Mixed Signals: How the creator economy has transformed advertising

Ben Smith:
I am Ben Smith.

Max Tani:
I’m Max Tani.

Ben Smith:
And this is Mixed Signals from Semafor Media.

Max Tani:
This week on the show, we’re talking to Leslie Berland, the chief marketing officer for Verizon, and the former CMO for a little company that was then called Twitter. We’ll chat with her about her old boss, Elon Musk, and how to build a marketable brand, capture people’s attention, and actually sell stuff in the age of cord cutting and digital fragmentation.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. The news cycle this week’s moving a little fast, and we thought we would step back with somebody’s career, who has really spanned the whole transformation of this media landscape.

Max Tani:
All of that after the break. So, Ben, as I was preparing for this episode, I was kind of reflecting back on the beginnings of my career about 10 years ago, and one of the first things I learned is that the easiest way to kind of get to the heart of many media stories, stories about the media, is the old Cliché, which is just follow the money, basically.

Ben Smith:
All right, Woodward.

Max Tani:
It’s a basic thing that anybody can learn.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, but it is true.

Max Tani:
It’s true though. It’s true.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. The more time you spend doing this, the more you realize so many of these decisions that you see the media make are financial.

Max Tani:
Well, exactly. And so, as that applies to our job and our industry, the people who are spending the money in media, who therefore have a lot of influence, are almost always the advertisers and marketers, principally the CMOs, or most powerfully, the CMOs.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. I mean, it is interesting, because I think when you are a media executive, when you’re in a publishing business, CMOs are very, very important people, but they also are, funnily, often a bit outside the space of journalism, partly because I think that marketers are very concerned with controlling the story and telling stories in a very disciplined way, and so, often they don’t love loose free-form interviews, so they’re sometimes slightly hard to book. But we’ve managed to persuade Leslie and a few others to come on this season, and I do think that, basically, nobody has been more swamped by the changes in media than the people responsible for using it to sell stuff at a massive scale. They’ve really lived this transformation, probably as intensely as anybody else, as any of us, sort of producing media.

Max Tani:
I mean, you really pick up on that when you go to Cannes Lyon, the big advertising festival, and you see the kind of folks who these people think are the most important. It’s like, literally, people who a lot of us have never heard of, but in three years we are very, very familiar with them, because of course, news and media is always just a little bit behind where the money is, but let’s talk about Leslie. Ben, who is she? Why should our listeners know who she is if they don’t already know who she is?

Ben Smith:
Yeah. I mean, she’s a real hotshot in the advertising business, and somebody who ultimately writes the checks that underwrite tons of the things you consume, whether it is the Super Bowl or your favorite TikTok influencer, and her career has really tracked these dramatic, dramatic changes in media. She started sort of as a star in a very traditional advertising department of American Express, and then kind of shocked her industry by jumping to Twitter in 2016, was then very briefly seen as the only person at Twitter who could handle Elon Musk, which the number of people who can actually do that turns out to be zero, and then followed the heat of the culture to Peloton, one of the darlings of the pandemic, a brief, brief spell there, before going to Verizon where she has one of these actually huge classic CMO jobs now, managing a massive budget across all sorts of platforms, but she’s always been, I think, at the front end of this shift from a job that was really about buying and shaping television ads and approving television scripts, to looking across a much broader, more confusing, more fragmented digital landscape.

Max Tani:
Let’s bring Leslie on.

Ben Smith:
Welcome, Leslie, thanks for coming on.

Leslie Berland:
So happy to be here.

Ben Smith:
I guess, I wonder, just to start really through the lens of your own, interesting career, you started in the most classic corporate environment, doing PR and then advertising for American Express, and I’m curious if there was a moment when you realized just how much the business was changing and how it was going to change your job and your career?

