Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's a were purpose driven platform. Like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance? How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? And
Speaker 1: it really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm
Speaker 1: Alexa Kristen. Welcome back to at Landia. Hey everybody. So
Speaker 1: recently Laura, myself and Cam our producer and producer, we're
Speaker 1: down in Keepiskene, Florida for the Washington Post Next conference.
Speaker 1: We did a live recording and UM we had a
Speaker 1: great conversation with some folks there. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was really interesting to be front and center with Amelia
Speaker 1: Garcia Ruez who is there managing editor, and Jed Hartman,
Speaker 1: who is their chief revenue officer, and get the difference
Speaker 1: in opinion on things like KPIs and the tension that
Speaker 1: exists between brand experience UM for readers and technology. You
Speaker 1: what they're doing to really kind of push the industry
Speaker 1: forward and think differently about uh, new products. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a great time, So thank you Washington Post
Speaker 1: for hosting us and furnishing probably one of the best
Speaker 1: spicy margarita is I think we've had on the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we definitely got through the second round the crowd and
Speaker 1: I think they were very excited. I have to say
Speaker 1: Amelio definitely hit the second one quickly. So this weekend
Speaker 1: Atlandia UM coming back off my visit down to one of,
Speaker 1: if not my favorite town outside of the Tri state, Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: I have to say something about Austin. I was like
Speaker 1: totally skeptical of Austin, and then I went down like
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago to visit friends and I
Speaker 1: went to the Alamo Alamo Drafthouse, Fried Pickles, get them
Speaker 1: watch a movie Crunch. Crunch It's the best thing in Texas. Underrated.
Speaker 1: So I didn't have time to get to the Alamo Drafthouse,
Speaker 1: but I did spend quite a bit of time downtown
Speaker 1: south by Southwest and one of the big winners I saw.
Speaker 1: And another reason why I think brands continue or need
Speaker 1: to continue to show up at these sort of conferences
Speaker 1: right is because it gives people both in the industry
Speaker 1: and from a consumer standpoint, a chance to touch the
Speaker 1: brand in a way that isn't always accessible through day
Speaker 1: to day interaction. I also think to that point, and
Speaker 1: when we were talking about this, when you were down there,
Speaker 1: I had this moment where it was like, so many
Speaker 1: brands actually, if they go down or if they're at
Speaker 1: an event like south By, they actually have the opportunity
Speaker 1: strike out and do something different than they would in
Speaker 1: their full like marketing media mix. Right, it's a chance
Speaker 1: to experiment for sure, and and and truly innovate. I
Speaker 1: remember because we were That's why you said, because I
Speaker 1: was talking to a couple of clients down there. And
Speaker 1: it's funny. It's like, if there's ever a place to
Speaker 1: test whether it's tech, art, science, data like Austin, is
Speaker 1: the place in south By in particular where all of
Speaker 1: those things intersect. So it's like, what do you have
Speaker 1: to lose? You, what do you have to lose? I
Speaker 1: agree with that, and and I love the idea that
Speaker 1: you were talking about. Was like it's tangible, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can touch it. And so I'll give you a
Speaker 1: list of some of the things that caught my eye
Speaker 1: and and some of the things that I heard um
Speaker 1: at the JW. Marriott that were some fan favorites. So
Speaker 1: American Gods is a show on stars to this enormous bowl,
Speaker 1: like you could not miss this ship. It was a
Speaker 1: huge bull be all. It was a bowl and it
Speaker 1: was a show stopping and arresting UM experience, whereas Prison,
Speaker 1: Prison Break, UM did this escape room that I actually
Speaker 1: didn't have a chance to go through, but a lot
Speaker 1: of my colleagues did and said it was such unique experience.
Speaker 1: You felt like you actually got in and around the
Speaker 1: brand and felt like you were actually on the set,
Speaker 1: which I think is another way to give people a
Speaker 1: different perspective. One that I did get a chance to
Speaker 1: see UM, which is right around the corner from a
Speaker 1: place I actually used to bartend, so I know the
Speaker 1: street very well, they know me well. Was breaking Bads,
Speaker 1: Los Poilos Armanos set and actually two of the actors
Speaker 1: gian Carlos Posito and Bob Auden Kirker Kirk, I'm going
Speaker 1: to mess that up. Thank you actually came by and
Speaker 1: again it's it's this really cool way to and and
Speaker 1: also it's such a low key kick back vibe and
Speaker 1: I think it gives you a chance to see, you know,
Speaker 1: the celebrities getting into it, but again a very non
Speaker 1: Hollywood glamorous because like three years ago, right, it was
Speaker 1: like lines around the corner, celebrities everywhere, but it felt
Speaker 1: like it was more plugged in, like more amped, and
Speaker 1: almost like to a point where it got overamped, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're over the cliff, right, like some
Speaker 1: of the foam has come down on the beer and
Speaker 1: like it's a good drink. Well. I think that the
Speaker 1: stars of south By were actually different this year. It
Speaker 1: was a very politically charged south By UM so Cecil Richards,
Speaker 1: the president Plan Parenthood, was down there talking a lot
Speaker 1: about how tech stands with Planned Parenthood, which I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. I did take a picture with her,
Speaker 1: you can see it on her Instagram. A podcast Joe
Speaker 1: Biden gave a huge talk down there relative to healthcare
Speaker 1: camp cancer UM, and I would say the star of
Speaker 1: the show, and I'm not biased because I am a
Speaker 1: resident from New Jersey UM was Corey Booker, who had
Speaker 1: a key note. From what I understand, there was overspill
Speaker 1: that standing room only didn't even have an overspill room
Speaker 1: or overflow. I should say, I'm not talking about me
Speaker 1: and my gene so I think it was interesting to
Speaker 1: see um a political leader come and obviously we've talked
Speaker 1: about politics quite a bit on our show, but all
Speaker 1: these worlds are really starting to blur. I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say, issues causes blending now with tech, and I
Speaker 1: wonder my question to you, was tech as responsive like
Speaker 1: the tech crowd, as responsive to the politicians, the people
Speaker 1: like the n g O s, those types of people
Speaker 1: who showed up. Well, these organizations know that they need them, right,
Speaker 1: They need advancements in tech to help scale their causes.
