Yoni Bloch

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder and director of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome back to the FOSS podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by Yoni Block, longtime FOSS to Tendi, and founder of the interactive storytelling company, Echo. Yoni is a true rock star, both as a musician and as a tech startup entrepreneur. Ever since he and his band in Israel made their first interactive music video, he has understood the power of giving the audience agency a role to play. He was one of the first people to see the potential of interactive video and since founding Echo in 2010. He has worked tirelessly with creators, technologists, and brands to usher in a new age of interactive storytelling. Of course, not all audiences want their media to be interactive. Sometimes, even I would rather simply sit back and be told a story rather than be asked to make decisions within it. But Yoni saw much earlier than almost everyone else that there was something magical about interactive video when it's used correctly. In 2013, Echo created the now iconic interactive music video for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." The video won four golden lions at Khan and earned the distinction of, quote, "pretty much the best thing ever," end quote from "Wired Magazine." The following year, Echo won the prestigious inaugural "Fost Prize" with their short film, "Posibilia," a collaboration with the director duo, "The Daniels." And just a few years after that, in 2018, Echo served to new heights with a $250 million investment from Walmart to develop new methods of interactive marketing. Yoni is one of those rare examples of someone who's both an artist and a technologist, and who's pushed a medium forward while building an enormously successful business. Please welcome my dear friend Yoni Block to today's episode. [MUSIC PLAYING] Yoni Block, it's such a delight and pleasure to have you on the future of storytelling podcast. Such a delight and pleasure to be here. Well, it's really fun whenever we get to spend some time together. So thank you for being here. Let me start by asking you about the origins of your company, Echo. I know that you started as a musician, right? Tell me that story. I started, like my background, was actually a combination between a lot of passion to music. My mom was an artist, and she bought me a classical piano. And so I made up to classical piano lessons when I was a kid. My dad was a nuclear physicist. And I think he was also worried. I'm from Israel. He was worried that I'm going to get drafted in the mandatory army service to something aggressive. So he bought me a Commodore 64, and would sit with me on weekends to teach me stuff to do. I had that too. I had a Commodore 64 on my desk as a kid. Yeah. And so obviously I loved those things. My dad had an internet account from the university since '89. I joined this audio recording piracy group that cracked, like, sounds bad now, but it was very cool back then. And I used that to record songs at home. Then I uploaded to the internet to a website that actually one time fostered the feature, because it's a really sad story. It's like from 1998. This is like pre-Mitespace or anything. And it's Mitespace and Facebook and YouTube all rolled together in a world where there is no high-speed internet. Well, anyone could upload a song or a picture or a text and get comments and like it was a commune of artists. And I would upload my songs there that I would record at home. And nobody would have the energy to download an MP3, because it took 30 minutes to download at the time. But then I got like the, you know, Israel is tiny. And there was only one record company here that was Sony CBS, the daughter of the CEO, held the songs and told her dad that he should sign me up for like, you know, anybody. You said like, it's big on the internet. And he said, what's the internet? What are we talking about? So then you got the record deal. You started to make music. And then I know you wanted to do a music video. And it wasn't a normal music video. We were thinking about how do we do like a music video that lets you play with it. So it keeps you interested and also makes you feel like you're missing out. So you will have to play it over and over again. And the actual like, belt of the idea was, you know, we had an argument in the studio about who should play the solo to a specific song. In a good way, yeah, like not on end. Then we were like, OK, let's all recall the solo and we'll choose in the end. And then we were like, oh, you know, we live in a world where why don't we just like, you tell us which one. So we made an interactive music video that like one of the things in it is that you have to seamlessly choose who's going to play the solo. It created this desire for people to play the same song more than once. The average time of that music video, people watching it was like three times the length of the video. And it was cool. And what was the name of it again? It's called pretend to be happy. I mean, I loved that video. I remember you showing that to me. I loved the fact that there were multiple story lines. You know, it was in a party, right? In Israel and you could decide who to follow through the party. And not only were you seeing different story lines, but you're also then hearing sort of slightly different versions of the music as you went through. And you felt this little bit of a sense of ownership. Like, I really enjoyed this part of the path that I discovered. And I fell in love with the song just as you said, because I listened to it so many times. It's like, oh, this is a great song. I feel connected to the song. Yeah, there is. It's exactly that idea. I think there is something about instead of just listening to the song, feeling like you all, you have tried the different versions. And this is the right