How I Reverse Engineered A $100 Million Exit – Jason Lemkin

0:00:05 Art everybody election day in the United States is just a few days away and I’m here to officially endorse
0:00:12 Nobody because you should not be trying to get political advice from a podcaster that you like
0:00:16 I’m just a guy who does business and I’ve made a little bit of money on the internet
0:00:19 That does not make me an expert in politics. However today’s episode
0:00:21 Is about politics, but not in the way you might expect
0:00:28 I am fascinated by the marketing machine that is underneath political campaigns regardless of which candidate you’re going for
0:00:34 They’re spending over a billion dollars trying to persuade people to do a thing. That’s how business works, too
0:00:38 There’s marketing machine trying to convince people to push a button at the end of the day
0:00:42 and I wanted to understand the science the tactics and the
0:00:48 Persuasion techniques that the different campaigns have used over the years the best stories about what’s actually going on under the hood
0:00:51 And so I invited on a guy named Sasha Eisenberg
0:00:56 He studied this for a couple of decades now and he wrote a book that I thought was really good called the victory lab
0:00:59 So I invited him on to come tell us some stories about how
0:01:05 The marketing machines underneath political campaigns work. I think it’s fascinating. Enjoy this episode
0:01:16 And it seems like there’s this thing where
0:01:21 This whole industry that gets paid to help politicians get elected
0:01:24 I think it’s something like six billion dollars a year goes to
0:01:30 This group of people whose job is to be, you know, marketing machines for for political purposes
0:01:33 And when something works
0:01:39 They look, you know, the incentive is to go tell the world how genius you are and how it was your tactic
0:01:41 That was the thing that worked and when it doesn’t work. It’s like
0:01:48 Politician had no charisma. Nothing we could do there, right? They need to deflect in order for to survive
0:01:51 When you were writing your book, which is called the victory lab. Did you
0:01:58 I guess like, how did you get around that bias? Like, how could you figure out how open were these people and sharing what’s actually working?
0:01:59 Not and
0:02:05 Did you have to kind of like read between the lines to try to figure out where they just sort of grabbing extra credit versus what actually happened?
0:02:08 Yeah, it’s one of the most
0:02:11 difficult things reporting in this area. So, you know, I I
0:02:17 Was fortunate that I reported this book between election cycles if you go in right now and you ask
0:02:23 The harris campaign or the trump campaign or the super PACs working for them, you know
0:02:28 Show me exactly how you’re you’re testing your ads on online platforms. They are
0:02:31 That maybe they will tell you some stuff
0:02:36 They very selectly will leak out stuff and they think it’ll help them raise money usually
0:02:43 So you’ll read a story in wired one story in wired. It’s like inside Kamala Harris’s ad testing machine
0:02:49 And details are very carefully selected over the course of you know, during the campaign to give out to one piece
0:02:52 That then they can send out when they go out when she does to do a fundraising tour
0:02:59 You know in Palo Alto that can convince, you know, a bunch of of tech executives that that she’s running a smart campaign
0:03:04 So during a campaign though, it’s very difficult to get real details on what they’re doing
0:03:10 They don’t want to the value of impressing their donors is up against not wanting to you know
0:03:13 Give away any anything to the competition
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0:03:54 Right after election day
0:04:00 The campaign basically ceases to exist. So everybody is on to another job a lot of them are
0:04:05 You know looking for work or return to their consulting firms or starting new firms
0:04:12 Develop some trick or tool during the campaign. Is it isn’t there like some conference where they all go to like some uh
0:04:15 Some beach resort area where they go and they all get drunk and start talking
0:04:22 Yeah, I mean so there’s like a post-election sort of conference circuit where democrats or republicans come together to um
0:04:26 To kind of trade notes, but they they need to launch a business
0:04:31 I mean, it’s basically like every two years. There’s like a new sort of window for startups and and especially every four years and so
0:04:34 There’s a window where they go from
0:04:42 Being afraid that they will get fired if they talk to a reporter because if you are caught leaking even the most minor thing inside a
0:04:45 campaign that is you know
0:04:49 Fireable immediately fireable expense because they don’t want anybody but the spokesman or the candidate talking to them
0:04:51 And then two days later
0:04:55 They are trying to figure out what they’re going to do with the rest of everybody in the campaign is and so
0:05:00 They’re starting to take credit for everything they did. So, you know, I remember in 2012
0:05:07 You had this, um, the obama analytics department, which is really pioneering out that they had like 52 54 people in this
0:05:09 analytics program, which at the time was huge
0:05:16 They called it the cave and these guys, you know, I I was reporting throughout the year for slate at that point and and
0:05:20 Was able to eke out bits of of news over the course of the campaign through
0:05:26 Really judicious reporting and I would hear stories about the campaign manager summoning
0:05:30 people on the analytics department into his office to say did you talk to sasha because
0:05:35 You know, there was some inquest the final like it was pretty sad and then the day after
0:05:38 You know a whole bunch of them basically we’re getting Eric Schmidt to
0:05:42 Launch a phone
0:05:47 For them and we’re out giving interviews to everybody who wanted and taking credit for a whole bunch of things
0:05:53 That probably were not theirs alone to take credit for and and and the issue with that campaign is it has a binary outcome
0:05:55 right one candidate wins and the other one loses
0:06:03 And no one thing ever shapes that outcome not traditional things like you know what whatever happens on tuesday
0:06:08 It did not happen because one of the candidates chose the right vice presidential nominee or not
0:06:11 It did not happen just because of the just because
0:06:14 You know harris had a better debate performance than trump
0:06:16 It did not happen just because turnout was up in
0:06:19 pennsylvania and down in nevada
0:06:26 It was a confluence of dozens hundreds of big and small things and it’s it’s a storytelling exercise
0:06:33 To see who can basically tell the most convincing story about why the election turned out the way it did and there were political actors
0:06:35 Who want to tell that story right like
0:06:39 Moderates in the democrat party of kamala harris will win will say because she took moderate positions on this and that
0:06:44 But there are people who from a sort of technical tactical perspective want to will want to say
0:06:46 It’s because the tv ads were really persuasive
0:06:53 Or it’s because our social media strategy was so good and you need a good bullshit meter and you know
0:06:59 And then the best way to do that is just really be alert to everybody’s incentives for telling certain types of stories and be skeptical of
0:07:02 Of of the times where people have a real
0:07:08 Obviously transparent agenda and I think I and I think you know from a reader’s viewers perspective
0:07:17 Be be wary of any sort of monocosal explanation for anything in in electoral politics. No one thing did anything right right now
0:07:22 Well, I do think it’s fascinating that you you know when you’re talking about the behavioral change aspect
0:07:27 um, one of the great things any entrepreneur could do is sort of learn from adjacencies and so basically saying
0:07:31 Hey, if we want to win in politics, we could do things that have worked in politics
0:07:34 But maybe there’s things that have worked in the business world or you know
0:07:40 Sheldini wrote that book, you know about persuasion not for politics at all, but you could use things like that
0:07:42 I mean, it’s like
0:07:46 The way you describe that kind of like hey voter history is public. Here’s yours
0:07:51 Um, and here’s your neighbors and we’ll be sending an update later. That’s elf on the shelf
0:07:56 Right. That’s that’s me. Hey the elf is watching and he’s going to tell santa if you’ve been naughty or nice
0:08:01 It’s as simple as that. I don’t need to explain the virtues and why you should be wanting out of your it’s just very simple
0:08:04 Uh, somebody’s watching and and I think that that’s a very powerful thing
0:08:07 I also found it interesting because
0:08:10 What we traditionally hear if you just go turn on the news you turn on cnn
0:08:12 You’re going to hear a talking head explaining
0:08:15 They’re going to be talking about certain stories
0:08:18 And they’re going to be they’re going to bring on some expert pundit
0:08:23 Who’s going to tell you about how this thing that the vice president said during the
0:08:26 You know convention and how that has this huge ripple effect
0:08:31 But it’s actually just the most recent thing that happened. Yeah, and one thing I found fascinating was the story that you wrote
0:08:37 about biden’s 2020 campaign and you talk in the in the article you wrote about
0:08:41 They realized that they were flush with cash
0:08:46 They were going to have more funding than they they were going to have more funding not less funding than what they needed
0:08:49 And so I guess the campaign manager or somebody was you know asked somebody on their team
0:08:51 They go if you had an extra 10 million to spend
0:08:54 To have the highest impact, where would you spend it?
