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 word 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? It
Speaker 1: really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currnty and I'm Alexa Kristen.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Atlantia. Coming to you from spring break
Speaker 1: and sunny Arizona. Hi, Laura, Hi, I miss you know
Speaker 1: we should be down here. We thought we would use
Speaker 1: this week to bring in one of our friends from Adwik,
Speaker 1: Josh Dernberg, who is the tech editor of that trade publication,
Speaker 1: coming and talk to us about some of the things
Speaker 1: um that he's seeing from his vantage point, not just
Speaker 1: from a signal in the noise trend perspective, but also
Speaker 1: ways in which we think that we can bring the
Speaker 1: industry tighter together to actually move it forward. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that the conversation really is more about what can
Speaker 1: we do to kind of change the PR marketing advertising
Speaker 1: agency relationship. And I think that a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been saying what he's saying. He's very clear, and
Speaker 1: I like his currently dystopian. He likes to say he's
Speaker 1: a pragmatist and a realist, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: somewhat like dystopian kind of perspective of where we are
Speaker 1: today in this relationship between the press and and the
Speaker 1: agency side and the client side. I think that there's
Speaker 1: a lot to be said in terms of the trades
Speaker 1: and I and I'm hoping we talked to him about this,
Speaker 1: that there's a lot to be said about getting into
Speaker 1: where the trades are going and the trade publications role
Speaker 1: in actually driving change in the industry versus just maybe
Speaker 1: reporting on it. So I'm excited to talk to Josh.
Speaker 1: We're going to bring him in the studio and we'll
Speaker 1: be back with him right after this. Yeah, we're back
Speaker 1: in the studio with Josh Sternberg, the tech editor of
Speaker 1: ad Week. Welcome to the show, Josh, Welcome does the show, Josh,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me so, Mr Josh Sternberg. Similar
Speaker 1: to our friends or Fisher, you've been on kind of
Speaker 1: both sides of the world. Um, tell us about where
Speaker 1: you came from, what You've done both on the paid
Speaker 1: sign Brandon Content and now over ad week. What are
Speaker 1: you doing? Yeah? So I'm here because I'm a failed musician.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this about yeah, aren't we all? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I um. I was in a rock jazz improv band
Speaker 1: for a long time, and clearly there's not a market
Speaker 1: for that. So I went to graduate school and really
Speaker 1: enjoyed academia. So I became a professor for a few years.
Speaker 1: Then I met a girl, wound up in New York
Speaker 1: where it was not economically viable for me to cross
Speaker 1: two rivers back into New Jersey to continue teaching. So
Speaker 1: I need to find a job, and I landed in
Speaker 1: PR and it was fine. I got a good understanding
Speaker 1: of how companies and brands communicate, but at the same
Speaker 1: time I still enjoyed writing. Wound up at digit A,
Speaker 1: writing covering media and the ongoing transition that publishers face,
Speaker 1: moving from a legacy print analog world to a fun
Speaker 1: digital world. How many years ago is that now? So
Speaker 1: that was about That was six years ago, two thousands twelve,
Speaker 1: and it was a digit A for about two and
Speaker 1: a half years. I got a call from the chief
Speaker 1: revenue officer at the Washington Post who called me up
Speaker 1: and said, hey, we're doing this brand studio thing. You've
Speaker 1: been covering it, you know, the playbook of what people
Speaker 1: are doing. Seemed to have a good head on your shoulders.
Speaker 1: What do you What do you say? So I said sure,
Speaker 1: um did that for about a year and a half
Speaker 1: or so. Then NBC News came calling. And while I'm
Speaker 1: doing the same thing at NBC News and got laid
Speaker 1: off in March of this is on the digital side
Speaker 1: doing Brandon content. Uh yeah, yeah. When I got laid off,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, I really don't want to go
Speaker 1: back into the business side, all the glitz and glamor
Speaker 1: of it all. I really missed reporting. I missed being
Speaker 1: in a news room, I missed the intellectual curiosity of reporters.
Speaker 1: And I ended up at that week. So I've been
Speaker 1: here now for about four months and it's phenomenal. So
Speaker 1: you've been covering a lot of what's on everybody's mind
Speaker 1: right now, the Facebook, Google, do appoly and for many
Speaker 1: of our listeners who obviously are in the industry, this
Speaker 1: has become mainstream news as opposed to just industry news.
