July 25, 2023 • 37 mins
In a world where so much of our information come through our social feeds and the brands that provide us with that information are in frequent turmoil, we wanted to know: what does it take to launch a new brand, in NEWS, from scratch, especially one looking to bring back a more transparent, global view? Steven and Marisa chose this topic to welcome their first guest (friend?) to the conversation: Justin Smith, former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group and now co-founder and CEO of Semafor. As always, stay on to hear their thoughts on: “what’s on your minds?”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Brand New from the iHeart Podcast
Network and Brand New Labs. We're back. I'm Marissa Thalberg
and I'm Stephen wolf Eda. And what's new this week? Steven?
You know, we've been talking so much about work, but
as the founder of Executive Moms, I always think about
the totality of our lives as spouses, as parents, as executives.
(00:28):
And the funny thing is, going back from my executive
mom days, summer was always an interesting time as a
working parent because now the regular order of school is
disrupted and you're always trying to figure out how to
keep your kids busy and how to make that work.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So there's more than just work. It's not just work
all the time.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Some days there's not Can we.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Just pause for a minute, Mary, what is executive Moms?
Because I know what it is. I know a lot
of folks that have worked with you and know you
know what it is. Just for our listeners, what is
executive Moms?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, I have to admit Executive Moms is a little
dormant now, but thing has its season and I started
this just for a perspective before the advent of social media.
It was two thousand and two. I had recently become
a mom myself. I was living in New York, this
bastion of work life, and I just wanted to find
a way to congregate with other working moms like me
(01:17):
as a new one myself, and I was shocked that
really nothing existed. So you can question the dubious wisdom
of trying to solve that issue for myself by giving
myself a second career, but that's what I did. Enough
people said we need this, and the brand was very
we talk about brands, the brand was very instinctive to me,
this idea of being a fancy executive and a warm,
(01:37):
friendly mom, and that those two ideas cohabitated in all
these amazing women, and we just needed to not be
prescribed how to do it better, but just feel that
sense of connection, commiseration. A lot of things that became
buzzwords later weren't then. Content and community.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You were building one of the first OG communities.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
In a way. It was this idea of aggregating content.
No one knew to call it that, including me, but
that was just instinctively what I wanted. I wanted someone
to talk to me in bite sized morsels about all
the things that I was interested in because I'm more
than a mom, more than an executive, and so it
was this big thing for a really, really long time.
(02:19):
All the events were in New York, but the content
the community was national in some cases international. And what
it did was it gave me an unintended platform something
I feel really passionately about still today, which is supporting women,
working women, and now really working parents. As we navigate,
particularly in the United States, this constant is you just joked, like,
(02:41):
aren't we always working? And there's a lot of guilt
and there's a lot of stress, and we just want
to feel like we're doing okay by all of it.
Most of us care.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
And how do you provide for your kids? How do
you make sure that you're spending time with them? But
they had their activities during the summer. I mean you've
been doing that obviously with Avery, right.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, Avery's my g youngest and my kids are older
than yours. So we're going to talk about Sebastian and
Sienna in a second. But it is interesting. I mean,
Avery now has one more year of high school and
so she just came back from a wonderful pre college
program actually at my alma Mater Brown, and you know,
you just think looking back now through their lens, but
(03:20):
the pressure that kids have today to build a resume.
And by the way, I want to be clear, we
didn't do it for that reason. I think it's just
a wonderful experience to get a taste of what colleges
and to start exploring your interests. And I can honestly
say that's why she did it, and that process of
instantly making friends and how that prepares you for college.
So it was great. But you know, through the process
(03:42):
of even figuring out what class she wanted to take,
start having all these questions and the run up to
college essays and college applications like who am I, what
do I want to be? How do I figure that out?
And here we are decades later, and I think we're
all still on that journey somehow of figuring it out.
That's what you don't know when you're young, is that
it never really ends.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I'm definitely coming to you for all that advice. You know,
that's all pre college.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I'm over here, you know, kind of third grade and kindergarten.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I love it. I'm chillous.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I'm making sure the kids are in soccer camp. You know,
we have dance camp, robotics camp. We're at yesterday the
Arsenal versus Barcelona match and Sevacion that's our Premier League club,
so that was amazing, but also trying to find time
to fit in family and really have it integrated with work.
We're actually leaving to Mexico City tomorrow. Team three parts.
We're actually shooting right now a scripted show in Mexico
(04:31):
City with Ohano and the team, but we're bringing the
family down cited so they could actually see what the
set is like and obviously just get exposed to the business.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I will say one of my favorite things about being
an executive mom has been for all the sacrifices, the
opportunity to allow my children as they've grown up, to
enjoy some of the interesting experiences that my career has allowed.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
That's that's the right way to allow some of those
paths and for them to be exposed to it and
see it and buy. The way I also think it
goes in reverse is I've never subscribed to the philosophy
that you pretend you don't have a family or an
outside life when you're talking to your work colleagues because
we're whole people. And the more that people see us
and work as whole people, I just think the more
authentic and the more relatable we become, particularly as we
(05:17):
rise up and become leaders. I think younger generations crave that.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I also think that you just oose that authenticity. I
don't think that in twenty twenty three people want to
have their work life and their personal life really segregated
and compartmentalized. You have to have it integrated. So I
applaud you and all the women that actually do that. Obviously,
my own wife struggles with how do you do the
work life kind of balance, But it's something that we
(05:40):
all have to deal with and we have to figure
out how to integrate it and having partners that are
supportive of that. So I'm very mindful of that.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I love that, and you know what, well, Steven, Before
we go to our hot topic, which I want to
get to, I just want to say one thing on
that you have an amazing wife and I have an
amazing husband. But the more we think of this not
as a working mom issue but as just a people issue. Yes,
and for those colleagues that don't have children, they shouldn't
feel left out of this. Everyone has responsibilities, interests, and
(06:08):
obligations outside of work, and listen, the days of nine
to five have been long gone, and it's the phone
that did it to us because our work was always
with us. But then there has.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
To be COVID accelerated.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
It COVID accelerated, I guess because commuting staff was all like,
they're no borders. But at the same time, it means
that we have to be a little bolder about allowing
people to see our whole selves, whether that's in social media,
whether it's in a conversation with your team, whether it's
bringing your family to things that are appropriate to bring
them to, like you are with your family in Mexico.
(06:40):
What an amazing experience your kids are going to have.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Weed have a separate hot topic just on this because
and I'm curious if our listeners get excited or they
feel that this is interesting to talk about, because having
your integrated whole self show up in work and outside
of work, I know that's something that a lot of
people struggle with. So if this is interesting listeners, please
let us know. We will definitely have this be a
future hot topic. But let us wrap what's new, and
(07:04):
get ready for the hot topic, which is going to
talk about starting a new brand.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Today.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
We're talking about starting a new brand. That is the
hot topic for this episode. Marissa and I feel that
when you think of this world of team what we
talk about technology, entertainment, advertising, media, and marketing, there's so
many players, there's so many new brands being created, but
especially in media, I feel like it's such a tumultuous
(07:37):
time when you think about entertainment brands. I mean, look
at all the evolution that's happened with HBO, HBO Max
now it's Max, who knows what it's going to be tomorrow.
Think about everything that's been happening with social lately. Obviously
Threads is a new brand, but there's also all these
upstarts they haven't gotten the same amount of visibility or news,
things like Blue Sky Post, which is also a very
(07:59):
news focused social And there's also Spill, which is very
much focus on the black community that has really felt
abandoned by what used to be Black Twitter. It was
always a big thing. That's an invite only new social app.
Certainly there's news. CNN is going through their evolution as well.
