The secret to Zohran Mamdani’s winning media strategy is simpler than you think

Summary

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Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

Episode: The secret to Zohran Mamdani’s winning media strategy is simpler than you think
Air Date: July 3, 2025
Hosts: Max Tani & Ben Smith
Guests: Rebecca Katz (Fight), Morris Katz (Fight, Mamdani campaign)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the media strategy that fueled Zohran Mamdani’s meteoric, improbable rise from obscurity to presumptive Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. Max Tani and Ben Smith are joined by Rebecca Katz and Morris Katz, two architects behind Mamdani's winning campaign, to dissect how short-form video, authenticity, and media fluency—not just flashy tactics or expensive TV—enabled him to break through in a fast-changing media landscape. The discussion relates Mamdani’s story to broader shifts in political campaigning, the evolving role of consultants, and the challenge of matching media strategy to candidate charisma and authenticity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The New York Mayoral Primary as a Media Story

• The entire media world was fixated on Mamdani’s race, both because of the candidate’s shock win and the campaign’s innovative approach to communication.
• Ben Smith draws on his own history covering New York City politics, emphasizing how the city functions as a microcosm for broader trends in media and politics.
  (02:01)
• "His rise and his improbable victory is a media story fundamentally for reasons we'll get to." – Max Tani (02:52)

2. Zohran Mamdani’s Unconventional Media Approach

• Mamdani’s rapid ascent was largely invisible to traditional political observers until his viral videos began circulating widely. Ben Smith admits he first heard of Mamdani through one of these videos.
  (06:04)

• Mamdani’s use of vertical video, meme culture, and performative stunts (e.g., “jumping in the ocean in a suit for the ‘Freeze the Rent’ campaign”) gave his messaging a unique authenticity and sense of fun.
  (05:05)

  Notable Quote:
  "He was just using vertical video so effectively... was jumping in the water with the... On New Year's Day in Brighton Beach with the polar bear, wearing a suit to propose a rent freeze. And it was like kind of corny in a very particular way that worked." – Ben Smith (05:05)

3. Letting the Candidate Be the Strategist

• Morris Katz and Rebecca Katz stress that Mamdani himself was the campaign’s best strategist—most viral video concepts were his ideas, and the team’s main job was to “let Zoran cook.”
  (10:37), (11:35)

• The campaign intentionally avoided shoehorning Mamdani into off-the-shelf consultant playbooks, instead empowering him to be as authentic as possible.

  Notable Quote:
  "Our best strategist is by far, Zoran... And a lot of the videos, for example, are Zaun's ideas." – Morris Katz (10:37)

4. Short-Form Video & Media Fluency as a Generational Advantage

• Youth and comfort with contemporary social media platforms made Mamdani far more “native” to the media moment than many older politicians.

• Rebecca Katz argues that real fluency—not just the ability to churn out cringeworthy consultant-fed TikToks—matters, and Democrats need candidates who actually “grew up in it.”
  (17:11)

  Notable Quote:
  "We need candidates who actually understand the media moment that we're in... Right now we have a lot of older candidates who are learning how to do some of this from their grandchildren." – Rebecca Katz (17:11)

5. Positive Authenticity and Virality

• The group discusses theories about why short-form video works so well for certain candidates. Mamdani broke the mold by matching hopeful, positive energy with the inherently “entertaining” nature of short vertical videos.

• Authenticity—rather than forced optimism—was key to avoiding the kind of “relentless dunking” unsuccessful candidates sometimes draw on social platforms.
  (18:41), (20:17)

  Notable Quote:
  "You have to find the lane that is sincere to the candidate... there are a lot of different ways to get there, but it's about kind of landing it in a way that feels authentic." – Morris Katz (20:17)

6. Matching Candidate and Medium

• Success comes from aligning a candidate’s strengths and personality with the right formats, not merely copying what works for someone else.
  (33:36), (32:05)

  Notable Quote:
  "Matching people to areas in which they're organically comfortable in non traditional media is a kind of critical thing... it's like a copycat business where it's like, oh, this worked for this person, so now let's do the exact same thing for this other candidate..." – Morris Katz (32:05)

7. Paid vs. Earned Media in the “Social First” Era

• Mamdani's team recognized the power of paid television during live sporting events, like the Knicks’ playoff run, as a way to reach older and less digitally native voters—a tactic many Democrats still underutilize.

• Shorter, punchier 15-second ads allowed the campaign to outmaneuver a better-funded opponent and hammer home Mamdani’s core “freeze the rent” message with frequency.

• Despite social’s dominance, traditional paid advertising still played a vital complementary role.
  (25:35), (28:10)

  Notable Quote:
  "We went all in on Knicks games, spending a massive amount of our resources and making sure that we'd have a really heavy presence there... If the New York Knicks can win a championship, surely Zarambani can be the next mayor." – Morris Katz (25:35)

8. Authenticity, Disruption and the New Political Archetype

• Mamdani, like other candidates Rebecca Katz has worked with (John Fetterman, Ruben Gallego), represents authentic disruption and a willingness to run against entrenched systems—in style and substance.

• Authenticity isn’t about “cosplaying normalcy.” Whether it’s gym shorts (Fetterman) or a suit (Mamdani), what matters is emotional honesty and a real connection to the lives of constituents.
  (29:04), (30:10)

  Notable Quote:
  "Just be fucking normal. Right? Or not be normal and own it... it's not that hard." – Rebecca Katz (30:10)

9. Old Media vs. New Media: Complement, Don't Replace

• Despite the viral power of social platforms, the campaign did not shut out traditional media. Mamdani met with editorial boards and remained accessible, leveraging both new and old channels to drive, reinforce, and loop narratives.

