Media

“There’s a war raging now in which there are predictions and reports that genocide is happening. And yet this does not get the front page attention of the international press,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of Sudan on the latest episode of Mixed Signals.

She also talked about what it feels like to become the policy face of the conflict and about managing policy in this addled news cycle. That, Hunter Biden’s laptop, raw milk, and more on the latest episode of Mixed Signals.

The Paris-based ad giant Publicis has broken away from the pack of media holding companies — the topic of our first Cannes newsletter, coming out Monday morning in France. Executives and rivals agree that the company’s drive toward centralization — some credit French business culture, not a line you often hear! — has given it an edge over more distributed competitors, allowing it to make huge acquisitions and a simple platform for clients.

“The Japanese talked it. The French did it,” lamented the former Americas CEO of the Tokyo-based giant Dentsu.

You can read the full story in a few hours (about 15 minutes after I’m done writing it, and 10 minutes before I board the plane!) in our Cannes newsletter.

The Washington Post looks to remake its identity

THE SCOOP

The Washington Post is shopping for a new brand.

The Post is in talks to bring aboard the legendary admaker David Droga to commission a new marketing campaign to redefine its image as it seeks to broaden its audience and find a space beyond presidential politics.

Droga — the founder of the ad agency Droga5 and CEO of the consultancy Accenture Song, which made The New York Times’ “The Truth is Hard” campaign — hasn’t yet begun work or formalized his brief, two people familiar with the conversation said. But he has told the Times that he won’t be available for its next round of marketing.

The Post’s current slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” dates to 2017, as Donald Trump’s attacks on journalists had brought the Post and the Times into the center of America’s heated politics. Post proprietor Jeff Bezos had picked the phrase up from iconic Post journalist Bob Woodward, then-editor Marty Baron recalled in his memoir, Collision of Power. “Like others at The Post, I questioned the wisdom of branding all our work with death and darkness,” Baron wrote. But the line seemed to meet the moment. Post subscriptions boomed through the Trump years. In 2019, the Post aired a Super Bowl ad on the theme.

The Post later brought in the former CEO of Droga5, Andrew Essex, to work on its marketing in 2021, two former Post executives said. That fall they released one television ad on the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” theme, a kind of movie trailer for an investigation of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

KNOW MORE

Now publishers are attempting to broaden their appeal beyond the hardest, darkest news. The Times is talking to agencies about a new campaign, an advertising executive said. The Wall Street Journal recently launched a campaign aimed at engaging “a wider demographic than what we’ve had in the past.” The slogan, “It’s Your Business,” features attention-getting propositions like, “Make AI girlfriends your business.”

Both embattled new Post CEO Will Lewis and Droga were expected to attend the ad industry festival in Cannes, France this week, but Lewis is reportedly staying behind to try to put out some fires.

Michael Kassan, a founder of the marketing consultancy MediaLink, is now locked in bitter litigation with his old partners at UTA. He’s now building a competitor called 3C Ventures.

This is excerpted from Phil Elwood’s upcoming book, “All The Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians,” a chronicle of the underbelly of public relations in Washington, D.C., which will be published June 25 by Henry Holt.

My cab heads across the underside of Foggy Bottom and stops in front of the Watergate Hotel. The driver hands me a blank receipt. Blank cab receipts are the joy of every expense-accounted staffer in DC. An eight-dollar cab ride can transform into a fifty-dollar trip to the airport. I go to the airport a lot.

The Watergate’s exterior looks like ribbons flowing in the wind. Once a posh address, the Watergate is slowly dying. Bob Dole used to live here; now the highlight is the Safeway in the basement. DC’s zone-based taxi fare system was influenced by Dole, who wanted to ensure that he could ride from his residence in the Watergate complex to his Senate office in a one-zone ride.