Obviously Fox and when you think about podcasts, I mean,
certainly there's been all this back and forth. Where are
(08:21):
people getting new podcasts? Are they canceling podcasts? And I
think we have a new podcast, right, I think.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
We have a new podcast and a new brand starting
from scratch, brand new. There you go.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So how do you think about this starting a new
brand from scratch?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, I think if you particularly put it through the
lens of media brands, which we want to focus on today,
because brands as open ended as that is. Just talking
about media brands alone and the different categories you've sketched
out entertainment, social, news, podcasts, streaming, digital, there's so much
change in this industry, and let's be honest, so many
(08:56):
media companies struggling. I mean, who would have thought companies
like BuzzFeed and Vice, who are the darlings of the
media world just a few years ago. I mean we've
seen profound change and sell off there. We talked in
the last episode about threads. But certainly you can't understate
the advantage of starting a new brand when you have
instant awareness and audience that you can port over from
(09:18):
a huge brand. In that case, of course, Meta slash
Instagram so I think it's a really interesting question of
first of all, finding your why. I know that's a
big theme for you, Steven, and finding your why. I
mean the real question is there's always room, if there's
a genuine white space, and if it's not, you have
to you have to question is it gratuitous? And will
(09:41):
it then have a place to live? But there always is,
there are always is some one at meat and then
do you have the right proposition to fill it?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
But finding your why and also answering the question why.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Now, Yeah, there's so much news, there's so much being
done in media, and arguably you now have the creator
a kind of me really driving a lot of news
as well. I'm a huge football soccer fanatic. I love Arsenal.
I'm always getting my news from social.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Did I just see that you're a top ranked fan
of Arsenal, Steven? Is this going to go on your bio?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I am a top rand fan. I'm going to have
to put it on my LinkedIn for sure. But I
love Arsenal and I get my news from folks on social.
So I just feel like even the definition of how
we get news, how we get information, it has been
so disrupted by social and digital, but really launching a
new centered brand I think is really hard, and I've
thought that what better way to kind of really have
(10:35):
a fresh, brand new voice, a brand new perspective on
this conversation, I thought it'd be great to invite a
friend of ours, Justin Smith, who is the CEO of
the new brand called Semaphore.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, we've had our eyes on this for a little bit.
It just launched in October and some of four is
founded by former Year Times journalist Ben Smith, as well
as our guest that we've invited, Justin Smith, who was
formerly the CEO of Bloomberg Media Group. No relation between
the two Smiths, by the way, no relation. And what
I've found really fascinating when I first learned about it
(11:10):
is their positioning. So brands always start with the positioning
what's your why? What gap are you feeling? And it's
articulated in three words, So I really like the simplicity
of that. It's a news platform built on the ideas
of being one intelligent, too transparent. Sure we're going to
talk to Justin about that and three global from the start.
So we thought this was the right time to bring
(11:31):
a brand new POV into the conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So justin, welcome to the pod.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Welcome, thank you, delighted to be here. Congrats on your
new podcast, Thank.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You, congrats on your new company. All right, so let's
get into it. First off, where are you calling in from?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Where are you right now?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I'm in DC. Semaphore is based between New York and DC.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
You co founded this with Ben Smith.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
You guys met what like fifteen years ago and then
you kind of reconnected in Davos.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Tell us a little bit about how someone foar came about.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
So Ben is my famous other half Smith. We both
grew up in the media industry together. Ben was a
kind of a great star of his generation. I think
he's one of the most talented, disruptive editors of his kind,
who was really on the founding team of Politico, BuzzFeed
News and then did that stellar, stellar performance as a
media critic for The New York Times. I'd had a
similar run on the business side, from the Economists to
(12:22):
the Atlantic to Bloomberg, and we were both entrepreneurial, always
stayed in touch and had very complimentary skills editorial and business.
Having front row seats to global news, you see the
audiences evolve you see the technologies evolved, You saw what
happened to social media and news. Every time we got together,
we just kept on talking about this is the opportunity,
This is the opportunity, This is the opportunity. And we
came at it from different angles. But I would say
(12:44):
that the madic focus of these discussions was always around
the news consumer. And I think that what inspired us
to leave Bloomberg and to leave The New York Times
to do this. It inspired the sixty five staff that
we have, is that by twenty twenty two when we
quit our jobs, I mean, the frustration of discerning global
news consumers with the existing media offerings, it's just unbelievable.
(13:07):
I mean, you can see it in the levels of
trust in news media in American around the world, which
are all time lows, you know, down beneath ten percent
domestically and even eleven twelve percent around the world. And
then how overwhelmed people are. The information overload question is
just not really considered by a lot of news publishers
who just keep on pumping out more and more content,
(13:28):
and so people are overwhelmed. People don't know what to trust.
We're in this incredibly complicated global interconnected world where pandemics
are coming from China and smoke is coming from Canada,
and supply chains are being reinvented, and the global economy
is changing. And so we thought, could we pull together
the greatest team in news media to innovate against these
(13:50):
consumer frustrations. How do we fight bias and polarization. How
do we create more transparent journalism to innovate against information overload?
How do we restore trust by curating and distilling great
views and perspectives. And lastly, we are just very interested
in this global reality that we live in, which is
very few news organizations bleed global in their DNA. That's
something which we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Justin It's such an interesting and ambitious vision. And I'm
curious because you just laid out, I mean, the pedigree
that you and Ben have in terms of really big,
established companies and here you are finding yourself as entrepreneurs.
And Steve and I've been spending some time in this
episode talking about the disruption of media brands in this space,
(14:33):
from established ones that are struggling, new ones trying to
get off the ground. Of course we've been talking about threads,
but it has the full force of a megabrand behind it,
And I'm curious how daunting it feels to you at
this stage to start effectively a new brand from scratch,
and what does success look like to you?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Well, I mean I would lie if I didn't describe
this experience for both Ben, myself and all of us
as daunting. I mean, we want to create one of
the great twenty first century quality independent global news brands
to compete with the New York Times and CNN and
all the big players, the Economists, the Financial Times. So
it's a huge, huge undertaking. We went into this with
(15:13):
very clear open eyes, and one of the things we
did is we we realize it's going to take us
a very long time to do this. One thing about
being kind of mid career is that you know how
long it takes to build something great, having endeavored to
do so many many times. And so Ben and I
signed up for ten years together at the very minimum.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Wow, I mean, it's a marriage, justin.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
It's a marriage. And the actual leadership team and the
whole company, which our shareholders are all also on a
ten year vest which is a very unusual thing, but
it's because it's gonna be a very difficult, challenging road.
They're gonna be ups, they're gonna be downs, it'd be
twists and turns. It's gonna take time. Yeah, your question
reminds me of early January twenty twenty two when we
quit our jobs and I was in my kitchen and
DC Ben was in his kitchen in Brooklyn, and you know,
(15:57):
I had gone from being COEO Bloomberg Media. You know,
I had a pretty big team working for me and
Ben probably as well, And all of a sudden, you're
there at your kitchen with your laptop. You know, you're
working twenty four hours a day or like sleeping five
hours a night. You're working seven days a week. I
think we scheduled a Saturday morning seven am call and
a Sunday morning seven am call just to keep us
on the point. And I remember just being like, oh
(16:18):
my god, the phone's not ringing, and everything that one
wants to will into reality you have to do. And
I remember just thinking like this is just all pushing
things out into the world, birthing these ideas and this concept.
And I developed this mantra for myself, which was three words,
do the work. Do the work. There's no one else
to do the work. You're gonna be the recruiter, the fundraiser,
(16:39):
the PR person. I think Ben and I managed our
PR rollout for Semaphore, just the two of us, and
I think we had some ridiculous amount of comms globally
when we announce. But it's humbling, it's daunting, but it's
also just the most exciting and inspiring opportunity to And
the fact that you get a chance to do this
with your life and do something so purposeful and meaningful
is also just you know, I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I just have to comment really fast on the ten
year piece because that really struck me. Patience is not
much of a virtue these days in business, and I
think we could do a whole episode on just the
problem of short termism in business and the investor community
with public companies with privately owned companies. So not only
for you to commit to each other as founders for
(17:21):
a ten year arc, but for your backers to say,
we see that. What an incredible story and lesson to
put out there just in the world at large right now,
because good things do sometimes take time. I'm so glad
you shared that. Very interesting.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
It's a big dream and a big project, and we're
about nine months old now, and you know, we've gotten
so many things right, we think, but we've gotten a
bunch of things wrong too. Every day we wake up
just looking at the areas that aren't perfect or aren't
hitting where we want them to be. And it's just
all about improving and digging deeper and making things better
and stopping doing things that aren't working and trying new things.
