The political news media is broken and I want to fix it. I’m mostly doing this over on Substack. Please subscribe over there if you think this is useful.

I love journalism and the function journalists play in society. At its best, journalism is the search for truth as part of the media ecosystem. In a hypothetical world, that is enough.

But in the real world, there are other dynamics that also play a role. As someone who has worked in digital media and advertising for a long time, I’ve seen it first-hand: slim margins, the quest for virality, the desire for speed, and the push for ever-greater monetization.

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The business model of media is straightforward: content is created. It gets monetized by ads, subscriptions, purchases, or some combination of all three. This is the model for all of it now: news, books, movies, YouTube, TikTok (the discussion around whether social platforms are technology or media companies can be had another day).

It took a long time to get here. America Online and others debuted their portals in the early 1990s and ushered in a new digital era. We are still navigating the dynamics of this generational shift (see the streaming industry circa 2023). And yet the need for journalism — for truth — hasn’t changed. And this is true whether covering news, world affairs, technology, culture, or politics.

For political journalism, if digital was the start of turning the world upside down, serial liar and master manipulator Donald Trump was the accelerant. His appearance on the political scene in 2015 disrupted how the political news media did just about everything. And it forced a lot of questions:

What is truth?

How do we report on the truth?

How should we treat lies — especially when lies drive page views and tune-in?

Donald Trump descended down that escalator and declared he was running for President. And by doing so, he also declared a new era of journalism, though we didn’t know it. Over the course of four years in the White House, he told 30,573 lies — and the news media talked about most of them, spreading them to the four corners of the world.

By 2020, I started to question my own hold on reality.

Donald Trump knew how the media worked: people tune in for spectacle. What will he say next? He knew that if he lied, the media would repeat it, until it became accepted as truth by some subset of the population.

Are Mexicans really rapists?

Did he really build 400 miles of the wall between the U.S. and Mexico?

Is he really a billionaire?

Donald came along to a struggling journalism business and gave it exactly what it needed: ratings. Don’t take my word for it, take Les Moonves’: “Trump May Not Be Good for America, but He’s Damn Good for CBS.”

I would argue it’s tough to be prepared for something that you’ve never dealt with, though we all knew what Donald Trump was. But the news media was used to covering what was said, and what was happening. So they did exactly that: covered what Donald said, and what Donald did. Terrible stuff. But people tuned in.

In the process, the news media inadvertently advanced anti-democratic ideas into the mainstream, because the media isn’t pro-democracy, it is pro-revenue, even if The Washington Post claims that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its masthead.

Some examples:

• The New York Times gave “alternative facts” Kellyanne Conway a guest column espousing the supposed normalcy of MAGA.
• The media consistently gives space to Trump spokespeople to tell their side of the story, when it’s often a lie.
• In general, it has been very hard for the news media to even call a lie, a lie.

The common justification is: well, people need to know these perspectives. I don’t disagree. But there are unintended consequences: abnormal things become normal. Lies become believed. But I believe the news media’s job is to report the truth, not to report what was said. The media can inform us of these perspectives without interviewing known liars, and they can also provide what is said in the context of what is and isn’t a lie. This is what the truth sandwich technique is for. And many journalists do their best here — but not near enough to contain the damage that’s been done.

Today, Donald Trump is facing 91 felony counts — and counting. But one third of Americans think he should not be charged with a crime. How can this be? Because the news media consistently questions whether Donald really broke the law, or offers platforms to people who call it a fake-election-interference-witch-hunt-whatever, and we hear this over and over. This introduces just enough doubt for us to wonder. But this is serious business and the media shouldn’t be offering “alternative facts.” These felony counts could send Donald and his cohorts to prison for the rest of their lives. January 6 was a serious attack on the American experiment of democracy. The two impeachments were also serious business. I have hoped with each of these events that the media would change its ways.

It hasn’t.

Chuck Todd just gave new MAGA candidate Vivek Ramaswamy a platform discussing why he would not have certified the election if he were VP in 2020. And CNN did the same thing. By Mr. Todd doing this, he normalizes these extreme perspectives.

If we are on a mission to help the news media adapt to the new political age we are in, we have to get specific on what it is doing wrong, and how to fix it.

