Mr. Magazine

“I think you really have to understand the platforms that you’re playing on and who is consuming them. If you look at Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel and you look at the magazine; recently we launched the November issue of the magazine, which is a Thanksgiving issue and one we do every year. This year is a little bit different in that we launched at the same time a six-part series on YouTube launched. It’s about 4½ hours long, so this is long-form content and it’s called “Making Perfect.” This is a show that we started earlier this year in February, where we got together all of our YouTube stars from Bon Appétit and put them all in a series together, sort of our answer to “The Avengers,” and we asked them to make the perfect pizza, each episode is a different component of that pizza, from dough to cheese.”… Matt Duckor

“That’s the same piece of content being expressed really differently on two platforms. You don’t often have that much of a one-to-one, where we’re doing a print piece directly tied to something in video. We want to do more of that, and our audience is telling us that’s working really well, they love seeing these people depicted in the magazine and on the cover, it’s really fun.”… Matt Duckor

Matthew Duckor is Vice President, Video at Condé Nast Entertainment (CNE). CNE is an award-winning next generation studio and distribution network with entertainment content across film, television, premium digital video, social, and virtual reality.

With Matt at the helm, Condé Nast is connecting its print legacy brands deeply with its digital video programs on YouTube. And audiences are loving it. Matt oversees the video programs at Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Architectural Digest and Condé Nast Traveler. He has produced highly-popular franchises, such as “Kids Try,” “Gourmet Makes,” “Working 24 Hours At,” and “It’s Alive with Brad” for Bon Appétit, “Price Points” for Epicurious, “Open Door” for Architectural Digest, and “Culturally Speaking” for Condé Nast Traveler.

In February 2019, he also launched, along with his very talented team, he’s quick to point out, “Making Perfect,” a show that has made video stars out of Bon Appétit’s own talented test kitchen staff. Audiences who have been with Bon Appétit for years, along with a brand new base of fans, are following the brand through this journey and it’s making for a very exciting trip.

I spoke with Matt recently and we talked about these deep legacy print and digital video connections and how they are exciting and compelling viewers and readers to come along for the ride. It was a very intriguing conversation that centered around some highly intriguing concepts and ideas.

So, without further ado, I hope that you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Matt Duckor, vice president, Video at Condé Nast Entertainment.

But first the sound-bites:

On whether a day in his life is like a walk in a rose garden: Yes, it’s absolutely a walk in a rose garden. No, as you mentioned, I work in video programming across four brands: Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Condé Nast Traveler, and Architectural Digest. And what that means is I oversee all strategic programming decisions and production for those channels, so that’s distribution across our sites, obviously, but primarily YouTube, which is sort of the core of our digital video business here at Condé Nast. And it’s really ensuring that there’s a deep connection between the brands that we represent and the platforms that those brands play on. It’s promoting the brands obviously in print, on their websites, the social platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and the brand extensions we’re building in video, really making sure that there’s a deep connection and that those platforms are talking to each other.

On whether it’s easier to work with brands that have a print component in place or with brands that have no print counterpart since he has now done both: There’s something great about the brands at Condé Nast because there is brand recognition for many of the brands and so users at least have an awareness of what Bon Appétit is, even if they haven’t really experienced it before. But I think brand awareness only takes you so far; at the end of the day it’s the content strategy that’s put in place that’s either going to resonate with viewers or not. It’s going to be optimized for the platform you’re playing it on or it’s not.

On one of his Condé Nast colleagues being quoted as saying: we don’t create magazines anymore, we create brands and the magazine is part of that brand: I think that’s true. Part of that is just the necessity of how the media landscape is changing and I think it’s very difficult to exist on any one platform, especially print, with what’s happened with ad spending there over the past five years, in the U.S. especially. But I think the division for what a brand can be at Condé Nast has changed dramatically, even separate from the economic realities.

On his thinking process when he is putting together a video for audiences: I think you really have to understand the platforms that you’re playing on and who is consuming them. If you look at Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel and you look at the magazine; recently we launched the November issue of the magazine, which is a Thanksgiving issue and one we do every year. This year is a little bit different in that we launched at the same time a six-part series on YouTube launched. It’s about 4½ hours long, so this is long-form content and it’s called “Making Perfect.” For Thanksgiving, we asked them to make the perfect Thanksgiving meal, so each have to put in a different iconic dish from the Thanksgiving meal, the whole test kitchen works together, and that’s connected to the print magazine in a real way where there’s an 18-page feature in the well documenting the making of these recipes and of this series.

