Ditch the Pitch

and sunny Arizona. Hi, Laura, Hi, I miss you know we should be down here. We thought we would use this week to bring in one of our friends from Adwik, Josh Dernberg, who is the tech editor of that trade publication, coming and talk to us about some of the things um that he's seeing from his vantage point, not just from a signal in the noise trend perspective, but also ways in which we think that we can bring the

industry tighter together to actually move it forward. Yeah. I think that the conversation really is more about what can we do to kind of change the PR marketing advertising agency relationship. And I think that a lot of people have been saying what he's saying. He's very clear, and I like his currently dystopian. He likes to say he's a pragmatist and a realist, but I think it's a somewhat like dystopian kind of perspective of where we are today in this relationship between the press and and the

agency side and the client side. I think that there's a lot to be said in terms of the trades and I and I'm hoping we talked to him about this, that there's a lot to be said about getting into where the trades are going and the trade publications role in actually driving change in the industry versus just maybe reporting on it. So I'm excited to talk to Josh. We're going to bring him in the studio and we'll

be back with him right after this. Yeah, we're back in the studio with Josh Sternberg, the tech editor of ad Week. Welcome to the show, Josh, Welcome does the show, Josh, thank you for having me so, Mr Josh Sternberg. Similar to our friends or Fisher, you've been on kind of both sides of the world. Um, tell us about where you came from, what You've done both on the paid sign Brandon Content and now over ad week. What are you doing? Yeah? So I'm here because I'm a failed musician.

I didn't know this about yeah, aren't we all? Yeah? I um. I was in a rock jazz improv band for a long time, and clearly there's not a market for that. So I went to graduate school and really enjoyed academia. So I became a professor for a few years. Then I met a girl, wound up in New York where it was not economically viable for me to cross two rivers back into New Jersey to continue teaching. So I need to find a job, and I landed in

PR and it was fine. I got a good understanding of how companies and brands communicate, but at the same time I still enjoyed writing. Wound up at digit A, writing covering media and the ongoing transition that publishers face, moving from a legacy print analog world to a fun digital world. How many years ago is that now? So that was about That was six years ago, two thousands twelve, and it was a digit A for about two and

a half years. I got a call from the chief revenue officer at the Washington Post who called me up and said, hey, we're doing this brand studio thing. You've been covering it, you know, the playbook of what people are doing. Seemed to have a good head on your shoulders. What do you What do you say? So I said sure, um did that for about a year and a half or so. Then NBC News came calling. And while I'm doing the same thing at NBC News and got laid off in March of this is on the digital side

doing Brandon content. Uh yeah, yeah. When I got laid off, I was thinking, well, I really don't want to go back into the business side, all the glitz and glamor of it all. I really missed reporting. I missed being in a news room, I missed the intellectual curiosity of reporters. And I ended up at that week. So I've been

here now for about four months and it's phenomenal. So you've been covering a lot of what's on everybody's mind right now, the Facebook, Google, do appoly and for many of our listeners who obviously are in the industry, this has become mainstream news as opposed to just industry news. Can you give us some background on the state of

what's going on with Facebook and Google. So I think the one of the interesting things about all of this is that this is not something that happened overnight, and it's not something that is necessarily company lead users, advertisers, marketers. We allowed this to happen by continuing to use these

products and these websites without really paying attention. Um. You know, when you talk about the doopoly, it's more on the ad revenue side, right where five or eighty six cents of every digital dollar goes to one of those two companies, you know, And we're going to start to see Amazon take a little piece here and there. On the odd side, the Internet is for all times of purposes for a lot of people, Google and Facebook, so that attention, those

eyeballs are there. So, you know, I'll throw that back to you guys. Is you know, media and marketing folks, when you see a plan and you're looking for scale and reach, what are you looking for? It's it's a good question, and I think we think about things very strategically in terms of what is the big idea, how do we come across and drive impact and attention in the market. When you hear it some statistic and don't quote me on this, but it's something over fift of

impressions are viewed by bots not loading on a page. UM. That's concerning, and that's not something that's new. Those are not new facts, UM. And I think we very early decided some of the work that we've done, and certainly work that I've done with other clients, that we put content in an environment where it wasn't skippable, where it

