CYBERSPACE — Gavin Hay recently spoke to Forbes.com about lessons that businesses can learn from the adult entertainment industry. Hay is an entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of a post-production house in London — and a former gay porn star.
After Hay built, and sold, a successful television company, and retired to Brazil at the ripe old age of 42, he stumbled into adult entertainment. “I just did it on a whim,” he recalls to writer Franki Cookney. “Something to mark off my bucket list.”
As “Trojan Rock,” or just “Rock,” Hay earned a rep as a brawny, muscular “daddy” and filmed some 50 titles for a variety of companies, among them Raging Stallion Studios and Titan Media.
He put his entrepreneurial skills to use when he founded the award-winning Alphamale Media, which merged with powerhouse studio and distributor Eurocreme in 2010. Hay eventually sold the label, left his blue movie career behind and moved back to the U.K, where he founded post-production house Cherry Cherry.
He affirmed to Forbes.com the reputation of adult as early adopters of innovative tech. “Porn is no different from any media-related business, really,” he notes. “It has the same intrinsic business rules. However, one thing I was quite amazed by was the way that the adult world was far in advance of other media companies. We were running streaming services and pay-per-view before Netflix was even dreamt of.”
Hay notes the key role of adult in “the demise of Betamax and the uptake of VHS,” and in developing “online banking solutions [and] persuading its audience to part with their credit card details to create constant revenue streams, long before anyone else. Their marketing techniques are emulated everywhere.”
“Interestingly, porn has one of the best customer relations records — it has to! Porn is so personal,” he adds, “and we all have quite unique tastes. If you hide behind a smokescreen, you will never be trusted.”
He describes a key lesson businesses can take from the current state of adult: “Adapt and diversify.”
Online theft, a proliferation of content, tube sites and more have forced adult companies to effect rapid change to stay afloat.
Hay observed that adult has been “particularly good” at creating and marketing niche products. “This is worth considering as it means you are less likely to be copied, and you keep steering away from direct competition. It also allows you to be seen as innovative, establish a strong brand around that offering, and build a loyal customer base,” he said.
“Porn also streets ahead on issues of race, disability and gender… something the mainstream is still struggling with,” he adds. “But maybe the biggest lesson we can learn from adult industry is to be bold and not timid.”
Click here to read the complete interview.
Image source: Forbes.com