Storytelling Needs an Ecosystem
Heather Mason on why the social sector's obsession with problem framing is killing its ability to build visions people actually want to fund.
The social impact sector has gotten very good at describing problems. We have white papers, we have statistics, we have annual reports filled with data on gaps and disparities and needs. We know how to quantify suffering. We’ve built entire institutions around it. But here’s what we haven’t built, a system for telling stories that actually move people. Think about Hollywood for a second. Disney doesn’t release one film a year on one topic and then hope for the best. They have studios, development pipelines, distribution networks, talent agencies. They build collections of interconnected stories. They build entire imaginary worlds. Now think about how the social sector approaches storytelling. We fund one documentary and even that’s rare. We cross our fingers and then we wonder why it didn’t change everything. And meanwhile, the most powerful storytelling machinery in history is sitting right there. Madison Avenue can make you cry in 30 seconds.
22-year-old creators have audiences of millions, but the social sector’s still operating like it’s 1985, pleading, shaming, and hoping that the facts alone will change minds. Hope is magnetic. Guilt is repulsive, and we know this, and yet we keep reaching for guilt. To explore what it would actually look like to truly build a narrative infrastructure for social change at scale, I wanted to talk with someone who’s doing exactly that. Heather Mason spent 20 years producing some of the biggest convenings in the social impact sector, Skull World Forum, events for Ford and Rockefeller and more. But her first career was in film, and she never stopped believing that stories are the most powerful lever we have for social change. So she built the Impact Lounge, a traveling hub that brings together funders, filmmakers, and creators at places like Sundance and Cannes to build the connective tissue the sector has been missing.
I’m Eric Ressler and this is Designing Tomorrow. And now my conversation with Heather Mason.
Episode Highlights:
[02:15] Why narrative change is the most powerful lever for social change
[05:00] The social sector treats film as a tactic — Hollywood treats it as a system
[07:05] “I invested in one stock. It did not do well. I don’t think stocks do well.”
[08:00] Marvelization: what world-building looks like for social impact
[12:30] You were hired to solve a problem — what if you were hired to create a vision?
[15:30] What the Impact Lounge is and why convenings are the crucible for ecosystem building
[22:30] How storytelling drives policy change — from the UN to Minecraft
[30:00] The massive shift happening in media and why it’s an opportunity, not a threat
[37:00] Why small teams should build, not buy — and let go of perfect
[39:30] Nonprofit product placement and the rom-com that could change conservation
[44:00] Big swing content moves vs. daily raw content — you need both
[45:00] The Skunkworks mindset: annoyingly positive in a hard year
Notable Quotes:
Heather Mason [03:45]: “Data can inform us, but only stories can move us.”
Heather Mason [06:40]: “I wonder how our film is going to do. Our film. Our one film. That is a little bit like saying, ‘Well, I invested in one stock. It did not do well. I don’t think stocks do well.’”
Heather Mason [13:00]: “If people get hired to focus on the problem, you’re going to get problem-focused experiences, problem-focused communication, problem-focused white papers. When you’re hired to create a solution, when you’re hired to create visions, that’s a very different experience.”
Eric Ressler [49:15]: “If these are the world’s most important pressing ideas and we have ultra wealthy folks who have a lot of money who claim that they want to solve these ideas, then we should be not sparing expenses on getting the most creative minds telling the stories around these ideas.”
Heather Mason [49:30]: “You have the most powerful propaganda machine on Madison Avenue. Why are we not plugging these ideas into it? We have the most viral machinery in the world, true creators. Why are we not plugging these ideas into that, into cultural supernova of storytelling?”
Heather Mason [15:55]: “Hope is magnetic. Guilt and shame is repulsive to most people. So you don’t want to repel people if you want them to come to your cause. You want to become a magnet.”
Resources & Links:
Impact Lounge — Heather Mason’s traveling hub connecting funders, filmmakers, and creators at events like Sundance, Cannes, and Climate Week
Caspian Agency — Heather’s events and convenings company that has produced events for Skoll World Forum, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller, and more
Trabian Shorters’s Asset Framing — Framework on shifting from deficit-based to asset-based language in the social sector. Please research and add URL.
Outrider Foundation Nuclear Bomb Simulator — Interactive tool where you enter a zip code and see the impact of a nuclear blast, referenced as a model for big-swing content
Lumen Awards — Awards show created by Impact Lounge held three days before the Oscars honoring changemakers and filmmakers. Please research and add URL.
Cosmic — Creative agency for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations, founded by host Eric Ressler
P.S. — Struggling to align your message with your mission? We help social impact leaders like you build trust-building brands through authentic storytelling, thoughtful design, and digital strategy that works. Let’s talk about your goals »
Eric Ressler [02:00]: Heather Mason, thank you so much for joining me today.
Heather Mason [02:05]: Thank you. Thank you for having me on.
Eric Ressler [02:07]: I’m really excited today to dig into a lot of topics, but one of the first things I think I’d like to start with is a perspective that you have, which is centered around a couple different things. We’re going to talk today about media and the intersection between media and film specifically in storytelling and social impact, but you have this perspective that narrative change is, in your opinion, the best way for social change to happen in the most impactful way. I’d like to just start there and let you unpack that philosophy a little bit for our listeners.
