Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Social Organism
WORK NOTES: with Michael J. Casey
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1974
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/oliver-luckett#/entity * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Luckett
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1974; son of Bill Luckett and Kay Farese Turner.
EDUCATION:Vanderbilt University, B.A., 1996.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and businessperson. Founder or cofounder of companies, including iBlast, DigiSynd, Revver, ReviloPark, and theAudience; former executive at companies, including Anschutz Digital Media and Qwest Communications.
AVOCATIONS:Art collecting.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Oliver Luckett is a businessperson and writer based in Los Angeles, California. Raised in Mississippi, he earned a bachelor’s degree in French literature from Vanderbilt University. Luckett went on to become a chief Internet Protocol (I.P.) Services executive at Qwest Communications. He has also worked for Anschutz Digital Media. Luckett is the founder or cofounder of tech startups, including iBlast, Revver, ReviloPark, DigiSynd, and theAudience. His cofounder of theAudience is Ari Emanuel, chief executive officer (CEO) of the powerful talent representation company William Morris Endeavor, and one of the earliest investors in the company was Sean Parker, founder of Napster. TheAudience offers social media development and publishing to its clients, which include celebrities and film studios. The company has been criticized for monetizing the film promotion process. However, Luckett told Brooks Barnes, contributor to the New York Times Online: “In no way are we trying to create a blockade. We’re trying to prevent bad marketing from happening–making sure that our artists don’t get hurt by studios force-feeding fans with marketing messages.” Luckett added: “If you blast your ten million fans with boring marketing messages, they turn on you very quickly. … The secret is giving them great content, and that’s what we do.” Comparing the company to other tech startups, Luckett told Barnes: “This is not another flip-and-burn company. … TheAudience can have a lasting impact and change the entertainment industry fundamentally.”
In addition to his work with theAudience and other startups, Luckett is an avid art collector. He also supports artists by offering them residencies and mounting exhibitions of their work. Luckett told Deborah Vankin, a writer for the Los Angeles Times Online: “I nurture them, mentor them. … I’ve always tried to make art accessible to people because the art world is so inaccessible. It becomes a rich man’s game. I love the democratization of art that happens in the streets. And so I back a lot of those young artists because I think I can bring a network of influencers to get them exposure.” Luckett added: “I have to deal with all these corporate people all day long, and being around artists balances out my mind. … It’s literally an escape for me.”
In 2016 Luckett released his first book, The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life. He cowrote the volume with Michael J. Casey. The book offers a history of the evolution of social media, highlighting outlets, including Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and Instagram, among others. Luckett and Casey also discuss viral videos, memes, and hashtags, in addition to the proliferation of selfies. They argue that social media is a powerful communication tool and can effect change in the world. However, they admit that it can be dangerous as well. They provide examples of both positive stories connected to social media and negative ones. Luckett and Casey conclude the book by discussing the ways in which social media may evolve in the future.
Booklist writer John Keogh described The Social Organism as “deeply informed and nuanced.” Keogh concluded: “This work offers a compelling model to understand what social media is.” “There’s not much new here apart from some synthesis of current theories about meme proliferation and networking, but the book should interest cyberspace completists,” commented a critic in Kirkus Reviews. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that the book’s “preachy conclusion shouldn’t deter readers who are interested in how social media works and how to use it effectively.” A writer on the Damian Holmes Web log remarked: “If you have any interest in sociology or social media … get a copy and read it with a notepad or highlighter/marker by your side as it is full of great ideas that will trigger your own interesting thought processes.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, John Keogh, review of The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life, p. 6.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of The Social Organism.
Publishers Weekly, August 29, 2016, review of The Social Organism, p. 79.
ONLINE
Crunchbase, https://www.crunchbase.com/ (June 17, 2017), author profile.
Damian Holmes, http://www.damianholmes.com/ (December 18, 2016), review of The Social Organism.
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (May 2, 2014), Deborah Vankin, author interview.
