Speaker 1: Welcome to the last episode of season one of Calling Bullshit. Today,
Speaker 1: we've decided to dig into some of the things we've
Speaker 1: learned from our guests, from our own research, and from
Speaker 1: our audience, and then I sit down with the founder
Speaker 1: of Sleeping Giants, Matt Rubbins. The main theme, of course,
Speaker 1: the thing that led us to do this show in
Speaker 1: the first place, is trust. I think, like almost all
Speaker 1: corporations are incredibly performative, especially during like with like Pride,
Speaker 1: and I think also with like Black History, ronth It's
Speaker 1: like all just very performative. In my opinion, we're suffering
Speaker 1: through a crisis of trust. People, especially young people, are
Speaker 1: just losing trust with institutions of all kinds, and they're
Speaker 1: calling bullshit. We wanted to get out and ask some
Speaker 1: folks how they feel, specifically about trust when it comes
Speaker 1: to businesses. So our producers, Haley and Basil hit the
Speaker 1: streets of New York. When you think of a company
Speaker 1: that is untrustworthy, what do you think of untrustworthy? There's
Speaker 1: a hundred different ways to look at it. When they
Speaker 1: like have all these ads like yes, try us, we're good,
Speaker 1: and then they let you down. If a company is
Speaker 1: pushing around funds and the money trail is a little shady.
Speaker 1: That's my biggest thing, like saying that they're like good
Speaker 1: and sustainable and like, but actually causing a lot of
Speaker 1: environmental harm. I think Amazon Amazon automatically think of Amazon.
Speaker 1: I've heard that they don't actually process their returns and
Speaker 1: they just throw them away a lot of times. It
Speaker 1: gets a lot of flak, but I don't know enough
Speaker 1: to pass judgment and clear of the closing doors. Please
Speaker 1: what company or come and he's are you most loyal too?
Speaker 1: And why? I shop at Reformation a lot because they
Speaker 1: seem like they're pretty environmentally friendly. I am most loyal
Speaker 1: to ari e I because ari I is really good
Speaker 1: with the environment and they have some nonprofits and it's
Speaker 1: just a lot of values that align with my values.
Speaker 1: So definitely Trader Joe's because they have great products and
Speaker 1: I think they do try to cut out plastic where
Speaker 1: they can. Today people are becoming increasingly activist in support
Speaker 1: of their beliefs, for example, changing their spending habits to
Speaker 1: align with those beliefs. When you think of conscious capitalism,
Speaker 1: like what comes to mind a business model that can
Speaker 1: make money and still do the whole capitalist thing. But
Speaker 1: doesn't harm any groups of people or the environment or
Speaker 1: diminish any cultures. I don't know if there's such thing
Speaker 1: as conscious capitalist them. I think shopping at small businesses,
Speaker 1: especially in New York City, is the only way to
Speaker 1: go if you're truly going to be like a good citizen.
Speaker 1: I usually research a company before I purchase anything. A
Speaker 1: few people even told us they boycott certain companies because
Speaker 1: of their values, like BP and Exxon, for example, Like
Speaker 1: I will refuse to get gas there just because they've
Speaker 1: done oil spills. I've stopped shopping at like Brandy Um
Speaker 1: Brandy Melville because of kind of like the whole body
Speaker 1: positivity movement. And one person felt like the system is
Speaker 1: just too hopeless to even support at all. Friends or
Speaker 1: I like, we don't feel bad about stealing from like
Speaker 1: Walgreens or things like that because it's a corporation. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's ever been a corporation where I'm like, damn,
Speaker 1: that's like they're doing something good. The actual data here
Speaker 1: is sobering. More than fifty of young people today reject capitalism.
Speaker 1: They don't trust that it has their interest us at heart,
Speaker 1: and they really care believe that companies have an obligation
Speaker 1: to help solve environmental and social problems. There is a
Speaker 1: growing list of companies out there who are doing this right,
Speaker 1: and the market rewards them. Purpose driven companies grow an
Speaker 1: average of three times faster than their competitors, while keeping
Speaker 1: their workforce and their customers more satisfied. In the long term,
Speaker 1: I believe this generation will force the old school bullshitters
Speaker 1: to shape up or ship out. When we started this season,
Speaker 1: I thought we'd chosen organizations with a wide range of
Speaker 1: BS scores. I honestly thought that more of these companies
Speaker 1: would fall somewhere in the middle. But that's not what happened. Often,
Speaker 1: as we dug in the deeper the b S got. Overall,
Speaker 1: we found that companies were either really low BS or
Speaker 1: pretty high. You can see this for yourself at our
Speaker 1: webs calling Bullshit podcast dot com. No matter where a
Speaker 1: company falls on the B S scale, each one taught
Speaker 1: us something new, and as we looked back, three overarching
Speaker 1: themes emerged about how purpose led companies really require a
Speaker 1: new approach. First, purpose is not marketing. You have to
Speaker 1: mean it. As Russell Diaz Canseco from Vital Farms told us,
Speaker 1: your purpose lives at the core of your business. You've
Speaker 1: got to live it. You have to live it, even
Speaker 1: in your darkest moment. You gotta do it for real.
Speaker 1: And you've got to start with the purpose and let
Speaker 1: the business model come from that, as opposed to trying
Speaker 1: to stick a purpose on top of a business model
Speaker 1: that you already think is the right one. And we
Speaker 1: encountered several organizations that use purpose as a marketing tool
Speaker 1: instead of an action driver. For example, Meta, formerly known
Speaker 1: as Facebook, says their purpose is to give people the
Speaker 1: power to build community and bring the world closer together,
Speaker 1: all the while prioritizing the most polarizing and often truly
Speaker 1: harmful content. Here's Ramas Treaty Bazan. The most heinous forms
Speaker 1: of speech are what are being most prioritized. So, you know, Tie,
Speaker 1: it's one thing for me to say, you know, you
Speaker 1: should be able to speak how you wish and you
Speaker 1: should be able to read what you want. It's another
Speaker 1: thing to say that, Tie, I'm just going to keep
Speaker 1: feeding you insane, crazy and at times conspiratorial and outrageous content.
