Steve Hilton on the Murdochs, David Ellison, and conservative media’s California

0:10Max:Welcome to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. I'm Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semaphore. And this week, Max and I talked to somebody who's right in the middle of a media political storm, which is the race for governor in California. Steve Hilton is the, I would say, somewhat surprising nominee on the Republican side for governor. He's somebody who's been at the intersection of media and politics his whole career, but a lot of it in another country, Britain, where he was David Cameron's key media advisor until 2012, before moving to the U.S., working in tech, and then getting a show on Fox News.

0:44Max:These California races are always a real laboratory for media, because it's a media state, not just the entertainment capital of the world, but also a place that's so big that traditionally politicians have to campaign through the media. You just can't knock on all the doors in California. And so we had an opportunity to talk to Steve about what he's learning from the middle of that crucible and about some of those big media issues facing California, particularly the flight of Hollywood, threats we reported on this week at Semaphore from Paramount to leave the state. And finally, of course, Max's personal hobby horse, which is the ways in which conservative media have been painting California as an uninhabitable hellhole.

1:22Max:So we'll have Steve Hilton here right after the break.

1:31Max:Hi, I'm Joshua Spania, VP of Marketing at Google. And you might assume I have all the answers when it comes to marketing. The truth, I'm just as curious to learn, discover the answers to everything as everyone else. We are living through a total reset of our marketing industry. The old maps don't work, which means we get to chart a new path forward. It's dynamic, it's fast-paced, and honestly, there's never been a more exciting time to be in marketing. That is why we've started a new podcast, Frontier CMO. It's from Think with Google, and I promise it's not just a bunch of corporate waffle. I'm sitting down with people who really know what's going on.

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2:42Max:Thanks so much for joining us, Steve. Great to be here. I was preparing for this. I realized that many of the people who watch and listen to this show may know you from Fox, but they may know you from the streets of California. But I think many of them may also know you as the other Republican who was on the ballot during this wild media circus around Spencer Pratt, who ran for mayor of Los Angeles, who was going to be the big Republican champion. And then actually he lost and you won, despite his big tweets and his AI videos and things. And you, meanwhile, were wandering the state with a flip phone.

3:17Max:And I guess I wonder if there's a media lesson that you took from your victory and his loss there. Well, I do think Spencer did an amazing job generating excitement and energy around his campaign. So that's a huge positive. And you'll be seeing as we move as we've moved into the next phase of this campaign now in the general election. And you're going to be seeing really us turning up the volume very much. in terms of the campaign. Because as I've always said, although it's true that California obviously needs change, a majority of Californians think the state's going in the wrong direction, we can get into all the examples of why, you know, life is so tough for people who live in California, why we need a change of government, or at least some balance in our government, after 16 years of one party controlling everything.

4:08All that's true, but it's an uphill battle. And for me now, in a head-to-head with the Democrat candidate Javier Becerra, and so there's no question that we're going to be, we not only need, but we'll be even increasing the kind of volume in terms of media that you saw from Spencer. And so I think it's very important what he did, and it was great, and it got people very excited. But of course, it's also true that you've got to have a campaign that has that grassroots element to it. And that is what we've been doing. we've been traveling the state since when i launched my campaign up end of april last year and we've been doing many of the old-fashioned things a lot of people said to me that's not how it works in california it's too big it's the fourth biggest economy in the world the biggest state in america there's no way you can do it that way you basically announce your campaign in some slightly crappy press conference and then you sit at home and phone people for money and then you spend the money in ads at the end of the campaign.

5:11That's how it works. And I just thought that sounded really terrible in so many ways. I said, I don't want to do it like that. I actually feel like you've got to earn it. You've got to go out there. You've got to meet people. You learn from that. And that's what we've been doing. We've been doing hundreds and hundreds of town halls up and down the state. And yes, it's true. The very first one, I remember we had, I don't know, 75 people show up in Pasadena, I think it was. But by the end, we were getting 500 people regularly, every single stop. And that adds up. It's thousands and thousands of people, and they talk to other people and so on.

