Participant Media isn’t a Google or Apple or Starbucks or Miramax in its heyday, but it has to be one of the coolest companies in the world. Only six years old and a far quieter force in the “Gimme five” film industry, the Jeff Skoll-backed company, now profitable in its own right, is probably today’s most active, bull’s-eye-hitting film/TV/social-action conglomerate.

Participant is also unique among its peers as it wraps social-action campaigns around each of the films it embraces as financier, producer, cause marketer or all of the above. But, Participant CEO Jim Berk assures, “Great storytelling comes first in terms of the projects we take on.” Entertainment first, of course, makes sense, as that’s how to get films seen, messages out, action taken, and change enabled.

And let’s not forget money made. Says Berk, “We are a for-profit company that is profitable.”

A look at just a handful of past projects is ample proof of these priorities to entertain, inform and motivate audiences to make a difference. Most recently, Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove, propelled by Participant’s far-reaching social-action campaign, won the Oscar for Best Documentary. Other jewels in the company’s crown include doc hit Food, Inc., fact-based mainstream features that became critical smashes like Charlie Wilson's War, and critically acclaimed art-house and crossover hits like The Kite Runner, The Visitor, Fast Food Nation, An Inconvenient Truth, and George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and Syriana.

Participant’s many Oscar-nominated and award-winning films are also a testament to a commitment to quality. Besides The Cove, Participant in February also took pride in big Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, thanks to its investment stake in Summit Entertainment.
The company’s bottom line is one part financial return and one part social impact, Berk explains. “Our core mission is to be a leading provider of entertainment that inspires and compels social change.”

Participant’s roots—by way of company founder/funder Skoll—are in technology and the Internet. The former first president of eBay, Skoll, named one of Time magazine's 100 People of the Year in 2006, is one of the country’s most revered and award-winning philanthropist/entrepreneurs. His Skoll Foundation, founded in 1999, provides unrestricted financing and services to select social entrepreneurs. He continues as founder and chairman.

In 2004, Skoll founded Participant Productions (now Participant Media) and now serves as chairman. Inspired by such classic films as To Kill a Mockingbird, Gandhi and Erin Brockovich, he imagined and realized an independent global media company that is focused on creating entertainment content that provides a long-term benefit to society.

To this end, L.A.-based Participant Media, with about 70 employees, comprises a film production unit, the related TakePart.com social-action network and the Participant Publishing arm, with four books to date.

Skoll has taken executive producer credit on at least 15 of the company’s films, thereby underscoring his belief that it is in everyone's interest, and in the interest of peace and prosperity, to shift the overwhelming imbalance between the "haves" and "have-nots."

But, busy with his own philanthropic projects and funds, Skoll four years ago put Participant into the able hands of CEO Berk. Says Berk, “Jeff’s mission was to expand across platforms with entertainment that inspires and compels and he was looking for someone with both a business and arts background to handle this. After I was approached by a headhunter, Jeff and I met for the first time at a lunch. We immediately hit it off and knew that we would work well together.”

Thus, Skoll entrusted Berk with considerable responsibilities and a mandate to evolve Participant Films into an integrated media entity. According to Berk, “Jeff empowered us to make these decisions regarding the social issues and projects we get involved with.” In fact, greenlighting at Participant, says Berk, is done by committee. “The heads of divisions weigh in so that about ten of us are making the decisions whether or not to get involved in a film.”

As CEO, Berk leads the company’s day-to-day operations and oversees its content, overall strategy and expansion beyond motion pictures. He also oversees Participant’s media investments and acquisitions and guides further development of the Participant brand and its social action and advocacy activities.

Although Skoll is otherwise engaged, “Participant continues Jeff’s goal to tell a story well, because that is how you get people emotionally connected to both film and issue,” Berk declares.

Prior to Participant, Berk headed a private company operating for-profit post-education schools and, before that, the country’s largest independent vacation ownership and resort companies. He also served as president and CEO of Hard Rock Café International, growing its core Hard Rock Café business.

While at Hard Rock, Berk stepped closer to the movie business and social action by serving as a member of the executive board and a divisional managing director of the Rank Group Plc, Hard Rock Café’s parent company, and as CEO of the philanthropic Hard Rock Foundation.

In music, Berk was the founding executive of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Foundation and produced live concerts, festivals, television programs and records through the nonprofit entertainment production company he created.

Berk also proved himself in education—key to Participant’s mission—when, in 1990, he became the youngest principal in the history of the 725-school Los Angeles Unified School District, overseeing the Alexander Hamilton High Schools Complex. Currently, Berk serves on several boards, including those of Summit Entertainment and the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television.



Of course, being a cool company like Participant means not just affecting many millions of lives positively and in an entertaining way but motivating these lives to get active in important environmental and social issues like peace, poverty, animal protection, human abuse, corruption, etc.

