#MediaSnack MEETS

#MediaSnack Meets: Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian

March 22, 2019 ID Comms Episode 30
#MediaSnack MEETS
#MediaSnack Meets: Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

If I was CEO of Facebook, "I'd lose billions of dollars for my shareholders" says Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian
But for a good reason. "I have an immodest goal to save freedom and democracy" he says. 

You may know Bob as his alter ego The Ad Contrarian, which is a regularly updated blog which Bob founded over a decade ago. It is devoted to presenting the counter argument to the marketing industry’s obsessive narrative with technology, automation and the new shiny things. 

The increasingly popular blog has evolved into speaking engagements and a series of books, most notably Bad Men which came out in 2017. 

In this episode we find out:

  • what is Bob trying to achieve
  • what drives him
  • when he’s going to quit (no time soon I expect). 
  • what Bob would do if he was the CEO of facebook instead of Mark Zuckerberg
  • what advice he would give to his marketers if he was the billion dollar CMO he frequently criticizes
  • and, whilst everyone reads his books, what does HE read for inspiration


You can check the show notes for this episode at mediasnackpodcast.com including a full transcript of the interview

So. Without further delay. Please enjoy this lively (and mildly sweary) interview with The Ad Contrarian, Mr Bob Hoffman

An ID Comms Podcast



Episode Links:

The Ad Contrarian Twitter
The Ad Contrarian Blog - First Comes The Sale. Then Comes The Social.

Bob Hoffman - Bad Men
Bob Hoffman - Laughing At Advertising
Bob Hoffman - Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey

#MediaSnack - Bob Hoffman named ‘The Copernicus of Media’


John Mortimer - Rumpole of the Bailey
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Richard Fineman - Physics Lectures
Eaon Pritchard - Where Did  It All Go Wrong?
Richard Shotton - The Choice Factory
Dave Trott - One Plus One Equals Three
Dave Trott - Predatory Thinking
Michael Lewis - The Big Short
Michael Lewis - Moneyball
Michael Lewis - Liar’s Poker






Tom Denford:

Hello everyone. I'm Tom Denford, co-founder of ID Comms. Welcome to episode 30 of#MediaSnackMeets. Recorded each week in New York, we get to meet the individuals and organizations doing great work to inspire success and drive change within the global media and marketing industry. In each episode, we find out what is behind that success, what it takes to make change in the industry, and what the rest of us can learn from that experience. My guest for this special episode is the writer, speaker and unashamed marketing loud mouth, Bob Hoffman. You may know Bob as his alter ego, the Ad Contrarian, which is a regularly updated blog which Bob founded over a decade ago. It is devoted to presenting the counter arguments to the marketing industry's obsessive narrative with technology automation and the new, shiny things. On a#MediaSnack video, a year or so ago, we called Bob the"Copernicus of Media," and as he explains, for many years he was the somewhat isolated voice on the sidelines of the business ranting at the madness of the modern digital marketing industry. But he's tenacious and his persistence with this message is having an impact. In the last few years, Bob's message has been getting louder and reaching wider and as his audience grew, many more started to really listen to what he is saying. And actually, what he is saying is the common sense that we as an industry need to hear. It is a reality check wrapped in a brilliant acerbic wit. To some he has actually become the de facto conscience of the industry. The increasingly popular blog has evolved now into speaking engagements and a series of books, most notably'Bad Men,' which came out in 2017. Bad Men is actually the marketing book most frequently referenced by previous# MediaSnackMeets guests, which is telling. If you haven't read it yet, you need to. There's a link to the book in the show notes at mediasnackpodcast.com If you have followed t he Ad C ontrarian, you know that Bob w rites and talks with a great and rare luxury and that is, he really, really doesn't care what you think. It's a gift not to have to answer to an audience o r boss, a client or any shareholders. He says,"My job is to make marketers uncomfortable." In this episode, we find out what is Bob trying to achieve, what drives him and when is he ever g oing t o quit. We also l earn what Bob would do if he was the CEO of Facebook instead of Mark Zuckerberg and what advice he would give to his marketers if he was$1 billion CMO. You can check the show notes for this episode mediasnackpodcast.com including a full transcript of the interview. So without further delay, please enjoy this lively and mildly swear-y interview with the Ad Contrarian, Mr. B ob Hoffman. Hi Bob. Welcome to# MediaSnackMeets.

