Hartbeat's Janina Lundy discusses authenticity and working on Kevin Hart's Tiny Desk episode
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00:00What does that look like for you in terms of, you know, approaching each project as a different event?
00:07Because as you mentioned, you know, obviously a lot of Heartbeat is driven by Kevin Hart,
00:12but it's about, as you said, setting up the next generation.
00:16So how do you look at leveraging the work that you're doing in, you know, helping these other creators?
00:23Yeah, I think a lot of it is about the authenticity, and that comes from working directly with creators.
00:30I think even with, like, going back to the Spirit Tunnel for just a second, for that, we brought in the actual Spirit Tunnel people from Jennifer Hudson's team.
00:39So those were the people that really do it every day.
00:43And, you know, we could have done that with a group of extras and just put it together, or a group of actors,
00:48but it was important for us to connect with the people who are actually creating this and driving those conversations.
00:55So we had that partnership.
00:58And I think we're just, we're doing that kind of across the board, finding ways to connect with younger audiences and younger creators.
01:05I mean, I'm going to give a couple examples that are Kevin-related.
01:08There's a lot that we're doing that isn't.
01:09But, you know, we just did the NPR Tiny Desk.
01:15So, Kevin has a character, Chocolate Draba, and we went to D.C. to Tiny Desk, and he performed, he completely freestyled all of that.
01:28But it's a way for us to be in the conversation culturally, and it dropped on April Fool's Day, on April 1st.
01:36But the response to it was amazing, and more than what we could have even imagined, like millions of views in the first few hours.
01:45And we've built social handles for the character and everything.
01:49So, you know, it's a way for us to be a part of the conversation.
01:52And then we're also, you know, he is on live streams with Kyson at Andruski, and it's another way for us to extend our audience and be a part of the conversation and understand what's happening in culture.
02:04And I think that's really important for us, is to really be immersed in what's happening.
02:09Can I ask you what the conversations look like when you're developing an idea like Tiny Desk?
02:14Like, how are you, you know, finding and locating and figuring out how and what would make sense, you know, obviously in this case, knowing Kevin's skill set?
02:24Yeah, so much.
02:25It's kind of, I mean, I guess you might even imagine this, but so much is like things that happen as a joke.
02:30Like, so we're sitting in a meeting, and we're talking about different things that we want to do, and it would be like, and somebody's like, you know, it would be really funny if we did a Tiny Desk.
02:38And then, you know, everybody's like, ha, ha, ha.
02:40And then he's like, no, let's do that.
02:41So a lot of it comes from that, and I think we have the benefit of having, you know, his creative vision and comedy, but we have that in our team as well.
02:53People really just thinking about sort of funny things that could happen and how we can connect that to business outcomes.