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Theres a quote from Charles Bukowski framed on my office wall:What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. Were in that fire right now. For 25 years, our company has moved people to show up for entertainment. Then the world changed. Entertainment changed. Technology changed. Almost overnight, we had to throw the old playbook out the window. So, we paused. We looked inward and asked the hard question: Do we rebuild what we had or transform into what we need to be for the future? Companies need to choose the second. For us that meant becoming culture-led, not as a slogan or a rebrand, but as the infrastructure for how we operate. Becoming culture-led doesnt just guide values; it can become an operational advantage. FROM SILOS TO CONNECTION We stopped organizing ourselves around deliverables and started paying closer attention to what moves people. What makes them care, pause, laugh, click, and share. Inside entertainment, wed spent decades learning how to meet people in emotional moments. We began applying that same emotional fluency to everything we do: from car launches to hospitality marketing, and CPG storytelling. Not by forcing those categories to feel like entertainment, but by applying what wed learned about timing, tone, and human connection in places where meaning matters more than ever. A clear example was our work launching God of War Ragnarök for PlayStation. Instead of defaulting to an action-forward montage, we leaned into the childparent relationship at the heart of the game. That emotional center drove record results. We didnt get there by chasing categories. We got there by rethinking how we listen, interpret culture, and act on insight. A CHANGE IN HOW THE WORK MOVES Empowering culture-led work to emerge from an organization requires operational change. Were restructuring our strategy, creative, editorial, and social teams to be leaner and faster. Were bringing them into the same room at the start of every project. Its not perfect yet, but the work is already moving differently. We introduced informal culture briefs to stay close to whats resonating with people right now. Not whats trending, but what feels real and honest. That proximity keeps us grounded in how people live, not just how marketers talk. The result has been work guided by less formula and more heart, stronger briefs that adhere closer to consumers realities, and faster movement of ideas to production. LEARN TO SAY NO (WITHOUT FEELING SICK) We also had to get serious about what were willing to walk away from. In entertainment, the rule has always been simple: dont turn down work. You never know when the next thing is coming. That mindset builds hustle and burnout. A few months ago, for the first time, we turned down entertainment work that would have been a no-brainer any other year. But it didnt align with who we are becoming, and that was reason enough to walk away from the opportunity. Culture isnt just what you invite in. Its what youre willing to say no to. Every time weve made that choice, weve seen sharper focus, more ownership, and greater momentum. The team feels lighter, clearer, and more confident in where were steering the ship. THE REAL ADVANTAGE WAS NEVER THE CATEGORY The same instinct that led us to center the human relationship in God of War Ragnarök is the one that revealed what wed been building all along in entertainmenta space that trains you to make people feel something fast. You have seconds to earn attention, emotion, and trust. Over time, we realized that skill, emotional fluency, cultural timing, and instinctive connection were the real advantages. Not the form. Not the category. In hindsight, its what strategist Rita McGrath would call a transient advantage. A capability, not a credential. Something portable. Something that evolves as culture shifts. Once we recognized that, the question became how to operationalize it. HIRE TO PUT CULTURAL FLUENCY INTO PRACTICE Becoming culture-led takes more than intention. It takes structure. Were building that now through cultural roundups, shared language, and clearer boundaries. Not buzzwords. Practical ways to stay connected to how people think and feel. Were also changing how we hire. Experience still matters, but curiosity, self-awareness, and genuine growth mindset matter more. Alignment is becoming just as important as what client someone may bring in the door. Were learning to protect the culture were building by setting boundaries, by saying no, and by choosing clarity over comfort. Every time we do, we move forward. Were not done. And we probably never should be. That Bukowski quote doesnt say what matters is whether you make it through the fire. It says how you walk through it is what matters. Thats the challenge for leadership right now. Not avoiding change. Just walking through it honestly and with intention. Companies that treat culture as a core capability, not a campaign or a slogan, are the ones ready for whatever comes next. Michael McIntyre is the CEO of MOCEAN
Category:
E-Commerce
When my mom was dying, hospice came daily and stayed for about ninety minutes. They answered questions, checked what needed to be checked, and did what good professionals do: They made a brutal situation feel slightly less impossible. And then they left. Ninety minutes go fast when you are watching your mother decline. The rest of the day stretches out in a way that does not feel like time so much as exposure. Every sound becomes a data point. Every small change feels like a decision you did not train for. Her breathing sounds strange. What do we do? How often should we turn her to avoid bedsores? What is the diaper situation, exactly? That was the gap, the long, quiet stretch between professional help. In those hours, what you want most is not a miracle. It is simply someone to ask. AI ENTERED MY LIFE IN A WAY I NEVER EXPECTED AI found its way into my life when I least expected it. Not as a replacement for care or love, and not as a shortcut around grief. It was a tool that did not get tired. A place to put