Bob Hoffman:

Thank you Tom. It's great to be here. How are you doing?

Tom Denford:

Very well, thank you. I've been looking forward to this one. I know it's taken us a little while to schedule. I'm recording this in sunny Atlanta today and you're back home on the west coast.

Bob Hoffman:

I'm in Sunny California where it's supposed to be a lovely 75 today. I'm hoping that's correct.

Tom Denford:

Good. So lots to talk about. I want to come on to discuss your books and speaking and writing, which I think have become such an important voice of sanity in the advertising industry in recent years. I want to hear about the story about how Ad Contrarian started and what is it that drives you to be so prolific in telling us that we've all got it wrong. But first, let's start with the'why'. I read a great quote from you where you said,"My job is to make marketers uncomfortable." Can you explain what you mean by that and if that is a job, what exactly does that job involve?

Bob Hoffman:

Marketers, we think we know too much. We think we know things that we don't really know. I like to find the holes. I look at the Swiss cheese and I see the holes. I see the things that we pretend we know, but we don't really know and I like to point them out because I think they're the interesting parts of what we do. I think there's a whole lot about consumer behavior and a whole lot about marketing and a whole lot about advertising that we're good at pretending; we're articulate at describing our points of view about it, but I'm not sure we really know what we're talking about a lot of times. And so I like to point that out. I like to undermine the credibility of advertising aristocrats. That's what I like to do.

Tom Denford:

And you're not short of material, right? Everyday there's something new for you to write about.

Bob Hoffman:

It's remarkable how the ad industry is a never ending reservoir of material for me because there's so much that is said and done that has very little scientific backing to it and very little knowledge about it. When I first came into the advertising business, my first impression was how little we really knew. We thought we knew a lot of stuff, we said we knew a lot of stuff, but most of what we thought we knew was just the opinions and assertions of experts. It wasn't really knowledge, it wasn't really factual. And my opinion has continued since then. There isn't that much that has changed.

Tom Denford:

I think I first became aware of your writing in maybe 2009 and I'd read it occasionally because it was funny and entertaining. There was this guy in California ranting about the industry and my friends and I would share links to your blogs for fun. And then in 2011, I think it was, you published a blog post called,'First Comes the Sale, Then Comes the Social,' which I read and I thought,"Hang on, this guy makes a lot of sense." This is really good post. And I actually go back to it quite frequently. We'll link to it. If you go to mediasnackpodcast.com and see the show notes, you'll get links on everything that we're discussing today. But that particular post, for me, changed a lot. And then I began consuming Ad Contrarion somewhat religiously. So, let's go back. Tell me about how the Ad Contrarian blog started off. Did you always want it to be a blog? What happened to trigger that?

Bob Hoffman:

The interesting thing about that was that I started it before it was a blog. This was in the late nineties,'98,'99, where the dot-com hysteria had hit full stride and I was confused. I didn't see what other people were seeing. I didn't believe what a lot of people were saying. And for a couple of years there, I was an idiot until dot-com crash happened around the year 2000. All of a sudden I was a genius. But what I did, was I started writing essays to myself because the way I test myself on whether I know something clearly, whether I really understand something, is if I can write about it in a logical way. Because thinking, your thoughts go off in all kinds of directions, you're not really clear. But when you have to sit and write it down, then--at least for me--that's how I know I understand something. I'd write these little essays to myself about stuff that was confusing to me just to test myself to see if I was really thinking straight or not. These essays, we compiled at the agency and we did a little self promotion book called, the'Ad Contrarion.' That must have been I'm guessing 2003, 2004, something like that. So, we used it to send to clients to see if anyone agreed with my stupid ideas. And in about 2007, when I first became aware of blogs happening, I decided that might be a nice idea for a blog. So that's how I started the blog. And I must say, my partners in the agency hated it. They refused to connect it to the agency. It had to be my own thing, not related to the agency, because everyone was afraid to call out bullshit. When you are calling out bullshit on stuff that is accepted wisdom in the industry, you're out on a limb and my partners didn't want to be out on a limb. They were afraid of that. And so it became a personal thing rather than an agency thing, the Ad Contrarian blog.