Speaker 1: But it's always been that way. I also also conversations
Speaker 1: that now tech has to get closer to d C,
Speaker 1: the belt Way, right and I in a way that
Speaker 1: they never have. This is a great kind of place
Speaker 1: for them to me UM. One of the other things
Speaker 1: that was really cool, UH was podcasting, how a presence,
Speaker 1: I think for the first time UM and I think
Speaker 1: they're still talking though about advertising. I mean, their general
Speaker 1: which isn't a bad thing, right and it's early. It's
Speaker 1: early days, is to say listen, brands need to start
Speaker 1: experimenting with podcasting now because it's an easy way in right,
Speaker 1: in branded content, in sure, in advertising, just straight up
Speaker 1: advertising that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
Speaker 1: But to get to a really comfortable place where you say,
Speaker 1: wait a second, what's my brand's value in audio in
Speaker 1: these conversational interfaces, when our lives become so programmed, right,
Speaker 1: we tell our Alexa to only order tied. Right, I'm
Speaker 1: not even kidding. So if it is getting there, you say,
Speaker 1: I mean this is a simple example, right, you say,
Speaker 1: only order tied. I don't want to hear about any
Speaker 1: other laundry detergent definitely, And I think again it's it's
Speaker 1: early days. Um. But it was just really exciting to
Speaker 1: see so many great podcasters um, and people in the
Speaker 1: podcast industry down at south By. That was a new one. Um.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what my favorite. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: consumer things of south By was accessories. Um, everything old
Speaker 1: is new again is something that I feel, like I've
Speaker 1: said on the last two shows, but pins, like straight
Speaker 1: up old school buttons and pins. They've been like they've
Speaker 1: been getting really total nineties nostalgia. But my favorite thing
Speaker 1: I came on with was a customed Jane jacket that
Speaker 1: I designed with the Ladies of Soul Cycle. Um. So
Speaker 1: it was total badass, like skull and crossbones Jeane Jacket
Speaker 1: Levi's hello. I mean I thought it was like it
Speaker 1: was No, it was so. It was not that kind
Speaker 1: of skull cross it was. It was the sole cycle version. Um.
Speaker 1: And they had these three young women who were um
Speaker 1: seams artists and they were hand sewing and stitching these jackets. UM.
Speaker 1: So the back of my jacket if you see a
Speaker 1: girl walking around, you know, I thought about it. Maybe
Speaker 1: that would be the next one. It says savage and
Speaker 1: with some cactus patches. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who the losers were really quickly. The weather.
Speaker 1: The weather sucked and the weather totally brings down the
Speaker 1: vibe and awesome because you just want to be outside
Speaker 1: and walking around. And rain, which leads to my next
Speaker 1: big loser. Car service apps, so Uber and Lyft for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, is not often UM. So they
Speaker 1: had these two that were I feel like jockeying for
Speaker 1: like the Star of south By from a car service standpoint,
Speaker 1: Fasten and Fair and both of them were failing miserably
Speaker 1: in the rain. UM. And then the last big loser
Speaker 1: were these panels that feel like a redundancy see of
Speaker 1: same The panel, no speaking panels speaking, which is something
Speaker 1: that you and I have talked about. I would definitely
Speaker 1: challenge the industry a bit too, to reimagine putting four
Speaker 1: people up on stools that are definitely look so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, at the end of the day, you
Speaker 1: need someone to have some point of view on something
Speaker 1: that they've done, and you need some experience, right and
Speaker 1: everyone think it's like how this applies to me in
Speaker 1: the audience? Well, reason for being there. I mean for me,
Speaker 1: what I would love to see is like a redo,
Speaker 1: a different take on the format. Let's just three do
Speaker 1: a different take on the format. I don't have an answer.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We can think about this, I can
Speaker 1: think about it. So I think that all in all,
Speaker 1: you had a good time in south By. You didn't
Speaker 1: have my fried pickles at the Aluma, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: You go down there again. Because you're a hook them girl.
