#4 - REAL Always Wins

Why don’t people watch the news?

• CNN, FOX, & MSNBC combined for an average of around 8 million primetime viewers TOTAL in April 2020

  • 2017 Median Ages

    • CNN’s - 60

    • Fox News - 65 

    • MSNBC - 65 

• Joe Rogan - 18 episodes per month, 11 Million downloads per episode, Youtube viewers as well

  • According to his own reporting on one of his episodes in 2019 (The Joe Rogan Experience)

• The new generations are here and this what they want

  • Youtube, social content, podcasts

    • ON DEMAND

  • People want access and transparency

    • It’s a video & Access world

      • Information sharing and seeing behind the scenes is already inevitable

  • They want conversation

  • They want authenticity

    • TV is dying

      • It’s an internet world and it wasn’t built for the internet

• Transparency & Authenticity are synonymous

  • “REAL”

Media -- Dave Portnoy, Barstool Sports

• Built a Social Media conglomerate that features around the clock personal sharing with his base

  • Directed at a target demo (a big one)

    • Covering a bit of everything

  • Transparent about everything

  • Emergency Press Conferences

  • Makes it impossible to slight him or go at him because nothing bothers him and he’s an open book about every single one of his flaws/mistakes

SPORTS -- LeBron James

• Jordan was the first major individual brand off court

  • Pre-Social Media though

  • Still had barrier to entry of attention

• LeBron

  • Uninterrupted

    • “Authentic Insightful Entertaining” tagline

  • “More Than An Athlete”

  • “The Decision” back in 2010

    • Poor execution, but it provided an open forum with drama that he controlled

• Look at what Jordan just did with “The Last Dance”

• Athletes are now getting podcasts

  • JJ Redick

  • Bussin’ With the Boys

    • Taylor Lewan and fellow NFL linebacker, Will Compton

  • Former stars like Stephen Jackson & Matt Barnes as well

    • “All The Smoke” Podcast

BUSINESS -- Elon Musk, Gary Vee, 

• ELON MUSK’s company goes to the moon while he’s being sued in court for twitter antics and honesty

  • Also got his factory open by telling the government he was planning to break the law

  • Going on The Joe Rogan Experience and smoking weed

  • Tosses around quotes like:

    • “Tesla’s stock is too high”

      • He is founder and CEO of the company, so this is quite eccentric

• GARY VEE

  • Takes you behind the scenes

  • More on this later

BRANDS

• Domino’s openly talked about how bad their pizza is and turned the company around

• Patagonia

  • Radical Honesty

  • Founder, Yvon Chouinard

• Brands managing their own people

  • Glassdoor

  • Management accountability

  • The office “water-cooler” is now 24/7 on 12 different platforms

POLITICS -- Donald Trump

• Trump is highly controversial as President--but some of the non-policy tactics he used to build a relationship with his base fit a clear pattern

  • Gave his thoughts during all hours of the day and night on Twitter

  • Videos posted across socials

  • Talked like a “Regular Joe” with his verbiage, style, and tone

  • Self-deprecating jokes with ironic dishonesty

  • Owned being a billionaire by not running from it and finding a way to relate to working class Americans

  • DC is a secretive place and he represented an open door to a politician’s thoughts and opinions, unedited

ENTERTAINMENT

• Documentaries growth

  • Netflix trending content examples

    • “Explained” “America’s Book of Secrets” “Down To Earth” “Look Mom I Can Fly” “The Business of Drugs”

• Podcasts

  • Like we talked about with JRE--authentic non-big media driven types

  • Investigation & True Crime Pods

• Music examples of “behind-the-scenes” documentaries

  • Already mentioned Travis Scott

  • Jon Bellion

RADICAL HONESTY

• Jeff Bezos Sexting scandal with the National Enquirer

• DISCUSSING MONEY

  • Dave Portnoy & Marc Cuban openly discuss their wealth (in different styles, respectively) without alienating their fans

  • Sports

    • Players and coaches often act like they do things for the fans

      • “It’s not about the money” is a common quote

    • BUT--Tennessee coach Rick Barnes almost left for UCLA and, after deciding to stay at Tennessee, he was quite open about the fact that it had to with money:

      • “I would’ve left if they had offered a little more money”

MONEY

• The Great Financial Crisis

  • Wrecked people’s trust in the financial system

• People want to know:

  • Where is my money?

  • How do I track my money?

    • It’s all just numbers on a webpage

• But how can we get money out of the hands of the powers that be?

  • ...Bitcoin?

    • Created on October 1, 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto (while the financial crisis was settling in and ravaging countries across the globe)

      • Introduced the idea of “Cryptocurrency”

      • It remains to be seen if this will be the monetary adoption of the future

PR Culture

• Companies have cover your a** (cya) mentality out of fear of litigation

  • Brands are afraid to say or do something different because they don’t want to be wrong

• Brands hiding behind PR statements to show that they “care”

  • EX: Companies post-George Floyd

• Example of any famous person ever hiding behind a statement:

  • “I regret that my previous transgressions have brought harm upon my family, friends, pets, plants…”