Tom Denford:

I think it's fun that you called it the Ad Contrarian, because I guess that gives you a lot of room, a lot of license. The trouble as you have discussed, maybe it's become so important and influential there's a risk you cease to be contrarian at all. Maybe the industry is slowly coming around to your way of thinking. If you remember on a#MediaSnack video episode, we called you"The Copernicus of Media," because for years many dismissed you as maybe this crazy, angry guy on the fringes of the industry. And eventually, we've all come to realize that you've been showing us the truth all along. And if you don't know, Copernicus--listeners might be aware--was the guy who originally said that the earth moves around the sun and he was persecuted for that view. But eventually, obviously, we all came to realize that he was telling the truth all the way along. So, Bob, have you been conscious of that growing influence? Did you anticipate that it might start to change the way we think about the industry?

Bob Hoffman:

No, it never occurred to me that I would have any influence at all. I did it for myself, really. I wrote the blog for myself because I was frustrated. I saw so much nonsense that I just had to write it. And for the first couple of years, nobody read it at all. If I got 40 people a day, I thought I had a good day reading the blog and then something happened. I was out in Hawaii on vacation. I wrote something and it seemed to me, for the first time, I had actually found my proper voice in what I was trying to say. From then on, the blog seemed to gather momentum and I'm not sure I've influenced a whole lot of people. I hope you're right. I hope I have. I never thought it would do that. I never thought it would become a thing. Maybe it has and maybe it's done a few people a little good. I hope so.

Tom Denford:

So the blog has then evolved into a number of books, which have also been hugely entertaining but influential on the industry, highlighting the madness of the industry. One in particular,'Bad Men,' as a book really feels like an important piece of work and is well discussed. What was it that was driving you to write a book like'Bad Men?'

Bob Hoffman:

'Bad Men' came from, honestly, the first time in my life I ever undertook something completely selflessly. Most of the books I write, they're for self promotion and I'd do speaking gigs and all that kind of stuff. But'Bad Men' I really felt intensely about and I did it because I felt I had to do it. We don't realize, we just don't realize, how dangerous we've become. The advertising industry, in years past, if it was bad, it was annoying; you'd see a commercial and say,"Ah, that's stupid. What do I have to watch this for?" But now, it's truly the advertising industry led by spyware, by tracking, by consumer surveillance has become very dangerous. And we don't realize we're in the middle of it and we don't realize how much damage it's doing to society, to the rights of individuals and we don't know where it leads. We know what happens when governments know everything about us. We know how bad that gets. We've seen the Iron Curtain and we've seen the Gestapo, so we know when governments know everything, follow us everywhere, know who we're talking to, know what we're talking about, and have secret files on us. But we don't know what happens when marketers have this. This is unprecedented. And now, the marketing industry is doing exactly that. They follow us everywhere. They know everyone we're talking to. They know what we're saying. They read our emails and our texts. They have secret files on us that influence our lives in ways that we can't understand and that aren't always apparent to us. This is extremely dangerous. It's never happened before. Our industry has been terribly irresponsible in not recognizing this and in not reacting to the realities. Instead, we have our heads in the sand. We're pretending that this may be a good thing for marketers, so it must be good. No, it's not good. The rights of individuals, the strength of democratic societies is far more important than the convenience of marketers. And we have to start thinking about how we're going to limit the amount of information that we are collecting about people.

Tom Denford:

So regular readers will know, you take a particular and very regular objection to Facebook and some of their surveillance approaches to gathering user data. So, I'm assuming you don't use Facebook yourself?

Bob Hoffman:

Well, I actually do have a Facebook. I have a Facebook and a Twitter account and I kind of have to, because I have to see what's going on. If I'm going to write about it, I kind of have to...and honestly I like Facebook. It's not Facebook that's the problem, it's tracking that's the problem. That's what we don't seem to understand. If Facebook were just a social network--I have friends across the country--I love it. But they don't need to track us. That's what's doing the damage. And one of the problems that we have, is that we're being insulated, we're being protected by Facebook and Google, because the public thinks and the press thinks and the media thinks that Facebook and Google are the bad guys. But who are they doing all this data collection for? For us, for the advertising industry. But we're not getting the heat that we deserve for this. They're taking all the heat for us.