0:09:01 And there was this idea about misinformation and as biden called it the malarkey factory
0:09:06 And um, I thought this was pretty fascinating. Can you talk a little bit about the malarkey factory?
0:09:11 And specifically this idea of the harm index if you remember that I can kind of prompt you it’s what I found fascinating there
0:09:15 So, you know, I think that in in 2020 there was um
0:09:17 The campaign called a disinformation
0:09:22 But I think really to step back like they were trying to understand this new viral media environment
0:09:27 So, you know, if you go back just eight ten years in in politics campaign
0:09:33 Uh operatives would track communication by you could get a record of all the tv ads that are bought
0:09:39 By by cans you could see all of them. There’s services that will that will record and um
0:09:43 Allow you to access them digitally
0:09:47 You could see all your opponents campaign finance reports
0:09:50 You have a pretty good sense of where they’re getting money and how they’re spending it
0:09:54 Um, but you can have a uke and you can read the press coverage or see what’s on the news
0:09:57 You had a pretty good idea of where voters were getting their information
0:10:01 What the internet had changed is now like basically anybody had the ability to launch
0:10:07 Um a story and some of these get called disinformation because they’re they’re clear they’re transparently false
0:10:13 But for political operatives the real thing was like stuff’s moving that we don’t know where it came from or where it’s going
0:10:17 And and and what the motives of the people behind it are right because it’s not coming from our opponent
0:10:20 Like we know what our opponents trying to accomplish that they have the same brain we do
0:10:24 But if this is like Macedonian teenagers who are trying to gain like
0:10:27 uh
0:10:32 online clicks for for ad revenue or this is a foreign intelligence service or this is somebody
0:10:36 Like in their basement doing it for for the laughs like we don’t
0:10:40 We can’t game out like what they’re thinking stories are going viral
0:10:43 It could have an impact and we don’t know who or why
0:10:48 It’s it’s but who’s behind it. Yeah. And so the initially impulse was
0:10:53 Don’t you know you you’d have all these sort of lessons from the old world
0:10:59 Kind of media consultants like don’t let it an attack go unanswered right always be on offense
0:11:03 Um and like yeah, that makes sense if your opponent is attacking you on
0:11:06 What you know is one of their big themes, but if like
0:11:12 Somebody in in Saskatchewan is making something up about you
0:11:19 To impress their friends. Maybe you shouldn’t respond and maybe you can make the problem a whole lot worse by responding, right?
0:11:23 Um, you elevate it you can you can end up engagement
0:11:30 Algorithms can end up could end up helping spread it by you trying to fact check it
0:11:35 And so the binding campaigns mentality was let’s shift from thinking about this as a supply side problem, which is
0:11:41 Thinking about individual bits of content that are coming out every day and deciding how and when to response them
0:11:45 And basically as they said playing whack-a-mole with like whatever the new thing that was trending that day
0:11:47 And let’s think of this more as a demand side problem
0:11:53 That the most of the stuff we probably don’t need to respond to it’s not actually going to change voters opinions
0:11:58 But the stuff that we do need to respond to the campaign said is the stuff that that
0:12:05 Meets existing anxieties that voters have about biden or about paris or about certain issues
0:12:09 and so let’s preemptively try to understand which
0:12:17 Viral narratives would be most damaging to the campaign would do the most harm so that when they pop up on a given day
0:12:24 We have a framework for not overreacting or reacting to the wrong one. So this was the harm index. That was the the idea there
0:12:31 Yeah, that’s what we enter big survey over the course of the summer of of um of 2020 and they and they took a lot of story lines
0:12:36 Some based in truth and in a lot based in in uh, some version of lies
0:12:44 That they targeted the ticket so they you know, and they would ask voters basically like three questions. Why are you familiar with this two?
0:12:47 Uh, does it uh, do you think it’s true in three? Do you um?
0:12:51 Would it make you less likely to vote for joe biden? That’s that’s very simple, right?
0:12:56 Three three three questions and they’re doing this in person. This is online. How do they get this online?
0:13:01 This was online panel testing. I think that they did and they would just show my headline, right?
0:13:05 They’d be like hunter by this laptop weapon corruption, right? So yes
0:13:10 So the hunter biden corruption stuff. This would be for the laptop. I think but you know
0:13:14 Trump had already been impeached about trying to draw attention to his ukraine ties
0:13:16 A lot of people said that they were familiar with this hunter biden stuff
0:13:21 Not that many people said that it would actually make them less likely to to vote for joe biden
0:13:24 And then they did focus groups and it came out that people
0:13:28 People did not think the biden was fundamentally driven by his personal financial pain
0:13:32 And so they might have thought it was they might have been familiar with it
0:13:34 They might have even thought that there was some truth to it
0:13:37 But it didn’t really change the way that they thought about buying on a core issue
0:13:45 However, the stuff related to his age and his mental infirmity that stuff obviously a lot of people knew about it
0:13:47 um
0:13:49 And at the same time though a lot of
0:13:55 Pursuatable voters said it would make them less likely to vote for biden and the focus groups revealed that it wasn’t that they were actually
0:13:59 This wasn’t news to campaign that they find had an age problem in 2020
0:14:00 um
0:14:04 And the way that the communication staff on the campaign had dealt with this thus far was
0:14:10 They would set up like photo ops of him him bicycling or like tell them to jog up the stairs to his plane
0:14:12 right like
0:14:18 And and what came back from the focus groups was like this was all wrong voters were not worried about
0:14:25 Uh, his physical well-being they want concern like that. He wasn’t going to get his steps in in the white house
0:14:27 They were
0:14:29 They saw him as a fundamentally weak political figure
0:14:32 I think a lot of this had to do with being defined as vice president
0:14:37 He was like he won the he won the primaries of creating. He’s never the main character of that race
0:14:39 And there are a lot of voters who said
0:14:45 Basically like I kind of like the guy, but I don’t really know what he cares about or what he wants to do or who he’s going to listen to
0:14:47 and
0:14:52 That manifested so it wasn’t it was about his political weakness, but it manifests itself in being
0:14:55 susceptible to
0:14:58 Questions being raised about his physical condition and mental condition
0:15:04 And so what the the way the campaign responded to those was first they went out in a
0:15:08 Started buying ads in places where people who would be exposed to that type of content
0:15:12 Pursuadable voters who would be exposed that type of content work
0:15:18 So there’d been this effort on the left for a while to to boycott fox news and Breitbart websites
0:15:23 On the buying campaigns. I know we’re buying advertising there because we want to get next to the content that people are seeing
0:15:30 Do they bought like search terms? So if you typed in, you know, biden and senile or something you you would probably get
0:15:33 Cookied and shown like a youtube pre-roll ad
0:15:39 And they were things that if you were modeled as one of the persuadable voters who was sensitive on this age thing
0:15:41 You would get targeted
0:15:45 But you would not have any idea that it was about his age the most successful
0:15:48 ad that they tested to these people was
0:15:51 15 seconds of biden
0:15:56 To camera just talking about like I grew up in scran and I have middle-class values
0:16:02 And that’s why I want to you know cut taxes on middle-class people and raise them on the rich or something like really banal
0:16:03 because
0:16:10 All the research suggested that these people just wanted to hear him and his own voice saying what he cared about and what he would do
0:16:12 that’s the people who who were
0:16:17 Who could be turned off by the attack by claims that he was seeing I’ll just wanted to hear that like he could articulate
0:16:23 His basic his basic world view right in a firm voice direct to camera not edited
0:16:25 Like you know and and and they were suspicious
0:16:29 of of things that looked too glossy or too slick
0:16:31 um
0:16:37 And so there was a sort of push away from kind of the traditional aesthetics of political advertising, right like a lot of like
0:16:42 Here’s a headline and here’s a thing and here’s a cut and here’s some like
0:16:48 Yeah, there’s more and and here’s and here’s some stock footage of farmers, you know eating ice cream and like no it’s like
0:16:51 Really something very
0:16:55 Clearly looked unedited. Um, because the because the people who are sort of
0:17:00 Open to this were were ones who were sort of innately suspicious of political communication
0:17:03 right right and so this idea of they
0:17:08 Took the stories and they’re like you had the sleepy joe stories. You got the creepy joe stories
0:17:14 You got the hunter biden stories tested on people figure out three questions. Have you heard about this?