Speaker 1: I am. I am a longhorn hook them Anyway, We're
Speaker 1: going to roll into our live record that we did
Speaker 1: with the Washington Post at the Washington Post next conference
Speaker 1: and key a Biscayne, we'll be right back. Should as
Speaker 1: a about to get so real, so I'm Laura Carenti,
Speaker 1: I'm Alexa Christian and this is Atlandia. So we're super
Speaker 1: excited to have two industry veterans join us today, Amilio
Speaker 1: Garcia Ruez, who is the managing editor of The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: and Jed Hartman, the c r O of the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: So obviously the industry, um guys has been talking a
Speaker 1: lot about your breaking tagline, democracy dies in the darkness.
Speaker 1: Although Amelia, after last night, we're convinced that the darkness
Speaker 1: also brings out the best of democracy after we saw
Speaker 1: you on the dance floor, So yeah, are you going
Speaker 1: to shake it? But we're we're, obviously like everybody here
Speaker 1: with us today at the Washington Post Next Conference, enamored
Speaker 1: with the courage and the bravery it took for a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty year brand to come out with a tagline.
Speaker 1: And Alexa and I really just want to know why now?
Speaker 1: So why now is has nothing to do with Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: although the timing seems to be that way. We began
Speaker 1: working on tagline branding thing a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and newspapers or publishers, i should say, are terrible at
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. We're just not very good at marketing.
Speaker 1: We don't like doing it, and uh, it took us
Speaker 1: a very long time. We had consultants come in, we
Speaker 1: had meeting after meeting after meeting. Jed was a part
Speaker 1: of the process, and we were sort of kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: And eventually we got to this point where Jeff uh
Speaker 1: in conversations with Bob Woodward, the fame journalist, came back
Speaker 1: with this democracy dies in darkness thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: newsrooms in general are very cynical places, so that is
Speaker 1: you can imagine. The first reaction was, oh my god, really,
Speaker 1: what else are you gonna come up with? But as
Speaker 1: it time went on, we all sort of grew closer
Speaker 1: to it. We look at a lot of alternatives, uh,
Speaker 1: and nothing quite fit, and finally we settled on what
Speaker 1: we settled on that came out a couple weeks ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Alexa and I have been talking
Speaker 1: a lot over the last few days since we've been
Speaker 1: down here in Miami, just about obviously the new cycle
Speaker 1: and what um it's brought to the surface, which is
Speaker 1: the credibility of journalism. UM. What we find interesting is
Speaker 1: this kind of tension between scale um versus quality is
Speaker 1: a truly a race to the bottom or is there
Speaker 1: this more important time now than ever to kind of
Speaker 1: separate yourselves from the pack and start thinking about how
Speaker 1: you come to the market from a quality standpoint. Are
Speaker 1: you speaking about a marketer coming from a quality standpoint
Speaker 1: or a publisher? But then how do marketers how do
Speaker 1: marketers spot you right quickly doing that, and how do
Speaker 1: they engage with you doing that? Sure? So I think
Speaker 1: it depends on what a marketer's true goals are with
Speaker 1: the real kpi and not superficial kpi click through those
Speaker 1: are all superficial kpi. No marketers, unless you're an add
Speaker 1: tech company, make money on clickthrough, You make money on
Speaker 1: something else, right, So it depends on your real KPI
Speaker 1: to really leverage Washington Post or other publishers. It's to
Speaker 1: understand what is the audience engaging with, what do they
Speaker 1: on their own organically, and how does that intersect with
Speaker 1: a marketer's objectives and do you look for a sweet
Speaker 1: spot in there and then you capitalize it and it
Speaker 1: which seems so easy, However, it can be very difficult
Speaker 1: for a marketer sometimes to leave a core message to
Speaker 1: get closer to what the publisher is organically engaging their
Speaker 1: audience with So it's looking for that, and it's the
Speaker 1: onus is on us to find that, and the onus
Speaker 1: is on the marketer to look for that. I want
Speaker 1: to want to want that and it Both of those
Speaker 1: things are challenges. We have to find the right intersection
Speaker 1: that, but but the marketers to say I want that intersection.
Speaker 1: I don't want this just us talking about ourselves to
Speaker 1: people who may or may not want to hear that.
Speaker 1: I want to find where it intersects. So the focus
Speaker 1: on technology with Washington Post, to focus on new products
Speaker 1: with Washington tim Post. Has that made it easier to
Speaker 1: get to that engagement metric? Absolutely? How so? I mean
Speaker 1: for many years advertising has been about the marriage of
Speaker 1: art and science. You could look at holding companies, websites.