All of Participant’s features, says Berk, have an important social message with social-action campaigns, costing from several hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars each, wrapped around them.

Once a project is selected, Participant goes full-bore into research to identify those groups best suited to the subject and mission of a film. The strategy is to enlist “global citizens” in the company’s social-action network. “We then we go mine this community of interested people, a kind of elaborate grass-roots approach. We also use our mission to bring the appropriate NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and corporations—our marketing partners—to the table.” NGOs like the National Resource Defense Council, AARP and the Humane Society leverage their vast influence and memberships to the specific causes. No less important, their participation helps fill seats.

Participant also gets behind the creation of school curriculums and university tours for films, which can include both screenings and lectures. The outreach effort also includes VIP screenings for those who make the decisions and influence policies and the staging of live events in parks and communities.

Participant’s sole involvement in the case of Oscar-winning The Cove was social-action outreach; the company funded, created and executed the campaign to bring attention and action to the plight of dolphins that were being so savagely slaughtered in an infamous Japanese village.

To assure the effectiveness of this social action and advocacy component, the company brought on John Schreiber as executive VP, social action and advocacy. Schreiber manages the creation, development and execution of each film’s social campaign, all of which are designed to inspire citizen action, awareness, education and legislative advocacy.

Like Berk, Schreiber came to Participant continuing a long career in which the arts, business, advocacy and education intersect. Dubbed “a visionary producer” by The New York Times, Schreiber has had broad-ranging experience in award-winning theatre, television, concerts, major music and comedy festivals, documentary film, branded entertainment, and a host of other cultural and cause-related events.

His many creator and producer credits include the important JVC and Newport Jazz Festivals, the weekly television concert series “Hard Rock Live” (VH1), the Benson & Hedges Blues Festivals, and major events for Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House, and the Grammy Foundation. He received Emmy and Tony Awards as producer of the Broadway and HBO hit “Elaine Stritch at Liberty” and has developed and produced cause-related entertainment marketing programs.

With a mandate to build awareness and outreach campaigns around every Participant feature, Schreiber has a challenging job. He estimates that the company to date has been involved with about 24 theatrical features, with unique social-action campaigns and partners behind every one.

“There are a number of facets to these campaigns,” he explains, “often including the enlistment of grass-roots and corporate partners to specific causes emanating from the films. The common goal in all these campaigns is to educate the public and give them tools so they can help bring about change.” Schreiber’s team, says Berk, is “a huge part of what makes Participant.”

The company expends considerable energy on “cause marketing,” lining up corporate partners who get on board for no fee. For the Magnolia release Food, Inc., to cite one example, Stonyfield Dairies came on board by advertising the film for free on ten million yogurt lids. And Chipotle sponsored free screenings of the film in 32 cities nationwide, displayed promotional materials in all of its restaurants, and underwrote a bonus feature about sustainable agriculture for the Food, Inc. DVD.

Even for so commercial a film as The Crazies, Participant’s involvement with Greenpeace helped bring attention to the chemical-safety act yet to be passed by Congress. Says Berk, “Our message is that you can move the needle by petitioning Congress to take action on an important bill that is just sitting there.”

Often Participant will kick in 50% of marketing costs, but Overture took on all of the P&A for The Crazies, since theirs was a traditional distribution deal. Participant’s role, says Berk, was to add value to the marketing efforts.

About the connection between so much social-action effort and the effect it has on pulling in audiences, Berk believes “our campaigns bring more people to theatres as we make sure that they get emotionally connected to a film. And even if their position on an issue is not what we might want, we know that at least they like the fact that the issue is being raised.”

A key Participant strategy to connect to the public is its digital weapon—the TakePart.com website, which, notes Schreiber, “comes early in the [outreach] game.” Participant only launched the site in 2009, but it has become so important and effective that “every project is given a life on the site,” says Schreiber. In addition to informing users on how to take action, TakePart also serves as the hub of an extensive network of cause-related sites covering a broad array of social issues.

Schreiber’s advocacy arm also gets involved with a film’s distributor. (Exhibitors too may participate with lobby displays, etc.) And the films themselves guide viewers since, as Schreiber explains, “there’s a call to action at the end of our movies. The Cove, for instance, ended with information informing audiences how to send messages to the Japanese ambassador or to Vice President Biden about their outrage at the dolphin slaughter.”



While deep in the advocacy component behind Participant, Schreiber reiterates that it’s the good script that comes first. “The film itself must be a strong experience because, at the end, when the audience is really moved and can read how to help, it’s a magical moment for us to get them to actually make a difference by texting and going to our website.”

