Film Credits

In 2015 I gave a presentation at the DLD Conference about brands and tech. The video of the talk went semi-viral on YouTube after a music industry analyst (@boblefsetz) featured it in his newsletter. Soon after, I had a book deal; I was writing this newsletter every week; CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg were calling me for on-air spots all the time; and the firm I’d founded a few years earlier, L2, began growing 60% a year. I built a studio above my garage to handle the pace of livestreams and TV hits. After working my ass off for 25 years, I was an overnight success. The lesson? Our society, for some reason, links credibility with appearance in a video format endorsed by an umbrella brand (i.e., a broadcast network) or millions of views/likes on a platform.

When the pandemic hit, Vice TV convinced me we could do an entire show remotely, from that home studio. My wife cried after she saw the first episode. And not good tears. More like “I am deeply disturbed at how bad this is, and what it might mean for our family” kinds of tears. Vice wanted to renew for more episodes … but I said no. The quality wasn’t there, and I realized that my actions need to match my words: I shouldn’t be producing an ad-supported show while I’m publicly criticizing how advertising is media’s carcinogen. That flummoxed them. Being on TV is an addictive substance, and not many people walk away.

Bloomberg, a firm I admire, asked me to do a show for them. With launch just days away, and four episodes in the can, they asked me to do some promotions for social media. In one, I dressed up/down as a “bitcoin miner” (inspired by David Hodo’s construction-worker character from the Village People) and tweeted it out. Twitter liked it, and so did the Bloomberg execs, at first. But the video offended one, or more (still not sure) people in the newsroom, and management asked me to clarify that they hadn’t approved the video (true) and to apologize. I refused as … I wasn’t sorry. The execs were generous with me and wanted to figure out a way forward. However, after meeting with my team, we decided that if we couldn’t do what we do, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. So we were canceled (sort of) before the show aired.

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Πηγή: profgalloway.com