Building Up Leaders of Color
Black alumnae leaders recently came together for a fireside chat about their career journeys and the pitfalls and rewards of leadership.
Building Up Leaders of Color
The Art and Science of Storytelling
Chicago Booth helped marketer Andrew Sugerman, ’97, take his career “to infinity and beyond,” first to Disney and now as the co-founder of his own entertainment studio.
- By
- November 23, 2020
- Alumni Stories
Andrew Sugerman, ’97, has built his career on captivating audiences. The former Disney executive and co-founder of production studio Invisible Narratives has excelled at enthralling audiences while working in publishing, digital learning, and entertainment. But there was one particular moment in his career when he found himself spellbound.
In 2012, when he was an executive vice president at Disney, Sugerman was responsible for leading the iconic entertainment brand’s $3 billion portfolio of print and digital publishing properties. At the time, Disney had one very notable newcomer that came from a galaxy far, far away.
“When we acquired Star Wars and Lucasfilm, I went up to the Presidio in San Francisco and I had the chance to really dig into the Expanded Universe and archives of the Star Wars universe,” Sugerman recalled. “It was surreal to ‘own’ stories that in many ways shaped my childhood.”
He took advantage of the opportunity to have three New York Times bestselling authors write their own interpretations of George Lucas’s iconic first Star Wars trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The three books launched prior to the 2015 release of The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars film to be released under Disney.
He had first arrived at Disney in 2007 to lead Shanghai-based Disney English, an innovative children’s education startup. He oversaw everything from language-learning content and curriculum to real estate and technology—and ultimately scaled the new project to 1,500 employees serving 40,000 school children across China.
His credits his Booth education with helping him guide such large-scale endeavors, relying on boundless creativity while remaining grounded in smart business strategy guided by data. His coursework in finance, statistics, strategy, and marketing taught him how to think several moves ahead, he said.
“It’s about ensuring that we deeply understand our consumer better than anyone else as we build-out not just our product but the messaging and everything in between while applying the Chicago Approach to marketing of theory, evidence, and evaluation.”
— Andrew Sugerman, ’97
“Looking ahead one to three years in terms of where the consumer may be going is critical on the marketing front while thinking about the type of messaging that bridges consumers from where they are to where we want them to be and quantifying what works best,” Sugerman said. “It’s about ensuring that we deeply understand our consumer better than anyone else as we build-out not just our product but the messaging and everything in between while applying the Chicago Approach to marketing of theory, evidence, and evaluation.”
He still stays engaged with Booth by serving on the steering committee for the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing and connecting with current students. “I think it's important to maintain a bridge to your past as you move into your future,” he said. “My time at Chicago Booth had an impact on me professionally and personally that was quite profound. I want to make sure that I maintain that connection, even though it's been a long while since I've been there. The school has evolved so much over 20 years, and being a part of that is energizing and important to me.”
Today, Sugerman is still delighting and surprising audiences with his latest venture, Invisible Narratives. Sugerman cofounded the Los Angeles–based micro-entertainment studio in 2019.
“It’s not just about having a science perspective, because I don't want to lose the human emotion and the elements that come with that instinct,” Sugerman said. “But it’s not all art to the point that you ignore insights from big data that could help point the way. It’s about having a combination of the two.”
— Andrew Sugerman, ’97
At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic brought all major Hollywood studios to a complete standstill, Sugerman’s micro-studio knew they had the agility and flexibility to adapt. Tapping into the enthusiastic world of Esports fandom, they partnered with YouTube influencers FaZe Clan to create a feature horror film, Crimson. The film launched in October through Inviz.tv, Invisible Narrative’s direct-to consumer content and commerce online platform, packaged with merchandising to create an event tailor-made for a Gen-Z audience.
Using stringent safety protocols, the studio also filmed the sci-fi pandemic thriller Songbird this past summer in less than 20 days in partnership with producer Michael Bay, making it the first feature to be filmed in Los Angeles post-lockdown. The film will be released on Apple iTunes, Amazon, and Google—among other platforms—on December 11, 2020.
“Realizing that there would be a shortage of stories due to the Hollywood shutdown, we quickly came up with a creative small-set solution to filming a feature during the pandemic that we then put in front of the guilds and got approval,” Sugerman said. “We worked closely with them in making sure that the approach was very safe and secure.”
Throughout his professional journey, Sugerman has drawn on his experiences at Booth to successfully balance the art and science of marketing.
“It’s not just about having a science perspective, because I don't want to lose the human emotion and the elements that come with that instinct,” Sugerman said. “But it’s not all art to the point that you ignore insights from big data that could help point the way. It’s about having a combination of the two.”
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