The secret to Zohran Mamdani’s winning media strategy is simpler than you think

20:34And if the things you're then saying on the medium aren't direct or clear or transparent, they're not going to break through the same way. And so I think it's about matching a clear message to a clear form of communication. so it doesn't feel lost somewhere in the middle. Well, this is a good point to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Rebecca and Morris after this.

21:09Max:Some share of our listeners are in the advertising business. I am curious, like, what even is the job of paid advertising when you've got like this social media phenomenon was kind of 20 % out of zero. I'd never heard of him as like a pretty informed voter on the back of social media. Like, how did you think about what you were doing there and kind of what worked? So we knew it's helpful having a candidate who's so consistent in their message and vision because it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for, hey, what are we going to talk about Lazar? Like we knew what we were going to talk about, but it was about introducing him to this, all these people who had no idea who he was.

21:45And we were getting these polls back where he'd be at 20%, but with 60 % name ID. And so we felt like, okay, well, now we're introducing him to 40 % of the electorate, a slightly older portion of the electorate, people who are a little bit less informed. How do we want to go about that? And we felt like at that point, there was a clear contrast between him and Cuomo, and a contrast that really was what we wanted to be delivering to voters. This is a choice between a corrupt politician of the past who's responsible for this economic crisis that we're dealing with and a bold new choice for the future who's going to make New York City affordable.

22:23And we did that through a number of an opening contrast ad to really frame this as a one-on-one race and also taking advantage of the fact that the Knicks had this kind of magical playoff run occurring. and we went all in on Knicks games, spending a massive amount of our resources and making sure that we'd have a really heavy presence there, which wasn't just about reaching all of the New Yorkers who we knew would be watching the Knicks, but also kind of tapping into New York and these viewers at this moment of possibility and hope and optimism. You know, if the New York Knicks can win a championship, Shirley Zonaldani can be the next mayor.

22:57And then from there, we went to, you know, we were able to use 15-second ads instead of the traditional 30-second ads to kind of fight this frequency battle with Cuomo having this super pack that was pouring millions in. And because his message was so clear, we felt like we could condense it into 15 seconds and get a lot of that same value out. And then with this freeze the rent ad, where freeze the rent is basically 60 % of the words in the ad. It's a bunch of people walking around saying, this guy's going to freeze the rent. Did he hear Zoran's going to freeze the rent? And an ad like that, we felt like, again, the benefit of having a clear message and clear things you stand for, you don't need someone to see it 20 times for them to understand what you're trying to communicate.

23:38They can see it once or twice and know, oh, Zoran Maldani is the guy who's running off of a rent freeze. It is funny that the Knicks thing worked for Zoran in a way that, like, I remember in 2021, Andrew Yang was, like, talking very deeply. He would, like, tweet a lot. He talked a lot about the Knicks, but it never, it obviously didn't help his campaign in any sort of way. It's very interesting to me that Zoran was able to kind of capture. Maybe the team is better, but yeah.

24:03Rebecca Katz:But it's also something Democratic ad makers don't do a lot of. I mean, my partner Tommy McDonald was talking about this for, you know, many cycles ago too. Like we have to advertise on sports more because there's more people watching live TV and who are getting into it. And I just think it's something that a lot of Democrats don't do.

24:20Max:And actually, Rebecca, like that brings me to like a broader question about what you're doing. Like you've really like your career who's become defined by this kind of like new set of Democrats. John Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, I would say, like are the two senators. I know you work for Zoran Mamdani, Morris worked for Dan Osborne, this kind of interesting, independent Nebraska figure fighting against the system. And I'm curious like what they have in common and where the sort of, the way they feel connects to their politics. Because they are kind of like, they don't feel exactly like every other politician.

24:57Rebecca Katz:No, and they're not like each other. Let me just be clear. I don't think I think a lot of these people would not want to compare themselves with the other one. But what I will say is that they all have a fundamental understanding that the system doesn't work for everybody. Right. And that like it's kind of broken and that we need to make real change here. And, I mean, when I tell this story all the time with Ruben Gallego, we were making an ad and he was saying it's not just that the costs are too high. It's that we need to tell people it's not their fault, right, that, like, everybody is struggling.

25:27Rebecca Katz:And I think there is a way to actually talk to the – when you're running a campaign to talk about the people versus talking about yourself. And I think candidates win when they connect to the people who actually live in the district that they're seeking to represent in a way that is not polished or in talking points, but is like real and true. And I don't know why it is so hard to find those candidates, but I think when you find them, you need to run them and they will win.

25:54Max:But I guess like to be a successful person who is standing up to the system, like is it important that you wear jorts?