Heather Mason [02:35]: A lot of this stems from my love of film, so I am biased. That was my first career. But I would say it also comes from, I know there are a lot of psychological studies. I’m not going to be able to list them all. They talk about how we learn, how we share information and how we decide the rules and guidelines of a culture, the morals, the values. Those all come from stories and you can trace those back to Hans Christian Anderson tales or myths or legends or African parables. We are learning through the Bible. Religious texts, they’re all taught in stories because there are parts of our brain — and again, I can’t list all of the scientific reasons behind it — but that light up when we hear a story. And there are things that turn off and why we yawn in lectures when we start to hear the facts and statistics.
Those are important. I am not saying they aren’t, but when they’re woven into storytelling, they take on a whole different meaning. And we have a statement we say, which is data can inform us, but only stories can move us. That’s when you get a change of action is when people hear a story, can relate to it. And there’s a reason why film has been called an empathy machine. It allows us to be a part of their stories. So I do think it’s critical.
Eric Ressler [04:05]: So I hear this a lot, and I’ve actually spoken about this a lot from my purview as well, touting the impacts, the potential of storytelling, and yet we’re not really seeing that in any meaningful way shift the sector. You could maybe counterargue that. I think there’s been a lot more embodiment of storytelling, at least philosophically in the sector at large, but then there’s often still this retreat to the comforts of annual reports and white papers and academic jargon when we’re trying to describe sometimes, to be fair, these complex social issues. Why do you think that the sector at large has been so reluctant or unable to adopt storytelling in the same way that consumer brands do or that documentary film producers are able to?
Heather Mason [04:55]: I think a lot of that stems from the fact of the way that the social sector has thought of film, media, now it’s broadening out creators as a tactic, as opposed to a world, as opposed to creating a cultural ocean, as opposed to working together across stories with different organizations instead of working across silos and partnerships. Those are two different ways of thinking. And the way I would describe that is if you think about the Hollywood system, Hollywood has a studio system. They have the big ones, Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal. You’ve got the big guns. They have a system around them to distribute, to create, to work in development. I worked in development at Fox. To have that, that’s an incubator in a sense. That’s an accelerator program. You have production deals. I would say that’s probably more like accelerator, incubator, maybe development at large.
And then you also have distribution deals with National Association of Theater Owners, NATO. You’ve got conferences. There’s an entire system, but Disney doesn’t just put out one film a year on one topic. No, they have slates of films. And if a certain genre picks up, they all pick up on it. And all of a sudden you’ve got tons of superhero movies. How did that happen? Why are there two Armageddon films with meteors crashing into planets? Well, because that’s hot right now. So we’re going to jump on that. Let’s contrast that with the way that film is used, and I’ll use film again over in the social sector. We have an issue area that’s girls’ education. We’re going to do one film. I wonder how our film is going to do. Our film. Our one film. There is not an acceleration around slates of films.
There are not, how can this film be a TV series that might be distributed by a different foundation? How can that one actually inculcate a whole other studio? One film. I hope that one film works. That’s why I think people have looked at that and gone, why hasn’t that one film worked? And that is a little bit like saying, “Well, I invested in one stock. It did not do well. I don’t think stocks do well.”
Eric Ressler [07:15]: Right. So I love this contrasting thought experiment that we’re doing here, and I wonder if we can go a little bit deeper on it. And clearly you’ve thought about this deeply. So I’d love to hear what does the world look like? What does your world look like when media and film and more immersive forms of narrative change are embedded at a fundamental level in the social impact sector instead of these one-off bets that are being placed and the burden is largely falling on individual implementation organizations to come up with, create and distribute that one piece as a big swing move that maybe doesn’t pay off because of the problems that you’re describing here. What is the right way to do this look like in the social impact space?
Heather Mason [08:00]: I get so excited talking about this. And I don’t know that there’s one right way, but I’ll give you some ideas. And I will say there is a gentleman, and I’m going to forget his name right now, so whoever thinks of this can put this in your show notes, who has come up with a term called Marvelization. And I wish I had come up with that because that’s what I’m describing. I love Marvel movies. I will say that. I love Star Wars movies as well. I love Star Trek. Any of those are franchises because they’ve created a world and Marvel has created a world, that’s why they can have all those spinoffs. And the rules apply in that world. That’s what world building is called in film. You build the world, John Wick has a world. So to do this in a way that I think would work for the social sector is you can have world building and hopefully the competition wouldn’t be so great in the IP that you could, because the IP here is saving the world, so I would hope we’d be a little open source on that, is you could create more characters and more experience in a Marvelization type of world.
That is one way that if you take a large foundation is doing this, but if they started to agree in a sense creatively to be a part of these worlds, what does that look like if you win? And I know that’s been a phrase for a lot of social good folks. What does it look like if we win? And I think there is not enough time thought about that because there is so much time spent on we need to tell people how bad it is first. And I can see the relevancy there. And sometimes people get upset when I do not put enough gravitas on that because I haven’t sobbed enough or cried enough. There is a time for that. There is also a time and there is a place for people and personalities who do focus more on the world building of the solutions that can take place because I think that’s how you get there.
