This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. I'm thinking to Tim about our earlier conversations at the Bloomberg Live Work Shifting event. We're talking about what workers expect and are increasingly demanding in this tight labor market. What they want from employers, greater pay yup, flexibility, sense of purpose, respect, a path to growth, and companies that have a clear
mission that they can align themselves with. So our next guest to spend decades having conversations with companies and some of the best known brands. You created a multibillion dollar advertising and marketing and branding agency along the way. We are delighted to have with us. Donnie Deutsch, former CEO and chairman of Deutschink. Today he is host of the on Brand podcast and he joins this via zoom in New York City. Donny, good to have you here with us.
How are you great to be here, Carol, Great to be thank thanks for having to really appreciate it. Well, A lot to talk about. We want to get to your podcast, but we also want to ask you about having spent years talking to companies about their products, services, they're branding. How did that conversation involve How is it continue to evolve to today? Are you talking about as
far as corporate conscience? Yeah, well, corporate conscious and just how they think about it, right, and you know they've got to think about so many things when they put something out there. Yeah, you know, Look, I'll work back from corporate conscious. You know today this is price of entry,
particularly for young people. The company used. Companies used to want to be agnostic because obviously you don't want to alienate one consumer, you know, And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, consumers are particularly eighteen to forty nine, which is where the sweet spot is for most marketers, are demanding where companies have to say about voting rights, about racial equality. Uh, you're gonna see companies is gonna be interesting in Florida now with the don't say gay
Uh and Disney has come out against it. Uh. And you're seeing, well, as you guys talked about earlier, all of the companies pulling at it or stopping to a business Russia. This is what people, young people care about, not only the product, but the conscience and the way the company looks at the world so very often right now, it's good business to have a good moral center. Do
investors care about it? You know, all this that that's been put out there Donny about multiple stakeholders business roundtable that in a few years ago. We hear it incessantly. But I do wonder when it comes down to it, what's more important bottom line or that you are saying and doing the right things. What's the connects to an into an investor you're looking for bottom line? You know?
But obviously every investor has their own decisions to make in terms of the types of companies they do business with. But it really comes down to I'm gonna go back again, is if you have a company that is tone deaf, and you have a company that won't stand up and say we believe in voting rights, so we believe in racial quality or certain things that are just kind of just basic pillars of our democracy and fair play. Uh,
those businesses are not going to do well. So you know, I, as you're looking at the company's balance sheet, also, it's not gonna be on the balance sheet, but try and look at what they stand for and how they stand for it. And I think that's gonna be critical, Donnie. What are some companies that are doing a really good job of this? Right now? Who comes to mind for you? Um, I'm gonna use Disney right now? Is it is example? I mean this is not this is an issue that
is Uh. There are two sides. I don't know. There are two sides too, as far as people having passionate feelings about it that don't say gay was basically not bringing up in school uh, any issues of gender, any issues of lgbt q Uh. The other side of the argument as well, it only goes up to third grade, and do we want this being discussed with such young children and you know, putting these issues on the table for them in any degree. So you're gonna have, are
you arguments on both sides. But Disney, which is a very progressive company, has a very big gay population within it. As an employee, base uh took a stand and came out and said something. You know, they were asking that, so you can't hide anymore. But I think that the company's obviously any company that is giving percentages of their business is a way to certain uh charities filanthropic. So
it's not just issues, it's also being philanthropic. What about when it comes to politics and how companies get involved increasingly in politics in this damage. It's a little bit of a pause after January six and you know the riots of the Capitol, uh, in the insurrection. But it's it's kind of come back that companies are playing in politics again. Yeah they have. But by the way you're you're gonna a company is gonna be asked, you know, what do you think of the Black lives matters? They
can't hide, they can't hide it. It used to be, well, we have no comment, and the no comment can backfire on you. So they still You know, most companies, if they had their way, they would not be venturing into
politics or venturing into you know, certainly they don't. Companies don't for the most part, I want to get behind the political candidate, although I did see you did see exceptions with with none with companies, I would say coming out against Trump, but very vocal uh choruses within the companies. But you know, particularly you're a big company, you selling a mass. Audience is a word they call it. There's
a reason they call it mass. It's a mass. And the way it works why companies are so sensitive to issues is here's what happens. Let's say a company runs an AD and it's offending somebody because of the way it representative person or something like that, and somebody writes a letter to the CEO and says, MS, the CEO, I've been buying new product in twenty seven years, as has my family. I'm no longer can buy a product. They send that note down to the chief marketing officer
with a letter, this is just one consumer. This is please take care of because no no CEO wants to see even one person. And you can always buy media in different places. And the CMO, she's a note from the CEO. This say is please take care of it. That means like do something to let's get off this network or let's get off this product. And so there's a lot of times there is I don't want to nurism, but there's a lot of a lot of fighting consumers pencils.
Donny said, tight, we're gonna come back and continue the conversation. Donnie Deutsch is with us. He's host of Von Brand with Donnie Deutch. Will continue in just a moment. I want to get right back to Donnie Deutsche. He's the host of on brand with Donnie Deutsche the podcast Donni great to have you back with us on your podcast, You You Go Everywhere. Your guests have included Michael J. Fox,
Steve Madden, former Governor Chris Christie, You Do Politics Michael Cohen. Um. One thing that I was thinking about when owner planning call today is is the public opinion polls of President Joe Biden, which are not looking great right now. According to Real Clear Politics, forty two point three percent when it comes to job approval rating, so not the lowest in his presidency, but um just off of the lowest.