Speaker 1: It has. I would argue though, that there are many
Speaker 1: new news uh publishers that would say they're leading for
Speaker 1: scale because they're relying on tech. We were having this
Speaker 1: really interesting conversation about the fact that you're tied to
Speaker 1: this rich legacy of investigative journalism that was born out
Speaker 1: of the Beltway. Um, now you've been able to use
Speaker 1: technology to help scale. I actually think that's not even
Speaker 1: giving you enough credit. So this is where I think
Speaker 1: you're not even giving us endit. No, no, like this
Speaker 1: this is the show, right, this is what we do.
Speaker 1: But like, I actually think that you've thought about journalism
Speaker 1: and technology together first. It's what's the experience? Right, I
Speaker 1: think I think you got to go to the evolution
Speaker 1: of this, right, And my team is tired of me
Speaker 1: hearing me say this. But for years, on one side
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, you had the traditional public. Here's the Post,
Speaker 1: the Times, the Wall Street Journal, l A Times are
Speaker 1: over here. And then you had the disruptors come in, right,
Speaker 1: the Huffington Post, buzz Feeds, people like that. And so
Speaker 1: we existed in these sort of parallel universes for a
Speaker 1: while until we began to learn from them the audience
Speaker 1: acquisition techniques that work. So how do you make sure
Speaker 1: your headlines work on Facebook? Your Google search terms are right?
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, we saw our audiences grow. They,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, decided, we'll wait a minute, we
Speaker 1: need to do more quality. We can't just be only
Speaker 1: about scale, So they began hiring newsrooms. BuzzFeed has a
Speaker 1: pretty large newsroom now, and there is this meeting in
Speaker 1: the middle that is going to happen uh, and that
Speaker 1: is happening now, and I think that's what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: So the reason, the reason we're coming at it from
Speaker 1: a content point is that that's where we started on
Speaker 1: the road. Then we learned the techniques, we added the
Speaker 1: great technology, and we are now sort of ready to rumble.
Speaker 1: On the other side, which you have is people who
Speaker 1: are just now learning the journalism. And you've seen with
Speaker 1: like the problem BuzzFeed had with the UH, with the
Speaker 1: document they chose to make public. Journalism is hard. It's
Speaker 1: just as hard as the technology and the audience audience
Speaker 1: acquisition parts were. But they are and they are the Trump,
Speaker 1: the Trump Dosier, the Yah. Yeah. When they did the
Speaker 1: Trump dossier, they made it public and that was the
Speaker 1: first time you really saw BuzzFeed take big time heat
Speaker 1: for a journalistic decision. Right. So there's a meeting in
Speaker 1: the middle. We're getting closer and closer, and here comes
Speaker 1: the mother of all battles to see who survives. And
Speaker 1: I don't think everybody's gonna be able to survive. I
Speaker 1: think it's the people that have the best technique, audience
Speaker 1: acquisition techniques, the best content and the best technology who
Speaker 1: were going to succeed. And I think that's why Jeff
Speaker 1: believes were so well positioned right now because of the
Speaker 1: three Uh, we think we're the best. Final point is
Speaker 1: if you go back to October, dropped back to October
Speaker 1: and you look at what happened right, this huge story
Speaker 1: was going on in the country, the election was going nuts. Uh,
Speaker 1: and here we are the traditional publishers. And if you
Speaker 1: look at com Score for October, what happened right the
Speaker 1: trade sational publishers, the disrupted actually kick the ass of
Speaker 1: the disruptors. You had US, CNN and The Times leading
Speaker 1: com Score, BuzzFeed and Huffball below. What happened. What happened
Speaker 1: was the story became so important and so big that
Speaker 1: that's what you had to have and we just had
Speaker 1: it better. Alex and I did some homework, um between
Speaker 1: last night and this morning, just about going bring this
Speaker 1: back to the I P. So your partnership with Storied
Speaker 1: Media Group, can you talk about like I P and
Speaker 1: now how it's more important because of technology. So for years,
Speaker 1: if you worked in the newsroom, you had this experience.
Speaker 1: We would write a story and then a the phone
Speaker 1: would ring and it would be somebody claiming to be
Speaker 1: a pulp a producer in Hollywood, and they would say,
Speaker 1: I saw your story on X I would like to
Speaker 1: buy that story. And we all would go, okay, you're
Speaker 1: gonna buy the story. We already wrote the story. What
Speaker 1: do you want to buy the story? And then they
Speaker 1: would say no, no no, we want to do the rights
Speaker 1: to this story. We want to we to make a
Speaker 1: movie or make a TV show out of that. And
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, what are you gonna give us? You know,
Speaker 1: they'd say four dollars and we'd said okay, we'll take
Speaker 1: four dollars. Uh, and that was it and off they went.
