AI transcript
0:00:06 What’s up, y’all? It’s Kenny Beach, and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can’t even remember when.
0:00:09 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:20 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:24 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach, so you don’t miss a thing.
0:00:32 Welcome to Office Hours with Prof. G.
0:00:40 Today we’re continuing our special three-part series, Prof. G. on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today.
0:00:44 What a thrill. Let’s bust right into it.
0:00:48 Okay, what do we have here? Our first question comes from Dom on Instagram.
0:00:49 He asks,
0:00:54 More and more companies are taking political stances as part of their branding.
0:01:04 Growing up, I was told that businesses should never talk about religion or politics in order to stay out of trouble and not segment customers.
0:01:06 Does this hurt companies in the long run?
0:01:10 Do you think it is smart that businesses are moving in this direction?
0:01:13 This is going to require some nuance.
0:01:16 So I’ve served on a bunch of public company boards, seven.
0:01:17 I’m kind of a big deal.
0:01:18 Kind of a big deal.
0:01:21 And probably 24 private company boards.
0:01:26 And my general view on political statements is that it’s mostly virtue signaling from the CEO.
0:01:33 It likes to get in front, especially about three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, get in front of a younger workforce and talk about all this woke nonsense.
0:01:36 Because why it was nonsense is because they didn’t believe it themselves.
0:01:39 They were just trying to score, like, acquire virtue.
0:01:45 Like, I don’t have enough Gulf Streams or shares or options here, so I want to capture social status.
0:01:47 I think that’s actually a pretty decent criticism of the Democratic Party.
0:01:58 Instead of focusing on the material and emotional well-being of consumers, they want to pretend that they’re grabbing virtue rather than actually getting any fucking thing done at the ground level in terms of what actually impacts people.
0:02:04 So I generally think it’s a good idea to stay out of politics.
0:02:07 I try to separate the person from the politics.
0:02:15 I live just south of Palm Beach, and a lot of my friends are Republicans, and I just think they’re batshit crazy.
0:02:19 I just don’t understand how they can tolerate some of this nonsense.
0:02:23 But at the same time, I also recognize they’re thoughtful, nice people, and I enjoy their friendship.
0:02:31 So I try to ignore it when they put out a reel saying, oh, finally, the truth that these food products cause autism.
0:02:33 And I want to write, dude, didn’t we go to college together?
0:02:35 Are you really that fucking stupid?
0:02:37 Because I know that will damage the friendship.
0:02:39 So I try to separate that.
0:02:41 I also try to separate the company from politics.
0:02:42 Now, Prop2 doesn’t do that.
0:02:44 You know, we’re a media company.
0:02:45 We’re a small company.
0:02:52 We are highly political because a lot of what we do is putting out thought leadership, opinion, et cetera.
0:02:58 And still, we would probably be a bigger company if I just focused on business and tech rather than taking political stance.
0:03:00 But at this point in my life, I get to do whatever the fuck I want.
0:03:01 See above.
0:03:01 I’m going to talk about.
0:03:08 My favorite is when people say in my newsletter, they write, oh, get back to talking about business or things you know.
0:03:11 Basically, I got a lot of like stay in your lane.
0:03:12 Well, you know what my lane is?
0:03:14 Whatever the fuck I want to talk about.
0:03:15 And I’ve earned that.
0:03:16 And I’m finally there.
0:03:21 Anyways, anywho, for most big public companies, you do want to avoid politics.
0:03:25 Now, having said that, occasionally an opportunity comes along.
0:03:29 Race relations in the U.S. were capturing a lot of attention.
0:03:40 Colin Kaepernick was a great quarterback, two-thirds of Nike’s customer base under the age of 30, not kind of on board with how race relations were going in the United States.
0:03:46 Anyone who was upset about them embracing Colin Kaepernick, who burnt their Nikes, had to go out and buy their first pair of Nikes.
0:03:48 It was a very smart move.
0:03:58 They probably alienated somewhere between 5% and 10% of their TAM to embolden or entrench or inspire 90% of their addressable market.
0:03:59 That’s a really good tradeoff.
0:04:01 We are in that moment right now.
0:04:09 And essentially, I think that things have gotten so out of control where we’re rounding up people with the wrong tattoo, doing really stupid shit around tariffs.
0:04:14 It’s going to do nothing but elegantly reduce our prosperity, put thousands of small businesses out of business.
0:04:20 Doge, which was nothing but literally like, okay, how stupid can you be?
0:04:21 We’re going to cut $2 trillion.
0:04:23 No, I meant $150 million.
0:04:24 No, I meant $60 billion.
0:04:27 No, I meant less than the subsidies to Tesla.