was integrated within other content that was editorially driven. And I think that's something that we we tend to forget about that that doesn't happen by pressing a button and running through a programmatic buy Right. That's many nights of having drinks and dinners with the sales rep. And that's many nights of that sales rep trying to figure out how am I going to get this account to do these things? And there's often that a disconnect because most

people are not Most buyers are not like you. We have a box to check, we have a spreadsheet to fill out, and let's just keep the ball moving forward. UM. And the sales rep they're looking at they've got a quarily number to hit, they're looking at what's in front of their face. But that sales rep who's trying to do something big, trying to do something creative, will often have to walk back those ideas either a because no one's buying, be because they have a hard time articulating

what that thing could be. And then when it does get sold, the execution is really bad because no one actually thought it through. And I'm sure that pisses you guys off on that certainly, And I think that's a large part of what's wrong, you know, and why many years ago we walked away from the RFP process and we want the value. There was no value right, There was no value in it anymore because at the end of the day one, we weren't looking for off the

shelf kind of stuff. Um. We also, and this is something that I talked to other client side folks about all the time, like, you should know what the Washington Post is really good at, and you should know what their road map is, and you should know how you know what the New York Times is really good at and what's the differentiator And you start going to those people specifically because you have an idea, not the other way around. Can I tell you the story, tell us

the story. But I want to ask you a question before we get too far away from it. What is the trade media's role in changing this conversation? So there are a couple of ways of looking at this. Trade journalism works well when you are able to explain something to practitioners who are doing this every day that might have their clients on. So if I am writing about how a particular company is doing something, so you know, let's say the Washington Post, how the Washington Post is

operating their programmatic strategy, it's a process story. It's here's how this one company is doing this one thing, and here how you reader can take away knowledge of what this company is doing and how you might be able to use those practices in your day to day job. Um, there's another side of trade journalism that can shine a light on some of the shady stuff that happens in

the industry that we talk about in different settings. We go out for drinks, you guys tell me stuff that you wouldn't tell me when I'm calling to talk about a story. It's in a way, no, no, it's not not you specifically. Let's yes, you guys. You guys do

not give me any dirt ever. But you know, going going out to drinks with sources, going out to coffee or launch and just talking with people, you can find stories of companies doing bad things, people doing bad things, and then you report and you shine a light to hopefully show others, hey, don't do this, this is dumb. Uh. There is a growing trend not just within trade journalism um,

but within the tangentials of trade journalisms. So it doesn't quite seep into the mainstream, but it does get into publications that cover media or advertising on the side um where they look for the salacious and for the dirt for the sake of salaciousness and dirt. So can we park that part there? Because I want to come back

to the center. One of the main reasons we created at Landia was how do we shape the conversation, poke holes and ask questions about legacy models, the traditional way of doing things when in fact technology and the consumer have moved tenfold away from the way this this industry

acts and behaves and and goes to market. So when I got to add week, part of my pitch for them to hire me was that I wanted to build a desk that looks at basically how every single decision that the media landscape has made over the last twenty years has been wrong, and it has created problem, which

has created more problems, which has created more problems. And that we are at a point with technology becoming better, becoming stronger, becoming faster, where through the lens of trade journalism as educator, as explicator, that we can help brands, publishers, agencies, platforms,

even ad tech vendors make better decisions. So that way, when we figure out how to make VR headsets not look as silly as they look and make a use case for people to actually put them on, we're not getting served display ads or pop ups or banner ads, right, um, And I think to your point, the way that we can do that is to write stories and cover the industry with that perspective of look, here's what doesn't make sense, here's what makes sense, Here's what's working for this company

and why, and what can you take out of it that you might be able to help with your job. So Alex and I have talked to, obviously Sara Fisher who's a reporter, and Sarah made a really good UM point at the end of the episode talking about how the relationship between the industry and the trade press can afford to get tighter in the sense of shaping those narratives and helping journalists who might not have been practitioners. You and Sarah were both in interesting situations and that

you were a practitioner at one point. How can the industry help Josh Sternberg, How can the industry help Sarah fisher Um and others like you or those that have no background in our in what we do, tell those stories or explain them in a way that's going to actually create change versus swirl. Yeah, the thing that comes to mind immediately is don't lie, don't bullshit, don't obfu, skate, Just tell us it's okay that you don't know something. It's okay that you tried something and it failed. Not