Speaker 1: So you go crazy with a dopamine firing in your head,
Speaker 1: and it's like staring at a burning car the entire time.
Speaker 1: But Meta definitely isn't alone in saying one thing and
Speaker 1: doing another. As Joe No Sarah pointed out in our
Speaker 1: episode about the n c double A, the real bullshit
Speaker 1: factor to me about the n c A is how
Speaker 1: orwellian the language is. They screw player in a dozen
Speaker 1: different ways, and yet they always characterize what they're doing
Speaker 1: as being the force for good, as being the people
Speaker 1: who are trying to to save the college athlete. We'll
Speaker 1: take this story from Jamie hen about a leaked marketing
Speaker 1: presentation from BP. Instead of outlining strategies for actually reaching
Speaker 1: their goal of net zero, it was all about messaging.
Speaker 1: They run through this incredible series of slides about how
Speaker 1: the world changed in because of the global climate strikes
Speaker 1: in Grettith Thunberg and everything that had happened, and BP
Speaker 1: was wasn't trusted on this important issue of climate change
Speaker 1: that the public cared about. So they needed to do
Speaker 1: something to signal that they got it on climate change.
Speaker 1: It could be part of the energy transition. Of course,
Speaker 1: nothing in the presentation was actually about concrete things that
Speaker 1: they would do, like stopping gass production. It was all
Speaker 1: about the ways that they would remarket themselves. This brings
Speaker 1: me to my second major takeaway doing is believing the
Speaker 1: opposite of empty marketing is purposeful action. Many of our
Speaker 1: guests had sent pastic ideas for actions companies should take
Speaker 1: to help close the gap between what they say and
Speaker 1: what they do, like this idea that Matthew Weatherley White
Speaker 1: had for black Rock. If I were Larry think I
Speaker 1: would do one release, simple thing. I would change the
Speaker 1: new client form to require investors to opt out sustainable
Speaker 1: and impact investing and instead opt in. I think the
Speaker 1: messaging alone would give Larry Fink so much power, so
Speaker 1: much sort of political capital to force change within the
Speaker 1: organization that that institutional operational hesitation slash resistance slash intractability.
Speaker 1: I think it would sort of collapse on its own weight.
Speaker 1: Or this potential action for Meta from RMA Srinivasan, What
Speaker 1: if Facebook partnered with independent journalists in every single country
Speaker 1: where it operated so that those journalists could actually have
Speaker 1: power over media, you know, auditing, tweaking, working with Facebook
Speaker 1: technologies so that they could reach people in those countries
Speaker 1: in ways that are more fair. Good intentions must be
Speaker 1: backed by action. Being purpose led isn't an end state
Speaker 1: it's a journey. Like Andreine Clark explains, it can also
Speaker 1: be a fight, and I say, well, then you've got
Speaker 1: to grab the bull by the horn and wrestle with
Speaker 1: it and make it work for you. Wrestling with the
Speaker 1: problems actually trying to solve them is what makes being
Speaker 1: purpose led so exciting. But without trust, people just won't
Speaker 1: come along for the ride, which brings me to the
Speaker 1: third and final takeaway of this season. The key to
Speaker 1: trust is transparency. To be transparent, you have to tell
Speaker 1: people what's really going on. Are you achieving your purpose?
Speaker 1: Are there problems that you've encountered that you can't solve?
Speaker 1: Admit that private prison company Course Civic, for example, would
Speaker 1: benefit massively from being more transparent. So I can't find
Speaker 1: data on their website about a lot of things that
Speaker 1: I would typically look for in measuring whether they're running
Speaker 1: a constitutional present and there's a whole list of things
Speaker 1: that the facility needs to be measuring to show that
Speaker 1: they're in compliance with the constitution, And you don't see
Speaker 1: that type of data or that reporting on cours Civics
Speaker 1: website that Sharon Brett from the a c l U
Speaker 1: explaining just how hard it is to trust that Courcivic
Speaker 1: is living up to its stated purpose. But just collecting
Speaker 1: data isn't enough. You have to measure what matters. In
Speaker 1: our episode about America, Andrew Yang was inspired to start
Speaker 1: a third political party to restore faith in our system,
Speaker 1: partly based on the idea that GDP isn't everything. Right now,
Speaker 1: you have these economic indicators that are GDP and stock
Speaker 1: market prices, and they're going up in up, even as
Speaker 1: more people are sinking into the dirt. So what I
Speaker 1: believe we should do is take our human well being
Speaker 1: and look at it the same way we do stock
Speaker 1: market prices and say, okay, how are the kids doing?
Speaker 1: You know, how how are people doing? How are communities doing?
Speaker 1: We should be measuring our health, our mental health, our
Speaker 1: kids ability to learn, our environmental quality are affordability and
Speaker 1: access to healthcare and education. Measuring what matters and making
Speaker 1: those results public is a big part of being purpose led.
Speaker 1: It's easy to trust that all birds cares about sustainability.
Speaker 1: There's a comprehensive label explaining it to me on every
Speaker 1: shoe box, and everyone's compensation is tied to hitting their
Speaker 1: sustainability goals. CEO Joey's willinger that carbon emission reduction goal
Speaker 1: that we stated alongside our financial didance. I'm paid on that.
Speaker 1: If we don't hit those reduction targets for carbon and
Speaker 1: I don't make as much money, and same for all
Speaker 1: of the executives and and leadership team at All Birds.
Speaker 1: We think about ourselves as a purpose native company, so
Speaker 1: that alignment between mission and financial outcome was essential for us.
Speaker 1: So if you want to build trust and close the
Speaker 1: gap between word, indeed, start with a genuine purpose. Remember,
Speaker 1: actions speak louder than words. And finally, transparency will keep
Speaker 1: you honest. And since we try to hold ourselves to
Speaker 1: these same standards, you'll hear what it sounds like when
Speaker 1: somebody calls BS on us right after the break welcome back.