0:04:39 I mean, that has been handled so poorly, so poorly that Americans are so fed up that the biggest commercial opportunity in a decade, and I said this last week and I’ll say it again.
0:04:57 I said it in the last office hours and I’ll say it again, is to come out not against Trump so much, but to come out in favor of American values of decency, of competition, of being thoughtful around our economic policy, of embracing our great immigrant population, PhD students, of rule of law, of due process.
0:05:00 All the things that we’ve come to expect are American.
0:05:05 That company, that company will register a torrent of new business.
0:05:10 I mean, for God’s sakes, this guy is flailing, literally flailing.
0:05:14 This is the biggest commercial opportunity in the last decade.
0:05:24 In sum, with rare exception though, let me finish where I started, you generally want to avoid politics because you are likely going to alienate 50% of the population.
0:05:29 Having said that, on a risk-adjusted basis, this is a calculated risk worth taking.
0:05:32 Our next question comes from Instagram.
0:05:34 Ambreen asks,
0:05:49 Each year we pick sort of a strategic imperative.
0:05:53 I think it’s important to have one thing that you’re like, this is the one box we have to check this year.
0:05:58 Because I think being an effective leader is not deciding what to do, it’s deciding what not to do.
0:06:00 And that is, you only have so much wood.
0:06:03 So I think it’s important every year to say, this is our strategic imperative.
0:06:04 We’ve got to check this box.
0:06:13 For 2025, the strategic imperative for Prop G Media is to get much better and dramatically increase our video views.
0:06:23 What I found just fascinating and kind of blew my mind was that the primary channel of distribution for podcasts right now is not Apple, it’s not Spotify, it’s YouTube.
0:06:33 20% of the listens of this program right now will be listened to on a television or watched on a television, which isn’t a good idea.
0:06:36 All of a sudden I get very self-conscious because listen to my voice.
0:06:38 My voice, ooh, hello, dreamy.
0:06:40 I’m handsome, handsome voice.
0:06:41 Brad Pitt of voices.
0:06:44 Face, for those of you watching on TV, not so much.
0:06:45 Not so much.
0:06:48 See above, lost virginity when he was 19.
0:06:55 Anyways, so my skills play well to audio, but here’s the bottom line.
0:06:57 Podcasts are moving towards video.
0:07:04 Podcasts are essentially becoming TV shows with strong audio components where you can just listen to the audio.
0:07:09 If you look at, I think the next Joe Rogan is a kid named Steve Bartlett.
0:07:16 When I moved to London two and a half years ago, the first thing I did was drive to the studio in Ipswich or Norwich or whatever the cool part of town is.
0:07:20 And he had this incredible studio with eight people, cameras everywhere.
0:07:26 And I’m like, this is like Charlie Rose, but much more deft production quality.
0:07:28 And he was basically doing a TV show.
0:07:33 And if you’ll notice, in the last two and a half years, Stephen has busted into the top 10.
0:07:36 He used to be in the top 10 in the UK, and now he’s in the top 10 globally.
0:07:38 I think he’s probably going to be the biggest podcaster in the world.
0:07:49 And if you look at the top 100 podcasts of the 1.6 million that are out there and the 600,000 that put out content every week, the top 100, there’s been huge churn.
0:07:53 50 new entrants into the top 100, 50 have dropped out.
0:07:56 And what is the arbiter of who has churned in and churned out?
0:07:58 It’s their video game.
0:08:07 So we have spent a lot of time trying to think about, we hired a kid named Billy Bennett who used to work for us, who’s now, was at CNN and is now working with us, just focusing on video.
0:08:13 We have a full-time tech guy, our tech guy, Drew, who’s sort of our head of engineering and has known us for about 15 years.
0:08:20 The woman who runs my business, Catherine Dillon, is a creative at heart and edits and thinks about video.
0:08:27 The hard part is that the thing that played to my strengths in terms of video from a personal standpoint is I’m on the road about 150 days a year.
0:08:31 So my studio was basically a dop kit that I could set up.
0:08:31 I didn’t even have a ring light.
0:08:36 I would just try and find a nice part of the hotel room I was staying in and do a reasonable job of video.
0:08:38 And that’s no longer going to cut it.
0:08:48 So we’ve spent a bunch of money on studios that we’re replicating in the different places I spent a lot of time in, specifically New York, Florida, and London.
0:08:50 But I’m not sure that’s enough.
0:08:58 So we’re trying to be really thoughtful about marketing, pushing people to our videos, using more sound effects, usually using more visual effects.
0:09:03 The fastest growing part of our franchise or our portfolio, if you will, is Prop G Markets.
0:09:08 And that’s because it is tailor-made for graphic overlays because we talk a lot about stocks in the market.
0:09:12 And Ed’s in the same place so they can create better production values.
