The producer
Fifty-two founders. Fifty-two films.
52 Icons is a documentary series about people who are doing something genuinely iconic inside their industry. One founder per film. Fifty-two films across the next twelve months, published on Forbes.com.
Why fifty-two
Our icons are among us
52 Icons profiles people who have changed the way their industries work. Some of them are known. Most are not. The series goes looking for the founder whose name is not on a list yet, and gives them the same treatment as the one whose name is on every list.
The films do not flatter anybody. They observe. Watched closely enough, the ordinary business of running a company becomes strange and much harder than it looks. Nothing is exaggerated, because nothing needs to be. Not every founder in the series set out to make the world better, and the films do not pretend otherwise. What they set out to do was build something that lasted, and that is the more interesting story.
There is a reason for making fifty-two of them. One film is an anecdote. Fifty-two is a record of how work changed in this decade, told by the people who changed it, while it is still recent enough to get right. Our icons are among us, and most of them have never been asked a proper question about what they built.
The register
A natural history documentary, about business
Each film observes one founder the way a natural history film observes a species in its habitat: the rituals, the conditions, the odds it works against. The narration is sincere and unhurried. Nobody winks at the camera.
That decision is the whole series. A corporate profile asks a viewer for their attention. A documentary earns it. It is why people watch a 9 minute film to the end instead of leaving at ten seconds, and it is why the film is still worth posting in eighteen months.
Reverence is the technique. Treat a founder at a kitchen table with the same seriousness a nature film gives a creature at dawn, and the audience leans in. Overstate it and they leave. Every line of narration is written to be spoken slowly and to survive being fact checked.
The making
One interview, then everything built around it
The finished film runs 7 to 10 minutes. It is built around a single directed interview sitting with up to four of your executives, either on location or captured remotely at broadcast standard. You are asked real questions and given room to answer them properly.
Around that sitting we build the narration, an original score and the cinematic footage that carries the story. Then it is graded, mixed and cut in an editing suite, in the same order a broadcast documentary is finished.
Alongside the film you receive:
- The finished documentary, 7 to 10 minutes, published on Forbes.com
- A written feature published on the same page
- Three 15 second cutdowns for social
- A 60 second cinematic trailer
- A press release for your announcement, and social copy to go with it
The terms
You control the story, from the first call
You have editorial control from the planning call onward. You decide how broad or how narrow the story is, which parts of the business it enters, and who appears. You sign off the final cut before anything is published. Nothing is published on a maybe: if the story is not right yet, it does not go out.
There are fifty-two slots and each one goes to a single company. Every slot is sold direct by us. No resale, no agency rate, no two companies sharing a film. That is what keeps the series consistent and the editorial line clean.
Once your film is published we assign you a full royalty-free licence to it. Post it, share it, run it in paid media, cut it up for your own marketing, for as long as you like. You are not renting your own story back from us.
The first film
No. 01 is BruntWork
BruntWork was founded in Sydney in 2020 and runs a workforce of thousands with no head office at all. No tower, no floor, no turnstile. Thousands of people working from kitchen tables and spare rooms, from Manila to Bogotá, in a company built for a world that changed in the space of a month. It is the first habitat the series enters.
The standard
Accuracy before flattery
Every film is built on a source ledger before a word of script is written. Figures a company reports about itself are attributed to the company. Figures nobody can verify are left out, however good they sound. We do not claim awards we have not won, rankings nobody measured, or audience numbers nobody counted. If it is on the page, it can be checked. The full disclosure on production methods.
52 Icons is produced by Fifty Two Icons, an independent documentary producer. The series runs to fifty-two films, one founder each, released across the next twelve months and published on Forbes.com under licence, secured under contract. Fifty Two Icons works with a number of further publications, which are listed on the home page. Onward syndication of the series beyond Forbes.com is planned rather than contracted, and is described as planned until that changes.
The same small team makes every film in the series, from the first planning call through to the final cut. That is deliberate. Fifty-two films made by one team hold a single voice. Fifty-two films farmed out do not.
Contact
Talk to us about featuring your company
If you would like your company considered for one of the fifty-two slots, write to us. A first conversation takes fifteen minutes.