New York Times Online, http://www.nytimes.com/ (November 11, 2012), Brooks Barnes, author interview.*
Oliver Luckett
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Oliver Luckett
Born 1974
Nationality American
Education BA
Alma mater Vanderbilt University
Occupation Businessperson, art collector
Known for Founding or co-founding the companies iBlast, Revver, DigiSynd and theAudience
Oliver Luckett is an American businessman and art collector. He is the founder of iBlast, Revver, DigiSynd and theAudience.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Companies during the 2000s
3 theAudience
4 Media
5 Personal life
6 References
Early life
Born in 1974, Luckett was raised in Mississippi by his mother and father. His father co-owns the Ground Zero blues club with actor Morgan Freeman. While in high school, he learned microbiology and computer coding[1] and received a bachelor's degree in French literature from Vanderbilt University.[2]
Companies during the 2000s
In 1999 Luckett cofounded the firm iBlast Networks with former FOX syndication president Michael Lambert and former head of Universal Studios Ken Solomon, and following its founding Luckett served as the company's Chief Technology Officer.[3][4] In 2005 Luckett cofounded the firm Revver, which was the first company to attach advertisements to amateur and professional Internet videos, providing the video makers with a percentage of the ad revenue. He cofounded the company with Freenet developer Ian Clarke and Steven Starr.[5] He then founded DigiSynd, a company that outsourced packaging, syndication and marketing for digital studios and other content creators. The company was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 2008. Disney made the decision to create a sequel for Finding Nemo after finding the most liked fan page on Facebook was the film’s character Dory.[1][6]
theAudience
Main article: theAudience
Luckett is the cofounder and CEO of theAudience, a social media publishing firm. The idea for the company was developed at a dinner between Luckett and William Morris Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. theAudience develops and publishes content across multiple social media platforms. William Morris Endeavor was one of the initial investors in the firm, in addition to City National Bank, and Napster founder Sean Parker. theAudience works with its clients to develop social content and publishing strategies. Content published by theAudience is seen by about one billion social media users per month.[7][8][9]
Media
As founder of theAudience, Luckett has appeared on broadcast television shows including Frontline Magazine,[10][11] in addition to print publications. Luckett has explained that due to a consumer's initial decision to follow a property or individual, using social media to funnel viewership to websites or promotional videos becomes a path of less resistance than more traditional methods of attracting viewers.[12][13] Some of Luckett's work with clients has been written about by national newspapers, such as his work with Richard Simmons and Steve Aoki.[14][15] He has also been an advocate for movie studios to pay actors for their marketing commitments to the films they appear in,[8] as well as philanthropic aspects of social media on Bloomberg Television such as American Express' latest documentary Spent.[2][16]
Personal life
Luckett is a collector of art, including items from Iceland.[1][17]
Overview
Update
Primary Role
CEO and Founder @ theAudience
Investments
1 Investment in 1 Company
Gender:
Male
Location:
Unknown
Person Details
Update
Oliver is the founder and CEO of theAudience. Prior, Oliver was CEO and co-founder of DigiSynd, a Walt Disney Company and previously Oliver co-founded Revver and helped kick off new media with their novel concept of the video rev-share: the principle component of Revver's business. He left the company in 2006.
Prior to Revver, Oliver took the Norman Lear "Declare Yourself" campaign to the Internet and gathered more than one million new online voter registrations.
Taking a trip back further, we would find Oliver as the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of iBlast, Vice President of Network Development at Anschutz Digital Media, Chief IP services architect for Qwest Communications and founder of the media and technology consulting firm, Revilopark. Unfortunately, ReviloPark's client list is highly confidential, so we cannot disclose its work with Norman Lear, The Wayans Brothers, BlueChip Investors, Pamela Anderson, David LaChapelle, HSI Productions and Karyn Rachtman's Mind Your Music.
Oliver still cherishes his bachelor's degree in French Literature from Vanderbilt University. Additionally, he teaches at various graduate schools in Digital Media and lectures extensively at industry conferences and events worldwide.
He makes his home in Los Angeles, CA where there is almost always a stranger sleeping on his couch.
Oliver Luckett is a technology entrepreneur and currently CEO of ReviloPark, a global culture accelerator. He has served as Head of Innovation at the Walt Disney Company and co-founder of video sharing platform Revver. As CEO of theAudience, Luckett worked with clients such as Obama for America, Coachella, Pixar, and American Express. He has helped managed the digital personae of hundreds of celebrities and brands, including Star Wars, The Chainsmokers, Steve Aoki, and Toy Story 3.
QUOTED: "In no way are we trying to create a blockade. We’re trying to prevent bad marketing from happening–making sure that our artists don’t get hurt by studios force-feeding fans with marketing messages."
"If you blast your 10 million fans with boring marketing messages, they turn on you very quickly. ... The secret is giving them great content, and that’s what we do."
"This is not another flip-and-burn company. ... TheAudience can have a lasting impact and change the entertainment industry fundamentally."
A-Listers, Meet Your Online Megaphone
By BROOKS BARNESNOV. 10, 2012
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Oliver Luckett, center, with Jeff Pressman, left, and Kate McLean of theAudience. For its celebrity clients, the company aims to build armies of fans across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times
EVEN in an industry accustomed to madcap characters, Oliver Luckett cuts a “Who was that?” swath across Hollywood.
Raised in Mississippi and with the accent to prove it, Mr. Luckett, 38, is known for zooming around town in an Aston Martin — that is, when he’s not jetting off to places like Iceland, where he was last December to compete against Bjork in a gingerbread house-building contest. He lost, despite help from a buddy in Disneyland’s research and design lab.
With his new company — a social media start-up called theAudience — Mr. Luckett promises nothing short of rewiring celebrity economics, and he abruptly dismisses skeptics. “Get on my train,” he likes to say, his blue eyes blazing. “We’re leaving now.” Yet he can also be a big softy known for his striped-sock collection. During a business meeting not so long ago, he veered into an emotional story about coming out of the closet and started to weep.
