Michele Donati on Why Open Beats Closed in Modern Media Planning

A conversation with Michele Donati, EVP, Chief of Futures of Horizon, on why Horizon is betting on an open ecosystem—Horizon OS and its labs—to bring best-in-class partners together, accelerate innovation, and drive smarter media investment across the full planning-to-optimization workflow.

Highlights:

Horizon OS decoded: why “open beats closed” for speed, flexibility, and partner-powered innovation

How Horizon Futures maps 65+ subcultures into actionable brand and audience strategy

The new live-event playbook: real-time hype → social reverb → cultural afterglow

Where LLMs actually change insight workflows (without replacing the human layer)

Why labs matter: de-risked experimentation for clients who want innovation without chaos

EPISODE 56 TRANSCRIPT

Marissa Price
Welcome. Hi, Michele. Welcome to Breaking Through the Mayhem.

Michele Donati
Hi, Marissa. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm pumped to be here.

Marissa Price
Awesome. We're happy to have you. So we have with us today Michele Donati, EVP Chief of the Horizon Futures team.

And we're really excited to chat, dig into all things media, culture, all the things that both of our companies are really passionate about. I thought to just kick things off before we officially get into the hard-hitting questions, you agreed to be a good sport with us here today and play along with a little bit of a quiz. We had talked about, we want to get to know you a little bit better, but also get in the winter spirit.

So here's how we're going to do that. We're going to ask you a few questions throughout the time that we have here together about your favorite movies. And at the end, it's going to reveal to us with perfect precision, I'm sure, your favorite winter activity.

It'll tell us a little bit more about you through how you plan to spend some of these cold days coming up. Does that sound good?

Michele Donati
Oh, that sounds fabulous. I love it.

Marissa Price
All right, perfect. So we're going to kick it off with a question and then we'll get into some of the other stuff that we definitely want to talk about today. From this list, pick your favorite movie.

Beauty and the Beast, Encanto, Peter Pan, and The Lion King.

Michele Donati
This is so hard. I'm going to say Peter Pan. Is it hard because you love them all?

Michele Donati
It's a classic. I do love them all. I love Beauty and the Beast.

Belle, she's in the book. I love to read, so I totally relate to her. But I would have to go with Peter Pan just because it's so whimsical and so fun.

I've always been a fan of Peter Pan.

Marissa Price
Perfect. All right, great. Question number one in the books.

Let's get into the media side of things. We're going to kick it off, get right into it. It's right there in the name.

Does the Horizon Future team have a crystal ball?

Michele Donati
I certainly wish we did. That would make our jobs a lot easier. No, unfortunately we don't.

As much as we are focused on being Horizon's strategic foresight group and really trying to project what's going to happen in the future so our clients can stay ahead of that, there's no simple formula for it. There's no silver bullet or crystal ball, that'll really get us there. It's a combination of looking into a lot of different signals that we get from the data that we work with in order to really project those potential futures so our clients can be prepared for them and not react to them.

We want them to be ahead of the game. That's really how we make it happen.

Marissa Price
Love it. Okay, great. Well, with that as the backdrop, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about your role and the role of the Futures team at Horizon.

Michele Donati
Absolutely. I lead up Horizon Futures. As we touched upon before, we're definitely focused on the future.

That's the future of consumers, the future of brands, tech, media, what's happening from a macro perspective. Within the team, we have three different pillars. We have our consumer and culture focus.

They are really focused on consumer sentiment. They do social listening. They’re tracking macro trends. They're 65 different subcultures.

We'll talk about that a little bit more later. We work with Sightly a lot actually in order to monitor a lot of those trends and subcultures. Then we have our future of channel.

They are very focused on the intersection between consumers and technology. How are they adopting technology and how is that changing the way they consume media? How does it change the way that advertisers really need to reach them and connect with them?

What does that mean for the media landscape? How do we really, again, get ahead of that for our clients in the future? Then the last pillar is our multicultural group.

They're very focused on diverse audiences and what are the best ways to connect with them in a meaningful way. They're also really focused on making sure that all of our clients bring a really inclusive lens to the marketing that we do in order to reach their consumers and connect with them in a really strong and impactful way.

Those are the three pillars and we all work together.

Marissa Price
I was going to say, okay, great, because I was going to ask, how often is that research done independently of each other versus the insights across those coming together for some type of more co-collaborative output?