(17:57):
And it's just a long process. But we're really thrilled
with where we are so far.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I love this because this truly is the journey of
an entrepreneur. And I so empathize with you justin because
going from zero to one is hard, and I think
people so glamorize at a startup hustle culture and all
that kind of stuff, But it's hard, and it takes
at a minimum a decade for something to kind of
get off the ground, and it takes time for it
(18:22):
to percolate, and it's never up into the right right.
There's lots of peaks and valleys. But you know, I'm
so curious. We're both news junkies. Your undergrad was international
relations at Georgetown.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I was at Tough. I was always.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Thinking of doing something in foreign service or something with
global fairs. So I really am just kind of a
fanboy of being able to do these things and create
this global news brand. But I have to ask, why
do you think the world needed another news brand at
a time when it's hard, it's really hard to not
just create a brand, but to create a brand that
(18:55):
actually is going to connect with an audience when they're
really just getting the news from TikTok and Instagram and
Twitter and now maybe threads. So I'm just curious, what
do you feel was missing that is really going to
be unique to Semaphore.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
The news industry really has taken a huge significant hit
from the rise of social media, not just a business
model hit, but actually a product and content hit. The
reason why trust is so low amongst premium news brands
is because many of those premium news brands began to
write for the algorithm. Their own newsrooms became corrupted in
a sense with the ecosystem of distribution. So actually being
(19:33):
able to have a blank slate of paper and say, well,
how do we really really rethink the presentation of content
for a world where consumers don't trust anything anymore. There
was a time thirty years ago when most of the
center of this country trusted the New York Times or
trusted CNN back when Ted Turner started it. Those days
are long gone on that point alone, how do you
(19:54):
innovate to restore a credibility and a belief? And so
we launched Semaphore with our first core product innovation, which
is just rethinking the article format, which is the atomic
unit of journalism, and rethinking it so that we could
make it completely transparent and expose the scaffolding of the journalism.
Let the reader know this is the news, and let
the reader know this is the journalist's view of the news,
(20:14):
and then bring in alternative perspectives around the news, but
label them clearly for the reader. No one's done that before.
And the level of engagement that we're seeing, the level
of reader virality we're seeing in terms of growing our audience,
I mean, we probably have about four million readers now
on and off platform, two million on platform, two million
off and we're nine months old. We've got almost half
(20:35):
a million subscriptions to our newsletter products. I mean, this
is a really exciting start for us. Our newsroom is
very different in other newsrooms because we're crunching other people's
content and blending it with our own and presenting kind
of a compressed, very very efficient package that offers kaleidoscopic
explanations for complex issues. Right no newsroom in the world
(20:56):
is doing that, Like we are inventing this new type
of blending of original content and distilled external content. And
so that's why we think the world needs this. It's
serving consumer needs and frustrations with a completely fresh, different thing.
And hopefully it's what you're ex parents saying when you
read it.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I would say, yes, I've really become a fan. I
mean that, And I think it's because one of your
key tenants is transparency and that you're not trying to
play to the fringe or to the algorithm. And something's
just really struck me. And I was thinking about in
the context with Semaphore, that almost feels hope this is
okay to say, like the grownups have left the media
building and are you maybe trying to be the grown
(21:35):
up in the room again? If so, can we get
everyone else back on board with it? So impressive numbers,
but can this be ultimately do you even want it
to be? But could it be a mainstream solution in news?
Over this tenure arc to get people back to not
just choosing partiesan sides and their consumption of quote journalism.
(21:59):
What's your point view on that.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
We would love to bring our vision for balance, transparent,
multi perspective content to as broad of an audience as
we can. When you think about disruption, one of the things,
and this sort of relates back to Steven's last question,
every other news organization, really, every traditional news organization is
a single source news organization. They just want you to
(22:22):
read New York Times content, and they'll just send you
more CNN, more New York Times, more journal which is great,
but their morning newsletters are basically the ten to fifteen
stories that they have written in their brand. Very few
of the if any of these brands, actually deign to
bring in other sources and other content. But what do
consumers want? Consumers don't want just one filter. But to
your question about the adults leaving the room, I mean,
(22:43):
to some extent, this semaphore, I think is a little
bit of a response to the social media corruption of
news media and quality news media. I think we're sort
of finally in this in the news space, in this
post to social moment. You know, we barely have any
traffic from Facebook. It's amazing if you compare that to
eleven years ago and I launched Courts, which was basically
sort of built on the back of Facebook, you know,
(23:05):
as of many of the other brands that have now
not done so well, like Vice and BuzzFeed and others.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So there's a no cage match in your future with
zuk or of Elon.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
They are in a different place on the planet than
I am. But no, I think we I think we'd
like to continue to serve this purpose and mission of intelligent, global,
transparent information that hopefully can bring some calm and reason
and intelligence to what is a pretty chaotic and frankly
an algorithmically negative in my view environment for news, and
(23:37):
which is only going to get a little bit more
complicated with AI and so on, which we're already beginning
to see.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Well, I feel like you were alluding to the elephant
in the room. Everything that's algorithmic is obviously leading to
machine learning, and certainly we see it right now with
the writer's strike and how important the role of AI
or not using AI in writers' rooms. It's becoming a
true lightning rod. I'm just curious, like how are you
thinking of AI as you kind of approach your way
(24:02):
to not just make the news, write the news, but
also disseminate the news.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
As a startup, you do see things opportunistically and you
see things with a positive outlook of how can we
use tools that are emerging and new technologies to kind
of improve our mission. We don't approach it with that
sense of dread and fear. But having said that, I
think the most commonly asked question I'm thrilled about this
instead of our product arditorial meetings is can AI do this?
(24:28):
So we're deeply, deeply sensitive to developing products that are
uniquely human created and bring the values that a human
touch and human mind and human curation can bring. And
I think AI can be a really good supporting tool
for that. Distillation, summarization, translation, these sorts of things can
be done really well by the machines. But the actual
(24:50):
curation of sources, the selection of sources, this blending process
that we talked about is really not done well by machines.
And while that will get better, I think we have
to be quite careful about that.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well. I'll tell you I've for one just feel like
I would really welcome a mature, adult voice back in
the room. So I think there are other forms of
content we can all enjoy consuming, and we can enjoy
the froth of social media. But when it comes to
journalists and when it comes to understanding what's happening in
our world, I miss feeling that sense of trust and
(25:23):
credibility in my news sources. In fact, not a lot
of people fact check where they're even getting their news from,
which is something that I know I've spent a lot
of time thinking about as a consumer of news as
an advertiser within news. Kudos on this mission, and I
know Stephen and I both wish you just tremendous success
with this because it matters. As brand people, we think
(25:43):
about names, and I know you and your partner Ben
were probably very deliberate about the choice of names. Semaphore
What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Well, it's an ancient Greek word that is two part sema,
which is the carrier, the bearer, and then four which
means of signal, the bear of a signal, which is
a great idea for a journalism brand. But most importantly,
it's a word that is the same spelling and the
same pronunciation in about thirty plus languages, so German, French, Spanish,
many African languages, Hasa and Swahili, and some Southeast Asian languages,
(26:16):
and so in particularly the time when a lot of
the global news media is very Western centric and has
brand names with the word New York or British or
Wall Street in them, we wanted to start a new
company in the twenty first century that was just actually
had a full global connotations and could be understood across
the world in many different countries and cultures.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
That's so interesting because for those of us who've managed
global brands or classic naming stories of not thinking through
what the name means in other languages in other countries.
So well done, and finding a name that has both
meaning and translation ability across so many different parts of
the world, so very much fitting your global objective.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
Well done, Thank you, so.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Justin with Semophore. Obviously, the revenue model has to include
advertising and so much shape perform. I imagine, how are
you thinking to attract brands to be a part of
your new brand.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Well, obviously the heart of that proposition is just attention,
deep audience engagement with your product and with your brand,
which is something which we feel like we've accomplished so far.
We've got about thirty five to forty global brand partners
right now. You know, many of them are the great
brands in the world from a whole range of different
sectors and segments. What we're doing with them uniquely is
(27:29):
we are working with clients on developing completely new custom
ideas together. So Verizon and Semaphore built out a whole
text messaging journalism model together. We use the text format
as a way of doing live interviews and publishing those,
(27:50):
and so we care a lot about these perspectives and
views and just distillation of different parts of a story.