Just another showy show-business personality? Some people think so. But many of the entertainment factory’s most powerful forces — William Morris Endeavor, Lionsgate, Universal Pictures — and one tech superstar, Sean Parker, are taking him very, very seriously.
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About two years ago, Mr. Luckett left a senior position at Walt Disney, where he managed the social media presence of Cinderella and her cartoon friends, to do the same for actors and musicians. For each client, theAudience works to build a network of fans across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus and to keep those followers engaged by posting a steady stream of catchy pictures, comments and videos.
THEAUDIENCE, part of a stampede of start-ups aiming to exploit the intersection of celebrity and social media, also sells its services directly to movie marketers, record labels and concert promoters. It did stealth work on behalf of the hit movie “Ted,” for instance, and the Coachella music festival. Mr. Luckett refuses to identify his clients, but he says theAudience publishes thousands of items a month on behalf of about 300 accounts, reaching a total of 800 million fans.
Movie and music executives say theAudience’s clients include Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Jack Black, Eddie Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Usher, Pitbull and LMFAO.
Celebrities seizing opportunities to promote themselves? As Captain Renault would say, “I’m shocked, shocked.” But theAudience illustrates something important about where Hollywood is headed. After largely ignoring social media — allowing fake Facebook pages to proliferate, sticking with tried-and-true publicity stops like “Entertainment Tonight” — stars and agents are realizing en masse that they need to get on that train.
There is intense downward pressure on artist salaries in all corners of entertainment. Movie attendance over the summer hit a 20-year low. The Web has decimated the music industry. DVRs are roiling television. William Morris Endeavor, a founding investor in theAudience, sees the assertive cultivation of social media networks as one way to shift power back to stars.
To agents, the metrics of theAudience offer crucial leverage: If you cast Ms. Theron in a movie, she comes with an ability to fill seats through her social network, and we can prove it with data. Oh, and she needs to be paid more because of that. The same leverage holds true for sealing endorsement deals, which is where celebrities, and their agency backers, increasingly make their real money.
“That is absolutely part of the conversation now,” says Ari Emanuel, the co-chief executive of William Morris Endeavor. “We all use all the tools we have.”
If you were wondering how Rihanna was cast in “Battleship,” it was lost on no one at Universal that she came with 26 million Twitter followers.
Photo
The comedian Russell Brand says theAudience’s services have helped him sell out shows “without any paid advertising.” Credit Christopher Polk/Getty Images
Ultimately, Mr. Emanuel and others look at social media networks as a new type of cable channel, and theAudience is helping celebrities to program theirs. Consider it as the Web equivalent of OWN, Oprah Winfrey’s channel; she maintains control of what goes on it, but she hires people to make it happen.
“The real value of these networks is in programming,” says Mr. Parker, the Napster founder who also played a big role in Facebook’s world domination. “If you can aggregate effectively, you can start to imagine social media a little bit more like traditional media.”
Mr. Luckett has a long history with start-ups, including Revver, a video sharing site that was precursor to YouTube. He says theAudience recently obtained $20 million in an additional round of financing from Guggenheim Partners; Intertainment Media; Participant Media; the Founders Fund, which is Mr. Parker’s investment company; and the Capricorn Investment Group, the investment arm of Jeffrey Skoll, the first president of eBay.
“A lot of celebrities are overwhelmed with the demands of social media, and theAudience, which has some extremely smart executives, is one of the companies filling the void,” said Danielle De Palma, senior vice president for digital marketing at Lionsgate, which hired Mr. Luckett to work on “The Hunger Games.”
THEAUDIENCE is far from the only start-up trying to convince studios and stars that they need its social media help. Some are founded by entertainment veterans, but others are backed by tech types trying to exploit a lack of understanding among senior studio executives about how Facebook and Twitter work, according to Ms. DePalma. She says she gets up to 10 pitches a day from companies trying to peddle social media wares.
Moviepilot, a young company based in Berlin, recently came to Hollywood, promising to use social media to connect fans to the moviemaking process as a way to get them excited about future releases. Fizziology monitors Facebook and Twitter on behalf of entertainment marketers to “spot trends, threats and opportunities.” Crowd Factory sells social media management, as does Digital Media Management. Thismoment focuses on managing “brand experiences” across social media platforms.
Zefr puts tens of thousands of film clips onto YouTube, with a goal of encouraging consumers to download or rent the whole movie. Zefr, which recently expanded into the TV, music and sports realms after securing $18.5 million in additional financing, also helps content owners identify and monetize clips posted on YouTube without permission.
Mr. Luckett’s most direct competition is probably WhoSay, largely because it is backed partly by Creative Artists Agency, the chief rival of William Morris Endeavor. WhoSay also allows clients — like Tom Hanks, Shakira, Sofia Vergara and Ellen DeGeneres — to manage their presence in the digital world.