0:09:22 In sum, the assumption we made was that the new arbiter of who moves up in the world of podcasting and who moves out is going to be how strong your video game is.
0:09:26 Now, your question is what would happen if that changed?
0:09:27 I don’t know.
0:09:32 I guess we just have to pivot and be agile and try and figure out what that next thing is.
0:09:35 I think the next thing, YouTube is the new channel.
0:09:44 I believe that in 2026, and I’m already starting to think about a strategy here, that the new arbiter of success in podcasting is not going to be Spotify.
0:09:46 It’s not going to be Apple.
0:09:47 It’ll still be YouTube.
0:09:55 But more than anything, or the new player, if you will, that creates the difference between numbering number 300 and number 30 is the following, Reddit.
0:10:01 I think Reddit is literally out of central casting in terms of its niche domains.
0:10:12 It’s the viscosity of how they become a platform for taking pieces of podcasts and threading them into different comments on Reddit.
0:10:17 I think Reddit is going to be the new platform that kind of picks winners and losers.
0:10:24 A possible second to that on 26 is going to be Netflix, who’s decided to get into the game.
0:10:41 And Netflix just has, with 350 million consumers, with custody of 350 million home screens, if they decide that they want to distribute Mel Robbins’ podcast or Raging Moderates, that podcast will immediately shoot into the top 20 of podcasts globally.
0:10:45 So they have so much custody of the consumer that they perhaps could be the new arbiter.
0:10:52 In sum, I’m trying to think about not only what’s in front of our face, but think around the corner and make bets accordingly.
0:10:53 But I think about this stuff a lot.
0:10:56 So in sum, you’ve got to make a bet.
0:11:10 You’ve got to have a strategic imperative and hold people accountable and invest additional resources in that imperative such that you can give people the resources to move against or act against what you think is important and where the puck is headed.
0:11:15 And also think about, you know, looking beyond the second corner.
0:11:18 So what’s the corner we’re moving towards or where’s the puck going?
0:11:19 Video, hands down.
0:11:21 Where do we think it might be headed?
0:11:23 Reddit and possibly Netflix.
0:11:24 Thanks for the question.
0:11:27 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:12:55 I started my career in big agencies back in the early aughts when the internet was young.
0:13:01 However, even then we were talking about how the media was splintering and how it was getting harder to get noticed.
0:13:03 As you know, the trend has gone into overdrive.
0:13:14 Audience attention is splintered across endless platforms and micro-communities, and trust is shifting, from institutions to individuals, from brands to influencers.
0:13:16 I keep coming back to this question.
0:13:21 How does the humble media planner or marketer even navigate this reality?
0:13:26 The age of the all-powerful, monolithic brand feels like it’s fading fast.
0:13:33 And now, resonance doesn’t come from one big message, but from a thousand fragments finding the right ears.
0:13:35 Yeah, I agree.
0:13:48 So, it used to be, if you think about it, not that long ago, you could capture a third of America in about four nights, because two-thirds of America was watching one of three channels five hours a day.
0:13:52 Now, that media landscape has fragmented just wildly.
0:13:55 And not only that, the costs have gone way up.
0:14:01 So, we didn’t realize how inexpensive broadcast advertising was, how cheap it was.
0:14:15 You could capture, essentially, a 30-second spot on the Academy Awards 30 years ago was about a fifth of the price, and it reached three times as many people as it does today.
0:14:21 So, it was 15 times, you have 15 times the ROI, and yet people still do it.
0:14:22 We didn’t realize how cheap it was.
0:14:39 So, the fact that media was so inexpensive from, like, 1945 to 1995, maybe in 2000, created an ecosystem where the algorithm for creating shareholder value was to have a mediocre truck, salty snack, sugary drink, shoe, or car.
0:14:59 Build an OK slash shitty car, the K car, or out of Detroit, and wrap it in amazing brand codes of tough like a rock or apple pie, whatever it might be, or find soap, then craft it with OK materials or ingredients, and then talk about European elegance.
0:15:06 Create a shitty beer and convince people that if they drink this beer, they’re going to be hot and have a six-pack and be more attractive to potential mates.
0:15:17 And you could infuse these incredible brand codes really inexpensively using some creative agency of guys who wore black and gave you awards if you spent enough money on their ad campaign and can every year.
0:15:19 That ship has sailed.
0:15:22 That dog just doesn’t hunt anymore.
0:15:27 Because now we have these weapons of mass diligence that say, OK, and this is the example I always use.
0:15:30 I usually used to stay at the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, or the Mandarin Oriental.
0:15:32 One, because someone else was paying.
0:15:34 I was usually there speaking or with a client.
0:15:35 And two, they always deliver an eight.