And so we now we allow our advertisers to actually
in line and promote and insert the view from Goldman
Sachs or the view from Pfizer in a contextually relevant
article in real time, stuff that no one else has
really tried or executed. Again, so it's working well. We
(28:11):
do a lot in the live event space and the
hybrid event space all around the world. We just did
a great event in Zurich around the future of AI
and the global economy, and we've done about forty events
so far. So live events, custom content, premium advertising. We've
got to get the advertising community to support news the
way that they used to in the past. There's a
(28:32):
lot of data out there that suggests it's actually incredibly
powerful medium and environment for marketing and messaging. And obviously
there have been issues with context environment which have suppressed
some of the investment, but we hope that that will
be revised and revitalized.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Well quality matters and advertisers will leave that too. So again,
Justin Smith, thank you so much for joining us. And
up next we're going to move on to what's on
your minds. We're back and now we shift from talking
about what's on our minds talking about what's on your mind.
(29:08):
We love hearing from you, so let us know what
you're wondering about. Want us to chat about. You can
send us your questions to ideas at brand dashnew dot
com or drop them even on any of our social channels.
We'll check all those spots. In fact, this week's question
actually came to us over threads. There you go, and
here is the question. Knowing what you know now about marketing,
(29:32):
would you have stayed in marketing and if not, what
would you have done. I'm going to bide my time
and ask you to take the first crack at this one.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Stephen, that's a good judy question, because I feel somewhat torn.
I definitely would have started my career again in finance.
I feel so strongly about understanding the principles of business,
so I definitely would have continued with that. But when
I left investment banking, I actually went to a technology
st start up in ninety nine, as some of you know,
(30:02):
Akamai Technologies, and that's kind of where I started my
first foray into marketing. But I started doing product marketing,
which is a different type of marketing. Obviously in the
tech industry it's a really important skill and role. But
I may have shifted from product marketing into product I
think in retrospect understanding the product world, and I feel
(30:24):
if you look at a lot of the successful leaders
that have come up through the ranks in technology, they
usually start in the product world and then they kind
of make their way up assuming more and more responsibility.
For a lot of technology companies, product is really the
launching pad for them to do marketing. But just from
a digital lens, a lot of growth hacking is happening
from a product person trying to do a b testing
(30:47):
or trying to do different ways to understand audience and engagement.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
And I just feel that the.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Product capabilities it gives you this really great platform to
do lots of other things. It doesn't devalue the role
of marketing or brand. But for me personally, I think
I would have taken a little bit more of a
role into product.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
What about you?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
You know that's really interesting because when I reflect on this,
I believe that the things that drew me to marketing
then and it took me a while to synthesize it
this way, are still the things I love. And I
always say that it's best marketing sits at this really
unique intersection of business strategy, culture and I love that
(31:26):
and consumer psychology or human psychology. Really we just make
it about consumers. I love that. And then underpinning that
all is the art of storytelling, and I love that.
I love being a communicator. I also love being a
creative problem solver, and I think I worry based on
how marketing has changed and the complexity of it, there
is a bit of a tendency in some organizations to
(31:49):
devalue the role of creativity, and for me, that is
really the heart of what makes this function in this career.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
So great.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Your answer is interestingly through the lens of and I
believe in technology. I was an early adopter to digital,
but I just don't believe that it replaces creativity. It
becomes conduits for new ways of driving creativity so long
as we remember that. So for me, that's still what's
good about it.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
But this is such an interesting perspective because I don't
think any one department or swim lane owns creativity just
the way are you know, I never understood at a
company the chief strategy officer. I feel like that's one
of those nothing titles, you know, like get a real
funny swim lane. It's got to be meaty, right, Like
it's got to be sales as a swim lane. Marketing
(32:38):
is a swim lane, finance tech, But you know, chief
strategy officer, everyone is responsible for strategy. Same thing with
like innovation, and I think same thing with creativity. One
would argue that product there is a ton of creativity
and you're actually doing a ton around human understanding in psychology,
you know, design thinking, you know kind of how do
you do discovery and then delivery.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
I feel that there's a way for.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Us to have an end, not an or, because I
feel that almost on the tech side, a lot of
folks almost get like a bad rap because they think
that they actually don't appreciate creativity. And I think there's
almost a branding problem in technology where they need to
kind of rethink the way they position it.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Look. I've had joking conversations though with certain colleagues in
the C suite like CFOs and chief accounting officers who say, yeah,
you don't want me to my job shouldn't be too creative.
That could get us into trouble. But it really it
just depends on how you define creativity. And I've really
spoken about this and I feel strongly about it that
(33:38):
creativity should be about fresh ways of solving problems. So
if you think about that, then you're absolutely right, Stephen.
No one should own creativity. But marketing does have a
unique contribution to play, and I believe it's also about
creating a culture in an organization that marketing, if it's
a strong function within the business, can help lead. For
(34:01):
sure is to make everyone actually feel that the whole
company hums with that energy. That creativity is exciting. It's
about freshness. It galvanizes people but.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
That's where marketing truly is the connective tissue inside of
a company. I firmly believe that because ultimately, and I
feel it's so dated. I mean, honestly, it's not about marketing.
It's about the customer. It's about your audience. And I
wish there was a way to rebrand marketing where it's
really about instead of chief marketing officer, it's either the
chief brand officer the chief customer officer. I know you've
(34:33):
had some of these titles in the past, Marisa, but
I feel that there is a way to really have
a larger perspective on how everyone is coming together around
creativity and if there was a way to really show
how product and technology and marketing and sales they're all
working in unison with that lens of what does the
(34:54):
customer need? But who is the voice of the customer?
It's always going to be the marketer or the head
of brand like that is very uniquely in that swim way.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Okay, but let's just end with the final part of
the question. Fantasy job. If you hadn't done this, you
would have done Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
If I'm being really authentic, I love teaching. I've always
loved education. My parents were teachers. I would love if
I were to waive a magic wand I'd love to
be some type of university professor and really trying to
help the next generation of kids learn about either business,
(35:30):
everything that we talk about in Team, everything we're discussing
here in this podcast. I think would be really cool
to be an actual professor.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Oh my god. See this is where we are similar.
I feel we might need to go create the brand
new university curriculum because I love when I guess teach
at the college level. It gives me such great energy.
But I'm going to be a little frivolous and say
my other fantasy jobs would be luxury shoe designer yes,
or host of I'm really going to embarrass myself now,
(35:58):
so have at it with me, people host of say
yes to the dress. Oh, I don't know why. It's
my silly TV obsession. It makes me feel good.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
I don't even know that show.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
That's probably Better Off. Okay, it's like on season twenty one,
and I think I've watched all of them. So there
you go. True confessions on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
But you are truly a fashion icon, and there's no
one that actually is able to kind of pick a trend,
and you're always ahead of that curve, so that that
makes sense. I could totally see you doing the luxury
fashion shoes.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And yet made for audio audio. Right.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, we'll have to figure out the video component at
some point. But are you wearing Fably's shoes now?
Speaker 1 (36:32):
No? No, barefoot and podcasting more true confessions?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Is this the kind of thing you know? No one
knows you're a dog on the that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, that's the goodest time. We're going to close right there.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I want to hear about your favorite luxury shoes.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
We're going to go through all the brands, right branday, Wait,
so your favorite?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Now you have to say, like, what's your favorite luxury shoper?
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Oh my goodness, come on, don't make me comm it.
Oh good baton, okay, baton, I'll be But I'm a
bargain chopper. See, I like nice things at great prices.
And we'll talk about value propositions in a future podcast.
But that's it for this time. I'm going to cut
us off. And hey, if you like this content, even
our Solly True Confessions about fantasy jobs, don't forget to
(37:15):
follow us at the brand New podcast wherever you listen
to your podcast so you never miss an episode, Please
follow us on our socials Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and
oyes threads. Thank you so much for joining us. We
want to hear from you. Let us know what you're
wondering about. Questions can come right at us at any
of those places, or to our email at ideas at
(37:35):
brandashnew dot com.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
And definitely please leave us rating a comment on Apple Podcast,
tell us how much you like the content, how much
you like Marissa's obsession with shoes' buspread, the word boy,
and please view that algorithm and join us next time
for what's brand New
Hello, and welcome to Brand New from the iHeart Podcast
Network and Brand New Labs. We're back. I'm Marissa Thalberg
and I'm Stephen wolf Eda. And what's new this week? Steven?