Tom Denford:

Okay, so indulge me for a second. I want to imagine that in a parallel reality, Mark Zuckerberg realizes the error of his ways and perhaps after an extensive worldwide search, asks Bob Hoffman to replace him as CEO. So, what would you do as the new CEO of Facebook?

Bob Hoffman:

I would end tracking. I would lose billions and billions of dollars for my shareholders, but I would end tracking and I would go to a traditional advertising model. They have 2.3 billion viewers monthly. There's no reason why that cannot be monetized into a wonderfully profitable advertising medium without having to track people. I mean, we've had decades of successful advertising media that didn't track people, didn't follow them everywhere, didn't collect private personal information about them and they were brilliantly successful. All the television and radio and newspaper and magazines, they all did beautifully well. They didn't have to track people. But now we're told by the online advertising industry that tracking is essential to their business model. It's complete bullshit. They could be very happily successful without having to track people. They reach plenty of people every day. There's no reason why they have to be spying on us everywhere we go and everything we do.

Tom Denford:

Yeah, I agree. I think maybe this crept up on marketers. They were sold the sizzle without understanding what goes into the sausage. I do think we're starting to see a change on marketer's sentiment on this...small, green shoots perhaps, and it's early stages, but some of the CMOs or media leaders that we deal with are becoming aware that they have a responsibility over where their advertising goes, not just the internal accountability to make those dollars drive sales. Some are talking about programs which acknowledge the importance of media sustainability, that as you said, some of these issues over data privacy are being created for the advertising industry and really for no other reason. Do you get a sense things are improving and marketers are starting to feel more responsible about what happens when they use certain advertising platforms?[P&G Chief Brand Officer] Marc Pritchard's speeches, maybe in recent years, is that a demonstration that marketers are realizing that they can"vote with their dollars," as Marc said, and that this can change the behaviors of these platforms?

Bob Hoffman:

One of the interesting comments you just made, Tom, is that you think that marketing and media and advertising people are starting to get aware of this and are starting to think about it and I think you're right, but here's what's happening. There is no one who I've talked to about this who doesn't agree that it's getting out of hand and that something has to be done. Nobody disagrees with that and yet nothing is being done. It's all talk. There are so few in the leadership positions in companies, in trade organizations--the least in the USA--who are doing anything about this other than talking and talking just isn't enough because we're getting to a point now where it's getting way, way too dangerous. We've seen what's happened. People are losing confidence in the electoral process, they're losing confidence in democratic institutions...Journalism is being terribly hurt by this and we've got to get our arms around it faster. We're on a very slippery slope. It's getting bad and it's getting bad fast. The ad industry really needs to wake up and do something.

Tom Denford:

So, how do we create action? Trade bodies are serving a broad need, but the CMO's are the ones who send a message to their teams that trigger those actions. So, let's just play pretend again. Bob Hoffman is now CMO of a giant CPG business. What messages are you giving to your marketing and media teams?

Bob Hoffman:

I am not a media strategist, you are. I am not qualified to give specific answers to that question. I'm a copywriter. But here's the way I see it in the large picture: If I'm a CMO, I have three alternate ways to go. Number one is to continue down the path I'm going on where more and more data is collected, where people's privacy is being disregarded and I can continue down that path, and to me that's the path to hell. The second path is we could go back to the way things used to be. That's impossible. Sadly, you can never go back. The technology exists and you can't go back to doing things the way you used to do them. It just doesn't work. There needs to be a third path and the third path is to use technology but not use it in a way that's personal. We can still use media technology. We can still use ad tech, but not ad tech that is based on the spying on people and on the surveillance of people. Now, I don't know what that looks like. I'm not a tech guy and I'm not a media guy, but I'm sure there are a great many smart people, including yourself, who can figure out how ad tech can be utilized to improve the value of advertising without spying on individuals. If I were to CMO, that's what I would have my staff working on. How can we do this without hurting society, without hurting democratic processes, without hurting individuals?

Tom Denford:

Do you think the industry needs to be regulated, though, to achieve this?

