Episode 1271: If you're explaining, you're winning

Zain 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 1271. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan. And Corey, not with us, one

Zain 0:09

one Stephen Carter. This guy has decided to take a break, a vacation of sorts, a getaway. Yeah, I

Corey 0:18

I think he's going to a hedonism resort, if I recall correctly. My recollection is he said, Corey,

Corey 0:25

Corey, I'm going to a hedonism resort, don't tell anybody. buddy so my recollection

Zain 0:29

recollection this is a patreon episode

Zain 0:31

yeah when i bug

Zain 0:31

your phones um reverse patriot act uh you know just making good do you think yeah just making good reverse and the wrong country so i feel like it's it's totally fair um yeah spying on white people in the country next door uh reverse patriot act um

Corey 0:50

um reverse patriot so

Zain 0:52

so when i reverse patriot acted you guys i heard the same thing so i i will double verify uh that's what i heard that he told you that's where he was going and he's um he's unsure when he's going to come back from from hedonism does

Corey 1:05

this mean that um you um you also heard the 30 minutes where i complained about having to do an episode with just you just out of curiosity i mean i i don't care one way or the other i'm just i'm just curious yeah

Zain 1:16

yeah no no and hey while you're thinking about that go ahead oh thank you i'm

Zain 1:19

i'm Let some traditions remain constant. By the way, just so you know, I have bottled drinks here, which means life is going really well for me. I don't have to do the whole can thing that you're doing. That's weird. Are cans a sign of poorness? That's what we're going to discuss.

Zain 1:36

I always thought- Cans are amazing. No, no, no, no. Here's the thing. When you have someone over, okay, Corey, here's the thing. When you have someone over, okay, removing alcohol from the equation, okay, for a second.

Corey 1:47

I won't, but okay. But

Zain 1:48

But do it, right? This is our ongoing sort of discussion on items more important than politics. Removing alcohol from the equation.

Zain 1:55

Do you feel more classy giving them a canned drink or a bottled drink?

Corey 2:00

Okay. I think can classier than plastic bottle, glass bottle classier than can. You

Zain 2:07

right. The ordering is no, no, no. Cans at the bottom, plastic bottles in the middle, glass bottles at the top. I think we agree on glass bottle. Let's remove that from the equation. Oh,

Corey 2:14

Oh, we do agree on glass

Zain 2:14

glass bottle. Okay. And regardless of what's in it. It's nice.

Zain 2:17

Yeah. Okay. So glass bottle is fine. Yeah, we can find some common ground. That's great. I fundamentally disagree with you. Now, the only thing the San Pellegrino, which is what you're drinking, the only way I would buy that argument, Corey, that can would be above plastic bottle, was if it was can with foil on top. Now, what I see you drink there is not can with foil. I see you drink foil-less can, which means dirty top can does not beat out generic plastic bottle, regardless of what's in it.

Corey 2:46

I got to tell you. Yeah. The aluminum can is one of the great marvels of the modern world. It's very good, very recyclable. We should all be using cans all of the time. Forget these bottles, this plastic nonsense. Get with the times, folks. Cans, they're back. You heard it here first. That was

Zain 3:03

was actually a much weaker take than I thought. I was taking a sip from my bottle, hoping that something excellent

Corey 3:08

excellent would come. You

Zain 3:08

You could do a spit

Zain 3:09

Yeah, something would be coming from it.

Zain 3:11

Why do you think they have the aluminum top on those cans? Seriously, serious question. as a marketer do you think it's like pure marketing no

Corey 3:20

i think it's because they're made in a filthy factory where rats are shitting on top of the cams all of the time okay i'm

Zain 3:25

i'm going to take the other side i think it's pure marketing cool uh that's what we're doing uh cory let's let's move it on to our first and our only topic uh our first and only topic the gatekeeper gap uh folks if you're tuning in this is a a combination that you haven't heard before which is cory hogan

Corey 3:43

hogan and I saw it, but I don't remember anything about it. Neither

Zain 3:47

Neither do I. But this, now knowing Carter's at his hedonism camp for a while, and he may not be joining us, Corey, I think it's finally time that we give the listeners what they haven't asked for, which is the long-awaited Corey Hogan Look, Listen podcast. Can you give some folks some background on what this is, and why we haven't gotten it off the ground up until now?

Corey 4:11

Look, I will not do that. I have absolutely no interest in doing that. Listen.

Zain 4:18

me tell you what this is going to be folks okay cory um as you may know might be um the self-described big brain of the podcast uh often uses the words look and listen uh sometimes in an educational but largely in a condescending tone um to to both his fellow panelists alongside you the listener and we wanted to formalize that with this being the first episode of cory hogan look look, and listen. We want to discuss one topic where Corey will look and listen and lecture us about why certain things happen in certain ways. And Corey, we've got the perfect topic to dive into because just this weekend, today being December 3rd— Oh, somebody even

Corey 4:58

even more patronizing than me. Well,

Zain 5:00

Well, arguably, you're a patronizing twin, which, by the way, to complete the circle, this is a Patreon episode. And thank you for patronizing at Patrons. Corey, the

Zain 5:10

the most patronizing politician we have seen in a long time has come out with a 15-minute Vox explainer-style video that he has posted on his socials. I'm talking about none other than Pierre Polyev. He has a video called Housing Hell. He put it up over the weekend, 9.30 or so in the morning yesterday. On Twitter alone, Corey, 2 million views, another nearly 200,000 on YouTube. I suspect more on on Facebook and other platforms. It's racking up the views. I'm hearing a lot of conversation about it. It's something that I haven't seen in recent memory. So before I want to discuss the substance, maybe we can discuss the form if you're open to it. And when I say it's a 15-minute explainer video by Pierre Poliev, I'm not joking. It's 15 minutes long. It's voiced over by Pierre Poliev end to end. And he does a Vox-style explainer where there's highlighters on screen over charts, circling different things, infographics, motion graphics moving across the screen, you know, streams of documents rolling in, b-roll cut, you've seen this before. The reason I'm describing it, because I'm trying to, you know, jog your memory, folks, you have seen something like this before. And if you haven't seen this video, you have seen this format, you have seen this type of video. Corey, let's

Zain 6:27

let's discuss the form.

Zain 6:29

And let's just start with have you seen a politician do something like this before? I can't recall it but i also also haven't racked my brain deeply to see if someone has but i may have mused that that politicians should do something like this but i haven't have you well

Corey 6:44

well so not with this level of polish but there was a very famous incidence uh with ross perot where he did this where he purchased a bunch of air time on television and effectively with a bunch of charts explained what he perceived the problems of the world to be how he resolved them and and And, you know, looking more locally here in Alberta, the very first Nenshi election in 2010, a similar kind

Corey 7:07

kind of purchase of media was done where

Corey 7:10

allowed him to then explain these things. But it was more of a town hall format in that case.