Leslie Berland:
Absolutely. So yeah, I did start my career at American Express, but was in the PR comms function. It was a really interesting time, because there was the moment of digital transformation that was happening in the financial services space, and that was also colliding with the rise of social media, and so, when you’re sitting at a company that is a bank and also contemplating where the world is operating in an entirely new way, getting information in an entirely new way, sort of getting control of brands, and brands being in the hands of consumers in an entirely new way, it was a really, really fascinating time. I had, from my comms job, took a role that was called VP of Online Media, but it was essentially driving social media strategy for the company. I was actually the first tweeter for American Express, if you can believe it, so my career came full circle. It was the first time you saw that the younger generation, the most junior people at the company knew so much more, so much more than the most senior people at the company about something so important.

Max Tani:
So, then, after you built something really interesting, you’ve been one of the first people to understand digital ad American Express, then you jumped to Twitter in 2016 to run marketing. I’m sure some people at American Express, some of your colleagues, maybe people you knew were kind of wondering what you were thinking, and I guess-

Leslie Berland:
Yes.

Max Tani:
... What were you thinking? Why would you make that decision?

Leslie Berland:
That’s such a good question. It’s actually as dramatic as you’re making it sound, and Twitter was a platform, and still is, frankly, but was a platform that I was so passionate about, and was so addicted to, and was a lifeline of information, so it was like a crossroads in life. It was sort of like I could take the linear path and the road probably more commonly traveled, or I could do something that is way more unchartered, unknown, and in many ways, risky. Jack Dorsey had just come back to the company. I was the first CMO. I was the only person on the executive team who lived in New York, and so it definitely sort of was this moment.

Max Tani:
You were known somewhat briefly as one of the only people who could deal with Elon. This was mentioned in Ryan Mack and Kate Conger’s Twitter book, which described you as, and I’m quoting from the book, an expert in harnessing large, male business egos. Now, I know, obviously, you’re limited in what you can and probably want to say about the whole saga, but just to take a step back, what we’re kind of curious about is, what did you learn from that experience? What have you actually taken and kind of applied to the other jobs, even if you can’t speak about it specifically?

Leslie Berland:
I mean, this is hours and hours. I mean, how do I summarize? No. Truly, truly. I mean, listen. There’s so much to learn about how people lead, what drives decisions, what influences decisions. When you think about the platform itself and the voices on the platform, and I experienced this in all my years at Twitter. When you’re getting real time feedback loops, it also changes the brain chemistry and how you think and how you operate.

Ben Smith:
Do you think Twitter changed the brains, as you say, of the people running it, whether it was Jack, Dick, you, or Elon? Do you think it was particularly weird, and all the people who worked there? Was it harder to operate because everyone was losing their minds on Twitter all the time?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. I will tell you this. First of all, I used to dream in tweets. I would close my eyes at night, and I would see the timeline, and I was not alone.

Ben Smith:
That’s so disturbing.

Leslie Berland:
Just so you know that, but I will say this, working at Twitter or any public, open platform, including obviously X now and others, you definitely are trained and wired in a completely different way than anywhere else because you are operating at a speed that is minute to minute, quite literally. You are constantly on the platform. You’re constantly seeing the world unfold in ways that are beautiful and ways that are horrifying. You are getting feedback loops from lots of different places, that obviously are quite polarizing, often. So absolutely, I think anyone who has or continues to work at these platforms is built different, and it is not for everybody.

Ben Smith:
Now, as you suggest, in a very normal company, you’ve moved on. You’re the CMO of Verizon, which is one of the classic, huge CMO jobs in America, and I was actually talking to another CMO the other night. I mentioned that we were going to talk, and she said, “Isn’t Leslie bored?”

Leslie Berland:
Oh my gosh.

Ben Smith:
“Isn’t this boring compared to all the craziness that she’s been through in the past, sort of selling phone subscriptions in a basically, fairly normal way?” So, I don’t know, is this boring?

Leslie Berland:
I am the opposite of bored. I took this job, because I saw the opportunity and the need for transformation and change. This isn’t stepping into a role, where the expectation is to do the same thing over and over again.