And I think you can look at Star Trek, why we have flip phones, world building.
Eric Ressler [09:55]: This ties into something that I think about a lot, which is this tension between needing to articulate the problem, identify the problem, talk about the stakes of the problem, talk about the relevance of the problem. There’s no shortage of problems in the world right now. I think we can all agree on that. But I don’t think there’s enough imagination, enough time spent to your point around this world building or Marvelization. I’ve thought about that in a different way around just being better about having compelling, clear, engaging visions for what does it look like if we win, to use your terminology. I think film and media has a lot of potential to do a better job of sharing those ideas. When we work with social impact organizations, we can feel that when we talk to executive directors or CEOs or founders. And then when we look at their communications, when we look at their website, when we look at their social presence, there’s this massive gap between the experience of talking to one of them or hearing them on a podcast and their communications as an organization.
Now, what I’d like to press on a little bit from your perspective, and this maybe starts to get into the fundraising ecosystem a little bit more, is my sense is a lot of orgs want to do this. Maybe they believe in it, maybe they’re a little skeptical, they don’t even see the full potential of it, but there’s an impotence in the sector. Yes, we want to do storytelling. Yes, we want to do more rich media. We want to break out of the box of the academic jargon and the reports and the white papers, but we don’t have the money to do it. We don’t have the funding to do it because it’s restricted to this particular program or because that would cost $100,000 for a documentary or whatever it is. How do we break that catch-22, that cycle of needing the funding to invest in story building at a fundamental level and not just as one-off experiments?
And where’s the burden sit there? Is it on the funder’s responsibility? Should foundations be writing checks for this? Do we need to be just building more sustainable orgs? This is the constant catch-22 in my mind around any kind of investment, but especially investment in anything that has to do with communications in the sector. How do you think about that?
Heather Mason [12:05]: That’s always going to be a tension. And anything with fundraising is where you prioritize your dollars. And I would reel this back just one step when you were starting your question on why or how does this happen in the fundraising ecosystem because they want to do this and it’s different when you talk to them. Where I think it goes a bit astray is folks are told when they’re working at some of these organizations, we’re here to solve a problem. It was set up to solve a problem. That’s why your organization exists. So when you start to hire people and say, you’re here to solve a problem, you are going to naturally focus those people on problems. As opposed to, think about if I said I was going to hire you for an organization, your job is to create solutions. That’s a very different way to think.
Your job is to create a vision. Your job is to become a visionary. And I think if people get hired to focus on the problem, you’re going to get problem-focused experiences, problem-focused communication, problem-focused white papers. When you’re hired to create a solution, when you’re hired to create visions, that’s a very different experience. And the reason I start there is because with fundraising, there is often, there’s a wonderful guy, Trabian Shorters, I’m sure some people know him who are listening to this, talks about asset framing and gaps in asset framing and that a lot of funders are focused on lacking language in order to fund things as opposed to abundance language to fund. What’s the opportunity of this community? What are the assets of this community? Not under, under, under. And that is focusing on problem. And the reason why I start there is because that’s a bedrock philosophical look at why your organization exists.
And until we talk about why the organization exists, we cannot create new priorities for what they are going to fund and what is going to be fundable. If you’re funding solutions, then maybe you’re funding a part of the film ecosystem. Maybe you’re not funding the entire production of the film. I outlined an entire Hollywood system, but there’s so many different organizations that feed into that. Some own theaters, they’re theater owners, some are doing accelerators, some are working in development of scripts, some are agents, some are collecting types of films or stories that could be funded. There is a role. I also think this is where looking at Hollywood is a good example because an organization or a foundation may be like, “We have to do everything.” Well, that’s not necessarily true, especially if you’re an independent studio, which I think a lot of different organizations could be.
Eric Ressler [14:55]: I love this metaphor of this ecosystem, and I think that social change creates or necessitates ecosystems and collaborations, which I think ties in nicely to a lot of the work that you’ve been doing at Caspian around convenings and events and bringing people together. And I’d love to talk a little bit about specifically what you’re doing with Impact Lounge since that ties into both of these topics. I’d love for you to actually just describe what Impact Lounge is and where it’s going and how that vision came to be.
Heather Mason [15:30]: And it’s funny because it’s exactly where we’re talking about, which is perfect because my whole thought after working in convenings around the social good sector for 20 years is looking back to my start in the movie industry. And I’ve always thought that that is the number one way to move hearts and minds is in stories and bringing people to hope. Hope is magnetic. Guilt and shame is repulsive to most people. So you don’t want to repel people if you want them to come to your cause. You want to become a magnet. And that is what film does. And so I thought, I’m going to bring my two loves together and create the Impact Lounge so that this movement, this ecosystem can be accelerated. And the way you accelerate, as I’ve seen at events, and I fully believe in them, is events are a crucible, when done well.