On what he thinks is the biggest challenge that magazine media companies face today as they move toward the future: There are so many challenges. I think so much of what we’ve gone through over the past few years at Condé Nast has been structural organization. On the editorial side, the editorial staff is really built around magazines and then around digital, and there was a shift that happened probably five years ago where the company had to take a hard look at who is here, and who are the editorial leaders that are right to bring these brands into the digital and social era.

On whether he ever fears YouTube will stop hosting the videos: I don’t think that’s in anyone’s best interests, including YouTube’s. We bring something really unique to the YouTube platform. Condé Nast is a premium content publisher. There is all sorts of content on YouTube. And I can direct you to other news stories to read some of the challenges that YouTube has with the platform, but I think one of the real bright spots is companies like Condé Nast and brands like Bon Appétit making YouTube a center of their digital video strategies. We have a really great relationship with the platform.

On getting people out of this digital Welfare Information Society: We’re working on that. That’s a huge priority that everyone is trying to figure out, how to do these membership products. And we see people launching them, and we believe that we have the right to win in that category. We have brands that people are, Bon Appétit especially, incredibly passionate about.

On whether he has a favorite out of the four brands he oversees: I’ve worked at Bon Appétit the longest, I will say that, since 2011. I started on the editorial side of the print magazine, before digital video was something that Condé Nast had really gotten into, and that was also before the creation of Condé Nast Entertainment (CNE), so I’ve been with that brand since six months after Adam Rapoport relaunched it in 2011. So, I’m certainly closest to the brand, I’ve worked on that the longest.

On the biggest misconception he thinks people have about him: I don’t know if people think of anything when they hear my name. I don’t know if there’s a conception, much less a misconception about me. I don’t know if people really understand how many people work on the video content that we do here; how much of a team effort it is. There aren’t only the 26 other people who are on my team working with me, directors, producers, associate producers, camera people, culinary producers. So, maybe a misconception is that I run the Bon Appétit channel by myself and there’s no one else involved in the creation of it. Absolutely not the case.

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him: I hope that people connect me to what we’ve done at Bon Appétit. I’m incredibly proud of the channel that we’ve built. It’s a collaboration between a lot of people, as I mentioned, including Adam Rapoport. It was his vision for Bon Appétit to have two things: one, a channel that would sort of center around a test kitchen as a place where everything happens. In  reality, the test kitchen is a place where everyone loves to hang out, where there’s always food coming out, people are gathered around, much like kitchens in everybody’s home.  The test kitchen is the center of all other parts of the brand, so naturally it needs to be the center of whatever we do in the video.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home: You’re welcome at any time. (Laughs) I have two kids, one just turned two and the other is almost three months old. So, you’ll probably catch me and my wife, Dawn, dealing with them. My wife Dawn used to work at Bon Appétit, we met here, she worked in the test kitchen as a chef. She’s worked everywhere from Real Simple, where she currently works now, to Martha Stewart, and  Bon Appétit. She’s currently working on a cookbook that will be released in a couple of years, so she might be testing recipes for that. So, that’s what we’ll be doing. Drinking a glass of wine, for sure, is something you’ll see. But mostly taking care of our two kids, and getting to spend time with them.

On what keeps him up at night: We have one of the most positive comments sections on the entire Internet at Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel. The thing that keeps me up is will that turn on us. (Laughs) Will fans ever think we’ve lost our way? We haven’t had that happen, thankfully. I think we have really great instincts about our content, because we’re building around real people who have real appeal. I think they have a really good understanding of what makes for interesting content for our audience. It doesn’t keep me up too much, but I do think about that fan reaction, which can be an addiction.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Matt Duckor, vice president, Video at Condé Nast Entertainment.

Samir Husni: You’re a director, a vice president in charge of four brands; so, how does a day in your life go? Is it as easy as a walk in a rose garden?

Matt Duckor: Yes, it’s absolutely a walk in a rose garden. No, as you mentioned, I work in video programming across four brands: Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Condé Nast Traveler, and Architectural Digest. And what that means is I oversee all strategic programming decisions and production for those channels, so that’s distribution across our sites, obviously, but primarily YouTube, which is sort of the core of our digital video business here at Condé Nast.