Ben Smith:
And just at a high level, just sort of explain it to the audience, I think Verizon and a lot of, I mean, I think the telecoms industry, traditionally, the marketing is going out and saying, “Our plan is 15 cents cheaper, and the coverage in North Dakota is a little better.” It’s very focused on details, which is, I don’t know, probably most of the reason people buy phone plans, and it seems like that world is changing a bit, right? That’s what you’ve brought into change?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah, so I think that part of what we do is incredibly core, right? How you tell those stories, I think there is, and we’re experiencing it, there’s massive opportunity to tell these stories and to communicate this in clear, bolder ways. I think, at the same time, there’s a brand transformation that we are driving as well. We relaunched the brand in June of last year, and are now sort of building from there. The goal is to very much bring to life all the things that Verizon is and does in your life. It’s this amazing challenge, where we are running underneath, empowering every single thing you do, but we’re invisible most of the time. And so it’s sort of bringing to life and telling stories about an invisibleness, but that’s so critical, and that’s an amazing challenge.

Ben Smith:
With that sort of relaunch of the brand, I mean, my sort of read of it is that you were kind of trying to take it away from being seen as this utility, this invisible thing, into something that feels like it’s starting to edge into the space of other brands, of media brands, of entertainment brands. I think that it’s been interesting to see these things merge. It is interesting to me that you can get a Netflix max subscription through Verizon.

Leslie Berland:
Right, right.

Ben Smith:
That’s a weird twist, and I’m curious if you see these things converging? Are those things that are sort of your customers, also sort of your competitors? How do you navigate that?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. No, listen, they are absolutely our partners and our collaborators across so many realms, but I think you’re hitting the most important part, which is we truly are a life company, right? Every time you pick up your phone, it works because of us. I mean, we are, really, at every touch point of every part of the life cycle and family, and we carry that responsibility. It’s a privilege and a responsibility.

Max Tani:
So, just to take a step back and get a sense of scale, how much money does Verizon spend on marketing every year?

Leslie Berland:
In total? Approximately 3 billion.

Max Tani:
That is unbelievable. I mean, it’s difficult to wrap your head around that and having one person in charge, obviously, you have a lot of folks who work with you, but-

Leslie Berland:
There are many people in charge. That includes all of our promotional spend, et cetera. Yes.

Max Tani:
Of course, of course. But still, it’s pretty significant.

Leslie Berland:
Yes.

Max Tani:
To your point about the ways in which you tell the stories about Verizon changing, what’s the breakdown of how and where you spend that $3 billion? Is it still television ads, or how are you shifting that? What does that pie chart look like?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s still evolving, and it certainly depends. However, there’s no question that it is evolving from linear TV to digital. Digital and social marketing, specifically, is extraordinary. Streaming, all of these channels and spaces, and getting increasingly personalized is where we’re moving. That said, there is still a role for linear TV. Sports continues to be massive and only getting bigger, and so my goal is to continue to elevate the brand and drive sort of awareness for what we offer, and then, of course, be super smart lower down the funnel.

Max Tani:
So, linear TV’s still big, sports is still big, but obviously that other bucket, the one that we talk about in media, is that kind of creator space, right?

Leslie Berland:
Yes.

Max Tani:
How much of your life as CMO is now about figuring out that?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah, so a lot of my life is spent living in that space, so I’m not spending much time trying to figure it out. I’m spending a ton of time on these platforms, deeply in these platforms.

Ben Smith:
Scrolling, TikToks, and Reels is what you’re saying?

Leslie Berland:
Yes.

Ben Smith:
Do you dream in them yet?