Michele Donati
It's a collab. It is one big collab. Of course, each of the teams has their own focus and objectives, but there's so much overlap.

You think about culture, you think about consumer, you think about multicultural, channel tech, it's all related, which is why it's all in one group, quite honestly, but they each have their own specialty and expertise. Our multicultural team recently led a point of view on Bad Bunny and how he's going to be performing at the Super Bowl, but there's a larger macro cultural impact of that as well. Our cultural team was part of that.

Everything's really a collaboration across all three teams, which makes for a lot of fun. Very exciting.

Marissa Price
That's great. Obviously, our companies have a shared passion when it comes to all things, culture, media, and what it means for how brands want to engage with audiences and subcultures, like you mentioned. I do think it's interesting and really shows the value that Horizon is putting on those types of outputs and insights by having that dedicated resource across the board.

Some of your work is client based, other is more just general thought leadership, is that a fair way of looking at it?

Michele Donati
Absolutely. Our purpose is really to elevate the work that the agency does for our clients. We want to make sure that they're bringing the best solutions and the latest data and insights to the work that they do for them, so they make smarter media investments that are really going to move the needle and drive business outcomes.

There are things that we do that benefit the entire portfolio, things that as an agency, as a leader in the space, we really need to be ahead of in order to be leading the charge and pushing our clients forward and making sure that they're not stagnant, that they're really getting ahead of where the culture is going. We also do work specifically for our brands as well. We do primary research, we do social listening, we do brand evaluations, we help them map their brands to different subcultures, which ones does it make sense for them really to engage with based on their core brand values?

It's a variety of different things, both the mix of client direct and then, of course, enterprise-wide work.

Marissa Price
Yep. Great. Okay.

With that, we're going to get into movie number two.

Michele Donati
Okay.

Marissa Price
From this list, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Robin Hood, and Tangled.

Michele Donati
Ooh, this is good. You got some classics in there, some newer, some parts of the newer of the Disney canon.

Marissa Price
Something for everybody.

Michele Donati
I'm going to say Tangled.

Marissa Price
That's a good one.

Michele Donati
That's a really good one.

Marissa Price
That was too easy, so we're going to do one more.

Michele Donati
Okay.

Marissa Price
Aladdin, Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians, and The Jungle Book.

Michele Donati
Oh, man. I love The Jungle Cruise when I go to Disney. I have been such a sucker for that, so I really do like The Jungle Book, but Aladdin was amazing on Broadway.

Let's go with Aladdin.

Marissa Price
Aladdin. Final choice.

Michele Donati
Yes.

Marissa Price
Locking it in. Love it. Okay. Awesome. All right.

So getting back into some of the work that your team is doing, definitely a commonality we're hearing throughout that collaboration is the importance of getting to meaningful insights that become actionable in some way, right? That can take a lot of different form as far as how brands and even your agency team members can learn from it and take some type of action based on it. So how over time has your process, your tools, maybe the skill sets needed changed or evolved in order to get you to that insight, and how have you seen speed to insight potentially be impacted?

Michele Donati
I mean, we've always operated with a process, right? We have a guiding kind of overarching process that's very analogous to what our clients as marketers follow as well. So starting from understanding kind of the broader landscape, what's happening with competitive, what's happening culturally, to identifying what are the right audiences and what are the right objectives and communication goals that we need to have, to designing the strategic plans to reach those consumers, to investing in a really smart and efficient and impactful way, to optimizing and making sure that we're always learning there's this continuous improvement in how our brands are connecting with their consumers, right?

So we've always had this overarching process. However, I would say the past few years have been so exciting, especially as someone from an insights background, because the tools that we have at our disposal with the widespread adoption of large language models and AI being embedded into our entire workflow has been, I don't want to say revolutionary. I might be overselling it.

Let's just say it's been a big evolution. I would say probably the biggest that I've seen in my career. And it's so much more, like you said, the speed to insight is really there.

It's not that humans are being replaced. It just is really augmenting the human intelligence layer that we've always had. But it has been a little bit of a mindset shift, I think, for some folks to be a little bit more open-minded in the way that they work with these tools.

I think people are used to kind of going into a tool or a platform and pulling some data and having a very repeatable result. And when you're working with kind of chat-based tools and it's much more of an open mindset, it's like working with a human, right? So it's like how you ask the question is important.

It's not just picking specs. It's like you're engaging with a person. So that's been a big shift for, I think, a lot of people that have been in this industry for a minute, like I have, where they've had to really open their minds to a different way of working and a different way of engaging with data, gathering data, mining data, and really pulling out the insights and manifesting it as well.