Bob Hoffman:

Yes. We have proven to be completely irresponsible in this. I am not a person who i s"regulation first." I'm not that kind of guy, but in this case, it's completely clear that we are not mature enough and not responsible enough to control our own bad instincts. You hate to put it in the hands of the Washington knuckleheads and the lawyers, but in this case something has to happen and so I am in favor of regulation.

Tom Denford:

Are we close to that tipping point, do you think? Or, now that the public is more widely aware of the challenge of the Facebook approach, if we look at that, maybe people didn't realize that Facebook was using their data in the ways we've described. A scandal like Cambridge Analytica suddenly brought this onto the front pages of the newspapers and really to the public's attention.

Bob Hoffman:

Can I give you a little anecdote on that?'Bad Men' came out about eight months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the very first thing I mention in the introduction to the book is Cambridge Analytica. So, when that happened, I said,"Hey, maybe I'm not an idiot." The first thing it did was-- I just joked about it--but it did kind of validate for me that I wasn't just crazy. The second thing it did that I think was very valuable, was that it brought to the attention of the public some of the dangers of tracking and surveillance marketing and how that can be used to undermine democratic processes. That was the alarm that finally went off in the minds of a lot of people. But right now, news doesn't last very long in this world and people forget and people are not motivated enough yet to stand up and do something. I'm very nervous that this is going to evaporate, because the the near term benefits of the psychological drugs that we get from social media are more powerful in the minds of many people than the theoretical down-the-road dangers of all this. So, I'm not really sure we have connected yet to the average person in the street and explained just what dangers lurk ahead for them if we continue down these roads. My next book is a book about delusions and it's about the delusions that exist in the advertising industry and in the marketing industry. It's not necessarily about the dangers of tracking and surveillance. There will be some of that in there. The working title for the book,'Delusional: How marketers are wasting billions on fraud and fairy tales,' so you can see which way the book is going. The two things that I'm most concerned about now that I'm writing about most are of course, A: Tracking and B: Fraud in the advertising business. Our relationship with the public has never been great; we've never had a great reputation as a business with great integrity. But Gosh, we've lost so much in the past few years. And the fraud and the spying have done absolutely nothing but weaken our position with the general public even more. The people who are supposed to be leading our industry are just not, they're just not. They don't have a handle on these issues. They pretend they don't exist. I hope that what I'm writing and what I'm saying has an effect, at least to some degree.

Tom Denford:

And is that your audience with this book? The marketing leadership to drive action?

Bob Hoffman:

Yes. And I'm not sure how the book is gonna turn out because I'm maybe one third finished with it and I really don't know where it'll wind up. I have a goal, I have a very immodest goal and my immodest goal is to save freedom and democracy. That's what I'm thinking about. Of course that's not actually what I'm going to do, but that's the way I think about it because that's where we're going with this and we don't realize it. I have to do whatever I can to get that message out into the world. I hope I can do it a little.

Tom Denford:

So looking ahead, you have a new book coming out later in the year, which we're obviously all looking forward to, but where do you want to go with all this? What are you trying to achieve? Were you sent down to save us all from ourselves?

Bob Hoffman:

Yeah. God sent me down here to save the world. No, I just want this story to be told. That's all. If someone else were telling it better than I would shut up, but we don't realize how dangerous we've become. It's a really important message for our industry and for our society that advertising not be allowed to do things that we would never allow governments to do. We wouldn't allow governments to follow us everywhere we go. keep track of everyone, read our emails. We wouldn't allow them to do that. There would be protests in the streets. But we're allowing marketers to do this. It makes no sense. You know it's going to wind up in governmental hands because governments are brilliant at inventing crises at which they need to take extraordinary measures, which means gather all the information from all the marketers and find out exactly who we are and what we're doing and who we're talking to. You know the day is going to happen that that's going to come. It always does.

Tom Denford:

Now, as you all know, maybe from previous#MediaSnack MEETS episodes, all of our guests tend to be involved, in some way, in change in the industry for the better, hopefully. So, I always want to know where our guests go to for their own inspiration and motivation. And they often give me two or three books that they recommend or blogs and things that they read. And you'll be delighted to hear that your books are frequently mentioned, especially'Bad Men.' I'm really curious to know what you read for inspiration. I have visions of Bob Hoffman's nightstand piled with dark dystopian fiction or weighty spy novels...or are you digging through Senate hearing papers over your cornflakes?

