Stagwell’s Mark Penn on polling, politics and media

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Current Podcast – Stagwell’s Mark Penn on Polling, Politics, and Media

Released on September 4, 2024

Introduction to Mark Penn and His Career

In this episode of The Current Podcast, hosts Damian Fowler and Ailee Slifring engage in an insightful conversation with Mark Penn, the Chairman and CEO of Stagwell. Mark Penn brings a wealth of experience from his diverse career spanning political polling, strategic roles in major corporations, and founding a leading digital-first marketing and communications group.

Damian Fowler opens the discussion by highlighting Penn’s remarkable journey: “Mark Penn's remarkable career. First, as a political pollster who's advised names like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair. Later, he became chief strategist for Microsoft before founding Stagwell, a digital first marketing and communications Group” (00:15).

From Polling to Politics to Media

Mark Penn reflects on his multifaceted career path, discussing how his interests and strategic reorientations have shaped his professional trajectory. He explains, “I kind of re strategized myself like every decade or so and I say, well, okay, what is it that I really want to do” (01:11). Starting with aspirations in law, Penn detoured into polling, political strategy, and eventually technology, leading to his pivotal role at Microsoft. This diverse background culminated in the founding of Stagwell, aiming to create a more innovative and digital-first holding company.

The Intersection of Politics and Marketing

Penn emphasizes the intrinsic link between politics and marketing, particularly in today’s data-driven environment. “Mark's political background no doubt brings a much-needed perspective to marketing. He argues that in today's real-time, data-driven world, brands must have a constant finger on the pulse of the American consumer” (00:33). He further elaborates on how creativity in digital marketing surpasses traditional TV advertising, stating, “It takes the same kind of creativity, if not more so” (03:13).

Brand Safety and Advertising in News Media

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around Stagwell’s News Advertising Study. Penn challenges the conventional wisdom that brands should avoid advertising next to controversial news topics. He asserts, “It's a ludicrous notion to be blacking out legitimate journalistic publications for, quote, brand safety in general” (05:28). Penn argues that avoiding news media can inadvertently harm journalism and limit brands' exposure to highly engaged audiences. He advises media buyers to be open-minded and experiment with news environments, highlighting that “news consumers... are more likely actually to absorb your advertisement” (06:33).

Navigating the Media Landscape During Election Years

With the 2024 US Presidential election in focus, Penn provides insights into effective media strategies. He notes the shift in advertising spend towards social media platforms, especially as traditional TV advertising becomes saturated. “It's going to be jammed because there's more money than ever in politics, right. And so then, politics is then going to go over to social media” (08:13). Penn emphasizes the importance of understanding audience demographics and selecting appropriate channels, particularly for reaching younger voters on platforms like TikTok.

The Role of Events and Content in Political Campaigns

Discussing campaign strategies, Penn highlights the effectiveness of live events in generating engaging content. “Trump does events. So his event strategy is then geared to create content that then gets distributed primarily through social media” (09:39). He underscores the necessity for fresh, real-time content that resonates with voters, advocating for a blend of event-driven and digital media strategies to maximize impact.

Advice to Political Campaigns

Penn offers strategic advice to both Biden’s and Trump’s campaigns, focusing on the importance of targeting swing voters. “Getting switchers means appealing to people who don't agree with you” (11:01). He advises campaigns to move beyond base politics and seek compromise policies to attract undecided voters, asserting that this approach can lead to broader electoral success.

Reflections on Leadership and Growth at Stagwell

Mark Penn shares his perspective on leadership and organizational growth. He reflects on the early days of Stagwell, noting significant revenue growth and global expansion: “We started Stagwell eight years ago, you know, at zero, we're about two and a half billion in revenue now” (13:33). Penn expresses optimism about the company's future, positioning Stagwell as a challenger network poised for continued innovation and expansion in the digital marketing landscape.

Predictions for the Marketing Industry (2024-2025)

Looking ahead, Penn predicts a robust year for marketing with substantial investments in political advertising. “There's going to be $12 billion spent on politics. So that's always helpful” (14:14). He also anticipates intense competition in the technology sector, particularly regarding artificial intelligence, which will shape the future of digital marketing and media strategies. Penn is optimistic about the year 2024, contrasting it with the challenges of 2023, and foresees continued growth and innovation in the marketing industry.