Leslie Berland:
I do not dream in them yet. I do not dream in them yet, but I think that each platform is different, obviously, and I’ve gotten in deep enough to both see the opportunity for brands, and for ours, that is unique and different, but also to see where trends are starting to go before they go there, and so I think that’s the challenge in, I think, the CMO role right now, is that we are setting vision, strategies, and direction, and you really have to be in this stuff in the day to day to understand it.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. I’m curious. You’re a major executive at a giant company, and then some random influencer goes really viral, and you notice it or somebody sends it to you. Can you just be like, “All right. Verizon’s all in here,” or is there some long set of committee meetings, by which point, obviously, this thing is old. I mean, it is a big challenge for lots of different kinds of organizations. How do you deal with that?

Leslie Berland:
Well, oftentimes, I’m the one saying, “I just saw this on TikTok. This creator is starting to catch catch a couple,” so I’m in it with the team. Sometimes the team will bring something that’s sort of a curve-ball, but most of the time we’re in it together. We are sharing, ongoing. I mean, that’s how much I use these platforms as well, so in short, no. We keep these teams very, very small. It’s down to a few people. We did a TikTok video with Jules LeBron, who is the creator of the “demure” meme and trend. That, from beginning to end, was three days. Obviously, we were all watching what was happening, and every other brand was doing their own version of the “demure” trend, and I was like, “No. We have to go to the source, and we have to do this immediately before every other brand works with her,” and so, I think if we would’ve even lost a day, it would’ve been too late. There’s no room for committees and reviews upon reviews or hierarchy, I think, in this space.

Ben Smith:
And maybe we can play that, actually, that clip for our listeners.

Video:
Ladies, let’s be mindful when we use our phones. Me, I keep it very cutesy, very demure. I reply to my text, I get to my emails. I do a few picky-picky, flicky-flickies, and that’s why I’m at Verizon. Verizon lets me trade in a musty Diva for a Demure Diva. Verizon lets anyone trade in a crusty phone for a new one. We don’t have a crunchy phone, we don’t do a cracked screen. I’m not typing on my phone and getting cuts on my fingers. I’m not charging my phone and it’s weedy-wadawu, going crazy on me. Thank you.
Did you secure the bag?
You said we get the bag? I take my bag. I’m very cute. I’m very respectful to the staff. I don’t do crazy. I walk out with my nice, new phone, and that’s why I partner with Verizon. She keeps it elegant. She keeps it cutesy. She keeps it classy. She does red. She doesn’t do hot pink. She’s not crazy. She’s very demure.

Leslie Berland:
Yes.

Max Tani:
So, I guess the thing that I’m really curious about in this space, and I imagine this is a challenge that you guys have and that a lot of people in your similar roles elsewhere have, is how do you hook, yoke a brand onto something like that, like an internet trend like that, without making people feel icky or like, “Oh, man. This is kind of gross, sponsored content”?

Leslie Berland:
Totally. Yes.

Max Tani:
It’s like this is selling out for this person.

Leslie Berland:
Yes.

Max Tani:
Where is that line, and how do you think about navigating that?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. How do you essentially not be cringey, as the kids say?

Max Tani:
Yes.

Leslie Berland:
Listen, I think this all comes full circle around needing to heavily and intensely use these platforms in order to know the tone and the nuance around it. So, as an example for this specifically, the way the ideas came together was that this guaranteed trade-in, you can trade in any phone and get a new one, was the perfect, like we identified that as the perfect and possibly the only thing that would work with her. If we didn’t have that, and this was like a, “Get X percent off of this,” it needed to be a visual, tangible, something that she could riff off of.
I think the other part that’s so important with creators like her, and again, this was the first big brand deal that she did, ever, and so, what was so important in working with her was to say, “Be you. Do you.” Sometimes you start working with creators, especially those who are just up and coming, and they go into a corporate place. It’s Verizon, and suddenly there’s an effect that comes and they’re holding back a little bit. We are often pushing them to be as authentically them as they can possibly be to avoid Max, exactly what you’re saying, is coming in as a corporation doing a brand deal, so it all starts for me with authenticity of the creator and letting them do what they do.

Ben Smith:
One of the top comments under that post, maybe the top one, is somebody congratulating her on making so much money from Verizon and saying, “I hope you made $50,000,” which is a funny feature of that space.