everything is going to be successful. Not everything. Actually, pretty much nothing that you do is going to be revolutionary or game changing or whatever buzzword. Getting every single press release or pitch be honest. And I think that's where trade journalism can excel is if we focus on the honesty. The trick to that, though, is that a lot of people within the industry, especially on the business side, it's

not in their best perspective to be honest. I mean it's so funny because like I would never say, like I actually wouldn't think about honesty is the first thing but or the most important thing, because to me, that's like table stakes. Right. Um, what I think you're saying that is making me want a different model is like how do we start incentivizing a different relationship? Like how

do you incent a different model here? It's interesting, Like I'm just thinking over the work that we've done together, and I could see your point in terms of the business side coming to you when it's a best in class case study that they want to promote. But how many pitches have you sent maybe you're your peers have sent out to a publisher saying we want something that's never been done before. Of course, right, it's like, but don't do that, because if you're setting that bar, there's

nothing that hasn't never been done before. To use multiple negatives. So we had the privilege of having you at our first I R Element at Landy a live sound served over sound and Um, you and I talked that night. One of the things you said to me that resonated so much. I think you said, there's like basically a malaise in the industry that just creates mediocrity. That's my version of what you said. You said in a much

better headline. I just said, you know, the industries mediocrity by necessity, where the output of what we do is based off of not trying to do the best. But it's too again to your point that that laziness, that malaise of all right, I gotta check that box. I got to make sure that all the way up and down the chain that my ass is covered. It's cover your ass syndrome, right, and media on the business side

is really good at that. Yeah. I think what's really interesting here, though, is that, like you're talking about getting briefs that basically say, do something that's never been done before. Innovate is not a checkbox? Is that a check box? And it's phenomenal that those are the things that you that you guys on the on the editorial side see. But it's it's it's innovate with a pedestrian eye. When someone asks me what is the best piece of answered content,

I've seen brand branded content, native advertising content. So that's also part of the problem, right, what is this thing? Right? But anyway, you know, I always think to the g E Capital Bus road show that was done with Slate

for Growth. Yeah, bringing that was Laura, That was LA because that was that was it was interesting, right, It was taking the idea of you know what, we've got this message, and we want to take this message to particular people in particular areas, and then we can create all of this editorial content as well as sponsored or branded or whatever content and do it in a way

that makes sense for the reader. The biggest problem that I have with our industry is we don't take off our hat in whatever that hat maybe um you know, you might call me cynical, and I don't take off my reporter's hat. But at the same time, sometimes, you know, I cannot take off my marketer hat. And on the business side, that's all too prevalent where I've been in meetings where the sales rep and the agency and the brand are thinking in terms of the hat that they're

wearing and not they're human being hat. And when you put on the stress test of if you're a normal person and you're waiting in line at any grocery store and you're skimming through or scrolling through a website, are you going to click on that piece of sponsored content? What are you going to click on? And we don't think about that, or if we do, that doesn't get pushed down stream to twenty four year old media buyer

or the media planner. Um. So, if you can take off your industry hat and put on your human being hat, I think some of these challenges that the industry faces will just now actually fade away. I was talking to someone last night, UM, and I'm saying, why can't people see beyond what their business does? It's so fun? And then what you're saying, I'm taking to like like a

very just basic level. So people say, I am a data company that does X right and I see it all the time, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, your your capabilities are this, and if you applied it over here, which is something you're not even thinking about,

your company becomes totally different. And I think that so going beyond like the industry hat and the junior media buyer, I also think that we have like really senior, senior level people on the client side who also aren't thinking about what they do really really well and putting that in places that are just very simply valuable, And that's

what you're saying. Right at the end of the day, I think to your point, there are still too many UM brand marketers, UM and agency folks who are evaluating the success of campaigns based on impressions and things that do not reflect the engagement, meaningful engagement and qualification of the audience that they're reaching. Right, what does the consumer

care about? And these briefs that go out, you see them, they're very one way, very push versus pull in terms of here's my brand story and needs to show up and needs to target these people. But what happens when it gets to those people, it's it's out of their hands,

right like it, It gets just pushed along. So when I was on the business side, and I would get an RFP, and it would say, we want these three concepts to come through in the sponsored content, and I and and and my team we put together these what I thought were really smart content strategies and content plans and distribution mechanisms and all of these levers that we can pull to get the content in front of the

right people. And invariably I get nose from buyers and I get nose from brands because I didn't use those three specific words in the content. What what words whatever word? Right, So I learned that in order to win the account, all I needed to do was parent back the brief in a semi cogent way and then when we would win the account, put together content that was mediocre by necessity.