You know, we've been talking so much about work, but
as the founder of Executive Moms, I always think about
the totality of our lives as spouses, as parents, as executives.
(00:28):
And the funny thing is, going back from my executive
mom days, summer was always an interesting time as a
working parent because now the regular order of school is
disrupted and you're always trying to figure out how to
keep your kids busy and how to make that work.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So there's more than just work. It's not just work
all the time.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Some days there's not Can we.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Just pause for a minute, Mary, what is executive Moms?
Because I know what it is. I know a lot
of folks that have worked with you and know you
know what it is. Just for our listeners, what is
executive Moms?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, I have to admit Executive Moms is a little
dormant now, but thing has its season and I started
this just for a perspective before the advent of social media.
It was two thousand and two. I had recently become
a mom myself. I was living in New York, this
bastion of work life, and I just wanted to find
a way to congregate with other working moms like me
(01:17):
as a new one myself, and I was shocked that
really nothing existed. So you can question the dubious wisdom
of trying to solve that issue for myself by giving
myself a second career, but that's what I did. Enough
people said we need this, and the brand was very
we talk about brands, the brand was very instinctive to me,
this idea of being a fancy executive and a warm,
(01:37):
friendly mom, and that those two ideas cohabitated in all
these amazing women, and we just needed to not be
prescribed how to do it better, but just feel that
sense of connection, commiseration. A lot of things that became
buzzwords later weren't then. Content and community.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You were building one of the first OG communities.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
In a way. It was this idea of aggregating content.
No one knew to call it that, including me, but
that was just instinctively what I wanted. I wanted someone
to talk to me in bite sized morsels about all
the things that I was interested in because I'm more
than a mom, more than an executive, and so it
was this big thing for a really, really long time.
(02:19):
All the events were in New York, but the content
the community was national in some cases international. And what
it did was it gave me an unintended platform something
I feel really passionately about still today, which is supporting women,
working women, and now really working parents. As we navigate,
particularly in the United States, this constant is you just joked, like,
(02:41):
aren't we always working? And there's a lot of guilt
and there's a lot of stress, and we just want
to feel like we're doing okay by all of it.
Most of us care.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
And how do you provide for your kids? How do
you make sure that you're spending time with them? But
they had their activities during the summer. I mean you've
been doing that obviously with Avery, right.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, Avery's my g youngest and my kids are older
than yours. So we're going to talk about Sebastian and
Sienna in a second. But it is interesting. I mean,
Avery now has one more year of high school and
so she just came back from a wonderful pre college
program actually at my alma Mater Brown, and you know,
you just think looking back now through their lens, but
(03:20):
the pressure that kids have today to build a resume.
And by the way, I want to be clear, we
didn't do it for that reason. I think it's just
a wonderful experience to get a taste of what colleges
and to start exploring your interests. And I can honestly
say that's why she did it, and that process of
instantly making friends and how that prepares you for college.
So it was great. But you know, through the process
(03:42):
of even figuring out what class she wanted to take,
start having all these questions and the run up to
college essays and college applications like who am I, what
do I want to be? How do I figure that out?
And here we are decades later, and I think we're
all still on that journey somehow of figuring it out.
That's what you don't know when you're young, is that
it never really ends.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I'm definitely coming to you for all that advice. You know,
that's all pre college.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I'm over here, you know, kind of third grade and kindergarten.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I love it. I'm chillous.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I'm making sure the kids are in soccer camp. You know,
we have dance camp, robotics camp. We're at yesterday the
Arsenal versus Barcelona match and Sevacion that's our Premier League club,
so that was amazing, but also trying to find time
to fit in family and really have it integrated with work.
We're actually leaving to Mexico City tomorrow. Team three parts.
We're actually shooting right now a scripted show in Mexico
(04:31):
City with Ohano and the team, but we're bringing the
family down cited so they could actually see what the
set is like and obviously just get exposed to the business.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Well.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I will say one of my favorite things about being
an executive mom has been for all the sacrifices, the
opportunity to allow my children as they've grown up, to
enjoy some of the interesting experiences that my career has allowed.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
That's that's the right way to allow some of those
paths and for them to be exposed to it and
see it and buy. The way I also think it
goes in reverse is I've never subscribed to the philosophy
that you pretend you don't have a family or an
outside life when you're talking to your work colleagues because
we're whole people. And the more that people see us
and work as whole people, I just think the more
authentic and the more relatable we become, particularly as we
(05:17):
rise up and become leaders. I think younger generations crave that.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I also think that you just oose that authenticity. I
don't think that in twenty twenty three people want to
have their work life and their personal life really segregated
and compartmentalized. You have to have it integrated. So I
applaud you and all the women that actually do that. Obviously,
my own wife struggles with how do you do the
work life kind of balance, But it's something that we
(05:40):
all have to deal with and we have to figure
out how to integrate it and having partners that are
supportive of that. So I'm very mindful of that.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I love that, and you know what, well, Steven, Before
we go to our hot topic, which I want to
get to, I just want to say one thing on
that you have an amazing wife and I have an
amazing husband. But the more we think of this not
as a working mom issue but as just a people issue. Yes,
and for those colleagues that don't have children, they shouldn't
feel left out of this. Everyone has responsibilities, interests, and
(06:08):
obligations outside of work, and listen, the days of nine
to five have been long gone, and it's the phone
that did it to us because our work was always
with us. But then there has.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
To be COVID accelerated.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
It COVID accelerated, I guess because commuting staff was all like,
they're no borders. But at the same time, it means
that we have to be a little bolder about allowing
people to see our whole selves, whether that's in social media,
whether it's in a conversation with your team, whether it's
bringing your family to things that are appropriate to bring
them to, like you are with your family in Mexico.
(06:40):
What an amazing experience your kids are going to have.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Weed have a separate hot topic just on this because
and I'm curious if our listeners get excited or they
feel that this is interesting to talk about, because having
your integrated whole self show up in work and outside
of work, I know that's something that a lot of
people struggle with. So if this is interesting listeners, please
let us know. We will definitely have this be a
future hot topic. But let us wrap what's new, and
(07:04):
get ready for the hot topic, which is going to
talk about starting a new brand.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Today.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
We're talking about starting a new brand. That is the
hot topic for this episode. Marissa and I feel that
when you think of this world of team what we
talk about technology, entertainment, advertising, media, and marketing, there's so
many players, there's so many new brands being created, but
especially in media, I feel like it's such a tumultuous
(07:37):
time when you think about entertainment brands. I mean, look
at all the evolution that's happened with HBO, HBO Max
now it's Max, who knows what it's going to be tomorrow.
Think about everything that's been happening with social lately. Obviously
Threads is a new brand, but there's also all these
upstarts they haven't gotten the same amount of visibility or news,
things like Blue Sky Post, which is also a very
(07:59):
news focused social And there's also Spill, which is very
much focus on the black community that has really felt
abandoned by what used to be Black Twitter. It was
always a big thing. That's an invite only new social app.
Certainly there's news. CNN is going through their evolution as well.