I’m stressed because Peter Brown called me an hour ago and said, “You need to get down to the Libyan embassy.” Lately, Brown has developed a penchant for calling at all hours with orders. Orders to jump on the next plane out of town. Orders to put out a fire. Or to light a match.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Our client is very happy,” Brown said. “But the world will be very displeased.”

Inside the Watergate’s office building, I head through a nondescript door into a suite full of Libyan flags and portraits of Muammar Gaddafi. The embassy’s décor is tacky, stuck in the 1980s. Everything about the Gaddafis is stuck in the ’80s—and covered in layers of cigarette smoke.

Ambassador Ali Suleiman Aujali invites me to sit down at an oval desk.

Last time I was here, we had Donald Trump on speakerphone setting up a game of golf for the Libyan ambassador.

“I gotta ask. Why did you pick the Watergate?” I say once I’m seated.

“It was available,” Aujali replies.

“I’d imagine,” I say. “Nothing shady has ever happened here.”

Ben and Max are in Cannes to cover media and marketing’s biggest annual gathering, where many of the most powerful people in media come to make deals, rub shoulders, win awards, and sip Aperol spritzes on the Côte d’Azur.

Starting tomorrow and through the week, we’ll deliver news, scoops, and insights on the year ahead in media — with all its deal-making, gossip, and pretentious grandeur, from one of the industry’s true epicenters.

Subscribe to our pop-up newsletter, Semafor Cannes.

⁛ News

Public offering: Newsmax, with two massive lawsuits looming, is looking to raise $225 million. Its filing reveals the brutal economics of its business: The right-wing channel lost $42 million last year.

Pas de politique: France’s football federation is asking the press not to pester Les Bleus players for their political views, as the European Cup kicks off during a surprise French election season.

Labor left: The CEO of progressive media company The Intercept has brought in a decidedly less-lefty media force to help her navigate the organization’s woes. Intercept CEO Annie Chabel has enlisted an attorney from the firm Proskauer Rose to help push back against the organization’s union, two people familiar with the move told Semafor. Proskauer Rose has been the go-to law firm for media organizations in their contentious negotiations with newsroom unions in recent years. Chabel’s decision to bring in an attorney from the firm comes amid a months-long back-and-forth between staff and the nonprofit’s management, which Semafor has covered in detail.

THR cuts: The Hollywood Reporter laid off several top editorial staffers and at least one business executive in a cost-cutting move that shook staff last week. Semafor confirmed that the company parted ways with Vice President of Business Development and Consumer Partnerships Cathy Field, one of the highest-ranking business executives at the company.

Longtime television figure Lesley Goldberg and Rebecca Sun, the senior editor of diversity and inclusion, both announced on Twitter on Friday that they had been laid off. Employees on the editorial side of the company were shaken by the moves, as well as details about the parent company Penske’s involvement. Some staff were alarmed when, during a meeting on Friday, co-editor-in-chief Nekesa Mumbi Moody said that she was not aware that the layoffs would be happening until recent days — suggesting that even top editorial figures had little say in staff reductions.

✦ Marketing

Brands can’t hide: A new study from Edelman found that consumers care a lot about politics. “To a staggering extent, our new research shows, brands and politics have become melded in the public mind,” writes CEO Richard Edelman.

Breve: Morning Brew parted ways with its chief commercial officer just six months after she joined the company. Sara Badler joined the business-focused digital publication late last year as the company prepared for what it described then as a “transformative year ahead.” But Badler left the company abruptly last week, Semafor has learned, just weeks after giving an interview in which she laid out the company’s new advertising strategy. Badler did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Morning Brew declined to comment.

⁜ Tech

Info wars: Platformer reports that an internet monitor, the Stanford Internet Observatory, is shutting down after pressure from House Republicans, and casts it wisely as part of “the effort to re-balance the information economy in favor of Republican interests.”

• The Black sports icons shaping Donald Trump’s take on race.
• G7 agrees outline of $50B deal to fund Ukraine using frozen Russian assets.
• Renewable energy alone can’t save Ukraine’s faltering grid.