Straight From The Horse's Mouth

I wrote the following piece in 2024. The argument was simple: many faceless media brands had become commodities, and the future belonged to the people willing to put their name on the work and go direct.

Last week, James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems agreed to buy a large chunk of Vox Media for ~$300 million. Look closely at what he bought and what he left behind, because the line he drew is the entire argument.

What Murdoch wanted: New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. That network is anchored by shows like “Pivot” and “The Prof G Pod”. Take a look at any piece of Prof G content and you immediately know it’s Scott Galloway’s brand. That is the parasocial premium in action: a face, a voice, a person you feel you know. High signal, hard to commoditize.

Now look at what he passed on: The Dodo, Popsugar, and Eater. This bundle is the purest artifact of the era I wrote about. When I think back to scrolling Facebook in the early to mid 2010s, I remember the deluge of useless listicles and viral videos engineered to be watched, shared, and forgotten. Though we didn’t have a word for it yet, this was, of course, brainrot. Same incentive then as now: cheap algorithmic reach, monetizable for as long as the platform allowed it, only now with the humans removed.

The Facebook algorithm shifted, the cheap Meta ad arbitrage that turned viral clicks into ad-supported page views dried up, and the music stopped abruptly. These brands were commodity content farms all along, and they got exposed.

BuzzFeed down 86 percent. Vice down 93 percent. Mic down 95 percent. Food52 down 96 percent. Same era, same structural flaw. The mighty fell, confirming the thesis we described.

– BP

Remember playing the game of “telephone” as a kid? It begins with one person whispering a message into someone else’s ear, and the message travels around the circle. Typically, by the time it reaches the last person, it’s unrecognizable from the original content.

The more friction between a news source and its recipient, the more distortion.

Newspaper revenue peaked in 2006.

That same year, Twitter was founded.

The iPhone came out in 2007, Facebook reached 100 million users in 2008, and Instagram was launched in 2010. This was a knockout combo for our collective attention spans. Businesses and media publishers realized this, and the fight for clicks and eyeballs was on.

In this early 2010s period, our Facebook feeds were flooded with silly, strange, and mostly vacuous content from groups like Buzzfeed and Vice. Changes to the Facebook algorithm (de-prioritizing features that send users off their platform to publishers’ sites) slashed traffic to the webpages where publishers hosted advertisements – in many cases their far-too-concentrated source of revenue.

Many media darlings of the 2010s have died or put on life support in the past ~5 years.

In many cases, this is because they were nearsighted in their strategy. They opted for clickbait when young people crave community. This is a key element in the shift from the attention economy to the intimacy economy. Communities (and, in the most successful cases, cult-like followings) are built through audience trust. Trust is built through transparency, authenticity, and consistency. The best way for individuals and businesses to do this is DIRECTLY.

The media businesses that have faltered in recent years have platforms like Substack, X, YouTube, and Spotify to blame. These democratized content creation and distribution — no one needs a news network to hire them for their voice to be heard. We want to hear from smart, interesting people – we don’t want to read faceless, quantity-over-quality content from difficult-to-define digital publishing brands.

From Bari Weiss to Dave Portnoy to Marc Andreessen to Tobi Lutke, business leaders are pulling back the curtain on their companies, missions, and personas by cutting out the middlemen and speaking directly to their tribes.

Why does this private equity CEO have 1 million followers on TikTok? Because he knows that at the end of the day, businesses are just people. He creates content so others can understand what motivates him as a leader, who he enjoys working with, and to pay it forward to others with wisdom and advice. His short-form videos set the tone for who he is and what he has built.

With each tweet, Substack essay, and podcast appearance, these bosses are marketing their businesses, building their brands, attracting talent, and lowering customer acquisition costs. Their content serves as the top of the funnel for many key areas of business development.

They’re not at the mercy of countless committees or consultants who carefully craft their every word before sending out a clunky press release. Instead, they’re controlling the narrative as the person who is actually in the trenches.

It’s no wonder why young people are so much more passionate about the former in each of these examples. They feel like they know the leaders and they feel a part of a community.

You can hardly set foot in a bar, visit a golf course, or even walk through the airport without seeing someone wearing Barstool merchandise. When is the last time you saw someone wearing an “ESPN” hat?

On top of everything else, going direct is just flat-out efficient. In July, Joe Biden took to X to announce his resignation from the Presidential race. There was a 16-minute gap between his post and the first report by a legacy media company.

People need leaders, and leaders need to take ownership. The leaders of the stars of tomorrow will cut out the middlemen, take communications by the reins, and earn the trust of their employees, customers, and prospects.

This piece was originally published on Dash Media on October 6, 2024.

ICYMI: This week’s podcast episode with Sid Balaga & Suraj Peramanu, Co-Founders of The 4th Quarter:

I publish an essay every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: [email protected]

– Brent