Speaker 1: And maybe it got made, maybe it didn't. Maybe they
Speaker 1: reached out to the reporter, or maybe they didn't. It
Speaker 1: just sort of happens. Uh. There was a guy smarter
Speaker 1: than me, unfortunately in Hollywood, had been an agent for
Speaker 1: a long time. We said, wait, wait, wait, every day
Speaker 1: publishers are creating this unbelievable amount of content. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hire a bunch of people who are gonna sit in
Speaker 1: my office and they're gonna go through all of the
Speaker 1: publisher's content. They're gonna take that content, they're gonna put
Speaker 1: it into a giant database, and they're gonna make the database, uh,
Speaker 1: based on different types of stories. So, uh, story about
Speaker 1: a single woman overcoming long odds, story of trouble family,
Speaker 1: story of refugee, story of whatever. And they're gonna create
Speaker 1: this sort of giant matrix of all the content being
Speaker 1: created in in the country and they're gonna flip it
Speaker 1: and they're gonna say to Hollywood, Hey, you need an
Speaker 1: idea for something, Come on in. Do you think the
Speaker 1: brands have a right to play in that with you?
Speaker 1: Do they have a right to play in it with us?
Speaker 1: I think they do. Ever, I think I think the
Speaker 1: reason I'm up here and the reason I come to
Speaker 1: this event is that we need to explore this right.
Speaker 1: We need to open this dialogue. Uh. So we now
Speaker 1: have this company's representing us in Hollywood, uh, and they
Speaker 1: are going to sell our our stuff. We talked earlier
Speaker 1: about The Butler. The Butler was a story that ran
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post that a producer read that made
Speaker 1: that phone call, and next thing you know, it became
Speaker 1: a movie that I think Oprah did right producing folks.
Speaker 1: So this happens all the time. So what else can
Speaker 1: we do with our i P so that we do
Speaker 1: more than just the one article. Let's try to redefine
Speaker 1: it and let's make it far more effective, sharpened, sharpen
Speaker 1: the sword so that we can hit a specific audience.
Speaker 1: You all can do the same thing with your with
Speaker 1: your branded content. Right instead of trying to put out
Speaker 1: the piece that will appeal to the most people, think
Speaker 1: about it in terms of I'm going to create it
Speaker 1: this way to appeal to these people, this way to
Speaker 1: appeal to the those people, and then put it where
Speaker 1: they are. And if you do those two things that
Speaker 1: that's going to be our strategy going forward. I think
Speaker 1: you'll find a big audience. But how do brands then
Speaker 1: come to you and say, I don't want to just
Speaker 1: do branded content. I don't just want to sponsor something.
Speaker 1: I want to partner with you in a different one.
Speaker 1: I don't just want to I want I want to
Speaker 1: go co produce. What does that look like in this
Speaker 1: new world where i P is focused. It's very difficult.
Speaker 1: Uh And And there is a line between the newsroom
Speaker 1: and advertising, and the line is very simple. We make
Speaker 1: our decisions based on journalistic reasons, not financial reasons. So
Speaker 1: once you get a marketer into that conversation, it can
Speaker 1: become very tricky. Is it impossible. No, We've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of things in the past few years that work fine,
Speaker 1: satisfying both sides of the wall. But you do have
Speaker 1: to be careful, and we need brands and marketers and
Speaker 1: agencies to be respectful of the fact that this is
Speaker 1: what we do, and this is the single most important
Speaker 1: thing in our industry is the fact that we make
Speaker 1: decisions based on journalism. If that were to falter, if
Speaker 1: we were seen as making decisions based for financial reasons
Speaker 1: and doing stories because a marketer wants us to do it,
Speaker 1: our industry has gone in five minutes. What if a
Speaker 1: brand said, listen, I feel like I have I P,
Speaker 1: you have I P. Let's combine. Let's go create a
Speaker 1: product together. So we've tried a couple of different things
Speaker 1: in that space. We like. We love it in the
Speaker 1: hardware space. So if you are a technology company that
Speaker 1: that is building hardware, we'd love to be able to
Speaker 1: take your hardware and then use it for journalistic purposes
Speaker 1: and tell a really cool story. We had a very
Speaker 1: long drawn out conversation with a major hardware producer last year,
Speaker 1: about ten months about actually taking something that they were building,
Speaker 1: taking it to the space station for journalistic reasons and
Speaker 1: being able to tell a story that way that didn't happen,
Speaker 1: didn't quite work out. But I think there are partnership
Speaker 1: opportunities work and work, but we got to be very careful,
Speaker 1: I mean agreement. And I've evolved a lot on this um.
Speaker 1: I've pushed many editors hard on not to say a
Speaker 1: nice thing about a client, but it but and this
Speaker 1: is years ago, not certainly recently, but on topics like
Speaker 1: doesn't it make sense to cover this topic? I have
Speaker 1: a market that wants to sponsor it. Even that is
Speaker 1: dangerous and uh, I would never think to try to
Speaker 1: influence in any way anything that The Washington Post is
Speaker 1: going to do from a journalistic perspective, they I sell
Speaker 1: ads next to their stuff. That's why you have a
Speaker 1: brand studio, and that's why exactly a brand studio. And
Speaker 1: very importantly, it has to be transparent of where the
Speaker 1: content is coming from. It needs to be labeled clearly
Speaker 1: what it is. So this drives us. I also think
Speaker 1: you gotta remember there's a one point of information. The
Speaker 1: biggest complaint we get in the newsroom is when we
Speaker 1: do not label stories correctly as opinion or analysis. This
Speaker 1: drives readers nuts. And we might think that a label
Speaker 1: is a u X negative. I think it actually is
Speaker 1: a u X signal that is helpful, but there has distinction.