Marissa Price
So I find myself saying please sometimes in my prompts.

Michele Donati
You don’t want to be rude. It hurt use manners.

Marissa Price
Exactly. But it is really interesting, right? Like that back and forth engagement.

And it's not just that first time getting that answer. It is kind of a process, like you said. That's probably a good segue to a recent announcement from Horizon Media.

Very exciting. I'm going to queue it up and tee up with a little... I don't know if it's the official tagline, but I'm into it.

So I'm going to go with it. And I think you'll know exactly what I'm talking about here. And then you can give us some more background.

Open beats closed.

Michele Donati
Yes. So we've recently launched Horizon OS, which is really our open ecosystem that we're working with for our clients every day.

The tagline, I don't know if that is the official tagline either, but let's just go with open beats closed. You know, as someone who is responsible for insights and really focused on innovation at the agency, having this open ecosystem is very liberating. It means that we're not beholden to one tech provider or one partner that's going to really drive and be the entire engine for everything we do.

Having this open ecosystem means we're going to use the best-in-class resources that we can in order to keep driving our clients forward. You think about Google. I'm not going to out-Google Google, or out-Sightly Sightly, you know?

So let's leverage all the different tech that's out there in order to really bring the best solutions to our clients. So there's a few pillars within that. We start with Blu, which is our AI-native, chat-based, large data platform.

That's really the foundation. That's where we access our Blu IDs, our 250 million individuals. We've got a number of third-party data integrations in there.

Then we have AgentQ, which is really more of an internal tool. It's a place where I can do a lot of innovation. It's a little bit of a playground for our team when it comes to manifesting insights and creating agents that drive experiences for brands.

Then we have the human intelligence layer, which we're all a part of, which is the human in the loop of that innovation. It's not just rely on the tech and the tech will take care of everything. No, the human is still a very core component, which is why we say it's one of the three pillars of the Horizon OS.

Then an offshoot of that, which you're very familiar with, are the Horizon OS labs. This is an innovation playground. It's for our clients.

We're bringing them in under the hood while we test and learn and try out new technologies in order to find out who are the right partners that we want to work with, from everything from insights gathering and cultural intelligence, which is kind of where I'm focused, to creative design, creative optimization, media partner selection, all the way back to identity resolution. Who are the right partners that we should be experimenting with in order to improve all the different parts of that five-step strategic process that I outlined before?

Marissa Price
Yeah, that's a really cool part, right? Horizon OS labs, like you mentioned, bringing in the best-in-class partners. I think for a few reasons, it makes a smart.

We know that there's that old question of build, buy, or partner. Horizon has so much expertise in so many different places, but to try to build every single thing, you're going to take away from somewhere. By partnering and creating this open ecosystem, you really are letting all the best technologies, partners come together in a way that makes the human layer as effective as possible, and the work that your team is doing and that others are doing at Horizon to have access to all of this in one place kind of elevates everybody, right?

And the work that your company can do across the board.

Michele Donati
Absolutely. I mean, the build, buy, or partner, I mean, I think it's such a smart way to go about innovation specifically because it's like, just because you can build it doesn't mean you should, right? And I think there's historically been this perception in the industry that everything has to be proprietary and bespoke and created by the agency, but that doesn't necessarily make sense from an investment perspective and also just from a speed perspective, right?

It takes time to build these things. I mean, we built Blu from the ground up, right? So we've done that, we've built, we know we can build, but if there are other places where we want to move a little bit faster or there's other people that already have tech that we can leverage to do the things that we want to do in these other areas, why not work with them?

So it's really been, I think, a refreshing perspective to have at the agency to adopt this kind of mindset when it comes to innovation with different partners.

Marissa Price
Do you think this lab's offshoot, like you mentioned, is going to change the way some clients potentially approach innovation, right? It almost feels like there's an environment created that's a little bit de-risked, right? A little bit pressure tested already for clients who maybe don't want to always be first to kind of cannonball in, but they still want to be future thinking, progressive, and making innovations on the way they plan, activate, optimize, but they need a place to do it that feels a little bit like, not that their path is totally plotted, but it's not completely uncharted territory either.

Michele Donati
Somewhere in the middle, maybe. Right. I mean, when we started this process, we're sending out RFIs to hundreds of technology providers.