• The decline of print’s influence is real (“Nobody reads the paper on the subway... everybody's looking at their phones”), but wholly ignoring traditional media is still a mistake.
  (33:36), (35:02), (35:50)

  Notable Quote:
  "It was a very deliberate early on choice from Zoran where it was like, I will talk to anyone about anything. You're trying to reach a ton of different people and different people get their news in different ways." – Morris Katz (35:50)

10. The General Election: Expanding the Coalition

• As the race enters a new phase, Mamdani’s core message will remain—the affordability crisis, corrupt adversaries, and hope for real change—but the electorate shifts more conservative.
• Social media, especially video, was central to surging new voter registration:
  "In the 14 days leading up to the last day to register to vote, 37,000 new registrants... Zoran used the videos to communicate and say, guys like TikTok, like, let's go register to vote. And then people did it." – Rebecca Katz (38:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• "He was just using vertical video so effectively... It felt kind of fresh, was tapped into just sort of ridiculous New York stuff." – Ben Smith (05:05)
• "Our best strategist is by far, Zoran... A lot of the videos, for example, are Zaun's ideas." – Morris Katz (10:37)
• "We need candidates who actually understand the media moment that we're in." – Rebecca Katz (17:11)
• "You have to find the lane that is sincere to the candidate... It's about kind of landing it in a way that feels authentic." – Morris Katz (20:17)
• "If the New York Knicks can win a championship, surely Zarambani can be the next mayor." – Morris Katz (25:35)
• "Just be fucking normal. Right? Or not be normal and own it." – Rebecca Katz (30:10)
• "It was a very deliberate early on choice from Zoran where it was like, I will talk to anyone about anything." – Morris Katz (35:50)
• "In the 14 days leading up to the last day to register to vote, 37,000 new registrants... Zoran used the videos to communicate and say, guys like TikTok, like, let's go register to vote. And then people did it." – Rebecca Katz (38:53)

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Additional Insights & Reflection (Post-Interview Analysis)

Ben and Max reflect on the conversation:

• The success formula isn’t replicable by medium alone: candidate intuition, a real feel for the new communications landscape, and a marriage of policy with viral, authentic content are necessary.
• Campaigns are now in direct competition with media to grab public attention; a successful political operation may resemble a nimble, always-on media outfit more than a hierarchical party machine.
• While Mamdani’s success highlights the triumph of populist, anti-establishment messaging in this media era, there is still room for more moderate, traditional candidates—media fluency isn’t a guarantee, but it can open doors for insurgents who might otherwise be ignored.

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Timestamps for Major Sections

• [02:52] The NYC primary as a media story; Ben’s history
• [05:05] Why Mamdani was able to break through (viral video and authenticity)
• [10:37] “Let Zoran cook”: letting the candidate lead strategy
• [13:48] Is Mamdani a Democratic mirror to Trump’s media genius?
• [17:11] Generational fluency with new media & candidate selection
• [18:41] Does short-form video have a partisan bias or simply reward positivity?
• [25:35] Paid TV, the Knicks, and adapting ad strategy for a new media environment
• [29:04] What authentic disruptor candidates have in common
• [33:36] Can you circumvent old media entirely?
• [35:02] Staying open to press while still leaning on new media
• [37:34] The general election: new coalition and mobilization via digital platforms
• [41:14] Reflection: intuition > analytics; “hand grenade” candidates
• [45:04] Why there’s no playbook for viral, personality-driven campaigns today

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Episode Takeaways

• Authenticity and platform fluency win the moment. Mamdani’s campaign proves that message, messenger, and medium must align—gimmicks or playbooks alone mean little.
• The media world is now equal parts creator and competitor with political campaigns—savvy candidates are content hustlers and community builders.
• Traditional media remains relevant, but only as one piece of a multifaceted approach. Modern campaigns must reach voters where they actually are—often on their phones.
• Viral moments only work if they’re organic, positive, and true to the candidate’s personality.
• Matching the candidate to the right media strategy is critical; carbon-copying tactics won’t work unless they fit.

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This episode offers a playbook for future campaigns—one that values adaptability, fluency, and authenticity over consultant-driven templates, and shows how new media can rewrite the rules of political engagement.

Transcript

[A]

So one of the things that I've enjoyed in making this show about media has been trying to figure out how you create an advertising product that's about advertising. We've been interviewing Josh Spanier, Google's VP of marketing and a pretty major player in his own right in the ad business. We've gotten, I would say, shockingly good feedback from you all. People don't seem to be skipping them, which is, I am told, something that often happens with advertising and podcasts. We've gotten a little feedback that I'm not asking Josh hard enough questions. So if anybody has any ideas for sort of, you know, big picture questions, particularly about the marketing industry, please send them our way. You can email them to me at ben.smithama4.com.

[B]

Welcome to mixed Signals from Semaphore Media, where we are tracking the wild changes in this media age. I'm Max Tawny, media editor here at Semaphore. With me as always, still from across the world. This week he's in Latvia, I believe is Semaphore's editor in chief, Ben Smith. Hi, Ben, how's Latvia? It's great.

[A]

I feel like you just doxxed me, Max, but it's great.

[B]

It's a pretty big country. I mean, it's not like the world's biggest country, but it's an entire country. Not given any specifics.

[A]

Shout out to our Latvian listeners.

[B]

Well, this week on the show, we're not gonna be talking about Latvia or the Latvian media ecosystem. We're gonna be talking about something a little bit closer to home, which is the New York Oral primary and what it means for media. Our guests on the show this week are Rebecca Katz, the founder of the political media agency Fight, and Morris Katz, of no relation, who ran the media campaign for Zoran Mamdani, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the mayor's race. We will ask them to go behind the scenes of Zoran's media strategy and talk about how the Internet, short form video and podcasts have completely changed what matters in a political campaign cycle.

[A]

Yeah, I think I'm very curious to learn whether the medium is the message, whether the candidate is the message. But it was an extraordinary media campaign that I think everyone has been looking really closely at.

[B]

Well, I know we're excited to dig into it with them right after the break.

[A]

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[B]

So, Ben, I imagine this must be minorly annoying for people who do not live in New York City, but the entire media world, which is of course based in New York, over the last week, week and a half has been obsessed with the New York City Democratic primary mayoral election. It was pretty funny. I was talking to my dad on the night that it happened. I was like, oh, my God, it looks like, you know, Zoran Mamdani, the socialist candidate, he's 33 years old. He's my age, is going to be the next mayor. And my dad was like, who? You know, he lives in California. But in our case, we actually have a reason to talk about it, which is that it weirdly fits right into our wheelhouse in two senses. One, his rise and his improbable victory is a media story fundamentally for reasons we'll get to. And the second is because we are uniquely qualified in the sense that you used to cover New York City politics. This was kind of your joker origin story. You understand this world better than most people out there. Even some people who are on the beat today, I think, I imagine you could just plug right back in and get going again.