I see four areas worth exploring:

Bothsidesism

Legacy media’s political framing has been Democrat vs. Republican. And so the conventional wisdom is to make sure “both sides” are represented, or to imply that both sides are guilty of the same thing. But the framing should actually be Democracy vs. Authoritarianism. The media needs to acknowledge that until the GOP changes, or dies, it is no longer what it used to be. This is why Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are politically homeless in the GOP.

Doomsdaying

On the left, we have “tune in, Donald is going to get away with it all.” On the right, we have “tune in, the Democrats are coming for your guns .” Fear and rage drive tune-in, but this also drives an exhaustion that is not good for us. MSNBC and Fox News are both guilty, as are others. There’s an opening here for journalists to minimize mountains and maximize molehills with better context, likelihood of outcomes, and expertise. Donald Trump can’t make 91 felony counts magically disappear. And Democrats — even if they wanted to — will never be able to take away your guns.

Access Journalism

The New York Times and others need access to politicians in order to break news and attract audiences, so they will often agree to platforming political views. Access journalism like this leads to the viral, anonymous “I am part of the resistance” column from inside the Trump administration in 2018. And journalist Maggie Haberman is buddies with Donald in order to get interviews with him and to help sell her book. If all the media stopped playing this game, we could stop playing this game. We’d get information for free, because politicians need the media.

Fascist-normalizing

If we treat something as normal, people will believe it is. Politics used to be normal. But in 2023, this is not just a normal Republican primary debate, and it isn’t normal for the media to ask if charging Donald for all these crimes is too mean. The Overton Window has shifted dramatically.

As Historian Thomas Zimmer put it, “The New York Times has successfully played by the rules of neutrality-theater journalism, which prizes being above the fray and performing civil discourse from a position of nonpartisanship above all else — including accuracy and honesty.”

Or as The New York Times itself put it in 1939, Hitler was an ok guy:

And yikes, as I write this, The Wall Street Journal gave Donald Trump himself space for a letter to the editor. I can’t keep up.

I don’t have a problem with the news media making money. But there’s got to be a path forward to reporting on the news without hindering democracy itself. Donald Trump introduced the accelerant, and it is time for the news media to adjust. I’m hoping Fox News’s $787 million lawsuit loss will be a wake-up call that telling lies does not pay.

To wrap, there are disputed sources for this quote, but it should be a north star for the media:

“If one person says it’s raining and the other person says it is not, it is not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out of the window and see which is the truth.”

I’ve been calling out the political news media for years on Twitter. I had this idea to formalize it and write about it here. I do not know if people will find it interesting, but I hope my own interest is contagious. The political news media is doing it wrong and I want to change that. My mission is to help them adapt to the new political age we are in, in a way that is constructive to America’s future.

If we are successful in this mission, I won’t need to write about it.

The political news media is broken and I want to fix it. I’m trying this mostly over on Substack. Shameless ask to subscribe.

Truman Capote wrote:

She belongs to that sect most swiftly, irrevocably trapped by New York, the talented untalented; too acute to accept a more provincial climate, yet not quite acute enough to breathe freely within the one so desired, they go along neurotically feeding upon the fringes of the New York scene. Only success can give relief, but for artists without an art, it is always tension without release, irritation with no pearl.

To strive for greatness, the ideal. I will probably never be truly, change-the-world famous-great. Neither will you.

I’m a very good marketer. I understand digital. I can be strategic and execute.

I’m a good writer. I write novels and short stories and business articles and political perspective. Some of them are good. They are not as popular as posts by Benjamin Hardy or Jon Westenberg.

I’m good at staying fit.

I’m good at having a positive attitude when it’s needed.

I’m good at maintaining friendships.

I’m a good son, brother, and uncle. My family is the bomb. I’m a great dad for two animals. My children.

I’m terrible at dating; not so hot at self-confidence. Sometimes at least. It scares me to type that.

I get mad a lot. At stupid shit like traffic. A shrink might help. I get too busy and forget to find one.

I hold myself back from more huge career moves, because I don’t have the mojo, or the willingness to give up the time. Or maybe both. I get tired.

I’m good at being afraid. I’m afraid to say what I really feel. Sometimes I have panic attacks. I get mad about this too.

I’ll never be famous. Neither will you. When I tweet, one of the three hearts is usually my own. If my article gets 200 views, that’s good, and includes family eyes. I’m not a Kardashian or a Miley or a Styles. Some days I wish I were. I’m not that beautiful, young or rich. I watch YouTube videos sometimes and get jealous. I know it’s not real. Half a billion views.