So so because I think this is a really important point as you're talking about that process that you were at the time willing to power it back, and I know that you're not the only person who does this to win business because you have a number and hit

and that's how you're incentivized. On the ad cell side. Well, clearly I didn't do that good of a job by design, by design um, But can we talk about just going back to the earlier question, how can we as an industry, how can we as agency people and brand marketers work better with the Josh Sternberg's and journalists of the industry

to change this conversation. So I think this is part of it, right, having these types of conversations on the record, where one of the things that I try to do is talk to as many people as possible up and down the food chain. And I know that if I talked to the CEO and the CMO. I'm going to get a slightly more refined message than if I talked to the VP, then when I talked to the director,

than when I talked to the manager. So I try to talk to everybody so I can kind of get a better sense of what is real and what is not. I look at more in terms of war, maybe because I mean it sounds like it's like look like this. The CEO is the head of the army, right, and the CEO is getting his or her information from his or her lieutenants, who's getting their information from the grunts on the ground and the sales jups and the agency reps who are going out for dinner and drinks and

gene parties and apple picking. Are the ones in the trenches who are trying to give the information up to their respective generals, and those messages often get conflated, destroyed, um misconstrued. Can I can I say something? Of course, if if marketing became this is a druma, I'd beat a lot. But if marketing became more at the center of true business, do you think that there would be

onions to peel back? Do you think there will be stories to spin or would you be talking about real ship that's moving real needles, that's changing real consumer relationships, that's doing real things. And is that and is that coming? I don't know. And this is very naive and very stupid, and they understand this, but for me, the the bottom line is do you sell ship? Do people buy the product or the service that you are advertising and marketing and if so, then it's working. Right. Yeah, but I'm

talking about like marketing building products. And this is a hard concept. Right when marketing actually starts becoming part of creating the products and creating the business versus just going out and messaging that business and bringing in sales, it will always do that. I mean, I I think of jobs and Apple, right, the product was built in conjunction with jobs, thinking of marketing. Yeah, but he wasn't thinking about marketing. He wasn't thinking about marketing. It's thinking about

a product. And you know what I mean, that's what that is what we're talking about, and it's real and like Steve Jobs, sorry I'm excited in Arizona. It's only seven in the morning. But like Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs wasn't like I'm going to go and think about marketing. He knew that that was his strong suit. He knew he was a seller, but he wasn't just selling. But he also, if I may designed with the consumer in mind, he built for the consumer, which is if you look

as competition, nobody there is. They're thinking about the utility, but not necessarily the end consumer. They had their tech teams building ship and then they didn't have the right marketers on top of it. And so one of the biggest problems is they like, look at Yahoo tech teams and then separated marketers. Look at Microsoft and Microsoft and Sati has done an amazing job with Microsoft, but I'm going to tell you, like still tech teams building things

for consumers. That's why some of their Windows products didn't work. It's clear, it's clear, but but I guess that's my that's my big sticking point. If we start, if marketers stopped just thinking about the cell and Laura and I talked about this all the time, and and start thinking about the context, right, And what I talk that was back to take off your hat. And I think you guys are in the position to actually change that, right.

I'm not. Well, actually I would argue that because as we're sitting here, you know, in my head brainstorming, and and Alexa will probably be able to finish the sentence. But I actually see the role. I don't think the word journalists in a trade function actually does it justice anymore.

I actually see you being the conduit or the liaison between these agencies and these publishers and these brands to start connecting dots that they're not seeing because everybody is so in the rabbit hole you said, having blinders on focused on the thing that they're selling, that they're making, that they're creating, that they're not leveraging the best practices or lessons learned or failures of their peers to learn

from cree and move forward. I also think they can't see the signals, Like when you're drinking your own bathwater, and we all do it to a certain extent, you cannot see the signals in the noise. And that's what we built this platform on. That's what we built this right, and that's what I would love to see more folks on our side of the table. Use you, Josh Stebergain, and I use the word use loosely, but partner with you on to start thinking about how we I don't

want to. And this is a practice I'm going to take away from this conversation. I'm no longer going to call you and say, hey, I'm doing this insane thing, and it's it's not for innovation for innovation sake. There's a strategic purpose. But I'm gonna call you and say, hey, I'm I'm wondering about this thing. What's going on in the marketplace. Is there a conversation we can have with

somebody else that you're talking to that's exactly right. So the stories that I will look at more closely as a reporter are the stories that someone comes to me and it says, I'm not selling a product, I'm not selling the new thing. I'm interested in what I'm seeing, and I need you as that conduit to go find other people that are doing this and we're not. We're not doing it. We're not doing it exactly, or am