[A]

Yeah. Actually say somebody who works on one of the campaigns, they couldn't believe how this. The sort of like Gen X political reporters who used to cover this stuff years ago. How obsessed we all are still, you know, and some of them are now like, the most important White House reporters in the country. But they're calling the spokesperson for Zell nor Myrey's campaign, you know, asking for the latest gossip or whatever. And so, yes, it's the New York mayor's race in New York politics, and New York kind of media culture is the origin story, I think, for a lot of what we do.

[B]

Yeah, you know, Ben, I think about two or three months ago, you know, when the conventional wisdom was, oh, this guy's kind of picking up a little bit of steam, but he'll never be able to actually do it. He's gonna get his, like, little slice of the kind of lefty online folks and never gonna take off. You know, I asked you about it, and you told me you were one of the first people who told me that you thought he actually had kind of a legitimate shot, which made me less surprised than I think some people as the G started to narrow. But why did you think that he actually had a chance to win this thing?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, my sort of, I guess, like modern media lens was really in competition with my like hard boiled New York reporter lens. Because the hard boiled, the sort of traditional New York thing is that this Internet stuff, this meme stuff, this, like people under 50 and what they think about stuff never really winds up mattering in politics. And it's kind of the old hacks lumbering to the finish line most of the time. But Mamdani really obviously captured a new way of communicating. You know, he was just using vertical video so effectively felt kind of fresh, was tapped into just sort of ridiculous New York stuff. He was jumping in the water with the. On New Year's Day in Brighton beach with the polar bear, wearing a suit to propose a rent freeze. And it was like kind of corny in a very particular way that worked.

[C]

I'm freezing your rent as the next bear of New York City.

[B]

Let's plunge into the detail.

[A]

The other thing about. I covered New York politics for a long time and remained totally obsessed with it. I don't think I'd ever heard of the guy before December or January. Like the first I heard, probably the first time I ever heard of him was seeing one of his viral videos. So, like, he really came out of nowhere.

[B]

Well, that's the reason why I feel like we're pretty excited for and pretty fascinated by our guests on today's episode, one of whom you've actually noticed, known for a really long time. So, Ben, talk a little bit about them and what you're most interested to hear them speak to.

[A]

Yeah, we've got Rebecca Katz and Morris Katz. They are not related to each other. Separate. Katz's and Rebecca's, you know, been around national politics, New York politics for a long time. She worked for Harry Reid for a while. And then what I remember is years ago she had started her own consulting firm in New York and was trying to get me to meet this kind of enormous, quirky lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania. And honestly, like, I couldn't figure out why she was talking about him. And never, never met John Fetterman back in, you know, many years before he became this very central national figure.

[B]

Do you regret that not meeting him?

[A]

Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, what a great story he is. He turned into. But I guess I didn't like her pitch was this guy feels different from everybody else. Like, you'll get it when you see it and you hear him and you'll see why that's gonna work. And I just didn't see how that was gonna work and was wrong. And like. And I think she made a specialty of working with candidates with him, with Ruben Gallego, the Democratic senator from Arizona, now with Mamdani. And she launched an agency called Fight, and Mamdani is a client. And the guy who worked very embedded with Mamdani's campaign for the firm is her colleague, Morris Katz. And so they've really been in the trenches of this, but they've also been in the trenches in the context of building what is basically a political advertising agency. And so I think it's this question of kind of what is media now and what moves people now? I mean, it's something that they are really in the business of trying to figure out.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, to one of your points that you were mentioning earlier, one thing that I'm really curious about is how much of this was tactic or a medium that people can replicate, as in, you know, just making short form videos, and how much of it is the candidate themselves, because, you know, there were other candidates who tried short form video. I think Brad Lander was really trying to do some of it. It just didn't quite work the that Zoron was able to kind of make short form video into this real engine for the campaign and really to, you know, earn media through that in a way that we haven't really seen very often in media. So I'm really excited to hear what they have to say about that.

[A]

Right. Is the medium the message, is the messenger the message. Are they all the same thing? I think that's a question a lot of people are trying to figure out right now. So we can ask the Katzes that.

[B]

Yeah, let's bring Morris and Rebecca in right now.

[A]

Rebecca Katz. Morris Katz. Thank you so much for joining us.

[D]

Good to be here.

[C]

Thrilled to be here. We're both thrilled to be here.

[A]

I guess I wondered to kick it off, Rebecca, you and I have known each other a long time, and you recently founded this political media agency called fight. And I wonder, can you just give us the landscape on what you do and particularly what you did and didn't do for the Mamdani campaign, because you and I had a very long email exchange in which you were very clear about not wanting to take credit for anything you hadn't done.

[D]

Right. So Basically, after the 2024 elections, this country was a little bit at a crossroads, and it felt like Democrats weren't quite understanding where we were in the moment. And I got together with my partners Tanya McDonald and Julian Mulvey. And we founded Fight for, like, different kind of candidates to run different kind of campaigns. And we were lucky enough that Morris Katz came and joined us. He had done the Dan Osborne campaign with Tommy McDonald in the previous cycle. And we were just trying. Trying to do something a little bit different in politics.

[A]

Kind of unusual. Independent in Nebraska.

[D]

Correct. And Morris had been telling me about Zoran Mamdani for over a year, and I was not really believing him. I guess I just didn't. I was starting to see it in November with the first viral video that they did of Zoran in the street, asking people who had voted for Trump why they voted for Trump. Like, I saw something special. But it wasn't until I met him at our first ad shoot that I just, just, I was like, this guy's got it. And then we were off to the races.

[B]

So, Morris, I saw. I have in my notes here that you told New York Magazine that the strategy was to let Zoron cook. What did that specifically entail?