I’ll probably never be rich. Neither will you. At least in the financial sense of the word. It’s just statistics. Most people aren’t rich.

I don’t have the vision of Steve Jobs even though I wish I did. The first iPod sits on my dresser; I try to absorb inspiration from it. I dust it instead. I take that back, I probably have the vision of Steve Jobs in certain areas but don’t know how to execute it.

I’m not Elon Musk. I love electric cars but I don’t know how to be a CEO of a car company and I don’t feel like trying.

I’m not Stephen King. I didn’t write my first novel while working in a laundry, didn’t get a six-figure deal in my early 20s, and I don’t live in Maine. My grandparents did. I did write two novels though. One is very good. Agents said no, so far.

I don’t know who has the scorecard on great. I don’t think there is one.

Steve Jobs was a great innovator but I don’t know how he was in his family life. Movies are great at conjecture. Maybe he was a shitty dad or husband because work consumed him.

Elon Musk is a great innovator. Money helps. Access to rich people also helps. But maybe he’s a terrible sleeper or gets mad a lot like me or has high blood pressure. That’s not so great.

Stephen King is a great storyteller. Many say he’s not a great writer, like Hemingway. I remind people that Hemingway blew his head off, which isn’t so great.

We’re all great at something and not so great at other things. Some people get rich and famous for their greatness. Most people don’t.

Tesla has 30,000 employees you haven’t heard of. Tesla wouldn’t be here without them. They are working to make Tesla great.

The happiest people don’t fly too high or too low. I read that somewhere. You are great, because you are. You don’t have to be famous to be great.

Todd Lombardo on Twitter and LinkedIn. If you like it, ❤️ it.

This week, I intended to write about one of two things: either something wonky about BuzzFeed (go check out Digiday instead), or an article I’ve been working on called And Then What, which may be about turning the voice in your head from foe to friend, unless it dies.

Instead, I’ve got Manchester on the brain. As we know, on Monday night, some fucktard thought it would be a good idea to go to an Ariana Grande concert and detonate a bomb.

Detonate a bomb among a crowd of teenage girls? On what planet does that make sense? I felt the same way about Oklahoma City, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Orlando, and all the rest. Unforgiveable. And I hate that this list is so long that I’m forgetting some. San Bernardino.

First and foremost, say a prayer for the dead, for the injured, and for their families. Second, it’s all the W’s: what, why, who. And that’s when you know you aren’t going to write about whatever it is you wanted to write about. How could you, when you’d rather hop on plane to Manchester to help, or beat the shit out of the guy who did this?

The question for me now is: what’s appropriate to write about? One of my struggles in life is I believe that there is some rule book somewhere, with the “right” way to do something, and if I search long enough, I would find it, and therein would be the answers I’ve been looking for.

I lived in New York on September 10, 2001. When I awoke on September 11, I watched the Today show and went to the dry cleaner before heading off to work. Only I never got there, because life changed at 8:46am.

Or so we thought. Life changed in certain ways: broken families, rebuilt skylines, airport security, suspicion. Life remains the same in other ways: half the country hates the president, parts of the world are on the brink of war, there’s a new must-watch TV show (The Keepers on Netflix).

I know I’ll never forget 9/11, but now it takes stumbling upon an old photo, or another September, to remember. Vivid recall gets harder (that lingering burning stench), but that doesn’t make the event less significant. Time heals is a real thing, and thank God for that, because humans aren’t built to walk around with permanent broken hearts.

But now, it’s Manchester, and mourning the dead. And wondering why.

I’m reading God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens. In chapter 2, Mr. Hitchens writes about the death that has been caused by different religions, from Christians in Belfast to “ethnic” cleansing in Serbia. Extreme intepretations of religion tend to divide: I’m saved and you’re not. I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m better and you’re worse. There’s something very, very wrong about that.

We have religious extremists claiming responsibility for Manchester, because they believe that if they blow up enough people, that will somehow make it right, according to their rule book. In other words, to them, killing makes sense. They are also fucking crazy.

I remember a conversation with a writing mentor of mine a few years back. We were having a vibrant discussion about whether writer’s block is real. If you are working on a novel and don’t know where to take it, that’s writer’s block. If you are on the hook for a TV script but don’t know the next scene, that’s writer’s block.

But unless you have a specific topical deliverable, there is no such thing as writer’s block, because at the very least, you can write an article titled, What It’s Like To Have Writer’s Block.