Leslie Berland:
Getting her bag.

Ben Smith:
Yeah, getting her bag. It was funny that a, is that about the right amount? Is that about what you paid? I felt like it was low, honestly,

Leslie Berland:
Listen, I can’t confirm or deny, but I will tell you she was very happy and her team was very happy. I will say that, and it also enabled, once she worked with us, there were so many other brands that she’s worked with since then, but I will tell you another part of the strategy is literally what you said, which is we knew that, if you tracked her comments over time, people were rooting for her. That was part of what was happening. They wanted her to be successful, and they were invested, so nothing about the response surprised any of us. I knew those comments. We’re like, “It’s going to be like, ‘Get your bag, girl.’” We knew that was going to be a big part of it.

Ben Smith:
There’s no real analogy for that in traditional media, where you sell an ad and your audience thanks you and congratulates you.

Leslie Berland:
Right, right.

Ben Smith:
That is not the normal experience in media, although we try to produce advertising that’s high quality.

Leslie Berland:
Yeah, no. You’re absolutely right, and that’s not most creators. There are certain creators that you see that are coming up in this way.

Max Tani:
Well, on the topic of seamlessly integrating advertising into media, we’re going to take a break right here, and then we’ll come back and hear more from Leslie.
This week in our branded segment from Think With Google, I spoke to Google’s VP of marketing, Josh Spaniard, about how to meet consumers where they are, whether they’re searching, scrolling, streaming, or shopping. So, the big story of 2024 was just this massive fragmentation of media, this incredibly confusing landscape for people like us to look at, a place in which consumers can deeply personalize what they’re listening to, what they’re seeing, what they’re reading. I think that makes it hard for people in your position, for marketers, to find consumers at the right place in the right time, so how do you think about navigating that?

Josh Spaniard:
So, I recently went to a museum, and I saw up close a beautiful Jackson Pollock painting, one of its splattered canvases. As I stood in front of that beautiful painting, I really was thinking about my own marketing services industry, as you describe the complexity of every surface and touch point and device of PR, comms, media, AI, and content, and how it all has sort of blurred together, and it is somewhat overwhelming, but then part of my job and part of every good marketing’s job is to take a step back and try and see, I guess, the signal, the noise, or the shapes in the patterns, like you do with the Jackson Pollock. One of the things I’ve used is a framing around four key consumer behaviors: streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping. What we are seeing across Google’s product mix and all our properties is these activities, these key human behaviors are sort of intersecting through technology.
When we understand the consumer journeys that people are taking, we as marketers can actually help navigate those paths and actually intersect in ways which are useful and additive to consumers, so that may be someone using Google Lens with their phone, just taking a picture of something and searching for it, or it may be someone watching and strolling through YouTube, pausing a video and using Circle to search, to search for a watch that someone in that video is wearing, and getting instantaneously a Google search shopping result, which allows you to buy that watch and then go back to watching the video. This framing, streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping is helping us really think through these different pathways and where we can be useful from both a technological and a marketing engagement perspective to help unpack this complex, dynamic landscape to make mess from the noise, just as Jackson Pollock helps us do with his paintings.

Ben Smith:
Brave New World. Where can people learn more about consumer behavior today?

Josh Spaniard:
You can head to Thinkwithgoogle.com, and there’s bursting with great content, great articles, and great videos to learn about the streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping principle.

Ben Smith:
All right. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Spaniard:
Thanks, Ben.

