Scott Galloway

So one of two things has happened.

Either broadcast advertising is a terrible value now, or back when I was growing up, it was an unbelievable value.

And the reality is it's mostly the latter.

And that is you could have a shitty shoe, a shitty car, a shitty salty snack, a shitty sugary beverage.

And if you created these associations of European elegance or American masculinity or paternal love or maternal love, choosy mooms choose Jif.

You could put out a mediocre market, capture all of the emotions of the majority of the nation on a fairly limited, you know, advertising budget, and then sell 30 or 20 cents of peanut butter paste for two bucks.

So that was kind of the algorithm for creating shareholder value.

And then with Google and weapons of mass diligence that came out from TripAdvisor to AI, you've seen a vast migration of capital out of advertising into distribution, so you have Apple, or post-purchase branding, which is either influencer, social media, warranties, customer service, CRM, all that good stuff.

So I don't like the term advertising, but marketing or whatever you would call it, customer engagement, customer ROI, we need better terms.

I do think it's a decent education, learning how to communicate with people, and actually communication is a better word, and try to create emotion that results in margin.

And that is brand is kind of Latin for margin or emotion.

And what you want is irrational margins from consumers.

So

I want to drive something with a stallion logo on the hood of my car, a Ferrari, I don't own a car actually, because it says something about me.

It says I'm masculine, successful, European grace, have the money to buy a Ferrari, please have sex with me.

And I think the majority of really high margin brands are doing one of two things, making you feel closer to God or giving you the sense that you'd be more attractive to a broader selection set of mates.

But I think that the skills you get in communications is a strong one.

How to figure out a market, how to figure out what moves people, figure out distribution, figure out technology, different channels to reach them.

So I think that you have...

I think this is what I call, it's not the default career path it used to be, but it does teach, I think, really strong skills.