Obviously Fox and when you think about podcasts, I mean,
certainly there's been all this back and forth. Where are
(08:21):
people getting new podcasts? Are they canceling podcasts? And I
think we have a new podcast, right, I think.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
We have a new podcast and a new brand starting
from scratch, brand new. There you go.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So how do you think about this starting a new
brand from scratch?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, I think if you particularly put it through the
lens of media brands, which we want to focus on today,
because brands as open ended as that is. Just talking
about media brands alone and the different categories you've sketched
out entertainment, social, news, podcasts, streaming, digital, there's so much
change in this industry, and let's be honest, so many
(08:56):
media companies struggling. I mean, who would have thought companies
like BuzzFeed and Vice, who are the darlings of the
media world just a few years ago. I mean we've
seen profound change and sell off there. We talked in
the last episode about threads. But certainly you can't understate
the advantage of starting a new brand when you have
instant awareness and audience that you can port over from
(09:18):
a huge brand. In that case, of course, Meta slash
Instagram so I think it's a really interesting question of
first of all, finding your why. I know that's a
big theme for you, Steven, and finding your why. I
mean the real question is there's always room, if there's
a genuine white space, and if it's not, you have
to you have to question is it gratuitous? And will
(09:41):
it then have a place to live? But there always is,
there are always is some one at meat and then
do you have the right proposition to fill it?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
But finding your why and also answering the question why.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Now, Yeah, there's so much news, there's so much being
done in media, and arguably you now have the creator
a kind of me really driving a lot of news
as well. I'm a huge football soccer fanatic. I love Arsenal.
I'm always getting my news from social.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Did I just see that you're a top ranked fan
of Arsenal, Steven? Is this going to go on your bio?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I am a top rand fan. I'm going to have
to put it on my LinkedIn for sure. But I
love Arsenal and I get my news from folks on social.
So I just feel like even the definition of how
we get news, how we get information, it has been
so disrupted by social and digital, but really launching a
new centered brand I think is really hard, and I've
thought that what better way to kind of really have
(10:35):
a fresh, brand new voice, a brand new perspective on
this conversation, I thought it'd be great to invite a
friend of ours, Justin Smith, who is the CEO of
the new brand called Semaphore.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, we've had our eyes on this for a little bit.
It just launched in October and some of four is
founded by former Year Times journalist Ben Smith, as well
as our guest that we've invited, Justin Smith, who was
formerly the CEO of Bloomberg Media Group. No relation between
the two Smiths, by the way, no relation. And what
I've found really fascinating when I first learned about it
(11:10):
is their positioning. So brands always start with the positioning
what's your why? What gap are you feeling? And it's
articulated in three words, So I really like the simplicity
of that. It's a news platform built on the ideas
of being one intelligent, too transparent. Sure we're going to
talk to Justin about that and three global from the start.
So we thought this was the right time to bring
(11:31):
a brand new POV into the conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So justin, welcome to the pod.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Welcome, thank you, delighted to be here. Congrats on your
new podcast, Thank.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
You, congrats on your new company. All right, so let's
get into it. First off, where are you calling in from?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Where are you right now?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I'm in DC. Semaphore is based between New York and DC.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
You co founded this with Ben Smith.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
You guys met what like fifteen years ago and then
you kind of reconnected in Davos.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Tell us a little bit about how someone foar came about.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
So Ben is my famous other half Smith. We both
grew up in the media industry together. Ben was a
kind of a great star of his generation. I think
he's one of the most talented, disruptive editors of his kind,
who was really on the founding team of Politico, BuzzFeed
News and then did that stellar, stellar performance as a
media critic for The New York Times. I'd had a
similar run on the business side, from the Economists to
(12:22):
the Atlantic to Bloomberg, and we were both entrepreneurial, always
stayed in touch and had very complimentary skills editorial and business.
Having front row seats to global news, you see the
audiences evolve you see the technologies evolved, You saw what
happened to social media and news. Every time we got together,
we just kept on talking about this is the opportunity,
This is the opportunity, This is the opportunity. And we
came at it from different angles. But I would say
(12:44):
that the madic focus of these discussions was always around
the news consumer. And I think that what inspired us
to leave Bloomberg and to leave The New York Times
to do this. It inspired the sixty five staff that
we have, is that by twenty twenty two when we
quit our jobs, I mean, the frustration of discerning global
news consumers with the existing media offerings, it's just unbelievable.
(13:07):
I mean, you can see it in the levels of
trust in news media in American around the world, which
are all time lows, you know, down beneath ten percent
domestically and even eleven twelve percent around the world. And
then how overwhelmed people are. The information overload question is
just not really considered by a lot of news publishers
who just keep on pumping out more and more content,
(13:28):
and so people are overwhelmed. People don't know what to trust.
We're in this incredibly complicated global interconnected world where pandemics
are coming from China and smoke is coming from Canada,
and supply chains are being reinvented, and the global economy
is changing. And so we thought, could we pull together
the greatest team in news media to innovate against these
(13:50):
consumer frustrations. How do we fight bias and polarization. How
do we create more transparent journalism to innovate against information overload?
How do we restore trust by curating and distilling great
views and perspectives. And lastly, we are just very interested
in this global reality that we live in, which is
very few news organizations bleed global in their DNA. That's
something which we wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Justin It's such an interesting and ambitious vision. And I'm
curious because you just laid out, I mean, the pedigree
that you and Ben have in terms of really big,
established companies and here you are finding yourself as entrepreneurs.
And Steve and I've been spending some time in this
episode talking about the disruption of media brands in this space,
(14:33):
from established ones that are struggling, new ones trying to
get off the ground. Of course we've been talking about threads,
but it has the full force of a megabrand behind it,
And I'm curious how daunting it feels to you at
this stage to start effectively a new brand from scratch,
and what does success look like to you?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Well, I mean I would lie if I didn't describe
this experience for both Ben, myself and all of us
as daunting. I mean, we want to create one of
the great twenty first century quality independent global news brands
to compete with the New York Times and CNN and
all the big players, the Economists, the Financial Times. So
it's a huge, huge undertaking. We went into this with
(15:13):
very clear open eyes, and one of the things we
did is we we realize it's going to take us
a very long time to do this. One thing about
being kind of mid career is that you know how
long it takes to build something great, having endeavored to
do so many many times. And so Ben and I
signed up for ten years together at the very minimum.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Wow, I mean, it's a marriage, justin.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
It's a marriage. And the actual leadership team and the
whole company, which our shareholders are all also on a
ten year vest which is a very unusual thing, but
it's because it's gonna be a very difficult, challenging road.
They're gonna be ups, they're gonna be downs, it'd be
twists and turns. It's gonna take time. Yeah, your question
reminds me of early January twenty twenty two when we
quit our jobs and I was in my kitchen and
DC Ben was in his kitchen in Brooklyn, and you know,
(15:57):
I had gone from being COEO Bloomberg Media. You know,
I had a pretty big team working for me and
Ben probably as well, And all of a sudden, you're
there at your kitchen with your laptop. You know, you're
working twenty four hours a day or like sleeping five
hours a night. You're working seven days a week. I
think we scheduled a Saturday morning seven am call and
a Sunday morning seven am call just to keep us
on the point. And I remember just being like, oh
(16:18):
my god, the phone's not ringing, and everything that one
wants to will into reality you have to do. And
I remember just thinking like this is just all pushing
things out into the world, birthing these ideas and this concept.
And I developed this mantra for myself, which was three words,
do the work. Do the work. There's no one else
to do the work. You're gonna be the recruiter, the fundraiser,
(16:39):
the PR person. I think Ben and I managed our
PR rollout for Semaphore, just the two of us, and
I think we had some ridiculous amount of comms globally
when we announce. But it's humbling, it's daunting, but it's
also just the most exciting and inspiring opportunity to And
the fact that you get a chance to do this
with your life and do something so purposeful and meaningful
is also just you know, I'm very grateful.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I just have to comment really fast on the ten
year piece because that really struck me. Patience is not
much of a virtue these days in business, and I
think we could do a whole episode on just the
problem of short termism in business and the investor community
with public companies with privately owned companies. So not only
for you to commit to each other as founders for
(17:21):
a ten year arc, but for your backers to say,
we see that. What an incredible story and lesson to
put out there just in the world at large right now,
because good things do sometimes take time. I'm so glad
you shared that. Very interesting.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
It's a big dream and a big project, and we're
about nine months old now, and you know, we've gotten
so many things right, we think, but we've gotten a
bunch of things wrong too. Every day we wake up
just looking at the areas that aren't perfect or aren't
hitting where we want them to be. And it's just
all about improving and digging deeper and making things better
and stopping doing things that aren't working and trying new things.
(17:57):
And it's just a long process. But we're really thrilled
with where we are so far.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I love this because this truly is the journey of
an entrepreneur. And I so empathize with you justin because
going from zero to one is hard, and I think
people so glamorize at a startup hustle culture and all
that kind of stuff, But it's hard, and it takes
at a minimum a decade for something to kind of
get off the ground, and it takes time for it
(18:22):
to percolate, and it's never up into the right right.