Notable Quotes

• Mark Penn on Passion and Career Choices: “Follow your passion. Don't worry so much. If you do something really interesting, really well, you'll figure out how to manage the reward side of things” (02:19).

• On Creativity in Digital Marketing: “It takes the same kind of creativity, if not more so” (03:13).

• Challenging Brand Safety Norms: “It's a ludicrous notion to be blacking out legitimate journalistic publications for, quote, brand safety in general” (05:28).

• Targeting Swing Voters: “Getting switchers means appealing to people who don't agree with you” (11:01).

Conclusion

Mark Penn provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolving intersections between politics, marketing, and media. His insights into brand safety, effective campaign strategies, and the future of digital marketing underscore the importance of adaptability and innovation in a rapidly changing landscape. Penn’s forward-thinking approach and emphasis on data-driven strategies offer valuable lessons for marketers, media buyers, and political strategists alike.

For listeners seeking to understand the complexities of modern marketing and its ties to political dynamics, this episode of The Current Podcast serves as an essential guide, enriched by Mark Penn’s extensive expertise and strategic foresight.

Transcript

[Ailee Slifring]

Damien.

[Damian Fowler]

I'm Damian Fowler.

[Ailee Slifring]

And I'm Ailee Slifring.

[Damian Fowler]

And welcome to this edition of the Current podcast.

[Ailee Slifring]

This week we're delighted to talk with Mark Penn, the chairman and CEO of Stagwell.

[Damian Fowler]

Well, where to start? Summing up Mark Penn's remarkable career. First, as a political pollster who's advised names like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair. Later, he became chief strategist for Microsoft before founding Stagwell, a digital first marketing and Commun communications Group.

[Ailee Slifring]

Mark's political background no doubt brings a much needed perspective to marketing. He argues that in today's real time, data driven world, brands must have a constant finger on the pulse of the American consumer.

[Damian Fowler]

We start by asking him how these two worlds, politics and marketing, have always been bound together. Mark, it's no secret that you've covered the water from being a political strategist to a pollster to a businessman, an author. You know, can you walk us through a little bit about how you went from polling to politics to media? That's a big question, right?

[Mark Penn]

Well, yes, I'm still trying to answer that question myself. How did I get here? You know, I kind of re strategized myself like every decade or so and I say, well, okay, what is it that I really want to do? And so I kind of started actually out as I was going to be a lawyer, and then I detoured from law to polling, and then I was going to be upholstered working for the president and I got to do that. So then I kind of detoured from there and then at a certain point, and then I love technology. So I was then kind of went to Microsoft and became chief strategy officer. And then I had this idea to say, why could I take all my experiences in polling and campaigns and running Burson Marsteller and I ran Microsoft's advertising too, and I said, you know what? I could form a better holding company because it could be more digital first. It could be more freed from the legacy assets, it could be more innovative. And so I did exactly that.

[Damian Fowler]

Yeah. Doing a little research on your background, it seems like your curiosity seems to have served you very well throughout life. Is that part of the DNA of what drives you or what motivates you to keep going?

[Mark Penn]

Well, you have to do what you're interested in. You know, I always think it's so funny. You know, my partner and I were going to be corporate lawyers, and then we decided, you know what, we like this polling thing. We have impact on campaigns and society. And we thought, oh, we're Giving up this cushy life as corporate lawyers. And we, we did a lot better doing polling than we ever would have done as corporate lawyers. So what I always tell people is follow your passion. Don't worry so much. If you do something really interesting, really well, you'll, you'll figure out how to, you know, how to manage the reward side of things. And that's much better than doing something you don't really like that you somehow think is going to be rewarding.

[Damian Fowler]

Now Stagwell, as you mentioned, offers this big marketing network that's tech driven. You know, as a leader in digital, how have you seen the two areas move together? You know, the idea of digital marketing, performance and creative. How do those two things converge?

[Mark Penn]

Well, I think they have to work together. I think that to the extent that you're creating a digital experience that is a creative activity that everyone remember, those of us who are not born digital, think of how we create a TV spot first. Those who were born digital don't think in that way. They think in how they're going to create a digital experience first. Right. And, and that takes the same kind of creativity, if not more so. Right. Because TV spots eventually had like a, they had like a, they had rules, right. And they had a boundary and they were 30 seconds and you know, and you can be like, it's actually more of an interesting open canvas when it comes to digital creation.