Speaker 1: But I know because the focus isn't here's this thing.
Speaker 1: It drives are crazy because that's all there is. Right.
Speaker 1: People are coming to the table and still saying, I
Speaker 1: want a fifty with a label, right, and I'll have
Speaker 1: this this bag. The conversation is that you asked about
Speaker 1: u X yesterday, which I thought was the smart and
Speaker 1: we just talked about this, which is such a smart question,
Speaker 1: and the answer back to you was, Washington Post, we
Speaker 1: need you to lead the way, right, We need you
Speaker 1: to tell us what's available. How do we do this?
Speaker 1: So I think we need to redefine the paradigm. Right.
Speaker 1: We haven't changed the fundamental framework of the article page
Speaker 1: since when the web first started, so we have not
Speaker 1: made that change. But it is a very difficult thing
Speaker 1: for us to change in the newsroom because I can't
Speaker 1: and we we have these conversations where somebody in our
Speaker 1: news room will go to Jed and say, you know what, man,
Speaker 1: this article really looks great. Without any ads on it.
Speaker 1: Can we just take the ads off, take the take
Speaker 1: the banner off, and it would look really cool. Jennal said, well,
Speaker 1: you can't do that that, you know, we we need
Speaker 1: that revenue. So my people get frustrated. He gets frustrated
Speaker 1: about the question. You know, we we missed an amazing
Speaker 1: opportunity with the iPad. In my opinion, that was where
Speaker 1: we all should have said, you know what, stop the ship.
Speaker 1: Let's come up with an entirely new way of doing this.
Speaker 1: Let's not make it feel like an interruption. Let's create
Speaker 1: a whole new flow. And I think we blew it.
Speaker 1: I think there's I think there's more opportunities. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of opportunity, and that's what Jared's team is developing with
Speaker 1: many of the new ad units, that are options for
Speaker 1: marketers that lend to u X, that are light fast
Speaker 1: and and UH capture attention. However, if for some reason,
Speaker 1: if a three two fifty, if an agency and a
Speaker 1: marketer want to invest money in it because it works
Speaker 1: for their business, say I'm not going to tell them
Speaker 1: not to. Now, there is a inherent problem with the
Speaker 1: creation of of digital advertising. It's the only medium that
Speaker 1: was really built on the fraction lad First of all,
Speaker 1: every other medium, a thirty second spot gets the exact
Speaker 1: same palette that the directors of the show gets. Right.
Speaker 1: A magazine, everyone gets the same The editor, the advertiser
Speaker 1: get the same thing. But the advent of the Internet,
Speaker 1: the editors take all the good stuff and what they
Speaker 1: don't want they toss the advertiser, and that's how ads
Speaker 1: were created. And that's a problem. What a lot of
Speaker 1: the issue is is what sits with inside that, what
Speaker 1: you do and what you do with it, and how
Speaker 1: marketers can work with publishers to understand platform by platform technology,
Speaker 1: pike by technology, how they can take the best of
Speaker 1: what they have to bring to an audience with the
Speaker 1: needs and the desires of the people coming to the
Speaker 1: post and create time spent that This is such a
Speaker 1: critical conversation to have now because of the distributed platform's
Speaker 1: right create a great experience. We solved Let's say we
Speaker 1: solve the problem on Washington Post dot com. That's great,
Speaker 1: But when then I send out that article to Apple News,
Speaker 1: to Facebook, Instant, to Google AMP, all those ads get
Speaker 1: stripped away and we're starting the game all over again.
Speaker 1: You know, we had a great conversation with Apple News.
Speaker 1: We were we were creating these beautiful projects and then
Speaker 1: we were sending them to Apple News and they just
Speaker 1: looked like shit. So we went to them and we said,
Speaker 1: look look at look at what you're producing, and look
Speaker 1: at what we're producing. And we expected them to push back.
Speaker 1: We expected them to say, you know, we don't really care.
Speaker 1: We just want the feed of content. We know better
Speaker 1: than you. Apple News said, you know what, come to Cupertino.
Speaker 1: Come to Cuppertino, sit down with our designers, and let's
Speaker 1: try to solve this problem. These are the conversations we
Speaker 1: have to have with the Facebook. You know, Facebook instant
Speaker 1: is great. It's fast, it's fast. It's fast. It's fast
Speaker 1: because the only thing they're loading is the article. They're
Speaker 1: not loading head units. They're not doing all the other
Speaker 1: stuff that actually slows the page down. That's not solving
Speaker 1: the problem. When when you're starting on sorry, go ahead,
Speaker 1: are we filling up glasses here or not? Than you
Speaker 1: look at this servant, take so damn long, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, thank you, plea, don't let that happen again.