0:17:16 Do you think it’s true?
0:17:21 And is this gonna like you know make you less likely to vote for for for biden?
0:17:26 Super simple and then basically counter figuring out what is the counter programming message at first?
0:17:29 They thought hey she’ll i’m on a bike that counters the sleepy joe message
0:17:32 I think they had this score where on the x-axis it was like
0:17:36 number of people who are aware of it on the y-axis it’s like
0:17:41 How much it’s gonna impact their vote so they just they could just have a board that showed all the issues
0:17:44 As like oh a lot of people are aware about this hunter biden thing
0:17:48 But it’s not it’s not effective to vote low harm score a 25 harm score
0:17:54 And then yeah, I skip I skip mark shonka like I think the first little podcasting is described charts people love that
0:18:03 The x-axis was the reach so it’s harm index the x-axis was the reach right how many people had heard about it right and y-axis was
0:18:11 What the infact yeah, you know impact and so you know and basically that the campaign’s thinking tactically on this was
0:18:12 um
0:18:16 If it’s in the bottom if it’s on the left of this thing we don’t need to worry about it
0:18:21 If it has high impact but low reach let’s keep an eye on it because if it spreads
0:18:25 If it makes the jump out of like some corner of 4chan to
0:18:30 To you know mass media or you know getting to normal people on facebook
0:18:35 Then we will have a problem so let’s be prepared and then the stuff in the upper right hand corner
0:18:40 It’s reaching the voters we care about and it’ll change their opinions like that’s where we need to act
0:18:42 right right
0:18:50 Hey, let’s take a quick break to talk about another podcast that you should check out it is called the next wave
0:18:54 It’s hosted by matt wolf and nathan lands as part of the hubspot podcast network
0:19:00 Which of course is your audio destination for business professionals like you you can catch the next wave with matt wolf
0:19:05 And he’s talking about where the puck is going with ai creators ai technology and how you can apply it to your growing business
0:19:09 So check it out listen to the next wave wherever you get your podcast
0:19:18 What about um trump so you wrote that book in 2012 i think 2011 2012 time yeah
0:19:20 so then
0:19:22 this guy who is
0:19:24 you know this
0:19:29 Persona this tv personality comes from the business world not a politician at all runs his campaign
0:19:32 I think he even has admitted that like
0:19:37 It wasn’t like he didn’t think he was going to win initially and therefore he talked about like
0:19:39 I didn’t really have a plan because like you know nobody thought we would win
0:19:44 We just thought we were doing our best and then when we got when we won I had to figure out the plan on day one
0:19:49 What do you when when you look at that? What do you see do you see this kind of like master marketer?
0:19:54 Do you just see this anomaly? Do you did he use the normal playbook? Was did he throw out the normal playbook?
0:19:56 What did what did trump do?
0:19:58 so trump in 2016
0:20:02 What he did in the conventional sense was the big the big shift was he went from
0:20:06 An uh tv dominated campaign for paid advertising
0:20:10 He obviously dominated tv almost every day of the year in terms of free media coverage
0:20:14 But his budget um, which is much smaller than hillary clinton’s was
0:20:23 Typically, there’s a lopsided indifference between tv spending and digital spending and and also by direct mail and some of the
0:20:27 the non-digital tools and I think he had he had like half the money
0:20:31 Which is like unheard of the only place where you might see that
0:20:37 These days there’s like a city council candidate in a place where it’s too expensive to buy television and all they can do is
0:20:40 Is you know spend 40 000 on facebook ads, right?
0:20:46 You never see high-level campaigns of any size that are that are at parity in those two and the reason trump
0:20:54 Spent and was ready to spend money online starting in real way starting in the spring of 2016 was that jared kusher
0:21:00 Came to him and convinced him that this what trump doesn’t like spending money. Um, he’s you know
0:21:03 Pete’s claim also doesn’t use a computer
0:21:08 Yeah, so this is kind of amazing like uh, did you see this clip that’s going viral right now of
0:21:13 Him sitting there watching kamala’s speech. Have you seen this clip? I haven’t
0:21:18 Yeah, it’s it’s uh, it’s from some I think there’s like a documentary. I guess it’s like a clip from it
0:21:22 And so, uh, it’s called the art of the surge. I’m not sure if it’s that right? Yeah
0:21:28 And so he’s sitting next to this blonde woman. I don’t know who she is and he’s literally like orating his tweets
0:21:33 So he sees kamala say something on tv and then he goes
0:21:37 Um, no way. We’re gonna let that happen exclamation point
0:21:44 Um, not on my watch and send and then she’s typing and she says and he just does like 16 of those in like this like clip
0:21:49 Because people never knew like wait this guy doesn’t use computer. Is he even behind his social and they showed him doing that
0:21:53 Which is hilarious from that point. He’d had out he’d had a twitter account for five years
0:21:58 and and and he understood that to be a big part of his celebrity and ability to drive traditional news coverage, but
0:22:02 spending real money on on facebook ads not just on
0:22:10 You know self-made content and hoping it it spreads organically that came because because jarred kusher came to him and convinced him
0:22:14 Then instead of all the other things in the campaign where consultants are begging you to spend money
0:22:20 And it goes out the door that you could make this a revenue center by fund by through for fund raising
0:22:26 So you typically tv ads you you pay the money to try and change people’s opinion and you hope you get votes afterwards
0:22:30 If you buy ads you can you target them well and you have people who want to give you money
0:22:34 You can obviously this is why charities do online fund raising and stuff
0:22:41 and so Trump started spending real money on facebook because he was seeing a return on and
0:22:45 That resonated to him. It was it was the it was the you know
0:22:52 It was economic motive fundamentally more than it was a part of a political strategy and what he ended up doing
0:22:55 um by the combination of
0:22:59 His organic ability to draw attention
0:23:04 um online in ways that that traditional politicians couldn’t
0:23:06 and the fact that they were
0:23:12 um amplifying and catalyzing it through through what ends up being eventually some some real paid
0:23:16 spending mostly on facebook advertising but also a little bit on other platforms
0:23:21 He was able to create a community online that was you know
0:23:28 Really deep and meaningful and to the people who are part of it and you know, I think that we thought at the time
0:23:32 You know the idea was that obama was the great digital era politician because he had
0:23:36 He had developed the best, you know the best and biggest lists
0:23:42 That was the measure in in 2016 the measure of a successful online politician was how many sign-ups
0:23:48 How many email addresses do you have how many people have given you their cell phone number and opted into letting you text them
0:23:54 How many people followed you on platforms and that basically was supporters that you can now communicate with for free
0:24:00 Right, that’s all all that all that represents is you no longer have to pay to advertise to them
0:24:05 They have have given you the information and authorization to talk to them
0:24:11 And but what did obama do with that these tens of millions of supporters who had had chosen to
0:24:13 to um sign on in some way