Speaker 1: In the spirit of participation, we set up a phone
Speaker 1: number where folks can call in and tell us what
Speaker 1: they think of the show. Did we get a score
Speaker 1: wrong or right? Where we maybe bullshit? Hey, it's tied
Speaker 1: to calling Bullshit podcast. I'd love to hear what's on
Speaker 1: your mind. And remember, if you leave a message, you
Speaker 1: might be featured on an upcoming episode. This is Whitney.
Speaker 1: I just listened to the Albird's episode. I thought it
Speaker 1: was super cool hearing about the materials innovations that Albert's
Speaker 1: is leading with their sweet phone and with the tree
Speaker 1: runner eucalyptus. And honestly, I'd never really thought much about
Speaker 1: how a lot of our sneakers are made out of
Speaker 1: oil or petroleum. Hey, I really like your podcast, but
Speaker 1: I gotta say is the latest episode on All Birds
Speaker 1: is purely a PR pluck Like there's nothing about calling bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's all about, like you know, praising the company, interviewing
Speaker 1: the co founder. So I would just encourage you have have
Speaker 1: to stick to your original format because you're almost like
Speaker 1: doing PR for other companies. Hi. There, I have to
Speaker 1: say my favorite episode has been Vital Farms. I absolutely
Speaker 1: love listening to the CEO's perspective about however, company is
Speaker 1: on a journey and the way to progress on that
Speaker 1: journey is to continue to set really audacious goals and
Speaker 1: to hold yourself accountable to those. Hi. I listened to
Speaker 1: an episode for the first time regarding what it kind
Speaker 1: of means to be an American, and I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the many vantage points that you included in the episode,
Speaker 1: just kind of hearing from folks that are maybe similar minded,
Speaker 1: but been also talking to folks that you know may
Speaker 1: have had an opposite view. Hey, calling bullshit team, considering
Speaker 1: the delta between word, indeed between the American dream and
Speaker 1: lived experience with many Americans, you gave a score of
Speaker 1: sixty two. I would argue that it should be even higher.
Speaker 1: For where it's worth I'd give I'd like to hear
Speaker 1: more about wellness companies at a mass scow that are
Speaker 1: really challenging the stories that are fed to women in
Speaker 1: the capital society. I'd love to see some some more
Speaker 1: episodes on some of the big guys, the Amazons of
Speaker 1: the world, the Google's hear what you all think about
Speaker 1: some of these big tech giants. Another interesting episode for
Speaker 1: company to eament could be TikTok when you start to
Speaker 1: smell bullshit in a company? What are the telltale signs
Speaker 1: that a company is purpose washing versus you know we've
Speaker 1: made a mistake. Thanks so much, ye thank you everyone
Speaker 1: who took the time to call in, and please keep
Speaker 1: them coming. Even if we're in between seasons. The line
Speaker 1: will be open, so if you have any thoughts or opinions,
Speaker 1: hit us at two on to five oh five. Five.
Speaker 1: We also received some pretty critical feedback via email that
Speaker 1: surfaced some important questions and made some interesting suggestions. I've
Speaker 1: asked our producer D. S. Moss to read part of
Speaker 1: one from a listener we'll call Joe. It's hard to
Speaker 1: take this seriously coming from marketing consultants, people working for
Speaker 1: years in a field that has largely helped corporations avoid
Speaker 1: accountability and change rather than drive it. Why don't you
Speaker 1: start by calling bull on marketing firms first and foremost.
Speaker 1: They have the biggest say do gap of all. I
Speaker 1: certainly hope that some of the experts you bring on
Speaker 1: include activists who actually put their work and lives on
Speaker 1: the line to get corporations to make those statements in
Speaker 1: the first place, to show and to tell them what
Speaker 1: they need to do in order to change in meaningful
Speaker 1: ways instead of meaningless actions that do nothing real. You're
Speaker 1: talking about the classics say do gap to build your
Speaker 1: brand and to get clients. Other people do it and
Speaker 1: have done it long before you, and we'll do it
Speaker 1: long after you move on to something else, because they
Speaker 1: spend their lives devoted to the fight for social transformation. Ouch. Honestly, though,
Speaker 1: I thought Joe made some great points here. First, just
Speaker 1: to be clear, your purp is is not marketing. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's companies that think of it as marketing or as
Speaker 1: part of their brand image that get in trouble and
Speaker 1: maybe wind up as an episode of calling Bullshit. This
Speaker 1: email got me thinking more deeply about the role that
Speaker 1: advertising and marketing play in the bullshit sphere, and so
Speaker 1: I decided I wanted to have a conversation about trust
Speaker 1: with a real activist and also someone in advertising, the
Speaker 1: founder of Sleeping Giants, Matt Rivets. My conversation with Matt
Speaker 1: right after the break, welcome back. To dig more deeply
Speaker 1: into the topic of bullshit and marketing, I called up
Speaker 1: Matt Rivets, founder of social media activism organization Sleeping Giants.
Speaker 1: All right, folks, I am very pleased to introduce Matt Rivets. Matt,
Speaker 1: welcome to Calling Bullshit and thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. So
Speaker 1: to start off, I'd love it if you would tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit more about your journey in advertising,
Speaker 1: how you got started in the business, and then maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit more about how you began to become
Speaker 1: more activist. Yeah, I started in nineteen I had always
Speaker 1: kind of known that I was going to go into advertising.
Speaker 1: I was really obsessed with the early Cliff Freeman commercials.
Speaker 1: Little Caesar is that kind of thing, and between that
Speaker 1: and SNL, I just felt like that's something that I
Speaker 1: would like to do. And I was lucky enough to
Speaker 1: get a job and graduated early from college and got
Speaker 1: my first job in Boston and just started working at
Speaker 1: Needency there and it was just a great business to
Speaker 1: be super creative to level up. And then I moved
Speaker 1: to San Francisco and I got to work on Adidas,
Speaker 1: which I always wanted to be work on a sports brand.