Bob Hoffman:

It's actually exactly the opposite of that. I read for entertainment. There are some people who are heroes of mine who I read. One is a fellow named Richard Feynman, who was a Nobel physicist, but just a brilliant guy, just fascinating to hear what he had to say. And his writings have inspired my thinking about science and the absence of real science in the marketing and advertising world. In our field, the books I've read recently, Eaon Pritchard's book,'Where Did It All Go Wrong?', Richard Shotton's,'The Choice Factory,' anything by Dave Trott I love. But not heavy marketing, not in the sense of marketing studies, not the kind of stuff you'd read in universities. I also like light fiction. I like John Mortimer's,'Rumpole of the Bailey.' So yeah, I'm not a reader of heavy literature or textbook-style stuff. I read for enjoyment more than for education.

Tom Denford:

That's great. And we'll link to all of these, plus your books, Bob. Go to mediasnackpodcast.com to see Bob's reading list in the show notes. I have an idea for you actually, if you're familiar with Michael Lewis--brilliant writer. He wrote'Moneyball' a nd'The Big Short.' B rilliant at getting into industries and writing about them in a really accessible way. A few of his books have obviously been made into movies. I just think he's the guy that would be able to take all of this stuff that we're all writing about--the stuff that we're talking about today--and maybe take that to the next level. I just think it'd be really interesting but to a wider audience. And I've wondered whether he's aware of the mess of the advertising industry. Do you think maybe we could lobby him to think about that for o ur next book.

Bob Hoffman:

He lives right down the road here in Berkeley.

Tom Denford:

Yeah. Good. Maybe we can pitch him an idea.

Bob Hoffman:

Okay, let's do that. I'm on board. The other thing we need to do, I think, in the ad business, is to get back to respecting creativity and to valuing creativity. I think we have done ourselves a lot of damage by being so obsessed with data. Now, data is just another word for information and it's important to have and you have to have information to make good decisions. No question about that, but we have overplayed the role of data. I mean, do you think Coke doesn't have the same data that Pepsi has? Do you think Ford doesn't have the same data that Chevy has? Do you think McDonald's and Burger King don't have the same data? Do you think Budweiser and Coors--they all have the same data. It's not how much data you have, it's how good you are at utilizing that data. And that means interpreting it and synthesizing it and that requires intelligence and creativity and imagination. That's the value of data. It's in applying it to an imaginative and creative thinking. That's how you get the value out of it. We have lost that idea so badly. We're seriously devaluing what we do and that is making good ads and making good communication. It's a trend that really needs to be thought through and we need to challenge the thinking about that a little more, because we're going way down the wrong road, I think.

Tom Denford:

Before we go, I want you to look ahead 12 months. What do you want marketers to be doing or thinking differently? And then looking back a year from now, what change would you like to have happen in the industry?

Bob Hoffman:

I want them to be thinking about how they can utilize creativity and imagination to improve their businesses. And that means finding the most talented, creative people you can find, the most talented creative agencies you can find and working with them and listening to them. And second, I want the era of wild west data collection to be over, that we recognize people's privacy as a right and that we stop abusing it. Those are the two things I'd love to see happen in the next year.

Tom Denford:

Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian. Thank you.

Bob Hoffman:

Thanks, Tom.

Tom Denford:

Would you like to meet on future episodes? Please let us know at mediasnackpodcast.com where you will also find previous guests, including leading media executives from companies like P&G, L'Oreal, Mars, and many more. Plus some of the industry's most provocative thought leaders, people like Professor Mark Ritson and Gary Vaynerchuk. You can subscribe to get new episodes each week, and if you liked this episode and you think somebody else would, then please do share it. Thank you so much for listening.

Introduction
Welcome Bob
Why do we need the Ad Contrarian?
How did Ad Contrarian start?
What prompted the book 'Bad Men'?
If Bob Hoffman was CEO of facebook...
If Bob Hoffman was billion dollar CMO...
Does industry need regulation?
Bob's long-term ambition
Recommended reading
Get back to respecting creativity
Hope for the future
Future guests