And it’s really ensuring that there’s a deep connection between the brands that we represent and the platforms that those brands play on. It’s promoting the brands obviously in print, on their websites, the social platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and the brand extensions we’re building in video, really making sure that there’s a deep connection and that those platforms are talking to each other.

We have this amazing megaphone in YouTube that’s reaching a whole new audience for Condé Nast separate from most of the other platforms. Bon Appétit, for example, 75 percent of the audience that we reach is between the ages of 18 to 34 and that’s really different than any other platform. There’s this amazing opportunity to really introduce these iconic brands to people for the first time and we need to make sure that it really connects with the rest of the ecosystem.

So, if somebody’s first test point for Bon Appétit is YouTube and they don’t know that a magazine exists or they don’t subscribe to magazines, and maybe never will, but they want to check out the magazine, they want to go to our social platforms, they’re on Instagram and they go follow us, there needs to be a connection between those platforms, otherwise there’s a total disconnect and the audience’s journey just stops at YouTube. Which we monetize YouTube and that’s great, but we really want people to experience these brands on every platform.

So, my day is really spent in making sure that connection is happening. It’s working with the editors in chief of these brands to really understand the vision of what drives their editorial strategy on other platforms. And then use the inside expertise that we’ve built up at Condé Nast Entertainment, which is the video division of Condé Nast that’s really in charge of all video production and programming strategy in operation, to ensure that we’re sort of matching that brand’s DNA and vision with best practices and videos that are going to actually scale and reach large audiences and that can be monetized. And to allow us to build a business off of a video that reaches new audiences and continues these brands into the future as the media landscape continues to change and video becomes the place where more and more advertisers are shifting their ad dollars.

We want that transition to be seamless, and obviously, print is still a huge core part of our business, but we don’t want to create different identities for these brands that have nothing to do with the equities, the legacies that they’ve built up. We want this to feel like part of a holistic strategy moving forward and not just: well it’s a new thing and we call it Bon Appétit, but it has nothing to do with the Bon Appétit of yesterday.

It’s the same people who are making the recipes in the magazine, on the website, who are on the podcast; the people who are powering our strategy. So, really I’m overseeing a team of 28 people now who are working across those four brands as well as various centralized departments that we tap on for pilot development and content optimization to make sure that those connections are happening and that we’re really moving these brands forward into the future through video.

Samir Husni: You’ve worked on brands that have had no print entity and now you’re working with brands that have a legacy print component. Which is easier to introduce into this digital age? Do you find it easier for you in your job now, working with brands that have actual print products that are still being published or was it much easier with the brands that had no print counterpart?

Matt Duckor: There’s something great about the brands at Condé Nast because there is brand recognition for many of the brands and so users at least have an awareness of what Bon Appétit is, even if they haven’t really experienced it before. But I think brand awareness only takes you so far; at the end of the day it’s the content strategy that’s put in place that’s either going to resonate with viewers or not. It’s going to be optimized for the platform you’re playing it on or it’s not.

I feel like that’s why a lot of our competitors who are not getting into video strategies, or who are just beginning to invest in platforms like YouTube and look for a meaningful engagement with the audience and new audiences, are struggling because I think you can’t just rely on the equity of a legacy publication to power the content on a platform where most of the audience doesn’t really have a connection to that brand. We’re building new connections with new audiences and funneling them back to other platforms, but we can’t rely on what Bon Appétit has done for the past 65 years of the brand to reach someone who is 18 years old and has no connection to magazines period, much less one magazine, Bon Appétit.

So, of course, we want to create a compelling experience that stands on its own, but then also make subscribers or event attendees or merchandise purchasers out of those viewers. And again, we bring people into an ecosystem where we can give them more of the Bon Appétit experience,  any of the three things that I just mentioned, or just them watching more videos on the YouTube channel, that’s what we’re looking to do.

I’d say that brand equity can help to a point, but really it’s sound content strategy and a deep connection with whatever that legacy is in order to actually put that print legacy into a platform like digital or social and get it to work, because otherwise you’re just sailing on a new platform in a new medium if you’re really not resonating with the people that are there.

Samir Husni: One of your colleagues at Condé Nast was quoted as saying: we don’t create magazines anymore, we create brands and the magazine is part of that brand.