Ben Smith:
You are now operating in a world, Leslie, where these big, social media platforms are shifting away from content moderation, toward a lighter touch, and obviously, when you’re with Twitter, you thought about this stuff all the time, I’m sure, but I’m curious as how you approach this new world if you’re worried about the context your ads show up in, or if you’re just measuring the increments that you sell and not so worried about the context in which they appear anymore?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. I mean, we care about all of it, right? You care about the message. You care about it being in the right place, in the right moment, in the right time, and you care about it being in a safe context and an appropriate context always. I think there is a very rapid rate of change that is underway, and by the way, these things, in my experience, they evolve over time, right? Oftentimes, changes are made, and then each platform learns, evolves, and understands sort of what’s working, what’s not working. These things are typically not linear, but certainly there is a lot of change underway.
So, I think it’s just really important to always look at the business objectives, what we’re trying to achieve, and the goals that we need to meet, as well as our customers, being sensitive to them, and our values, but every brand right now has to be understanding that things are changing, and they’re going to continue to change, so I don’t think we were ever in a place of, at least I never felt that there was a firm anchor in this space, because again, my world, in my experience, this was something that was always in conversation, was challenging, and we just need to be able to navigate it.

Ben Smith:
Do you think advertisers are going to push MetaX, other companies, back toward content moderation towards safer environments, or do you think that era is totally over?

Leslie Berland:
Listen, I think it’s all very early right now. I think that you see what platforms sort of announce and communicate, but then it’s also really important to have very strong and deep relationships at these companies and with the teams at these platforms, because you get so much deeper, right? What we’re all reading about and you’re all reading about are the policies, and what we want to understand are the tools and the tools available to us, and what this actually looks like and get our questions answered. And so, it’s very, very early right now, but all the platforms have been very collaborative.

Max Tani:
As we’re recording this, it’s still unclear what’s going to happen with TikTok, but I’m curious, from your perspective, what does a world without TikTok look like for you and for Verizon? I mean, you’ve spent all this time, both getting to know influencers and TikTokers, and you’re deeply plugged into this space. What does it actually mean if something changes?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. I think it’s probably even bigger than the question that you’re asking. I think, foundationally, so much changes from a culture and trend standpoint at baseline, like putting creators aside for a second, there is so much, like the purchasing power, the purchasing decisions and behaviors that are influenced by this platform, overall, is massive. From music, sports, entertainment, everything across. Beauty, apparel, all of it, so that would be a significant, significant shift. In terms of the creators and the influencers we work with, they’re on numerous platforms. Some of them go longer form. They’re on YouTube. Many of them are on Instagram. We spend a lot of time on Instagram and focused on Instagram as well. That is where a lot of our customers are and engage, but we work with Snap. Obviously, we advertise on Facebook, so we’re obviously in a lot of different places, but I do think there is no underestimating the dramatic, dramatic impact of this.

Max Tani:
Speaking of upcoming, interesting media moments, the biggest media moment for marketing in the US is always, obviously, the Super Bowl. Last year, you guys did a Super Bowl ad with Beyonce. This year, you guys, I understand, are skipping the game and doing activations across, I guess my notes are telling me 30 different stadiums. How do you think about that and why you guys are deciding to do something different this year? What’s the thinking?

Leslie Berland:
Yes, and we’re not skipping the game. We’re advertising during the game.

Max Tani:
Yes. Not doing Beyonce again at the game or something like that.

Leslie Berland:
Exactly, exactly. Well, listen, we’ll be there, and we’ll be on the ground doing lots of activations in Orleans as well, but I think this goes back to the conversation we were having earlier, about doing things that are very ownable to Verizon that put our customers at the center, that is sort of zigging where everyone else is zagging. What is exciting for us, watching this all unfold, is the Super Bowl hasn’t even happened, and the conversation about what we’re doing is very loud and very broad across the entire country, and so there’s something really interesting about capturing organic conversation, and we’re doing some advertising, but the press and the comms around this has been absolutely extraordinary, and importantly, at the local level. It’s sort of bringing this sort of big company type of experience, like the Super Bowl, which so few people get to actually experience, and bringing that experience to people in ways that, quite literally, no one else can, so this is where it’s an ambitious plan, 30 concurrent events happening, biggest Super Bowl party ever. It’ll be really amazing. We’re excited.

Ben Smith:
Is that cheaper or more expensive than one Super Bowl ad with Beyoncé?