Corey 7:14

You know, I would say this is kind of the modern take on it. You're right. It's that Vox Explainer style, which has been, like, to

Corey 7:21

to fatigue used by so many people over the time.

Corey 7:25

You know, the highlighting and the cuts and, you know, the video and the charts. every

Zain 7:29

every two or three seconds almost you know oh sure yeah yeah yeah i

Corey 7:32

i mean it's it is it is a very common way to put together a youtube video these days we don't really see political parties do this necessarily but we see political parties getting a lot more into the content

Corey 7:46

content business right and and so i guess you know i was maybe going to talk about this a bit later but let's throw it on the table right now

Corey 7:53

of the biggest shifts in politics in in my lifetime in your lifetime time two you just don't know it yet but i'm about to explain it

Zain 8:00

it to you thank you i can't wait to listen wow that's

Corey 8:03

that's good i can't

Zain 8:04

can't wait to listen cory one

Zain 8:07

one of the big the big shift maybe

Corey 8:09

the big shift is that we've

Corey 8:13

we've moved from earned media being the primary to owned media

Corey 8:17

being the primary right so some parties haven't totally figured it out some parties are doing it and haven't even realized it's what they're doing and then still spend an awful lot of time on earned as a parallel maybe less useful stream the media definitely hasn't figured it out the media still think they're particularly important they don't even i think fully realize how much they're just part of an owned strategy uh but we've touched on this a few times the idea that you do an interview just for the clips you know vivek style where you just go on and no matter how much you're beaten up for it you've got the clips of you saying the thing you want to say on

Zain 8:51

i would say if i i can jump in on this just to just to agree and

Corey 8:53

and add a proof point otherwise it's just like 60 minutes of me talking you go the

Zain 8:57

the most interesting proof point i would say this week is lethbridge mp rachel thomas going after um the the heritage minister uh st ange to try to get a clip for social like like almost acknowledged afterwards and further tweeting and like sort of uh corroborating of of information that oh she was just clip chasing like this was like straight up social clout chasing on the floor of a committee right

Zain 9:26

right like this is yeah so yeah yeah for

Corey 9:29

for the for those who haven't heard or for those who are listening to this a bit later and is like what the hell are you talking about because this feels somewhat ephemeral if you're not in quebec uh we had um

Corey 9:39

we had the lethbridge mp rachel last name you said i just forgot yeah

Zain 9:43

yeah formally Formally Harvard, yeah, yeah.

Corey 9:49

She hectored the heritage minister saying, can you answer in English? Because

Corey 9:54

Because the heritage minister was answering entirely in French, Pascal Saint-Ange, because she

Corey 9:59

she knew that made it not clippable. So both parties were actually playing this game of trying to deny or get the clip, right? Right. And and so

Corey 10:07

so then by going out and saying, can you say it in English, created a bit of a firestorm in Quebec, because, of course, this French is one of the two official languages. You are more than free to use French in a committee of parliament. And so it became a thing. It became a big thing. But you're right. The entire reason that Rachel Thomas was doing this was to chase what we all assume the social clip. Right. The clip of her asking the tough question and getting the unsatisfactory answer. And so it was all about that board on social. But, you know, you see that not just in terms of Hansard

Corey 10:38

Hansard and video from Parliament, you see that in situations like, well,

Corey 10:43

well, when Danielle Smith puts up something talking about a columnist said this was a great idea, and she just takes that piece of what the columnist said and did it. like earned

Corey 10:52

earned media right now really

Corey 10:56

just there to serve the owned media channels you know they're just looking for additional proof points in their own that they can kick out and they know that most of their listeners in this super partisan super media fragmented age are just going to see it from them you know not the media and insofar as they see it from the media in many ways it's likely because they've been sent there right like click through here this is another thing that supports me here. And

Corey 11:21

that's super interesting. Like that changes everything, you know, that owned has become so primary. Well,

Zain 11:25

Well, what is fascinating about it, and you're alluding to the US example, I think is a good one, because we're seeing it all over the place. If you just look at the Republican primary, and it's not to say that this has just happened in this cycle, right? You and I have used this in our politics, we've adopted some of these tactics of owned media without even fully acknowledging that it's owned media, or like actually, in our strategy or communications documents saying under-owned. But here's one thing that we've all started to do in some ways, which is merchandise on any campaign, right? This ability to, and it used to be merchandise, just used to be like things for the volunteers. But now every campaign that I know, and you're going to see this, you know, if there's a NDP leadership race in our province, for example, in Alberta, you're going to see this happen, right? Merch is going to be part of it. Another way to kind of raise a couple of bucks to brand people, to make them human billboards. uh from merchandise to like having clips that are more like instagram influencer style right leaning into those tactics the the prime example for me is vivek ramaswamy's people putting together like forbes-like articles about his business success um or you remember him shirtless playing tennis hitting those shots like above his waist baseline like he's playing pickleball but he you know wants to that's i mean that's that's like a perfect example right

Corey 12:40

right like that is the perfect example because can i tell you in 2012 in alberta um there was a there was a photo op that we arranged where it was raj sherman going for a jog he was leader of the liberal party at the time going for a jog with me actually with his campaign manager and it was just a clip of him jogging you know with me and um and

Corey 13:01

and that ran in the newspaper right but nowadays newspapers don't send photographers to that kind of shit they're not doing that soft stuff and it's just being done through owned channels right so you try to present this image of yourself through this controlled environment that you have so much control over it's very you know it's very kind of broken but you know owned has its challenges and i think one of the things as we talk about this shift from earned to owned is that in some ways that is intrinsically tied to this super partisan world that we now live in now right

Corey 13:32

right because you're seeing just one side of things all of the time and that's a really great way to drum up your base get them really militant get them to hate the other guy get them to donate even but it also means you're less likely to access other voters and we used to do this back in our day in hill and olton you'll remember we

Corey 13:52

would do message testing with boards we would do these uh you know randomized

Corey 13:57

randomized surveys essentially where you would get a message a picture and it from a voice we've talked a bit about this before right because we we knew for some people some voices would be more receptive they'd be more receptive to them than others and so you test one voice you see if they're receptive you same the same message with a different voice how does that change how they deal with it now

Corey 14:17

now if your voice is only your political party and kind of the political allies it's pretty easy for people to immediately discount or just avoid like i can't tell you you

Corey 14:27

told me we were going to be talking about this particular 15 minute clip. I hadn't watched it as of like 40 minutes ago.