Matt Duckor: I think that’s true. Part of that is just the necessity of how the media landscape is changing and I think it’s very difficult to exist on any one platform, especially print, with what’s happened with ad spending there over the past five years, in the U.S. especially. But I think the division for what a brand can be at Condé Nast has changed dramatically, even separate from the economic realities.

When I started at Condé Nast in 2011, Instagram did not exist, hadn’t launched yet. I launched Bon Appétit’s Instagram channel in 2012. YouTube was still a place primarily for short form cat videos and maybe the occasional blogger or creator, but major media companies weren’t playing in that space.  So, not only have the economic realities of print changed, but the landscape around it and the other options for brands to express themselves have grown so dramatically in the past few years that we’d be ignoring huge flocks of audiences as well as creative opportunities if we didn’t play in these platforms.

And again, with advertising dollars moving from print to digital video and from TV to digital video, that sort of requires us to have an answer for how do these brands exist in this new medium? It’s not even really new anymore, but compared to print, which has been around for centuries, it is newer, but digital video has been growing now for the past 10 years.

And I think it’s hard to be a brand in 2019 and not have an answer for how do we express ourselves on a platform like YouTube, which is the number one destination for people watching video on the Internet and the number two website behind Google.com overall on the Internet. If you don’t have an answer for how your brand exists there, I’m not quite sure that your brand is relevant and it’s not reaching a huge section of the Internet, which is people who just watch video, they’re not reading words or looking at pictures. Moving images are the way that they consume content, so I really think it’s so necessary to think, obviously, beyond  just print and beyond just social.

You need to have that collective ecosystem that’s connected, like I mentioned, it makes sense. All those parts speak to one another. If it were just the YouTube channel, we’d be missing out on a huge part of the depth and richness of a brand like Bon Appétit or Architectural Digest. There are multiple platforms that people can experience these brands on and each of them are different, but they’re all connected together and they make sense as a whole. So, why just plan one platform when we can express ourselves on many, connect them, and monetize all of them.

Samir Husni: You just explained that the brand has to be platform agnostic, yet some of the audiences are still platform specific. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you go through the thinking process? You’re making a video, while still using the same DNA of Bon Appétit, but it’s for ‘this’ audience and when you’re doing print, you’re doing it for ‘this’ audience.

Matt Duckor: I think you really have to understand the platforms that you’re playing on and who is consuming them. If you look at Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel and you look at the magazine; recently we launched the November issue of the magazine, which is a Thanksgiving issue and one we do every year. This year is a little bit different in that we launched at the same time a six-part series on YouTube launched. It’s about 4½ hours long, so this is long-form content and it’s called “Making Perfect.” This is a show that we started earlier this year in February, where we got together all of our YouTube stars from Bon Appétit and put them all in a series together, sort of our answer to “The Avengers,” and we asked them to make the perfect pizza, each episode is a different component of that pizza, from dough to cheese.

For Thanksgiving, we asked them to make the perfect Thanksgiving meal, so each have to put in a different iconic dish from the Thanksgiving meal, the whole test kitchen works together, and that’s connected to the print magazine in a real way where there’s an 18-page feature in the well documenting the making of these recipes and of this series. And then each of the different test kitchen stars are on the cover of Bon Appétit, so there’s eight different covers out there that are sent to subscribers and that are on newsstands that feature our talent front and center on the cover. So, we’re really connecting those platforms in a real way.

The print execution really focuses more on the recipes themselves, so it’s less focus on the talent, other than the cover of the magazine, but it’s more focused on the nuts and bolts of the recipes because we know that the print subscriber that we currently have is really most interested in that. They’re interested in the personalities, we definitely have crossover between our YouTube audience and subscribers, but we know that a lot of people take the magazine really to have the best tried-and-true tested recipes. They are avid home-cook, that is why they subscribe to Bon Appétit, because they get amazing recipes in the mail every month.

Of course, the YouTube series is also based around the creation of these recipes, but it leads far further into the personalities, to Brad (Leone), to Claire (Saffitz), to Molly (Baz), to Carla (Lalli), because we know the audience connects there most with the people behind Bon Appétit in the test kitchen, the place where everything happens. As Adam Rapoport, the editor in chief, likes to call it, it’s the sports center of food. It’s the one place where all these people come together to create these recipes, these iconic shows we’ve provided over the past few years.

That’s the same piece of content being expressed really differently on two platforms. You don’t often have that much of a one-to-one, where we’re doing a print piece directly tied to something in video. We want to do more of that, and our audience is telling us that’s working really well, they love seeing these people depicted in the magazine and on the cover, it’s really fun.