So now: Where does your mind go? What makes you mad?

You have a unique point of view, even when your inner voice tells you are you are plain Jane. A thousand thoughts cross your mind every hour — stuck in traffic, waiting for the subway. Some of those thoughts are interesting.

You just have to:

1. NOTICE them, and
2. GET THEM DOWN before they slip away.

And here’s the most important thing — you’re not writing for likes, are you? I’m guilty of it sometimes, I mean, we are in a like-me culture. But when you aren’t writing for likes, your voice finds a way. Who gives a fuck if nobody likes it, if nobody thinks it’s good, except you?

But when you aren’t writing for likes, your voice finds a way. Who gives a fuck if nobody likes it?

Most of what I write doesn’t reach a very broad audience. Fine. Most of my tweets are farts in the wind. Failure sucks, but I’d rather have two people read something I wrote than zero people not read something I didn’t write.

And there is no rule book.

Write about that.

My heart breaks for Manchester. There are useful ways to help.

I’m a digital strategist, writer, marketer and podcaster. I create content for all sorts of people and businesses.

Activism is not a one-time thing. It’s every day, for everyone. And it’s not as hard as you think.

by Todd Lombardo

One of the hardest questions in life is: “now what?”

This holds true in the context of business, relationships, and life. In my career, I’ve held my team’s feet to the fire more than once for an A+ analysis with no plan of action. Great, but what should our client do now that we have this information?

Action matters.

The Women’s March is over. I can’t recall a time in history where there was an organized movement around the world, from New York to Los Angeles, Antarctica to Iraq. Much of the media is reporting that the DC crowd was bigger for the March than for the inauguration.

Okay, now what?

We do not have time to march every day. And you, like me, are probably not a celebrity with access to millions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t continue to take action.

Here are five things you can do without ever leaving the house:

1/Donate to the new Obama Foundation. If causes you care about are getting the shaft by the new administration, the Obama Foundation is prioritizing its focus areas as health care, climate change, equality and more. These aren’t Democratic causes, they are human ones. Even if you don’t donate, you can share an idea — free.

2/Get Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Hat tip to my friend Benji Rosen at the Christian Science Monitor. The reason why this matters: Trump aside, the anger and the fear that many Trump voters feel is legit. Trump just tapped into it. We better start paying attention. I am hopeful this book will shed further insight; we are all Americans.

3/Become a virtual journalist on sites like Presterity.org. The distortion of the truth appears to be more rampant with this administration than others. Sites like Presterity are working to make sure FACTS MATTER. You can become a “citizen watchdog” and share your knowledge with the world. Hat tip to my friend Eleni Kavros DeGraw.

4/Respond to “alternative facts” with truth. Social media has its downsides, but never before have we had the opportunity to instantly publish — for free — our voices to the world. Celebrities with massive followings take advantage of that, but you can do the same by responding in the same feed to also reach those many followers. Fact-checking must be relentless, and the onus is on all of us:

5/Contact your congressperson. Letters, emails and phone calls on what you think about a given topic really matter, because politics is local. Contact your Representative in the House by entering your zip code here. Contact your Senator by entering your state on the Senate page here.

This is your America. Some assembly is required. What are you doing starting today?

If you found this useful, please ❤️ and share. Plus: Twitter. LinkedIn.

The New York Times’ scathing digital self-evaluation has implications for marketers too.

On Tuesday, The New York Times released a 35-page report, “Journalism That Stands Apart,” also known as the 2020 report. In it, The New York Times bravely — and publicly — describes how much work it still had to do to transform itself for a digital culture.

Some of the findings were obvious, such as focusing less on print, more on video; breaking down barriers rather than creating workarounds; growing digital subscriptions, and more. All in all, you get the sense that they perceive themselves, and want to be perceived as, quality rather than clickbait. A noble endeavor, in our Fake News Buzzfeed Dossier world.

The New York Times numbers sound impressive:

• $500 million in 2016 digital revenue
• 1.5 million digital-only subscriptions (from zero, six years ago)
• Reporting from 150+ countries
• 200 pieces of journalism a day

Yet, even with these data points that would lead many to think, success, the New York Times believes they are failing. That takes guts, because these numbers sound impressive on the surface.

On a certain level, this “emperor has no clothes” perspective makes you think (well, makes ME think) that it’s okay to not be as together as you like; if even the New York Times can admit it, then so can I.