Speaker 1: Can you give us some background on the state of
Speaker 1: what's going on with Facebook and Google. So I think
Speaker 1: the one of the interesting things about all of this
Speaker 1: is that this is not something that happened overnight, and
Speaker 1: it's not something that is necessarily company lead users, advertisers, marketers.
Speaker 1: We allowed this to happen by continuing to use these
Speaker 1: products and these websites without really paying attention. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: when you talk about the doopoly, it's more on the
Speaker 1: ad revenue side, right where five or eighty six cents
Speaker 1: of every digital dollar goes to one of those two companies,
Speaker 1: you know, And we're going to start to see Amazon
Speaker 1: take a little piece here and there. On the odd side,
Speaker 1: the Internet is for all times of purposes for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, Google and Facebook, so that attention, those
Speaker 1: eyeballs are there. So, you know, I'll throw that back
Speaker 1: to you guys. Is you know, media and marketing folks,
Speaker 1: when you see a plan and you're looking for scale
Speaker 1: and reach, what are you looking for? It's it's a
Speaker 1: good question, and I think we think about things very
Speaker 1: strategically in terms of what is the big idea, how
Speaker 1: do we come across and drive impact and attention in
Speaker 1: the market. When you hear it some statistic and don't
Speaker 1: quote me on this, but it's something over fift of
Speaker 1: impressions are viewed by bots not loading on a page. UM.
Speaker 1: That's concerning, and that's not something that's new. Those are
Speaker 1: not new facts, UM. And I think we very early
Speaker 1: decided some of the work that we've done, and certainly
Speaker 1: work that I've done with other clients, that we put
Speaker 1: content in an environment where it wasn't skippable, where it
Speaker 1: was integrated within other content that was editorially driven. And
Speaker 1: I think that's something that we we tend to forget
Speaker 1: about that that doesn't happen by pressing a button and
Speaker 1: running through a programmatic buy Right. That's many nights of
Speaker 1: having drinks and dinners with the sales rep. And that's
Speaker 1: many nights of that sales rep trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how am I going to get this account to do
Speaker 1: these things? And there's often that a disconnect because most
Speaker 1: people are not Most buyers are not like you. We
Speaker 1: have a box to check, we have a spreadsheet to
Speaker 1: fill out, and let's just keep the ball moving forward. UM.
Speaker 1: And the sales rep they're looking at they've got a
Speaker 1: quarily number to hit, they're looking at what's in front
Speaker 1: of their face. But that sales rep who's trying to
Speaker 1: do something big, trying to do something creative, will often
Speaker 1: have to walk back those ideas either a because no
Speaker 1: one's buying, be because they have a hard time articulating
Speaker 1: what that thing could be. And then when it does
Speaker 1: get sold, the execution is really bad because no one
Speaker 1: actually thought it through. And I'm sure that pisses you
Speaker 1: guys off on that certainly, And I think that's a
Speaker 1: large part of what's wrong, you know, and why many
Speaker 1: years ago we walked away from the RFP process and
Speaker 1: we want the value. There was no value right, There
Speaker 1: was no value in it anymore because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day one, we weren't looking for off the
Speaker 1: shelf kind of stuff. Um. We also, and this is
Speaker 1: something that I talked to other client side folks about
Speaker 1: all the time, like, you should know what the Washington
Speaker 1: Post is really good at, and you should know what
Speaker 1: their road map is, and you should know how you
Speaker 1: know what the New York Times is really good at
Speaker 1: and what's the differentiator And you start going to those
Speaker 1: people specifically because you have an idea, not the other
Speaker 1: way around. Can I tell you the story, tell us
Speaker 1: the story. But I want to ask you a question
Speaker 1: before we get too far away from it. What is
Speaker 1: the trade media's role in changing this conversation? So there
Speaker 1: are a couple of ways of looking at this. Trade
Speaker 1: journalism works well when you are able to explain something
Speaker 1: to practitioners who are doing this every day that might
Speaker 1: have their clients on. So if I am writing about
Speaker 1: how a particular company is doing something, so you know,
Speaker 1: let's say the Washington Post, how the Washington Post is
Speaker 1: operating their programmatic strategy, it's a process story. It's here's
Speaker 1: how this one company is doing this one thing, and
Speaker 1: here how you reader can take away knowledge of what
Speaker 1: this company is doing and how you might be able
Speaker 1: to use those practices in your day to day job. Um,
Speaker 1: there's another side of trade journalism that can shine a
Speaker 1: light on some of the shady stuff that happens in
Speaker 1: the industry that we talk about in different settings. We
Speaker 1: go out for drinks, you guys tell me stuff that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't tell me when I'm calling to talk about