And in that crucible, those experimental little containers that we had back in chemistry class, not the book about witches, is in that little chemistry cup, you put all the ingredients to create the catalystic experiment you want to happen. And that is what happens at the Impact Lounge. So we bring together change makers, funders, and those in the filmmaking ecosystem, the creator ecosystem, so that they can start to meet. And that accelerates this movement because all of a sudden, I was on calls just even today. All of a sudden people are like, wait, I didn’t know they were working on that. Yes, they are. That’s more like studio system work. These guys are working on this. Well, we could go in on a funding thing with them. Yes, you could. You don’t have to go it alone. I didn’t know they were doing that.
Well, I know about that because we work with them with Caspian. That’s how that all comes together. And we have created, I would say, I have a success list of some major partnerships that we have been a part of bringing together because we’re forming that crucible for this to take place in. And people believe in events, they know events work, and this type of event is to bring together the, I would say, counterintuitive players. Why would a creator be on stage with one of our largest social entrepreneurs? This is why.
Eric Ressler [18:00]: And for listeners who don’t know Heather and Caspian, we’re not talking about small players here. We’re talking about Skoll World Forum and the Packard Foundation and some of the major foundations, just to speak to the foundation side of things for a bit. And this to me ties into the broader ecosystem around funding and how funding is happening and how money flows into the space because like it or not, social change needs money, it needs resources in a capitalist society. And if anything, we need way more money being spent out to the orgs that are doing this work, whether they are funders or intermediaries or the boots on the ground implementer orgs or consensus building orgs. We need the full ecosystem, in my opinion. So how do we get more of these network effects in motion and how do we get more people who are able to spend money and to invest in these causes to write checks?
I’m imagining your answer is going to be through narrative change and through story, but walk me through that theory of change and why that’s a better way of doing it than the more arduous scientific academic way of doing this work.
Heather Mason [19:05]: At a certain point, there will become the arduous academic type of work and fundraising. You have to know that these things actually have statistics behind them and studies and all of that. So that is a compliment. I don’t want to discount that. That’s definitely a compliment. But where I think about getting people to want to invest more is you start to show some of the work that has happened and how impactful it has been when you talk about, do you remember An Inconvenient Truth? Do you remember The Cove? Do you remember Food Inc? Supersize Me. Selma, Philadelphia, and do you remember what has happened with this particular org and some of the milestones that have happened in this movement? That’s probably a little fuzzier than maybe a scene that really stood out to someone in a movie.
And maybe that is why they got involved, or they probably got involved into a subject area because someone told them a story about a specific person. They probably didn’t just paper it over or they started with statistics and they led into a personal story. That’s fundraising 101. Here’s the big global need and here’s the individual stories. And those stories are told to everyone through films, creator content. And I think for any funder that says, because I know they really care, we’ve met them, we’ve seen them at our conferences, I really care about this issue because I’ve been on the ground, I’ve been involved in this, they’re crying, they’re sobbing, and I want it. Don’t you want everyone to feel that way? Yes, I do. Okay. Well, if you think you can run around and do a bunch of salons over the next, let’s see how many years you got, or you could move them to feel the same way and same passion you have doing this on a broader scale.
That is what this enables funders to do. Take the passion they feel about an issue area and translate it to a ton more people to get that excitement on the ground level for their issue.
Eric Ressler [21:15]: I want to dig into, I think there’s a very strong and maybe more intuitive case to be made that if you’re an org that is trying to activate the general public, everyday people who are maybe not experts in this issue, maybe it’s not their career trajectory, but they just care about a particular issue. Let’s take climate change. A lot of folks care a lot about the environment and climate right now who aren’t doing any of that work in their professional capacity, they just care about it as engaged citizens. I think there’s a very intuitive argument to be made there for the power of documentaries and story and media, and especially around hope instead of apathy. I think, and not necessarily apathy, but the end result being apathy of hope versus a more negative framing, a more problem-based framing, which has really been the main way that climate activism has been framed traditionally.
And I think we’re starting to see that’s not working very well. All of that to say, what about if an executive director or someone in an org that isn’t trying necessarily to activate grassroots support, but is doing more policy-driven work or policy advocacy work or consensus building work? Is there a place for storytelling for that type of org too, in your opinion?
Heather Mason [22:30]: A hundred percent. I’m thinking of, we’ve worked with UNDP before, the United Nations, and a gentleman there’s phenomenal. Boaz Palde started a very cool extinction series where he showed a Tyrannosaurus Rex coming into the UN to shine a light on what was happening from a policy perspective. He also did something around weather kids, having kids report on weather around the world, specifically focused at policy, global policy. You also have Hunting Ground, which was a documentary about assault on campus focusing around policy. I know National Geographic has done multiple types of films around policy. And some of those are focused on a very few people who can move mountains based on policy as opposed to we need this to go to be seen by millions of people in multiplexes. These are very finely focused and their success stories because of them, because people would see this and actually make change.
And then, and I know this is a negative example, but I think it’s very cool from a potential groundswell policy area is gaming. And I know we’re talking more about film, but I think of all types of media.