Speaker 1: Could see evaluation season that everybody's list. If you're long,
Speaker 1: if you're starting a business from scratch, you don't have
Speaker 1: certain legacy ties. There's a newspaper company inside legacy digital
Speaker 1: companies and it's called the three fifty right. It's a
Speaker 1: declining legacy medium that you can watch. You can look
Speaker 1: at these enormous digital companies have been around for a
Speaker 1: long time. They're doing great in native social programmatic, but
Speaker 1: their businesses declined. Why because they have this legacy business
Speaker 1: withinside them and it makes it doesn't make it hard.
Speaker 1: You can't just shut it down. You don't want to.
Speaker 1: You want the money. So again, that's what you try
Speaker 1: to improve those units. You try to you try to
Speaker 1: educate your marketing partners. That's a two way conversation. Alexa,
Speaker 1: you hate programmatic, you hate you know these We don't
Speaker 1: have an issue with efficiency. We don't have There are
Speaker 1: certain brands who need scale. They need to get into
Speaker 1: certain places, in certain mindsets and certain behaviors quickly. But
Speaker 1: how we utilize that space has to change. It's also
Speaker 1: we have to ask you for something else. It's it's
Speaker 1: on both of them. No we did, we have to
Speaker 1: ask for something else. And I will tell you that
Speaker 1: some of the best ideas that we have done with
Speaker 1: you guys. Was we came to the table. He said, no, RFP,
Speaker 1: we know what you're good at, right, we have respect
Speaker 1: for who you are. How can we build something together together?
Speaker 1: That's it. It was truly that. And then we would
Speaker 1: sit in a room for hours and just grind it up.
Speaker 1: Grind I mean, just bang on it. I agree with
Speaker 1: everything you guys are saying. It has to be a partnership.
Speaker 1: The important thing is that the brand recognizes that we
Speaker 1: know the audience well and we're gonna make recommendations so
Speaker 1: your content performs best. And that can be very hard
Speaker 1: when if a brand wants to stick to a certain
Speaker 1: type of content and that's what they're they're they're very
Speaker 1: close to that content. But we're saying that may not resonate.
Speaker 1: And then and then there's a KPI to hit. So
Speaker 1: I love. This is My challenge to the both of
Speaker 1: you is to come to the next meeting we have.
Speaker 1: Instead of it being a deck about your calm score,
Speaker 1: reached numbers, the different verticals you have, etcetera. Tell me
Speaker 1: what your audience needs and why I can help that conversation.
Speaker 1: Come with that, you guys, Come with the we're getting
Speaker 1: heads forever the sales and so we do. But you
Speaker 1: have to say, you have to say no when they
Speaker 1: when when people are asking for three, it doesn't say
Speaker 1: but here's what we do. It's yes, that's true. I
Speaker 1: want the IO and and the space is the client's space.
Speaker 1: The space I can recommend. I could say this will
Speaker 1: work better, but if the client wants to run something,
Speaker 1: as long as not offense. I think all clients want
Speaker 1: to know what problems we can solve for our audiences.
Speaker 1: But if the more you understand the audience and what
Speaker 1: their needs are, the better you're going to stand down.
Speaker 1: What is most important to you, guys? Is it having
Speaker 1: the splash and making the impact or respecting the time
Speaker 1: and the needs of maybe the person who didn't want
Speaker 1: to buy a car today. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we can answer, but I want to anybody, anybody that
Speaker 1: has an opinion on that, I think obviously answer. We
Speaker 1: want to respect. We want to respect the reader. We
Speaker 1: want to respect um your editorial relationship with those folks.
Speaker 1: But we want to track what is eventually happening with
Speaker 1: that person. So no, we don't want to have this
Speaker 1: big disruptive experience. Every smart marketer in the world wants
Speaker 1: to get away from that, right and to respect what
Speaker 1: you guys are doing with them. But we need to
Speaker 1: find a way to understand what really is happening. How
Speaker 1: are we connecting with them? If you say, we're not
Speaker 1: making an instant sales, so how are we successful there?
Speaker 1: That's where we really could use you guys work. I
Speaker 1: think that so I would sum that up as attribution, right,
Speaker 1: like we can't we actually so, digital is trackable. Digital
Speaker 1: is traceable. But you ask any brand marketer and you say,
Speaker 1: did this really move the r O? I right, didn't
Speaker 1: move the needle for you. They're gonna hem and haw
Speaker 1: and say, well, we did this, we did this, and
Speaker 1: we found this causal relationship. Am I right? Digital is trackable? Yes,
Speaker 1: And that is a great thing about digital, and it's
Speaker 1: a poor thing about digital. There was a you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted a poor show when I was fifteen. It
Speaker 1: meant something to me. I wanted. I had no money
Speaker 1: and I had no driver's license, two things you need
Speaker 1: the ideal customer. Right, There was no such thing as
Speaker 1: the internet back then. Thirty years later, you got I
Speaker 1: got one, A used one, but I got one. Go
Speaker 1: follow my click stream. It's just not happening. There has
Speaker 1: to be a comfort that some waste is okay to
Speaker 1: develop brand and not everything has to be targeted work
Speaker 1: down the funnel. There has to be some comfort the
Speaker 1: old saying, I know half of my advertising works, I
Speaker 1: just don't know what happened. So I actually when I
Speaker 1: talked to partners, I don't say I have to. I
Speaker 1: do say, Okay, how are we attributing some of this stuff?