Corey 14:34

I can't tell you how little I wanted to watch it, right? Because I knew what I was going to be getting and I knew the voice and I knew it was Pierre Poliev, but you told me I had to and so I watched it.

Corey 14:45

But that's pretty uncommon, right? Like we don't tend to go out and look at things from voices that we know we don't want to hear from.

Zain 14:51

It is interesting and like maybe not to wrap up like the broader sort of the strokes of the conversation around this transition of owned media. But one of the things that I think we have learned and acknowledged is that, you know, you talk back to our Hill and Olten days, which were about a decade ago, I would say at this point, and we knew this trend of owned was, frankly, it happened in some ways, and it was going to happen more. This conversation of the overarching

Zain 15:13

overarching decline of the media, as we've heard, has been going on for a long time. I think one thing we have learned, and I'm curious to hear if you share this opinion of mine is that we

Zain 15:25

we thought own to like the earned to own cycle would be like taking what earned media did broadcast television taking articles and reproducing them but with like a small logo at the bottom with your candidates name so you could fool people that it was just like your broadcast or it was your article right remember like we thought that was going to be the future that we were just going to replicate broadcast news in fact i'd say there's been like luke lukewarm successful, if not entirely failed political experiments. I'd say the Doug Ford PCTV, despite him winning the election, PCTV in that election was like a fucking failure. Like, but because because the premise was, well, we were just going to do the broadcast news. And what they tried to do was do the broadcast news. And I think what they were, what they and others, ourselves included, were almost agnostic of Jersey color left and right were right about is that we were transitioning to owned, but we weren't transitioning in the same way where it was going to be a copy and paste of what the media role was within the confines of the campaign. So for those that are waiting for that and saying, no, you know, like the media is still very healthy and alive because no one is doing like the six o'clock news or no one is doing the content generation like we are. I think you're fooling yourselves because it's happening in a very different way. And it's already stuck up on you. You're not waiting for something to happen. It's here. If you're still in that in that camp would be kind of something I'd posit to. I mean, I completely

Corey 16:50

completely agree. Yeah, I could not agree more. And it's funny, because I think back to those days, and you're right, like, and we talked about it as content marketing back

Zain 16:58

back then. That was the big buzzword

Corey 16:59

buzzword at the time, right? You know, we're going to do all this content marketing. And I remember we were meeting with some of our colleagues in New York. I

Corey 17:05

think you were there. Maybe you weren't there. there and thankfully you

Zain 17:08

you guys put me on um on skype uh and when i say skype i mean it was actually skype so just like do you remember this meeting then i was talking

Corey 17:18

about some work they were doing yeah

Zain 17:19

yeah no no keep going i actually don't know which meeting you're alluding to i but i remember there was one if we're talking about the same one i can i can chime in but keep going

Corey 17:27

look i'll just say the name it was for ge right and it was like they were spending a fortune on content marketing with one of these i was there yeah yeah

Corey 17:35

and um and it it said literally nothing about ge until like the last sentence like all you know maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but it was essentially just a news story yeah

Corey 17:46

and then in like the most subtle ways it tried to embed ge in the most minimalist sense possible because the thinking was well because that you know we don't want it to feel overly partisan we don't want it to feel overly salesy so we've got to make it feel like news and that was kind of the theory at the time and part of the theory was Because everyone knew media was in decline, traditional media. Hey, if you do this, maybe they will just wholesale take this if you make it available and run it in a local newspaper, run it in a regional magazine, whatever the case may be. And I think that was, with the benefit of hindsight, kind of a dumb idea because we saw that media was dying, but then we built all of our content to go into the dying media. We

Corey 18:26

thought that they would still be there despite dying, and that just isn't the case. Now we're seeing those outlets drop left, right, and center. But, yeah, like, we would have been embarrassed to do some of kind of the shameless owned media that now is just normal, done, because the norms of the time had been set by print and digital and broadcast and all of that. That's right.

Zain 18:48

right. Like, you're right. Not just the form, but the norms. I think that's so important because we were just simply looking to say who was going to take over the form and like – but the norms of like – of treating this with a light touch, of trying to just walk this fine line and persuade. So at the end of someone watching the 20 minutes, they'd been marginally persuaded rather than hit by a hammer, which this video, which we'll get to, right? In many ways is, right? Like, literally, the reason you didn't want to watch it is you knew, not just you knew what was going to be said, but you knew the lack of subtlety around it. You knew it was going to be a 15-minute, like, you

Zain 19:27

you know, this is the only, this is God's truth. It was going to be told to you in that way. So to get back to the question then, you don't recall something like this happening. I guess let's stick on form still before we get to content, because why not, Corey? We've been able to burn 20 minutes this way.

Zain 19:44

Do you actually like this? Parking aside that it was pure polyev and that I told you to watch it because I wanted to talk about it today, as a political practitioner, when you watched it, did you actually say, you know what? Impressive. I like this. I see the strategic value of it or not. I'm fundamentally and genuinely curious.

Corey 20:06

Yeah. So I did, and I thought it was really well done. And I'm sure we'll get into it with more specificity in terms of the arguments and the nature and all of this. But there's a really big asterisk on that. Part of what I liked about it was the novelty. I think if one of these was coming every month, even, they would lose their novelty very, very quickly. People would be far less interested. fuck frankly it'd be like vox you know vox does not get the eyeballs i don't believe it certainly doesn't have the cultural resonance that it did many years ago because everybody has started doing the same explainer type videos and it's become kind of diluted and cliche and all of that and

Corey 20:42

you know it's not something that is going to work this well every time this was the first time they'd done this kind of long form and it was i would suspect probably the strongest topic for him to to do it on too yeah

Corey 20:54

um it's something people will be naturally receptive to it's something he's got good arguments for and it's just a super salient issue so uh all of those things made it like pretty rife but i think just like we saw

Corey 21:08

saw pierre pauliev do the walk and talk videos and then after a while we're like okay enough stop massaging the wood right and

Corey 21:16

and uh they've taken a bit of a backseat he

Corey 21:20

has kind of shown that he's willing to play with the tactics and kind of mix them up and change them and follow the kind of the trends of the day and that's not nothing you

Zain 21:28

you know i i could open up a can of worms but fuck it why not um before we even get to what's in the video uh one of the i i agree with you completely i was also i also enjoyed it i also liked it um you know it it was we talk about these campaign ads and i i don't know if you you would call this a campaign ad. I guess we would, in many ways. It was. It was, like, clearly partisan. It was about his campaign. We'll talk about it as a function of a campaign ad, its effectiveness. But if we talk about it from a forum perspective, its effectiveness, one of the reasons I liked it was its novelty. But one of the things that was just in the back of my mind, and I'm not suggesting that this is what he did, but I do know, and I think you know better than I

Zain 22:11

that a video like this um

Zain 22:17

easily with ai and i the ai conversation was just stuck in my head the whole time i'm like serious right like to me like just how they made this and to me it's like one of the things that i could see this format or videos like this especially for entering this like video age where like you know let's say the liberals realized that you know for example tweeting out your budget which is what christopher freeland did in response to this video is not a great idea, right? We could talk about that in a second too. But if they needed their videos up quickly, I could see like the arms race of back and forth political style videos like this using like AI and other things happen quite quickly. I know I'm opening up a can of worms that's deviating us from the subject matter, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that or if that just like went through your head as you thought about both novelty and form before we get into, yes, well, the substance.