Speaker 1: And then I went freelance, and I've got a great
Speaker 1: partner that I've been working with for a long time,
Speaker 1: and we just went and we worked at all these
Speaker 1: places that we'd always wanted to work. So two thousand
Speaker 1: sixteen rolled around and the election, everyone was feeling very raw,
Speaker 1: and I was feeling like I wasn't as concerned about
Speaker 1: Trump as I was about the rising tide of racism
Speaker 1: in the country. And I got particularly obsessed with Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: who I felt like it was a really dangerous individual,
Speaker 1: and he he said at the time. It was just
Speaker 1: after two thousand sixteen, maybe around there. He gave a
Speaker 1: speech and he said, let them call your racist where
Speaker 1: it is a badge of honor. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was horrendous. These are I didn't think that existed. I
Speaker 1: was not really tuned to that, so I got really
Speaker 1: obsessed with him. He was at the time the president
Speaker 1: of bright Bart News. I had never heard a bright
Speaker 1: Bart before, and so I went online and I could
Speaker 1: not believe what I was looking at. There were these
Speaker 1: articles that said, hoisted high and proud, that Confederate flag
Speaker 1: proclaims the glorious heritage, and would you rather your child
Speaker 1: had feminism or cancer? And the real hard part about
Speaker 1: it was looking above all those articles and seeing ads
Speaker 1: for companies that I had worked on previously in my career,
Speaker 1: And so right then I knew there was something wrong
Speaker 1: to have brands that I knew as a writer. You know,
Speaker 1: they were notoriously scared and don't want a word out
Speaker 1: of place. And I'd spent the whole nights writing these
Speaker 1: ads making sure that nothing was offensive at all. To
Speaker 1: show up next to an article saying the Confederate flag
Speaker 1: is great seemed really off to me, and I just thought, why,
Speaker 1: why would they ever support this? And and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, I was right. They didn't really know. My
Speaker 1: parents were very area tune to the world, and I
Speaker 1: learned a lot about the Holocaust growing up because I'm
Speaker 1: a Jewish guy, and I had learned a lot about slavery,
Speaker 1: and I learned a lot about the human rights abuses,
Speaker 1: and they actively encouraged me to get involved whenever I could.
Speaker 1: So that was the beginning of my journey in this.
Speaker 1: I just felt like, alright, some action needs to be taken,
Speaker 1: and who around is going to do it except for me?
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's that's great, and so is that
Speaker 1: the moment that that Sleeping Giants was born. At the
Speaker 1: exact moment, I was really scared at the time, but
Speaker 1: I just decided to go for it. I opened up
Speaker 1: an anonymous Gmail account and an anonymous Twitter handle. I
Speaker 1: had had a Twitter account that I had sent ten
Speaker 1: tweets from all about the Baltimore Ravens horrific offense, and
Speaker 1: that was about it. That was my That was the
Speaker 1: depth of my knowledge about Twitter. But I did know
Speaker 1: that if you were sitting on the runway for two
Speaker 1: hours on a plane that you could tweet at the
Speaker 1: airline and say I've been sitting on the tarmac for
Speaker 1: two hours, and they would they were getting in touch.
Speaker 1: They'd respond instantly, and they would send you twenty miles
Speaker 1: for the trouble. So I knew I could either try
Speaker 1: to call these companies. That wasn't gonna work. So I
Speaker 1: opened up this anonymous Twitter handle. I found some shitty
Speaker 1: stock art to put on it, and I called it
Speaker 1: Sleeping Giants because I wanted it to seem like it
Speaker 1: was bigger than just one person. I put a crowd
Speaker 1: shot on the masthead to make it seem like there
Speaker 1: was a lot of people. There was no one following,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't following anyone at the time, so it
Speaker 1: was really just from scratch from scratch. So I took
Speaker 1: a screenshot of the first at I saw. It was
Speaker 1: for so Far, which is a progressive loan company in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, California, next to the article proclaiming the glory
Speaker 1: of the Confederate flag, and I tweeted it to the company,
Speaker 1: and then I tweeted it to the CEO who was
Speaker 1: all on Twitter, and the CEO got back to me
Speaker 1: within thirty minutes. It was so quick, and he said,
Speaker 1: I had no idea that our ad was on there,
Speaker 1: and I don't even know if there's anything I can
Speaker 1: do about it, but I'm going to try to get
Speaker 1: it down. And I said, there's got to be something
Speaker 1: wrong with the technology where brands don't know where they're
Speaker 1: ending up. And that was the beginning of all of it.
Speaker 1: I got real addicted to it. For someone that loves
Speaker 1: to level up, it was it made a ton of
Speaker 1: sense for me too. I'm like, okay, well now I
Speaker 1: got really obsessed and it felt really great. Right these
Speaker 1: this company said we're not going to advertise on this
Speaker 1: page anymore. We don't want to support the racism on
Speaker 1: this page. Okay, so there's got to be a bunch
Speaker 1: of brands that believe the same thing. So I started
Speaker 1: tweeting it every other brand that I could find. You
Speaker 1: just refresh and there's another brand that would pop up,
Speaker 1: really big ones. You know that we're placing ads all
Speaker 1: over the internet, and it's just one by one. They
Speaker 1: kept coming down. Day by day. They were like two
Speaker 1: and three that would come down. It was, you know,
Speaker 1: a week into it, and maybe of teen advertisers left,
Speaker 1: and did you ever get contacted by Breitbart. Did they
Speaker 1: notice that this was taken place? No, they it took
Speaker 1: a while to land on their radar. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I had a friend who's the New York
Speaker 1: Times best selling author, and I said, what do you
Speaker 1: mind sending this out to your audience? So he sent
Speaker 1: his followers. I said, these guys are doing some interesting stuff,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden I had a hundred more followers,
Speaker 1: and then two hundred, and then a thousand, and they
Speaker 1: were all watching as these advertisers would leave one by
Speaker 1: one and they would amplify the tweets that went out.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, you know what, like these
Speaker 1: people are all watching and they're cheering on but they could.
Speaker 1: This is so easy. It's like taking a screenshot on
Speaker 1: your phone tweeting it to an average everybody could. So
Speaker 1: that kind of happened quick. I just put a set
Speaker 1: of instructions on the pin tweet at the top of
Speaker 1: the page, and it caught fire. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there were ten advertised is leaving every hour, and I
Speaker 1: just said to tag sleeping giants on the back so
Speaker 1: I could keep track of them. And it just built
Speaker 1: and built and built and built. Yeah, no, that's that's great. Well,
Speaker 1: and this is like shame on me. I didn't become
Speaker 1: aware of sleeping giants until later when you got engaged
Speaker 1: with trying to get brands to boycott Facebook. When was that?