There's lots of peaks and valleys. But you know, I'm
so curious. We're both news junkies. Your undergrad was international
relations at Georgetown.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I was at Tough. I was always.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Thinking of doing something in foreign service or something with
global fairs. So I really am just kind of a
fanboy of being able to do these things and create
this global news brand. But I have to ask, why
do you think the world needed another news brand at
a time when it's hard, it's really hard to not
just create a brand, but to create a brand that
(18:55):
actually is going to connect with an audience when they're
really just getting the news from TikTok and Instagram and
Twitter and now maybe threads. So I'm just curious, what
do you feel was missing that is really going to
be unique to Semaphore.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
The news industry really has taken a huge significant hit
from the rise of social media, not just a business
model hit, but actually a product and content hit. The
reason why trust is so low amongst premium news brands
is because many of those premium news brands began to
write for the algorithm. Their own newsrooms became corrupted in
a sense with the ecosystem of distribution. So actually being
(19:33):
able to have a blank slate of paper and say, well,
how do we really really rethink the presentation of content
for a world where consumers don't trust anything anymore. There
was a time thirty years ago when most of the
center of this country trusted the New York Times or
trusted CNN back when Ted Turner started it. Those days
are long gone on that point alone, how do you
(19:54):
innovate to restore a credibility and a belief? And so
we launched Semaphore with our first core product innovation, which
is just rethinking the article format, which is the atomic
unit of journalism, and rethinking it so that we could
make it completely transparent and expose the scaffolding of the journalism.
Let the reader know this is the news, and let
the reader know this is the journalist's view of the news,
(20:14):
and then bring in alternative perspectives around the news, but
label them clearly for the reader. No one's done that before.
And the level of engagement that we're seeing, the level
of reader virality we're seeing in terms of growing our audience,
I mean, we probably have about four million readers now
on and off platform, two million on platform, two million
off and we're nine months old. We've got almost half
(20:35):
a million subscriptions to our newsletter products. I mean, this
is a really exciting start for us. Our newsroom is
very different in other newsrooms because we're crunching other people's
content and blending it with our own and presenting kind
of a compressed, very very efficient package that offers kaleidoscopic
explanations for complex issues. Right no newsroom in the world
(20:56):
is doing that, Like we are inventing this new type
of blending of original content and distilled external content. And
so that's why we think the world needs this. It's
serving consumer needs and frustrations with a completely fresh, different thing.
And hopefully it's what you're ex parents saying when you
read it.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I would say, yes, I've really become a fan. I
mean that, And I think it's because one of your
key tenants is transparency and that you're not trying to
play to the fringe or to the algorithm. And something's
just really struck me. And I was thinking about in
the context with Semaphore, that almost feels hope this is
okay to say, like the grownups have left the media
building and are you maybe trying to be the grown
(21:35):
up in the room again? If so, can we get
everyone else back on board with it? So impressive numbers,
but can this be ultimately do you even want it
to be? But could it be a mainstream solution in news?
Over this tenure arc to get people back to not
just choosing partiesan sides and their consumption of quote journalism.
(21:59):
What's your point view on that.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
We would love to bring our vision for balance, transparent,
multi perspective content to as broad of an audience as
we can. When you think about disruption, one of the things,
and this sort of relates back to Steven's last question,
every other news organization, really, every traditional news organization is
a single source news organization. They just want you to
(22:22):
read New York Times content, and they'll just send you
more CNN, more New York Times, more journal which is great,
but their morning newsletters are basically the ten to fifteen
stories that they have written in their brand. Very few
of the if any of these brands, actually deign to
bring in other sources and other content. But what do
consumers want? Consumers don't want just one filter. But to
your question about the adults leaving the room, I mean,
(22:43):
to some extent, this semaphore, I think is a little
bit of a response to the social media corruption of
news media and quality news media. I think we're sort
of finally in this in the news space, in this
post to social moment. You know, we barely have any
traffic from Facebook. It's amazing if you compare that to
eleven years ago and I launched Courts, which was basically
sort of built on the back of Facebook, you know,
(23:05):
as of many of the other brands that have now
not done so well, like Vice and BuzzFeed and others.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So there's a no cage match in your future with
zuk or of Elon.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
They are in a different place on the planet than
I am. But no, I think we I think we'd
like to continue to serve this purpose and mission of intelligent, global,
transparent information that hopefully can bring some calm and reason
and intelligence to what is a pretty chaotic and frankly
an algorithmically negative in my view environment for news, and
(23:37):
which is only going to get a little bit more
complicated with AI and so on, which we're already beginning
to see.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Well, I feel like you were alluding to the elephant
in the room. Everything that's algorithmic is obviously leading to
machine learning, and certainly we see it right now with
the writer's strike and how important the role of AI
or not using AI in writers' rooms. It's becoming a
true lightning rod. I'm just curious, like how are you
thinking of AI as you kind of approach your way
(24:02):
to not just make the news, write the news, but
also disseminate the news.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
As a startup, you do see things opportunistically and you
see things with a positive outlook of how can we
use tools that are emerging and new technologies to kind
of improve our mission. We don't approach it with that
sense of dread and fear. But having said that, I
think the most commonly asked question I'm thrilled about this
instead of our product arditorial meetings is can AI do this?
(24:28):
So we're deeply, deeply sensitive to developing products that are
uniquely human created and bring the values that a human
touch and human mind and human curation can bring. And
I think AI can be a really good supporting tool
for that. Distillation, summarization, translation, these sorts of things can
be done really well by the machines. But the actual
(24:50):
curation of sources, the selection of sources, this blending process
that we talked about is really not done well by machines.
And while that will get better, I think we have
to be quite careful about that.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well. I'll tell you I've for one just feel like
I would really welcome a mature, adult voice back in
the room. So I think there are other forms of
content we can all enjoy consuming, and we can enjoy
the froth of social media. But when it comes to
journalists and when it comes to understanding what's happening in
our world, I miss feeling that sense of trust and
(25:23):
credibility in my news sources. In fact, not a lot
of people fact check where they're even getting their news from,
which is something that I know I've spent a lot
of time thinking about as a consumer of news as
an advertiser within news. Kudos on this mission, and I
know Stephen and I both wish you just tremendous success
with this because it matters. As brand people, we think
(25:43):
about names, and I know you and your partner Ben
were probably very deliberate about the choice of names. Semaphore
What does it mean?
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Well, it's an ancient Greek word that is two part sema,
which is the carrier, the bearer, and then four which
means of signal, the bear of a signal, which is
a great idea for a journalism brand. But most importantly,
it's a word that is the same spelling and the
same pronunciation in about thirty plus languages, so German, French, Spanish,
many African languages, Hasa and Swahili, and some Southeast Asian languages,
(26:16):
and so in particularly the time when a lot of
the global news media is very Western centric and has
brand names with the word New York or British or
Wall Street in them, we wanted to start a new
company in the twenty first century that was just actually
had a full global connotations and could be understood across
the world in many different countries and cultures.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
That's so interesting because for those of us who've managed
global brands or classic naming stories of not thinking through
what the name means in other languages in other countries.
So well done, and finding a name that has both
meaning and translation ability across so many different parts of
the world, so very much fitting your global objective.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
Well done, Thank you, so.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Justin with Semophore. Obviously, the revenue model has to include
advertising and so much shape perform. I imagine, how are
you thinking to attract brands to be a part of
your new brand.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Well, obviously the heart of that proposition is just attention,
deep audience engagement with your product and with your brand,
which is something which we feel like we've accomplished so far.
We've got about thirty five to forty global brand partners
right now. You know, many of them are the great
brands in the world from a whole range of different
sectors and segments. What we're doing with them uniquely is
(27:29):
we are working with clients on developing completely new custom
ideas together. So Verizon and Semaphore built out a whole
text messaging journalism model together. We use the text format
as a way of doing live interviews and publishing those,
(27:50):
and so we care a lot about these perspectives and
views and just distillation of different parts of a story.