In bringing their mix of entertainment and issues to the public, Participant gets behind a mix of documentaries and narrative fiction features. The Crazies, released last February through Overture, represented for Participant both a new genre (sci-fi/horror) and new cause (the danger of catastrophic accidents or terrorist acts at “high-risk” chemical plants).

In the film, based on George Romero’s 1973 cult classic of the same title, the inhabitants of a small Midwestern town succumb to insanity and death after a mysterious toxin contaminates their water supply. Participant, whose social-action campaign sought increased citizen protection from biotoxins, joined forces with Greenpeace and the Chemical Security Coalition to educate, engage and activate people to support the passage of chemical-security legislation in the U.S. Senate (the House of Representatives already made a step in this direction).

Again, Participant’s TakePart.com was a linchpin in the campaign’s awareness/action offensive. At the website, people learn how closely they live to the nation’s most dangerous facilities and, through Greenpeace, they can automatically send e-letters to their senators encouraging them to vote for the legislation sitting in Congress.

Future Participant projects include Oceans, its first with Disneynature, which opens the doc on April 22 (Earth Day). Produced by vet French actor/producer Jacques Perrin (producer of the critically acclaimed The Chorus), among others, Oceans is an unprecedented journey to what lies beneath the oceans and reveals the vanishing wonders of this vast but endangered sub-aquatic world. Says Berk, “Participant will have over 20 social-action and advocacy partners for the film.” A service learning program with one of their partners, Earth Echo, will be just one big initiative.

Come April 30, Summit releases the live-action family comedy film Furry Vengeance, starring Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields. The film takes on land developers who erode nature and endanger animals with their plans to build on forest land. It sends a strong message about the environmental consequences of man’s encroachment on nature.

Furry Vengeance will mark “our largest outreach ever to kids, to third- and fourth-graders,” says Schreiber, explaining that about 500,000 packages containing habitat-protection activity kits recently went out to about 18,000 schools. Not only is the alert being sounded to a younger generation but such awareness “will drive children and adults to the theatres.”

On May 7, Participant unveils Casino Jack and the United States of Money, one of four films it had at Sundance 2010. The “want-to-see” for this pulsating doc from Alex Gibney has to be considerable. Gibney delivered the hit exposé Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side. (See our Gibney interview in the May issue.) With Casino Jack, he again fashions a well-researched, deeply involving account of masters of the universe who become slaves to the lure of money, power and pleasure.

The doc, like Enron, should prove that, to paraphrase Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, greed is good for box office. The film draws from the headlines and considerable media coverage to chronicle the very bad behavior of the now-incarcerated former Washington über-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his posse of corrupt politicians and enablers.

Says Berk, “Alex Gibney had the idea. And with a subject like the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and the politicians and cronies in his pocket, we immediately loved the story when it was presented to us, as did our head of documentaries and the rest of our team. We greenlit with Magnolia, with whom we’re partnered financially.”

To accompany the “want-to-see” elements of this Magnolia release, Participant forged a “want-to-help” component. To get audiences off their chillin’, film-buff butts is a Citizen Action tool kit, available online at TakePart, which gives them a variety of opportunities and options to learn what their representatives—congressmen and senators—are doing in Washington. Schreiber makes the point that, in spite of the focus on Abramoff and his corrupt gang, “all lobbying isn’t bad… [Abramoff] took lobbying to the nth degree, but lobbying can work for good causes.”

As in their other campaigns, “an end credit will alert viewers to the TakePart.com website,” Schreiber explains, “and we’ll be doing a series of town hall meetings around the country, mainly for student audiences. We’ll be talking about lobbying and stream these conversations live on TakePart.”



This summer, Magnolia also releases Participant’s Countdown to Zero, which was another Sundance premiere. The film, which then bounces to The History Channel, makes a case for total global disarmament by examining the dangers of nuclear weapons. Berk describes the doc as “really strong. And very scary when you hear how easy it is for accidents to happen and for [dangerous] materials to get into the wrong hands.”

Directed by Davis Guggenheim (Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth), Waiting for Superman, tentative for September, “is a very inspiring examination of the American public-education system from elementary through to high schools,” says Berk, adding that “it’s a sobering look at what works and what doesn’t, told through multiple stories.” The Paramount Vantage release will be in theatres “in a very big way with a multi-million-dollar campaign around it,” he assures. “We’ll be announcing details soon.”

Also for this year, Participant has Cane Toads: The Conquest, the only 3D film at Sundance and the first 3D feature for Participant. Berk describes it as a documentary sequel about how these small creatures took over a habitat. Like the original, “this is almost cult/horror and we’re looking for a unique release for it,” says Berk. The theatrical distributor is still to be determined.

