What Blackstone’s Holiday Video Teaches CEOs About Modern Communications
Blackstone’s annual holiday video is out. You know this because you watched. Likely as you scrolled through LinkedIn. Your team probably shared it on Slack. Then this morning you saw recaps in your morning emails from Bloomberg, Business Insider and PE Hub.
And you, financial services executive, were one of the intended audiences. You’re reading this because Blackstone’s video worked and you want to know why.
The Strategy Beneath the Humor
At first glance, the video feels like levity. Executives poking fun at themselves. Eighties nostalgia. Cameos. A little chaos. But you do not spend billions building a brand like Blackstone’s by accident. Underneath the humor is a very deliberate communications strategy.
Blackstone is in the middle of a shift. For decades, it was known primarily as an institutional player. Now it is marketing to a broader audience of investors. That requires more than new products. It requires a new way of showing up, and the video does exactly that. It humanizes leadership, signals confidence, and makes the firm feel accessible.
Designing Content for Owned and Shared Media
What should stand out to you is how intentionally the video was designed to travel. It lives first on Blackstone’s owned channels, where the firm controls the message, the tone, and the timing. Then it moves into shared media. Short clips, screenshots, and moments that are easy to repost, comment on, and react to. The video is built for sharing.
That momentum then unlocks earned media. Coverage from Bloomberg, Business Insider, and PE Hub signal to their readers where Blackstone is headed and the role of communications as part of its growth strategy. This shows how strong owned and shared content can drive earned media coverage.
The bigger takeaway for you as a CEO is not that you should make a holiday video, or that humor is the answer. It’s that communications today is an ecosystem. Owned, shared, and earned media work together, or they do not work at all. When they are aligned, one piece of content can reinforce culture internally, speak directly to priority audiences, and earn validation from the press.
Why Communications Is Now a Leadership Discipline
Blackstone’s video succeeds because it knows exactly who it is talking to, why it is talking to them, and how the message should move across channels. In an environment where attention is scarce and audiences are fragmented, that clarity is not optional. Communications is no longer a support function. It is a leadership discipline.