Speaker 1: a story. It's in a way, no, no, it's not
Speaker 1: not you specifically. Let's yes, you guys. You guys do
Speaker 1: not give me any dirt ever. But you know, going
Speaker 1: going out to drinks with sources, going out to coffee
Speaker 1: or launch and just talking with people, you can find
Speaker 1: stories of companies doing bad things, people doing bad things,
Speaker 1: and then you report and you shine a light to
Speaker 1: hopefully show others, hey, don't do this, this is dumb. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is a growing trend not just within trade journalism um,
Speaker 1: but within the tangentials of trade journalisms. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: quite seep into the mainstream, but it does get into
Speaker 1: publications that cover media or advertising on the side um
Speaker 1: where they look for the salacious and for the dirt
Speaker 1: for the sake of salaciousness and dirt. So can we
Speaker 1: park that part there? Because I want to come back
Speaker 1: to the center. One of the main reasons we created
Speaker 1: at Landia was how do we shape the conversation, poke
Speaker 1: holes and ask questions about legacy models, the traditional way
Speaker 1: of doing things when in fact technology and the consumer
Speaker 1: have moved tenfold away from the way this this industry
Speaker 1: acts and behaves and and goes to market. So when
Speaker 1: I got to add week, part of my pitch for
Speaker 1: them to hire me was that I wanted to build
Speaker 1: a desk that looks at basically how every single decision
Speaker 1: that the media landscape has made over the last twenty
Speaker 1: years has been wrong, and it has created problem, which
Speaker 1: has created more problems, which has created more problems. And
Speaker 1: that we are at a point with technology becoming better,
Speaker 1: becoming stronger, becoming faster, where through the lens of trade
Speaker 1: journalism as educator, as explicator, that we can help brands, publishers, agencies, platforms,
Speaker 1: even ad tech vendors make better decisions. So that way,
Speaker 1: when we figure out how to make VR headsets not
Speaker 1: look as silly as they look and make a use
Speaker 1: case for people to actually put them on, we're not
Speaker 1: getting served display ads or pop ups or banner ads, right, um,
Speaker 1: And I think to your point, the way that we
Speaker 1: can do that is to write stories and cover the
Speaker 1: industry with that perspective of look, here's what doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: here's what makes sense, Here's what's working for this company
Speaker 1: and why, and what can you take out of it
Speaker 1: that you might be able to help with your job.
Speaker 1: So Alex and I have talked to, obviously Sara Fisher
Speaker 1: who's a reporter, and Sarah made a really good UM
Speaker 1: point at the end of the episode talking about how
Speaker 1: the relationship between the industry and the trade press can
Speaker 1: afford to get tighter in the sense of shaping those
Speaker 1: narratives and helping journalists who might not have been practitioners.
Speaker 1: You and Sarah were both in interesting situations and that
Speaker 1: you were a practitioner at one point. How can the
Speaker 1: industry help Josh Sternberg, How can the industry help Sarah
Speaker 1: fisher Um and others like you or those that have
Speaker 1: no background in our in what we do, tell those
Speaker 1: stories or explain them in a way that's going to
Speaker 1: actually create change versus swirl. Yeah, the thing that comes
Speaker 1: to mind immediately is don't lie, don't bullshit, don't obfu, skate,
Speaker 1: Just tell us it's okay that you don't know something.
Speaker 1: It's okay that you tried something and it failed. Not
Speaker 1: everything is going to be successful. Not everything. Actually, pretty
Speaker 1: much nothing that you do is going to be revolutionary
Speaker 1: or game changing or whatever buzzword. Getting every single press
Speaker 1: release or pitch be honest. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: trade journalism can excel is if we focus on the honesty.
Speaker 1: The trick to that, though, is that a lot of
Speaker 1: people within the industry, especially on the business side, it's
Speaker 1: not in their best perspective to be honest. I mean
Speaker 1: it's so funny because like I would never say, like
Speaker 1: I actually wouldn't think about honesty is the first thing
Speaker 1: but or the most important thing, because to me, that's
Speaker 1: like table stakes. Right. Um, what I think you're saying
Speaker 1: that is making me want a different model is like
Speaker 1: how do we start incentivizing a different relationship? Like how
Speaker 1: do you incent a different model here? It's interesting, Like
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking over the work that we've done together,
Speaker 1: and I could see your point in terms of the
Speaker 1: business side coming to you when it's a best in
Speaker 1: class case study that they want to promote. But how
Speaker 1: many pitches have you sent maybe you're your peers have
Speaker 1: sent out to a publisher saying we want something that's
Speaker 1: never been done before. Of course, right, it's like, but
Speaker 1: don't do that, because if you're setting that bar, there's
Speaker 1: nothing that hasn't never been done before. To use multiple negatives.