[Ailee Slifring]

What would you say is one thing every brand or media buyer should be thinking about today?

[Mark Penn]

Every media buyer, I think today is just thinking about how they get to find the right place for their brand. I mean, I think it's kind of the basic of who's your real target audience and how are you going to find that audience. And I think they just have to be open minded that there are so many new ways to reach an audience that they have to spread their wings a little bit. Right. I mean, I think we went from it was just TV to it was just TV and Google and Facebook to now it's Google and Facebook and TikTok and retail marketing and so many other things. And I think they just have to be open to experimenting to find where their target audience really is.

[Ailee Slifring]

Now it's no secret that the publishing industry is under a lot of pressure today. And Stagwell recently published a study called the News Advertising Study with findings that showcase that it's safe for brands to advertise next to news regardless of the topic, and that ads next to those, even like controversial topics, perform just as effectively as those within more like positive news environments, maybe like sports or entertainment. Now, in your op ed for the current, you wrote that brands think there is less downside in those positive environments, but the opposite is true, too. There is less upside. Can you tell us what you mean and why should advertisers care about these findings?

[Mark Penn]

Well, I think that I discovered, and I discovered this when I did the budgeting at Microsoft. A lot of companies have a huge hole in their media buy, and that hole is news that they will be advertising in sports and they will be advertising in entertainment and they will be blacking out news or they will be subscribing to a service that in effect blocks them out. And what maybe started it out as some good idea, you know, that you're. The ad for Boeing shouldn't appear next to a plane crash. Really somehow devolved into something affecting 25% of news articles. Seriously demonetizing journalism and is having unintended consequences far beyond that. And brand safety, seriously, I mean, I've yet to see some brand lying in the curb because their advertisement appeared in the New York Times or the Wall Street. It's a ludicrous notion to be blacking out legitimate journalistic publications for, quote, brand safety in general.

[Damian Fowler]

The business model for news journalism is sort of evolving and changing. You know, what else do you think can advertisers and publishers do to work together to make sure that journalism is thriving even as newsrooms shutter?

[Mark Penn]

Well, I think that there has to be a little bit of re education here with the CMOs and the media buyers. I think they're afraid that somehow they're going to trigger some backlash against their company. Yeah, certain, certain things have triggered a backlash. But to go back to, I've never known that backlash to come from advertising in one of the major publications. And so consequently, I think that they can reduce some of their fear levels. And then also they have to understand that news consumers, right, in about 25% of the country, maybe 23 in the country, or what I classify as news junkies, right. Who, who go in and get updated on the news five times a day. That is a great engaged audience. They read stuff. Okay. That means they're more likely actually to kind of absorb your advertisement than someone who doesn't read stuff. And so I think they really have to rethink how some of their media planning and the audiences they're targeting and get out there and experiment with news. Because again, I think, I think for the social problem here is that it's demonetizing news and putting journalists out of work. But just be greedy, Just think about your brand. I think it will benefit.

[Damian Fowler]

They shouldn't be on the back foot so much. Speaking of news, of course, this year is a presidential election year in the US and elections all around the world. What do you think are the top channels in today's media landscape for this year's US Presidential election?

[Mark Penn]

Well, I think that's kind of interesting. Look, most campaigns spend most money on tv, right? So, but as I tell commercial advertisers, you know, if you have your customers in Ohio, well, Ohio is a less of a swing state than it was, but let's say Arizona or Nevada or even Virginia, good luck, good luck buying media, you know, in the last few months here because it is going to be jammed because there's more money than ever in politics, right? And so then, then politics is then going to go over to social media, right? And I think spend a lot of money on social media all being hard and you know, and you're gonna find just from an age cohort, you're gonna find people on X or older and people on TikTok are younger and kind of, you have to kind of understand your audience and the medium. So it's interesting. You know, I came from a lot of old school TV advertising. I've yet to see how people as effectively drive a message right on social media. I think they've got to do more work. As I always say, the best digital ads in either politics or commercial have.

[Ailee Slifring]

Yet to be invented, you know, to that effort. Especially when connecting with like Gen Z ers. Do you think technology will play more of a role? Do we see candidates still sticking true to like social media or are there other channels you think they're playing even more in this year?