TheAudience makes money by charging studios a fee for sponsored posts; Universal paid it to publish “Ted” materials via Mr. Wahlberg’s network. TheAudience also collects a portion of transactional revenue. When celebrity clients use their networks to sell something — download this app, buy this T-shirt — Mr. Luckett gets a cut. Celebrities are charged a per-month fee for theAudience’s services, starting at about $5,000.
Aside from competition, theAudience faces many challenges. Some traditional gatekeepers, like publicists, aren’t thrilled to cede control. Some of William Morris Endeavor’s agency rivals are ardently opposed to letting clients work with theAudience, worrying about giving Mr. Emanuel a poaching opportunity.
And there is the question of authenticity. Mr. Luckett’s enterprise is built on that precarious ledge: fans need to think they are getting material directly from a celebrity — that’s the magic of social media — and not a surrogate.
Mr. Luckett acknowledges all of those pesky matters, but says that none were particularly problematic.
He says theAudience isn’t looking for many more celebrity clients than it already has. As for authenticity, he points to its system of approvals; no item is published for a client without his or her blessing. That can be cumbersome but is necessary, he says. Of several A-list clients who were asked, none wanted to discuss their work with the company.
Photo
Charlize Theron and Mark Wahlberg are said to be clients of theAudience. Credit Joel Ryan/Associated Press; Tracey Nearmy/European Pressphoto Agency
Studios, meanwhile, trying to hold down costs, complain about being strong-armed into hiring theAudience. “If we cast someone in a movie and they are an Audience client, we now have to pay an extra fee to access their fans?” says one studio marketer, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering Mr. Emanuel. “That should be free and many stars are happy to oblige,” the marketer says.
A lawyer at another studio says contracts are starting to be written so that actors are required to make their “best effort” to use social media to promote their work.
When told that some studios feel that they are being forced to hire theAudience, Mr. Luckett responds, “And they benefit greatly by doing so.”
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He continues: “In no way are we trying to create a blockade. We’re trying to prevent bad marketing from happening — making sure that our artists don’t get hurt by studios force-feeding fans with marketing messages.”
SOME of Mr. Luckett’s previous start-ups have soared only to sputter, the biggest being Revver. (Its claim to fame was one of the first viral videos, “Diet Coke + Mentos.”) Mr. Luckett left Revver after clashing with investors over strategy.
More successful was Digisynd, a social media company of which he was a co-founder. It was acquired by Disney in 2008 as a way to manage cartoon characters online. Disney was shocked to learn that the No. 1 “liked” character was not Buzz Lightyear or Mickey Mouse but Dory the fish from “Finding Nemo.”
“The rules had reversed: the audience was telling us what it wanted,” Mr. Luckett says. (Disney is now deep in work on a “Finding Nemo” sequel.) Today, Disney has a total of about 400 million Facebook “likes,” up from about 400,000 in 2009.
It was Mr. Emanuel, whose assertiveness was parodied on “Entourage” on HBO, who got theAudience ball rolling at the advice of Mr. Parker. “Sean told us that all we should care about is social and for two years we tried to find the right person but couldn’t,” Mr. Emanuel says. “So I call up and scream at Sean, and he finally connects us to Oliver.”
At first, Mr. Luckett ignored Mr. Emanuel’s calls. “I was like, I’ve seen ‘Entourage.’ I don’t need an agent in my life,” Mr. Luckett says.
The two finally got together, and Mr. Luckett was intrigued to discover the degree to which celebrities were ceding control of their images on Facebook. A search turned up thousands of fake pages created by Facebook users for William Morris Endeavor clients alone, he says. (His opinion of Mr. Emanuel now? “I adore Ari. He picks me up when I’m down.”)
The concept behind theAudience was relatively simple, but the execution, at least the way Mr. Luckett and his partners wanted it done, was complex. TheAudience built software that allows employees — now more than 100 in London and Los Angeles — to track how posts are landing. How many followers are paying attention to posts, and how does theAudience use its software to learn what works and drive interest even higher?
Using the software, employees decide the optimum moment to post a Twitter message or Facebook picture. TheAudience also pays attention to things like decay, or how it takes for posts to lose their buoyancy.
“Amplification on these networks — slicing, dicing, cross-pollinating — takes a certain finesse,” Mr. Parker says.
Photo
Earlier in his career, Mr. Luckett helped Disney manage its cartoon characters’ online presence. The Facebook page for Dory the fish of “Finding Nemo 3D.”
Mr. Luckett contends that a celebrity’s number of fans is actually meaningless. “If you blast your 10 million fans with boring marketing messages, they turn on you very quickly,” he says. “The secret is giving them great content, and that’s what we do.”
The goal, explains Jeff Pressman, the chief operating officer of theAudience, is “to develop long-term emotional relationships.” He adds, “So when it does come time to ask something of these highly engaged fans — buy a ticket, click on a link — you have earned their trust and attention and they are willing to do it.”