Corey 23:08

Well, I didn't think about AI, but i would say at one point i was kind of thinking like how much did it cost to make this like either in time or money or like what do we think they invested in this particular thing yeah

Corey 23:20

and i don't know the answer to that but i sort of concluded just as i was watching it and probably not as much time as you might think in part because of the ubiquity of this particular format now like the number of you know themes you can download and filters and all of that that go into to adobe premiere um to create those vox effects they're they're ubiquitous and they cost like 50 bucks a pop if you want to go over to like any number of sites that sells them and yeah it still takes somebody who's got an eye for these things and a touch and a sense of the rhythm and the beat but uh yeah go um you know go to audio jungle and put in final fantasy music and you're gonna get the soundtrack that well

Zain 23:59

well you know you're

Zain 24:01

right it's not that hard you're You're absolutely right about templates. And I also say like, you know, often we give lessons on here. I suspect that one of the possibilities, and once again, I don't know this, is that there was probably some, potentially some young upstart within the organization that created something like this. And people were like, we love it, like add Pierre's voice to it. If that were what happened, I could not see, I could see that being quite possible, right? Like, yes, we like something like this, right? And I think what you're seeing right now from like the tactical side of things, The conservative movement, both in the U.S., but certainly visibly within the Canadian context, seems a lot more entrepreneurial and a lot more experimental with their tactics. So I would not be surprised that the influencer marketing era, this owned media era that we're seeing, the bleeding edge, at least in the Canadian context, with perhaps some well-treaded tires from the U.S., happened on the PR side. And frankly, we've seen it already. ready. Crypto podcasts, walk and talk videos, all these things. I think we're going to continue to see them push the envelope. Let's talk about its substance, Corey. Let's talk about the actual substance of it, right? 15 minutes long, not an exaggeration, split almost evenly as problem solution, deep dive on the problem, kind of like we do, deep dive on the solution, hyper-partisan on both. Tell me what you thought when you consumed it for the first time.

Corey 25:22

yeah so you know in a funny way the first i don't know seven minutes when it was talking about solution i don't know if that's the exact yeah

Corey 25:31

where he's discussing the problem and how the problem is more severe here in canada than elsewhere and the consequences of it and what it means and how middle class people have fallen out of it and the effects on on students and the elderly and all of that had me nodding along like the whole time Like it, this is, I've

Corey 25:48

I've said this before in a lot of different contexts. I think this is the problem right now. Like a whole generation is feeling closed out where we've moved to a place where somebody making an average wage cannot afford an average home.

Corey 25:59

And that's really bad. Like that's unsustainable. And that's going to create all sorts of antipathy, animosity, and

Corey 26:05

and ultimately political upheaval. And he's riding a bit of that wave right now. like when you look at where conservatives are polling with younger demographics relative to where they usually do i mean there's there's a reason here right people are now thinking that what their parents had is entirely out of reach for them and so as

Corey 26:23

as i sit there and i think about the problem i think yeah absolutely this is the problem this is the problem we've got to fix this particular thing and you know then there's a bit of a turn and all of a sudden it's saying and And this is because of Trudeau. This started in 2015 as basically the – no, it didn't. No, it fucking didn't. Like if you want to run the charts back and set different years, you know, you could probably say 2000. And you can definitely see this problem growing, although not at the rate of the last few years throughout the 21st century here. And so he sort of lost me on that. His kind of almost conspiratorial take on what quantitative easing was. was he's like well if it's a crazy sounding word and you don't know what it is you can bet you're being screwed or something yeah

Zain 27:04

yeah and as as he says that like just these spreadsheets back and forth in the background are just cutting in and out of the frames yeah i mean

Corey 27:11

mean like that's bullshit and that's nonsense qe uh obviously was for a very specific moment which was when there was a freezing up of liquidity during covid and the way he described it is not

Corey 27:24

not entirely wrong but not not entirely right and certainly misses the point of what quantitative easing is about when he talks about oh

Corey 27:31

oh you know government spending created that inflation not didn't you know our spending is not higher than the other countries that you earlier talked about not having this housing problem that we have okay uh the idea that interest rates are causing this well not really i mean sort of not really obviously your mortgage payment's gone up that's going to be part of your affordability if you own a home right now but uh it's not entirely what the situation is and again it's not different from other countries it's lower in fact than many of the other countries that we're comparing to they don't have this housing problem so he sort of lost me for a few minutes there but then he got me back on when he was talking about the dangers of financialization of housing and our totally insufficient rate of building and then he lost me you know when he talked about government added costs and then he got me back when he was talking about parking and you you it was a bit of a trip at the

Zain 28:17

the end you know in some ways you went through the populist roller coaster where

Zain 28:22

where we're things that that you know like when you add so much content as a populist and you may not say he's a populist and we could talk about that but like some of it's going to resonate to you to me too right like as a progressive who's kind of been on this file quote unquote especially on the on the in the lower income and housing precarity and homelessness yeah as soon as financialization i'm like fucking finally someone talking about financialization Which, by the way, like, you know, is a, I shouldn't say it's a darling of the left, but it's like the progressive left across both our countries have been pushing financialization for a decade now. It effectively means like these large corporate entities, investors controlling this lot of housing, jacking up rental rates, etc. Like, that's a very simple, if simplified, and frankly, poor explanation. Yeah, simple.

Corey 29:08

Well, it's not that bad. It's pretty accurate. Like, I mean, the reality is the minute you put the profit motive in, you're going to change things.

Zain 29:14

things. This is the root of where the housing is a human right mantra comes in and all these other things where people are talking about housing should not be investments, capitalism and housing, these sort of cultural conversations that folks may have dipped into or found themselves in the middle of, depending on their Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner conversation, Corey. Corey. But regardless, like in some ways, you went through like that populist roller coaster, which is that there's almost something for everyone. And I wonder, from like an audience perspective, well, two things. And I'll park the second part, which is how does he get more eyeballs on this? And what should his ad strategy on this product look like? But firstly, for those that are watching this, Corey, I think the objections you had are the objections of, of, and I'm going to say this like without the connotation that it sounds like, of a learned person.