one. They would actually argue about who's listening to their song correctly. So you did that. And that was a big success. Why do you decide to stop being a rock star and start being a tech star? All of my band also have a bit of a similar story to me where they, besides doing music, they also are either into engineering and computer science, or design, or animation, or the combination of that. But also, you know, we thought of ourselves as artists. When we started, you know, we were like a little bit torn between like, what are we? Are we business people? Are we creating a new art form? You know, we had a little issues in the beginning of like, how to manage as we grew. Look, we still have a lot to prove. But we've been able to make a lot of strides and advancements in that like gray area. And what was sort of the first real success that you had with the company? We had a funny, you know, like incident where this unknown musician in the US decided to do an interactive music video with us. Old Navy, you know, the company, like gave $300,000 sponsorship. And because it was the first thing we were doing, we came from Israel, we were like, oh my god, America, you know, like those so many. Now we know that it wasn't necessarily the thing that will be that repeatable. Eventually, we got Bob Dylan to do an interactive music video for us for, for like, Rolling Stone. And it never had a music video. ♪ Like a Rolling Stone ♪ And that was insane. That was, I mean, that was so good. Yeah, and still on, by the way, easily, on video.bobdylin.com, if you want to see it. It was a bit that like kind of artistic approach of like, we should, we're trying to invent a medium, not create a business yet. Johnny, I remember seeing the short film done by the Daniels called Possibility Up. And if you recall, that was the winner of the Future of Storytelling Prize, the first year we had the prize. And that showed me the power of branching video as an art form in terms of real storytelling. I mean, it was an extraordinarily beautiful piece that these two directors created together. When people think about branching storytelling, they think about just your own adventure. And then it's always like, if you go left, this will happen. If you go right, that will happen. But again, choice, like when you make a choice in life, which is what we're trying to emulate here, it's not black and white, and it's not left and right. It's much more like creating a persona, you know, like building a character, which is you, you should leave, that's the choice as you make. A lot of the stuff that we've been working on in fiction and storytelling, like what the Daniels did, is about not like choosing how the story should unfold necessarily, but giving you some kind of role and control inside a universe that they've built. In Possibility, specifically, it's a breakup that the more you interact with, the more breakup it gets. If you actually make all the choices in it, then they break up like 32 different ways while you're watching it, super powerful. It's a great idea. It lends to the question, leads me to that question of what is the role of the people formerly known as the audience? How is that changing today? I used the term formerly known as the audience. I didn't create that, but because at one point we only had the option of being a passive consumer of content. You didn't have any other options. Now there are all sorts of two-way media, the one that you've created and many other social media or gaming and others. The idea of the passive audience is going away. We don't even have good terms for it anymore. You know I've talked about this before. What do you call somebody who is a participant in the story? A player? Like a Shakespearean or gaming term? Or are they, Janet Murray in her famous book talks about people who have a role as Interactors? Obviously, there's a problem of definitions here, which is, again, definitions create a reality also. A nature is to participate. There's so many themes to explore. If you look at how gaming answers this idea of personalization and feeling of agency and try to bring that industry into a much larger world, I think we've never been an audience really. It seems to me that the move towards interactive media, our participatory media, is really about getting us back to that human desire to have roles that we can experience other than our own lives. A lot of people have told me before, like, don't you miss being a musician? And in the last few years, until COVID hit, I actually have these resurgence in audiences. It's a little bit like how the office is the most dream to show in the US now. So it turns out my albums from 12 years ago have been a really successful team agent now that I think I'm old school cool. And so I suddenly had these resurgence and was able to do sold out shows that more than I would be in real time. And it's the most fun I've ever had in my life. But part of the fun is that I get to do both, that I can be a rock star now and then I can have a business meeting. And I'd love to also be like a football player. You know what I mean? I think I really do. I really want to be a coach maybe or, you know, like, I'm, there's something about, like, we live only once. Why not try to live as many times as possible in that one time? When you let the audience have some agency in how the story unfolds, it creates a challenge for those of us who grew up in an age when the author had total control, right? When the, when the filmmakers vision was just what it was going to be and that person was supposed to be a genius. And I wonder how you see authors, filmmakers, storytellers struggle with the idea of giving up some of the agency, giving up some of the control over the story. Is that very difficult for people? You're not really giving up the story in life. Like you and I are talking. Let's say I tell you something and you obviously don't get what