Speaker 1: When did that? That was much later. It really became
Speaker 1: to me an obsession about the platforms themselves. How do
Speaker 1: you go deeper into this? It can't just be about advertisers.
Speaker 1: It's got to be about platform accountability. These are advertising
Speaker 1: platforms that are serving ads to two sites that really should.
Speaker 1: There were white supremacist sites that were getting ads when
Speaker 1: this thing started, and I sort of became obsessed with
Speaker 1: Alex Jones, who was harassing Sandy Hook parents out of there.
Speaker 1: His followers were harassing Sandy Hook parents out of their
Speaker 1: homes after their children have been massacred, and yeah, it
Speaker 1: just felt I just thought it was beyond the pale.
Speaker 1: This person was doing this and he was a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: and he was making tons of money on YouTube from
Speaker 1: ads and Facebook. And I was like, if an advertiser
Speaker 1: had the option to sponsor this on TV, there's no
Speaker 1: way way they would do it. So how are they
Speaker 1: doing it on these platforms and I had started to
Speaker 1: look up the terms of service on these platforms. How
Speaker 1: nothing he was saying was matching up with their terms
Speaker 1: of service. He should have been gone a long time ago,
Speaker 1: according to their own rules. So I just started lobbying
Speaker 1: effort on YouTube, and you know as sleeping giants, as
Speaker 1: the whole sort of community started to really push this,
Speaker 1: and there was no accountability that kept saying no, he
Speaker 1: would get a strike here and a strike there, and
Speaker 1: then that would go away. That was like they were
Speaker 1: making up the rules as they went. And eventually I
Speaker 1: got a call from a reporter that said, what do
Speaker 1: you think about Alex Jones? And I said, what are you?
Speaker 1: And he said, Apple just got rid of them from
Speaker 1: their platform because they don't make their money from ads.
Speaker 1: They're just they're a hardware company that also happens to
Speaker 1: have some platforms, but they they're not relying on ad dollars.
Speaker 1: And what happened after that was one by one, the
Speaker 1: next day, YouTube got rid of them, and Facebook got
Speaker 1: rid of them, and Twitter waited for another two weeks
Speaker 1: and then they got rid of them. And I said, man,
Speaker 1: that is no way to enforce your rules. Everyone should
Speaker 1: have their own rules and they shouldn't be looking for
Speaker 1: cover from anyone else. So that's really what got me
Speaker 1: into the platforms. I thought that was really wrong beyond
Speaker 1: ads supporting things, advertising supports these platforms and platforms make
Speaker 1: up their own rules, and what we're seeing right now
Speaker 1: in the world is they're really making it up as
Speaker 1: they go. So that really became kind of obsession of
Speaker 1: mind and then of sleeping giants rid large. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I mean, I'm not going to go into
Speaker 1: the history of cod but we share a worldview. We've
Speaker 1: taken different paths. But like you, I love to advertise thing.
Speaker 1: I became addicted to it in a way the people
Speaker 1: really actually it was such a fun business. And then
Speaker 1: decided that there had to be a better way. You know,
Speaker 1: I was becoming much more I guess, sensitized to the
Speaker 1: damage that we were doing by just creating endless growth,
Speaker 1: and so decided to jump out and do co collective
Speaker 1: and you know, way led onto way we were working
Speaker 1: with companies. I guess our thesis was, rather than tell
Speaker 1: your story using paid media, you should do your story
Speaker 1: through innovation and the customer experience, and that if we
Speaker 1: could get companies to take action to make it make
Speaker 1: their you know, their intent real through the customer experience,
Speaker 1: we would close the gap between word indeed. And then
Speaker 1: we decided to do this podcast because in the ten
Speaker 1: years between the time that we started co and today,
Speaker 1: purpose got really popular and we started to see examples
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, that company is saying their purpose left,
Speaker 1: they're definitely not. And the one that we became just
Speaker 1: hyper aware of was Facebook, who says that they, you know,
Speaker 1: want to empower everyone to build community and bring the
Speaker 1: world closer together. Facebook is the most egregious when it
Speaker 1: comes to that their messaging has been one of togetherness
Speaker 1: and connecting the world while taking zero responsibility for what
Speaker 1: they've cost. Yeah, literally doing the opposite. This is our
Speaker 1: season wrap up episode, and so what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do is just take stock and figure out what we've
Speaker 1: learned so far, both from our experience just making the
Speaker 1: show and and also about some feedback that we've received
Speaker 1: on the show. And one of the most interesting pieces
Speaker 1: of feedback that we've gotten is a listener who called
Speaker 1: bs on us and me specifically for being, to use
Speaker 1: his words, a marketing consultant who should be calling bullshit
Speaker 1: on the marketing industry, and I thought that was a
Speaker 1: totally or point, not like totally accurate, because marketing is
Speaker 1: a big part of several of our episodes, Jewel and
Speaker 1: and BP specifically, but definitely a topic worth discussing, and
Speaker 1: so largely that's the territory I wanted to explore with
Speaker 1: you today because you've been both like you're both a
Speaker 1: highly awarded creative person in advertising and you're also an
Speaker 1: activist in the advertising and marketing space. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a freelancer, so I've been really lucky. I've been
Speaker 1: able to pick and choose the projects that I've worked on,
Speaker 1: which has been great, but it is hard. Every time
Speaker 1: that a job comes up, you kind of hold your
Speaker 1: breath and go, Okay, is this gonna be the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. Everyone's got their own code and what
Speaker 1: they're willing to work on. How do you do that?