Zain 30:05

And I don't think they're going to have the objections. What I think they're going to pick up on are the small nuggets that do resonate with them, either on the problem or the solution. And they're not going to be offended by what you were offended by because, frankly, you know what QE is. You and I have an understanding of it, you deeper than me, but you know what it is, right? And I think most people would be like, yeah, okay, it didn't resonate with me, but it didn't fundamentally offend me. And I'm wondering if this video in particular fundamentally pushes back against our kitchen sink approach that we talk about in our sort of communications and marketing world that's saying the kitchen sink doesn't work. The kitchen sink is bullshit. And just to be clear, what you and I mean by that when we've done presentations and when we've talked about this is you have targeted, tailored, niche-specific messages. Don't give them everything because because those are cause for objections that they may not have had in the first place. I want to challenge this video as perhaps being the, not the antidote, but perhaps disproving that, because I'm not sure if people walk through it. They look at some of these other arguments, and they say, you know what, this makes me hate it, because he's still on the right wavelength, and there's still a couple of nuggets in there for me, regardless of where you might be on the political spectrum, if at all associated on the political spectrum. What do you think of that thesis well

Corey 31:23

would say i kind of consider the kitchen sink approach of communications to be something a little bit narrower than that it's when you kind of proactively rebut something

Corey 31:31

something that you think somebody might have a concern about so you try to imagine what their concern is ahead of time and address

Corey 31:37

it i'm not entirely sure that's what was going on here you could make the case that's what was going on because you put in an awful lot of stuff i don't think that's what was going on i

Corey 31:45

think it's actually a little bit more fundamental to presentation and communication than that and when i when i teach presentations and i've talked about this before i talk about you want to do you want to fill four buckets you want to fill four buckets as a speaker and i

Corey 31:59

i won't go into all of this stuff before but ultimately everybody's going to go into a conversation with some of those buckets filled or not right depending on the issue depending on who you are depending on a host of other things including your audience here but you're trying to build credibility relevance comprehension and a sense of urgency right so the credibility part I

Corey 32:17

think Pierre Polyev a lot of that content at the start really did a good job of filling that bucket all of a sudden he's really explained this issue he's identified it in very thoughtful ways he's he's gone into some of the nuts and bolts behind it that first seven minutes as I called it he really built some credibility as somebody who understands that particular issue on the relevance front he went through and he explained why it matters he talked about it mattering to students he talked about it mattering to you know grandparents so he made it relevant even to people who have homes but have people in their lives who they know could

Corey 32:48

could become anxious and you know not housed or under housed or whatever the situation might be there was the example of the newlywed couple that are sharing a house with two other newlywed couples for like eleven hundred dollars right checked

Corey 33:00

checked a lot of boxes there effectively talked about how it affects every group that you could possibly imagine housing affecting and then comprehension he unpacked that issue that again was that seven minutes like really explained what was happening and kind of faked comprehension on the causes i believe as he went through and certainly built a sense of urgency so really strong presentation fundamentals in that 15 minutes there and

Corey 33:25

and one of the things that i say in kind of the more advanced versions of presentation training is there

Corey 33:31

there are things you always want to be in a presentation like you want to be clear you want to make sure that you're simple enough and that you're understood and all of that but the next level stuff the next level stuff is the stuff like personal anecdotes, stuff like really compelling visuals. And it's stuff like detail. Because there is a very interesting thing about detail, Zane, just like a preponderance of information. Most people will shut out the specifics.

Corey 33:56

Most people shut out the specifics, and they just remember the fact that there was detail. And there is a bunch of interesting, I don't have like the citations in front of me, I'll have to maybe I'll drop them in the the Discord or something. But there are studies that show just volume of arguments, even bad arguments, make people more supportive, because they say, oh, they seem to know a lot about

Zain 34:17

about this. I think that's the wavelength I was talking about. Yeah, yeah. So I think we're aligned on that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, that's what's interesting to me. And I guess,

Zain 34:26

let me deviate for a second before I come back to this, because I think you do a really good job of explaining presentation training, how he's hit the mark, like if he was standing up, giving this PowerPoint, walking us through it in like a lecture or a 15-minute TED Talk, right, as like Junior Varsity, you know, conservative club, TEDx series that was happening, right, on campus. We'd give them high marks for it. You know, maybe TED would even pick it up on their main feed sort of thing, right? But I also want to reconcile that with something we hear in politics all the time. And I want you to explain this to our listeners, right? right? We call this a 15-minute well-done explainer video, right? Because that is frankly the format. But we also say in politics, when you're explaining you're losing, reconcile

Zain 35:14

that world for me. I see the daylight, but help me see the daylight from your perspective. And then I'll try to add mine if you don't cover it from your perspective. Because we say in politics, you know, if you're explaining something, you're losing, right? We talk about the headlines, we talk about, you know getting people to understand that surface level stuff yet we now have a politician who we're celebrating not celebrating that well let's just say what it is we're congratulating for putting out this just you know quasi viral 15 minute explainer video oh i think it's viral help me understand this yeah

Corey 35:46

well we say when you're explaining you're losing but really what we mean is when you're justifying you're losing right like when you're saying this action is not something you would support without additional context and therefore let me provide you that additional context and let me use the time that I have to give you that context, that's what we mean by when you're explaining you're losing. It doesn't really mean that like an explanation of something means that you're losing. If somebody naturally supports you and then you're providing additional proof points and you're reinforcing, you're making it stronger and you're making it more comprehensive, that's not really the kind of explaining we're talking about when we say when you're explaining you're losing. We're talking about the expansion of a thesis, right? If that thesis is fundamentally popular, if that thesis stands on its own, if that thesis is we've got to do something about housing and everybody agrees, that's no problem at all. But what he's done by expanding on this, by explaining, if you want, is he's reinforced his ownership of this particular issue by building those presentation points that I just talked about, that credibility, relevance, comprehension, and urgency. But the message stands on its own. You don't actually need to worry about them just hearing the top line. When you say if you're explaining you're losing, you're usually talking about an issue where if you just hear the top line, it's a negative for you. You're going to get fucked. And do you really want to spend all of that time creating the context that would allow that not to be true? That's the kind of explaining that's losing. You

Zain 37:07

You know, it is so interesting, you know, because I agree with you. I think when you're explaining you're losing as a headline has been one of the biggest misnomers and frankly, disservices to our overarching sort of both political strategy and policy, because I think it is always been about when you're justifying or rationalizing why you do or do not do something, versus people suggesting that it means we're only dealing in headlines, that this concept of politics and what Nahid would say in full sentences, or Don Ivey, this in here, or others, that that era is over, that if you can't boil everything down into 15 seconds, that you're not going to be successful. And we're seeing here someone who clearly has the 15-second, you know, let's rattle out the 15 seconds, right? Freest country on earth, gatekeepers, right? Like, everything feels broken. We got that. We got that packaged. And now we get the 15-minute. And this reminds me, in the absence of our hedonistic friend, Stephen Carter, his 330-330, he'd bring up, right? Like his concept of the 3 second, 30 second, 3 minute, 30 minute. And Polyev is kind of playing that instrument very fine-tuning right now, I would say.