Speaker 1: So we had the privilege of having you at our
Speaker 1: first I R Element at Landy a live sound served
Speaker 1: over sound and Um, you and I talked that night.
Speaker 1: One of the things you said to me that resonated
Speaker 1: so much. I think you said, there's like basically a
Speaker 1: malaise in the industry that just creates mediocrity. That's my
Speaker 1: version of what you said. You said in a much
Speaker 1: better headline. I just said, you know, the industries mediocrity
Speaker 1: by necessity, where the output of what we do is
Speaker 1: based off of not trying to do the best. But
Speaker 1: it's too again to your point that that laziness, that
Speaker 1: malaise of all right, I gotta check that box. I
Speaker 1: got to make sure that all the way up and
Speaker 1: down the chain that my ass is covered. It's cover
Speaker 1: your ass syndrome, right, and media on the business side
Speaker 1: is really good at that. Yeah. I think what's really
Speaker 1: interesting here, though, is that, like you're talking about getting
Speaker 1: briefs that basically say, do something that's never been done before.
Speaker 1: Innovate is not a checkbox? Is that a check box?
Speaker 1: And it's phenomenal that those are the things that you
Speaker 1: that you guys on the on the editorial side see.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's innovate with a pedestrian eye. When
Speaker 1: someone asks me what is the best piece of answered content,
Speaker 1: I've seen brand branded content, native advertising content. So that's
Speaker 1: also part of the problem, right, what is this thing? Right?
Speaker 1: But anyway, you know, I always think to the g
Speaker 1: E Capital Bus road show that was done with Slate
Speaker 1: for Growth. Yeah, bringing that was Laura, That was LA
Speaker 1: because that was that was it was interesting, right, It
Speaker 1: was taking the idea of you know what, we've got
Speaker 1: this message, and we want to take this message to
Speaker 1: particular people in particular areas, and then we can create
Speaker 1: all of this editorial content as well as sponsored or
Speaker 1: branded or whatever content and do it in a way
Speaker 1: that makes sense for the reader. The biggest problem that
Speaker 1: I have with our industry is we don't take off
Speaker 1: our hat in whatever that hat maybe um you know,
Speaker 1: you might call me cynical, and I don't take off
Speaker 1: my reporter's hat. But at the same time, sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: I cannot take off my marketer hat. And on the
Speaker 1: business side, that's all too prevalent where I've been in
Speaker 1: meetings where the sales rep and the agency and the
Speaker 1: brand are thinking in terms of the hat that they're
Speaker 1: wearing and not they're human being hat. And when you
Speaker 1: put on the stress test of if you're a normal
Speaker 1: person and you're waiting in line at any grocery store
Speaker 1: and you're skimming through or scrolling through a website, are
Speaker 1: you going to click on that piece of sponsored content?
