The Exit Interview: After A Summer At Bonobos, Bradley Lautenbach Heads Back To Harvard Business School
Sean McManus — August 3, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
Originally from Naperville, Illinois, Brad Lautenbach graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film and Television Production and then worked for five years at ABC News. This summer, before starting his second year at Harvard Business School, Brad was an all-star intern for Bonobos. We talked to Brad about high-level corporate strategy, making viral chimpanzee videos, and how he ended up in Belize hugging this nurse shark.
You went to Tisch, so what kind of videos did you make?
I started interning for ABC News pretty early as undergrad, so I didn’t make a feature film or anything. But I did produce music videos for indie rock labels.
What did you do for ABC?
I started at Good Morning America and worked my way up to producer there. The travel was awesome. I covered big stories like Katrina from the front lines, and even went with Diane Sawyer to interview George Bush at the White House three days after the storm. I worked on shows from Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle—places like that.
How do you beat that?
After working on the TV side, I moved to the digital, where I was a product manager for Abcnews.com. I was working on strategic projects like pushing the ABC news brand in a digital direction, both on the content side and on the presentation side. My long-term project was building a strategic partnership with Facebook. We partnered to cover the 2008 primaries and produced the first television debate with all Democratic and Republican presidential candidates between the critical Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary.
What did you learn about TV content on the Web?
The idea was to keep old audiences with a new medium while at the same time, building new audiences. Like Bonobos, we wanted to take an old established business model, in this case fashion, and make it disruptive with an online model. Fortunately for Bonobos, fashion isn’t on the verge of death like old media is.
Any advice for media companies in the throws of disruption?
Look, the headline sells, but it’s a slippery slope. If the headline is Britney Spears, it will probably get the click, but the question is whether that click is at the expense of overall credibility. So there’s this constant tension.
You had a great job. Why did you apply to business school?
As I wrote in my application I used to make fun of business school people. It seemed so boring. I had this job that I loved but realized I was missing important skill sets, namely corporate strategy, marketing, and consumer psychology—all of which I wished I better understood.
Is HBS everything people think it is?
It exceeded every expectation. I’m working with the greatest minds in business, and with people from all over the world. And well over half of the value of an MBA is the people you meet. I’m building a great network.
What was the most important “big idea” from your first year?
Professor Francis Frei is one of the leading thinkers on the idea of customers as operators and making the customer part of your business model. She teaches a class called Technology and Operations Management. At Bonobos, we require our customers to play a really important part in our business model, like in the way we rely on customer honesty to return pants for a legitimate reason. Her expertise coupled with her big ideas on leadership was huge for me.
How did you end up at Bonobos?
I was introduced to Brian Spaly when he spoke at a luxury goods conference at HBS. He talked about making the customer the center of the universe, a concept that a lot of people get wrong. I was impressed and I asked for an internship.
What do you think of the pants?
Well it’s funny. I went through a few hurdles before I bought my first pair. The pants were well marketed but mostly to athletically built guys, which is not me. When I finally tried them, they fit perfectly. They’re the first pair of pants to make it look like I have a butt.
So what exactly did you do here?
I worked on the marketing side, figuring out a referral program that we launched this summer. We always want to find innovative ways to get our brand loyalists to evangelize about the brand and provide incentives for that. So we developed an online game where you can rack up credit for referrals. The idea is that there’s all this pent up enthusiasm about Bonobos—customers can’t stop talking about them. We want to empower those people to bring their friends into that experience in a meaningful way, and in a way that will be good for all parties.
I heard you also helped out with our soon-to-be released “Big Chimpin’” viral video?
I was able to draw on some experience I had both in story-writing in school and producing viral video for ABC to help tweak the concept. It was a lot of fun to be back in my creative roots, but the real credit for the project goes to [actor] Rod Bananapants, though. He is an inspiration on screen. Definitely Oscar-worthy.
You’re also a Web guy? How did you apply that expertise?
I was given some responsibility for the website. I worked with the tech team on web analytics. Increasingly, we want to understand what people are doing on the site, like where they are hovering and where they are falling off.
Did you learn anything about fashion along the way?
I’m more driven by technology and customer service, but I do like to dress well.
Why are you trying to strangle this nurse shark?
Over winter break a few section mates and I went to San Pedro, Belize. One afternoon we went snorkeling at a place called Shark Ray Alley, where you can be right up next to the sea life. This was a nurse shark that was particularly interested in having its picture taken with me.
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Reading this story makes me think that maybe I finally need to pull the trigger on a pair of pants — this quote really spoke to me
“I went through a few hurdles before I bought my first pair. The pants were well marketed but mostly to athletically built guys, which is not me”
Pretty much how I feel — worried that you have to have a 32″ waist and 2 hours in the gym per day to pull these pants off!
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Brad is also our Section President, which he would never admit due to humility, shame, or both. Congrats on finishing your internship – I’m looking forward to seeing Big Chimpin’ soon!
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Having grown up with Brad from kindergarten to high school, I think he was President of every club our elementary school and junior high had to offer. I remember having arguments with other friends about who would be President of the country first, Brad or his fellow HBS classmate, Andrew Mondi. If Brad is, I’m sure he’ll be the best dressed President in history thanks to Bonobos. Congratulations on your summer work, and looking forward to seeing what else you can accomplish in the future.
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We over market the athletic thing. I have HIGB – half indian guy butt, and I look awesome in Bonobos. In fact, now my ass gets slapped in bars. That is a new one. Let’s go non athletic guys lookin good in Bonobos. andy
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[...] to one of our awesome summer interns, Ajay Prakash of Stanford Business School. In the tradition of Brad Lautenbach, who departed a few weeks ago, we sat down briefly with Ajay as he finishes his time at Bonobos [...]
[...] know if they were paid or not) last year—check out profiles of last summer’s interns, Brad Lautenbach and Ajay Prakash. Since applying for internships before they’re posted is a great tactic to [...]
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