Managing “content programming and production” for theAudience is its president, Kate McLean, formerly a top lieutenant to Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive. Ms. McLean may have an M.B.A. from Harvard, but she also has a fascination with celebrity. Mr. Iger used to become annoyed at her for reading US Weekly on the Disney corporate jet, she says.
“We’re dealing with pop culture, and it should be fun,” she says. Mr. Luckett, she adds, “has a tremendous love for art and artists — as we all do here — and that really inspires and invigorates the whole team.”
The British comedian Russell Brand says theAudience has helped him sell out shows “without any paid advertising”; the company also advises him on where to route tours, based on the geography of his fan base. “It’s a smart way to talk to my fans directly and in a bespoke manner,” Mr. Brand says.
Is he concerned about handing over his social media presence to outsiders? “Not at all,” he says, joking that he couldn’t do it himself if he tried: “You have to remember that I have no actual skills.”
The electronic dance musician Steve Aoki echoes Mr. Brand. “I need help making sure what I put out on Facebook or Twitter isn’t all jumbled up, that it has meaning and value and is viewed to the maximum,” he says. Mr. Aoki said he had 408,000 Facebook “likes,” or fans, before he hired theAudience; he now has 1.2 million.
Mr. Aoki says he plans two weeks’ worth of posts with Ms. McLean and her team in a sitting. “They also come to me with ideas, and I will adjust the idea so it makes sense to me,” he says. “I control everything.”
MR. LUCKETT is having a ball in Hollywood partly because it’s a long way from where he came from. Growing up gay in Mississippi wasn’t easy, and one way he coped was via computers. As a teenager, he taught himself how to write code and to plumb the depths of the Internet, recalling that one month he ran up a $700 phone bill in dial-up Internet service.
“It gave me a way out of the cotton field,” he says.
Still, let’s not go too far. His family was wealthy and employed one of Tina Turner’s cousins as its housekeeper. His father, Bill Luckett, who made an unsuccessful bid for governor last year, is a lawyer who is a co-owner of a restaurant and blues club in Clarksdale, Miss., with the actor Morgan Freeman.
Oliver Luckett graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1996 with a degree in French literature, and went to work at Qwest Communications, where he helped build its fiber optic network as chief I.P. services architect. Afterward, he took a two-and-a-half year hiatus, living on Majorca part of that time and consulting for the Declare Yourself voting campaign started by Norman Lear.
Despite his whirling dervishness, Mr. Luckett says he is tied to theAudience for the long haul. “This is not another flip-and-burn company,” he says. “TheAudience can have a lasting impact and change the entertainment industry fundamentally.”
He paused for dramatic effect before adding one of his sig-nature lines: “Period. End of story.”
QUOTED: "I nurture them, mentor them. ... I've always tried to make art accessible to people because the art world is so inaccessible. It becomes a rich man's game. I love the democratization of art that happens in the streets. And so I back a lot of those young artists because I think I can bring a network of influencers to get them exposure."
"I have to deal with all these corporate people all day long, and being around artists balances out my mind. ... It's literally an escape for me."
Tech mogul Oliver Luckett connects with emerging artists in a big way
Oliver Luckett
Deborah VankinDeborah VankinContact Reporter
Oliver Luckett has perfected the art of excess. Seemingly every inch of the walls in his Los Angeles tech start-up, theAudience, is crowded with murals and framed works by street artists such as Shepard Fairey as well as contemporary artists like Jere Allen and Iceland's Gabriela Fridriksdottir, all from Luckett's personal collection.
Luckett, 39, founded theAudience with William Morris Endeavor Chief Ari Emanuel and Napster cofounder Sean Parker in 2011 to manage the social media pages of celebrities and brands. The company says it unleashes about 6,000 pieces of content — photos, videos, funny comments — to more than 1 billion people a month, earning Luckett the reputation as "the man behind the curtain" when it comes to creating buzz for clients on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube. Though his role in the tech world has been well documented — this year he was featured in the PBS "Frontline" documentary "Generation Like" — not as many people know of Luckett's passion for art. He leverages his connections, online and offline, to help break emerging artists.
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As the new media mogul gives an art tour of the office, there's little hint he arrived home last night from Miami, where he had hosted parties at the Ultra Music Festival, or that tomorrow he jets off to Rome for a speaking engagement. On this rare day in Los Angeles, whether he's talking about his company's growth from 10 to about 150 employees in three years or his voluminous social circle of Hollywood power player friends, or his fluorescent sneaker collection, or his insatiable appetite for street art, illustration and design — a collection that fills additional office space down the street, the London offices of theAudience and his Hollywood Hills home — less is not more in Luckett's world. More is … barely enough.
Artful offices
Inside the Beverly Grove office, there's practically no retreat from the explosion of visual stimuli. Floor-to-ceiling murals of fantastical purple sea creatures by the husband-wife duo Kozyndan bookend a wide-open work area, abstract sculptures rise in corners and custom art chandeliers include a hand-blown glass octopus and another composed of dangling, razor-sharp scissors. Small prints rest against employees' cubicle walls, and even the exterior of the office has not been spared: Enormous murals by JR, Anthony Lister and the British street art crew End of the Line cover three sides of the building.