Speaker 1: What are you going to click on? And we don't
Speaker 1: think about that, or if we do, that doesn't get
Speaker 1: pushed down stream to twenty four year old media buyer
Speaker 1: or the media planner. Um. So, if you can take
Speaker 1: off your industry hat and put on your human being hat,
Speaker 1: I think some of these challenges that the industry faces
Speaker 1: will just now actually fade away. I was talking to
Speaker 1: someone last night, UM, and I'm saying, why can't people
Speaker 1: see beyond what their business does? It's so fun? And
Speaker 1: then what you're saying, I'm taking to like like a
Speaker 1: very just basic level. So people say, I am a
Speaker 1: data company that does X right and I see it
Speaker 1: all the time, and I'm like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: your your capabilities are this, and if you applied it
Speaker 1: over here, which is something you're not even thinking about,
Speaker 1: your company becomes totally different. And I think that so
Speaker 1: going beyond like the industry hat and the junior media buyer,
Speaker 1: I also think that we have like really senior, senior
Speaker 1: level people on the client side who also aren't thinking
Speaker 1: about what they do really really well and putting that
Speaker 1: in places that are just very simply valuable, And that's
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Right at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I think to your point, there are still too many
Speaker 1: UM brand marketers, UM and agency folks who are evaluating
Speaker 1: the success of campaigns based on impressions and things that
Speaker 1: do not reflect the engagement, meaningful engagement and qualification of
Speaker 1: the audience that they're reaching. Right, what does the consumer
Speaker 1: care about? And these briefs that go out, you see them,
Speaker 1: they're very one way, very push versus pull in terms
Speaker 1: of here's my brand story and needs to show up
Speaker 1: and needs to target these people. But what happens when
Speaker 1: it gets to those people, it's it's out of their hands,
Speaker 1: right like it, It gets just pushed along. So when
Speaker 1: I was on the business side, and I would get
Speaker 1: an RFP, and it would say, we want these three
Speaker 1: concepts to come through in the sponsored content, and I
Speaker 1: and and and my team we put together these what
Speaker 1: I thought were really smart content strategies and content plans
Speaker 1: and distribution mechanisms and all of these levers that we
Speaker 1: can pull to get the content in front of the
Speaker 1: right people. And invariably I get nose from buyers and
Speaker 1: I get nose from brands because I didn't use those
Speaker 1: three specific words in the content. What what words whatever word? Right,
Speaker 1: So I learned that in order to win the account,
Speaker 1: all I needed to do was parent back the brief
Speaker 1: in a semi cogent way and then when we would
Speaker 1: win the account, put together content that was mediocre by necessity.
Speaker 1: So so because I think this is a really important
Speaker 1: point as you're talking about that process that you were
Speaker 1: at the time willing to power it back, and I
Speaker 1: know that you're not the only person who does this
Speaker 1: to win business because you have a number and hit
Speaker 1: and that's how you're incentivized. On the ad cell side. Well,
Speaker 1: clearly I didn't do that good of a job by design,
Speaker 1: by design um, But can we talk about just going
Speaker 1: back to the earlier question, how can we as an industry,
Speaker 1: how can we as agency people and brand marketers work
Speaker 1: better with the Josh Sternberg's and journalists of the industry
Speaker 1: to change this conversation. So I think this is part
Speaker 1: of it, right, having these types of conversations on the record,
Speaker 1: where one of the things that I try to do
Speaker 1: is talk to as many people as possible up and
Speaker 1: down the food chain. And I know that if I
Speaker 1: talked to the CEO and the CMO. I'm going to
Speaker 1: get a slightly more refined message than if I talked
Speaker 1: to the VP, then when I talked to the director,
Speaker 1: than when I talked to the manager. So I try
Speaker 1: to talk to everybody so I can kind of get
Speaker 1: a better sense of what is real and what is not.
Speaker 1: I look at more in terms of war, maybe because
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like it's like look like this.
Speaker 1: The CEO is the head of the army, right, and
Speaker 1: the CEO is getting his or her information from his
Speaker 1: or her lieutenants, who's getting their information from the grunts
Speaker 1: on the ground and the sales jups and the agency
Speaker 1: reps who are going out for dinner and drinks and
Speaker 1: gene parties and apple picking. Are the ones in the
Speaker 1: trenches who are trying to give the information up to
Speaker 1: their respective generals, and those messages often get conflated, destroyed,
Speaker 1: um misconstrued. Can I can I say something? Of course,
Speaker 1: if if marketing became this is a druma, I'd beat
Speaker 1: a lot. But if marketing became more at the center
Speaker 1: of true business, do you think that there would be
Speaker 1: onions to peel back? Do you think there will be
Speaker 1: stories to spin or would you be talking about real
Speaker 1: ship that's moving real needles, that's changing real consumer relationships,
Speaker 1: that's doing real things. And is that and is that coming?
Speaker 1: I don't know. And this is very naive and very stupid,
Speaker 1: and they understand this, but for me, the the bottom
Speaker 1: line is do you sell ship? Do people buy the
Speaker 1: product or the service that you are advertising and marketing
Speaker 1: and if so, then it's working. Right. Yeah, but I'm
Speaker 1: talking about like marketing building products. And this is a
Speaker 1: hard concept. Right when marketing actually starts becoming part of
Speaker 1: creating the products and creating the business versus just going
Speaker 1: out and messaging that business and bringing in sales, it
Speaker 1: will always do that. I mean, I I think of
Speaker 1: jobs and Apple, right, the product was built in conjunction
Speaker 1: with jobs, thinking of marketing. Yeah, but he wasn't thinking
Speaker 1: about marketing. He wasn't thinking about marketing. It's thinking about
Speaker 1: a product. And you know what I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: that is what we're talking about, and it's real and
Speaker 1: like Steve Jobs, sorry I'm excited in Arizona. It's only
Speaker 1: seven in the morning. But like Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: wasn't like I'm going to go and think about marketing.