Leslie Berland:
I will not answer that question, but I will say that it is money very well spent.

Ben Smith:
I mean, just to conclude a final question. Basically, every weekend on the show, we’re talking about these sweeping changes in the media, this sort of shift toward individuals, where they call them creators, influencers, brands, and this intense fragmentation, where people are consuming from all different directions and different things. The business around it is going to continue to evolve, continue to get more sophisticated, and I guess we’re curious. Where do you think it’s heading, and what’s the next big innovation that you see coming down the pike?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. I love that you asked this question, because I think that it goes back to what you were talking about, [inaudible 00:29:54] on your TV. There’s a historical sort of draw, so sort of the blanketing, and what is very, very clear and is only going to become further intensified, is you called it fragmentation, but it is these micro communities, these micro passions, these micro interests, and ways of talking within those contexts that are getting more and more specific, and speaking with people, not at people, I think that that entire space and world is going to continue to intensify in that way, because there are so many platforms and so many just opportunities and outlets for people to connect on very specific things, so it’s all about really getting local and nuanced and understanding your audiences, and again, above all else, being able to move very, very quickly.

Ben Smith:
And is the path to that armies of Leslie Berland’s spending 10 hours a day on TikTok or whatever the TikTok successor is, or is it the kind of, to me, slightly scary, hyper-personalization that AI can bring, where every single individual is being marketed to differently? That sounds like a lot of work, honestly, marketing to zillions of communities with 10 people in the mix?

Leslie Berland:
Yeah. Listen, I think that, obviously, and to go deep into obviously the AI conversation, but I think responsibly using the new technologies to meeting the right people in a non-scary way, I will say delivering the message that is most important and most relevant to you or groups of you is obviously the goal. In terms of a million Leslie’s, I don’t think anybody wants that, but I do think that every single marketer needs to be understanding these platforms. They need to be users of these platforms. There is, in my view, no way to do this job without that hands-on understanding.

Ben Smith:
All right. Well, look forward to seeing you on Little Red Book or wherever we are next.

Leslie Berland:
Look at you. That’s a hilarious, hilarious trend underway. That’s right.

Ben Smith:
So strange.

Leslie Berland:
It’s very strange, but it’s very funny content, I have to say.

Max Tani:
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Leslie. We really appreciate it.

Leslie Berland:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Max Tani:
Super, super fun to chat with Leslie. She’s so, so dynamic. You had had the disclaimer, a lot of CMOs are kind of buttoned up or buttoned down. I don’t know what you exactly said.

Ben Smith:
Careful, I would say.

Max Tani:
Careful. Exactly.

Ben Smith:
Careful around journalists.

Max Tani:
She’s careful around journalists, but it was fun and it was an interesting window into just how CMOs at the biggest companies are thinking about spending their money in media, right?

Ben Smith:
Yeah, and it’s like this kind of great flattening you see everywhere. The CMO is obsessively watching TikTok, seeing something happen on there, and just, as fast as she can, getting to that creator and doing a deal. It’s very opportunistic and fast, and just miles away from what used to be this very kind of careful, slow moving, “We’re planning next to year Super Bowl ad” kind of business. Well, that stuff, of course, happens too.

Max Tani:
It’s really interesting to me, too, how much is not market or research driven. You would imagine that the TV ads, there’s a lot of data that goes into like, “Okay. We’re going to do these ad buys here, and this is where we’re looking to grow, and we want to compete in this place.” This is literally just like, “I’m the CMO. My team sent me this really funny video, and let’s get this person on the horn and bang one of these things out really quickly,” and I didn’t realize how much of the job was literally going to be knowing creators and having good impulses around what works in that space.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. I’m sure there’s also piles of boring stuff, research, and data, of course, which she referred to the bottom of the funnel in passing, but yeah, it’s just the sort of speed at which you got to move now. I mean, it’s true in our business too.