And it made me think of an article that Are Editor in chief Emeritus Matthew Winkler wrote UH Back for Bloomberg Opinion in December, and he took different metrics UH about how the economy has been doing GDP, profit growth, SMP five performance, non farm payrolls, consumer credit, and more, and he came to the conclusion that America's economy improved more in Joe Biden's first twelve months than any president during the past fifty years, notwithstanding the contrary media narrative
contributing to dour public opinion. From a branding perspective, I wanted to get your take on this, because the unemployment rates sub four percent right now, the American consumer is doing pretty well. Yes, inflation is really hot right now. But but why are the president's job approval ratings so low? Great question, And uh, it's a lot of what we talk on I'm on One and Joe all the time on MSNBC. It's a lot what we talk about their podcast. It's basically a messaging. It's you know, I can give
an arty, I can sit here. You just rattled off that the economy obviously, say you know, the last couple of weeks with Ukraine, and obviously there's the little fear with inflation. But as far as the first year Rory, I think it's a couple of things. I think Joe Biden himself does not come across as firmly in control. Joe Biden is a good man and I support him for president, but there's something in his delivery that he
doesn't feel strong, and I think that translates. It's hard to see that in polls, but I think it's partially his age shows. And I don't mean to make an ages comment saying when he comes across he doesn't now he's looked very firm and very in control with what's going on in Ukraine. But up until this point, particularly
with the Afghanistan, that really really hurt him. And also the Democrats there's a lot of them to far progress, and there's a lot of woke issues that are constantly discussed, and I think that that comes up and hurts him because most of the country is not living in a super woke universe, if you will, and so I think all those things contribute to it, but I think most of it is the messenger himself. I don't think he
has come across inspirational. And I think there's the there's the substance, and there's the sizzle, and the sizzle has not been there all right. So now it makes me wonder to go back to like the Kennedy Nixon debate, like take media out of the picture. How much that you know, for better or worse, we're in media. We're all in social, linear, you name it and all it's
uh different forms. Um, But if you take media out of the picture, how might that impact political messaging and how we view Yeah, I mean it would we'd have to go back to another universe, you know, like and it's hard. You know, even I know we can, but what do you think about, like how much that is skewing? We talked about it, right, messaging, how much it can be skewed for better or worse, for wrong or right.
It's every thing, it's and and But the difference now is that the media used to be the media used to be newspapers and and six o'clock people literally would get their news. They get it from the morning newspaper and they're six o'clock evening news and the look and that was it. And the big problem now in media is not the media itself, is that everybody gets bespoke
media and there's no accountability on social media. And whereas big half the people in the world get their news from Facebook now and Facebook, if I wanted to run an ad for bleach detergent, I would have to go more through more stringent, uh you know, regulations to get it on ABC or to get it on Bloomberg. That I would have to get it to put it on Facebook or so many other places. So the problem is
not the proliferation of news itself. The problem is the proliferation of inaccurate news and false news and in accountability in the social media spaces and we have not figured that out yet. So Donnie, okay, we haven't figured it out. Do we need to rethink that and regulate them more? I mean it is I think you need to look at their algoram And this is something that's discussed abot because it's a slippery slope. You know, who gets to
play Judge and Jerry and whatnot. But another hand, how do you have Facebook, for instance, which we know is putting out so many falsehoods about the pandemic and other things and whatnot. And also I know there's not very popular with Fox News does things that are they're not always accountable and stand behind. I don't mean to sound like a liberal lefty, but we just it's very scuted it.
Of course, I'm sure MS does some things. On the other side, the problem is the slippery slope thing, particularly on when we talk about the Internet, and the answer is algorithms, because the algorithms are set up that the more you know, uh, passionate and crazy the response to the more engagement whatnot, which leads to very polarized messages
on both sides. So we so basically we need to look at the algorithms of these big social media giants and make sure that there there's something in there that's not guaranteed. Okay, we are trying to put on their stuff that is going to be very, very controversial. It was controversial breeds engagement. Engagement meets eyeballs. Eyeballs needs money
to be to be fair. And Facebook has come out and talked about developing a strategy that they've had in years to monitor and remove content that violates his policies. They're working on it. We know it's not perfect, but just to be fair and and donnia you know, I gotta ask because this is one thing that you know, Democrats and Republicans really seem to agree on, and they don't agree on the methods, but they want to quote unquote rain in social media, rain in the tech companies.
And I'm wondering if if you think that there needs to be stricter regulatory environment for social media, something needs to be done. This is you You can have half the world getting news from an outlet. And I'm not just picking on Facebook, but they seem to be the one of most people get the news where there is just not accountability for fact. You can't it doesn't you know, once we lose truth. Truth is one of the pillars
of democracy and we need truth, we need facts. And right now people get media bespoke and people get the media the way they want it and if they're not hearing what they want, they'll find another place to get it. So we've over democratized media, you know, democratization of things, and we put too many, too much power in the hands of the you know, the smartphone. I always say is in certain ways of the devil. I mean there's something about when there's too much, too much democratization of
something like the truth, and that it becomes problematic. Yeah, it's kind of ironic, right, this democratization. Um. Donny fun to spend some time with you. Thank you so much. We really appreciate. Donny dot H is former CEO and chairman of Deutchink and of course, host of the on Brand podcast. Joining us via zoom in New York City,