Corey 38:17

I mean, I totally agree. That's exactly the one I wanted to bring up. But like, the idea is you want to make sure that you filled for

Corey 38:23

for all of those levels, ideally, right? Like, if you're only going to have time to do one, you want to have the good 15 second one, because most people will only be at that level, and politics is a volume game. But if you can fill it all out, If you can have the 15-second version, if you can have the 15-minute version, and if you can have every version in between, that's very powerful, because that allows you to sort of meet the expectations of everybody along the way. And I'll tell you something, as much as we were just talking about the media's declining relevance here, you know, the fact is, there's going to be a lot of media who watch that 15 minutes and have now, whether

Corey 38:56

whether they wanted to or not, been armed and thought-induced through this particular lens of Pierre Paul Yance. I

Zain 39:04

I mean, listen, not to bring in politically sensitive things, but when does that stop me? But this is one of the reasons why, you know, when you refer to like the lens that you view things through, right, these congressional trips that we hear about, congressmen taking to Israel fully paid for, right, whether there's an active war or not. I mean, the purpose is fundamentally to view a very complicated, extremely nuanced situation through a lens that is palatable to you, that makes you understand, and that in its most subtlest ways increases your support or your level of vocalization for a particular issue, in that case being Israel. And in this case, you know, the job that this video does is even if you look at the problem and dissect it, Corey, there are partisan angles to how the problem is even defined. The first seven minutes of that video, as I call it, the roughly, right? It's not like the problem is purely defined with the purest, academic, most comprehensive, everything on the table. Let's make sure, you know, all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. No, it is a partisan definition of a problem. And even if you acknowledge that, it's hard to not fundamentally lean on that as a crutch every now and then, even without you knowing, because you have ingested. And I think there's huge, like, even if you watch the first seven minutes, which this is all leading to me asking you about what his ad strategy should be. So I'm getting to a point in a second. But even if you watch the first seven minutes of it, or the first couple of minutes of it, the definition of the problem on his terms is helpful in its own right. Even if you are complete bullshitty and saying everything on the back end is bullshit, I'm not buying it.

Corey 40:44

Well, and I don't think everything on the back end is bullshit. I think it's an interesting mix of bullshit and not, and probably enough. And sort of this correlation

Corey 40:53

correlation that is made into causation all of a sudden, that this problem occurred, therefore

Corey 40:58

therefore it was Justin Trudeau who did it through his actions. We saw this spike happen after 2020 in financialization, therefore quantitative easing is the reason why we had this spike in financialization.

Corey 41:09

Very, very, very dubious, that argument that's being made there, that QE is the line that leads us to the financialization of the housing market. I don't think so. I just don't. I

Zain 41:20

I have a question for you. So this video, I think, highlights another one of Piers Polyev's, like, skills as an orator. And we've seen, like, you know, fundamentally pretty good orators across our times, like politicians, like, you know, I've worked with Nahed, I think he was an outstanding orator. We've seen folks like Tom Mulcair, we've seen, you know, on the provincial level, Jason Kenney, I think was a fantastic orator. Great orator. Pierre Poliev, talented orator.

Zain 41:47

We know that. But we also, we sometimes view oration as like a one dimensional sort of like thing, that they're just good at doing it. But there's some different columns, I would argue. And I think today, we kind of realized if we have it, and I think the walk and talk videos gave us an understanding as well, that he's actually a pretty good explainer of things. He can take complex things, yes, at a partisan lens, but give you a easy-to-understand, base-level, nod-your-head-style agreement to what he's saying. And that's a skill. It's a very specific skill of oration. We've also seen Pierre Polyev be like this oratory prick, right? He can be, like, fast-witted. He can, like, sometimes get himself in trouble, right? Right. We may even want to talk about how this video this week might be a channel changer to the troubles, quote unquote, he had last week, despite his poll numbers going up. And when I referred to, you know, some of his comments regarding carbon tax in the UK, as well as, you know, some some run ins with journalists. But I'll park that aside.

Zain 42:49

I'm kind of wondering the reason I'm kind of mentioning this is that when we see orders in our political age, they've almost been defined for one thing. Tom Mulcair, fiery in the House of Commons, didn't really have an explainer vibe to him. Right. right? Nahid Nenshi, excellent, like, you know, no notes, he could speak any single time. I think Jason Kenney, similarly, right? No notes could captivate a room, like, everyone in that room is like, man, I wish this was scalable, right? I'm persuaded. What should Pierre-Paul Lievre sort of like oratory lane be, Corey? This is what I'm ultimately trying to get to. Should it be that Bill Clinton-esque, like, explainer-in-chief with what we've witnessed here? Should he stick to the kind of like, you know, prickly, witty, let me be charitable, the witty, fast-witted, like, you know, like, sort of fire-breathing style person, like, I'm kind of trying to reconcile all of this as he picks his brand on rhetoric. He's got this amazing talent, and I'm wondering if he needs to hone it in in some way, rather than just let it loose on each of these lanes all the time, where to the point they're not able to be contained, and people are more confused by who he is than actually fully appreciative of this guy's immense skill. Does that make sense even as a fundamental question?

