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"Everybody has to have a life mission.
"You get that life mission, and combine that with a sense of self, then you have someplace to go business-wise."
As a successful publisher whose proven forte has been tapping the urban marketplace, Keith T. Clinkscales (HBS MBA ‘90), in keynote remarks at the conference on February 24, said that pride in oneself is paramount for business success. "A sense of self is the most important thing an individual can have," he told the audience of current MBA students, alumni, and guest professionals attending his lunchtime address.
"It's probably your most powerful business tool: knowing who you are and why you are."
Reminding the audience that February was Black History Month, he also told the group that they should "pick up the ball" from the preceding generations of civil rights activists, "and run it to the end zone."
"If not us, then who?" Clinkscales asked.
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| There are three great forces in this world. There is God. There is finance. And there is media. That's it. And you can argue all day. It all breaks down to that. | |
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| — Keith Clinkscales |
The chairman and CEO of Vanguarde Media and Vanguarde Neomedia, Clinkscales publishes a number of urban-oriented magazines and online publications, provides consulting, and organizes conferences. His latest launch, in January 2001, was Savoy, a lifestyle magazine aimed at affluent African-American readers. Clinkscales is also the treasurer of the board of trustees for the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Before he created Vanguarde two years ago, Clinkscales was president and CEO of Vibe Magazine; he was also the first African-American president of Time Inc., which owned Vibe.
Clinkscales's fascination with the power of media, he said at the conference, dates back to his childhood in the largely white community of Turnbull, CT. His mother, a teacher, compelled him to spend every Saturday reading at the library, he revealed with a somewhat embarrassed grin. He wasn't drawn to books, however, since they didn't have any pictures. Magazines and periodicals, on the other hand, proved very appealing.
After graduating magna cum laude from Florida A&M University, Clinkscales found himself working in the private banking division of Chemical Bank in New York. The time was the late 1980s, and racial tensions in New York were high, he said.
"New York was a hot situation. I was learning about banking, but I was listening to this music." Though his head was filled with the defiant messages of hip-hop, with lyrics about anger and justice, "meanwhile, I'm at a bank dressed like this," Clinkscales said, drawing a laugh by gesturing at the dark, tailored business suit he wore for the conference.
He found further inspiration, he said, from following the career of filmmaker Spike Lee, whose hit movie "She's Gotta Have It" was financed on the strength of Lee's credit card. To Clinkscales, the film manifested what hip-hop was all about: Even though hip-hop musicians lacked instruments, he said, they made do with turntables.
"It's a culture of doing without," he explained. "They don't say, 'We can't make it happen.' They're gonna make it happen."
Clinkscales decided to start his own magazine devoted to hip-hop culture with a group of friends. The result, Urban Profile, was launched when Clinkscales was 24 years old. He kept it going while a student at HBS and, with this real publishing experience under his belt, was tapped by Time Inc. to help lead the fledgling magazine Vibe with Quincy Jones.
Three forces and a new market
"There are three great forces in this world," he stated. "There is God. There is finance, and there is media. That's it. And you can argue all day. It all breaks down to that."
Clinkscales said he enjoyed his tenure at Time Inc., particularly working with Jones. He learned a lot about what works, and what doesn't work as well, by watching the groundwork being laid for such later successes as Martha Stewart Living and InStyle.
In addition, he said, addressing the audience, he observed "how our own culture responds to trade marketing methods."
"All this time, something strange was happening in America, where the people who make the market decisions, the dollar decisions, were starting to say, ‘You know, this market is reaching a lot of people.'"
Marketing efforts that were increasingly tailored for an urban, African-American audience, Clinkscales noted, were beginning to pay off in a serious way; and the marketing culture itself was beginning to change as a result. The impetus for it all, he speculated, began when fashion company Tommy Hilfiger aimed its advertising at the urban hip-hop community, while maintaining and reinforcing its core "prep" audience.
"A number of other advertisers would recoil" from the suggestion that they would be smart to make similar efforts, Clinkscales related, declining to name names. To him, however, the potential for marketing products had broadened tremendously.
"Any time you get a market, respect the market," he stressed. "You might not be able to handle the market, but respect the market."
In his mid-thirties, he decided to leave Vibe and strike out on his own as a publisher. The timing could not have been much worse.
"I stepped into the perfect storm of the Internet fury," he recalled. Raising money for his venture was a lot more arduous that he had banked on, even given his high-profile magazine experience. Every potential backer he talked with, he said, was enamored with Internet pure plays.
Although Clinkscales managed to find solid investors by the time the AOL Time Warner deal was announced, he said he felt vindicated when such major companies decided to forge their future on linking traditional media with the Internet, rather than relying on the power of the Internet alone.
Fortitude and heart
As members of the audience considered what he called "the endless possibilities of the new economy," Clinkscales concluded his remarks on a sober note by reminding them to reflect on their frequently painful heritage.
"Keep in mind, people died for us to be in this room," he said. "They gave up huge amounts of their rights, huge amounts of their time. And we have a bill to pay. We have a note that is due — big time.
"It is our historical mandate to pick up the ball that was carried by the civil rights generation, and run it into the end zone."
Economic rights for African-Americans, he said, need to lead to political awareness. The 2000 presidential election that left many votes by African-Americans uncounted in Florida, he said, was an example of the lack of political power.
Business is about finding competitive advantage, he said. As people of color, he said, "the world is turning brown right before our eyes. There has never been a better time to be people of color.
"We have a competitive advantage just in being who we are," he added. "Just in being ourselves: if we have the courage to be aware of it, and if we have the fortitude and heart to manifest it."
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