Regardless, of everything in the report, and it is a worthy read, the part that popped out for me was:

Our work too often instead reflects conventions built up over decades, when we spoke to our readers once a day, when we cultivated an aura of detachment from them and when by far our most powerful tool was the written word.

This is the key, and probably one of the greatest challenges we as humans, business owners, executives, managers, and contributors face in life: we get stuck doing the things that solve yesterday’s problems, rather than preparing for tomorrow’s.

As marketers, we know, the world has changed. We live it! We get our news via feeds, not at 6pm in front of the TV. Articles, if they are read, are on phones and iPads. Short-form videos, regardless of production value, take up loads of media consumption time; ads are blocked, skipped, or not even around in ad-free environments; and we binge-watch a lot of what we love.

And here’s the deal: marketers and media companies are much more alike in 2017 than they have ever been before. Where once, marketers focused on ads and reach, and publishers focused on content and audiences, now, we all want all of those things. Marketers try to get views with viral videos; media companies try to reach as many people as possible with their content.

If you are a marketer thinking to yourself, this doesn’t matter to me because I’m not a journalist, think again. It does.

The New York Times wrote:

1/“The report needs to become more visual.”

For marketers: Yes, yes, yes, we are in the era of visual media. We have these amazing toolsets and we are not using them correctly, or not using them enough! Can you imagine if you went back to your counterpart in 1975 and told them about the ability to post videos for millions (Facebook and YouTube), or images (Instagram — 600 millionusers), or Stories (Snapchat + Instagram)? For free? Yet, many a brand’s Instagram accounts stand dormant, not for lack of wanting but for lack of knowing how to operationalize — we don’t know where to get photos.

2/“Our written work should also use a more digitally native mix of journalistic forms.”

These are often our marketing defaults: TV, print, OOH, radio and banner ads. Then social gets its own bucket. This has never made sense to me. Facebook is not at all like Snapchat or YouTube. And Facebook has 1.8 billion active monthly users. Yet the TV spot often comes first in the creative process. This has to change, creative concepts need content strategies that leverage the best of the platforms, not as one offs. Social is here to stay.

3/“We need a new approach to features and service journalism.”

This is where brands need to think more like media companies. Do you have an original content strategy? Should you? Big brands like Chipotle do, as do smaller ones like Smith & Forge Hard Cider (100 million views for this one). Are you set up to create one? Is your agency? What is our strategy for growing your audience organically?

4/“Our readers must become a bigger part of our report.”

The ad is the first step. It’s what comes after that matters — and is the most overlooked. In 1980, this wasn’t the case. Today, it’s about views, shares, comments, likes — and dislikes. Going viral — tough to do — but effectively part of a free media strategy if achieved.

There’s much more in the report worth checking out — about operations, about audiences, about hiring. Marketers and media companies are in the same car, and the destination ahead will be tons of fun — if we work very, very hard now.

Did you read the report? Is The New York Times on the right track, or doomed to fail?

Todd Lombardo is a digital media advisor; Marketing at CakeWorks; Digital Strategist + Editor at Mistress; Marketing at Hastings Studios.

Your 60-second read for 10/11: Snapchat’s $25B IPO; The Simpson’s embrace digital innovation; having faith in Facebook; and more. This is what matters this week in digital media.

1/ Snap Inc.’s $25 billion IPO is more than an IPO.

Snapchat’s parent company is reportedly planning an IPO in March at a valuation of $25 billion. That’s no small potatoes: it’s 10x the New York Times, and one-tenth AT&T. You can go on about the 150 million+ daily active users, or that they are mostly millennials, or that they just released Spectacles. But this is the real reason this matters: Snapchat is one of the first companies who recognizes that the future of digital interpersonal communications is image-based. We are not happy, we are smiley-face. This is why the photos disappear, because Snapchat is conversation, and that doesn’t need to be recorded. This is also why Snapchat and Facebook, while being lumped together as “social,” are in fact oh-so-different, and why an all-in-one social media strategy is usually not fruitful. Communication: more like Picasso, less like Hemingway. More from The Atlantic.

2/The Simpson’s push creative boundaries, even in middle age.

