Clios on Culture: Why We're Breaking Down the Silos for 2 Days

The people we market to don’t divide their lives into sports, music, entertainment, advertising or creators

The first vertical I launched when I took over the Clios 16 years ago was Clios Entertainment. The program grew out of the Key Art Awards at The Hollywood Reporter. I came to it knowing traditional advertising well, but I quickly recognized how different entertainment advertising was. The agencies were different, the deliverables were different, and the studios and networks were crucial to the equation. As a result, people in the industry had an entirely different perspective on what makes great work.

I realized I couldn’t rely on what I knew about advertising; I had to get to know this community of marketers and how they worked. That experience shaped much of what we’ve built since. As we expanded into sports, music and, more recently, creators, we didn’t just take the original Clio Awards and slap a different industry name on them. We spent time getting to know each community and understanding what mattered to them. 

Because while we’re all marketers, marketing an NFL team isn’t the same as marketing a movie, marketing a rap artist isn’t the same as marketing a prescription drug and building an audience as an independent creator is something entirely new.

Our shows are separate for a reason. People want to be judged by peers who understand what’s unique about their work. They want to be honored in front of those peers—they deserve their own time in the sun.

I still believe strongly in that, but culture isn’t a vertical.

The people we market to don’t divide their lives into sports, music, entertainment, advertising or creators. Culture is what’s front-facing for them. It’s the athlete they root for, the music they listen to, the show they stream, the creators they follow and the brands they buy. It’s also all the ways those things connect and collide.

Something that starts in one world can quickly become part of another. An athlete becomes a fashion icon. An actor launches a tequila brand. A creator designs a capsule collection. A song takes off because of a television show or a TikTok trend. In fact, these crossovers are a sign of success today. Just look at Roblox and the World Cup.

At the Clios, we’ve spent years building these communities separately, and now we’re in a unique position to bring them together. People ask me for connections all the time: “You know someone in music, right?” “You know someone in sports?” “Who do you know in entertainment?” That’s really where Clios on Culture came from.

For two days in New York this month, we’re doing something very different from our awards shows. Instead of giving each community its own room, we’re putting them all in the same one. The lines between these industries keep getting blurrier, and some of the most interesting work we see doesn’t fit neatly into a single box.

Clios on Culture is about having those crossover conversations together. The collisions—between sports and music or entertainment and fashion—are all over the agenda.

Basketball legend and entrepreneur Sue Bird will talk about the next chapter of women’s sports and what the changing business means for athletes and their personal brands. Stevie Van Zandt—a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, an actor on The Sopranos and a Jersey boy—will talk about creativity, risk-taking and refusing to compromise. Legendary photographer Mark Seliger, known for his work in Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, will share what he’s learned from decades of photographing the people and moments shaping culture. And Jordan Howlett—known to millions as @jordan_the_stallion8—will help us understand how talent rises to the top, what makes audiences stay and what brands need to know before sending over a brief.

There will also be conversations about fandom, taste, brands becoming content studios, artificial intelligence and a changing media landscape that doesn’t belong to any single corner of the industry.

Our awards programs will stay separate because people should be celebrated by their peers. But you also can’t understand what’s happening in culture if you only listen to people from your own corner of it. Clios on Culture is about networking, inspiration and what happens when everyone is in the same room.

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