5:43And they post on Facebook. You take pictures with everyone. And of course, we still did raise money, and we still did spend that on ads, particularly streaming, which enables you to be much more targeted in your advertising. A lot of people said, why aren't you running ads? Well, we were, but we just weren't running the kind of broadcast ads that everybody sees and is aware of. We were much more targeted in our spending. So it's not like we didn't use that. I'm on social media. We had, you know, pretty good engagement on many of our posts, not on the scale of what you saw with Spencer. So I think you need all of it.

6:15And that's certainly what we're going to be doing in this next phase of my campaign. Spencer obviously got a lot of attention from the national media in the way that he was campaigning. He was really successful at capturing attention. But when you look at, you know, how he performed actually in L.A., it wasn't that much different than, you know, how the standard Republican has performed running in the city in previous elections kind of before the actual runoff. I mean, do you think that there was something – how do you explain that, I guess, the idea that, you know, he got a lot of attention from us in the media, but in the end, the results ended up being, you know, exactly the same.

6:53Does that say any – what do you learn from – what do you take away from that? It's interesting. I don't know Spencer particularly. I've met him once. I endorsed him, and I was thrilled to see the energy and excitement he brought to their campaign. I know many people are working with many of the people who worked with him now. We're now working with them. But I don't know too much about it. The question I always had was whether the power that he brought to his argument, really deriving from the fact that his story in relation to the fire. That really resonated, particularly on, if you could say, I mean, LA is huge for those who don't know.

7:33LA County is the biggest in the country. It's 10 million people. It's about a quarter of that whole vote. We have 58 counties in California. LA County is one. It's about 23, 24 % of the vote. He was running for mayor, which is LA City. That's a subset of LA County. That's about 4 million people, but it's an enormous metropolitan area. And the fire story, of course, it affected everyone in LA, and I was here at the time, but it was very much a West Side story, in the sense of that's where it took place, particularly the Palisades Fire. And the question for me was always like, what resonance did those arguments have, and the force of those arguments on, you know, in Boyle Heights, which has now been affected.

8:22I've been a few times now already on the east side of LA, a heavily working class Latino area, just affected by a fire in the warehouse. That was the fire story for East LA just recently. Of course, that was after the end of the mayor race. So I think it may well have been also a question of the core argument and the resonance of that across the city.

8:44Max:You've done a lot of things. You worked in British politics, in tech, and in the media. And before you ran for governor, you had a show on Fox. How has the power of Fox News affected your campaign? Well, I've been very open about that and appreciative of the fact that it's given me a platform, no question. Going back to what we're saying earlier about the size of California, which is a big state, and it's very difficult to get going if no one knows who you are. And thanks to those years on Fox, both as a contributor and hosting a show, a lot of people, particularly obviously on the Republican side, knew who I was.

9:22And so that gives you a starting point. And I'm really grateful for that. I loved my time at Fox. It was great fun and a whole new turn in my career that I didn't anticipate. Learned a lot doing it and made great friends and it was fantastic. But I'm very clear that it was an important foundational point for being able to run statewide in a state as big as California. The fact that just you've got that name recognition, that's really helpful. It's not the whole story. You don't win just on the basis of that. Obviously, you need to, and if you look at, you know, audience numbers, just to take that, you know, it's, you know, you're not going to win an election in California with the Fox News audience.

10:06However much I love the Fox News audience and appreciate their support. I'm curious, what did you learn about communicating in the American political space from being on Fox News? Obviously, you understand British political communication. It was something that you did to help David Cameron, the former prime minister there when you worked for him. But what did you learn about specifically American political communication from it i feel like i should i should chip in the research note here

10:36Max:that that hilton was satirized by the bbc comedy the thick of it as i watched some of it yesterday the herbal tea drinking publicist stewart pearson if people would like to drink herbal tea yeah no i mean sometimes i drink black tea most of the time okay in the evening you know i mean i mean if we get into tea yeah i'm definitely you know i can talk a lot about tea but um that wasn't the i didn't recognize the caricature although i think i'm slowly turning into that guy i remember when when the um just physically anyway when the character came out this is a while ago now is it two ten ten plus years ago yeah at least yeah right it was still i think i was still there i never watched it i was aware of it i never watched the show even the even the even the seasons before I made an appearance.

