Advertising Week NY: BrightLine CEO and Founder Jacqueline Corbelli Discusses Her Framework for Transforming Ambitious Ideas into Practical Outcomes
Jacqueline Corbelli, Founder and CEO of BrightLine, is a pioneering AdTech founder, UN changemaker, and author of Changemaker: A Modern Playbook for Creating Personal Impact and Transformational Change.
At this year’s Advertising Week New York, Corbelli sat down for a Q&A with Michael Gewirtzman, the Global VP of Programming at Advertising Week. In the interview, she explained her framework for transforming ambitious ideas into practical outcomes and how anybody can spark change in business and society, from transforming TV advertising to addressing global issues. She also discussed some essential actions that should be taken in today’s rapidly evolving and unpredictable world.
Corbelli's journey as a change maker and the initial challenges of making CTV viable
Gewirtzman began by noting Corbelli’s extensive and varied experiences. “You've founded multiple companies,” he said. “You've led roles at the Vatican. You've taken on complex societal challenges. Not just a simple resume, right? Was this always the plan? Was this what you thought you would do when you were younger?”
“The key word is changemaker,” Corbelli said. “Throughout all those individual experiences, my focus has been on change management. So that's the throughline.”
“You were the first female founder to define interactive TV advertising at scale,” Gewirtzman noted. “What was the hardest technical or commercial barrier you had to break through to make CTV viable?”
“The big commercial challenge was in the age of TiVo, for example, one of the first,” Corbelli said. “It was brands being challenged by internet capabilities just starting to lift their head up a little bit in the television industry. That provided the first opportunity for a company like BrightLine to come onto the scene. It was a very different company then versus now, but we got to know the viewers really well and how they would respond to opportunities to engage. And that was the beginning of finding ourselves.”
Gewirtzman asked her about the types of change that accelerated CTV adoption and her thoughts on elements that still need standardization.
“I think the pandemic unleashed it for reasons we all remember,” Corbelli said. “[Regarding standards], they've been out there for quite a while. It's really been the takeover, if you will, of streaming in the living room. That has been the inflection point.”
The importance of AI in enhancing viewer engagement
Gewirtzman emphasized that AI was a significant topic throughout the conference and that its ubiquitousness and influence are now unavoidable. “It's rewriting creative media ops. It's all over our industry,” he said. “So where does AI genuinely add lift in CTV today, and where is the hype, and where is it risky for brands? What's the state of it?”
Corbelli said that what is happening with AI now is only scratching the surface of far greater possibilities. “I think that in a year from now, we'll find this industry is thinking differently about AI. Obviously, there are some cutting-edge leaders. I'd like to think that [BrightLine is] one of them. We’re finding a way to use AI to target, not identity-wise, but in terms of the types of experiences that work best and responding to them in a way that AI allows you to do. That said, as an industry, we have a long way to go before it understands the true potential of AI and [how it] handles some of those challenges around talent and creative.”
Examples of effective changemaking
Gewirtzman asked Corbelli about her approaches to effective changemaking. “Can you give us a before-and-after of one initiative where your changemaker framework shifted outcomes, and then what inputs, what cadence, and what results?”
“BrightLine is a perfect example,” she said. “We used the framework at the beginning to [ask] what the ideal viewer experience would be if this was something that brands could take full advantage of and highly customized experiences, for big brands who could experiment and wanted to be first in understanding how they were going to be able to capitalize on it once it became a standard completely was where we started. We transitioned to tech once it became clear that streaming television and the internet were converging in a very specific way; we couldn't predict it before it became obvious. The framework allowed us to clean the sheet of paper once again. What does it look like when you're totally capitalizing on it? And it led to this robust technology that sits across all the ad-supported apps on your television, allowing brands to quickly click and get it out there across the biggest audience possible.”
Sustainability and the inclusion of small and medium enterprises in global supply chains
“You've worked with both the UN and the Vatican on sustainability and ethics,” Gewirtzman said. “What did these rooms teach you that you didn't learn in the boardroom?
Corbelli spotlighted the significant differences between for-profit companies and political and religious ones, such as the UN and the Vatican. “[Corporate] boards sometimes communicate well, but when driven primarily by earnings and stock price, it's a particular kind of conversation. Whereas when you're at the UN or the Vatican, they become much broader. Sometimes, it's not an advantage when a conversation becomes much broader, but it [can be]. I learned that if you try to apply the framework you've referred to on a stage that big, you really have to listen and understand the motivations around the room before you can actually put that framework into action. It is quite different from being in a very specific industry or set of business opportunities.”
Sustainability and the need for inclusion of small and medium enterprises in global supply chains
Gerwitzman asked, “If you could rewrite one policy or an industry norm to speed up the process of sustainability or equitable growth, what would you change tomorrow?”
Corbelli said that her primary focus is rebuilding supply chains, making them durable in an increasingly unpredictable world, and ensuring the inclusion of small and medium-sized businesses. “We need to be resilient to a lot of shocks that are going on, [particularly] weather-related shocks,” she said. “There are a lot of those. And what everyone is starting to understand and migrate toward is this idea that the only way you can create resilient supply chains at a global level is when you allow small and medium-sized enterprises into the picture. That's where the innovation is. And so the change that I would make overnight, because it's just happening too slowly, is that big companies need to start letting in smaller and medium-sized enterprises. Procurement processes are what I would change because there are just a lot of structural issues attached to bringing in the most important and exciting new players into that room.”
An outlook on the future of technology and innovation
Gerwitzman asked Corbelli about her thoughts on where the industry is headed in the near future. “What do you hope we're talking about in a year from today?”
Corbelli expressed mixed feelings about the present and what is soon to come. “I feel like the fact that we can sit around this room and talk about the things in this industry that are changing and how we're going to take advantage of innovation and technology is cool,” she said. “And in a year from now, hopefully we'll be doing that in an atmosphere where we can count on a lot of the impact that can come from AI that people don't feel is dangerous, for example. But we could take total advantage of it as well as some of the things that are really blocked from moving forward, because there's fear, among other things, of actually moving down one path or another, because you're being judged in a major way that could affect your viability as a company. And we can see where big tech is going and where others are or aren't. And I think in a year from now, hopefully we'll be in a different place with that, but I don't know if I'm too optimistic.”
The best moves towards becoming a true changemaker
Gerwitzman wrapped up the interview by asking Corbelli about the core of what it truly means to enact change. “We've used the word changemaker a lot,” he said. “What's the first step? It's such an overwhelming word for someone to take that first step into even being a changemaker.”
Corbelli underscored that the first key step is taking action, with a dynamic perspective and asking the right questions. “It's the same thing at the world level as at the business level,” she said. “And it really comes down to what needs to change? How can you tackle it at the lowest risk possible, but then take action? I mean, adaptability and staying flexible are big. Staying clear on where you're headed and why is big. But what's not good is analysis paralysis and waiting. It's not a good idea to just wait, especially in the environment that we're in. So I would say to think and act.”
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