0:15:41 But the reality is the Mandarin Oriental in Istanbul is just not where I want to stay.
0:15:47 The core associations of these hotel brands meant that they delivered, you know, always an eight.
0:15:54 But then my social graph, TripAdvisor, friends, Weapons of Mass Diligence, Google, OpenAI.
0:15:57 I go to OpenAI now and say, I’m going to South by Southwest in Austin.
0:16:01 I’m in the midst of a midlife crisis, and I want to hang out with younger, cooler people.
0:16:04 And it literally comes back with stay at the Austin proper.
0:16:05 Boom.
0:16:06 I don’t need the brand.
0:16:07 I’ve never heard of the brand.
0:16:11 I just know that I trust these weapons of mass diligence more than the brand.
0:16:13 So what do you have?
0:16:17 You have people trying to figure out how to gain these algorithms in search.
0:16:21 You have influencers, the rise of the influencer generation, the rise of Instagram.
0:16:24 Do you know how much influence Instagram now has?
0:16:30 Also, at the end of the day, and this sounds very passé, the era of Don Draper is just over.
0:16:34 The sun has passed midday on the bullshit of thinking you’re going to have a mediocre product
0:16:35 and a great brand.
0:16:37 Now the product is the brand.
0:16:39 And that sounds very passé, but it’s true.
0:16:43 The companies that have developed the most market capitalization over the last 20 years
0:16:45 have really been victories, not in brand, but in supply chain.
0:16:50 Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix’s supply chain.
0:16:54 They went direct to consumer with DVDs by mail, and then they went direct to consumer using
0:16:54 broadband.
0:16:55 How much money?
0:16:58 What do the most valuable companies in the world have in common?
0:17:00 They don’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:00 Why?
0:17:02 Because they’ve put all their money into the product.
0:17:05 And oftentimes, it’s not just about the product.
0:17:08 It’s how you deliver it and discover it, i.e. supply chain.
0:17:09 So what do you do if you’re a marketer?
0:17:17 You think about, okay, where’s my core customer finding and doing diligence on my product?
0:17:20 Sometimes the best CMO comes back and says, folks, I got to be honest.
0:17:24 We should put all our money into innovation around digital to unlock new features with our
0:17:24 product.
0:17:27 Tesla doesn’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:31 And the bottom line is, their brand has gone way down because Elon Musk is an enormous
0:17:35 asshole, but also because the product has gotten really stale, right?
0:17:40 So consumers can find the best product now using these weapons of mass diligence.
0:17:43 So whatever you’re going to see, you’re going to see reallocation of capital out of traditional
0:17:49 marketing into supply chain, into influencers, into social, and into product itself.
0:17:51 And this is hand-to-hand combat.
0:17:53 There’s no single platform.
0:17:58 If you wanted to bet on any two platforms, I don’t know, you’d probably bet on TikTok
0:18:00 and Instagram and also maybe YouTube.
0:18:02 I mean, there’s a cumulative effect here, right?
0:18:06 You got to kind of do it all, but you want to have influencers.
0:18:07 You want to have evangelists.
0:18:12 You want to over-serve a core customer base such that there’s word of mouth and they absolutely
0:18:13 fall in love with your product.
0:18:18 I used to use Norelco or Braun or these shitty brands to clip my head.
0:18:23 And then I found this clipper from a former East German factory that used to make propellers
0:18:26 from Messerschmitts and they make this incredible clipper.
0:18:29 And I went online and I found out where it was and I ordered them and they’re more expensive,
0:18:30 which is a pricing signal.
0:18:35 But you can now find the best product or discover it online.
0:18:40 So look, I’m not sure I’m saying anything revolutionary here, but the CMO that’s like the second
0:18:44 lieutenant in Vietnam that gets shot in the forehead within six to 18 months is the one
0:18:48 that comes in and wants to do the brand identity and hire a big agency and talk about traditional
0:18:48 media.
0:18:50 Boss, that ship has sailed.
0:18:56 This is hand-to-hand combat that is a combination of a better product with digital unlocks, huge
0:19:00 supply chain investments if you have access to cheap capital, and then trying to identify
0:19:04 evangelists slash influencers who can weaponize these platforms to your advantage.
0:19:06 That was a mouthful.
0:19:08 Thanks for the question.
0:19:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:19:13 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours of
0:19:14 propertymedia.com.
0:19:16 That’s officehours of propertymedia.com.
0:19:21 Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit,
0:19:23 and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.
0:19:34 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:19:35 Our intern is Dan Shallon.
0:19:38 Drew Burrows is our technical director.
0:19:41 Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:19:45 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
0:19:51 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:19:52 and Thursday.
0:00:09 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:20 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:24 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach, so you don’t miss a thing.