There was apparently an organization that showcased how climate was affecting people in, I believe it was Minecraft. And one day there was this great forest in this game, you could play in it, and the next day it was gone and everybody was really upset because you’re playing your game, you need to map your forest and know where it is. It was gone. They said, “Oh, that’s okay. Got clear cut,” because there was a policy change that allowed this entire forest to just be clearcut. Now that is impactful. And if you want to impact, there’s more people playing video games than watching films necessarily, so we will be going into that area a bit, but that was very visceral. And if you had done that on a localized level, think about that type of media play.
If there was a pipeline going through somewhere and you were able to showcase in games, media, anything that something was a problem, you could probably activate a lot more people than doing potential petitions, signs, showing up at Walmart with a checklist.
Eric Ressler [25:05]: I think the other thing that I’ve thought about a lot as it relates to this topic is that even if you are an org that is doing work in a very grasstops or policy-based arena where you need to change the minds of 10 decision makers at the state level or national level, whatever it is, wouldn’t you want broader cultural tides and support behind your decision and your recommendations? We need the general population. And to some extent, shouldn’t we be bringing in the mandates and the will of the people in policy in general anyway? So I think it was a little bit of a devil’s advocacy style question because I personally believe very strongly in the power of all of this and I believe that it has a place, maybe needs to be used a little bit differently dependent on the type of org that you are and who you’re trying to activate.
But I think sometimes that gets used as a, “Oh, well, we don’t need to do storytelling because we have 10 people. All we need to do is get them in the right room.” And I would actually challenge people who think that way to reconsider the power of this approach and of narrative change as a huge asset in your potential direction.
Heather Mason [26:10]: 100%. If I can say one more thing about that, 100%, because the other piece of this that I find so fascinating, because I have old brain, I have Gen X brain, and whenever I come across new brain, it’s so different and it’s so exciting. For instance, we did an Impact Lounge at the United Nations. So we travel, we go everywhere, we do Impact Lounge, Sundance, Cannes, UN, Climate Week, we go international, and we had three creators on stage, meaning YouTube creators at the United Nations, and we had them talk about what they were doing with impact. And those three, I keep wanting to say kids, young people, represented over 20 million followers. So there’s first that, that’s bigger than a publicity and advertising P&A budget for a lot of independent films, those three young people. But what I thought was even more fascinating than thinking about who they could influence and what big voices they had was in the middle of the panel at the UN, this gal takes out her phone and she does a live, “Yeah, I’m right here on the stage UN. It’s super cool.” Totally live to her followers.
Now, I’m a Gen X person. What we normally do is, of course, we have photos, we do video, we send that to post-production, we slice and dice it, we put it through some people. The other thing I would challenge when you’re saying, “Don’t just focus on those couple people.” I would say don’t just focus on those couple of people. And you can get a massive groundswell behind you by the time you go to those people using just creators and what they’re calling verticals, vertical shows just on your phone and you can reach 20 million people. Imagine that level of cultural pressure that could be applied while you are even building your campaign. Don’t wait till it’s pretty. Don’t wait till it’s cute. She wasn’t waiting until she was even offstage and she already had 20,000 likes.
How does that even happen? So I agree with you that waiting and only focusing on these couple people just for this pretty campaign, those days are gone. They’re over and I am not sad to see them goodbye because if those 10 people pass a law that nobody else knows should be passed, you’re pushing a boulder uphill against the wind for someone else to come and undo it because nobody knew, nobody believed in it, nobody supported it. And I think that happens a lot of times because there’s a story behind it.
Eric Ressler [28:45]: Hey friends, real quick before we continue today’s episode, I’m Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose built for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we’ve helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy, but we’re not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let’s talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today’s conversation.
This is a little bit of a, you could argue maybe off topic, but I want to go there. As I’ve been watching media change and someone who loves to geek out on seven episodic sci-fi, deep novels that are 1,500 words each, long form content, love media and film and the art behind it and understand that that is something that requires a lot of time, energy, budget, intention to make these beautiful films, these beautiful documentaries. And then alongside that, there’s this next generation of media coming up that is so the opposite of that. It’s live streamed. It’s vertical video. There is no production value. It’s all just authentic human expression in its raw, uncut, unfiltered form. How are you just personally thinking about the massive change happening in media? And I don’t think that that new media is coming in replacing old media. I mean, look at how many more pieces of media are being generated on streaming platforms. The movie industry is not going away, it’s just changing. But I’m just curious, how are you thinking about all that right now personally?
Heather Mason [30:45]: I get excited because I’m one of these builders people. I’m an entrepreneur by trade, of course. So I’m always seeing like, “Hey, if it’s raining, you sell umbrellas. When the sun comes out, you sell sunscreen.” So I am always that irritating person that’s going to try to see opportunities, gaps, things we’ve never thought of before are always going to be more interesting to me. And I lived through the movies are going to die because of Blockbuster. Then they were going to die because of Blu-ray. I’m definitely aging myself and everybody’s going to stay at home because they’re only going to watch DVDs forever. It’s over. And that never happened. And iTunes is going to kill concerts. iTunes has been a problem, but I think there’s always room for more.