11:26And I remember seeing the clips and being horrified about how old and fat this character was. But now that's me, so I can't really complain. Also, the character had a beard back then, interesting, I think, which I didn't until recently.

11:42Max:We all sort of turn into caricatures of ourselves, ultimately, I think. But I think also the funny thing about it is that I think I said this somewhere else, maybe in one of the debates when I was asked about what we're watching with one of my team members on the campaign trail on sort of long drives around the state. We ended up watching it. So now I have seen it. I haven't quite got to the end. It's a brilliant show. It's a really fantastic show. To get back to the question, I am curious what you learned about, you know, about political communication through kind of your time at Fox and, you know, what some of the feedback you got was, you know, from your time on there, what lessons you took away that you're kind of applying now as you're kind of seeking the, you know, the governorship.

12:24It's interesting. One of the things that I heard is very interesting because when you're a host and people come up to you and they say generally nice things, I always used to point out that I was in the perfect, you know, sweet spot of awareness, not nothing like the kind of national figure status of someone like you know one of my former colleagues at fox tucker carson for example you know well ben um who you know i as far as you know found it difficult to go out because people would come up to him and yell at him and whatever is incredibly well known and therefore has had many people who hated him as well as loved him i wasn't anywhere near that category um i had a show on sunday nights it was a very uh loyal audience and i really appreciated it but just nothing like that kind of attention so people would come up to you and say always nice things i never had one negative thing ever um in all those years and they would say something general like i love your show that was very common oh hi is that you steve nice to see i can we do a picture i love your show and i would always ask why because i just in you know seeking feedback in terms of well if there's something particularly like then i should do more of that and the thing that came up over and over again was this phrase because you're so clear you tell it like it is all this kind of stuff something something in in that nature of being direct so i think actually funnily enough the real um learning point was not from u.s media maybe it was from it was bringing some of what uk media and politics is known for to american media because to me this is just natural how you make arguments remember i was you know that was my job for a long time in in uk policy even before working for david cameron years back before then the early 90s um i worked for a while as a policy researcher at the conservative party and then uh was the campaign coordinator for our general election campaign in 1992, working with our ad agency.

14:34And really in that world of crafting messages and so on, and the tabloid culture of the newspapers in the UK, particularly strong, and all of that is incredibly direct and blunt and simple and clear. And I think that's probably what people were reacting to. In other words, it was maybe bringing some of that British attitude to US media, in fact. Is California kind of too laid back for that? I feel like the California, you know, I'm from Southern California. It has definitely a more laid back kind of less plugged in political culture than the, you know, UK, you know, the kind of, you know, hard-nosed UK tabloid culture.

15:17I know the Post is kind of trying to do this with the California Post, but I mean, do you think California is a little bit too laid back for that style of politics? no i think you know it's just especially in in a world where you know as everyone always talks about you know you got get got to get people's attention everything's so fragmented social media people look at something what is it 10 seconds before moving on you know so i actually think maybe it's even not this podcast people listen to this for a really long time they lock in right to the end no yes whatever nope nope we don't see that drop off in the data one person in California who spends a lot of time watching Fox News, supposedly, he's told this to us, is Governor Gavin Newsom.

15:57He's been on Fox News a bunch. I mean, do you kind of buy that? Do you buy his I watch Fox News every day kind of thing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do very much. And I think that he's obsessed with the media yeah to a fault um and i think that you can see in him someone who is all and in a way you could say well there's not what else can he do because his record is so bad um you know california failing on every measure you know almost every single indicator that matters california is not just doing badly but the worst performing state in america on you know cost of living housing cost gas prices, electric bills.