0:24:19 Well, he basically asked them to give money and occasionally to volunteer or take some action
0:24:24 Um, but it was very transactional. It was very one sided
0:24:26 uh, and
0:24:33 What we realized in retrospect and that was basically every politician in the united states till trump came along and what trump did
0:24:37 Mostly by instinct not by any strategy or I think great
0:24:41 abstract conception of like how to communicate digitally because just
0:24:44 He gets it in a in an animalistic way
0:24:46 was that
0:24:48 you
0:24:53 Should engage like a poster does right and that means you know obama never like re
0:24:55 amplified is
0:24:59 retweeted or shared his his supporters content
0:25:08 Why because if you’re the obama campaign in 2012 you spent hundreds of millions of dollars on opinion research
0:25:09 polling
0:25:14 focus groups other qualitative research testing your ads in your mail
0:25:19 You have come down at that point you have come to the to the
0:25:24 syllable on what you want to say on which issues when to whom how
0:25:31 And the whole campaign is this command and control exercise to make sure that you’re saying the exact right saying at the exact same time
0:25:33 At the right time to all the right people
0:25:39 So the idea that you would take your most enthusiastic supporter who’s tweeting at you all day and just like share with your followers
0:25:45 Is so antithetical to the way that political professionals think about the best way to communicate and trump does it because he does it impulsively
0:25:48 Ha ha that’s funny. Let’s share it right
0:25:51 And what he did was he created
0:25:58 A community of people who were invested who felt like they were part of the campaign and they ended up you know
0:26:03 The whole mean culture around him the online maga community
0:26:04 is is
0:26:06 Is a I think a far more satisfying
0:26:13 Satisfying place for its members to reside online because they get all this reinforcement from like-minded people
0:26:18 That obama or hillary clinton or joe biden never gave even if they collected a lot of names of people who
0:26:20 Ended up giving them money online
0:26:24 Right and that is that is a gift that I have not seen
0:26:26 we’ve seen politicians and
0:26:31 get some part of that for some period of time bernie sanders had some of that whatever else but there’s
0:26:37 You know still so Paul the idea you have to relinquish a certain amount of control over your communications
0:26:41 And there are very few politicians who who are willing to do that
0:26:47 That is fascinating to me that I did not know the the story there of kushner coming in and basically like
0:26:52 Changing the frame from we spend money to try to buy votes versus we spend money
0:26:57 To rake in more money and then that one dollar becomes two that two becomes three and three becomes four
0:27:04 That we can just continue to fundraise this way and then and ultimately if somebody’s giving you their money
0:27:08 They’re probably closer going to give you their vote right so it’s not like you’re only doing one versus the other
0:27:14 Japan’s have always had a very clear divide both in terms of like the org chart within the headquarters in terms of the budget
0:27:18 And in terms of what you say and where and some of it’s because of regulations around around
0:27:20 political spending but like
0:27:27 Fundraising communication is a very different beast inside a campaign than persuasion or or get out the vote
0:27:29 communication and
0:27:32 Totally different offices in the campaign, but like what trump?
0:27:35 I think sort of just
0:27:40 Naturally found now was if you’re spending a lot of money prospecting on facebook telling people why you’re great
0:27:46 On some of that will go to people who will end up shipping in 10 bucks and signing up for recurring payment, right?
0:27:51 Some of it will also will go in front of people whose opinions you are helping to shape
0:27:56 Some of it will go help turn people already support you into volunteers by getting this and that
0:28:00 Campaigns did not typically think that they thought of it as we’re having
0:28:02 We have our fundraising targets
0:28:03 We have our
0:28:08 Who almost by definition are not your persuasion targets because your persuasion targets are people whose minds aren’t made up
0:28:11 Your fundraising targets are people already support you and you’re trying to get them to give more
0:28:18 Yes, yes, um, okay, so I like that and it seems like you know trump is this kind of blend of
0:28:22 Uh celebrities like an influencer brand right in the same way that you know
0:28:29 Kylie Jenner you know Kylie Jenner can sell, you know makeup better than uh than a makeup brand that doesn’t have an influencer
0:28:34 Or that you know, George Clooney can sell alcohol or you know, ryan reynolds can go sell
0:28:40 Cell phone service through mary mobile. It seems like the ads using trump worked and it sounds like you’ve also kind of
0:28:42 pointed out that
0:28:44 He created a bit of a community
0:28:49 Whereas like I can’t even really tell you what is comal like I could tell you trump’s community
0:28:55 Which is the maga movement and I kind of know who they are what they look like what they what they stand for and what they’re all about
0:28:58 I don’t even know what the name of the community would be
0:29:03 For kamala like it would only be people who hate trump. I think is the only answer
0:29:05 There was a little bit of they call themselves the k-hive
0:29:10 Of like a little cluster of of kamala supporters
0:29:15 But that campaign did not last long for a reason which is I don’t think that there is a particularly broad-based
0:29:19 Um, enthusiasm for her never met a lot of k-hivers
0:29:25 She has been at some disadvantage and there’ve been advantages to starting a campaign
0:29:29 In july but a lot of disadvantages and a lot of it is that
0:29:30 you know
0:29:36 audience online audience takes a long time to build and you know, I I think that she
0:29:42 I think it’ll be an interesting conversation to have after the selection as to whether she will have had the shortest presidential campaign
0:29:44 in
0:29:48 Modern american history by far, right? I mean that the general
0:29:52 Tendency has been towards these two-year campaigns and she’s gonna have a four month
0:29:59 Right campaign. Well, she’s done a couple things well, right? She raised a lot of money very quickly. She’s she’s out raised trump
0:30:01 She’s also
0:30:06 I’ve you know her tiktok when she started she you know picked a medium and it seems like they were picking alternative medium
0:30:10 So, you know trump has done a lot of podcasts. She’s done a couple the podcast seems to be a bigger
0:30:13 part of the equation this this time
0:30:20 She went super viral on tiktok right away and they had a bunch of songs and little earworms like you know
0:30:24 JD vance’s you know, i’m a never trump guy song that that that was great
0:30:26 You know, they’ve done a bunch of things like that
0:30:29 You know when he said the thing about eating the dogs eating the cats, you know within minutes
0:30:35 It’s viral on tiktok as a song that somebody remixed and so I think they’ve done a lot of interesting things there
0:30:39 Does any of that stand out to you? Do you have opinions on any of that? I’m curious how you look at that
0:30:45 Um, you know, I think one other thing that they did which is pretty novel is that they have
0:30:51 Gotten into the like clipping and amplifying little bits of every crazy little thing that trump says
0:30:56 I mean, there was this school of thought among democrats. It was pretty prevailing. I think for for
0:30:59 Most of the trump’s which is don’t give him oxygen
0:31:04 Don’t give him exposure. You’re only feeding the whatever and uh, they would scold journalists
0:31:06 Or why are you taking his speeches live?