I not. One of the things. One of the things, if I can to out my own company for a second, that I really enjoy about ad Week is over the last year and a half or two years, the company has been shaping itself to service as a place for that community. And not to say that there's no skepticism or you know, you might call it cynicism or negativity.

I call it pragmatism and realism. Um. But the idea that CEO and CMOS read us to understand what's happening, and when they can connect dots and we can help connect dots, it makes for better decision making on the

business side. At least that's the theory. And I'm excited over the coming months and years to continue to develop this community because I think the idea of agencies and brands and publishers talking to each other as opposed to pitching each other needs to happen to make better decisions. Partnership is happening right now. So it's time killed by d I Y. And we know that you have the best tweets in the trade pub games. So we're hoping your answers are just as exciting. Yeah real okay, yeah,

So Josh, what would you kill in the industry? Oh? God, everything, burn it all down? Um. Not a cynic no, no. And one of the things that we're working on is to be skeptical but not cynical, which is fair. It's hard to do that. Um. What would I kill? Um? From the reporter perspective. I would kill press releases. There's no reason for a press release. I'm never going to cover your press release because you're sending it to me and you're sending it to five thousand other people. There's

nothing interesting in a press release. That's why it's a press release. What would you buy? What would I buy? I would buy the New York Yankees? Would you buy them as is? Yeah? I love the Baby Bombers. Yeah. Um. What would you do yourself? I'd be a musician. I hear like tears, Yeah, I mean that's that's like. I am the most comfortable when I'm on stage with the

guitar slinged around my shoulder. So why don't we figure out how we do in Atlantia at week event that you can play at done one of my colleagues, Marty Swant, he's also a guitar player, and when I was coming over to ad Week, we were kind of kicking around the idea of starting a band called the c p MS. I will see myself out on that one the next start over time. Josh, thank you so much for coming. Where can people call you to partner with you to talk about stories? No phone calls. Do not call me.

You can email me Josh dot Sternberg at at week dot com, or you can follow my brain farts on Twitter at at Josh Sternberg. Josh, thank you so much for coming to Atlantia. Always a pleasure to hang out with you. So I think Josh poses some interesting challenges to our side of the business, and I think that there's ways to really start thinking about UM partnering with

journalists in a way that doesn't just report out. And I think we've got this plea from him on press releases and pitch stories, but really thinking about how we can change the narrative and work together to learn from one another, and that really I think changes the role that the trade publications play and trade organizations at large

in our industry. Wouldn't you say? We agree? And I'm like really into this challenge he put out there to marketers and agencies and said, Okay, we'll kind of kill the idea and reporting on kind of short termism and delacious stories if marketers and agencies are willing to come and talk more openly about failures and really work with us on concepts and ideas versus things and campaigns like tactics and nextic you shift, um, and I think that

every marketer out there should kind of take that challenge and gives Josh a call and say here, I'll give you something to report on. Let's let's change the industry. Yeah. I think it's totally the same way we think about urfping versus integrating and and collaborating and so UM. I think that those are behavioral shifts that the industry is um beginning to engage in. And I think we can only go up from here. So with that, big ups

for our producer, Cameron Drews. Thanks Cam, And we have a new producer in the house who is joining our team another Laura. Welcome to the show, Laura. Um, she's smiling from behind the booth. What am I gonna do to Laura's such a problem. I don't know. I think it's pretty bit badass. Cam. We love you that we're adding another woman to the to the team. Yeah, it's not you, it's us, Cam, we know. Um. Anyhow, Thank you to Andy Bower's, Matt Turk, Jacob Weisberg, all our

friends and family at Panable. We will be back in two weeks. Enjoy spring break at Landia. Full disclosure. Our opinions are our own.