Oliver Luckett
When Oliver Luckett is smitten with an artist, he has been known to buy 40 or more pieces of their work at a time and offer commissions. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Luckett zigzags frenetically through the narrow hallways, enthused by his surroundings. Broad and burly, his full, auburn beard lends him a handsome, rustic quality, a look softened by a cartoony bear T-shirt and iridescent blue and green Lanvin sneakers.
"These are Jordan Crane, these are Kozyndan, these are Icelandic mountain ranges by Hrafnkell Sigurdsson that I found when I was there," Luckett says in a Mississippi drawl, flicking his finger at each artwork as he zooms past. "So much great art there, I came home with a crate!"
Oliver Luckett
Oliver Luckett's passion for collecting art is visible at his tech start-up, theAudience, where works by Shepard Fairey, DevNgosha and others are on display. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Suddenly Luckett stops in his tracks and goes silent, scrolling intently through his iPhone, his brow furrowed. "There's always a fire, always a crisis," he says with a laugh, before continuing. "This is another by Fairey, this is DevNGosha, more Kozyndan, these are by Birgir Andresson …"
TheAudience's A-list clientele has included actors Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Hugh Jackman, musicians like Usher and superstar DJ Steve Aoki, and even politicians. (The firm handled President Obama's main Facebook page during his 2012 reelection.) It also represents "influencers" — regular people whose online platforms might include upward of 6 million followers on Vine. Increasingly, theAudience provides social media production, distribution and analysis for global brands such as American Express, Ford Motor Co. and Dove. It builds social media followings, a new kind of currency in today's economy, and creates content such as a concert photo from the recent Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or the Chainsmokers' "#Selfie" music video, which has gotten more than 86 million views since January on YouTube.
Although theAudience has officially represented Fairey, Lister and Takashi Murakami, among others, most of the artists Luckett cultivates are not clients.
"I nurture them, mentor them," he says. "I've always tried to make art accessible to people because the art world is so inaccessible. It becomes a rich man's game. I love the democratization of art that happens in the streets. And so I back a lot of those young artists because I think I can bring a network of influencers to get them exposure."
Luckett's support often comes in the way of old-fashioned patronage. When he's smitten with an artist, he has been known to buy 40 (or more) pieces of their work at a time and offer commissions. He gives their work as gifts to friends such as Morgan Freeman and Bjork and showcases artists' work in the office, which is trafficked by high-profile entertainment figures.
Usher saw the work of Kozyndan on theAudience's walls and featured the artists on the cover of his 2012 album, "Looking 4 Myself."
"I was so impressed by Kozyndan's ability to create a world within an everyday setting," Usher says. The art "felt very connected to what my 'Looking 4 Myself' album experience was."
Comic actor Mike Epps' manager bought him a DevNGosha piece for his birthday, Luckett says. "A lot of people have come through our office and been like, 'Oh, my God, hook me up with that artist.'"
For Emanuel's 2012 Oscar party, Luckett featured work by the street art collective Cyrcle in an outdoor party tent. Emanuel ended up purchasing all three works for his home.
"They met Pharrell at the party, and the guys now continue to work with him," Cyrcle manager Benjamin Kaufman says, adding that Cyrcle members David Leavitt and David Torres appeared in Pharrell's 24-hour music video for "Happy," dancing down Highland Avenue. "Oliver also brought them to London to create an installation at his office there. He's helped spread their work internationally."
Most recently Luckett took on painters Devin Liston and Gosha Levochkin, who work under the name DevNGosha, as "artists in residence" for sixth months. He provided a stipend for living expenses so they could focus on creating work to be featured in a solo show, and he turned the entire third floor of theAudience into a DevNGosha art gallery. At the March 26 show, the artists sold about 80% of their work, which included originals and limited edition prints, with an artist-friendly 60-40 split of proceeds between DevNGosha and Luckett.
He also had DevNGosha create a piece for an Aoki fan art event, an image of which appeared on the DJ's Facebook page. "Steve's content on social reaches about 27 million unique people a month," Luckett says, so it was a way of getting DevNGosha work in front of all those fans.
"It was amazing," Levochkin says of the residency. "I gave up my job at an art supply store to commit to art. The residency's over now, but it created momentum, we're sitting on a body of work, and we're getting commissions every day, mostly people who saw us online."
Luckett's efforts aren't selfless. Beyond the financial returns from the gallery show, which he says went toward covering his costs, working with visual artists provides a much needed retreat from his tech career and heavy international travel schedule of speaking engagements.
"I have to deal with all these corporate people all day long, and being around artists balances out my mind," he says. "It's literally an escape for me."
