Russell Simmons Speaks About The Power Of Black / Jewish Partnerships

Posted by: Russell Simmons via Global Grind

There is no question about the well documented history where the Black and Jews have stood together in their fight for civil rights, equality and political power. But, not so much is said about the creative alliances in business where Blacks and Jews are and have been forging new businesses and ideas that have helped enable Blacks and Jews to enter the mainstream in American business. These are the partnerships that have and will create goodwill and change the future.

There are many examples of how Blacks and Jews have come together to fight against hatred and bigotry. In fact, as my friend Rabbi Marc Schneier at The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, often states (and he even wrote a book about it called Shared Dreams), that Dr. King was an ardent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, including taking part in efforts to ease discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union and the safety and security of the State of Israel. Dr. King also spoke out strongly against anti-Semitism in the United States. We all know that no segment of the American population provided as much and as consistent support to Dr. King and to African Americans as did the Jewish community.

But, like any relationship, the bond between Jews and African-Americans has experienced its ups and its downs. However, despite claims to the contrary, the relationship between Blacks and Jews today remains strong.

Maybe it’s because the Jewish community has suffered from tremendous anti-Semitism throughout history and as a result of their plight, Jews have been able to better sympathize with the struggles facing Blacks. Or maybe it is because the Jewish community know that if it happens to the Black community it can also happen to them.

So for generations, Jews and Blacks have marched together in the streets of Birmingham and Washington, and shared the stage at venues in Harlem and elsewhere. Our two communities are not afraid to stand side by side, continually defying those who would prefer to see us behind solitary bars and forgotten, not in front of cheering crowds.

Rabbi Schneier and I, travel the country sharing these stories, discussing our tale with anyone who will listen – Blacks, Jews, or otherwise. This is true in synagogues and churches as well as college universities like Queens College – which Rabbi Schneier and I will address next week.

Despite the years of anti-Semitism, the Jewish community has not let the hatred of others hinder their ambitions or drive for success. The Jews have been resourceful and have stood together and time and time again prospered in business, medicine, law and entertainment. This is a great example of what a tight knit family and education can accomplish even against a world filled with shut doors and hate.

While I have many first hand experiences in records, jewelry, fashion, internet, tv, film, financial services, and much more, I have also noticed Jay Z, Puffy, and most of hip-hop out-branding the record business that is dying its own death, and building partnerships in areas previously reserved for white men. Both Jay Z and Puffy are truly creative entrepreneurs, and both have learned a lot of these skills from their Jewish partners and suppliers.

Entrepreneurs are usually raised in cultures that feed that free spirit that allows them to dream up new ideas and break the mold. Without documentation I can still safely state that in most hoods, and certainly in mine, going to school to “get a good job” was the goal.

But I built many businesses with Jews who didn’t let school dim down their dreams and they were comfortable with the idea to let go of the idea of job security and fly. This I learned from Orthodox Jews, Syrian Jews, Reform Jews and other sects of Judaism. All of these communities have welcomed me.

Since the days when the white gang “The Green Ways” in Queens chased me into the white housing development where the kids and mothers accepted me, and I learned the difference between the “different whites in Queens,” the Jewish community has proven to be a safe haven and a place to empower myself and other Blacks.

From our president to everyone in the hip-hop community, we have a strong history and partnership with the Jewish community and today I thought I would restate this fact in case there is any doubt about who else has struggled like Blacks and who else has stood by Blacks in our most difficult times. We know that we still have work to do, however, each individual must exude the kind of tolerance and love that we would want to receive ourselves. We must learn how to love everyone, not just within our own community, as the world is too small, and our potential is too great.

-Russell Simmons

ALL BLACK EVERYTHING. Very Cool Pic ! I’ll be in the next one.

Beautiful (Exclamation Mark), I remember her on “The Roof” , she’s still a favorite.

Adapted from photo by Mat Honan

Change happens slowly.
It took us years before we noticed that Microsoft was upending a tech industry that, until the 1990s, IBM dominated. However, if you squinted you saw this starting in the 1980s once the mainframe era was ending.

Then Google changed the game for Microsoft (a client) in the 2000s when the desktop lost some of its dominance to the broadband-enabled web – but like with IBM this shift started earlier, back in the 1990s.

Now, it could happen again.