Speaker 1: How are we looking at it? But I put the
Speaker 1: onus on me to think about completely different metrics to
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do. What I'm saying to you
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting is a new conversation with
Speaker 1: publisher and brand to say, think about it, maybe like
Speaker 1: this and we'll see come with us. Right, We're open
Speaker 1: to that conversation. Our article, next project, we will go anywhere.
Speaker 1: We'll go on the road. You know Joey travels well
Speaker 1: only to Miami. Right, it'll have to be a nice place.
Speaker 1: I do think though, that the frustration too is the
Speaker 1: one off solution. So we'll see a solution that you
Speaker 1: guys come up with. Our people in this room are
Speaker 1: really creative, come up with and we're like, this is
Speaker 1: really cool and then we don't see anything like that
Speaker 1: again for months. So maybe I put a challenge out
Speaker 1: to the marketer side of this and the agency side
Speaker 1: of this, because also we run generally generalizing on campaign cycles.
Speaker 1: That's why we're fair weather. When you say I thought
Speaker 1: it was great and then I never saw it again,
Speaker 1: that's right we're doing. So maybe we have to change
Speaker 1: the conversation. We it's about building audience over time and
Speaker 1: having and having consistent relationship. So I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I take that on for all of us marketers. You
Speaker 1: came up with a with a great ad unit and
Speaker 1: a great idea that ran into campaign. Are there other
Speaker 1: people out just to steal that idea and copy it
Speaker 1: and do it themselves. I hope they do. If it
Speaker 1: were Yeah, I hope they do. I agree with that.
Speaker 1: So rarely do we let you have the last word,
Speaker 1: but we're going to. Um, this is what we call
Speaker 1: the last tweet. Uh, how has technology changed your career
Speaker 1: personally for better or for worse? Okay, let me answer them. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's without a doubt changed it for the better because
Speaker 1: it's so exciting and so fun. Um, it's ever changing
Speaker 1: and there's an unlimited amount of possibilities that you can
Speaker 1: create with it, and so I think because of that,
Speaker 1: you can only be excited about technology and as relates
Speaker 1: to digital UM as opposed to analog UM. What I
Speaker 1: would also say is that it's just well, you can
Speaker 1: you can edit it down. The other thing I would
Speaker 1: say in my next tweet would be alright, go ahead,
Speaker 1: I and I can fix this. Uh. What what I
Speaker 1: would say is, what I would say is that if
Speaker 1: you feel your new school and you're thinking today it
Speaker 1: it's sort of a blank slate Tomorrow, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: your new school tomorrow. Right, So every day you have
Speaker 1: to you have to keep learning, uh, because that's just true.
Speaker 1: So you can feel like, wow, I'm ahead of the
Speaker 1: curve right now, you can wake up tomorrow and be
Speaker 1: so far behind. Don't stop, get it, get it. You
Speaker 1: could have just said that the fire sign and one
Speaker 1: after the how about you? Uh? So what we do
Speaker 1: is we tell stories. So I'm a storyteller. Technologies to paint. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the ink, it's the pencil. Uh, it's it's how
Speaker 1: we tell the story. And because the more it devolves
Speaker 1: and the more you embrace the evolution, the more colors
Speaker 1: you have to paint with. It's truly that simple. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I like your palette. Yeah, thank everybody, Thank you had fun,
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you care awesome. So that was spicy, spicy.
Speaker 1: Third episode, last question, who runs the world? Girls? Girls?
Speaker 1: So at Lanta, I have something really special that I've
Speaker 1: been working on. We're talking about industry events. I'm act
Speaker 1: really working on one with the ladies off she runs
Speaker 1: It dot Org? Who runs it? She runs it to
Speaker 1: put on one of the hottest lineups I've seen in
Speaker 1: quite a long time, featuring women in marketing and advertising,
Speaker 1: talk about everything from communications to experiential data and definitely
Speaker 1: women's content. Check out the lineup on She runs It
Speaker 1: dot Org. Tickets available now. We'll see out there in
Speaker 1: March twenty nine. I'm excited. It's gonna be awesome, amazing.
Speaker 1: But anyhow, here we are Episode three. Make sure you subscribe, download,
Speaker 1: and definitely follow us on at Landia Podcast on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Instagram and Facebook. As always, we'd like to thank our
Speaker 1: family at Panoply, Cameron Drew's, Laura Mayor and Bowers, and
Speaker 1: our secret EP Matt Turk, thanks for joining us this
Speaker 1: weekend at Landia. We'll be back into Tuesdays with an
Speaker 1: all new episode. Bye. Full Disclosure. Our opinions are our own.