[C]

Well, so I, I think it's. It sounds like something that's just a line that, you know, people would say. But I always say Zoron is this group's best strategist. Like, our best strategist is by far, Zoron. And a lot of times his ideas and his instincts are the. The best we have. And a lot of the videos, for example, are Zaun's ideas. And a lot of the best events that we had and policies that we put forward are coming from Zoan. And I think we have a big problem in general in Democratic politics, where we kind of, as consultants, come in with our playbook, and then it's about forcing a candidate into that playbook. So, hey, this is how you're going to win the race, and we're going to make you the candidate to win the race. And we took a different approach. We have this extraordinary candidate with a clear vision on the kind of race he wants to run. And it's going to be our job to empower him, to put him in a position to succeed, to create context in which his ideas can flourish. But we got to trust our guy, and we did throughout.

[D]

One of my favorite examples from Zuran is when he decided on the Staten Island Ferry that he's like, hey, the Staten Island Ferry is free. We're talking about free buses. Let's go make a video on the Staten Island Ferry. That was, that was the Zoran original. I mean, there's a bunch of them.

[B]

Yeah. Well, no, actually, I want to hear some examples from, from both of you guys. What were some examples of ideas that he had for videos?

[C]

I mean, a lot of the, a lot of the videos start with, start with Zoran. Ideas like the jumping the Freeze the rent. Jumping into the ocean in a suit for Freeze the Rent was like a great example. Zaun was like, here's this thing I want to do. And I was like, that sounds like a crazy thing for a candidate to do, to jump in a suit into the freezing ocean to talk about freezing the rent. But that was a huge viral moment or following the election. We talked about closely prior to the election the idea of the way that his populist message could plug in with the larger conversation about the party and the party's messaging moving forward. But it was Zaun and Andrew who came up with the idea of, okay, now we're doing rad, let's just go talk to these voters. Instead of something that would be a more traditional, like, hey, let's wait two weeks and pull something and then, you know, release a direct to camera or press conference.

[D]

Right. And he's also up for things that are not necessarily always his idea, but like if you take the walk from down Manhattan, that wasn't his idea, that was Julian's idea on staff. But then he decided, sure, this sounds great, let's do it. Right? Like, not a lot of candidates would just be game to do something new and fun and different. Especially when you're like, we're going to end in the middle of the night and then you have work to show up for six hours later.

[B]

Yes, that's true. Yeah, exactly. Not many people are down for a. What is what like a 13, 14 mile walk or something and then have to wake up six hours later for an extremely big day at work.

[D]

Right.

[A]

When you do talk about like a new kind of candidate with a very like real like personal feel for how to communicate and how the media works, it does make me wonder how much you think about Donald Trump, who's the other person who I always think is like a intuitive media genius who has broken all the rules and been very, very effective in communicating with people. Like, is that, do you think about Trump as you do these things?

[D]

I mean, Trump was. Trump kind of took to Twitter like he was native to, like, he understood it, he used it. That was his way of communicating. I think too often we have politicians who actually have no idea anything about social media. Like they don't go on it on their own, so they don't know how to communicate. Through it. Zoran's obviously, like, native to it, and it's easy for him, and he uses it and he's creative, and he, like, knows how to have fun with it, too. Like, he wasn't writing like a. Like having staff write like a cringy, like, Taylor Swift clapback. Right? He was actually able to. To think of ideas and have daily messages that he would just record on his own and load up on his own. You didn't have to teach him how to do it.

[C]

I think there is a. I think Trump's understanding of kind of new media allowed him to dominate and define the conversation in a really powerful way where it wasn't just beholden to, you know, what was the conversation on television. It was, I can use my direct line of communication to then shape what the conversation is on the nighttime news. And I think, like, that has sent Democrats reeling in some ways where it's like, now we're not allowed to talk about the actual news. We have to talk about a manufactured crisis that Donald Trump has decided is politically convenient. And I think Zaun kind of was able to do the reverse of that in this race in a lot of ways.

[A]

What's the reverse of that?

[C]

I think the reverse of that is on affordability. I think Zaun was able to early on identify that affordability was this massive crisis in New York. It's something all New Yorkers were feeling. It's something they were talking about, even if polls weren't necessarily capturing it as the top issue. Part of that is because I think there was so much baked in cynicism about any politician's ability to actually change it. But John was like, you know what? No, if we actually talk about this issue and the ways in which we can change it, it can move that more to the forefront. And then by the end of the race, affordability was massively the top issue in the race, and it was what everyone was talking about.

[D]

And that's something you rarely see from Democrats, especially. Like, usually you see them looking at polling and saying, okay, it's static. We're gonna have to talk about crime. We're on the defensive, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, And Zoron went in and he actually changed the conversation and made it more about what people were focused on. I also wanted to say, like, having a younger candidate makes a difference. Like, we were. We had an ad shoot a couple weeks ago where we were. Attacks were coming at Zoran. We were writing a script pretty quickly, and Zoran just, like, sat down at the laptop to kind of bang it out a little bit with people yelling. Usually you have the candidate maybe saying what he wants someone else to write, but you rarely see the candidate himself taking a little bit of ownership and really getting to it in the way that he has. It's different.

[B]

There's this idea that's kind of been percolating or being talked about or debated among some people in Democratic circles, particularly Democratic digital circles since Trump's election, that we need to find candidates who are more native to the media forums of the moment. And candidates will be better at making vertical videos or making YouTube long form YouTube videos or podcasts if they actually consume that content. Do you think that that's true and important? And also does that change the way that Democrats should be thinking about selecting their candidates? Should they be looking for people who seem be more terminally online? Is that like a good thing now?

[D]

Oh, Max, you're singing my song right now. I mean, I do think, I wouldn't say terminally online, but I think we need to have candidates who actually understand the media moment that we're in. And, you know, I think if you look at the last election we won with people who were like high information voters who read the newspaper every day, right? But that's not the electorate anymore. You know, people. People are leading very busy lives and we have to kind of meet them where they are, whether that's YouTube shorts or Reels or TikTok or whatever. And I think we need candidates who can adapt to it. And right now we have a lot of older candidates who are learning like how to do some of this from their grandchildren. And we need candidates who actually grew up in it and understand how to communicate, who are naturals.

