Kevin Hart and Thai Randolph on comedy, connection and bringing Hartbeat to Cannes

Kevin Hart is being honored this week as Entertainment Person of the Year at Cannes Lions. But if he had his way, it would be his media and production company, Hartbeat, being recognized—rather than him personally. “It's a big deal, right? It's the first time I'm receiving an award of such magnitude,” Hart told Ad Age. “But the bigger award is the opportunity to take my C-suite team out to Cannes and sit in front of some of the biggest advertising agencies and potential partners in the world and know that I'm supposed to be there. To know that we're supposed to be in those rooms, having those conversations.” Cannes Lions coverage Follow our live blog here Sign up here for email updates See all of the Grand Prix winners here The 43-year-old actor and comedian, known for his indefatigable work ethic and relentless positivity, has been a force in advertising for years. A lot of that has been driven by sheer force of personality—he’s personally fronted a huge number of projects, and the company is forged in his image and even carries his name. The man and the brand, in many ways, are one. But as he looks to scale Hartbeat into a global media force, Hart recognizes it needs to extend well beyond him. Growing the company, rather than his personal brand, he says, is what most excites him these days. “The star of Kevin isn't getting any bigger. I'm thankful for it, I’m appreciative of it, but my focus and my priority are the company and the brand,” he said. “Our opportunity to grow is where I really, really get hyped.” A growing media empire It’s been an eventful few years for Hart and his business ventures. In April 2022, he merged his two entertainment entities—digital comedy network Laugh Out Loud and production company Hartbeat Productions—to form the new Hartbeat. The company includes Hartbeat Studios, which finances, develops and produces original content; Hartbeat Media, which is involved in events, gaming, music publishing and Web3, and also serves as the company's distribution arm; and Hartbeat Pulse, a branded entertainment studio and marketing consultancy. At the time of the merger, the company announced a $100 million investment by private equity firm Abry Partners—which is helping the company to scale quicker. NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which signed a multiyear, first-look deal with Laugh Out Loud and acquired an equity stake in 2020, remains a shareholder. (Hart is involved in a slew of other businesses, too, from a chain of vegan fast food restaurants to a line of tequila and more.) Branded projects created through Pulse are a growing focus. Hart has proven adept at developing original IP with brands, going back to “Cold as Balls,” a digital series sponsored by Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice in which he interviews athletes while they’re sitting in locker-room ice baths. The series, which launched in 2018 and is now in its eighth season, has racked up more than 1.4 billion views to date. Other longtime brand partners include Chase, DraftKings, Fabletics, Hydrow, Sam’s Club and C4 Energy Drinks. Related: Watch Kevin Hart's Super Bowl ad for DraftKings Hartbeat’s proposition is simple and built largely around humor—that the company, from Kevin on down, knows how to make people laugh, and that people connect to brands that make them laugh. This focus on humor isn’t just because the company’s founder is a skilled comedian, but because laughter is the most human of emotions—a shortcut to connection. “If you can get someone to find some joy, some levity, some light in the message, then you've got an opening, a window to communicate,” said Thai Randolph, CEO of Hartbeat, who was previously president and COO of Laugh Out Loud and COO of Hartbeat Productions. “And consumers are demanding it—90% of consumers say they want brands to employ humor, and if you're talking about Gen Z and millennials, that goes up to 94%. And it's not just for entertainment’s sake—they're 80% more likely to patronize a brand if they’ve had a storytelling experience with them that employed humor.” Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here Another fundamental belief is that advertising and branded content are just as good a vehicle for delivering entertainment as anything else—a view that used to be rare among celebrities but has gained traction in the wake of successful comedic brand work from Ryan Reynolds and others. “It’s the best vehicle for entertainment. I feel like it’s always been,” said Hart. “Advertising is not going anywhere, ever. It’s going to be around. What we do is focus on being creative and finding new ways to amplify the story that’s attached to the brand.” Three recent projects show the range of Hartbeat’s approach. The first, and in some ways the most traditional in format, is the “Bring the Merry” campaign for Sam’s Club. The campaign launched in December 2021 and included a full-year deal for 2022—including a Super Bowl spot, a midsummer digital campaign, and a branded holiday short film/faux movie trailer, “Merry Like This,” showcasing the