Welcome to the second episode of our special series, Prof G on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today. In today’s episode, Scott answers your questions about whether brands should get political, how to pivot when industry assumptions no longer hold, and why marketers must adapt to a world where trust is shifting from institutions to individuals. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
Hey there, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, the show about what happens when tech and media collide. And this week, we're talking to Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram and who also runs Threads. And he told me what Threads was originally going to be called. I called it Textagram as a joke, which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it.
Textagram, great name. You're making me regret telling you this.
Welcome to Office Hours with Prof G. Today we're continuing our special three-part series, Prof G on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today. What a thrill. Let's bust right into it. Okay, what do we have here? Our first question comes from Dom on Instagram. He asks...
more and more companies are taking political stances as part of their branding. Growing up, I was told that businesses should never talk about religion or politics in order to stay out of trouble and not segment customers. Does this hurt companies in the long run? Do you think it is smart that businesses are moving in this direction?
This is going to require some nuance. So I've served on a bunch of public company boards, seven. I'm kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal. And probably 24 private company boards. And my general view on political statements is that it's mostly virtue signaling from the CEO.
It likes to get in front, especially about three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, get in front of a younger workforce and talk about all this woke nonsense. Because why it was nonsense is because they didn't believe it themselves. They were just trying to score – Like, acquire virtue. Like, I don't have enough Gulfstreams or shares or options here, so I want to capture social status.
I think that's actually a pretty decent criticism of the Democratic Party. Instead of focusing on the material and emotional well-being of consumers, they want to pretend that they're grabbing virtue rather than actually getting any fucking thing done at the ground level in terms of what actually impacts people, see above inflation, etc.,
So I generally think it's a good idea to stay out of politics. I try to separate the person from the politics. I live just south of Palm Beach, and a lot of my friends are Republicans, and I just think they're batshit crazy. I just don't understand how they can tolerate some of this nonsense. But at the same time, I also recognize they're thoughtful, nice people, and I enjoy the friendship.
So I try to ignore it when they put out a reel saying, oh, finally, the truth that these food products cause autism. And I want to write, dude, didn't we go to college together? Are you really that fucking stupid? Because I know that will damage the friendship. So I try to separate that. I also try to separate the company from politics. Now, Profity doesn't do that.
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