Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover

By: Ellen McGirtWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:22 AM

Not long ago, he was the butt of jokes--lockbox, earth tones, a postelection beard. Then he dusted off an old slide show and jumped with both feet into the private sector. The untold story of how an epic loser engineered what may be the greatest brand makeover of our time.

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Joel Hyatt, CEO of Current TV, says he and Gore set out “to democratize—small d—television first and the media industry generally.”

Former Goldman Sachs exec David Blood cofounded Generation Investment Management with Gore. The firm now has nearly $1 billion under management.

Al Gore Inc.
"I have really enjoyed the business world much more than I expected," says the former Vice President. Among his business and financial interests.
An Inconvenient Portfolio
Al Gore's financial-services startup, Generation Investment Management, buys shares in companies that fit its founders' definition of sustainability. The firm doesn't disclose holdings, but public filings reveal some familiar names--Whole Foods, Staples, and General Electric. Here's a sampling of seven other lesser-known stocks in the portfolio as of March 31.
Video: The Future of Online Advertising--Current TV VCAM (viewer-generated commercial)
Current TV is tapping into the future of online advertising, working with advertisers to create viewer-generated commercials like this SONY HDV ad created by a 16-year-old. To date, some 32 VCAMs have hit the air. T-Mobile has selected three VCAMs already, and Pop Secret, Sony, and L'Oreal are also using VCAMs.

His biggest unpaid superstar is Gore himself. On the night of the Grammys this year, Gore went from dressing room to dressing room backstage, recruiting performers. He was in the midst of lobbying the Red Hot Chili Peppers when he was called to the stage to present the award for best rock album--to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. When the group came out to accept the award, they told Gore they'd do the concert.

Live Earth was inspired, Wall says, by An Inconvenient Truth. After he saw the film at its premiere, he talked to NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker about broadcasting the concerts across the NBC properties and lined up the BBC and MSN as partners, then reached out to Gore. "I told Al, 'I don't need anything from you, I just want to hand you the mike.'"

That Gore now finds himself the celebrity draw is ironic, given that his star "performance" revolves around a slideshow. When Laurie David and the documentary team she'd assembled--director Davis Guggenheim, producer Lawrence Bender (of the Kill Bill movies), producer Scott Burns (famous for the "Got Milk?" ads), and coproducer Lesley Chilcott--went to San Francisco to lobby Gore about making a movie, he was reluctant. His global-warming spiel was just a lecture, he said. How would it work as a film?

He relented, though--in part because he was so passionate about the slide show. Working first with flip charts and a slide carousel, and now with Apple's Keynote software, Gore found he could talk to people in his own voice, without the handlers, image consultants, and intermediaries that turned him into a sound-bitten, earth-toned version of himself in 2000. Gore was happy to continue traveling the country with his slides, but David had a more aggressive agenda: "Let's get it out there!"

The production schedule for An Inconvenient Truth was so compressed that Gore joked it was like making "Kill Al, Vol. Three," a friendly jibe at Bender. Filming began in July 2005; the premiere was at Sundance the following January. In between, Katrina hit. "I was scheduled to give the slide show in New Orleans that day," Gore says. "The audience was the state insurance commissioners who wanted to learn more about hurricanes and global warming."

The movie was released theatrically in New York and Los Angeles in May 2006, in wide release in June. And by March 2007, Gore was thanking the Academy. Part of the proceeds from the film go to the Alliance for Climate Protection. The film has made more than $50 million worldwide; 50,000 DVDs have been given away to schools and nonprofits, and 850,000 copies of the book have been sold.

Back in New York, I ask Gore to explain what he meant when he said he wanted Current TV to be transformational. He answers with a 10-minute history lesson on the computer. "It's a geeky analogy, but you're from Fast Company, so you'll like it," he says good-naturedly. Sketching a diagram on a file folder, he reveals just how geeky he is himself. He certainly needs more than 30 seconds to get his point across.

That helps explain why, despite the interest from so many Democrats in his political aspirations, he seems genuinely distanced from the idea of running for President--at least for now. "What politics has become," Gore explains at one point during our discussion, "is something that requires a kind of tolerance for artifice and manipulative communications strategies that I just find I have in very short supply. I just don't have the patience for things that seem to be greatly rewarded in today's political system."

Politically, his outsider status makes him a potential kingmaker.

If this is sour grapes over 2000, it doesn't sound like it--at least not from the vantage point of 2007. "A politics of ideas, driven by passion, seems to encounter a headwind," he tells me. "I do think that the Internet is bringing revolutionary transformation. I have not ruled out the possibility of getting into politics sometime in the future," he says, "but I don't expect to. Because I don't expect things to change. If they did change, then I would feel differently."

As a political figure, Gore may be more palatable as a possible dark horse than an actual candidate--precisely because he seems incapable of turning his passions into sound bites. And in any campaign, he might find himself on the defensive for his business activities. In his slideshow tour, he has been paid by many companies, which could be used to challenge his integrity. (He routinely cuts or eliminates his fee for schools and other nonprofits.) He also headed the Apple board committee that cleared Steve Jobs of wrongdoing in the stock-options backdating scandal.

Sitting where he is, his outsider status makes him a potential kingmaker among the Democratic candidates. He has said he expects to endorse someone eventually. Whoever gets the nod can expect Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection to run its own campaign on the issues.

Gore sees no reason to apologize for not wanting to jump into the electoral fray. As a businessman, he can speak with a candor few successful politicians can maintain. He has made an enormous amount of money and achieved positions of influence from technology to financial services to media. He and Tipper are even setting themselves up as angel investors for a few early-stage tech companies they believe in. In doing one end run after another around the status quo, he has created a new life: a perfect amalgam of environmental activism and a new type of capitalism in which there is more than one bottom line to consider, more than one master to serve.