0:31:12 And why are you guys sharing your clips of everything he says and now go to the kamala hq account and
0:31:16 It will be it’s like those guys, you know the media matters guys or whatever else
0:31:21 We’re just clipping like all these wild things that that that go on fox news just these seven seconds
0:31:26 He said that, you know, you can electrocute yourself with uh with a car on the moon or something and like look at this crazy old guy
0:31:29 And that’s a very different mentality about how to go at trump in particular
0:31:33 Then democrats had and so you know, I think that they they feel like they
0:31:40 The the digital team in in the campaign, which is basically inherited entirely from the biden campaign
0:31:46 They feel a little unshackled. They have much more to work with I think that there was you know, um
0:31:52 Obviously, they have a a candidate who’s more dynamic and him closer to pop culture
0:31:56 They have more celebrities who are eager to be associated uh with the campaign
0:32:01 They also, you know, I think that there was a a sense that biden
0:32:03 um
0:32:08 So emphasized like the dignity of the office and trump is beneath this that there was a sense of like
0:32:12 let’s not get down in the mud and and play trump’s game and I and
0:32:15 um, I think that there’s a real freedom to do kind of name calling and
0:32:19 Stuff that that the biden people would have thought is sort of pettier than their brand
0:32:25 Um, you know, and so so yeah, I think that they’ve been far more willing to mix it up in
0:32:27 online
0:32:34 Um, I I do think though this is an area where she probably you know and engage with influencers and such but
0:32:39 If she’d had an extra year to cultivate those relationships online
0:32:44 Some of that would be showing through now in a way that they’ve just been you know scrambling to
0:32:49 I mean they were doing things in august that campaigns are usually doing the previous march like you know
0:32:53 Designing a logo, right? I mean like really like day one type type things
0:32:58 You’ve studied and covered elections for like more than 15 years
0:33:02 I think who do you think is running the better campaign right now?
0:33:04 Not who’s gonna win, but who’s running a better campaign?
0:33:10 I thought trump for most of the year was running as good a campaign as
0:33:17 He could run now. I start to see a real mismatch between what they claim is their strategy and
0:33:23 And the organization that they have been building for it, which is you know in short
0:33:27 So much of the trump plan seems to be based on
0:33:32 mobilizing young men, especially young men of color
0:33:35 um
0:33:40 And there’s reasons in polling to suggest that there’s real room for for him to gain in a way that
0:33:42 That few republicans have there
0:33:47 But the you know, that’s that’s this job of basically going to people who are not voters
0:33:49 and turning them into voters and
0:33:54 All the research I’ve written about suggests that you know the best way to do that is
0:33:58 high quality face-to-face interactions
0:34:02 Uh from a volunteer be sure to volunteer from a voters community and them
0:34:08 To to have these sort of socially meaningful interactions to give them really practical advice like you know
0:34:11 Where’s your polling place and and and and all of that stuff?
0:34:16 And the campaign has made a decision to effectively outsource a lot of that
0:34:20 You know what what people call ground game or field organization?
0:34:25 but the real boots on the ground part of campaigning to america pack which is the elan musk uh
0:34:28 funded super pack
0:34:37 And typically the division of labor on campaigns has been that that sort of nuts and bolts labor intensive work that does not scale up easily, right?
0:34:44 You know that going from 100 people in west philadelphia knocking on doors to 200 people knocking on doors in west philadelphia takes twice as much
0:34:53 Work in capital going from 100 ads on tv in pennsylvania to the same ads running twice as often takes basically no more effort
0:35:00 And so the way that there’s been this big question for about 15 years about how do you divide responsibilities between campaigns and the super packs outside?
0:35:05 different sets of rules different advantages for each of them and typically the way it’s broken down
0:35:08 Is that campaigns and the party committees will do that labor intensive work?
0:35:13 That doesn’t scale up and the money on the outside will basically buy ads
0:35:19 Mostly tv some digital that amplify the message because they can’t coordinate with one another directly
0:35:21 the
0:35:23 The trump people blown up that model
0:35:28 and they’re now trusting this outside group that musk runs to
0:35:33 Do this door knocking thing? What is he doing because I actually haven’t followed it fully
0:35:36 He’s going mr. Beast. He’s giving away a million dollars a day
0:35:40 I I don’t even understand what that is. Can you explain that? What is you on doing?
0:35:43 So he’s paying people to get their friends to sign petitions
0:35:47 She can get like in a 47 dollar bounty or something if you can get your friend to sign a petition
0:35:51 That says like I believe in the first and second amendment and give your information
0:35:57 Um, and what is that? Why why that I can come up with a few theories of what?
0:36:02 They could do with that information, but it seems like a pretty roundabout
0:36:04 Way to get information that’s already available
0:36:10 Like there’s already a database of every voter in the state and if I wanted to know people in pennsylvania who care about
0:36:13 uh
0:36:17 You know who are conservators or you know, or maga or and own a gun like that’s
0:36:24 A combination of publicly available or viable information. I shouldn’t have to pay people to go collect it from their neighbors. Um
0:36:27 And so it seems
0:36:33 Like a tactic you would use that’s far better if you’re trying to have a long-term movement
0:36:35 organization building thing which doesn’t
0:36:42 I haven’t seen any indication that that ilan musk is trying to build a generational movement here. Um
0:36:46 It does not seem like a particularly effective way to to to get people to
0:36:50 To vote for the first time or the second time in their in their lives
0:36:55 So that’s one big part of what they’re doing then they’re doing just a lot of basically hiring day laborers to go
0:36:57 knock on doors
0:37:02 and there’s been a bunch of reporting wiretests and the reporting uh daily beast, I think on
0:37:10 It’s like it isn’t any industry hiring people off the street and and paying them by the hour or or um,
0:37:12 or product contacts, um
0:37:19 Leads to a lot of bad work and you have a lot of really poor incentives for people to either be inefficient or or give you bad data
0:37:23 If you’re if you’re if you’re paying them uh per complete
0:37:28 So I I I’ve sort of shifted my view on the competence of that the the trump organization
0:37:31 over the course of the year because it seems like they they
0:37:36 They haven’t aligned their strategy with their their tactics and an organization
0:37:40 And I think common hairs is like a far more traditional democratic campaign
0:37:45 And there’s a a kind of you know sensible logic to it even if if she’s made a few mistakes along the way
0:37:48 It sounded like the thing ilan’s doing, um
0:37:54 You know, he’s trying to sign you can’t pay people to vote. That’s illegal
0:37:59 So it’s kind of like I’ll pay you to sign the petition and the petition says something that sounds very like agreeable
0:38:03 Like I I support free speech. Yeah, who doesn’t right like that sounds pretty reasonable
0:38:08 But like it seems like there must be some some 3d chess going on that I’ve not I don’t fully understand
0:38:10 Which is what what do you do after that? What’s the point of that?