16:42We just named the most dangerous state when it comes to crime. Chief Executive Magazine ranking California 50th out of 50 for business climate. U.S. News and World Report ranking as 50th out of 50 states for opportunity, highest poverty rates tied with Louisiana, highest unemployment rate, et cetera, highest taxes for the worst results. And so in a sense he's got nothing to say except to sort of tell a story completely detached from reality using the media. And so it's really interesting to me to watch him, you know, the shamelessness and brazen way he's kind of fabricating this counter-narrative to what he calls California derangement syndrome, which is very deep for him because he sees it all the time, because he sees the criticism of California based on the facts of what's happened in California for many years.

17:36And of course, he's got no answer for that, hasn't been able to change the trajectory when it comes to policy or substance. So all he's got is this media narrative. And I think he's pretty good at it, actually, until you actually bring the facts, which and when the whole thing collapses. Setting aside even, you know, some of the major problems, which are, you know, I think a lot of people agree with across party lines. I mean, do you agree with this portrait that, you know, some of even your former colleagues at Fox have painted of California as a nightmarish hellhole? Both things can be true.

18:10And this is how I put it, that now, even now, with all these things going wrong, there's nowhere better than California. There's nowhere better. I mean, we have everything we need with incredible advantages, incredible natural beauty, the best weather, great universities, amazing people, a culture of innovation and hustle and the rebel spirit of California, which is why we've created so many amazing, world-changing industries over the years, from tech to Hollywood, of course, and so on, and now AI. So that's all true. And so you drive around, as I do probably more than anyone else in the state of California.

18:45I've seen the whole state. It's just incredible. It's breathtaking. And you meet people who've started companies and they're doing amazing things and life can be very good that's all true but at this and and at the same time as gavin keeps pointing out we are the world's fourth biggest economy but it's an economy that isn't really working for the people who live here because the drivers of that of the fact that we have a big economy which i'm proud of and i i'm with my plans will be the third biggest economy because we're going to cut out the bloat and regulatory nightmare that is driving businesses out and restraining our growth.

19:25But the drivers of that scale are mainly a small number of very valuable, incredibly successful tech companies generating huge amounts of revenue and tax and so on, but not many jobs. And included in that overall size of the economy number is the size of the government. They've doubled the size of the government they've increased they've basically doubled the budget in the last 10 years even though the results were so worse so that's not a healthy economy and if you dig down into it i mean you use that term dystopian of course it's not true that the whole of california is a dystopian hell hole but the other day um we came back from the east coast quick trip to the east coast from downtown la and i went to get some food after you know got there in the evening and you walk around downtown LA.

20:19That's exactly what it felt like. It really did. It's shocking how bad it is in some parts of Los Angeles. Skid Row the other week, which is not a street, it's a neighborhood. It's absolutely worse than any third world country I've ever visited. I've been to many. The place where I would push you a little bit is, you know, the third world doesn't have, you know, natural wine bars or omakases or Equinox, which you'll also see down the street from some of these kinds of things. I guess, do you feel like the media narrative, though, is more complicated than sometimes you see in, you know, the front pages of the New York Post or, you know, the Daily Mail or places that are describing it in these types of ways?

21:01Because, you know, I read that and I think that's just, that's, there are certainly these, you know, there are certainly places where these problems are playing out and that's real. But there's also, So there is this other side of California as well, which is beautiful and amazing and incredible. And that doesn't really get talked about as well in this type of coverage. What do you think about that? You're right. But that's the media, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's not that the role of the media is not to be a tourist promotion agency for California or anywhere else.