Speaker 1: He knew that that was his strong suit. He knew
Speaker 1: he was a seller, but he wasn't just selling. But
Speaker 1: he also, if I may designed with the consumer in mind,
Speaker 1: he built for the consumer, which is if you look
Speaker 1: as competition, nobody there is. They're thinking about the utility,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily the end consumer. They had their tech
Speaker 1: teams building ship and then they didn't have the right
Speaker 1: marketers on top of it. And so one of the
Speaker 1: biggest problems is they like, look at Yahoo tech teams
Speaker 1: and then separated marketers. Look at Microsoft and Microsoft and
Speaker 1: Sati has done an amazing job with Microsoft, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you, like still tech teams building things
Speaker 1: for consumers. That's why some of their Windows products didn't work.
Speaker 1: It's clear, it's clear, but but I guess that's my
Speaker 1: that's my big sticking point. If we start, if marketers
Speaker 1: stopped just thinking about the cell and Laura and I
Speaker 1: talked about this all the time, and and start thinking
Speaker 1: about the context, right, And what I talk that was
Speaker 1: back to take off your hat. And I think you
Speaker 1: guys are in the position to actually change that, right.
Speaker 1: I'm not. Well, actually I would argue that because as
Speaker 1: we're sitting here, you know, in my head brainstorming, and
Speaker 1: and Alexa will probably be able to finish the sentence.
Speaker 1: But I actually see the role. I don't think the
Speaker 1: word journalists in a trade function actually does it justice anymore.
Speaker 1: I actually see you being the conduit or the liaison
Speaker 1: between these agencies and these publishers and these brands to
Speaker 1: start connecting dots that they're not seeing because everybody is
Speaker 1: so in the rabbit hole you said, having blinders on
Speaker 1: focused on the thing that they're selling, that they're making,
Speaker 1: that they're creating, that they're not leveraging the best practices
Speaker 1: or lessons learned or failures of their peers to learn
Speaker 1: from cree and move forward. I also think they can't
Speaker 1: see the signals, Like when you're drinking your own bathwater,
Speaker 1: and we all do it to a certain extent, you
Speaker 1: cannot see the signals in the noise. And that's what
Speaker 1: we built this platform on. That's what we built this right,
Speaker 1: and that's what I would love to see more folks
Speaker 1: on our side of the table. Use you, Josh Stebergain,
Speaker 1: and I use the word use loosely, but partner with
Speaker 1: you on to start thinking about how we I don't
Speaker 1: want to. And this is a practice I'm going to
Speaker 1: take away from this conversation. I'm no longer going to
Speaker 1: call you and say, hey, I'm doing this insane thing,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not for innovation for innovation sake. There's
Speaker 1: a strategic purpose. But I'm gonna call you and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm wondering about this thing. What's going on in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. Is there a conversation we can have with
Speaker 1: somebody else that you're talking to that's exactly right. So
Speaker 1: the stories that I will look at more closely as
Speaker 1: a reporter are the stories that someone comes to me
Speaker 1: and it says, I'm not selling a product, I'm not
Speaker 1: selling the new thing. I'm interested in what I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: and I need you as that conduit to go find
Speaker 1: other people that are doing this and we're not. We're
Speaker 1: not doing it. We're not doing it exactly, or am
Speaker 1: I not. One of the things. One of the things,
Speaker 1: if I can to out my own company for a second,
Speaker 1: that I really enjoy about ad Week is over the
Speaker 1: last year and a half or two years, the company
Speaker 1: has been shaping itself to service as a place for
Speaker 1: that community. And not to say that there's no skepticism
Speaker 1: or you know, you might call it cynicism or negativity.
Speaker 1: I call it pragmatism and realism. Um. But the idea
Speaker 1: that CEO and CMOS read us to understand what's happening,
Speaker 1: and when they can connect dots and we can help
Speaker 1: connect dots, it makes for better decision making on the
Speaker 1: business side. At least that's the theory. And I'm excited
Speaker 1: over the coming months and years to continue to develop
Speaker 1: this community because I think the idea of agencies and
Speaker 1: brands and publishers talking to each other as opposed to
Speaker 1: pitching each other needs to happen to make better decisions.