So when I look at how the movie industry is changing, one thing that’s fascinating to me, and this goes into my event background, of course, but this also is a falloff from COVID is events are going logarithmic. Events are a hockey stick right now as far as how many and the industry. The second thing that is coming along with that is eventizing movies. Movies should no longer just be go and sit and then go home again. That’s great for Gen Xers. We love that. Go watch a movie. Everybody quiet. We go home again. That’s not what’s happening. That’s why Minecraft was so exciting as a movie where people were coming and having a great time. Barbenheimer, you now have the reason why theaters, and I know AMC is changing their theaters, you now have Netflix creating houses. So not only is Netflix not necessarily killing things, they’re now creating events around all their series. That’s different. That’s new. That’s getting people together. They want to discuss things. So you’ve got this movement towards wanting to discuss, and you also have movement towards, you have creators on set who are going to do clips and videos of a film while it’s being made.
That’s already ancillary content around a film. Are you watching the film? Are you watching the film about the film? The creator who’s going to be in the film, the YouTube kid who’s going to be in there, who’s actually shown you it being created. And sometimes the movie can be a culmination after it’s already been streamed. After you’ve been streaming it, you build a following. And now the movie theater is the pinnacle. It’s not the start. It used to be that was the start and then it trailed off into streaming. Oh, it went straight to video, sadness. Now it could go straight to streaming, end up in a movie theater and it won. And now it really wins and now people are going to go to experience it like a concert. When my favorite band puts out a song, I don’t get sad that I’ve already heard it.
I can’t wait to go see it in concert. That is almost a better way to think of how some of these — I keep saying kids, I feel so bad — young human beings are thinking about it in one way that it could change and develop. And that is exciting. And you’ve got the break apart of more art houses that are able, you can distribute straight to theater. That was totally impossible before. So I think thinking of these as more like a must-see TV, must-see experience is very different. Now that does mean if you want the award season, awards would have to change because the Oscar — but that’s why we started our own awards show through the Lumen Awards is our awards show three days before the Oscars, and we don’t have any of those rules because I think rules are going away. They need to be a lot more flexible and fluid and ours give awards for change makers and filmmakers.
But there’s excitement for me.
Eric Ressler [34:20]: That makes me think of a couple things. One, this move away from individual films to more interest in TV and serial content that you can binge. Stranger Things, season five dropping recently. And it is a world in the same way that Marvel or Harry Potter, there are these world building opportunities. And then also so many shows now have a companion podcast, which seems like 10 years ago that would’ve been the most weird thing ever to consider. But I’ve listened to those, which is so geeky, but it’s awesome. If you really get invested in a show and its characters, to me as a creative person, I’m like, how did they make this? I want to know what the showrunner thought about this and why they made the decisions that they made. And so the depth that you can go on any given piece of creative media today is just so much more. You used to be lucky to get a behind the scenes release after a film that would come special on the Blu-ray DVD, and that would be one reason why you would get it.
Now there’s so much more. Now I want to tie this back into social impact here. I’m going to try to here in a segue, which is we need social impact organizations to figure out how to produce exponentially more content than they are able to produce right now. I talked to orgs who are highly successful, who have been around for 30 plus years, who are struggling to get an email out a week. That is not going to cut it in today’s media landscape. It is just not. There’s so much content out there. And then they’re frustrated when it’s like, well, no one knows what we want to do and we’re having trouble getting support. And this ties back into this catch-22 around, well, you need to be able to invest in producing content. And it doesn’t all have to be high fidelity, high production value content.
It can be, let’s get a clip mic on and let’s talk about, I’m about to go into a convening meeting. What am I hoping to get out of it? What happened out of it? But it’s still, I don’t want to diminish. Even we create a lot of content at Cosmic, this podcast being one of them. And it is a struggle as a small team, we’re a team of eight. I personally do a lot of our content creation and distribution alongside. So I don’t want to diminish that creating content is time, effort. It requires expertise, even if it is low fidelity, off the cuff content. How do you think we bridge that gap? Let’s take it from the point of view of if an executive director or a communications manager at a nonprofit is listening to the show right now and they want to, they believe in this.
They’re like, I want to do this. I believe in the power of narrative change. I see the power of storytelling. I see how it could work towards our mission. How do I go from where I am today struggling to send an email a week to producing documentary films, to producing an exponentially larger amount of content? And how are you seeing organizations bridge that gap?
Heather Mason [37:15]: I don’t think they have to do it alone. And I also think there’s a very large spectrum of producing content. I think there’s another piece of that when you are a small team, because we have worked with organizations that have small teams as well as very, very large teams, where you do have to let go, and this is the entrepreneur speaking, you do have to let go of the perfect and accept the good. And that is just a philosophical, that’s a leadership issue. I know there’s downsides. I’ve worked in social good. I know that the landmines you have to avoid. However, to your point, we are in a different world. This is a faster world. We may have to let go of all the precious, all of the perfect, or it’s going to be irrelevant by the time we wake up and figure out how to adapt those rules.