21:34Max:When you're governor, we'll talk about how you feel about that. I got some ideas for California tourism when that happens. Max, this is so obviously your career trajectory. Deputy governor for tourism promotion. Yeah, call me, Steve. One struggling California small businessman I wanted to ask you about, who you know well, and a part-time resident, I believe, of L.A., Lachlan Murdoch. You worked for him and for his dad, and I think really know them. I'm curious what you think people don't understand about the Murdochs. um i don't know what to say to that question other than i admire them greatly um there's an incredible work ethic that's the number one thing that comes to mind an incredible work ethic a real commitment to some sort of just basic common sense values as i described them in terms of um a belief in in free enterprise in america love of america and everything america represents just very, you know, I think, you know, fundamentally decent and admirable values that I agree with, and they work incredibly hard.

22:46I also love the kind of disruptor role, particularly with Rupert over the years that he's played, taking on the anti-establishment aspect of of um his character and what he's done which actually is very californian in that sense of seeing an opportunity saying well this isn't working we've got a chance to do something completely different let's completely reinvent in industry he's done that many times and so i think it's that's what i see is is incredibly hard-working innovators um who've who've who've played an incredibly positive role in the world. That's what I see. Now, you wouldn't expect me to say anything probably other than that, but I think that it's just a really amazing story, actually.

23:37Well, we have a lot more that we want to get to with Steve Hilton, but we have to take a short break. So we'll be right back with more after this.

23:50Max:This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, I talked to Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about what marketing lessons we can learn from the World Cup. We're in the middle of the World Cup, maybe the biggest entertainment event in the world, 6 billion people watching, 48 nations. How do marketers even begin to engage with an event of that scale? So this World Cup has been absolutely phenomenal. Just a wonderful reminder of humanity coming together, of teams, of communities, of fans, just enjoying each other. And it's been great. And I can tell you, every marketer in the whole world wants a piece of it.

24:27Max:We all want to bottle this magic and infuse it into our marketing programs. And one medium-term effect is, I'm telling you now, UEFA rights, FIFA rights, soccer rights, and most sports rights are going to be more expensive going forward because we're going to look back at this event and go, yes, we want to be part of whatever's coming next. So that's going to happen. As a marketing organization, Google Marketing, we've been heavily involved in the World Cup. And our real focus has been to be a companion to the matches, not just a commercial interruption. So all our assets, all our creativity, all our programs are really designed to give fans who enjoy the games, something extra.

25:05Max:Search, queries, keywords that people are looking for, YouTube dance trends, Gemini soccer tips, all the things that would help them enhance and enjoy their experience of the games. That's the way we're really showing up. And it kind of speaks to authenticity and being part of the experience, not trying to be dictatorial, top down, telling people just buy something now, but actually help them enjoy the overall game. What does this mean for marketers and how are they participating? There's been a load of really compelling marketing, but I want to tell you about something that we're doing inside of Google.

25:37Max:Pele is the world's most famous soccer player. His best goal was in 1959, but no one's ever seen it because there were no television cameras in the stadium where he scored this goal. We just have eyewitness accounts of it. Google Marketing, Google Technologists, Google Engineers have been working with the Pele Foundation, Pele's own family, to capture all those descriptions of the goal, a couple of still photographs, and using Gemini and AI to recreate the goal for the first time. It's a really good example of how I think we can give back to the soccer community. The documentary of the making, the talk about the goal is really fascinating.

26:16Max:And by the time you all hear this, it'll be out in the world. Great way to participate in the World Cup and World Cup topics without actually domineering it. Where should people go to find out more? You can subscribe to my podcast, Frontier CMO, on YouTube or on LinkedIn for our latest insights and learning about the World Cup and marketing overall.

26:43Steve, speaking of California media moguls, we reported this week that Paramount is threatening to leave California, in part because of some of the actions that the state has taken to try to block the merger that was just announced. Have you spoken to David Ellison, and how real do you think that that threat is i don't think that's not how i would characterize it i think that the story there that i'm gonna get to the merger in a minute but in terms of the thing i don't see i don't think there's any ever ever any moment when that was put forward as a threat i think it was an advisor briefing someone to say that all options are on the table first reported by our colleague rohan he's he read our report more closely than i'm describing it And as a result, you've got all this swirl of excitement from Tennessee.