0:00:32 Welcome to Office Hours with Prof. G.
0:00:40 Today we’re continuing our special three-part series, Prof. G. on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today.
0:00:44 What a thrill. Let’s bust right into it.
0:00:48 Okay, what do we have here? Our first question comes from Dom on Instagram.
0:00:49 He asks,
0:00:54 More and more companies are taking political stances as part of their branding.
0:01:04 Growing up, I was told that businesses should never talk about religion or politics in order to stay out of trouble and not segment customers.
0:01:06 Does this hurt companies in the long run?
0:01:10 Do you think it is smart that businesses are moving in this direction?
0:01:13 This is going to require some nuance.
0:01:16 So I’ve served on a bunch of public company boards, seven.
0:01:17 I’m kind of a big deal.
0:01:18 Kind of a big deal.
0:01:21 And probably 24 private company boards.
0:01:26 And my general view on political statements is that it’s mostly virtue signaling from the CEO.
0:01:33 It likes to get in front, especially about three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, get in front of a younger workforce and talk about all this woke nonsense.
0:01:36 Because why it was nonsense is because they didn’t believe it themselves.
0:01:39 They were just trying to score, like, acquire virtue.
0:01:45 Like, I don’t have enough Gulf Streams or shares or options here, so I want to capture social status.
0:01:47 I think that’s actually a pretty decent criticism of the Democratic Party.
0:01:58 Instead of focusing on the material and emotional well-being of consumers, they want to pretend that they’re grabbing virtue rather than actually getting any fucking thing done at the ground level in terms of what actually impacts people.
0:02:04 So I generally think it’s a good idea to stay out of politics.
0:02:07 I try to separate the person from the politics.
0:02:15 I live just south of Palm Beach, and a lot of my friends are Republicans, and I just think they’re batshit crazy.
0:02:19 I just don’t understand how they can tolerate some of this nonsense.
0:02:23 But at the same time, I also recognize they’re thoughtful, nice people, and I enjoy their friendship.
0:02:31 So I try to ignore it when they put out a reel saying, oh, finally, the truth that these food products cause autism.
0:02:33 And I want to write, dude, didn’t we go to college together?
0:02:35 Are you really that fucking stupid?
0:02:37 Because I know that will damage the friendship.
0:02:39 So I try to separate that.
0:02:41 I also try to separate the company from politics.
0:02:42 Now, Prop2 doesn’t do that.
0:02:44 You know, we’re a media company.
0:02:45 We’re a small company.
0:02:52 We are highly political because a lot of what we do is putting out thought leadership, opinion, et cetera.
0:02:58 And still, we would probably be a bigger company if I just focused on business and tech rather than taking political stance.
0:03:00 But at this point in my life, I get to do whatever the fuck I want.
0:03:01 See above.
0:03:01 I’m going to talk about.
0:03:08 My favorite is when people say in my newsletter, they write, oh, get back to talking about business or things you know.
0:03:11 Basically, I got a lot of like stay in your lane.
0:03:12 Well, you know what my lane is?
0:03:14 Whatever the fuck I want to talk about.
0:03:15 And I’ve earned that.
0:03:16 And I’m finally there.
0:03:21 Anyways, anywho, for most big public companies, you do want to avoid politics.
0:03:25 Now, having said that, occasionally an opportunity comes along.
0:03:29 Race relations in the U.S. were capturing a lot of attention.
0:03:40 Colin Kaepernick was a great quarterback, two-thirds of Nike’s customer base under the age of 30, not kind of on board with how race relations were going in the United States.
0:03:46 Anyone who was upset about them embracing Colin Kaepernick, who burnt their Nikes, had to go out and buy their first pair of Nikes.
0:03:48 It was a very smart move.
0:03:58 They probably alienated somewhere between 5% and 10% of their TAM to embolden or entrench or inspire 90% of their addressable market.
0:03:59 That’s a really good tradeoff.
0:04:01 We are in that moment right now.
0:04:09 And essentially, I think that things have gotten so out of control where we’re rounding up people with the wrong tattoo, doing really stupid shit around tariffs.
0:04:14 It’s going to do nothing but elegantly reduce our prosperity, put thousands of small businesses out of business.
0:04:20 Doge, which was nothing but literally like, okay, how stupid can you be?
0:04:21 We’re going to cut $2 trillion.
0:04:23 No, I meant $150 million.
0:04:24 No, I meant $60 billion.
0:04:27 No, I meant less than the subsidies to Tesla.
0:04:39 I mean, that has been handled so poorly, so poorly that Americans are so fed up that the biggest commercial opportunity in a decade, and I said this last week and I’ll say it again.