[A]

You know, Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes had this interesting conversation the other day about whether vertical video kind of has its own politics. You know, I think Ezra said that Mohammed Zoran is the first vine politician. That's like a very deep cut I want to ask you to explore. And Chris Hayes said that he thinks that the vibes directionally in vertical video are more positive. And I think he means like emotionally positive rather than kind of liberal than the vibes of X. And I wonder, like, and this is. That's the sort of question of whether the medium is the message. But do you think that vertical video pushes a particular kind of politician at a particular kind of politics, or does it just serve people who are good at it in whichever direction?

[C]

I think part of Zaun's success in this was people are not scrolling through social media to feel worse they may often be the result, but they're strolling, they're going to Instagram or they're going to Twitter to distract themselves from, you know, their jobs or whatever thing they don't want to be doing at the given moment or thinking about the given moment. It's a form of entertainment in a lot of ways. And I think part of Zoron's success was in this I'm constantly positive energy and hopefulness, and I think it certainly comes through well in vertical video. But I also think that that was kind of a general component of the campaign. I think that there's been vertical video success. That's not that. I just think whether it's vertical video or campaign events or traditional media, the appetite for constant cynicism and skepticism is not as large as it is for, oh, I actually feel better after interacting with this thing.

[B]

But how do you do that in a way that's not like. That doesn't come across as kind of like, hokey or, like, naive? And I mean, I don't mean to say this to beat up on him necessarily, but like, Brad Lander was doing some of these short. Was trying to do some of these short form videos as well. I remember seeing some of them and they didn't hit in the same way that they did for Zoran. Maybe that's because he wasn't, you know, as fluent in the form as somebody who is younger might be. But, you know, we've seen plenty of candidates try to run positive, optimistic campaigns before, and they just get relentlessly dunked on on Instagram or on Twitter or X or whatever. How do you do it in a way that's not. Where's the line there?

[C]

I think you have to find the lane that is sincere to the candidate. And I think a lot of Brad's videos were very good.

[B]

And.

[C]

You can't guarantee any video is going to go viral for whatever reason. But I think you look at kind of Bernie and AOC and some of the content that they've put out from the Fight Oligarchy Tour, that's done really well. That is positive and hopeful in a way that's very different than Zoron Fast walk and talk down the street, but that is still fully. You feel better after you watch it. And even if it's relying on validators who are at the rallies or clips of the speeches. And so there are a lot of different ways to get there, but it's about kind of landing it in a way that feels authentic.

[A]

But do you think short video in Some bigger picture way is like pro socialist. I don't mean like that this is what the Chinese Communist Party is doing necessarily, but just that like left wing, that there's something about the left that maybe where Twitter was good for the right, these, these forms are good for the left. Is that, do you think that's true?

[C]

I think that it's hard to disconnect some of Zoran's success from some of the policies. Not necessarily like, oh, if you're a socialist you can go viral and if you're moderate, you can't. But I think people are eager for the benefit of the medium. Is this direct transparency and clarity. And if the things you're then saying on the medium aren't direct or clear or transparent, they're not going to break through the same way. And so I think it's about, you know, matching a clear message to a clear form of communication so it doesn't feel, you know, lost somewhere in the middle.

[B]

Well, this is a good point to take a quick break. We'll be right back with with Rebecca and Morris after this.

[A]

This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier, about a new era for media planning. So one of the great challenges for the marketing industry through all of history has been how to figure out whether the hundreds and millions of billions of dollars the industry is spending are actually working in the year 2025. How do you do that?

[E]

Growing up then I assume your parents told you that TV or too much TV was a bad thing for you, right?

[A]

Oh, yeah. I wasn't allowed to watch tv.

[E]

The marketing industry has kind of suffered from too much TV. We have spent 75 years using the notion of the number of people watching a TV show, therefore the number of people seeing your advert as the proxy for success. All the ratings we talk about, all the excitement about the number one TV show has led to this sort of meme and industry of most people equals good. And actually, as a marketer, I don't need lots and lots of people to see my ad, to see my commercial. What I need them to do is take the action to buy the product, download this app, whatever it is we're trying to do. So the TV industry has in some ways being a bit of a, an anchor for what we really need to do and what's emerged in the marketing space and something we're doing inside of Google marketing is really thinking about outcome based planning. So moving on from just buying ads and hoping a lot of people see them and buy something to actually determining what is the business outcome we really need to have happen. And then using Gemini AI sophisticated modeling to model out what tactics and channels will deliver on those outcomes. And we're all getting pretty good at it across the industry. And that's a really exciting step forward because it's a much stronger conversation with your cfo, with your cmo. When the CMO and CFO says I need to sell this many phones and you can say okay, for this budget and this approach, you'll get this many phones at this level of cost per phone, whatever the targets or metrics might be. So that's how the world is really moving on. Breaking the paradigm from TV as just large scale reach to actually the outcomes you're trying to get.

[A]

From a marketing perspective, what advice would you give people trying to shift into that, into an outcome based system?

[E]

So you got to start with clear business objectives. That's the first thing. What are you trying to achieve? You then need to invest in the right measurement tools and techniques and methodologies, work with the right partners. And then third, you got to be pretty willing to be agile and adapt. Outcome based planning is pretty fluid. Your competitor changes their pricing. That's going to impact your business results. You need to move on the fly and adapt. Doing those three things, starting with clear business objectives, investing in the right measurement approaches and then being agile is a great start to outcome based planning.

[A]

And where can people find out more?

[E]

If you head over to thinkwithgoogle.com and do a search for guide to modern marketing planning, there's a great article that covers outcome based planning and a whole lot more information in one place.

[A]

Thanks, Josh. Some share of our listeners are in the advertising business. I am curious what even is the job of paid advertising when you've got this social media phenomenon was kind of 20% out of zero. I'd never heard of him as a pretty informed voter on the back of social media, like how did you think about what you were doing there? And kind of what worked.