26:02Rebecca Katz:um i i think everybody has their own personality right i mean zoran mandani has worn a suit every day for like how many days now i don't know like it's just like everybody has their own thing you know but it has to be true to who you are that's it like you can't just fake it like it's like it's like when everyone just starts cursing because they think cursing is in or they think you know like it's just like just be fucking normal right or not be normal and own it like it's not it's not that hard. Yeah, Ben, I actually don't think that Fetterman ever wore jorts. I think he just wore shorts and cargo shorts.

26:35Rebecca Katz:Gym shorts. Gym shorts. Gym shorts. That's right. That's right. I do remember the gym shorts outside in the winter thing. But I guess, you know, another kind of separate elephant in the room here, and this is a question for you, Rebecca, which is, I mean, as we're recording this, you know, there was some viral stuff earlier today about Fetterman, you know, not wanting to be there, you know, in the Senate for, you know, this big debate over the big, beautiful bill, as it's referred to. I'm really curious what your feeling is about the recent stories and everything that's kind of come out on Fetterman.

27:05I'm sure you have a unique perspective on that.

27:08Rebecca Katz:I'm really proud of the campaign we ran in 2022. I think we did amazing things, and I'll stop there. I don't really know. Yeah, I'm busy in New York right now, So I can't really speak to.

27:25Max:Are you still working for him?

27:26Rebecca Katz:I am not. I haven't been working for him for over a year. The other question that I'm kind of curious about, what's the distinction here between strategies that can be replicated in terms of like medium, as in politicians should be going on podcasts more, doing more short form videos or whatever, versus just like having a candidate who is charismatic, right? It's undoubtedly true that there were some other candidates who read all of our articles about media and tried to implement them and kind of came up short. How much of it is charisma versus kind of the medium itself? I think it's like what Rebecca was saying earlier, where it's kind of about matching the candidate to the media.

28:05And so like, you know, Tim Walls, for example, or something, I think he did it once or twice, but it's like Tim Walls could have been doing, you know, college football games and high school football games every single week. And he would have been incredible in that content. Like, would it have been great if he was like in a suit jumping into the ocean talking about freezing the rent? Probably less good. Would it be as good if Zoran was, you know, commenting on a high school football game in Texas? Like, probably not as good. But there is like, you know, matching people to areas in which they're organically comfortable in nontraditional media is a kind of critical thing across the spectrum.

28:43And I think part of the problem we get into is it's like a copycat business where it's like, oh, this worked for this person. So now let's do the exact same thing for this other candidate instead of that kind of overall approach. One other thing I'm kind of curious about here is I've been thinking a lot about the ways in which the media landscape has changed. You know, I wrote a little something about, you know, the New York Post's kind of indecision over kind of who to back and how hard to go at Zoran versus at Cuomo. I'm really curious, like, would it have been possible in this race for Mondani to still win and basically entirely circumvent the old school kind of media?

29:20Or do you think it was important to be able to do both? I don't know. How did you think about old media versus new media in this kind of context and who was consuming it?

29:29Rebecca Katz:Zoran Mandani was hit every single day by the New York Post. Like it was just every single day they were saying how fucking terrifying he was, right? And that's not how a lot of New Yorkers get their news. I mean, there's this I remember back in the de Blasio administration, a staffer, senior advisor to the mayor famously told the Daily News that their their paper didn't matter anymore. And then she basically said, you want to bet? And then just destroyed him. Right. And that was but that was, you know, 10 years ago. It is now it is it is harder for it wasn't true then, but I think it is a little bit more true now.

30:10Rebecca Katz:Like you can't ignore the media, but I don't think the tabloids rule the day. I say this like hoping not to get now killed by the tabloids, but like don't rule the day the same way, right? Because not everybody – like when I first moved to New York 15 years ago, people on the subway, everybody was reading the paper in the morning, right? Right. Nobody reads the paper on the subway in the morning anymore. Everybody's looking at their phones, right? So it's just like you have to adapt with it. You have to – and that's New York City. Like every campaign, you have to do it a little bit different where you are.

30:40Max:And yet, you know, one of the big pieces of media conventional wisdom now is that you don't have to talk to the press. Nobody talks to us anymore. Like minor congressional candidates half the time won't return your call.

30:50Rebecca Katz:I love reporters. I try and talk to reporters all the time. I just want you to know that.

30:54Max:Okay, noted that you like us. But in general, it's no longer considered like an important part of being a public figure, being a business executive or being a politician or being an athlete. just to talk to the media, to answer questions, to be open. And I wonder if that's changing too. Like I see it in tech with like the Sam Altmans of the world who go around us all sorts of ways, but are very open. And again, I noticed that in fact, Zoran, although you were running a very new style social media, new media campaign, was very, very open to the media. He was one of the first people come into the New York editorial board, just like very engaged with the press in a kind of an almost like old fashioned Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani kind of way.