I mean, can you imagine if every single one of our clients was trying to manage that process? It's too much, right? And every client has different appetites for risk and for experimentation and innovation.

So you're absolutely right. The labs brings together a curated list of folks that we've already done a lot of the diligence in terms of going through the RFI, understanding the core offering, making sure that everything that the tech provider is offering is privacy compliant. We've gone through all of that.

We put them through their paces and we're just bringing forth what we think are kind of the, again, best-in-class partners in all these different areas. And the great thing with this continuation of the labs is it provides this runway for different areas of exploration with the different sessions. So we can be very focused on creative optimization in one round or we can make sure that we're touching on every single part of our process with each lab.

So depending upon our clients' needs and their interests, we can really focus what we're doing at the labs and then also demonstrate leadership as an agency and making sure we're pushing them in the right direction through the labs. So there's definitely a benefit. One of the things that I think from all my work over the course of my career with new businesses, clients, they want to benefit from the agency knowledge that they have from working across the portfolio too.

So it's like, what has this brand done that maybe this brand hasn't done yet that we can help connect them through the labs and they can understand, oh, this client A is a little bit further when it comes to experimentation in this area than client B is, but client B has excelled in a different area. So the labs also creates a forum for them, for the clients to come together and learn from one another as well. Yeah, that's great.

Marissa Price
A little bit of a different way of thinking, right? When we talk about collaboration at the agency, that's a cool element to be bringing in for sure. Great.

Well, I think we worked hard, so I think we're ready for another. I think that was great. All right, you ready?

Michele Donati
Yes.

Marissa Price
Bambi, Frozen. Oh, okay.

This is going to be a hard one. Pinocchio and the Little Mermaid.

Michele Donati
Oh, this is, you know, I didn't realize how much of a Disney buff I guess I am until this quiz because I was like, oh, that's really good too.

Marissa Price
We're both learning about you, I guess. Really?

I know. I'm like, now I know what I'm doing tonight. I'm going to be watching some movies.

You know, Frozen will always hold a special place in my heart. You know, at the core, it's two sisters. I have a sister.

You know, when my niece was very young, it was when that movie came out and she was like many little girls and boys was like very into the Elsa and the Anna of everything. So I'm going to go with Frozen.

Marissa Price
Nostalgic because I have a niece of similar age and favorite for sure. Yeah. All right.

One more before we get to our next question. Alice in Wonderland. Elemental. Mulan. The Emperor's New Groove.

Michele Donati
Okay, I'm torn. I love Alice in Wonderland because it's just it was just so I mean, it's a great book and it was such a wild movie.

But Mulan is such a strong female character. She's such a badass. Like I got to go with Mulan.

Marissa Price
I was I don't even think I was giving you choice at that point. I'm like, I'm in it with you. It's definitely the one that we're going with.

Michele Donati
I can't wait to see what this is going to tell tell all of us about me at the end of this quiz. It's going to be worth the wait, Michelle.

Marissa Price
Okay, so we just talked about some of the recent developments with Horizon OS, some of the work that you guys are doing, the tech partners and that's all coming together. We're definitely really excited, like you said, to be part of that and bringing our cultural intelligence layer to a lot of the work that you guys are doing and bringing all those partnerships into one place is very, very cool to see. How do you think that's going to evolve some of the work that your team does?

What are the maybe spaces in the media landscape that you're excited about? Maybe you've already explored, but this is going to let you dig in even further and move even faster when it comes to developing new insights around some of the places that media is shifting.

Michele Donati
Absolutely. I talked about speed to insight a little bit earlier, and I think that's a place where Sightly can really help us because from our cultural intelligence perspective, we're tracking macro trends. We've mapped over 65 different subcultures and a lot of that is a very manual process.

You're gathering signals from different places and you're saying, hey, all these things together, there's a pattern here. It makes sense. It's leading me down a path of something.

Oh, this low-salt gamers is an emerging subculture, for example. A tool like Sightly and with your brand mentality platform really helps us gather those signals in a much more automated way and even identify signals that maybe were not on our radar to help us identify new subcultures and new trends. Part of it is that speed to insight.

I think being able to scale a lot of the work that we're doing is something that is really exciting because again, when you're focused on cultural intelligence, there's a lot of work that has to be done and a lot of judgment. It's a lot of art and science. The more we can use technology to get us a little step ahead and to speed things up, that means that we can scale this intelligence across for a lot more brands.

