THE TWO-MINUTE VIDEO CLIP has a low-budget, jittery feel. Quick, clumsy transitions tee up self-consciously cheesy reenactments. The vibe is high school AV club—except for the clip’s narrator. He looks like a stock photo of a bureaucrat, in a dark gray suit jacket and blue dress shirt. His wide-set eyes never look away from the camera; his hands never stop gesticulating.
The man is the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and as elevator music swells, a title screen reveals this to be another edition of “Office Hours With Gary Gensler.” Normally, these short videos are upbeat explainers on topics from SPACs to offshore shell companies. But this is a special edition about the perils of celebrity-sponsored investment products. (Short summary: Be careful!)
Gensler shared the episode with his 250,000 Twitter followers on Oct. 3, 2022, and it was particularly special because it coincided with big news: The SEC had extracted a $1.26 million settlement from Kim Kardashian, related to the actress failing to disclose that she had been paid to plug a scammy cryptocurrency token on Instagram. Published at the outset of the Monday morning news cycle, the video had the desired effect: Media outlets from CNBC to the New York Post lapped it up. The SEC—and Gensler—appeared everywhere.
Federal agency heads—typically buttoned-up lawyerly types—don’t traditionally devote their time to semi-cringey social videos. But Gensler has posted more than 30 episodes of “Office Hours,” each one a potential magnet for media attention. In an early November interview with Fortune, Gensler describes “Office Hours” as core to his mission. Investor protection and education, “engaging with the public,” are what the SEC should be doing more of, in more creative ways, he says—to give investors the information to make good decisions. “It’s about articulating what this reform agenda is,” he says.
At the same time, “Office Hours” is cheeky and unabashedly combative: quintessentially Gensler. He’s been an SEC chair like no other—a fixture on TV and social media. And he relishes battle, whether it’s sparring with crypto advocates, tussling with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, or wrangling with other bureaucrats over who gets to set the rules of the road for investors.
Gensler’s hard-charging approach has made him one of Washington’s most recognizable figures. And halfway