0:04:57 I said it in the last office hours and I’ll say it again, is to come out not against Trump so much, but to come out in favor of American values of decency, of competition, of being thoughtful around our economic policy, of embracing our great immigrant population, PhD students, of rule of law, of due process.
0:05:00 All the things that we’ve come to expect are American.
0:05:05 That company, that company will register a torrent of new business.
0:05:10 I mean, for God’s sakes, this guy is flailing, literally flailing.
0:05:14 This is the biggest commercial opportunity in the last decade.
0:05:24 In sum, with rare exception though, let me finish where I started, you generally want to avoid politics because you are likely going to alienate 50% of the population.
0:05:29 Having said that, on a risk-adjusted basis, this is a calculated risk worth taking.
0:05:32 Our next question comes from Instagram.
0:05:34 Ambreen asks,
0:05:49 Each year we pick sort of a strategic imperative.
0:05:53 I think it’s important to have one thing that you’re like, this is the one box we have to check this year.
0:05:58 Because I think being an effective leader is not deciding what to do, it’s deciding what not to do.
0:06:00 And that is, you only have so much wood.
0:06:03 So I think it’s important every year to say, this is our strategic imperative.
0:06:04 We’ve got to check this box.
0:06:13 For 2025, the strategic imperative for Prop G Media is to get much better and dramatically increase our video views.
0:06:23 What I found just fascinating and kind of blew my mind was that the primary channel of distribution for podcasts right now is not Apple, it’s not Spotify, it’s YouTube.
0:06:33 20% of the listens of this program right now will be listened to on a television or watched on a television, which isn’t a good idea.
0:06:36 All of a sudden I get very self-conscious because listen to my voice.
0:06:38 My voice, ooh, hello, dreamy.
0:06:40 I’m handsome, handsome voice.
0:06:41 Brad Pitt of voices.
0:06:44 Face, for those of you watching on TV, not so much.
0:06:45 Not so much.
0:06:48 See above, lost virginity when he was 19.
0:06:55 Anyways, so my skills play well to audio, but here’s the bottom line.
0:06:57 Podcasts are moving towards video.
0:07:04 Podcasts are essentially becoming TV shows with strong audio components where you can just listen to the audio.
0:07:09 If you look at, I think the next Joe Rogan is a kid named Steve Bartlett.
0:07:16 When I moved to London two and a half years ago, the first thing I did was drive to the studio in Ipswich or Norwich or whatever the cool part of town is.
0:07:20 And he had this incredible studio with eight people, cameras everywhere.
0:07:26 And I’m like, this is like Charlie Rose, but much more deft production quality.
0:07:28 And he was basically doing a TV show.
0:07:33 And if you’ll notice, in the last two and a half years, Stephen has busted into the top 10.
0:07:36 He used to be in the top 10 in the UK, and now he’s in the top 10 globally.
0:07:38 I think he’s probably going to be the biggest podcaster in the world.
0:07:49 And if you look at the top 100 podcasts of the 1.6 million that are out there and the 600,000 that put out content every week, the top 100, there’s been huge churn.
0:07:53 50 new entrants into the top 100, 50 have dropped out.
0:07:56 And what is the arbiter of who has churned in and churned out?
0:07:58 It’s their video game.
0:08:07 So we have spent a lot of time trying to think about, we hired a kid named Billy Bennett who used to work for us, who’s now, was at CNN and is now working with us, just focusing on video.
0:08:13 We have a full-time tech guy, our tech guy, Drew, who’s sort of our head of engineering and has known us for about 15 years.
0:08:20 The woman who runs my business, Catherine Dillon, is a creative at heart and edits and thinks about video.
0:08:27 The hard part is that the thing that played to my strengths in terms of video from a personal standpoint is I’m on the road about 150 days a year.
0:08:31 So my studio was basically a dop kit that I could set up.
0:08:31 I didn’t even have a ring light.
0:08:36 I would just try and find a nice part of the hotel room I was staying in and do a reasonable job of video.
0:08:38 And that’s no longer going to cut it.
0:08:48 So we’ve spent a bunch of money on studios that we’re replicating in the different places I spent a lot of time in, specifically New York, Florida, and London.
0:08:50 But I’m not sure that’s enough.
0:08:58 So we’re trying to be really thoughtful about marketing, pushing people to our videos, using more sound effects, usually using more visual effects.
0:09:03 The fastest growing part of our franchise or our portfolio, if you will, is Prop G Markets.
0:09:08 And that’s because it is tailor-made for graphic overlays because we talk a lot about stocks in the market.
0:09:12 And Ed’s in the same place so they can create better production values.
0:09:22 In sum, the assumption we made was that the new arbiter of who moves up in the world of podcasting and who moves out is going to be how strong your video game is.
0:09:26 Now, your question is what would happen if that changed?