So when I think of the creators and I think of them, and I’m speaking of YouTube, YouTube type creators or TikTok creators or any of those folks, they’re already doing it. So it’s a build, not buy situation, I would think for a small team, but also for large teams. Bring them in. Usually they will have some sort of cause like those three we had on our stage. They each had a different thing they were very interested in and it’s not their main thing. If someone’s talking about beauty, one gal was talking about beauty, but she also really likes organic, sustainable skincare. Well, that’s her thing. That’s her organic. Could you pull her in to talk about regenerative farming that also supports some of that? Maybe. And she already knows how to do it. Are you going to be able to control her? No. That’s what I’m saying.
In the world of social good, there needs to be some let go so that these concepts can go viral. We actually want regenerative farming to go viral. We want fan fiction around organic. We want things around solar. So finding those creators can do the work for you. Might not do it every time, might not do it perfect, might have to have some guidelines, but if they’ve got 20,000, 20 million followers, that may be worth it. So it doesn’t have to be documentaries. It can be a clip a gal is doing on her Instagram every other day, which is huge that moves the mark.
And the other thing I would say is too, it’s the same with partnering with films that are already being made. So a film might be made, and documentaries are awesome, but I really love narrative films that you can do what I call nonprofit product placement. There was a film last year that was about domestic violence. Wouldn’t it have been nice if we had some nonprofit product placement in that film? And what if that popcorn bucket that was associated with that film could have had a QR code? Those are two very tiny things that potentially could have been done to basically drop in an action campaign that would have nothing to do with a nonprofit having to make a film.
My belief is, I’ve written a rom-com, it’s about conservation, but it’s a rom-com. I believe rom-coms can change the world. And imagine if those 200 films that are being made every Christmas, which I would love to be a part of if anybody’s out there, I was a development executive. I know my story beats, but I already have in mind the nonprofit because I’ve written in their tagline as a key plot point of the script. These stupid people that they say the earth needs a lawyer, whatever. And at the end, the earth does need a lawyer and that’s Earth Justice and they are a critical part of my plot, but it’s a rom-com and they kiss at the end and it’s beautiful.
So that is to me, if you want to start working in this world, in my perfect world, what I would love to see is every conference we produce, every 10th person should be a 20-something kid who’s either coding Minecraft, playing Minecraft, doing a TikTok series. They should be peppered into this world. And that is the point of the Impact Lounge, is to already get them to pepper together because that’s when you figure it out, you talk to them, bring them in the room.
Eric Ressler [41:15]: I think that’s a really good point of view is that two things I’m hearing. One, you don’t have to physically create all of the content yourself. There are professional full-time content creators out there just waiting to be paired up with the right cause who should be paid for their work and their expertise and their platform and their reach. And in doing so, you’re going to need to let go a little bit and not control the narrative, which I think is something that people think, “Oh, well, we’re going to find this creator and then we’re going to give them the script.” No, that’s the exact opposite thing you should do. And most good creators will say, “No, we don’t work that way.”
Heather Mason [41:50]: Would say no. Yeah, 100%.
Eric Ressler [41:55]: So that’s just something to be aware of if you’re exploring this path. To me, it ties into a bigger thing that needs to change in the social impact sector, which is the willingness to just take risks at all. And there’s a lot of reasons why orgs have been trained to and are not taking risks and sometimes lives are on the line. But one of the risks we can take is letting loose a little bit on our content. It is not going to end the world. Every once in a while, you may get a little bit of a PR blowback, but what are the opportunity costs of not doing that and publishing yet another boring white paper or yet another newsletter digest that no one is going to read is not going to move anything forward.
So I think we’ve been preaching on we need to be more forward looking, more willing to take risks, more willing to be bold. When it comes to content, one thing we think about a lot also is there’s the daily raw, rough content. And then map out what are four big swing features we’re going to do this year, whether that’s an interactive report. One of my favorite examples of this is an org called the Outrider Foundation. It’s getting old, but it’s still one of my favorite examples. They launched, one of their key focus areas is nuclear disaster and mitigation. They launched a nuke simulator, which is a little bit morbid, maybe not so positive, but informative where you put in your zip code, you choose a bomb and you see what happens. That was a big bet content move for them. They could have released that as a white paper that no one would read except for policy wonks, but that went viral because it was this immersive, maybe negative and scary, but interactive, emotionally compelling piece that they released.
We work with our clients to try and advise, what’s your version of the bomb blast simulator that we can do this year? We don’t need to only do those. Yes, they’re expensive. Their bigger swing moves are not always going to pay off, but they’re never going to pay off if you don’t ever try them. And that can be supplemented with the more person on the street, off the cuff, low production value, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing right now. Here’s why we care about it. Here’s what you should know.” Informing and inspiring your audience at the same time.
So hopefully some of these ideas give listeners permission and the ability to think about how to get from where they are to where they’d want to be. And we do need to wrap up here, but before I do, I want to talk about one more topic that came up as we were prepping for today, which is something that you said that stuck with me, which is that you are almost, what is the term that you used? I think annoyingly positive. I think it was something along those lines. And this has been a year that’s been hard for a lot of people to be positive in many ways in the space. And so I’d love to hear before we wrap up, we’ve talked about the Impact Lounge. I know you have a lot going on. I want to give you a chance to plug all the things that you’re doing, especially things that are lighting you up and making you feel annoyingly positive in this moment.