31:34Max:And I was curious what that is. Like, are these people who say that we don't matter also getting it wrong? Please say yes. I think yes. I mean, like, that was a very deliberate, early on choice from Zohan, where it was like, I will talk to anyone about anything. And I think, you know, you're trying to reach a ton of different people, and different people get their news in different ways. And if you just write off media, that's a lot of, a lot of, it's less about writing off those specific publications or papers, but in some ways, it's writing off the people who are reading them, who are relying on them for their news, and that wasn't something Zoran was comfortable doing or willing to do.

32:11And so I think there's real value in it. I also think that there's a balance of using some of the new media stuff to drive narratives so that you're shaping a lot of the traditional media. And so by having his own platform, which he was aggressively putting out his vision for the city. He was then able to, you know, when he's talking to traditional media, it was a lot of questions about affordability, about halal flation, about freezing the rent. And I think those two things were able to complement each other nicely.

32:39Rebecca Katz:Yeah. And one thing you asked about the through line of my candidates, like always candidates who are comfortable in their own skin. Like Zoran can talk to the media because he's comfortable in what he has to say and he's not afraid. And I think that is something that, But, you know, I think consultants can kind of over prep their candidates and say, don't say this, don't say this. And we get these robots that don't really connect with people on a human level. And I think Zoran absolutely does.

33:04Max:And, of course, the campaign, you know, isn't over. And, in fact, a new campaign is just beginning, you know, this week as we're talking about it. And the sort of center-right, center-left, whoever they are, are desperately trying to figure out how to stop Zoran. What is your job in the general election? Like, you know, it's a different electorate. It's a different set of people. They're more conservative. What are you guys going to be trying to do? I think it's the same. Zoran launched knowing he was running against Eric Adams, thinking maybe he was running against Andrew Cuomo. And it's the same message that it was then, which is there's an affordability crisis in this city, and it's because corrupt politicians who've sold out working people for their own personal gain.

33:45And Eric Adams meets that criteria. And now since that time, not only has he sold out working people, but he's sold out the entire city to Donald Trump to stay out of jail. And so I think we feel pretty confident in the fact that we have a mayor who's legitimately compromised to a Donald Trump administration and that it only makes this kind of contrast all the more clear. I also think that, you know, we saw a lot more New Yorkers show up on Tuesday than anyone expected. A lot of young people from across the city, a lot of immigrant communities, a really diverse working class coalition. And I think a lot of that kind of the shock element of Zoran's late surge was a lot of these people didn't know much about Zoran until last week or two weeks because of the nature of how elections work and when people start tuning in.

34:32And so the one through line of the entire campaign is the more people knows on and the more he's out there, the more they like him. And so it's our job to continue to get him out there. But I think we only see the coalition expanding. Yeah.

34:46Rebecca Katz:And I would just say for all the people who are mocking like social media and, you know, oh, we just you know, like in the debates, you saw a lot of his rivals kind of mocking the fact that he's like good at videos. Because in the 14 days leading up to the last day to register to vote, 37 ,000 new registrants got ready to vote. That's in contrast to 3 ,000 in 2021. Zoran used the videos to communicate and say, guys, TikTok, let's go register to vote. And then people did it. And that is important, too. He used social media to get more people engaged and feel like they were a part of something. And I think that is something that a lot of politicians can take from that lesson from this campaign without saying, like, you know, they're scared of, you know, socialism or whatever, but they can at least see some of the stuff he did and understand that it's applicable in other races.

35:36Well, Morris, Rebecca, thank you guys so much for being here. Congrats. And really curious to see what plays out over the next few months in the general election. Thank you, guys. It's good to see you. Thanks for having us. Thank you, guys.

36:02so ben you've covered a lot of races you've heard a lot of spin from new york political figures in your in your time what did you think about what rebecca and morris had to say about uh zoran's campaign and why it succeeded from a media perspective.

36:21Max:I mean, there is a level, it's good to be reminded in a world where everybody wants to talk about data and kind of like semi-phony complex analytics, that the element of sort of intuition in this stuff is very large. The notion that they just kind of felt some kinship with the New York Knicks and went all in on that. So such a like kind of interesting moment. But I think more broadly, just that like, I think Rebecca right now is working for a bunch of politicians who stand for, in some way, people's disgust for business as usual, their desire to just like toss a hand grenade into Washington. I do think that's, I think it's not necessarily solely a progressive impulse at all.

37:05Max:I think it's obviously a kind of Donald Trump, but also you have a bunch of these guys. They are mostly guys, I think, who dress a little differently and talk a little differently. And there's some sort of class signifiers in there. They're not like, and then this is truer of Fetterman and of Ruben Gallego, but they're not like trying to prove to you how well they did in school all the time. I don't know. That clearly works really well. And I do think that if you can't both communicate well on vertical video, and if you aren't just comfortable, I am glad she said that too, because I do think it's true that if you can't just interact normally with journalists and defend yourself and say things.