And so we now we allow our advertisers to actually
in line and promote and insert the view from Goldman
Sachs or the view from Pfizer in a contextually relevant
article in real time, stuff that no one else has
really tried or executed. Again, so it's working well. We
(28:11):
do a lot in the live event space and the
hybrid event space all around the world. We just did
a great event in Zurich around the future of AI
and the global economy, and we've done about forty events
so far. So live events, custom content, premium advertising. We've
got to get the advertising community to support news the
way that they used to in the past. There's a
(28:32):
lot of data out there that suggests it's actually incredibly
powerful medium and environment for marketing and messaging. And obviously
there have been issues with context environment which have suppressed
some of the investment, but we hope that that will
be revised and revitalized.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Well quality matters and advertisers will leave that too. So again,
Justin Smith, thank you so much for joining us. And
up next we're going to move on to what's on
your minds. We're back and now we shift from talking
about what's on our minds talking about what's on your mind.
(29:08):
We love hearing from you, so let us know what
you're wondering about. Want us to chat about. You can
send us your questions to ideas at brand dashnew dot
com or drop them even on any of our social channels.
We'll check all those spots. In fact, this week's question
actually came to us over threads. There you go, and
here is the question. Knowing what you know now about marketing,
(29:32):
would you have stayed in marketing and if not, what
would you have done. I'm going to bide my time
and ask you to take the first crack at this one.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Stephen, that's a good judy question, because I feel somewhat torn.
I definitely would have started my career again in finance.
I feel so strongly about understanding the principles of business,
so I definitely would have continued with that. But when
I left investment banking, I actually went to a technology
st start up in ninety nine, as some of you know,
(30:02):
Akamai Technologies, and that's kind of where I started my
first foray into marketing. But I started doing product marketing,
which is a different type of marketing. Obviously in the
tech industry it's a really important skill and role. But
I may have shifted from product marketing into product I
think in retrospect understanding the product world, and I feel
(30:24):
if you look at a lot of the successful leaders
that have come up through the ranks in technology, they
usually start in the product world and then they kind
of make their way up assuming more and more responsibility.
For a lot of technology companies, product is really the
launching pad for them to do marketing. But just from
a digital lens, a lot of growth hacking is happening
from a product person trying to do a b testing
(30:47):
or trying to do different ways to understand audience and engagement.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
And I just feel that the.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Product capabilities it gives you this really great platform to
do lots of other things. It doesn't devalue the role
of marketing or brand. But for me personally, I think
I would have taken a little bit more of a
role into product.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
What about you?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
You know that's really interesting because when I reflect on this,
I believe that the things that drew me to marketing
then and it took me a while to synthesize it
this way, are still the things I love. And I
always say that it's best marketing sits at this really
unique intersection of business strategy, culture and I love that
(31:26):
and consumer psychology or human psychology. Really we just make
it about consumers. I love that. And then underpinning that
all is the art of storytelling, and I love that.
I love being a communicator. I also love being a
creative problem solver, and I think I worry based on
how marketing has changed and the complexity of it, there
is a bit of a tendency in some organizations to
(31:49):
devalue the role of creativity, and for me, that is
really the heart of what makes this function in this career.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
So great.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Your answer is interestingly through the lens of and I
believe in technology. I was an early adopter to digital,
but I just don't believe that it replaces creativity. It
becomes conduits for new ways of driving creativity so long
as we remember that. So for me, that's still what's
good about it.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
But this is such an interesting perspective because I don't
think any one department or swim lane owns creativity just
the way are you know, I never understood at a
company the chief strategy officer. I feel like that's one
of those nothing titles, you know, like get a real
funny swim lane. It's got to be meaty, right, Like
it's got to be sales as a swim lane. Marketing
(32:38):
is a swim lane, finance tech, But you know, chief
strategy officer, everyone is responsible for strategy. Same thing with
like innovation, and I think same thing with creativity. One
would argue that product there is a ton of creativity
and you're actually doing a ton around human understanding in psychology,
you know, design thinking, you know kind of how do
you do discovery and then delivery.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
I feel that there's a way for.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Us to have an end, not an or, because I
feel that almost on the tech side, a lot of
folks almost get like a bad rap because they think
that they actually don't appreciate creativity. And I think there's
almost a branding problem in technology where they need to
kind of rethink the way they position it.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Look. I've had joking conversations though with certain colleagues in
the C suite like CFOs and chief accounting officers who say, yeah,
you don't want me to my job shouldn't be too creative.
That could get us into trouble. But it really it
just depends on how you define creativity. And I've really
spoken about this and I feel strongly about it that
(33:38):
creativity should be about fresh ways of solving problems. So
if you think about that, then you're absolutely right, Stephen.
No one should own creativity. But marketing does have a
unique contribution to play, and I believe it's also about
creating a culture in an organization that marketing, if it's
a strong function within the business, can help lead. For
(34:01):
sure is to make everyone actually feel that the whole
company hums with that energy. That creativity is exciting. It's
about freshness. It galvanizes people but.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
That's where marketing truly is the connective tissue inside of
a company. I firmly believe that because ultimately, and I
feel it's so dated. I mean, honestly, it's not about marketing.
It's about the customer. It's about your audience. And I
wish there was a way to rebrand marketing where it's
really about instead of chief marketing officer, it's either the
chief brand officer the chief customer officer. I know you've
(34:33):
had some of these titles in the past, Marisa, but
I feel that there is a way to really have
a larger perspective on how everyone is coming together around
creativity and if there was a way to really show
how product and technology and marketing and sales they're all
working in unison with that lens of what does the
(34:54):
customer need? But who is the voice of the customer?
It's always going to be the marketer or the head
of brand like that is very uniquely in that swim way.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Okay, but let's just end with the final part of
the question. Fantasy job. If you hadn't done this, you
would have done Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
If I'm being really authentic, I love teaching. I've always
loved education. My parents were teachers. I would love if
I were to waive a magic wand I'd love to
be some type of university professor and really trying to
help the next generation of kids learn about either business,
(35:30):
everything that we talk about in Team, everything we're discussing
here in this podcast. I think would be really cool
to be an actual professor.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Oh my god. See this is where we are similar.
I feel we might need to go create the brand
new university curriculum because I love when I guess teach
at the college level. It gives me such great energy.
But I'm going to be a little frivolous and say
my other fantasy jobs would be luxury shoe designer yes,
or host of I'm really going to embarrass myself now,
(35:58):
so have at it with me, people host of say
yes to the dress. Oh, I don't know why. It's
my silly TV obsession. It makes me feel good.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
I don't even know that show.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
That's probably Better Off. Okay, it's like on season twenty one,
and I think I've watched all of them. So there
you go. True confessions on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
But you are truly a fashion icon, and there's no
one that actually is able to kind of pick a trend,
and you're always ahead of that curve, so that that
makes sense. I could totally see you doing the luxury
fashion shoes.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And yet made for audio audio. Right.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Well, we'll have to figure out the video component at
some point. But are you wearing Fably's shoes now?
Speaker 1 (36:32):
No? No, barefoot and podcasting more true confessions?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Is this the kind of thing you know? No one
knows you're a dog on the that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, that's the goodest time. We're going to close right there.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I want to hear about your favorite luxury shoes.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
We're going to go through all the brands, right branday, Wait,
so your favorite?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Now you have to say, like, what's your favorite luxury shoper?
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Oh my goodness, come on, don't make me comm it.
Oh good baton, okay, baton, I'll be But I'm a
bargain chopper. See, I like nice things at great prices.
And we'll talk about value propositions in a future podcast.
But that's it for this time. I'm going to cut
us off. And hey, if you like this content, even
our Solly True Confessions about fantasy jobs, don't forget to
(37:15):
follow us at the brand New podcast wherever you listen
to your podcast so you never miss an episode, Please
follow us on our socials Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and
oyes threads. Thank you so much for joining us. We
want to hear from you. Let us know what you're
wondering about. Questions can come right at us at any
of those places, or to our email at ideas at
(37:35):
brandashnew dot com.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
And definitely please leave us rating a comment on Apple Podcast,
tell us how much you like the content, how much
you like Marissa's obsession with shoes' buspread, the word boy,
and please view that algorithm and join us next time
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