[C]

So I think we knew it's helpful having a candidate who's so consistent in their message and vision because it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for hey, what are we going to talk about? Lasagna. We knew what we were going to talk about, but it was about introducing him to all these people who had no idea who he was. And we were getting these polls back where he'd be at 20% but with 60% name ID. And so we felt like, okay, well now we're introducing him to 40% of the electorate, a slightly older portion of the electorate, people who are a little bit less informed. How do we want to go about that? And we felt like at that point there was a clear contrast between him and Cuomo. And a contrast that really was what we wanted to be delivering to voters. This is a choice between a corrupt politician of the past who's responsible for this economic crisis that we're dealing with, and a bold new choice for the future who's going to make New York City affordable. And we did that through a number of an opening contrast ads, really frame this as a one on one race. And also taking advantage of the fact that the Knicks had this kind of magical playoff run occurring. And we went all in on Knicks games, spending a massive amount of our resources and making sure that we'd have a really heavy presence there, which wasn't just about reaching all of the New Yorkers who we knew would be watching the Knicks, but also kind of tapping into New York and these viewers at this moment of possibility, ability and hope and optimism. If the New York Knicks can win a championship, surely Zarambani can be the next mayor. And then from there we went to, we're able to use 15 second ads instead of the traditional 30 second ads to kind of fight this frequency battle with Cuomo having this super PAC that was pouring millions in. And because his message was so clear, we felt like we could condense it into 15 seconds and get a lot of that same value you out. And then went with this freeze the rent ad where freeze the rent is basically 60% of the words in the ad. It's a bunch of people walking around saying, this guy's going to freeze the rent to be here. Zoran's going to freeze the rent and add like that. Where we felt like, again, the benefit of having a clear message and clear things you stand for, you don't need someone to see it 20 times for them to understand what you're trying to communicate. They can see it once or twice and know, oh, Zoran Hamdani is the guy who's running off of a rent freeze.

[B]

It is funny that the Knicks thing worked for Zoron in a way that like I remember in 2021, Andrew Yang was like talking very deeply. He would like tweet a lot and he talked a lot about the Knicks, but it never, it obviously didn't help his campaign in any sort of way. It's very interesting to me that the, that that Zoran was able to kind of Capture maybe this, the team is better, but.

[D]

But it's also something democratic ad makers don't do a lot of. I mean, my partner, Tommy McDonald was talking about this for, you know, many cycles ago, too. Like, we have to advertise on sports more because there's more live TV and who are getting into it. And I just think it's something that a lot of Democrats don't do.

[A]

And actually, Rebecca, like, that brings me to a broader question about what you're doing. You've really, like, your career has become defined by this kind of new set of Democrats. John Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, I would say, are the two senators I know you work for Zoran Mamdani, Morris worked for Dan Osborne, this kind of interesting independent Nebraska figure fighting against the system. And I'm curious, like, what they have in common and where the sort of the way they feel connects to their politics. Because they are kind of like they don't feel exactly like every other politician.

[D]

No. And they're not like each other. Let me just be clear. I don't think. I think a lot of these people would not want to compare themselves with the other one. But what I will say is that they all have a fundamental understanding that this system doesn't work for everybody and that it's kind of broken and that we need to make real change here. And I mean, when I tell this story all the time with Ruben Gallego, we were making an ad and he was saying it's not just that the costs are too high, it's that we need to tell people it's not their fault. Right. That, like, everybody is struggling. And I think there is a way to actually talk to the. When you're running a campaign, to talk about the people versus talking about yourself. And I think candidates win when they connect to the people who actually live in the district that they're seeking to represent in a way that is not polished or in talking points, but is, like, real and true. And I don't know why it is so hard to find those candidates, but I think when you find them, you need to run them and they will win.

[A]

But I guess, like, to be a successful person who is standing up to the system, like, is it important that you wear jorts?

[D]

I think everybody has their own personality. Right. I mean, Zoran Mandani has worn a suit every day for like, how many days now? I don't know. Like, it's just like everybody has their own thing, you know, but it has to be true to who you are. That's it like, you can't just fake it. Like, it's like, it's like when everyone just starts cursing because they think cursing is in, or they think, you know, like, it just like, just be fucking normal. Right? Or not be normal and own it. Like, it's not. It's not that hard.

[B]

Yeah, Ben, I actually don't think that Fetterman ever wore jorts. I think he just wore shorts and cargo shorts.

[D]

Gym shorts. Gym shorts.

[B]

Gym shorts. That's right. That's right. I do remember the gym shorts outside in the winter thing. But I guess. I guess, you know, another kind of separate elephant in the room here. And this is a question for you, Rebecca, which is, I mean, as we're recording this, you know, there was some viral stuff earlier today about Fetterman, you know, not wanting to be there, you know, in the Senate for, you know, this big debate over the big beautiful bill, as it's referred to. I'm really curious what your feeling is about the recent stories and everything that's kind of come out on Fetterman. I'm sure you have a unique perspective on that, that.

[D]

I'm really proud of the campaign we ran in 2022. I think we did amazing things. And I'll. I'll stop there. I don't really know. Like, I. Yeah, I'm busy in New York right now, so I can't really speak to.

[A]

Are you still working for him?

[D]

I am not. I haven't been working for him for over a year.

[B]

The other question that I'm kind of curious about, what's the distinction here between strategies that can be replicated in terms of, like, medium, as in, politicians should be going on podcast more or doing more short form videos or whatever, versus just like, having a candidate who is charismatic. Right. It's undoubtedly true that there were some other candidates who read all of our articles about media and tried to implement them and. And kind of came up short. How much of it is. Is charisma versus kind of the medium itself.

[C]

I think it's like what Rebecca was saying earlier, where it's kind of about matching the candidate to the media. And so, like, you know, Tim Walls, for example or something. I think he did it once or twice, but it's like Tim Walls could have been doing, you know, college football games and high school football games every single week, and he would have been incredible in that content. Like, would it have been great if he was, like, in a suit, jumping into the ocean, talking about freezing the rent? Probably less. Good. Would it be as good if Zoron was, you know, commenting on a high school football game in Texas, like, probably not as good. It's that there is, like a, you know, matching people to areas in which they're organically comfortable in non traditional media is a kind of critical thing across the spectrum. And I think part of the problem we get into is it's like a copycat business where it's like, oh, this worked for this person, so now let's do the exact same thing for this other candidate instead of that kind of overall approach.