Bart Simpson is 37 years old, though he still looks ten to me. 600 episodes later, his antics still seem surprisingly fresh. How? By embracing modern society. Lisa comments on 21st century politics, Marge texts Homer on her iPhone. It might all sound silly, but there’s an important point here — you are never too old to be cutting edge. Which is why The Simpson’s upcoming Treehouse of Horrors is embracing virtual reality. Friends and colleagues lament they are “too old,” or how they don’t understand millennials (who are just people, BTW). I am a proud Gen X-er, and remember a world before the WWW. But everything new that comes along — I embrace it. Just like Bart Simpson. Be curious. Another shining example of this? Martha Raddatz. Insanely smart and curious (and killing it as a debate moderator). Age is timeless, if you want it to be. More from Deadline.

3/Have media companies put too much faith in Facebook?

Mom always taught us, never put all your eggs in one basket. So what happens when Facebook becomes the top traffic source for media companies, who have no control over Facebook? There’s no doubt the FB is a top source of news for many of us, even if that skews our worldview. Vox reported last year that 40% of its referrals come from it. Looking back, I think Facebook understood that if it could get scale first, it could do everything else it wanted to do, because it’s difficult to turn down millions of monetizable views. Just ask BuzzFeed. But this lack of control also means when Facebook makes an algorithm change, publishers can suffer, in readers, impressions — and revenue. This is not sustainable, and media companies must figure out how to diversify. Search, anyone? More from Digiday.

4/Digital media allows people to comment. And some of that will be negative.

The old, golden rule: marketers want nothing negative associated with their brand. But these days, people find ways — even if you moderate the ability to post on your Facebook page, you will never stop negativity. Just ask any restaurant on Yelp. So the question becomes, are negative comments “bad”? Surely, offensive or threatening statements are never welcome, but if someone has a bad experience with your brand, wouldn’t you want to know about it? There’s a newer challenge of public airing of grievances (vs. an email) but I’ll tell you this: constructive criticism makes you better, makes you see things you are sometimes blind to yourself, whether you are a brand or a person. So, no negative comments is not the goal; receiving and responding to negative comments is. Even for this column, which I’ve been lucky to receive a few positive comments, I’ll also get the occasional negative one. This is fine by me, if they are constructive — I’m always looking for how to improve. So if you are thinking of leaving a negative comment somewhere, or even here, make it a constructive one, otherwise you are just lazy.

Todd Lombardo advises Fortune 500 companies and world famous brands on embracing digital media. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for fresh perspective every day.

Todd does marketing at CakeWorks Video and digital strategy at Hastings Studios. Sign up for CakeWorks’ Worth Reading Video News, the once-a-week must read video newsletter!

Your 60-second read for 9/13: iMessaging with brands; cats as a creative strategy; Hillary and the politics of digital; and more. This is what matters this week in digital media.

1/Apple opens up iMessage to brands.

Stickers are a big deal, just ask Snapchat. And messaging apps are a powerful 1:1 communication tool, especially globally (see Kik, Whatsapp, WeChat). Enter brands. Apple’s iMessage is giving brands the chance to create stickers that we can text to each other. Why would people voluntarily text a branded sticker? Emotional affinity, coolness factor, real-time activity (like shopping at a store)… Stickers make us feel creative, as we increasingly communicate like Picasso, rather than Hemingway. More from Digiday.

2/Speak up, or get spoken for — especially in politics.

It was only ninety minutes from Hillary’s overheating vid to public admission of pneumonia. But ninety minutes in digital media, well. In that time, the digital universe, both left and right — pontificated on various illnesses that implied Mrs. Clinton was on death’s door. Politics aside, this is a lesson to be learned by anyone who is in the public eye, or wants to be — if you don’t say something, somebody else will. While this has always been the case, when a tweet takes a second to write, and another second to go viral, having pneumonia can turn into something much worse, even when it’s not.

3/In the era of social media, sometimes it takes a lot of cats to get a little attention.

Not that cats are the solution for every ad campaign, but a point well taken: if you want people to pay attention, give them a reason to. Known in corporate circles as a value proposition, this is a surprisingly difficult message to formulate; it’s not, our product is great, it’s you can do X with our product. Or you will feel Y. In this case, the value prop is the warm and fuzzies, on a Monday morning commuting slog. The irony is that the #catsnotads program was in response to people feeling overwhelmed by advertising. What makes us ill can also be the cure. More from Adweek.

4/Twitter might finally know what it is. Now, to grow.