But I think if you look at the rest of what we’ve done, a show like “Gourmet Makes,” which is our larger show on YouTube starring Claire Saffitz, where she goes on journeys to recreate packaged iconic snack foods, from Twinkies to Twizzlers to Kit Kat bars, that’s not something that exists in the pages of Bon Appétit and never has. And it doesn’t quite feel right for that audience that we currently have there, who’s an avid home-cook and is looking for tried-and-true recipes. There may be a version of that which could play to that audience, but really that show is designed to reach a younger consumer on YouTube, who is really more interested in entertainment through the lens of food than sort of pure food service.

But Claire is someone who has worked at Bon Appétit for six years and has developed many, many recipes for the magazine in the test kitchen. And she brings all of that experience to this fun, viral format where she’s basically recreating junk food in the gourmet way. But she’s doing it with the authority and expertise and intensity that we would bring to any recipe that we would develop for Bon Appétit.

So, there’s that spiritual connection between the brand, Bon Appétit, and a the platform YouTube, and that makes a ton of sense, but allows us to reach a new audience without trying to shoehorn in something that we would do in the magazine into a platform like YouTube, where maybe it doesn’t make a ton of sense and wouldn’t let us reach a new audience in a real way.

Samir Husni: Since you started working at Condé Nast, and seeing all the changes that are taking place in the magazine media environment, what do you think is the biggest challenge that magazine media companies face today as they move toward the future?

Matt Duckor: There are so many challenges. I think so much of what we’ve gone through over the past few years at Condé Nast has been structural organization. On the editorial side, the editorial staff is really built around magazines and then around digital, and there was a shift that happened probably five years ago where the company had to take a hard look at who is here, and who are the editorial leaders that are right to bring these brands into the digital and social era.

And I think the same thing is happening now in video, where we just need to scaffold around some of these amazing people that we have creating iconic print magazines and digital websites, with the right expertise in video to ensure that we’re translating those things in a way that, again, is allowing us to reach new audiences in video, as well as creating a sustainable business out of digital video. And ensuring that transition happens smoothly and it’s connected to the rest of what the company is doing, or what the rest of a brand is doing. And it doesn’t feel like we’re creating these offshoots that are removed and have nothing to do with what the brand is doing on other platforms. If there’s a real connection, I think we will be the key to this really working.

Digital video on its own is, at least for us, can’t be the only business that a company has at this point in time. So, there really needs to be a deep connection; we need to be able to take a viewer from YouTube through a journey to experience some other platform that we have. Attend an event, spend money with us in some way. Ad supported business on YouTube has been fantastic and we’ve been incredible at working with our sales team to build up a real business there.

Obviously, we also work with brands in a new capacity and monetize there as well, but we have these other platforms that should be a part of the viewer journey, if we’re doing our jobs correctly. They should want to experience the brand in some other place besides video.

Continuing to make those connections and ensuring that the viewer journey is obvious, and there’s a way for that to happen, with examples like what we’ve done in print this month with “Making Perfect,” it’s like having a signpost saying: if you love this thing, you’ll absolutely love ‘this’ thing because they’re connected in a really tangible way. It’s not like, well, the videos are inspired, but the spirit of this brand isn’t there. No, this is a direct one-to-one connection, so subscribe now. That’s a really powerful message.

And figuring out the question around consumer revenue and how we move away from a business that’s entirely ad supported to one that involves people paying us directly for content. And not like print subscriptions, where we’re asking people to pay $10 that doesn’t even really cover the cost of creating the magazine, and magazines are still an ad supported business. We’re getting people to really support us for our content.

Again, whether that’s events, membership products; these are things that we’re looking at for 2020, and certainly, I think, most media companies are looking at. How we can balance out our really robust advertising business that’s incredibly strong with emerging platforms where we have audiences who are so passionate about our content, like our videos at Bon Appétit, that are willing to pay for things, but we don’t actually have a product beside the print magazine where they can pay us. Everything else is advertising supported.