the questions you are embarrassed to ask. It was a way to stop spiraling long enough to make the next decision. Before we reached hospice, my moms illness had already become a full-time information problem. Over the last few years of her life, her heart and kidney disease worsened, and the complexity multiplied with it. There were doctors and specialists, tests, lab results, scans, phone calls, and constant medication changes. The burden of continuity fell on us, and it was easy to feel like we were one detail away from missing something important. I kept feeling disappointed that I was not managing the data better. The dates. The times. The medication lists. When tools like ChatGPT took a leap forward, I suddenly had something I did not have before: A resource that could help me understand what I was looking at and organize what I could not hold in my head. In practice, it was not one magical capability. Depending on the day, AI played different roles: assistant, organizer, translator, sometimes just a calm voice to complain to that could talk back. I built multiple custom GPTs with specific jobs. One focused on medications. One helped me draft clear messages to doctors. One existed for the dumb questions, the ones you hesitate to ask because you think you should already know. Another served as a simple health profile, a place to store key details so I could reorient myself when I was exhausted. It might sound like overkill until you have lived long enough inside the healthcare system to realize how inconsistent it can be. People change. Portals change. Instructions change. That little AI team was consistent. It was there at any hour when my brain was foggy, and I needed to turn a messy thought into clear words. It even became emotional support in a way I did not anticipate. I built something like a caregiver therapist, somewhere I could say what I was feeling, including guilt, and got feedback that, even though I knew it was an algorithm, still brought real solace. AI WAS NOT PERFECT This is the part people do not like to say out loud. AI gave wrong information sometimes. It forgot a medication from a spreadsheet. It dropped something from a list. It did not remember a doctor when I asked. If you use these tools in caregiving, you must double-check, especially with medication, reminders, and timing. You must treat it like a friend who knows a lot but can be flaky. Still, even with those limitations, the difference was profound. This was never about delegating love. It was about delegating the parts of the experience that did not need to consume the last of my cognitive energy. When my mother finally passed, the AI journey took another turn. It became a project manager for funeral arrangements and the memorial service. It helped me think through practical details, such as food for 30 people and what flowers might cost. It helped me craft a eulogy by taking a messy voice memo, my unstructured stories, and the tone I wanted, and shaping it into an arc in my voice at a time when I could not simply turn on my best writer brain. In some ways, the most startling part is that I have a control group. My father passed away about three to three and a half years ago, right before the age of AI. The difference between then and now has been night and day. With my mother, having these tools did not make it easy in the way people mean when they say easy. It made it more dignified for everyone, including her. WHAT CHANGED WAS NOT GRIEF. IT WAS THE OVERWHELM Dignity is not the absence of pain or a tidy emotional arc. Dignity is being able to show up without drowning in chaos. It is being able to look your mother in the eye and be present, instead of being trapped inside your own spinning mind, trying to remember whether you wrote down the one thing that could change everything. In the end, the most important thing AI gave me was not an answer. It gave me room. Room to think, to breathe, to steady myself, to stay with my mother instead of disappearing into logistics and fear. Grief will always demand something from you. It demands tears, memory, love, and the kind of courage that does not feel like courage while you are living it. But it also demands paperwork, phone calls, deadlines, and decisions made on days when you can barely form a sentence. AI did not carry the grief. It carried some of the weight around it, so I could carry her, and then carry myself, with a little more dignity. Edwin Endlich is president of the National Alliance for Financial Literacy and Inclusion and chief marketing officer at Wysh.
Category:
E-Commerce
Paramount Skydance is taking another step in its hostile takeover bid of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying Monday that it will name its own slate of directors before the next shareholder meeting of the Hollywood studio. Paramount also filed a suit in Delaware Chancery Court seeking to compel Warner Bros. to disclose to shareholders how it values its bid and the competing offer from Netflix. Warner Bros. is in the middle of a bidding war between Paramount and Netflix. Warners leadership has repeatedly rebuffed overtures from Skydance-owned Paramount and urged shareholders to back the sale of its streaming and studio business to Netflix for $72 billion. Paramount, meanwhile, has made efforts to sweeten its $77.9 billion hostile offer for the entire company. Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery said its board determined Paramounts offer is not in the best interests of the company or its shareholders. It again recommended shareholders support the Netflix deal. David Ellison, the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, said Monday that it’s committed to seeing through its tender offer. We do not undertake any of these actions lightly,” he said in a letter to shareholders of Warner Bros. Warner Bros. has yet to schedule its annual meeting or a special meeting to consider the Netflix offer, and Paramount did not name any potential candidates for the board. Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
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