37:40Max:It's just a huge liability now. So you don't think that it would have been to Zoran's benefit to talk more about being a student at Bowdoin? Bowdoin. Oh my God. Well, when we have Malcolm Gladwell on, we can ask him about Bowdoin because he like has a whole thing about how it's the worst college in America because they spend all their money on food. There's also a rebuttal. So people should check out Bowdoin's rebuttal online, lest I forget. But in any case, he didn't bring it up much. I did see somebody I know asked him about when he was going to start talking about Bowdoin. And he said, wait for the general.

38:10Max:So who knows? That's hilarious. No, but, you know, to your Nick's point, it is also interesting to me how much Zoran was able to capitalize on and speak the language of this generation's like new viral kind of New York. Like what they were doing in those videos was essentially replicate the side talk videos, which went viral a few years ago in which there were just these man on the street style interviews with essentially crazy, very unique, but uniquely New Yorkers. And, you know, when Zoran went to interview Knicks fans, it had the kind of same digital coding as that. And I think that they were able to do that a few different times.

38:51The halal video kind of captured some of that. The walking the distance of New York kind of captured some of that. It played into his image. Him being out there and basically, you know, trying to interact with New York in a way that was recognizable digitally, Lee, I think was probably pretty helpful to his campaign. And if you contrast that with Andrew Cuomo making a right turn on red, which every New York driver knows is illegal in a video that was shared, it's just the optics are quite different.

39:20Max:Yeah. And there is always with New York politics, like how much of this is just New York? And he's already is like a very classic kind of New York kid. His dad teaches at Columbia. He went to Bronx Science. The free press had some whole rant about whether that really counts as a public school, which is like the most New York possible form of neurosis. And yeah, I'm sure that like we'll have a video with the Ock by the end of the summer. Like gotta happen. But there's this question of whether it applies. Like my actual impulse is that these new media lend themselves to populists, to the left, to the right.

39:53Max:And that like moderate establishment types for ways that are actually connected to the medium and to the moment are struggling right now to break through. But I think our colleague Dave Weigel would point out that Mikey Sherrill just won handily in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger won in Virginia, and that it's also been a really good summer for totally moderate female candidates who served in the Air Force and want to fight Trump. And so I think there's more than one path here, but there is a new insurgent left that has kind of like found its medium that I think isn't going away. Yeah, but I do think that, you know, there is a level to which it is unique.

40:37It's not just the format and there's not just an easy playbook you can kind of run a million times, right? Part of it is candidate intuition and just very clearly what happened here. It was some sort of alchemy, some sort of formula that involved policy positions that resonated with a group of people, plus a fluency with the medium and good ideas for content, and then just a candidate who had tremendous message discipline and charisma and appealed to enough people within the Democratic primary. It's not going to be an easy format to replicate, though it'll be fun and interesting to see people try to replicate it and kind of maybe fall short.

41:17Max:Yeah, and in your story, you had a great anecdote about his communications director, Andrew Epstein, downloading CapCut, which is this incredible video editing and captioning software onto his phone, just to get these videos in the moment out faster. There's a real kind of immediacy that, you know, that then the folks we're talking to who are making television ads, who are pulling back a little, you know, are able to ride that energy that really is coming right from the candidate often in minutes after something happens. And it's a very kind of, I mean, that's media now. Clearly also, like, there is a level to which a new candidate who wants to run in a media-saturated race has to saturate the web with interesting and engaging content, much like we do, right?

41:59Like, it's not that dissimilar from what a successful media company has to do, which is just put a bunch of shit out constantly. And if it's good, it will continue to feed into interest in, you know, whatever thing you're doing. And maybe what Zoran did is, like, not that dissimilar to like what Emily Sundberg does.

42:17Max:Yeah, I remember early in my career when I was covering Barack Obama and we were doing these terrible videos of Politico, this poor videographer following me around Iowa. And then I saw the videos the Obama campaign was putting out and you're like, oh, these are so much better. Like we're competing with the campaign and we're just obviously losing. And I think with Trump again, like essentially like Trump's like the editor in chief and executive producer and is basically out competing the media at their own game and And we're now in an environment where we don't just get to cover these people.

42:48Max:We compete with them for attention. It's true. But for the people who are still listening to this far into the podcast, I think it shows that maybe something is we're at least resonating with them. Well, thank you for resonating with us, folks. Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Sheena Ozaki, with special thanks to Josh Billinson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, and Tori Kaur. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor is Keith Poole, the editor of the New York Post.

43:29Max:And if you're listening to this in audio, please give us a review on your podcast app. It does really matter, so we appreciate it. And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.