I'm saying. I'm going to try to explain again. Oh, let's say I make an inappropriate joke and you don't laugh. I won't make any more inappropriate jokes, right? All of these are interactive moments where I understand something. It's not necessarily the bad ending and the good ending. It's more about how do I tell the story in a way that will reach the other side the most powerful way. And so the idea is one story, many ways to tell it, not necessarily many stories, you know, one experience to encompass them. You know, people a lot of times feel threatened because it's like, this is not my profession. This is not what I know how to do. And those people are like, oh my god, this is exciting and you toy to play with. Netflix has done interactive video, band or snatch, right? They've done some children's things. There are other big, big Hollywood producers getting in or directors starting to get into this. Do you think that were, first of all, is it about time? I mean, you were way ahead on this, but now there's a bunch of other companies sort of doing these types of things. Are you excited by that? Are you threatened by that? Is this going to be the next big thing? Are we going to be going to movie theaters someday when COVID's over and experiencing interactive films there? Where do you see this impact in the industry? I don't think those many companies will do it. I think Netflix is pretty unique in terms of the fact that Netflix has a lot to lose by experimenting with these kind of things and they still do that. And I think it's admirable. Look, Echo in its core is a technology company and a lot of the stuff that Netflix doing is using the core of a lot of our technology. So it's good for us, the more companies that use that. We have creative backgrounds ourselves, so we're jealous when somebody does something good, but we are excited that the business company and technology sites of it are like successful and that's obviously what we become greater artists and are excited for the global domination. So Yoni, we've established that you are basically just a grown-up kid and somebody who has all these things that he wants to play and be creative. But yet you've created, you've made a company that's a very serious company and you received a lot of funding, a lot of financing. I think Walmart was a recent major investor in Echo. I'm curious, where do you see this interactive video medium going on a business from a business perspective? There was a point where the company was growing that my COO was an amazing guy just for the fact he's willing to, he has enough patience to deal with me. He told me, "Look, we're growing. We need values and emission statement." And I'm like, "Oh, shit, that sounds so corporate and horrible. I never want to do that." And he convinced me in the end, he said, "Look, if we don't find a way to describe what's important to us in one language, then we'll never be successful." And after that, I took it really seriously. The emission statement we came up with eventually was to bring the out-of-story telling closer to the human experience using the power of choice. We have a bit of argument, especially as we're doing some of the things with Walmart, which are very focused on, you know, we call them inspiration hubs. So like we have a project called Cookshop, which is like an interactive cooking channel. But it's like it's starring Jamie Oliver. But instead of like a regular cooking show, he kills about you. And I'm going to help you get a whole load more flavor into your greens. Trust me, you won't regret it. Now, the best thing about this is this is an interactive video. That means you're the boss. That means you can navigate through my recipes to give you the ultimate recipe for you. The boxes will come up. Click what you want. I tested every single combination. And so you choose the recipe and then it's like, "Okay, first question. Are we doing this for you or for the kids?" And let's say you're killed for the kids. And he says, "Like, trust me. I know the challenge. I have five kids myself." And so people are like, "Oh, Jamie, you get me. You know that I have kids now. In the end, you get a recipe that is specific for you and things like that. And we like it because it humanizes the experience." And I feel strongly that that's the test of a mission statement that like if we walk on an extremely commercial project or we walk on something that's really just creative and has no realization of like, "How will it ever be making money?" It can both be contained within that same thing. That's exciting to me. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you're using the technology for marketing, advertising? I know there's some interesting things that you're doing to get people to engage with toys, for example. I remember you sharing some of that. That is a good example because toys are like so not so, but generally nice and have a lot of imagination in there. If you go to like, WalnutWonderLab.com, that is a good example. It's actually this thing that just starts like every time the world is there and you see it. And instead of just like, you know how usually when you shop full toys online, you would see pictures that maybe depending on like what the company added on it, it's not very, it's obviously not playful or for the kids. So here like one of my favorite examples is the Lego Stowels kit. So it starts and you see the box and you choose, do you want to open it up with the lightsaber or with the false? And if you choose the false, like a black hand, like a hand with a black light comes in and blows up and like all the pieces are in there. And then it's like, how good are you at Lego? And I'm like, really good. And it builds it up. Do you want to play with Obi-Kwan Kenobi or with Luke Skywalker? And so you get to actually play. And what we found out is that parents who have kids who say like, I want this, I want