Heather Mason [44:50]: Yes. And I am annoyingly positive. So apologies to some of your audience because I do always look for the opportunity. Every time there’s a crack in the foundation, there’s always something springing up. That’s how our world works. It doesn’t work any other way. When we lost horse-driven carriages, we got the car. So there’s always something around the corner for creators.
And one of the things, just as a mindset, and then I’ll talk about what we’re doing is during COVID, I run a live events company. That’s what I do. So everyone called me during COVID as though they were coming to my wake, “How are you doing? How are you doing?” And I was like, “I’m great.” Now for the first two weeks, I wasn’t. I’ll admit, I was not annoyingly positive. I was like, “Oh dear, the world’s falling apart and so is everything I do in my life and believe in.”
But then two weeks later, I took a note from Silicon Valley and I wish more social good organizations would do this, which is they start a Skunkworks team. That is part of Silicon Valley. What does that team do? They don’t know. They just get four or five brilliant people and go, “Here’s a big salary. Think of what is next. Think of not what’s around the next corner. Think of what is around the next glacier, hilltop and sea and moon and come back. We don’t even know what that is.” And so I started a Skunkworks team and every day I said, “We landed on a planet and there cannot be live events. What do we do?” There’s an alien race here, and that is how we became a whole different company during COVID that did virtual events and et cetera. So when I say I’m annoyingly positive, it’s because I take the Skunkworks approach.
What’s making you sad? Okay, be a Skunkworks. On this planet, you can’t do X. Take your two weeks, take your moment, you can cry. That’s okay. And then, and then, and that is the place I try to live in is the “and then.” So the “and then” is Caspian. So we are doing plenty of events. Events are going off the charts because people want to get back together. That has not just ricocheted back from COVID, it is ricocheted and added on top of itself, also because of AI. And there’s a couple people out there saying, which I agree with, AI means you can only trust in person and in person is such a powerful way to make a connection.
And then with Impact Lounge, again, I thought, geez, more years behind me than ahead of me. I might as well bring my two loves together of what I think really will work. And the other thing that’s lighting me up about Impact Lounge and where we go is I got to go to Cannes Lions last year. I’ve been to Cannes Film Festival. Of course we go there. Cannes Lions is about advertising. And when you were talking about what’s that nuclear bomb moment thing, this was exactly that.
The other piece, and I’m so glad you made me think of this, besides having a creator in audiences or bringing them into your office is ad agencies. Ad agencies, I thought film people were the most creative people in the world until I went to Cannes Lions. Impact Lounge will be having a big presence at Cannes Lions if I have anything to do with it and we get the right funding behind us, which we are fundraising, is advertising people can take a message, make you cry, make you laugh, turn out your heart and give it back again in 30 seconds.
And they do Cannes for Good. And they’re doing pro bono work for these different organizations. Now, they might not always do pro bono, so people have to get over that, but you get Madison Avenue attached to your cause. In a minute and a half, they can say anything that would turn people around. And the way I see them, and I went up to them, I said, “Those are short films. Don’t let those die. Don’t let those have a run on TV and be dead, bring them to the Impact Lounge, and we will play them like short films in between every session. Please let me have those as interstitials.” That’s what gets me excited and lit up lately.
Eric Ressler [48:45]: And I have friends who work in big ad world and let me tell you what they would do for causes that they cared about instead of products that they actually hate in real life and are forced to work on for years at a time and get their creative ideas shut down by MBAs who don’t know anything about advertising, it would be incredible. But the money’s got to be there. That’s the thing is who’s going to pay the bills on that? It shouldn’t have to be pro bono. And that gets back into the bigger structural thing around how fundraising flows. But if these are the world’s most important pressing ideas and we have ultra wealthy folks who have a lot of money who claim that they want to solve these ideas, then we should be not sparing expenses on getting the most creative minds telling the stories around these ideas.
Heather Mason [49:30]: Because you have the most powerful propaganda machine on Madison Avenue. Why are we not plugging these ideas into it? We have the most viral machinery in the world, true creators. Why are we not plugging these ideas into that, into cultural supernova of storytelling? We are leaving some of the biggest machines that we have and we created even here in this country to the sideline for Gen X 1980s fax machine level pleading and shaming and begging. That time is over and it needs to move forward into this next realm if we are going to supercharge the changes.
Eric Ressler [50:10]: Heather, I think that’s a beautiful place to wrap up. Today’s been awesome. Thank you so much for your time and sharing all of your ideas with us.
Heather Mason [50:15]: Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Ressler [50:20]: If you enjoyed today’s video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.
Total banger. I even started using “storytelling ecosystem” today
Some of the best strategic insights come from people who've lived in two worlds and finally brought them together. Heather's cross-field thinking makes visible what's been hiding in plain sight. These aren't just storytelling insights. They're fundraising insights, movement-building insights, a permission slip to imagine what becomes possible. Great conversation, Eric!