So, coming up with incredible products and creative solutions for people to be able to give us money. (Laughs) I was looking at the “Making Perfect” first episode that launched recently and we have comments literally that read something like, at this point, I’m just looking for a way to give Bon Appétit money to pay for this content. That’s an amazing problem to have, viewers so passionate about what we’re doing, that they’re asking us to devise ways to take their money. And we are about fan service and about providing an amazing experience on a platform like YouTube, which is ad supported, and we have a great business there. But we want to create, for sure, more in depth experiences for those core fans who really do want to take their relationship with these brands to the next level. They feel personally connected to them and they want to have a deeper involvement.

I even think there’s a feeling of wanting to support Bon Appétit. We see sometimes that people who subscribe to the magazine and say they have never subscribed to a magazine before, also say they subscribe to Bon Appétit because they love the magazine and they love what we’re doing on YouTube and they want to support us. And that’s an amazing dynamic and we need to figure out how we can continue that into 2020.

Samir Husni: Do you ever have the fear that YouTube might say one day that they’re no longer hosting these videos?

Matt Duckor: I don’t think that’s in anyone’s best interests, including YouTube’s. We bring something really unique to the YouTube platform. Condé Nast is a premium content publisher. There is all sorts of content on YouTube. And I can direct you to other news stories to read some of the challenges that YouTube has with the platform, but I think one of the real bright spots is companies like Condé Nast and brands like Bon Appétit making YouTube a center of their digital video strategies. We have a really great relationship with the platform.

We see the insane benefits of working with a platform like YouTube, which as I said, is the number one destination in the world for people watching video on the Internet. That’s an amazing platform to speak to and we have a great relationship with the company. It’s in everyone’s best s not to stop, so I don’t think too much about that.

Samir Husni: If you can do that, take people out of this Welfare Information Society that has been created in digital, that would be truly amazing.

Matt Duckor: We’re working on that. That’s a huge priority that everyone is trying to figure out, how to do these membership products. And we see people launching them, and we believe that we have the right to win in that category. We have brands that people are, Bon Appétit especially, incredibly passionate about.

Even Architectural Digest launched a product called “AD Pro” this year, which is more of a trade-focused membership program, and is a little bit higher priced. It’s for fans of the brand and professional people, like interior designers, decorators, architects, who are really interested in the trade. But that is also an amazing experiment in seeing whether we can launch a product that has real value to it and that is a trusted source of information news for industry professionals and people will pay us for it, not just have this be an ad supported site. In fact, it’s not an ad supported site, it’s 100 percent member supported. And they have a team of people who are running that site.

These experiments are happening at Condé Nast, the company is incredibly supportive of these efforts. Roger Lynch, our new CEO, I think he uses the two words consumer revenue more than any other words, maybe digital video he uses more, but it’s an incredible focus of the company and something we will figure out in the next few years.

Samir Husni: You’re in charge of four different brands that go from food to travel and other topics in between, do you have a favorite?

Matt Duckor: I’ve worked at Bon Appétit the longest, I will say that, since 2011. I started on the editorial side of the print magazine, before digital video was something that Condé Nast had really gotten into, and that was also before the creation of Condé Nast Entertainment (CNE), so I’ve been with that brand since six months after Adam Rapoport relaunched it in 2011. So, I’m certainly closest to the brand, I’ve worked on that the longest.

Every other brand that I work on I’ve been on for about two years. I love working on Architectural Digest, Epicurious, and Condé Nast Traveler, but I’m probably closest to Bon Appétit, and we’ve invested the most time and resources into that brand. So, there’s not a favorite, but the one I have the longest relationship with, for sure.

Samir Husni: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you? When they hear your name, what do they think of?

Matt Duckor: I don’t know if people think of anything when they hear my name. I don’t know if there’s a conception, much less a misconception about me. I don’t know if people really understand how many people work on the video content that we do here; how much of a team effort it is. There aren’t only the 26 other people who are on my team working with me, directors, producers, associate producers, camera people, culinary producers.

But there’s also a centralized strategy and development team here too. People like Joe Sabia, who is our director and senior vice president of development. Many of the great kernels of ideas that have become iconic shows that are synonymous with Bon Appétit’s video and in some cases, me, really started with him and other really talented people on our development team.

It really does take a village to launch something like this, especially inside a company like Condé Nast, where, obviously, we were incredibly print-centric and the idea of doing something that wasn’t directly tied to that product was not well-received in the way that it is now. Now it’s seen as we absolutely need to play to the strengths of these other platforms and find the elastic expressions of these brands that are yet connected to the DNA of the brand, but are just sync-fully made for these platforms that we recognize as being very different from the print magazine.