[B]

One other thing I'm kind of curious about here is I've been thinking a lot about the. The ways in which the media landscape has changed. You know, I wrote a little something about, you know, the New York Post's kind of indecision over kind of who to back and how hard to go at Zoran versus at Cuomo. I'm really curious, like, would it have been possible in this race for Vandani to still win and basically entirely circumvent the old school kind of media, or do you think it was important to be able to do both? I don't know. What did you. How did you think about old media versus new media in this kind of context and who was consuming it?

[D]

Zoran Mandani was hit every single day by the New York Post. Like, it was just every single day they were saying how fucking terrifying he was. Right. And that's not how a lot of New Yorkers get their news. I mean, there's this. I remember back in the de Blasio administration, a staffer, senior advisor to the mayor, famously told the Daily News that their paper didn't matter anymore. And then she basically said, you want to bet? And then just destroyed him. Right. And that was. But that was, you know, 10 years ago. It is now. It is harder for. It wasn't true then, but I think it is a little bit more true now. Like, you can't ignore the media, but I don't think the tabloids rule the day. I say this, like, hoping not to get now killed by the tabloids, but, like, don't rule the day the same way. Right. Because not everybody. Like, when I first moved to New York 15 years ago, or people on the subway, everybody was reading the paper in the morning. Right?

[B]

Right.

[D]

Nobody reads the paper on the subway in the morning anymore. Everybody's looking at their phones. Right. So it's just, like, you have to adapt with it. You have to. And that's New York City. Like, every campaign, you have to do it a little bit. Different where you are.

[A]

And yet, you know, one of the big pieces of media conventional wisdom now is that you don't have to talk to the press. Nobody talks to us anymore like minor congressional candidates. Half the time won't return your call.

[D]

I love reporters. I try and talk to reporters all the time. I just want you to know that.

[A]

Okay, noted that you like us, but in general it's no longer considered like an important part of being a public figure, being an exec, a business executive, or being a politician or being an athlete. Just to talk to the media, to answer questions, to be open. And I wonder if that's changing too. Like I see it in tack with like the Sam Altmans of the world who go around us all sorts of ways, but are very open. And I'm again, I noticed that in fact Zoran, although you were running a very new style social media, new media campaign, was very, very open to the media. He was one of the first people come into the New York editorial board just like very engaged with the press in a kind of an almost like old fashioned Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani kind of way. And I was curious what that is like, are these guys, are these people who say that we don't matter also getting it wrong? Please say yes.

[C]

I think yes. That was a very deliberate early on choice from Zoran where it was like, I will talk to anyone about anything. And I think you're trying to reach a ton of different people and different people get their news in different ways. And if you just write off media, that's a lot of, it's less about writing off those specific publications or papers, but in some ways it's writing off the people who are reading them, who are relying on them for their news. And that wasn't something Zoran was comfortable doing or willing to do. And so I think there's real value in it. I also think that there's a balance of using some of the new media stuff to drive narratives so that you're shaping a lot of the traditional media. And so by having his own platform, which he was aggressively putting out his vision for the city, he was then able to, you know, when he's talking to traditional media, it was a lot of questions about affordability, about halalflation, about freezing the rent. And I think those two things were able to complement each other nicely.

[D]

Yeah, and one thing you asked about the through line of my candidates, it's like always candidates who are comfortable in their own skin, like Zorin, can talk to the media because he's comfortable in what he has to say and he's not afraid. And I think that is something that I think consultants can kind of over prep their candidates and say, don't say this, don't say this. And we get these robots that don't really connect with people on a human level. And I think Zorin absolutely does.

[A]

And of course, the campaign isn't over. And in fact, new campaign is just beginning this week as we're talking about it. And the sort of center right, center left, whoever they are, are desperately trying to figure out how to stop Sauron. What is your job in the general election? It's a different electorate, it's a different set of people. They're more conservative. What are you guys going to be trying to do?

[C]

I mean, look, I think it's the same xoron launched knowing he was running against Eric Adams, thinking maybe he was running against Andrew Cuomo. And it's the same message that it was then, which is there's an affordability crisis in this city and it's because corrupt politicians who've sold out working people for their own personal gain. And Eric Adams meets that criteria. And now since that time, not only has he sold out working people, but he sold out the entire city to Donald Trump to stay out of jail. And so I think we feel pretty confident in the fact that we have a mayor who's legitimately compromised to a Donald Trump administration and that it only makes this kind of contrast all the more clear. I also think that, you know, we saw a lot more New Yorkers show up on Tuesday than anyone expected. A lot of young people from across the city, a lot of immigrant communities, a really diverse working class coalition. And I think a lot of that kind of the shock element of Zoran's late surge was a lot of these people didn't know much about Zoran until last week or two weeks because of the nature of how elections work and when people start tuning in. And so the one through line of the entire campaign is the more people know Zoran and the more he's out there, the more they like him. And so I think it's our job to continue to get him out there, but I think we only see the coalition expanding.

[D]

Yeah. And I would just say for all the people who are mocking like social media and, you know, oh, we just like in the debates, you saw a lot of his rivals kind of mocking the fact that he's like good at videos. In the 14 days leading up to the last day to register to vote, 37,000 new registrants like, got ready to vote. That's like in contrast to 3,000 in 2021. Like, Zoran used the videos to communicate and say, guys like TikTok, like, let's go register to vote. And then people did it. And that is important too. He used social media to get more people engaged and feel like they were a part of something. And I think that is something that a lot of politicians can take from that lesson from this campaign without saying like, you know, they're scared of, you know, socialism or whatever, but they can at least see some of the stuff he did and understand that it's applicable in other ways.

[B]

Well, Morris, Rebecca, thank you guys so much for being here. Congrats and really curious to see what plays out over the next few months in the general election.

[A]

Thank you guys. It's good to see you.

[D]

Thanks for having us.

[C]

Thank you, guys.

[A]

I want to tell you about Think with Google. Its marketers go to spot for insights from top CMOs, practical guides on emerging tech and strategies that drive real growth. You can learn how AI can help level up your marketing and address your biggest challenges across creative media and measurement. Whether you're a marketer looking for new ways to reach your audience or a curious leader wanting to get inspired, Think with Google is the place to be. Learn more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.