Max Tani:
But I think it’s also interesting too, because that’s probably part of the job that you can’t eventually have AI do, right? AI can tell you where to do your ad buys probably. What it can’t tell you is which of these creators is going to be really good to collaborate with, and just how to get the right tone and, “Oh. We don’t want to do a phone plan thing. We want to do a phone. Trade your phone in,” type of thing. I don’t know. It seems, to me, that there’s a little bit of gut skill there.

Ben Smith:
Yeah. It’s interesting, because the big story of marketing over the last 30 years is the creative part of it getting replaced by ad tech, and the technical aspects of marketing are sweeping aside the old Mad Men stuff, but it is interesting. As the technical stuff gets fully, truly automated, that there’s this kind of return of an obsession with how do you talk about your brand and with the, basically, intuitive stuff.

Max Tani:
It’s a creator-focused Don Draper. It’s like, have you seen that meme of Don Draper with the bus in kind of haircut? Do you know what I’m talking about at all?

Ben Smith:
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Can you explain it to me?

Max Tani:
All right. There’s no way, possibly, to explain what this means. It’s just him with the zoomer haircut. It’s incredible. There’s a few people who are in the advertising and marketing space. They’ll know what it is, but it’s funny how much, maybe it’s slightly, very slightly, true to life.

Ben Smith:
What do you make of Verizon’s ambitions to sort of edge into what I think of as the media space? If you’re watching a great show on Netflix, it sounds like Leslie wants Verizon to get a bit of credit for that in a way.

Max Tani:
I think it’s totally fascinating, and it actually does get a little bit at solving what is the ultimate frustration of cord cutting, which is, “Can’t I just pay for all of this with one thing?” And I think that that, actually, it’s something that a lot of media companies have tried to solve. You can see that Google has tried to solve that to a certain degree with YouTube TV, which bundles and packages different things, so I think it is really interesting that they’ve slightly edged into that space in addressing a serious concern that most consumers.

Ben Smith:
Totally. It drives everybody crazy, and as we all know, of course, like YouTube, Amazon, Apple are all trying to jump into that space, but there’s also this competition from the layer above them, which is the telecom, and it’s this funny kind of competition. I mean, the other thing that’s sort of interesting about it is that AT&T Disastrously purchased Warner Media as their way of getting into that space, and I think what you’re seeing Verizon and its competitors be like, “Wait, we don’t have to buy these guys. We have so much leverage in terms of being able to help them drive renewals and drive sales of their subscriptions, that we can kind of push them into letting us market them.” I mean, the fact that you can buy a subscription combined to Netflix and HBO is kind of a sign of the weakness of those companies in terms of converting subscribers in the strength of these other layers of the ecosystem. It’s really kind of wide open competition.

Max Tani:
Do you think that those companies, the Netflix’s, and I mean, Warner and Netflix are on different levels, but do you think that they sense that that is a place of vulnerability for them?

Ben Smith:
Yes, I think they do. Churn is just this terrible problem for all of them, and holding onto subscribers at any cost is true for Disney too, very important, and so they will give a lot to partners who can help them with that. Conversely, I do think they know, in the lesson we learned, is that these companies are not really going to get into the media business. Verizon had its disastrous experiments in the media business. AT&T had had its disastrous experiments in the media business. It’s going to be like a whole generation of telecom executives before they make that mistake again.

Max Tani:
Right, and why would you want to be in the media business when you can just basically sell media anyway through what you’re doing, through partnerships?

Ben Smith:
Why indeed, Max?

Max Tani:
I think we’ve made an effective argument against our own business, but we’ll leave it at that for today. Thank you so much for listening to Mixed Signals from Semafor Media. Our show is produced by Shina Ozaki, with special thanks to Max Tani, Britta Galanis, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pezzino, Garrett Wiley, and Jules Zern. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor this week is Jack Dorsey.

Ben Smith:
He’s always watching, and if you like Mixed Signals, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to review us.

Max Tani:
And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semafor Media’s newsletter, out every Sunday night.