0:38:15 Yeah, I mean if you use that information and then you have a really good operation to call those people
0:38:17 Maybe target them with digital advertising
0:38:21 Call them and knock on their door and say I know you’re a first and second amendment voter
0:38:27 And you sign the petition devoting yourself to the cause now do this and this like there’s actually a reason to think that works
0:38:32 But that’s just then one step. That’s just the first step in a three or four step process and you need to be really
0:38:36 Good and targeted at the next few steps because
0:38:40 You know one real difference. It’s important. I think for for your audience keep in mind when you
0:38:44 Um learning from adjacent fields is is great and important a lot of the breakthroughs
0:38:47 I’ve written about have come from people in politics looking to to business or elsewhere
0:38:52 But there’s some really different really important differences between business marketing and political marketing
0:38:54 And one of them is that the cost of uh
0:39:00 Of mis-targeting out of a false positive in your modeling is really high in politics, right? So if you are
0:39:03 If you have a consumer product
0:39:12 And your coke and you put a coke ad in front of somebody who’s on a diet or doesn’t like sugar has diabetes or like whatever
0:39:15 Okay, you wasted
0:39:18 For that person big deal
0:39:22 If you are the trump campaign and you send a door knocker
0:39:25 To do a get out the vote reminder to somebody who is
0:39:29 Your data tells you is should be a trump supporter, but they’re not
0:39:32 um or
0:39:33 There’s one trump supporter in that house
0:39:40 But you remind three other people the three women living with that one trump supporter that it’s election day on tuesday too
0:39:44 And it makes them more likely to vote or your person’s just kind of inefficient, you know like
0:39:50 Lazy and they knock on the wrong door in the apartment complex and they end up going to the to the Harris supporter and reminding them
0:39:56 You’ve not only you haven’t just wasted that interaction. You’ve created a vote for your opponent
0:40:01 There is nothing the only thing like that in the marketing world where there’s that cost to
0:40:08 Uh misidentifying your targets is maybe an insurance for or or credit cards
0:40:13 Where if if a company thinks that they can extend you a ten thousand dollar or credit limit and you’re not good for it
0:40:16 They made a big mistake right if an if an insurer decides that you
0:40:21 That you’re uh, you know should be a five hundred dollar premium and it turns out that you cost them a lot more
0:40:24 They’ve really screwed up but most consumer marketing like
0:40:29 There’s not a huge downside to getting your message in front of the wrong people but politics
0:40:34 There is and I think that’s the big mistake that a lot of people
0:40:38 And perhaps Elon or the people around him make as they move from business to politics
0:40:41 They say let’s just throw resources at it when I needed to
0:40:45 When I needed to build, you know create interest in Tesla
0:40:50 I just bombarded all these people digital advertising about tesla offered them all a free
0:40:56 test drive and you know cocktail at our at our at our cool, um, uh
0:41:05 Showrooms like that probably works to start building interest in tesla. It’s a terrible way to to try to turn out voters for your candidate
0:41:12 All right a quick break. I know that if you’re listening to my first million that means you love numbers
0:41:16 Well, I’ve got a new podcast called money wise and the premise is simple
0:41:22 We talk to high net worth people so people who have somewhere between 50 to 500 million dollars
0:41:26 And we start with simple premise which is tell me exactly how much money you have
0:41:32 How much money you make every month what your portfolio looks like how much money you spend every month
0:41:36 And every other bit of information that involves your net worth and your spending
0:41:41 And the reason we do this is because I want to demystify money
0:41:46 So we just had this woman named ann who has a 94 million dollar portfolio after selling her business
0:41:50 And she spends 360 thousand dollars a month and she talks about where the money is
0:41:54 And what she spends it on and why she spends that much and if it makes her happy or not
0:41:58 And then we dive deep on different topics like children buying versus renting
0:42:03 Giving money away. We basically are having a conversation that I see a lot of rich people having behind closed doors
0:42:08 We do it publicly so check it out. It’s called money wise and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts
0:42:17 And when you’ve been looking into a space like this like how disillusioned do you get and really I guess the question is
0:42:25 You’ve now studied multiple election cycles. You’ve heard you’ve talked to the teams behind this and then the different subsections of this industry
0:42:30 What’s like, you know, when I clean my house and I move the couch and I’m like, oh my god
0:42:35 There’s 10 years of my kid snacks under here. Like, what’s the thing or you’re like, I wish I didn’t see that
0:42:37 I wish I didn’t know that what what is the
0:42:42 ugliest part of this that that really has you know, you you saw or turns you off
0:42:46 I mean, I think the disinformation stuff is is you know
0:42:52 I generally was encouraged in the early years of writing about this because the people who were at the cutting edge of using this data and experiments
0:42:58 Were generally in the business of trying to get more people to vote or giving voters information that was more relevant to them
0:43:01 And that struck me as like democracy was
0:43:05 Was improving because of technology and innovation
0:43:07 um
0:43:08 If I use
0:43:12 Campes have a lot of data about individual voters. That doesn’t really scare me a lot of people have a lot of data about voters
0:43:16 And they were usually instead of giving you some vague thing about, you know
0:43:22 Morning in America if I if I think that you’re likely to care a lot about about, um, you know
0:43:29 Cancer research and I give you a now tormented message about what I my campaign would do for cancer research
0:43:31 Like I think that that’s generally good for the country
0:43:36 What what has changed is I think you have so many people have the ability to reach large numbers and voters now
0:43:42 We’re just not constrained by a lot of the expectations about honesty and can’t be held accountable for what they say
0:43:44 and
0:43:47 And I think that that that is is is scary to me
0:43:52 What’s going on now because ai has now made it easy to do deep faked audio
0:43:58 I can make I can make it I can make donald trump say anything for like, you know, 30 cents on my computer right now
0:44:02 I can make a video that shows, you know, something that I want happening
0:44:11 Um, I could have if hey if uh, if phone banking works. Why can’t I just spin up an army of ai phone agents to just call everybody
0:44:16 What is what have you seen as the new tools and is that has that happened this cycle or you think it’s next cycle?
0:44:18 relatively
0:44:22 Maybe less the cycle than I would have thought if we’d have this conversation a year ago, um
0:44:28 You know, I think that campaigns this is a place there were some campaigns that wanted to be first because they realized
0:44:33 I’d get a lot of attention and and um and wanted that but I think most campaigns
0:44:36 are afraid of the backlash of of
0:44:44 Of being associated with with ai even for not necessarily even from for manipulation
0:44:49 But just like, you know on non-live callers and and so I think there’s a hurdle that
0:44:58 Campaigns have from a kind of brand image perspective about being associated with with new or potentially sort of invasive feeling technologies
0:45:04 um, and so there’s been less of that where people are using ai the most in this campaign is like
0:45:10 Sure the same way we all might use it which is like brainstorming first drafts of of fundraising emails
0:45:15 You know like most fundraising emails. They need to come up with new ones every day to send to people
0:45:22 they’ll basically use the same types of of uh themes and and and messages
0:45:24 You’re probably going to eb test them anyway
0:45:27 So instead of having a bunch of you know
0:45:33 23 year olds who just you know graduated from liberal arts colleges like typing out your first drafts and trying to see whether the
0:45:38 The one that scares people into thinking you’re losing was going to do better than the one that has like jaylo’s
0:45:46 Signature under it. Why not have the machine come up with 10 different jaylo ones and test those and that’s I think like probably that that
0:45:52 The most we’re seeing um ai or automation being used in this campaign, but I think obviously that’ll change over the next few years
0:45:55 right um wire
0:45:58 Why is cambla doing like a a fortnight map?
0:46:03 they just released like a they’re basically like advertising in video games which I think others have done in the past but
0:46:07 I mean those people aren’t even old enough to vote. I think the average fortnight player
0:46:08 What’s the psychology around that?
0:46:15 So it starts from the position of having more money than they know what to do with and they’re being an unusual scarcity issue for
0:46:22 Political markers, which is like one you have one day by which all your sales have to be completed. I don’t think there’s another
0:46:28 Industry I mean there’s seasonal industries. I guess like a july 4th firework store. Yeah, right. So like
0:46:34 Um halloween stores probably make some interesting pricing decisions on november 1st, right?