0:09:27 I don’t know.
0:09:32 I guess we just have to pivot and be agile and try and figure out what that next thing is.
0:09:35 I think the next thing, YouTube is the new channel.
0:09:44 I believe that in 2026, and I’m already starting to think about a strategy here, that the new arbiter of success in podcasting is not going to be Spotify.
0:09:46 It’s not going to be Apple.
0:09:47 It’ll still be YouTube.
0:09:55 But more than anything, or the new player, if you will, that creates the difference between numbering number 300 and number 30 is the following, Reddit.
0:10:01 I think Reddit is literally out of central casting in terms of its niche domains.
0:10:12 It’s the viscosity of how they become a platform for taking pieces of podcasts and threading them into different comments on Reddit.
0:10:17 I think Reddit is going to be the new platform that kind of picks winners and losers.
0:10:24 A possible second to that on 26 is going to be Netflix, who’s decided to get into the game.
0:10:41 And Netflix just has, with 350 million consumers, with custody of 350 million home screens, if they decide that they want to distribute Mel Robbins’ podcast or Raging Moderates, that podcast will immediately shoot into the top 20 of podcasts globally.
0:10:45 So they have so much custody of the consumer that they perhaps could be the new arbiter.
0:10:52 In sum, I’m trying to think about not only what’s in front of our face, but think around the corner and make bets accordingly.
0:10:53 But I think about this stuff a lot.
0:10:56 So in sum, you’ve got to make a bet.
0:11:10 You’ve got to have a strategic imperative and hold people accountable and invest additional resources in that imperative such that you can give people the resources to move against or act against what you think is important and where the puck is headed.
0:11:15 And also think about, you know, looking beyond the second corner.
0:11:18 So what’s the corner we’re moving towards or where’s the puck going?
0:11:19 Video, hands down.
0:11:21 Where do we think it might be headed?
0:11:23 Reddit and possibly Netflix.
0:11:24 Thanks for the question.
0:11:27 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:12:55 I started my career in big agencies back in the early aughts when the internet was young.
0:13:01 However, even then we were talking about how the media was splintering and how it was getting harder to get noticed.
0:13:03 As you know, the trend has gone into overdrive.
0:13:14 Audience attention is splintered across endless platforms and micro-communities, and trust is shifting, from institutions to individuals, from brands to influencers.
0:13:16 I keep coming back to this question.
0:13:21 How does the humble media planner or marketer even navigate this reality?
0:13:26 The age of the all-powerful, monolithic brand feels like it’s fading fast.
0:13:33 And now, resonance doesn’t come from one big message, but from a thousand fragments finding the right ears.
0:13:35 Yeah, I agree.
0:13:48 So, it used to be, if you think about it, not that long ago, you could capture a third of America in about four nights, because two-thirds of America was watching one of three channels five hours a day.
0:13:52 Now, that media landscape has fragmented just wildly.
0:13:55 And not only that, the costs have gone way up.
0:14:01 So, we didn’t realize how inexpensive broadcast advertising was, how cheap it was.
0:14:15 You could capture, essentially, a 30-second spot on the Academy Awards 30 years ago was about a fifth of the price, and it reached three times as many people as it does today.
0:14:21 So, it was 15 times, you have 15 times the ROI, and yet people still do it.
0:14:22 We didn’t realize how cheap it was.
0:14:39 So, the fact that media was so inexpensive from, like, 1945 to 1995, maybe in 2000, created an ecosystem where the algorithm for creating shareholder value was to have a mediocre truck, salty snack, sugary drink, shoe, or car.
0:14:59 Build an OK slash shitty car, the K car, or out of Detroit, and wrap it in amazing brand codes of tough like a rock or apple pie, whatever it might be, or find soap, then craft it with OK materials or ingredients, and then talk about European elegance.
0:15:06 Create a shitty beer and convince people that if they drink this beer, they’re going to be hot and have a six-pack and be more attractive to potential mates.
0:15:17 And you could infuse these incredible brand codes really inexpensively using some creative agency of guys who wore black and gave you awards if you spent enough money on their ad campaign and can every year.
0:15:19 That ship has sailed.
0:15:22 That dog just doesn’t hunt anymore.
0:15:27 Because now we have these weapons of mass diligence that say, OK, and this is the example I always use.
0:15:30 I usually used to stay at the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, or the Mandarin Oriental.
0:15:32 One, because someone else was paying.
0:15:34 I was usually there speaking or with a client.
0:15:35 And two, they always deliver an eight.
0:15:41 But the reality is the Mandarin Oriental in Istanbul is just not where I want to stay.
0:15:47 The core associations of these hotel brands meant that they delivered, you know, always an eight.