Just as everyone thinks Google is unstoppable comes Facebook. Over time we may soon witness another shift as the web evolves from an intent-driven medium where you need tell it what you want to one where content and ads finds you through the lens of your friends and their digital footprints. However, if the desktop was the battleground in the 1990s and the web was in the 2000s then mobile is where the battle for dominance will take place next.

Consider these three data points, all of which are fresh…

* According to Mary Meeker, more people will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than PCs in five years
* Forrester reports that 17% of US consumers have smartphones. (That means that 83% don’t.)
* And Pew says that 55% of Americans connect wirelessly (And 45% therefore don’t)

And that’s just the US. Combine these three trends on a global level and it’s obvious that mobile is the future. Mobile is a far far larger market than mainframes, PCs or even the web. It will have lots and lots of winners in hardware, software and services. This is why I believe Facebook can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. They will be on every device, but they eventually will try to launch their own hardware too.

Consider this: Facebook is competing with Google for time, attention and ad dollars. With Google clearly serious about phones. And Apple buying up mobile ad companies. Facebook can’t solely rely just on others to carry their application if they want to dominate what will increasingly be a mobile market for content and ads. They will want to have a deeper relationship with their users. Deeper relationships means more data and more data means more moolah.

Facebook easily has the brand equity to launch their own phone (most likely with a partner at first) and marry it to your address book, photos, videos and events in ways that Google can never match because they are more social. Facebook gets connections and how to use the data to make your life better.

Scoble talks about the Google Reef. Sure it’s big. But in many ways it’s the Facebook reef that could be far larger.

How large? Consider these stats. A lot of people wouldn’t know Picasa from Picasso. But Facebook sees more than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month. A lot of people don’t know Yelp (a rumored Google acquisition) from Yodels, but Facebook has 700,000 local businesses that are a click away from 350M people – who oh yeah on average have 130 friends on the site and spend hours there, often from phones.

See the pattern? All of these are mobile experiences: your friends, your events, your photos and local businesses. They’re made for mobile phones. Mark my words. Facebook will launch a mobile phone. But this isn’t zero sum. There will be lots of winners.

VIA S-R

Interesting bit of game via TED and the co-founder of Reddit..

The December issue of Vogue Italia’s cover features gorgeous models, Gisele, Lara Stone, Christy Turlington, Kasia Struss and Natalia Vodianova in photo’s that look somewhat Twit-Pic…LOL

RT @Starclays : so I’m back on my Sk8Board P-Ish and attempting to snatch me up a model…Ha!

Mr. Social: Ashton Kutcher Plans to Be the Next New-Media Mogul
By: Ellen McGirt

I’ve walked into the middle of a swine flu outbreak.

“Here, put this on!” Ashton Kutcher bounds from around the corner in his loft-style Hollywood office, wearing a paper face mask and holding another one. “You can choose whether to wear it or not, but we all are. We can’t afford to get sick!” Within seconds, I am surrounded by a fast-moving herd of masked Flip-cam marauders, filming my every move. Perched on the stairs. Popping out from the office kitchen. Uh-oh. “Seriously!” says Kutcher, with a goofy grin around his mask. “Swine flu!” He points to the mask in my hand. Punked and defeated, I put it on. “Awesome,” he laughs.

I’ve walked right into an episode of Katalyst HQ, a Web-based video serial that puts the staff of Kutcher’s production company, Katalyst, through a loosely scripted, hopefully funny parody of its workday. The current 16-week “season” is sponsored by Hot Pockets, the savory pastry item whose creators want us to “eat freely,” unencumbered by a knife and fork. (Truly. The brand manager told me that.) The program is a collaboration between Katalyst; Slide, a Web company founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame; advertising titan Publicis Groupe; and Nestlé, which owns Hot Pockets. It has been a huge hit, with millions of reposts of the videos on Facebook, each one reaching an average of 65 friends.

“There is nothing really like this out there,” says an obviously thrilled Mike Niethammer, Nestlé’s group marketing manager. Niethammer, who reviews the script concepts, chuckles at the report of my punking. “I did throw out a Hot Pockets mention,” I say. “Nice,” he laughs.