0:46:35 um
0:46:38 So one thing is that they like have a lot of money. They have to get out the door
0:46:45 And all of the tv is bought up in you know, we’re down to seven battleground states the tv markets are saturated
0:46:49 There’s a point at which you can no longer send out new direct mail
0:46:50 um
0:46:57 If you wanted to get more volunteers knocking on doors you probably had to start building offices and having staff to train them months ago
0:47:00 And so at the end of the campaign you start to see
0:47:02 Uh, the end of this, you know, right before election day
0:47:09 You start to see campaigns making decisions that are driven less by efficient like overall efficiency and more by
0:47:12 Basically, where can we very quickly park some money?
0:47:18 and and I think that that um, you know that that’s when you start to see like soundtracks and
0:47:21 Stuff like that because there’s just nowhere else to put it
0:47:26 some people have called this election the the sort of the the podcast election because you have
0:47:29 Podcasts have become this huge medium
0:47:36 You have unedited unfiltered conversations. It’s kind of one of the only ways you can actually see what a candidate is really like
0:47:41 I was joking with my buddy. I said I think going on theovans podcast should be a new
0:47:43 federal standard for presidents
0:47:48 I just need to know if my president’s a good hang or not. Yeah, and uh, theovan might be the only guy who could save us there
0:47:54 um, you know, trump did rogan jd vance just did a three hour thing with rogan and famously kamala
0:48:01 And you know rogan said hey, you can come out to austin and let’s do you know, two three hours unedited in my studio. She said no
0:48:02 um
0:48:05 There’s two reactions to that one was wow
0:48:10 What a dropped ball you could have gotten in front of 30 million people in a like super meaningful way
0:48:16 Another was how dare you joe? She’s the vice president and there’s a few days left for the election
0:48:18 How do you have demands you should be you know?
0:48:20 Crawling to her to do this
0:48:25 And other people would say you’re not going to convince anybody who listens to rogan to vote for you count for for kamala anyways
0:48:32 What do you think about the role of podcasts and was it a mistake for kamala to not go on rogan?
0:48:35 I think that her campaign
0:48:37 um
0:48:41 Was slow to put her out in
0:48:46 a lot of different venues, you know, there’s that week where she did call uh, uh
0:48:52 Call her daddy and and the the view and it was like oh and then maybe she did colbert or kimmel or something
0:48:58 It was like oh, she’s doing media now and right part of what was shocking about that was that she was doing so little of it early on and like
0:49:03 Again, they had to build a campaign from scratch really quickly at a at an inopportune point
0:49:05 She had to pick a vp. She had to get ready for
0:49:10 You know a nomination speech debate all the stuff that she did not expect. She was going to have to do a few weeks earlier
0:49:12 so um
0:49:16 but also, you know, one of the advantages that democrats had in in
0:49:22 dumping biden from the ticket and getting her was you had somebody who first of all to send more energy
0:49:28 In theory, she can like work a full day and do a bunch of things that biden isn’t expected to do
0:49:31 the other thing is she’s more dynamic and she’s you know
0:49:35 More in tune with pop culture and I think there was some sense that
0:49:43 Wow, democrats are gonna go from somebody who does like three rallies a week and his his staff is afraid to put in
0:49:46 You know, I’m like face the nation not even
0:49:48 feels on like
0:49:51 to somebody who can do five events a day and
0:49:54 interviews non-stop and she’s charismatic and and
0:50:00 Intelligent and all these things and that never really came to fruition and I don’t know
0:50:08 How much this I think might be one of the things we start to learn after the election when when some journalists or book authors get
0:50:12 A little access into what they were thinking. I think one of the questions is how much of that was just that they didn’t have the
0:50:15 time to do as much of it and and
0:50:17 That would be could be sensible to me
0:50:23 The other or was it that the staff was fundamentally afraid that the downside of going into an unstructured
0:50:29 Two hours with joe rogan offsets the the upside of of getting in front of that audience
0:50:33 Can you give me a couple minutes on your new book? So you got this new book out
0:50:37 What’s the what’s the premise and then can you give me maybe one of the juicy?
0:50:41 Findings or learnings or stories that you had from it
0:50:45 Yeah, so it’s about this sort of new era. We’ve we’ve we’ve bouncing it out of this
0:50:49 But the new asymmetry that’s created when in this digital environment where
0:50:52 Is that their opposition is is not their opponent?
0:50:58 It’s not another candidate or party it it could be you know, the foreign intelligence service or somebody who’s
0:51:03 You know attacking you for shits and giggles or or who knows what and and
0:51:10 How sort of what the the search for a playbook for for learning how to communicate in that environment because it blows up
0:51:16 So many of the expectations about about campaign strategies and I write a bit about that biden
0:51:21 Example in there, which I think was really a really important shift in starting to think about
0:51:29 The recipients of disinformation more than the producers of disinformation, which has been I think a big mistake that that not just campaigns of people in the media
0:51:32 Make and try to understand what impacts only we’ll have
0:51:36 But I also worry about a really interesting group called we defend truth that
0:51:39 this this it’s a progressive group that
0:51:43 Has been trying to fight basically conspiracy theories
0:51:48 around the 2020 election and around around covid vaccines
0:51:53 They basically have gone out and hired some of the more successful like jiff and meme makers online
0:52:00 You know a guy who had like the most likes on him gathering stuff and their their theory of the case
0:52:03 is that
0:52:05 you need to be engaging in the in the
0:52:10 In the vernacular of the internet meme warfare. You have to you have to fight memes with memes
0:52:15 You have to fight memes with you and you need to be communicating in the way that that online audiences expect to be communicated to
0:52:19 Which means be coarse and be and be funny and you know
0:52:25 Be kind of in the pop culture conversation. Do not feel like political communication. Do not feel like marketing
0:52:30 Um, and you know, I I quote one of their um the sort of head guy there
0:52:33 He says like you need to earn the right to communicate with people and to do that
0:52:36 You have to usually entertain or inform them first
0:52:40 And I think it’s a really interesting way of starting to think about
0:52:43 how traditional political communication
0:52:50 Has to fundamentally rethink itself from the one way broadcast dynamic that a lot of the modern
0:52:52 um
0:53:00 Thinking about campaign was shaped into the kind of you know two-way or multi-linear sort of environment that of social media
0:53:02 It reminds me of like when
0:53:06 You had tv and movies were like the dominant video
0:53:12 Like media and if you were making a tv show you could afford to spend the first few minutes
0:53:15 If you watch the first couple minutes of a tv show, it’ll be like
0:53:19 The scene starts in new york a guy’s walking
0:53:22 We don’t know who he is what he’s doing and then there’s like this harmless scene
0:53:25 And then it finally like you get to the characters and the story
0:53:27 If you ever watch a tiktok or a youtube video
0:53:33 Like in the first five seconds, they’re doing something to tell you do not click away
0:53:35 Stay on this video. You got to watch this video
0:53:41 Like I hang out with mr. Beast and he’s like he could recite to me the first 40 seconds of of script
0:53:46 From a video he did three years ago because he drilled it so many times and every word
0:53:51 Was chosen of like I cannot like leave this first minute up for grabs
0:53:53 Right and what he talks about because I asked him I said, you know
0:53:56 Do you ever look at tv and what you could learn from them and he goes?