Facebook has grown to 1.7 billion users, Snapchat gets 10 billion views a day, while little ole Twitter — one of the original social gangsters — appears to stagnate. For those without millions of real followers, tweeting is like whistling into the wind. But for what’s happening in the world, or what famous people think, or say, or do, Twitter is the go-to place. And this bizarre 2016 election has proven this time and again, no matter what side of the fence you are on, did you see what so-and-so tweeted? Good news: Twitter knows its market positioning: LIVE — what’s going on right now. And it’s aggressively pursuing content partnership deals that fit that, with folks like the NFL and millennial news company Cheddar for content that can monetized. Live brings people together, the question is, will that be on Twitter? More from WSJ.

Todd Lombardo advises Fortune 500 companies and world famous brands on embracing digital media. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for fresh perspective every day.

Todd is the head of marketing at CakeWorks Video and the head of digital strategy at Hastings Digital Studios. Sign up for CakeWorks’ Worth Reading Video News, the once-a-week must read video newsletter!

Your 60-second read for September 6: Rogue One is coming; billboards are hot; the power of podcasts; and more. This is what matters this week in digital media.

1/Billboards are the new black.

I say this in jest of course, as out-of-home (OOH) advertising is a growing $7.3 billion business, and has been around since the 1800s. Just because digital is soon to be king of the hill (eMarketer: digital will blow past TV spending by 2017), does not mean that other advertising loses its value, unless you are the Yellow Pages. There’s something quite comforting about idling underneath a looming 20-foot tall superhero or bottle of vodka on Sunset Boulevard. And today’s billboards are digitized and connected anyway. Maybe they’ll just forget about the ad and play the movie. More from The New York Times.

2/Star Wars: Rogue One is coming.

December 16. And with any major movie-making these days, the marketing is part of the magic, and it’s digital, baby. Star Wars might be the exception to our growing sequelitis, because there is a Star Wars movie scheduled every year through 2020(!). And the marketing strategy? Get people to do your marketing for you, of course. This is why it’s not just a toy release, but a make-your-own-stop-motion video toy release, and it’s not just a trailer airing on TV, but a Darth Vader appearance that everybody shares. It’s still and always has been word-of-mouth, it’s just digital now. And it’s Disney’s job to make sure we never, ever forget (we won’t). More from Tubefilter.

3/Podcast power.

As control shifts to viewers (no-ad Netflix, ad skipping, ad blockers and more), it’s only natural for brands to focus on creating content that people want to watch, vs. interrupting what they want to watch. The desire to listen to quality podcasts is real, which is why Serial episodes have been downloaded 40 million+ times. I chalk it up to two developments: a/having a digital device with us at all times has created more listening windows; and b/the ecosystem has been built to service content into those listening windows. Brands like a surprisingly innovative GE (see it’s #6SecondScience Vines), eBay and others are getting on board with podcasts of their own. The keys are to both create the content, AND get it listened to — while selling, without being selly. More from Adweek.

4/Mobile as first screen.

Or perhaps it’s co-first screen, shared with your connected TV and your laptop. The fact remains, the sheer scale of mobile and all the corresponding apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Musical.ly, and others make well-functioning mobile experiences critical, and top-of-the-list. This is why Facebook is asking advertisers to speed-up mobile download times, and the Washington Post just debuted a new “lightning fast” mobile site. All without using too much of your data. Maybe WP owner Jeff Bezos has something to do with that. More from WSJ.

Todd Lombardo advises Fortune 500 companies and world famous brands on embracing digital media. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for fresh perspective every day.

Todd is the head of marketing at CakeWorks Video and the head of digital strategy at Hastings Digital Studios. Sign up for CakeWorks’ Worth Reading Video News, the once-a-week must read video newsletter!

Your 60-second read for 8/30: underestimating Snapchat; being selfie-absorbed; a TV ad is not enough; and more. This is what matters this week in digital media.

1/A TV ad is not enough.

This may pass as a this-couldn’t-be-more-obvious observation, but if it is so obvious, why are many brand experiences challenged? Example: two cashiers open, lines of people: Whole Foods can make it hard for us to give them money. See also, British Airways, who the Economist laments is downgrading their service, but not their prices. Then there’s Tom’s, whose Venice, California outpost is 50% store and 50% wifi-enabled hangout. And a success. A brand cannot survive on TV ads alone. More from Ad Age.

2/We are underestimating Snapchat.