Speaker 1: Partnership is happening right now. So it's time killed by
Speaker 1: d I Y. And we know that you have the
Speaker 1: best tweets in the trade pub games. So we're hoping
Speaker 1: your answers are just as exciting. Yeah real okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So Josh, what would you kill in the industry? Oh? God, everything,
Speaker 1: burn it all down? Um. Not a cynic no, no.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we're working on is
Speaker 1: to be skeptical but not cynical, which is fair. It's
Speaker 1: hard to do that. Um. What would I kill? Um?
Speaker 1: From the reporter perspective. I would kill press releases. There's
Speaker 1: no reason for a press release. I'm never going to
Speaker 1: cover your press release because you're sending it to me
Speaker 1: and you're sending it to five thousand other people. There's
Speaker 1: nothing interesting in a press release. That's why it's a
Speaker 1: press release. What would you buy? What would I buy?
Speaker 1: I would buy the New York Yankees? Would you buy
Speaker 1: them as is? Yeah? I love the Baby Bombers. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: What would you do yourself? I'd be a musician. I
Speaker 1: hear like tears, Yeah, I mean that's that's like. I
Speaker 1: am the most comfortable when I'm on stage with the
Speaker 1: guitar slinged around my shoulder. So why don't we figure
Speaker 1: out how we do in Atlantia at week event that
Speaker 1: you can play at done one of my colleagues, Marty Swant,
Speaker 1: he's also a guitar player, and when I was coming
Speaker 1: over to ad Week, we were kind of kicking around
Speaker 1: the idea of starting a band called the c p MS.
Speaker 1: I will see myself out on that one the next
Speaker 1: start over time. Josh, thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 1: Where can people call you to partner with you to
Speaker 1: talk about stories? No phone calls. Do not call me.
Speaker 1: You can email me Josh dot Sternberg at at week
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can follow my brain farts on
Speaker 1: Twitter at at Josh Sternberg. Josh, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming to Atlantia. Always a pleasure to hang out
Speaker 1: with you. So I think Josh poses some interesting challenges
Speaker 1: to our side of the business, and I think that
Speaker 1: there's ways to really start thinking about UM partnering with
Speaker 1: journalists in a way that doesn't just report out. And
Speaker 1: I think we've got this plea from him on press
Speaker 1: releases and pitch stories, but really thinking about how we
Speaker 1: can change the narrative and work together to learn from
Speaker 1: one another, and that really I think changes the role
Speaker 1: that the trade publications play and trade organizations at large
Speaker 1: in our industry. Wouldn't you say? We agree? And I'm
Speaker 1: like really into this challenge he put out there to
Speaker 1: marketers and agencies and said, Okay, we'll kind of kill
Speaker 1: the idea and reporting on kind of short termism and
Speaker 1: delacious stories if marketers and agencies are willing to come
Speaker 1: and talk more openly about failures and really work with
Speaker 1: us on concepts and ideas versus things and campaigns like
Speaker 1: tactics and nextic you shift, um, and I think that
Speaker 1: every marketer out there should kind of take that challenge
Speaker 1: and gives Josh a call and say here, I'll give
Speaker 1: you something to report on. Let's let's change the industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's totally the same way we think about
Speaker 1: urfping versus integrating and and collaborating and so UM. I
Speaker 1: think that those are behavioral shifts that the industry is
Speaker 1: um beginning to engage in. And I think we can
Speaker 1: only go up from here. So with that, big ups
Speaker 1: for our producer, Cameron Drews. Thanks Cam, And we have
Speaker 1: a new producer in the house who is joining our
Speaker 1: team another Laura. Welcome to the show, Laura. Um, she's
Speaker 1: smiling from behind the booth. What am I gonna do
Speaker 1: to Laura's such a problem. I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty bit badass. Cam. We love you that we're
Speaker 1: adding another woman to the to the team. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not you, it's us, Cam, we know. Um. Anyhow, Thank
Speaker 1: you to Andy Bower's, Matt Turk, Jacob Weisberg, all our
Speaker 1: friends and family at Panable. We will be back in
Speaker 1: two weeks. Enjoy spring break at Landia. Full disclosure. Our
Speaker 1: opinions are our own.