Over dinner at Pingtung on Melrose Avenue, he puts it another way: "Being around creative minds is what keeps me alive."
Creative beginnings
Art has long been a part of Luckett's life. He grew up in a wealthy home in Clarksdale, Miss., with art-loving parents, both lawyers. His father, Bill, owns a blues club with actor Freeman and filled the family's home with paintings by "the Mississippi Rembrandt" Jere Allen, Gerald DeLoach and the Russian artist Mihail Chemiakin. Luckett's mother, Kay Farese Turner, is also a sculptor. She sparked his love of the Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, whose work — along with that of Cuban sculptor Carlos Gonzalez and two Daft Punk helmets — adorns Luckett's living room.
"They threw great parties with well-known artists," Luckett says. "They made me value art."
Growing up gay in the South wasn't easy, but Luckett found solace in his love of technology. When he was 6, he was offered a three-wheeler or a TRS-80 color computer. The latter won out.
After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville with a degree in French literature, Luckett moved to San Francisco and fell into technology jobs, eventually landing at Qwest Communications as chief Internet protocol services architect. He went on to found tech start-ups including iBlast and Revver ("I was a serial entrepreneur in the technology space," he says), and in 2003 he took nine months off to live on the Spanish isle of Majorca and hang out with artists.
In 2008 Luckett sold his company Digisynd to Disney, where he stayed on to head the social marketing efforts for cartoon characters. That caught the eye of Emanuel.
"Ari said: 'I want you to leave Disney. Come with me and Sean Parker, and I want you to build the first social publishing studio,'" says Luckett as he races down the sidewalk connecting theAudience's two buildings on Beverly Boulevard. As a gaggle of his digital content producers in stylish glasses and skinny jeans passes, Luckett high-fives one of them.
"Hey, buddy, how's it going?'" Luckett says.
In the distance, the Lister mural is visible — a brightly colored, twirling figure. Lister painted it so that employees looking down from the sixth floor of theAudience would feel connected to the smaller sister building below.
"We're like a big family," Luckett says. "The artists too. I really believe we all benefit from the connections we have, and I wanna bring a bunch of artists together with the influence I have, encourage them to work together, and expose people to new art."
He squints into the sun. "Because the status quo — it's just boring."
deborah.vankin@latimes.com
QUOTED: "deeply informed and nuanced."
"This work offers a compelling model to understand what social media is."
The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life
John Keogh
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life. By Oliver Luckett and Michael J. Casey. Nov. 2016. 256p. Hachette, $27 (9780316359528); e book, $13.99 (9780316359542). 658.8.
Luckett and Casey are established authorities in the world of social media. If anyone can help us understand this digitally connected world, it's them--and they don't disappoint. They propose that the best way to comprehend the nature of social media is through the model of the seven characteristics of biological life. The book offers a deeply informed and nuanced portrait of the social-media landscape, supported by numerous examples. Although the outlook is hopeful, the authors clearly recognize the pitfalls and dangers social media presents and argue that we must guide its development if we want to make it better. The title implies that this will be a practical how-to manual for anyone who wants to take advantage of social media. It's not. This is an overarching theory of social media, spanning disciplines from biology to anthropology to business to computer science. Whether or not you agree with their vision for what social media can be and do, this work offers a compelling model to understand what social media is.--John Keogh
YA RECOMMENDATIONS
* Young adult recommendations for adult, audio, and reference titles reviewed in this issue have been contributed by the Booklist staff and by reviewers Michael Cart, Valerie Hawkins, Kristine Huntley, Krista Hutley, Biz Hyzy, and Lucy Lockley.
* Adult titles recommended for teens are marked with the following symbols: YA, for books of general YA interest; YA/C, for books with particular curriculum value; YA/S, for books that will appeal most to teens with a special interest in a specific subject; and YA/M, for books best suited to mature teens.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Keogh, John. "The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142720&it=r&asid=4fbee4ff30fb7649697409d454db02d5. Accessed 10 May 2017.
QUOTED: "There's not much new here apart from some synthesis of current theories about meme proliferation and networking, but the book should interest cyberspace completists."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142720
Oliver Luckett, Michael Casey: THE SOCIAL ORGANISM
(Sept. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Oliver Luckett, Michael Casey THE SOCIAL ORGANISM Hachette (Adult Nonfiction) 27.00 11, 15 ISBN: 978-0-31-635952-8
A manifesto of sorts, proclaiming that the ubiquity of social media is not necessarily the end of the world, Luddites notwithstanding, even if those media need to be cajoled “into a healthier state.”Luckett, formerly head of innovation at Disney, and one-time Wall Street Journal columnist Casey (The Unfair Trade: How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class, 2012, etc.), currently a senior fellow at MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, take a generally positive view of our connected, always-on digital world. However, pointing to Kim Kardashian butt shots and kitty videos, they caution, “not all evolution is progress.” Regardless, a swift evolution has glued us to our hand-held screens, and by the authors’ account, a sort of mass mind has spawned, patrolling the airwaves for ideas and deeds and punishing the bad while rewarding the good. Thus it is that when a Minneapolis dentist shot poor Cecil the Lion last year, the web came crashing down on him. “It is as if the Social Organism recognized Walter Palmer’s behavior as a harmful foreign substance,” write the authors, “a threat that needed to be expelled, akin to the racist Confederate flag.” So it is, as news travels less by media networks than by the peer-to-peer, instantly outraged spiderweb of Facebook and Instagram. The argument is the usual stuff of pop social science, in which carefully chosen anecdotes meet smatterings of fact. The approach is sometimes a little breezy and sometimes a little careless. It would seem ill advised, for instance, to characterize South Carolina shooter Dylann Roof as simply “a white twenty-one-year-old redneck,” though it’s certainly correct to observe that social media were supremely instrumental in channeling the grief and outrage of his murders into a campaign to remove Confederate symbols from the state house.