Speaker 1: Math I I think I do have a line in
Speaker 1: certain companies that I will definitely not work for on
Speaker 1: Facebook being one of them, but there are companies that
Speaker 1: are doing good things. The other thing is, sometimes you
Speaker 1: feel like you can take one of these companies and
Speaker 1: propose ideas that they you know, sometimes you need to
Speaker 1: use the system itself to try to improve it, and
Speaker 1: so you have an opportunity to sometimes do that, which
Speaker 1: is great, and the companies are more open to it
Speaker 1: now than they've been. But it is tough and it's
Speaker 1: tough to hold the line. You know. I was an
Speaker 1: inadvertent activist. I had no idea what I was getting into,
Speaker 1: and that thing grew and wow. Yeah, back when I
Speaker 1: was in more let's call it mainstream advertising, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do work with oil companies. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do work with chemical companies. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do work with cigarette companies. Those seemed pretty obvious to me.
Speaker 1: And so you're right, it's sort of a personal, choose
Speaker 1: your own adventure in that business. I was also lucky
Speaker 1: enough to work for people who who allowed me to
Speaker 1: recuse myself right based on my personal take, which I appreciated.
Speaker 1: I was very energized and excited by what you were
Speaker 1: doing with Facebook, and it got my attention that big
Speaker 1: brands got on board for a while at least, and
Speaker 1: and started saying we're not gonna advertise for a period
Speaker 1: of time. Yeah, but that was that was a moment
Speaker 1: in time that Unfortunately, you get more work done in
Speaker 1: really tragic times. And that was on the heels of
Speaker 1: George Floyd's murder and there were mass protests in the streets.
Speaker 1: People were really angry, rightfully, So you just saw a
Speaker 1: lot of these brands put a black square on their
Speaker 1: Instagram page and say we support Black Lives Matter, and man,
Speaker 1: that was bullshit for a lot of companies I talked
Speaker 1: about calling bullshit. It just felt like they were being very,
Speaker 1: very performative about their support. And we did some person
Speaker 1: on the street interviews as a part of this episode
Speaker 1: as well, and that word came up. People know, right
Speaker 1: and that That's what's interesting is companies aren't fooling anybody
Speaker 1: when they're when they do that. Not anymore. They used
Speaker 1: to be able to do they were Information moves fast
Speaker 1: now and there are a lot of reporters on this beat.
Speaker 1: You can tell almost instantly if something isn't coming from
Speaker 1: the right place, because there will be reporting on it
Speaker 1: and we'll go out on Twitter and they will get
Speaker 1: fil aid over it if they don't see it through
Speaker 1: and everything they do. I I had been really interested
Speaker 1: in doing some kind of Facebook action for about a year,
Speaker 1: but never felt sleeping giants is not big enough to
Speaker 1: do something like that. It was going to be throwing
Speaker 1: a pebble in the ocean. And I got a call
Speaker 1: from a couple of people, Jonathan Greenblatt at a d
Speaker 1: L and Jim Styre at Common Sense Media, and they
Speaker 1: called me and said, we kind of want to do
Speaker 1: something about Facebook right now. I just said, I would
Speaker 1: love to. I'm in a hunter whatever you want me
Speaker 1: to do, Like, I'm so flatter do you even ask?
Speaker 1: I wanted to do it for a while. But I
Speaker 1: think they they, like I thought that we needed a
Speaker 1: coalition to do it. We needed a much bigger show
Speaker 1: of force from a number of different quarters for some
Speaker 1: something on Facebook. And so I just said, look, I
Speaker 1: think we need something definite here. We need something that's achievable.
Speaker 1: Let's ask advertisers to take a month off. Take a
Speaker 1: month off of Facebook, because they really were allowing this
Speaker 1: racism to run wild, they were allowing disinformation to run wild,
Speaker 1: especially during George Floyd. The toxicity of Facebook was egregious
Speaker 1: and it worked. I mean, it was really a shot
Speaker 1: in the dark. It's amazing to look back now and say, wow,
Speaker 1: advertised was left within like a two week period, And
Speaker 1: at first it started with the usual players like the
Speaker 1: north Face and some more sort of conscious advertisers would lead.
Speaker 1: And then I think we heard from Verizon and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, this is happening now, And we all started
Speaker 1: texting each other like this is happening. And I've just
Speaker 1: seen enough with Fox and with bright Bar to know
Speaker 1: that once one of those things happened, the rest come
Speaker 1: down with it. And it was a tipping point, and
Speaker 1: advertisers left, and we knew that they weren't going to
Speaker 1: stay away for long, but they all made some really
Speaker 1: good statements about it, and it was the first time
Speaker 1: that there was some kind of dent in Facebook, and
Speaker 1: we felt like, Okay, if we could just get people
Speaker 1: to think about what they're supporting with their ad dollars,
Speaker 1: then we have a chance to hold these companies accountable
Speaker 1: long term, because advertising is ninety eight percent of Facebook's revenue,
Speaker 1: and it's not the big advertisers, necessarily a small and
Speaker 1: medium sized ones that really can't do business without it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was. It was impressive. I guess it's it's slightly
Speaker 1: disappointing to me that given the drumbeat of horrifying revelation
Speaker 1: since then about Facebook and their practices that more companies
Speaker 1: haven't just pulled off the platform completely. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: feels like Facebook they've got the world in a headlock
Speaker 1: right there. You know, the biggest and best attention machine
Speaker 1: in the world. And that's hard to resist if you've
Speaker 1: got a thing that you need to sell. But it
Speaker 1: would be great to see more clients making that a
Speaker 1: permanent choice. There have been a few, and there have
Speaker 1: been a few principled companies that have said we're not
Speaker 1: going to do it anymore, and they say that it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to do it, and it really speaks to
Speaker 1: the monopoly power of a couple of these companies. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have basically an advertising duopoly and they own our industry,
Speaker 1: not the way the other way around. Right now, it
Speaker 1: should be the other way around. As advertisers, we should
Speaker 1: we should be owning the relationship, not them. They are
Speaker 1: wholly dependent on us. We are not wholly dependent on them,
Speaker 1: but they've made it seem like we're wholly dependent on them.