0:15:54 But then my social graph, TripAdvisor, friends, Weapons of Mass Diligence, Google, OpenAI.
0:15:57 I go to OpenAI now and say, I’m going to South by Southwest in Austin.
0:16:01 I’m in the midst of a midlife crisis, and I want to hang out with younger, cooler people.
0:16:04 And it literally comes back with stay at the Austin proper.
0:16:05 Boom.
0:16:06 I don’t need the brand.
0:16:07 I’ve never heard of the brand.
0:16:11 I just know that I trust these weapons of mass diligence more than the brand.
0:16:13 So what do you have?
0:16:17 You have people trying to figure out how to gain these algorithms in search.
0:16:21 You have influencers, the rise of the influencer generation, the rise of Instagram.
0:16:24 Do you know how much influence Instagram now has?
0:16:30 Also, at the end of the day, and this sounds very passé, the era of Don Draper is just over.
0:16:34 The sun has passed midday on the bullshit of thinking you’re going to have a mediocre product
0:16:35 and a great brand.
0:16:37 Now the product is the brand.
0:16:39 And that sounds very passé, but it’s true.
0:16:43 The companies that have developed the most market capitalization over the last 20 years
0:16:45 have really been victories, not in brand, but in supply chain.
0:16:50 Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix’s supply chain.
0:16:54 They went direct to consumer with DVDs by mail, and then they went direct to consumer using
0:16:54 broadband.
0:16:55 How much money?
0:16:58 What do the most valuable companies in the world have in common?
0:17:00 They don’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:00 Why?
0:17:02 Because they’ve put all their money into the product.
0:17:05 And oftentimes, it’s not just about the product.
0:17:08 It’s how you deliver it and discover it, i.e. supply chain.
0:17:09 So what do you do if you’re a marketer?
0:17:17 You think about, okay, where’s my core customer finding and doing diligence on my product?
0:17:20 Sometimes the best CMO comes back and says, folks, I got to be honest.
0:17:24 We should put all our money into innovation around digital to unlock new features with our
0:17:24 product.
0:17:27 Tesla doesn’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:31 And the bottom line is, their brand has gone way down because Elon Musk is an enormous
0:17:35 asshole, but also because the product has gotten really stale, right?
0:17:40 So consumers can find the best product now using these weapons of mass diligence.
0:17:43 So whatever you’re going to see, you’re going to see reallocation of capital out of traditional
0:17:49 marketing into supply chain, into influencers, into social, and into product itself.
0:17:51 And this is hand-to-hand combat.
0:17:53 There’s no single platform.
0:17:58 If you wanted to bet on any two platforms, I don’t know, you’d probably bet on TikTok
0:18:00 and Instagram and also maybe YouTube.
0:18:02 I mean, there’s a cumulative effect here, right?
0:18:06 You got to kind of do it all, but you want to have influencers.
0:18:07 You want to have evangelists.
0:18:12 You want to over-serve a core customer base such that there’s word of mouth and they absolutely
0:18:13 fall in love with your product.
0:18:18 I used to use Norelco or Braun or these shitty brands to clip my head.
0:18:23 And then I found this clipper from a former East German factory that used to make propellers
0:18:26 from Messerschmitts and they make this incredible clipper.
0:18:29 And I went online and I found out where it was and I ordered them and they’re more expensive,
0:18:30 which is a pricing signal.
0:18:35 But you can now find the best product or discover it online.
0:18:40 So look, I’m not sure I’m saying anything revolutionary here, but the CMO that’s like the second
0:18:44 lieutenant in Vietnam that gets shot in the forehead within six to 18 months is the one
0:18:48 that comes in and wants to do the brand identity and hire a big agency and talk about traditional
0:18:48 media.
0:18:50 Boss, that ship has sailed.
0:18:56 This is hand-to-hand combat that is a combination of a better product with digital unlocks, huge
0:19:00 supply chain investments if you have access to cheap capital, and then trying to identify
0:19:04 evangelists slash influencers who can weaponize these platforms to your advantage.
0:19:06 That was a mouthful.
0:19:08 Thanks for the question.
0:19:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:19:13 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours of
0:19:14 propertymedia.com.
0:19:16 That’s officehours of propertymedia.com.
0:19:21 Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit,
0:19:23 and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.
0:19:34 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:19:35 Our intern is Dan Shallon.
0:19:38 Drew Burrows is our technical director.
0:19:41 Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:19:45 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
0:19:51 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:19:52 and Thursday.
Welcome to the second episode of our special series, Prof G on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today.
In today’s episode, Scott answers your questions about whether brands should get political, how to pivot when industry assumptions no longer hold, and why marketers must adapt to a world where trust is shifting from institutions to individuals.
Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to officehours@profgmedia.com, or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit.
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