[Mark Penn]

Well, it's interesting that, you know, what does Trump really do? Trump does events. So his event strategy is then geared to create content that then gets distributed primarily through social media. Right. And so it's very interesting because it's almost, you know, we look here, you know, we're at something called Sport beach. And so events are back. And events aren't a substitute for the media. They generate the content that you really need. That's because people, people want content that's fresh, right? And they want to feel that they're in the moment, right? They don't want something that's old and that's canned. And so I think that's, that's really, really important. But we are seeing, look, we know that about 70% of budgets now have really gone online and that is that Is, you know, back when I was at Microsoft a decade ago, it was probably 2%. So that has gone beyond anybody's expectations. Of course, that was one of the reasons that I founded Stagwell, because we saw that and we wanted to be ahead of that curve. And of course, that's one of the things that we, you know, work together closely with the trade desk on.

[Ailee Slifring]

Now, personal politics aside, what advice would you share with Biden's team and Trump's team? Where is the gap in each of their campaigns as, as it stands?

[Mark Penn]

Well, but I would really tell both of them the same thing. I try to explain to people the math of swing voting, that if an election is 5, 5 and it switches, one person switches, it becomes 6, 4. Now it takes two people in turnout to equal one person who switches. So getting switchers is really the most powerful thing in politics. And getting switchers means appealing to people who don't agree with you. Right. And so what I would say is get out of the politics of the base, get into the politics of switchers. Reach out to the people who don't agree with you. Try to find compromises in policy that brings them in, and whoever does that most successfully will not only win, but will win in a landslide. And if alternatively, they appeal only to their base, they may win, they may lose, but they will not have changed the 5050 nature of the country.

[Damian Fowler]

Now, you know, you're known as a sage advisor. What's the best advice you've ever received?

[Mark Penn]

Yeah, well, the best advice I ever received was at an elevator in which a guy told me he was a stock analyst, and he said, buy Amazon. He said, sell every other stock you have and buy Amazon because they will be the future of retailing. And this was like when Amazon was a peanut. I, of course, thought the guy was a nutcase. And so I did not follow that advice. I would say that, though, seriously, the, you know, I've worked for a lot of incredible people, and I always try to pick up kind of what they do best, right? And, you know, I worked with President Clinton, and President Clinton was just amazing at, at synthesis. You would, you would throw incredibly complex things at, at him and he would fit them all into pieces. Or, you know, or I worked, you know, with Steve Ballmer, who's a core investor, and I just thought he was like, I didn't understand how he had 110,000 people and went home at 5:30, and how his time management was so radically different than mine. So I always try to pick up things from whomever I worked with and to see like what's the special thing, some of the special things that really work well.

[Damian Fowler]

Fascinating. Now Stagwell is no stranger to growth or acquisitions. And what does the future hold for Stagwell?

[Mark Penn]

Well, you know, I always explain we started Stagwell eight years ago, you know, at zero, we're about two and a half billion in revenue now. We continue to expand out globally and also building a series of tech products. I feel that we're a teenager now, you know, we were a baby two or three years ago and we're really now coming on as a challenger network and we're going to continue to challenge. But we think we have a lot of growth, a lot of growth ahead of us now.

[Ailee Slifring]

There's a lot of things affecting the industry, a lot of major topics that are being discussed non stop. What is your prediction for the end of 2024 and into 2025?

[Mark Penn]

Look, I think this is going to be a good year for marketing. There's going to be $12 billion spent on politics. So that's always helpful. And you know, I think we have a, we have a good, we have several companies that are in the political space. I think that, that advertising is growing generally. I think tech companies have a lot of work to do in terms of the competition now that's, that's occurring on who's going to really dominate in AI, if anybody or how are people going to have different flavors of AI. So I think there's a lot of exciting stuff going on. I think 23 was a year I couldn't wait for it to finish. You know, it was not the year that we were hoping for but 24, you know, sitting here in mid year is looking good.

[Damian Fowler]

And that's it for this edition of the Current Podcast. We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.

[Ailee Slifring]

The current podcast theme is by Love and Caliber. The current team includes Kat Fessy and Sydney Cairns.

[Mark Penn]

And remember, a lot of companies have a huge hole in their media buy and that hole is news.

[Damian Fowler]

I'm Damian. And I'm Ilise and we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review. Also tune in to our other podcast, the Current Report.