Speaker 1: So we need more competition in the market. We need
Speaker 1: new platforms, we need other ways to reach people, and
Speaker 1: we need to think about that more critically, You can't
Speaker 1: just ask someone to wholesale leave the only way that
Speaker 1: they can actually reach some people. That's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: And one of the other levers is at agent season
Speaker 1: PR companies themselves. You know, one of the activists that
Speaker 1: we talked to this season for the VP episode was
Speaker 1: a guy named Jamie hen who runs an organization called
Speaker 1: Fossil Free Media. He's actually one of the co founders
Speaker 1: of three fifty dot Org, and his thesis is that
Speaker 1: ad agencies and PR companies are tools that bad companies
Speaker 1: are using to do harm to the world, and so
Speaker 1: he's overtly going directly after them. He overtly went after
Speaker 1: Edelman for all the work that they do with Exxon,
Speaker 1: for instance. What do you think about that? Look, I
Speaker 1: think that the next phase of this is employee activism.
Speaker 1: We saw it with Francis Hogan and Facebook. We've seen
Speaker 1: it across the board, and I think the whistleblowers are
Speaker 1: the most important people in this fight. Within the industry.
Speaker 1: Our industry, particularly in advertising, we like the status quo
Speaker 1: a whole lot. For an industry that loves change, loves
Speaker 1: to tout change and say that we're changing the world.
Speaker 1: We're really good at maintaining the status quo and and uh,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to see that change. I'm still in advertising.
Speaker 1: I want to be proud of what I do, and
Speaker 1: I want to be proud of our industry. The governing
Speaker 1: bodies of our industry are really doing a disservice to
Speaker 1: the industry in some ways by blindly supporting Facebook and
Speaker 1: Google all the time. When Facebook and Google are doing
Speaker 1: us a disservice as advertisers, They're putting us next to
Speaker 1: some really awful stuff. They're using our money to fund
Speaker 1: information that has caused genocide and in two countries. So
Speaker 1: I think it's really important for our industry to speak up.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's important for people in every industry
Speaker 1: to say raise their hand and say I think there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with this. Yeah. And it's interesting because we
Speaker 1: have seen whistleblowers in their industries. You mentioned Francis Hogan,
Speaker 1: and the ad industry has had things like diet Madison Avenue,
Speaker 1: which they were taking on toxic behavior in the workplace.
Speaker 1: But I'm not actually aware of any whistleblowers from inside
Speaker 1: ad agencies going after clients or client work. Have I
Speaker 1: missed that having some of them haven't mystic because it's
Speaker 1: not really happening. But I also don't know that a
Speaker 1: lot of people, even people in advertising, don't understand the
Speaker 1: mechanisms of what we support their I for sure did not,
Speaker 1: right absolutely, we didn't. We didn't know, And I think
Speaker 1: that was like the success of Sleeping Giants was more
Speaker 1: of an informational nature, letting people know that advertising supports
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. Right now, our entire online ecosystem
Speaker 1: is supported by advertising. We hold up the Internet, the
Speaker 1: free Internet. That's how everyone pays for websites, that's how
Speaker 1: everyone pays for social networks. That's what we support. So
Speaker 1: I think that we do need more education within the
Speaker 1: industry to let people know what they're paying into with
Speaker 1: their time. I don't think that we understand that, And
Speaker 1: I also think that if they knew that, they would
Speaker 1: speak up. And there are a lot of agencies that
Speaker 1: won't work on certain things, and and hats off to them,
Speaker 1: and that's great, but we do need employees to stand
Speaker 1: up and say we shouldn't work on this right Well,
Speaker 1: that leads to another question I had, which is do
Speaker 1: you think the ad industry would ever circle the wagons
Speaker 1: and refuse to do business with a particular industry or
Speaker 1: an individual company. No or Yeah, somebody somewhere is always
Speaker 1: willing to do that. There's always someone in every business.
Speaker 1: I mean, advertising is no different than any business. They're
Speaker 1: always bottom feeders in every industry. I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, not not calling anyone a bottom feeder in particular,
Speaker 1: but they're always going to be someone that's willing to
Speaker 1: take the dough, especially now it's gotten really hard to
Speaker 1: make a buck. You can't judge a company by trying
Speaker 1: to pay their employees, you know, in the end of
Speaker 1: the day. And and as an industry, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to get anyone to go on anything like we were
Speaker 1: really lucky that we got ten twelve organizations to all
Speaker 1: be on the same page. To just go after Facebook
Speaker 1: for a month, To get in all every adigency together
Speaker 1: and say we're not going to support Blank anymore is
Speaker 1: really tough to do. Yeah, Another thing that I've said
Speaker 1: on this show, because I really believe it, is that
Speaker 1: high BS companies and high BS industries, of which some
Speaker 1: AD agencies and some PR companies and and marketing in
Speaker 1: general is definitely guilty of, will begin to lose the
Speaker 1: war for talent. Do you think that that's happening? Are
Speaker 1: people choosing not to get into marketing, advertising pr today
Speaker 1: young people because of this problem. I don't think that
Speaker 1: people are as informed as they probably should be on
Speaker 1: what they're paying into, but I think if they knew,
Speaker 1: then they would be a little reticent. Look, we're seeing
Speaker 1: there is there is death only there are people at
Speaker 1: Facebook that are not happy and and sometimes you need
Speaker 1: people internally to champion certain causes to make things happen.
Speaker 1: But at some point some people are gonna sit up
Speaker 1: and say, no, I want to work for a company
Speaker 1: that's going to believe in something, that's gonna put their
Speaker 1: foot down when it comes to doing something bad in
Speaker 1: the world, and say I want to do something good
Speaker 1: and and I'm really banking on that. I feel like
Speaker 1: we need that. And I think when we have a counterbalance,
Speaker 1: when you have an agency that's willing to stand up
Speaker 1: and say, look, there are only certain kinds of accouncil
Speaker 1: we will work on. Then once you have that counterbalance,
Speaker 1: people are going to go and want to go work
Speaker 1: for them instead. This next generation, my kids give a
Speaker 1: ship and they look at everything critically. Now, maybe because
Speaker 1: I've been such an asshole online for five years and
Speaker 1: they've been listening to me. But this next generation does care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do, and well it's because they're going to inherit
Speaker 1: all the problems right, and they're acutely aware of that.