It is hard to picture the future when the roar of the present is deafening. Take Amazon circa 1997, when it sold only books. It’s the opportunities we don’t yet know about that may be the biggest. This is true for Snapchat, now forecast to have over 200 million global users by next year. Snapchat — with us always; empowering creativity for its users (and who doesn’t want to be creative); and a highly addictive glue between people. What will it become? It’s Facebook vs. Snapchat for our time. Kid, you’ve got potential. More from Adweek.

3/Being self-absorbed is a business model.

Who could have predicted that the art we love the most is the art of ourselves? The Economist has a great piece (sub. required) about this obsession: music festivals aren’t about the music, they are about us being AT the festival, which is why a quarter million Instagram pics from #Coachella are selfies. Or take our present and future Queen Kim, whose Kardashian family can charge $75,000 for a gotta-try-this brand photo — but are running into trouble with the truth-tellers. More from The New York Times.

4/There’s a hit YouTube series…from Kimberly-Clark.

I’ve said this before, the TV industry is not in decline, it is in transition to a streaming, more on-demand future. Kimberly-Clark created a YouTube series, which is sort of a U by Kotex ad, and it’s a hit. This only works if the content is good, and 43 million views say it is, no TV network or ad buy in sight. Super Bowl ads aren’t going away, and making a good series is incredibly challenging, AND whether there’s an ROI here remains to be seen, but this is not the last time brands invest less in “TV spots” and more in…something else. More from WSJ.

Todd Lombardo advises Fortune 500 companies and world famous brands on embracing digital media. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for fresh perspective every day.

Todd is the head of marketing at CakeWorks Video and the head of digital strategy at Hastings Digital Studios. Sign up for CakeWorks’ Worth Reading Video News, the once-a-week must read video newsletter!

Your 60-second read for 8/23: ‘Stranger Things” but no ads; Ryan Lochte fame; all about Musical.ly; and more. This is what matters in digital media.

1. Ryan Lochte: stupidity or PR?

It depends on whether you ask the cynic in your head or the idealist in your heart. If the goal was to amp up the fame factor, well Mr. Lochte, consider your efforts an A+ success, collateral damage aside, because everybody knows who you are now. Four sponsorships lost in a single day? That’s small potatoes compared to the bigger fish that Mr. Lochte is looking to fry. When it comes to fame in the digital age: the more you cross the line, the better. Hello, Kim Kardashian. More from The Atlantic.

2. Musical.ly might be the next big thing.

Unless we have reached peak app. How many social networks can one employed person manage? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Kik, LinkedIn, beBee…sigh. Musical.ly, with 90 million users, lets us star in our very own music videos. Maybe it’s a Gen Z thing, an insatiable appetite for connection and distraction. And maybe this is why Facebook launched Lifestage, a social app for high schoolers. Because we are all unpaid Facebook employees now. More from Digiday.

3. Social media is not a marketing afterthought.

I’m surprised every time a business person calls social media something derogatory. While it does take up an incredible amount of our day, I find it to be one of the most powerful, fundamental shifts in communication since the printing press and TV. Here’s why: in order to get published, Stephen King mailed in stories to magazines, and hoped to hear back. Now, you’ve got Medium and Wordpress and LinkedIn and a hundred other platforms, all free. And marketers, you’ve got access to huge audiences for top of funnel, large-scale kick-ass brand building (see Taco Bell + Snapchat), and narrow, super-targeted lower funnel conversion. Have you checked out the targeting tools on Facebook and Twitter recently? Social media IS marketing.

4. Netflix keeps saying ratings don’t matter (driving ad people crazy); hello ‘Stranger Things.’

Because for Netflix, they don’t. All Netflix cares about, according to CEO Reed Hastings, is growing subscribers. Which means: does he have original content that will attract new people to sign up? Look at ‘Stranger Things,’ a niche, supernatural mash-up of Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Stand by Me, E.T., and others. How many people have watched? It doesn’t matter. It’s become one of the must-watch shows of the summer, which means if you don’t have Netflix, you have to sign up. Subscriber, ad-free TV at a global scale, Mr. Hastings might be onto something. More from The Guardian.

Todd Lombardo advises Fortune 500 companies and world famous brands on embracing digital media. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for fresh perspective every day.

Todd is the head of marketing at CakeWorks Video and the head of digital strategy at Hastings Studios. Sign up for CakeWorks’ Worth Reading Video News, the once-a-week must read video newsletter!