this, they say like, oh, come play with it. First tell me that you like it and then I'll buy you. So it becomes like the trailer of the toy using interactivity to actually, especially in a world now, well, there are no toy stalls really, regardless by the way of COVID, but with COVID even walls. Those kinds of things allow us to to try to bring that experiential in scale by allowing you to interact even when you're in front of a screen and not just be laid back. So let's talk about how little trust there is in the world right now and how much of partisan and alienation and polarization and is there that you've talked about the technology that you developed as a way to help create something that is more human. Are you using it in any ways that can help us have greater trust or greater empathy, or greater connection with other people, not just to buy stuff? We've been thinking about it a lot. There's something powerful about adding choice because technically in storytelling, if you're able at any moment to allow the other side to say like the opposite, you know, something like that. And especially when you get into politics and things like that, nobody can ever be angry at you because if they are angry at you, there's a button to press to like flip everything around. There was a project that we did early on to try to like show power of the simuleness of the technology and we were looking at, you know, in role playing games, one of the things that's really like important to players is this tree dialogue, like dialogue tree, sorry, that like if you choose what to say and how the answer and what you then you choose what to say and it allows you to like by choosing what you're gonna ask or say or do you feel like you're creating, like your alter ego. And so we had an opportunity with the president of Israel for his 90th birthday to film an interview where you get to ask him any questions you want. One of the questions that he was asked was, does Israel have nuclear weapons? When you get to ask him that, you click it like, do we have, does Israel have nuclear weapons? And he looks at the comments like, I'm not gonna tell you. And because he says it to you, not the interviewer, you're like, oh, I'm sorry, I asked. Again, like there's something suddenly that makes it so personal and great. So we've been thinking a lot about, especially as we've gotten deeper into the business world, how can we use that authenticity or sincerity to really create, you know, more honest relationships with people you don't trust? And CEOs of big companies were an easy target. And so, you know, specifically because of our relationship with Walmart, we did the first test with the CEO of Walmart, who is, you know, again, it sounds bad, but he is an amazing human being, really. Because he also wasn't scared of any question. And part of the idea was, and you know, we explained those examples that if, because you decide which questions you can ask, people will look at it and will be like, oh, I can only ask the nice questions. So we were like, to make this walk, it only has to be the hard questions. And so we called it the honest conversation platform and it lets you ask all the hard questions. And so it becomes a repository. It started with the CEOs. The way it's being used more from business perspective is that, you know, a lot of companies like Venture, Capitalists and, you know, those companies where it's very person based, human based, but there's no, like if you ever look at like Venture Capitalists, there's no different, they all look the same, you know, they all, it's, you have no idea what's going on, you know, there's also bad stuff on what I said about they all look the same as you can imagine. But I, part of the idea is to allow you, people to be humanized. Right. What else do you see coming in the future of storytelling? I think I'm ready. And I think the world is going to become more ready for this to stop being experiments and start being more real. You know, I've had the chance to really look at a lot of the stuff that's happening on TikTok, for example. You know, there's all kinds of sides, obviously, for those things. But the way that generation creates content, even though the distribution is still linear, the way they create it is very interactive. You know, a lot of the stuff that is like, same guy dressed up 25 times in different way. And just, and so, you know, a lot of the things we're thinking with TikTok is like, oh, why don't we then just also let the viewer pick which one and not just the creator. But like you can see already, creators that are starting from that thought of like they would want the audience to participate and then get stuck by distribution, which to me is the step before, hopefully everything comes together. - Yoni, it's really hard to create a new medium. It's very difficult to be a trailblazer, to go out there and show that there's incredible creative and financial opportunities in a space that didn't exist before. It's something that I really respect that you're doing and want to see you be hugely, hugely successful. Keep up the good fight, my friend. - Thank you so much. - Yeah. - Great to see you. Thank you. - Yeah, wait to see you in human form. (upbeat music) - My sincere thanks to Yoni for speaking with me today. You can find links to watch all the works mentioned in today's conversation by visiting this episode's page on the future of storytelling website, f-o-s-t dot org, or by following the link in the episode's description. Thank you for listening to the future of storytelling podcast, produced in partnership with our talented friends at charts and leisure. If you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast, give us a review, and share with a friend. I hope you'll join us again in a couple of weeks for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please stay safe, be strong, and story on. (upbeat music)