Another future release is Fair Game, the Sean Penn-Naomi Watts starrer that tells the gripping true story surrounding the “outing” of covert CIA operations officer Valerie Plame and how she and husband Joseph C. Wilson IV took on the government and press to expose the politically motivated culprits. Participant is working with entrepreneur/producer Bill Pohlad’s River Road on the film. The two companies had previously partnered on the successful, Oscar-nominated Food, Inc. Pohlad also has a distribution partnership with Bob Berney in Apparition, but Berk only allows that the distributor of Fair Game is yet to be announced..

Also later this year, Summit releases the mental-illness drama, The Beaver, starring Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson.

Meanwhile, Participant plows through tons of proposals. Berk says that the company handles over 3,000 pitches and submissions a year for both narrative fiction and documentaries.

A Participant project can initiate in a number of ways, says Berk. “Maybe someone will have an idea and pitch it to us. Or an NGO that wants a story out there may come to us with a producer, as happened with our film about the American education system. Or ideas will come from producers or filmmakers like Alex Gibney, who had the Jack Abramoff idea.” Some projects are conceived and developed totally in-house. Others originate as spec scripts or pitches and some projects are jointly developed with the studios. “Currently we have about 42 projects in development whose messages we like,” Berk reveals.

From these projects, Participant anticipates a “run rate” of about six starts a year with a minimum of half originating internally. Ricky Strauss is Participant president, overseeing content. Fiction, documentary and marketing divisions all report to him.

About the windows for its projects, Berk says that all Participant films conceived for theatrical go into theatres. Regarding the day-and-date conundrum and shortening intervals between theatre, VOD and DVD release dates, Berk goes with the consensus that “with mainstream fare, the step release is still important to the life of the film. On smaller films, the VOD concept can work.” He adds that Participant will soon be supplying to TV, as it has about 17 projects in various stages of development.

Initially, Participant had to find financing and distributing partners, but no longer. “We have the ability to fund from half to 100% of a film’s budget, in fact to fully finance our films, thanks to the Participant imagenation abu dhabi Film Fund, created in 2008 and worth $250 million over five years.” And with their investment in Summit, “we have a distribution pipeline.”

The joint venture with imagenation, owned by privately owned A.D. Media Co., will allow Participant to produce 15 to 18 films over a five-year period. The Crazies, a joint presentation from Overture Films and Participant, was the first.

Partnerships are key to the company’s success on both the entertainment and social-action fronts. They can be one-off or ongoing and, in addition to the NGOs, foundations and non-profit advocacy groups, can involve big corporations and brands that become marketing partners. In one-off deals, Berk says that the company “has partnered and is partnering with all the studios on individual projects.”

With Summit Entertainment, “Participant has had an equity interest from the get-go,” says Berk, “and additionally we have an ongoing non-exclusive distribution deal with them.”

While Participant was behind the social-action campaign for The Cove, it worked with several releasing partners, including Roadside Attractions for theatrical and Lionsgate for DVD.

On the social-action front, Participant partnered with Me to We, a Toronto-based social enterprise promoting a socially responsible, globally focused approach to living for young people who want to help change the world through their daily choices.

But not every partnering effort will initially strike all eyes as pure. Lawyers could use more fans, but Participant found inspiration in its art-house hit The Visitor to bring law firm O’Melveny & Myers to the film’s social-action campaign. Suggesting that legal eagles can also be doves, the law firm committed to an ongoing program to develop and produce an ongoing pro-bono legal education curriculum to train lawyers on proper legal defense of immigration detainees at bond hearings. No small commitment, the goal is to train 3,500 lawyers by the end of 2012.

And those who deem big banks and credit card companies the devil’s pay-up-playground may raise eyebrows at Participant’s new alliance with American Express on the “Members Project,” announced in early March. The program is conceived to engage Amex users in getting active in making a difference and supporting worthy causes. Card-holders are directed to a dedicated section of the takepart.com website to learn and participate.

Explains Berk, “It’s a three-year deal with Amex. They’ve had a do-good philanthropy and outreach program, so we decided to partner. Our campaign with them doesn’t even have the Amex logo and it drives their customers to our website. We liked their goal and its values and believe the partnership makes great use of other people’s resources.”

If Participant’s partnerships don’t always ring “cool” to all ears, they are smart, magnanimous and unassailable in their urgent purpose to fix things. One partner, as yet untapped, who seems ideal for Participant—and pretty cool—is James Cameron. Both Participant and the world’s most visible filmmaker share environmental and oceanic interests and a habit of getting behind highly entertaining films that happen to promote good causes. And both have the money and influence to get things done and value entertainment as the means and the sine qua non.

A future partnership, perhaps? Answers Berk, “Anything can happen with us. We’re interested in being an activation network for people who want to use media to create a better world. And Cameron’s so brilliantly committed to those kinds of issues.”

This article was revised on April 13. The Skoll Foundation had been misidentified as the eBay Foundation.