. He's one of the sharpest guys I know, one of the most humble people I know. My former business partner, I actually, when I was launching a social ad platform, he helped lead the product and I did the client servicing the sales side. His name is Sumat Naira Milly.
00:06:24
Speaker
He's currently the GM from the retail media side of Philo. He's gone through successful exits himself, came from Techstars. He's been a rock for me. He lives in LA with me. He's always been there and he's become a very, very close friend to me. A lot of great people at Philo. Yeah. My former CEO, a citizen that
00:06:48
Speaker
A citizen was acquired by Conde Nast about four or five years ago, Dan Benjamin. He's had two successful exits himself. He's currently the VP of product Conde Nast. Dan has taught me so much. He's again, one of the most humble people I know.
00:07:06
Speaker
If you notice something there's like a common theme here which is being humble and you need a lot of humility and I think all of them have that and they've kind of been sell that with me. And then lastly, one of the reasons why I'm in Tulum. The CEO of Blockfusion, which is a Bitcoin or sorry, crypto mining company. His name is Alex Martini. He's a serial entrepreneur himself and he's been incredible. He's been an advisor to me in the past and my former startup and a mentor. I met him in 2011.
00:07:34
Speaker
Ironically enough, he's only given me advice on two things with urgency. In 2011, 2012, he told me one word, Bitcoin. I never listened to him. 2016. And I didn't listen to him either when he said Tulum in 2016. Back then, you could buy a lot of land in Tulum for like 30,000. You know, now you fast forward like six years, a lot of land in Tulum will be over like 200,000 up to maybe even like $600,000.
00:08:03
Speaker
So you're talking about a pretty good return. So yeah, these have had a huge impact on my life. So I think the advice from from that friend moving forward would be when you hear what he says, take action quickly. 100% 100%. Yeah. And I think my next venture launches, which is what I'm actually working on a proof of concept on with him right now, we're going to go through the MVP process now. And if it works out,
00:08:33
Speaker
you'll hear about it. It's in partnership with him, hopefully.
Commerce and Media Insights
00:08:37
Speaker
That's awesome. That's great. You and I were riffing right before this on the future of commerce and your experience at Firework, which is a fascinating company.
00:08:46
Speaker
Why don't you hit on some of the points and some of the nuggets that you were telling me as we all know that this is such a fast moving industry and when you combine video and personalization and commerce all at one, my two mogul and Adobe iCloud experience of video, commerce, personalization, though all of those just make me go, oh, where we have an exciting chat that we had. I would love for you to,
00:09:14
Speaker
instill some nuggets and just some of your perspective to our audience. Yeah, I'm happy to. I'll give you perspective. I don't want to go into any specific company, but I can give you a lot of the vision and the thought leadership that I've kind of drum up as a thesis and why it's led me to certain decisions in my career.
00:09:35
Speaker
I'd say while at CitizenNet and Conde Nast specifically, I realized that as the rise of social became very, very prevalent.
00:09:47
Speaker
I realized that every brand is becoming a media company. And when I say brand, I'm not just talking about retailers, which are obviously becoming media companies now, but I'm talking about every brand. If you're an influencer, you're a brand. If you're a mom and pop shop in Kentucky, you're a brand. If you are Applebee's, you're a brand because, you know,
00:10:09
Speaker
these brands are all then have some form of unique audience. And if they have an audience, a story to tell in a platform, they are now a media company. And so that's why I do consider like every brand is not becoming media companies. And the platforms are really the walled gardens. Those are the ones that give all these brands an opportunity to tell their story to their right audiences. So
00:10:35
Speaker
I'd say this has been a shift in the last 10 years and we're seeing it now in real time. And as part of that, you've seen this rise in social branded content, right? Branded content that predominantly lives in the walled gardens and vertical video. And that's been a huge piece of business for any influencer, as you know, any media company.
00:10:58
Speaker
some of the biggest media companies out there, I can't name any specific names, but I can say that with confidence, that they're diversifying their revenue lines by utilizing platforms like TikTok, or like a Facebook or Instagram for running audience extension. And the revenue lines can be anywhere between 10% to up to 50% of their overall top line revenue. And that's coming off the platforms, right? A lot. And sometimes all they're doing
00:11:26
Speaker
is they're just taking either advertisers' applied content, or they're building their own content for the brand, and they're just arbitraging the traffic, right? So there's a big business there, a very simple concept to understand, and it's scaling really well. So when I think about that, I think about this analogy, anyone who knows me, right, and you go back to what defines you, if you know me, you know I love pizza, okay? I fucking love pizza.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yes, I have a stance that pineapple does not belong on pizza. But when I use brand new content as an analogy, brand new content is like pizza.
00:12:06
Speaker
If you're a child, typically you won't eat broccoli or pineapple by itself. But if you put that shit on some pizza, you'll consume that. And that's why I say branded content is like pizza because you can consume some content from your best content creators and you can talk about a brand. You'll still listen. You'll still watch because you want to see the rest of that content. And so as I see this happening, I also see some of the biggest value that these
00:12:36
Speaker
creators or media companies bring are their audiences. And as we head into these, I would say a slow session with these macroeconomic trends, I'd say sponsorship budgets and advertising budgets that are net new are going to be a little harder to grasp. So I definitely think, and this is my thesis here, I definitely think media companies are becoming retailers now. I think there's a lot of media companies who are going to try to sell SKUs on their own that they develop as their own IP.
00:13:07
Speaker
If you look at Bustle, Bustle's created their own shop. Allure has their own shop. Allure has created a brick and mortar at one point. Pretty much every influencer is now tapping in to an affiliate solution, like an LTK, right? You've got this affiliate commerce space. So I do feel that every media company, whether you're a small influencer or a big media conglomerate like NBCU or Conde Nast, you're becoming a retailer in some capacity. With the current macroeconomic trends, I also feel like
00:13:37
Speaker
For brands, it's a safer space to play if you're going to pay a content creator or a media company on performance because it guarantees some level of
Future of Affiliate Commerce
00:13:45
Speaker
performance. Right. So definitely think that's one of the thesis that I've been leaning into. Let me to my career decisions. You know, I definitely think Firework is an amazing technology and company that can help propel some of these solutions in the marketplace.
00:14:00
Speaker
But at the same time, when I look at ad tech and I even look at creative tech, there's so much money being pumped into that side of the industry, right? One thing that I noticed is that there hasn't been that much money or disruption or innovation around the affiliate commerce space. I think the last company that's really made a splash is Stack Commerce and they had their exit.
00:14:25
Speaker
So in my opinion, it's a blue ocean strategy. I think there's room for disruption, room for enhancement within affiliate commerce space, specifically when you look at it at the intersection of content creation. So that's sort of like my thesis in a nutshell of how I kind of perceive the market. That's awesome. Adam, we appreciate you. We're excited to have you on the Oh Hello Platform. Thank you, my friend. Excited to have everyone pick you. Talk soon, my man. Thank you.