[B]

So, Ben, you've covered a lot of races, you've heard a lot of spin from New York political figures in your time. What did you think about what Rebecca and Morris had to say about Zoran's campaign and why it succeeded from a media perspective?

[A]

I mean, there is a level, it's good to be reminded in a world where everybody wants to talk about data and kind of like semi phony complex analytics that the element of sort of intuition in this stuff is very large. The notion they just kind of of felt some kinship with the New York Knicks and went all in on that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So such a like kind of interesting moment. But I think more broadly just that like, I think Rebecca right now is working for a bunch of politicians who stand for in some way people's disgust for business as usual, their desire to just like toss a hand grenade into Washington. I do think that's, I think it's not necessarily solely a progressive impulse at all. I think it's obviously a kind of Donald Trump. But also you have a bunch of these, these guys, they are mostly guys, I think, who dress a little differently and talk a little differently and there's some sort of class signifiers in there, they're not like. And then this is truer of Fetterman and of Ruben Gallego. But they're not, like, trying to prove to you how well they did in school all the time. I don't know that clearly. Like, that clearly works really well. And I do think that if you can't both communicate well on vertical video and if you aren't just comfortable, I am glad she said that too, because I do think it's true that if you can't just interact normally with journalists and defend yourself and say things, it's just a huge liability now.

[B]

So you don't think that it would have been to Zoran's benefit to talk more about being a student at Bowdoin?

[A]

Bowdoin? Oh, my God. Well, when we have Malcolm Gladwell on, we can ask him about Bowdoin, because he, like, has a whole thing about how it's the worst student college in America because they spend all their money on food. There's also a rebuttal. So people should check out Bowdoin's rebuttal online, lest I forget. But in any case, you know, he didn't bring it up much. I did see somebody ask somebody I know asked him about when he was gonna start talking about Bowdoin, and he said, wait for the general. So who knows?

[B]

That's hilarious. No, but, you know, to your Nick's point, it is also interesting to me how much Zoran was able to capitalize on and speak the language of this generation's, like, new viral kind of New York. Like, what they were doing in those videos was essentially replicate the side talk videos which went viral a few years ago, in which there were just these. These man on the street style interviews with essentially crazy, very unique, but uniquely New York New Yorkers. And, you know, when Zoran went to interview Knicks fans, it had the kind of same digital coding as that. And I think that they were able to do that a few different times. The Halal video kind of captured some of that. The walking. The, you know, walking the distance of New York kind of captured some of that. It played into his image, him being out there and basically, you know, trying to interact with New York in a way that was recognizable digitally, I think was probably pretty helpful to his campaign. And if you contrast that with Andrew Cuomo making a right turn on red, which every New York driver knows is illegal, in a video that was shared, it's just the optics are quite different. Yeah.

[A]

And there is always with New York politics, like, how much of this is just New York. And Duran is like a very classic kind of New York kid. His dad teaches at Columbia. He went to Bronx Science. The Free Press had some whole rant about whether that really counts as a public school, which is like the most New York possible form of neurosis. And, yeah, I'm sure that, like, we'll have a video with the Ock by the end of the summer. Like, gotta happen. But there's this question of whether it applies. Like, my actual impulse is that these new media lend themselves to populists to the left, to the right, and that, like, moderate establishment types, for ways that are actually connected to the medium and to the moment, are struggling right now to break through. But I think our colleague Dave Weigel would point out, out that Mikey Sherrill just won handily in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger won in Virginia, and that it's also been a really good summer for totally moderate female candidates who served in the Air Force and want to fight Trump. And so I think there's more than one path here, but there is a new insurgent left that has kind of found its media that I think isn't. Isn't going away.

[B]

Yeah. But I do think that, you know, there is a level to which it is unique. It's not just the format, and there's not just an easy playbook you can kind of run a million times. Right. Part of it is candidate intuition. And just very clearly what happened here, it was some sort of alchemy, some sort of formula that involved policy positions that resonated with a group of people, plus a fluency with the medium and good ideas for content. And then just a candidate who had tremendous message discipline and charisma and appealed to enough people, you know, within the Democratic primary, there's some sort of. It's not going to be an easy format to replicate, though. It'll be fun and interesting to see people try to replicate it. Right. And kind of maybe fall short.

[A]

Yeah. And in your story, you had a great anecdote about his communications director, Andrew Epstein, downloading Capcut, which is this incredible video editing and captioning software onto his phone just to get these videos in the moment out fast. There's a real kind of immediacy that, you know, that then the folks we're talking to who are making television ads, who are pulling back a little, you know, are able to ride that energy that really is coming right from the candidate in, often in minutes after something happens. And it's a very kind of. I mean, that's media now, clearly, also.

[B]

Like There is a level to which a new candidate who wants to run in a media saturated race has to saturate the web with interesting and engaging content, much like we do. Right. Like, it's not that dissimilar from what a successful media company has to do, which is just put a bunch of shit out constantly. And if it's good, it will continue to feed into interest in whatever thing you're doing. And maybe what Zoran did is not that dissimilar to what Emily Sundberg does.

[A]

Yeah. I remember early in my career when I was covering Barack Obama and we were doing these terrible videos at Politico. I had this poor videographer following me around Iowa, and then I saw the videos the Obama campaign was putting out and you're like, like, oh, these are so much better. Like, we're competing with the campaign and we're just obviously losing. And I think with Trump, again, like, essentially, like Trump's like the editor in chief and executive producer and is basically out competing the media at their own game. And that it is. We're now in an environment where we. We don't just get to cover these people. We. We compete with them for attention.

[B]

It's true. But for the people who are still listening to this this far into the podcast, I think it shows that maybe something is. We're. We're at least resonating with them.

[A]

Well, thank you for resonating with us, folks.

[B]

Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Sheena Ozaki with special thanks to Josh Billenson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor is Keith Peter Poole, the editor of the New York Post.

[A]

And if you're listening to this in audio, please give us a review on your podcast app. Does really Matter. So we appreciate it.

[B]

And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.