There’s not much new here apart from some synthesis of current theories about meme proliferation and networking, but the book should interest cyberspace completists.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Oliver Luckett, Michael Casey: THE SOCIAL ORGANISM." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216013&it=r&asid=0f5dc69175176d218d051cdf4a68cbf0. Accessed 10 May 2017.
QUOTED: "preachy conclusion shouldn't deter readers who are interested in how social media works and how to use it effectively."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216013
The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life
263.35 (Aug. 29, 2016): p79.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life
Oliver Luckett and Michael J. Casey. Hachette, $27 (252p) ISBN 978-0-316-35952-8
Luckett and Casey argue that social media--today's digital world of images, videos, hashtags, and more--"functions on every level like a living organism." Their history of modern mass communication, from "super-bloggers," Friendster, and MySpace to Linkedln, Instagram, and Vine, creates a context in which to effectively explore such topics as memes, selfies, and YouTube stardom. Examples include #BlackLivesMatter, Brexit, Twitter, Grumpy Cat, and Bat Kid. The extended metaphor works well to illustrate social media's power as a means of communication and driver of change, though Luckett and Casey's discussion bogs down at times in lengthy explanations of biological processes, including a puzzling digression on boll weevils. They offer a mostly positive perspective on social media as a living organism but take a very dim view of Facebook's "censorship" of users. They also make the important balancing point that "social media pitchfork mobs can engage in mass character assassination against targeted individuals." The book loses steam when the authors present their prescription for social media's future, but this preachy conclusion shouldn't deter readers who are interested in how social media works and how to use it effectively. Agent: Gillian MacKenzie, Gillian MacKenzie Agency. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life." Publishers Weekly, 29 Aug. 2016, p. 79. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA462236480&it=r&asid=75588b62c7d9733b62cb8307f20af49f. Accessed 10 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A462236480
QUOTED: "If you have any interest in sociology or social media ... get a copy and read it with a notepad or highlighter/marker by your side as it is full of great ideas that will trigger your own interesting thought processes."
Posted on December 18, 2016 by admin
Book Review | The Social Organism by Oliver Luckett & Micheal J. Casey
social-organism-luckett
I picked up The Social Organism after watching Oliver Luckett on Gary Vaynerchuk’s #askgaryvee vlog and was interested in the concept of social (media) as seen from the lens of an organism. The book gives background of the Social Organism and how the seven rules of life (biology) can be applied to social media. Luckett explores social media through the many lens/ideas throughout the book including Darwinism, commercial printing presses, and more however, the main lens/idea of the book of organism/science is explored including Koestler’s model, cell organisms, genes, artificial intelligence. It may appear at first glance that this would be a boring read, however the book is written to allow the reader to understand at a basic principles and how they can be applied to social media.
Luckett uses real life examples throughout the book including #BlackLivesMatter, Spring uprising, Taylor Swift swifties, Oreo’s dunk in the dark, League of Legends and more to show the good and bad aspects of social media and how many still don’t understand that social media is not a fad, or just another platform or media but a part of social makeup of many places that jump local, state and nation boundaries and work at a international level. However, one criticism I have of the book is that it is very USA-centric in its examples and reference points with only a few international examples (platforms, movements) which are covered all too briefly in the book. Another criticism of the book is that it spends too long in the initial chapters explaining terms of reference and concepts which I realise is needed for those who have little to no background in social media. I think there are many ideas in the book that are covered only briefly that could have been further explored, but I think that also provides the opportunity for Luckett and co-writers to explore in a followup book.
Overall, this is a great book that I will read again over the Christmas 2016 break to gain more ideas for the future. The main takeaway from the book is that social media has its good and bad sides and that we are living in an era when social media and the coming internet of things(IoT) is transforming the way we live, interact and govern. If you have any interest in sociology or social media I encourage you to get a copy and read it with a notepad or highlighter/marker by your side as it is full of great ideas that will trigger your own interesting thought processes. I am hoping that Luckett and co-writers have a follow up book in the making to explore ideas in more depth.