Speaker 1: What advice would you give to creative people and strategists
Speaker 1: and a count people working in the ad business or
Speaker 1: the pr business who are wondering about the ethical issues
Speaker 1: surrounding their career choice or who are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to move it in a more positive direction.
Speaker 1: I'd say, make a set of principles for yourself and
Speaker 1: what you're willing to hold yourself to, and try to
Speaker 1: stick to that as much as you can, and try
Speaker 1: to encourage others to say the same thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: agree on calling bullshit. We're we really believe that it's
Speaker 1: important to try to nudge capitalism in a more sustainable direction,
Speaker 1: and so we really believe in getting for profit companies
Speaker 1: to change and really start to think differently about their
Speaker 1: responsibilities to the communities that they do business in, you know,
Speaker 1: and the planet. But my sense is that there are
Speaker 1: folks a lot of young people among them who are
Speaker 1: just beginning to call bs on that. So I guess
Speaker 1: my question is, is sustainable capitalism itself just a bunch
Speaker 1: of bullshit? No, I don't think it is. I think
Speaker 1: we need it. I'm I'm a free market person. I
Speaker 1: believe in the free market. I don't think it's working
Speaker 1: right now. I think we've got a lot of monopolies.
Speaker 1: What we're seeing with you know, the Amazons the world there.
Speaker 1: You know, they just got their first union past, and
Speaker 1: and so you're starting to see employees being able to
Speaker 1: have some kind of be able to make a stand,
Speaker 1: take a stand and make a difference. Money makes the
Speaker 1: world go around, but I think it's incumbent upon us
Speaker 1: to use that money in the right ways. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's bullshit, or I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I think that advertisers, you know, in our business, if
Speaker 1: they are much more purposeful with how they spend their money,
Speaker 1: then they're able to affect change on the platforms, and
Speaker 1: then that in turn affects the world in a different way,
Speaker 1: and it changes the trajectory of what we're on right now.
Speaker 1: It's super idealistic, I know, but I'm an idealist. I
Speaker 1: can't continue to all people without trying to come up
Speaker 1: with a solution. Actually joined a company that is earnestly
Speaker 1: trying to change the ad tech land escape. It's called
Speaker 1: Noble Media, and I've been working with them for like
Speaker 1: two years and we're just starting to get some traction.
Speaker 1: It's nice. Can you just say more specifically what the
Speaker 1: thesis is for Noble Media? Yeah, the the thesis is
Speaker 1: you can't read the entire Internet, but you can try
Speaker 1: through technology to do it. And so they're working with
Speaker 1: a language scientists who's a professor of rhetoric to identify
Speaker 1: signals incredible and trustworthy content and also vice versa in disinformation,
Speaker 1: in hyperpartisan information and clickbait, and how to differentiate the
Speaker 1: two of those things so that you can actually, as
Speaker 1: an advertiser, you can target credibility on a page, which
Speaker 1: gets in turn more clicks and more interaction with their
Speaker 1: ads because it's on more trusted content. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's an attempt to solve the problem that I've been
Speaker 1: harping about, which is how can we help advertisers so
Speaker 1: they can support quality content, which is what they should
Speaker 1: be supporting anyway, and not support all the bullshit on
Speaker 1: the rest of the Internet that they don't really need
Speaker 1: to be supporting right now. The system doesn't allow them
Speaker 1: to do that. This technology does m I love that.
Speaker 1: I do too, or I wouldn't have joined. I love
Speaker 1: it totally. That's fantastic. I hope that works me too.
Speaker 1: Fingers crossed. I really do appreciate that you joined us today.
Speaker 1: I totally enjoyed the conversation and thank you for the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing both with Sleeping Giants and Noble Media.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. I mean
Speaker 1: I really anytime you know, you can have an honest
Speaker 1: discussion about an industry, I think it's a good opportunity
Speaker 1: to take. So I really appreciate that. Man. So what
Speaker 1: have we learned from all this? Are we qualified to
Speaker 1: call bullshit? Should you, dear listener? Trust us? This podcast
Speaker 1: is driven by maybe the optimistic belief that exposing gaps
Speaker 1: between word indeed and then suggesting solutions is an act
Speaker 1: of positive ativity. Talking with Matt reminded me of how
Speaker 1: powerful information really is and how it can be used
Speaker 1: for positive change. So we're definitely going to keep doing
Speaker 1: what we're doing. I also want to double down on
Speaker 1: something that we've done in every episode. If you're a
Speaker 1: leader of a company that we featured on this show
Speaker 1: and you want to come on and tell your side
Speaker 1: of the story, you have an open invitation. I also
Speaker 1: know that there are ways that we can do better.
Speaker 1: In season two, We're going to feature more founders and
Speaker 1: guests who are women and from marginalized groups. We're also
Speaker 1: going to feature more companies from outside the US. Usually
Speaker 1: I give a BS score right about now, but today
Speaker 1: I'd like to invite you to score us. How are
Speaker 1: we doing? Do you see any gaps between what we
Speaker 1: say and what we do? Send us an email at
Speaker 1: CBS podcast at co Collective dot com, or call us
Speaker 1: at two one two five oh five five. I'm both
Speaker 1: terrified and curious to know what you think. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us today, Matt Rivets. You can find more
Speaker 1: information on Sleeping Giants and Noble Media on our website,
Speaker 1: Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com. And if you have ideas
Speaker 1: for companies or organizations that we should consider for future episodes,
Speaker 1: you can submit them on our site too. And if
Speaker 1: we wet your appetite for another heap in help and
Speaker 1: of BS in the fall, subscribe to the Calling Bullshit
Speaker 1: Podcast on the I Heart Radio, App, Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks to our entire
Speaker 1: season one production team Ethan Applebee, Susie Armitage, Hannah Beale,
Speaker 1: Jess Fenton, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim, D s Moss, Ali,
Speaker 1: Nuen Hailey, Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Lena Beck, Silison Parker Silzer,
Speaker 1: Basil Soaper and me John Zulu. And thank you to
Speaker 1: the whole team at co Collective for really supporting this
Speaker 1: entire enterprise. Go Auntie Badgers Calling Bullshit was created by
Speaker 1: co Collective and is hosted by Me Time Onto you,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.