The Katalyst HQ series illuminates what Kutcher’s production company wants to become: not just a home for his television and movie projects but also a go-to source for brands looking to deploy what’s called “influencer marketing,” a squishy hybrid of entertainment content, advertising, and online conversation that finds its audience via video, animation, Twitter, blogs, texts, and mobile. “Entertainment, really, is a dying industry,” says Kutcher. “We’re a balanced social-media studio, with revenue streams from multiple sources” — film, TV, and now digital. “For the brand stuff, we’re not replacing ad agencies but working with everyone to provide content and the monetization strategies to succeed on the Web.”

Kutcher, 31, is not exactly the image of a business visionary. He’s still best known for his eight seasons as Michael Kelso, the pretty-boy lunkhead from That ’70s Show, and as the executor of cringe-worthy celebrity pranks on the hit MTV show Punk’d. (Not to mention his marriage to Demi Moore.) But his future, Kutcher insists, will be all about business. He intends to become the first next-generation media mogul, using his own brand as a springboard. “Punk’d is part of who he is,” says Sarah Ross, Katalyst’s director of new media. “We’re using his brand as a syndication system.”

If this all seems far-fetched, hang in there. Mask off, Kutcher holds forth nonstop on his multiplatform plans. He talks of Web trending, content pirating, and the fact that Twitter has yet to make any money. “If we in this industry don’t figure something out, we’re going to go the way of the music industry and be cannibalized by the Web,” says Kutcher. “It’s really a war to make money.”

It’s not just talk. Some 3.9 million people follow Kutcher on Twitter (@aplusk), and he has nearly 3.3 million Facebook fans. Those numbers have helped attract corporate clients beyond Nestlé — including Pepsi and Kellogg — and supporters such as Oprah, Larry King, and former News Corp. No. 2 Peter Chernin.

Kutcher and his partner, Jason Goldberg, spent the better part of two years courting the wizards of Silicon Valley, converting them from teachers and skeptics to friends and allies. For all their pranks, Katalyst’s digital division can claim one thing most other social-media businesses can’t: profitability.

The episode I walked into has a Thanksgiving theme, and Kutcher tells me he plans to let loose a live turkey in the office. “Then everyone will be worried about bird flu!” he says. This from a future media titan? Still, even if Kutcher turns out to be more style than substance and Katalyst doesn’t become the Next Big Thing, Kutcher’s experiment points toward a new model for the evolving media business that connects Hollywood, tech, and Madison Avenue. No kidding.

The Flip cams have left the room. Kutcher is making the case for his business. And he can barely keep still. He begins by taking jabs at the companies that have fueled him in the social space, specifically Twitter and Facebook. And he’s pretty funny about it, even if he’s also sorta serious. “When I have a conversation with someone and they say, ‘I’m not worried about monetization yet,’ that scares the shit out of me,” he says. He’s poking fun at social Web companies that run up their user base without regard for how they’re going to make money. “I’m part of an industry that is struggling daily. Daily. And I’m always worried about the numbers.” He jumps up, turns his Cubs cap around, and tucks his legs underneath him before plopping back down. “You cannibalize this business” — he waves at Hollywood — “a profit-positive business that trades at a decent multiple, and you’re just going to put people out of work. And these folks are counting on just figuring it out. And if they don’t, we’re fucked! That’s not okay.”

Then Kutcher does a spot-on impression of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg: “I can sell a more-targeted individual based on the content that you want — blah blah.” He laughs at my reaction. “Fucking awesome, dude. Go do it. And make a ton of money off of that, and I’ll make programming for that all day. But nobody is actually doing that.”

Next rant: ad agencies. “For years, the ad business has been happy to have a completely ambiguous accounting system that they’ve been monetizing off,” he says, referring to Nielsen ratings. “Now that the Web offers a slightly more granular dollars-and-cents audience-acquisition metric — now they’re going to get completely granular about how they’re getting money?”

What the Katalyst team is planning, he says, is simple: Make entertaining stuff, give it to people where they already are, let them have some fun with it, and mix in brand messaging. And because of the viral nature of the Web, each new consumer is cheaper to win than the last one. “The algorithm is awesome,” Kutcher says, sounding simultaneously sophisticated and adolescent. “Katalyst is a merger of three industries,” he goes on, settling into an unexpectedly credible argument. “A piece of us is connected to ad agencies. Because we get the complex overlay of the social Web, we know how to engage an audience and how to make entertainment for the social Web. And we know how to gain and activate and retain an audience. So we create social networks for brands.”

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