We can go deeper into different categories and different brands. That's very exciting. In the media industry, we've got a lot of really exciting things coming up.

We had the recent announcement of the Oscars going to YouTube. We've got an Olympics coming up. We've got the World Cup coming up next year.

We've got Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl. Live events are, I think, one of the last remaining cultural tentpoles. We've done a lot of research.

We have clients who invest very heavily into live events because it's a great way to reach a lot of people and be part of the cultural zeitgeist. What we found is that there are layers of a live event. There's the actual broadcast, the actual concert, the actual sporting event.

That's really the real-time hype. It's people who are engaging with the event in the moment and they're amplifying that across all different platforms. Then you've got really the social reverb in the days after the event.

Some of the real-time hype is the buildup, too. Olympics is a great example of that, where people are getting pumped or getting excited. I can't wait to see what Leslie Jones is going to do next year.

There's the real-time hype. Then you have the social reverb. How does this live event have a second life, if you will, online?

How people are engaging with the content days afterwards? I think about Bad Bunny's residency in Puerto Rico and the concert that was streamed. People were chattering about that online during the event.

Then they were also talking about it afterwards. Then there's the cultural afterglow. That's really when all of that social chatter grows into something more or something a little bit more indelible, when things start to get memed.

They become part of the cultural language and the cachet. The work that we've done around live events is really exciting. I think as advertisers and brands are looking at ways to connect with people in real-time, these layers provide even more opportunities for brands to really connect.

We know that there's only so many opportunities for people to be in the Super Bowl or to sponsor the Jingle Ball or certain concerts and sporting events. Because we found that there's these layers that people are engaging with, it just provides more opportunity for brands to really capitalize on the excitement. That's one of the very exciting things that is on our radar for the next several months, given everything that's coming up.

Marissa Price
Yeah, there is a lot, to your point, live events and the many layers. There are so many different ways of looking at it. Then through the brand's perspective, it becomes a really key piece too, which for us is really important.

There's culture, and then there's understanding how brands look at culture authentically and in a way that makes sense. What I love about what you said is there's tentpoles, the way we know and love them historically, but that's no longer that concrete start and end time. There is the lead-up.

There is the aftermath of it and what that all means and how people are engaging. That's the unpredictable part. Some of those cultural moments around the event is where some real opportunity can open up for brands if they're ready for it.

Now, what does ready mean? You can't have a playbook for it the way you can for sponsoring a big sporting event, but having a framework for decisioning, that if something happens and there's an opportunity that authentically aligns with your brand, how do you move quickly and take advantage of it? You need to be nimble in order to move quickly, because to your point, speed, it's important when it comes to insights, because it's also important when it comes to alignment and doing it in a way that feels relevant and correct to consumers versus just hopping on a bandwagon and doing it a little too late or in a way that doesn't make sense.

When brands can be ready to move quickly and have that framework in place, they're ready to be nimble and really capitalize on some of those opportunities that you couldn't have seen coming. Some of that afterglow and the reverb that you couldn't necessarily predict on a flow chart or on a video plan, that doesn't come through there. I agree because so much of our focus too is being ready to understand the moments as they unfold around those tent poles and being able to activate and move quickly and make smart decisions when it happens.

That work is really interesting. I'm curious to see how it will continue to evolve through the work that you guys are doing with Horizon OS and through the additional insights. I know the work that you did, I think it was called Redefining Live.

Michele Donati
Yes.

Marissa Price
I saw that come out as a little bit of a series, so I'm curious to see how that will continue to evolve because it is a really interesting space, especially heading into the next few months.

Michele Donati
Like I said, we have a lot of clients that are investing in this space, but even if you think about our offerings as an agency with Blue Hour and our whole creator offering, and then you think about HS&E, which is Horizon Sports and Entertainment, it's relevant across the portfolio. Everyone's trying to capitalize on the excitement of these live events. I believe it is a space that we will continue to probe into and produce more content there.

Marissa Price
Perfect.

Okay. We're up to a movie. Coco, Lilo and Stitch, Raya and the Last Dragon, Tarzan.

Michele Donati
Oh, I'm going to go with Coco. Those are all really good. Disney's got some great stuff.

Marissa Price
Coco?

Michele Donati
Coco for sure.

Marissa Price
Okay. Okay. Perfect.

One more then. Cars, Hercules, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There is a right answer in my household to this one, but I won't hold it against you, but there is a right answer.

Michele Donati
Oh no. Now I feel the pressure again.