0:54:01 Yeah, but what they could learn from us. I mean, he’s like do tv would never survive
0:54:07 On youtube and you he’s like people would click away and have terrible retention rates terrible click-through rates
0:54:10 They couldn’t survive in our world. And so similarly what you’re talking about is
0:54:16 In the old world where it’s my message versus the other candidate’s message and it’s just those two. It’s a 1v1
0:54:21 You know, there’s one playbook and now you’re saying you’re just playing the field
0:54:26 There’s the field of the internet where there’s stories and information coming from all kinds of different people
0:54:29 With all levels of accuracy and different levels of impact
0:54:35 How are you going to respond to not a 1v1 but sort of you versus the entire field of content that’s out there right now
0:54:41 And what’s your playbook to win there? Yeah, absolutely. And I think we’re only now starting to get you know
0:54:45 People have campaigns having a more
0:54:49 Instinctual understanding it used to be so much of online campaigning
0:54:51 you know
0:54:57 In the 2000s 2010 was basically let’s take things we’re already doing offline and figure out how to move them online, right?
0:55:00 Okay, so we know how to make 30 second videos and put them on tv
0:55:04 Let’s just turn them into you know, maybe we have to go from vertical horizontal or vertical or whatever
0:55:07 But let’s just figure out how to get them on to onto social media platforms
0:55:13 Can we can we do something online that looks can we basically take our direct mail program out of the that?
0:55:18 The usps and put it on into email and now I think we’re starting to get people in politics
0:55:20 some of it’s a generational shift some of it’s
0:55:27 Democrats realizing how poorly they’ve been outfoxed on online during the chanbera just started like we need to really step back
0:55:31 and rethink some of these foundational questions of how and why you
0:55:34 communicate to certain people
0:55:41 I want to I want to leave with one last question, which is what do you think is the most mispriced or misunderstood opportunity?
0:55:47 In elections meaning if somebody hired you and they’re like, all right, you’re gonna you’re our consultant
0:55:49 um
0:55:54 And you got to give them input to do something that maybe they’re not already doing or maybe they’re doing but not enough of
0:55:59 Where would you place a bet that you think has sort of more upside than people are currently?
0:56:02 You know taking advantage of
0:56:03 so less
0:56:05 maybe not economic upside
0:56:08 but
0:56:13 sort of political entrepreneurial upside would be in communicating with the voters
0:56:16 outside of election cycles and um
0:56:20 uh, you know, I think there’s a great example now like
0:56:24 The best I think we’re gonna if trump wins this election
0:56:30 We’re gonna look back and say arguably his best period was a period in 2021 2022 when he was largely out of the news
0:56:36 Republicans are distancing themselves the media wasn’t covering him democrats had hoped he was gone and stopped attacking him
0:56:39 and he was able to
0:56:44 Start to build up some sense of nostalgia for the trump years a lot of it like
0:56:48 Not based in a real understanding of what 2020 was like when he was president
0:56:57 but have distance helped him and if democrats had kept like a foot on his neck through advertising reminding people yes the reason you know
0:57:03 Wherever unemployment was in in inflation were in 2021 was because of the guy who was just there
0:57:05 reminding people about
0:57:11 Some of the kovat dynamics, but like they pulled away from him at just the moment that they propped they
0:57:14 could have um
0:57:19 continued to define him and I think there are a lot of reasons for that political money disappears
0:57:22 out of cycle you only get the surge of interest in cycle
0:57:25 but um
0:57:28 There’s short people starting to talk about party based branding, right?
0:57:33 So like so much of our political our political communication paid to me at tvs are almost entirely about candidates
0:57:35 and yet
0:57:41 Like when we started this conversation was that basically 45 percent of of the country are democrats of 45 percent of republicans
0:57:45 And they’ll always vote for their party and yet no political advertising has spent branding the parties
0:57:52 And I think there are advantages to doing that in a counter cyclical way when people are not being bombarded by
0:57:54 Tons of tv ads
0:57:57 But be reminding people the republican party stands for this and this
0:58:00 Here’s how the democrats screwed up last time or vice versa
0:58:03 um and try to
0:58:05 Think about not just
0:58:10 Winning votes in an election, but but sort of long-term audience building for a party
0:58:18 I like it. Uh, maybe you could also be one of these these political, uh, consultant shops that are making bank
0:58:23 What’s what is the what is the business that stunned you if how much it makes in the uh, in this sort of election
0:58:28 In this election marketing business. Is there any whether it’s a polling company or a research company that like
0:58:35 Is there any like multi hundred million dollar companies out there that do this the business model that’s still most astounding is is uh
0:58:42 Media buyers who get paid a commission off of off of the ads they place when percent of ad
0:58:49 Of ad spend and you know digital advertising is more labor intensive for them. But buying tv is
0:58:54 You know, there are only so many stations in in wisconsin that you could put ads on and
0:59:01 You know, it doesn’t take any more work to double the buy and they get paid a commission off of them
0:59:09 And they’re you know that that that’s in this been that way for decades and this is is there one like dominant ad buyer that like
0:59:17 There are a handful on in each party, but um and you know, they’re they’re probably having revenue in the
0:59:20 Some of them also make ads and so they’re part of a bigger media business
0:59:27 They’re probably you know playing on a high end in the in hundred million dollar revenue range. We’re not talking about you know
0:59:30 huge companies but
0:59:37 But it really does not require at this point a lot of savvy or or or or labor ad buyers one
0:59:39 Give me one more. Is there any other cool business that?
0:59:45 That is maybe it’s like a one-man shop that makes you know 10 million a year just doing a specific thing or
0:59:48 Is there any other interesting business niche that that you just stumbled into?
0:59:52 There’s still some interesting stuff to be done with data and modeling
0:59:58 Um, especially, you know, there are a lot of sort of boutique firms that will do campaign specific modeling
1:00:00 but what’s happening now is
1:00:01 that the
1:00:06 Things that presidential campaigns were able to do only presidential campaigns are able to do maybe 12 years ago now
1:00:14 Somebody running for county executive can use and I’m not sure that there are this is more an opportunity that people have mastered
1:00:15 but I think that there
1:00:19 have probably opportunities to figure out how to package and translate that for
1:00:26 Small-scale campaigns that do not have professionals always working on them the person running for state rep in your neighborhood
1:00:33 Her brother might be like the effect the fact of campaign manager and whatever else and often that the delta between
1:00:37 What what a sort of engaged layperson?
1:00:41 Trying to run a campaign can do and the sophistication of the tools and data available
1:00:42 It’s just too much to bridge and they don’t do it
1:00:48 But there probably is a way to to price those and create tools that are more accessible
1:00:53 That that’s where I think that’s a place that if people were looking to try to get into the sort of tech end of the political business
1:00:55 There’s there there’s price of opportunity
1:01:01 Very cool. Sasha, I appreciate you coming on and give us the extra time man. This is fascinating. Thank you so much
1:01:04 Where should people find you send them to your book? Tell them what tell them what they need to know
1:01:10 Yeah, my new book is called the lie detectives in search of a playbook for winning elections in the disinformation age
1:01:14 And I have a website Sasha Eisenberg. So it’s my first name in last name.com
1:01:20 Um, you can find all my books there. My my first one was about the global sushi business, which may be of interest to
1:01:26 To to you too. So, um, it’s been really fun. I I love talking about politics from an angle
1:01:33 That’s different than one people are saying on cnn on any given day. So thank you. All right. Thanks so much man. That was great
1:01:34 future
1:01:38 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
1:01:44 I put my all in it like the days off on the road. Let’s travel never looking back
1:01:46 Bye
1:01:48 You
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