Corey 43:59

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't, I think we have talked about how Pierre Polyev sometimes falls into prick mode when he has spent so much time trying to be somebody else here, right? And that's an interesting challenge that he has. I'm not sure that, well,

Corey 44:14

well, it is. It's tied to the orator question here. Let me unpack this orator thing a bit. Yeah, let's

Corey 44:20

does it mean to be a good orator like like for me it is actually those things along the lines of building everything towards getting people to agree with you to the point that they are willing to take action right

Zain 44:32

it's a high bar like in

Zain 44:33

world we operate it's it's obvious it's not just like you know gentle applause it's this motivates me to do something like that's a very that's motivate

Corey 44:40

motivate to do something yeah that is that is the summary that is the perfect summary and the thing is most

Corey 44:47

most people don't think good orator is that like most they're like that was was a pleasant speech or i enjoyed

Corey 44:52

it doesn't take that next step to action i don't think a lot of people are thinking that meant they were a bad order but

Corey 44:58

but that's not what being a good political order is a good political order does require that kind of action that next step and there are a lot of different ways you can do that there are a lot of different tools in the toolbox and some people are just going to be innately better with some than others right um again

Corey 45:14

again you're trying to be compelling you're trying to build that urgency comprehension relevance

Corey 45:19

and credibility. And there are lots of ways to do that. There's not one way to do that. Pierre Polyev has shown that he has a lot of ways to do that. Like he is a two-way player here. He can be that prick and he can also be that explainer. Now, when the two start to seem like they're two totally different people, he's got a bit of a problem here. But I don't think at their core, they need to be two entirely different people. He's going to have to sort of watch himself on all of these things here but but yeah i mean part of his challenge this this kind of schizophrenia that he sometimes induces here is

Corey 45:52

is he can do those things you know he doesn't lean on one thing and and he he doesn't really need to sometimes maybe he should but he doesn't like personally need to he can still make his point in different ways so

Corey 46:05

so yeah i don't know i mean like i do think it's a bit of an interesting thing to watch and see how it kind of plays out for him yeah

Zain 46:11

yeah like i guess the the root of my question is really like what does this what does explainer do to his brand

Zain 46:17

you know what i mean like i don't think

Zain 46:19

it yeah okay i mean i'm curious like i'm i'm and it's a question i grapple with like because i think it does add a bit of depth like quite literally in some ways like you know adding a 15 minute video to your stack is like is depth in some ways to be able to walk people through this this certain level of content shows a different muscle but like as it relates to the guy who who fires out headlines and and is building this certain momentum. Would he just be better with a more focused sort of perspective? I think it's kind of, I wonder if that conversation is actively happening, right? Like within his party, being like, you've got this skill. In fact, there might be too much skill. And then this sounds like too many compliments for Pierre, but I think this is perhaps what they're saying, right? Like, dude, we may want to actually strategically think about this, right? Like where your value, your oratory value is best placed, knowing that attention is fundamentally limited.

Corey 47:10

know it's interesting because when we talk about those walk and talk videos and even going further back like start of the covid pandemic remember when he's sitting in a field with two pieces of lumber we all made fun of him oh yeah

Corey 47:23

sure like explainer has been part of who he is for a long time like even when you look at him in committee he will often try to summarize what's going on in a way that like like frames it all like to your point earlier about that seven minutes it's framing it in a useful way he has always been part explainer part prick and he's always kind of used it the way this video does in long form in my opinion right he will very clearly lay out the parameters of everything it's almost like a chess player who's moving the pieces in the position to get ready for his attack there and then he does his attack and that's usually where he makes the turn and it's actually like zane you said it and it's so right like that first seven minutes is not neutral it's not like it's cnn reports it

Corey 48:06

is him putting the pieces on the table that tell the story he wants to tell you know the price increases since 2015 doesn't matter he's not looking at the parts earlier than that and some of those earlier trends right getting everything on the table he needs to make that scathing vicious attack to come and um you know maybe he doesn't need to come off as such an ass sometimes as he does when he's doing it but it's it's all been been part and parcel it's always been his thing right like i am going to set this up and then i'm going to go for the kill maybe

Zain 48:36

maybe he just keeps the balance going right i'm just trying to stress this with you stress stress test this with you as we go along um talk

Zain 48:45

talk to me about his ad strategy this

Zain 48:46

this is a 15 minute piece and there's like a lot of like there's a lot of interesting things we're brushing back against including like uh you know longer format i mean this is a podcast that It occasionally records, you know, sometimes over an hour, 20, hour, 30. Like, I mean, I don't hope I'm not revealing our trade secrets, but we have very high penetration on this pod. And that's only to make the point that, A, we're amazing, but B, people, especially if you have an audience, will go through it and watch the whole thing. Like, there's this misconception that, like, it has to be 15s and 30s, which I want to get to. That's so funny. Actually, can we talk

Corey 49:20

talk about that in the context of our pod? because we i won't say who but we have some friends at the cbc who i remember years ago would say like it's

Corey 49:28

it's too long you got to make it shorter right like you got to do 30 minutes you got to do 45 minutes and

Zain 49:32

and this was pre-rogan doing three hours sort of thing which is not we're

Zain 49:35

we're not trying to go down that path but when you look at the rogan stats and you could look at these stats like the penetration is like 65 70 percent of people complete the three hours like they're loyal devoted like they're there

Zain 49:48

yeah but like you

Corey 49:49

you know our our stats

Corey 49:51

stats aren't bad either. Something like 97% finish even when you do an hour 20, right?

Corey 49:56

And so it never really seemed to me like it was a particularly big problem. Like we weren't seeing like these drop-offs or declines here. And it is one of those things where maybe

Corey 50:06

maybe it's a different issue. Maybe it's somewhat related here, but we're

Corey 50:10

we're not in a world where everything is programmed in those blocks anymore. And you kind of can choose to dip in and dip out of the things that you care Like, you don't have to sit through a program that you only half care about when it's a podcast, right? Well, case in

Zain 50:23

in point, can I just add here, right, as you're making this point, this video, right, to get very specific about it, is 15 minutes and 9 seconds. And the order probably was, let's just make it however long it needs to be. We don't need to shave it down to 15 perfect. It was 15.09, and if that's what it needs to be, it's fucking it's 15.09. That's what came out on the end. And I think there's something actually, like, as simple as that is, there's something very incisive about that in its own right.

Zain 50:51

Because they didn't make a 15-minute video. They made a 15-minute, 9-second video because that's what it needed to be, right? And that's a very different thing than going out and saying, let's make a 15-minute explainer video.