Five years ago, I think video was seen as a diversion and there are a lot of people here who understood that this was, in some ways, the future of the company. We were looking at new revenues streams, a new vision for what  Condé Nast could be and how these brands could continue to live. We’ve been working really hard within the walls of CNE to make that happen in collaboration with our edit teams throughout the building.

So, maybe a misconception is that I run the Bon Appétit channel by myself and there’s no one else involved in the creation of it. Absolutely not the case.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Matt Duckor: I hope that people connect me to what we’ve done at Bon Appétit. I’m incredibly proud of the channel that we’ve built. It’s a collaboration between a lot of people, as I mentioned, including Adam Rapoport. It was his vision for Bon Appétit to have two things: one, a channel that would sort of center around a test kitchen as a place where everything happens. In  reality, the test kitchen is a place where everyone loves to hang out, where there’s always food coming out, people are gathered around, much like kitchens in everybody’s home.  The test kitchen is the center of all other parts of the brand, so naturally it needs to be the center of whatever we do in the video.

And two, that our staff would be the talent powering the channel, and that was the vision from the beginning, that we would elevate our talent and make them on-camera personalities. And the fact that they were real people would be the strength of the channel, not a weakness. That we didn’t have media-trained professionals and celebrities that we were just plopping into the world of  Bon Appétit and calling it a Bon Appétit Production, we had the people who were actually working here.

And we’ve been able to take those to criteria and build a really special thing about it. So, I hope that people associate me with the work that we’ve done, but as I said, it’s not just me.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; on your iPhone; or something else? How do you unwind?

Matt Duckor: You’re welcome at any time. (Laughs) I have two kids, one just turned two and the other is almost three months old. So, you’ll probably catch me and my wife, Dawn, dealing with them. My wife Dawn used to work at Bon Appétit, we met here, she worked in the test kitchen as a chef. She’s worked everywhere from Real Simple, where she currently works now, to Martha Stewart, and  Bon Appétit. She’s currently working on a cookbook that will be released in a couple of years, so she might be testing recipes for that. So, that’s what we’ll be doing. Drinking a glass of wine, for sure, is something you’ll see. But mostly taking care of our two kids, and getting to spend time with them.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up night?

Matt Duckor:  I think the world of video production is constantly moving. There are always fires popping up, we deal with a lot of people. We have a big team; we have multiple productions happening every single day. We also work with talent who have their own special quirks, I love all of them. Dealing with people, managing people is most of the job and ensuring again that we’re doing what we say we’re doing, which is creating a really valuable proposition for our viewers, which is we’re giving you incredibly high quality content that you enjoy that is up to the standard of what people expect, especially with Bon Appétit. The fans are so connected to what we’re doing and have such a high standard for content that we produce, because they feel personally invested in these people.

When you launch a new show with somebody, there’s a real reaction, mostly almost unanimously positive. When Chris Morocco got his new show and the pilot came out four months ago, there was like a sense of joy that we had done right by Chris and had given him a show that was just for him. And it’s also the perfect show for him, it plays into all of his best instincts.

There may be a new show with new talent that doesn’t feel quite right for the audience, it’s not in the mold that they expected. So, it’s really anticipating what our audience wants and that we’re doing the right thing, that we’re really creating valuable content that feels like we’re predicting what the audience wants before they even know they want it. And making sure we have that positive reaction.

We have one of the most positive comments sections on the entire Internet at Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel. The thing that keeps me up is will that turn on us. (Laughs) Will fans ever think we’ve lost our way? We haven’t had that happen, thankfully. I think we have really great instincts about our content, because we’re building around real people who have real appeal. I think they have a really good understanding of what makes for interesting content for our audience. It doesn’t keep me up too much, but I do think about that fan reaction, which can be an addiction.

It’s really gratifying to see people get lit up when we launch a new series or just a new episode of “Gourmet Makes.” The joy that brings to people’s lives, and I get messages and emails about it, about Bon Appétit just being the one bright spot in people’s day when a new video drops, or Bon Appétit got them through a hard time, or they just binge watched a whole show that they didn’t even know existed on YouTube; you don’t want that joy to go away. It’s really exciting as a programmer that people are spending absurd amounts of time with our content. We’re a real part of people’s lives. So, not wanting that feeling to go away keeps me up sometimes, but I think we’re mostly doing a good job.

Samir Husni: Thank you.