retailer’s new “Scan & Go” feature. The trailer premiered in 1,700 movie theaters across the U.S., reaching 9.8 million viewers in theaters and receiving over 7 million views across digital platforms. The second project is Hartbeat’s series for Gillette called “Behind the Shave.” The campaign stars four influencers with different types of facial hair introducing the King C. Gillette line of beard products through comic videos in which they talk to a mysterious voice behind a mirror they’re admiring themselves in. The videos all had a brand recall of 84% or higher, and 67% of viewers were more likely to purchase KCG after watching the videos, per Hartbeat. @lolnetwork Did that really just happen?! Sorry @Stephen Hart our guy @s_johnson_voiceovers has jokes. #JusticeForStubble #KingCGillette #MasterYourFacialHair ♬ original sound - LOLNetwork But perhaps the company’s most wide-ranging work, spanning comedy to purpose, has been its partnership with Chase. Working with the Sundance Institute, Hartbeat and Chase created the “Women Write Now” program. Now in its second year, it’s a comedic writing fellowship designed to champion the next generation of Black women in comedy through mentorship, advocacy, production and exhibition. Year two included an immersive mentorship lab, the production of three original short films from the writers, a premiere screening at the Sundance Film Festival, a distribution deal for the films to run on Peacock, as well as two original digital content series promoting the campaign (“HERLights” and “Script to Screen”). View this post on Instagram A post shared by LOL Network (@lolnetwork) Hartbeat also produces more traditional commercials for Chase. These include an amusing 30-second spot recently, made with Big Spaceship, that featured Hart, Basketball Hall of Famer Allen lverson and NBA star Stephen Curry endlessly repeating the word “cashbacking”—in comic reference to Iverson’s famous “practice” rant from 2002. “When you’re selling anything, you want people to understand what the product is without a bunch of jargon,” said Hart. “Look at how we're talking about finance with Chase. We took one of the biggest fuckups of Iverson's career and found a way to reinvent that moment of old—to talk about finance. You have to understand the power of laughter. Hartbeat makes people laugh, and that makes things resonate.” Even brands that don’t necessarily see themselves as comedic can learn something from Hartbeat’s approach—that there is heart, not just humor, at the core of its productions, Randolph said. “Whether we're employing humor or not, we try to ground everything we do in a human story. That allows folks to suspend disbelief and invest in what you’re trying to say,” she said. Along with humor and heart, the final piece of Hartbeat’s creative formula, Randolph added, is heat—the pursuit of buzz on a mass scale. “We can't predict virality, but we try to include every story with viral value,” she said. “That means creating it with great care and designing it to be shared. That's when we activate our influencer network. That's when we deploy distribution across our ecosystem of audio and digital and programmatic and streaming media—to give it the best chance of reaching the most amount of the intended audience.” The power of diversity Black-founded and run, with a female CEO, Hartbeat also embodies the kind of diversity that the advertising industry constantly champions but continues to struggle to enact. Hart and Randolph both say it’s not about checking boxes—it’s about reflecting the world at large, and simply hiring the most talented people. Also read: Super Bowl ads reflect waning DE&I commitment “There's so many diversity initiatives that exist across the landscape. But for us, this is a business imperative. It's not about goodwill,” said Randolph. “Our mission is to keep the world laughing together. So yes, we are 53% women. We are over 70% people of color. But that's also the composition of the globe, right? So we are creating a reflective environment so that we can tell reflective stories.” “It’s pretty simple, right? Be a company that's part of the change you ultimately want to see,” said Hart. “Hire women not because they're women, but because they're talented and deserving. Embrace diversity not because you need to, but because there's talented people who are diverse and they're all over the place. We're making sure our creativity is a reflection of us as a brand—not just being the voice that says the right thing but being people of action.” All in all, it’s proving to be a potent formula for success—something Hartbeat can celebrate this week at Cannes, even as it works the festival to find more brand partners and content opportunities. “This week is going to be a big one,” Hart said. “I hope to come out of it with an even clearer vision of what I know to be true—that things are really cooking for us. It’s a good place to be in. I'm happy, once again, about the award but more happy about the business we're doing.”

Kevin Hart and Thai Randolph on comedy, connection and bringing Hartbeat to Cannes

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