I'm going to say Pocahontas.

Marissa Price
Okay. I like it.

Michele Donati
Although I really like Hercules too. I like all of them. I mean, Hercules is great, the whole Greek mythology thing, but Pocahontas, again, love a strong female lead.

Marissa Price
Love it. Pocahontas.

Okay. It's so funny you mentioned that, I was going to say the announcement of Oscars moving to YouTube in 2029, I was wondering, does that speak to the new definition of live events or changes as a whole that are happening?

Does it turn out that you do in fact have a crystal ball at the Horizon Futures team and you saw that one coming, right? With the work that you're doing around a live event. Do you see that tipping over and seeing more of that type of evolution in the space or any other type of evolution that you think is coming that we should all have our radars up for?

Michele Donati
It's so funny because it seems like in the media industry, we have this cycle of where we innovate, there'll be a disruptor, right? There's the streamers, right? Where the disruptors that came out and they were offering people these different types of experiences and alternative to broadcast and cable and everything.

And then the more the time goes on and the more that we need to evolve their business models, they start to behave a little bit more like the broadcast networks and the linear options that are out there. So I mean, you saw it with Prime and Thursday Night Football. We've seen it with Netflix and WWE.

All these streamers are getting into these spaces because they realize that there is a really strong value to engaging with people in the moment. I mean, there's so many brands that are very focused on specific sales windows, right? Whether it's retail or even consumer packaged goods, they have certain seasons and certain weekends that they really need to drive.

So a live event is a really great way for them to connect with folks and to make that happen, to get their message out there. So it's not really surprising to see that the streamers are now kind of moving into more of this live space because the excitement around that is not going away. We may say that mainstream doesn't exist like mainstream culture because there's been kind of this fragmentation and interest, but the tentpoles still exist. It's just the way people engage with them are different.

They’re just adapting to the way people are consuming the content and where people want it and this YouTube development is another example of that.

So not surprised. Definitely not surprised.

Marissa Price
That's interesting. A little bit of a what's old is new again.

Michele Donati
Kind of look at the bundling that's happening, right? You know, and the mergers and acquisitions that have been happening in the space. Like, it's not surprising for someone who's been in the industry for a couple of decades.

Marissa Price
Cool. Okay, last movie and then the big reveal. Brother Bear, Fantasia, Moana, The Princess and the Frog.

Michele Donati
Oh, I like those all.

Marissa Price
I'm impressed with your breadth of knowledge here.

Michele Donati
Well, I don't know the, I don't know the first one, I'll be honest. I don't know Brother Bear. I like The Princess and the Frog.

It's New Orleans based. You know, I went to college in New Orleans. That was a great one.

But I'm going to go with Moana. It's such a, it's a big one in this house. So I'm going to go with Moana.

It's a great one.

Marissa Price
Perfect. Perfect. Okay.

Well, while we tally up the results and do the big reveal, why don't you tell us a little bit more about where and when people can find the research coming out of your team?

Michele Donati
Oh, well, there's a lot of great places to engage with us. So we've got a Horizon Futures page within horizonmedia.com. So it's futures.horizonmedia.com.

And then we also have a sub stack that you can subscribe to, which is we put out content weekly there. And then we also have Futures Fridays on LinkedIn as part of the Horizon Media presence on LinkedIn. So in the new year, every Friday, there'll be a post from us.

And that's a great place to find kind of the latest and greatest content that we've produced as company and as a group.

Marissa Price
Awesome. Thank you. That's great.

Okay, here we go. Your favorite winter activity with perfect precision is ice skating.

Michele Donati
That's actually not bad. You know what? That's not too off.

I mean, I do like to ski and ice skating is a close second.

Marissa Price
That actually makes a lot of sense for the explanation, which is that you love the mix of elegance and exhilaration, even if it means a few dramatic slips along the way.

Michele Donati
I would say that's accurate based on my skiing and ice skating skills, even though I try every winter. Yes, I would say that's pretty on point.

Marissa Price
Thank you for being a good sport with our quiz. It was fun to hear more about your team, learn a little bit more about you and congrats again on the announcement around Horizon OS. We're really excited to see where that partnership takes us and where Horizon can do some amazing work across the board with the partners that you're working with and what it means for clients.

Michele Donati
Me too. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

One of the most interesting podcasts I've ever had to do. You're keeping it so fun.
Marissa Price
That's what we're going for.

Thank you.