Corey 51:03

oh i agree and i think you talk about ad strategy one of the opportunities they have here is to continue

Corey 51:09

continue to play with the format that they've got in the channels that they've got like to me when i think about ad strategy for this i think youtube

Corey 51:16

youtube pre-roll 100 with the full 15

Zain 51:23

and skip back to six if

Corey 51:24

if you want yeah

Corey 51:25

just do it just do and i'll tell you something we did this a bit at the government of alberta with some of our longer form explainer videos and we found like we for sure always made sure we had our key message in the first six non-skippable seconds there yeah

Corey 51:37

yeah i mean like the number of people who like if you get them hooked will just sort of stick around is is pretty impressive and and that is like you're not paying really a lot more for uh you know that so go for it i

Zain 51:48

i mean the amount of kids who are going to be watching this um as pre-roll before miss rachel is going to be amazing i feel

Corey 51:57

feel like that's the target audience that

Corey 52:00

it ends up being well this is why zane let me tell you i've got to tell you this right now it's a mistake that i made i'm still dealing with it here my kids are now you know i've had kids for a while get them their own youtube account right away do not mix that shit together

Zain 52:14

together with your youtube

Zain 52:16

yeah no no cause you problems sufjan's starting to watch matt rife on jordan peterson's podcast and uh i think

Zain 52:21

think he's i think he's enjoying enjoying it yeah

Corey 52:23

it's a it's yeah i mean

Corey 52:25

mean you gotta watch out for that it's it's gonna

Zain 52:27

your feed now it's a dumb person uh with jordan peterson so here we go um well anyways um

Zain 52:36

would you would you split this up or

Zain 52:39

or would you just say the secret sauce was that we made a video about this topic and it needed to be however long it needed to be it ended up being 15 minutes and nine seconds i'm not true horning this into a minute 30 or 15s as any traditional ad person would tell me to this lives how it lives or would you actually be in the room and push back and say you know what it's going well maybe it should have more eyeballs than it is maybe it's one minute version isn't terrible maybe a 15 second version or 30 second version that says find out more at this website isn't terrible what would you be pushing back knowing that let's just say it's it's a bona fide viral success what would you be telling folks in that room today you

Corey 53:19

you know well first of all i'd say test go out and try

Zain 53:22

try it right but

Zain 53:23

be a classic ad person for me for a second too right like have an opinion but beyond test i have an opinion i have an opinion what would it be what would it be don't

Corey 53:32

don't do it like i would be you

Zain 53:33

you know me too me too that's what i would say one

Corey 53:35

one of the biggest challenges in advertising is what i i describe as jumping jumping mediums so when you are watching a television program and it says like go to this website or there's a billboard and it says call this number and all of a sudden you're asking somebody to do something different than what they were doing part

Corey 53:52

of why i love digital is you don't have to jump medium you can just stay there and you can kind of click through and you can follow the chain and you can get all the way down and you pay for so much that is not used on on a on a medium jump right so imagine a television ad that says watch the viral video at housing hell.ca pierre does housing.ca which i now have to oh

Zain 54:14

oh we also do we own housing hell.ca let's just check that because if we do not oh well

Corey 54:18

well he's got he's got no no he doesn't he doesn't uh housing hell.ca i think it's

Zain 54:24

you know what we're gonna do we're gonna do our own version of this video we have to do it now that's

Corey 54:27

that's amazing well we do

Zain 54:28

do an ai version can we just make this full circle and

Zain 54:32

do an ai version of

Corey 54:32

of this video probably

Corey 54:37

i'll be a little bit of housing

Zain 54:40

okay very nice uh make that quick cory like maybe maybe even maybe even make these listeners wait while we purchase housing hell.ca i

Corey 54:47

i just don't know that how compelling that is where where

Corey 54:51

where you have to do a bit of a jump from like the you're not going to do it justice in 30 seconds the the entire point was the depth and you're not going to to be able to recreate that I hear

Corey 54:59

hear you 30 seconds I

Zain 55:00

I think I think in the room it gets really exciting when you know you've hit on something and then you're like how do I just get this to more right and I think what you can I

Zain 55:10

I yeah go ahead go ahead do it do it do it Marshall

Corey 55:13

Marshall McLuhan here is in the corner screaming at everybody this was made for a different medium it

Zain 55:19

it was right and

Corey 55:20

if you want to do a 30 second ad do not try to do a 30 second cut of your video think about the message you want to to make in 30 seconds and do that and maybe at the end of the funnel there's a way that they can get to the video but i think it would be a huge mistake to try to repackage this video as 30 seconds you know if you want to make the same point using some of the same materials fill your boots but don't try to turn this thing into something it isn't for a medium it wasn't created for that's that's my personal feeling like now that said overrided

Corey 55:49

overrided by go out and test but you asked for like an ad opinion and that's my ad i

Zain 55:53

i think i'm in the same ballpark as you um tell me me this i've got no over under lightning round i want to wrap this up um

Corey 55:58

um well it's because it's for carter you do it for carter well

Zain 56:01

exactly and he's not here um

Zain 56:04

should the liberals do man like i'm not don't solve their world's problem solve this problem and i guess you might even if i'm asking you in such a narrow question you might just tell me well fuck it this is not a problem this is not one of your top 40 problems that that your opponent has a viral video on on a core you might disagree like i'm just kind of giving you one option right you can take that door if you want to to be like fuck it this is not one of your big problems man you've got other problems but you look at it it's working i've heard anecdotally this weekend this video was sent to me on instagram a few times even before i saw it on twitter and i was like i don't even know what the hell this was i honestly thought it was a video taken down pierre and the liberals finally got their act together wrong and then i watched i'm like oh shit no you should

Zain 56:46

no well i thought like maybe they were just packing all their ammo for like a 15 minute hit on Pierre and it's not. What should they do, man? Like, if you're sitting as like the ad person for the liberals, like they'd almost pump this to your corner. Like, yeah, the political director would talk to you about it, but you're the ad person for the liberals, or you're like someone who's on the calm side. Would you say not one of our 40 problems? Or would you say, fuck, it's one of the issues we need to actually neutralize, if not just fully win? This is a problem. How would you be? How would you be thinking about this today?

Corey 57:17

oh so first of all i think it is one of your 40 problems i think that this is like if

Corey 57:23

if not the problem it's like a capital a a problem here what i would not do is what christia freeland did which was quote tweet it and say here's a link to the budget right she

Zain 57:32

she took that down but i i'm pretty she did

Corey 57:34

did take it down and then she posted it again without the quote tweet so oh

Corey 57:39

not the greatest political communication strategy ever pretty pretty ridiculous stuff here you don't you You don't try to trump in a communications arena a communications product with a policy product. You know, we talk about the budget and the fiscal update being communications products, but

Corey 57:56

but only in like the loosest sense. Like you're not trying to get everybody on Twitter to read the fiscal update. That's fucking ridiculous. And I get that we just said, hey, 15 minutes in substance and that's amazing. But the reality is there are actual charts and data and stuff that's just going to make people go to sleep if you're forcing them to go read that there. So don't do that. I'm not sure anything needed to be done in terms of the particular approach on Twitter this weekend, like wait and see where it's going. And, you know, I think that talking

Corey 58:27

talking about it is just going to be raising the volume on it at a certain moment. And you've got to decide how and when you respond in a thoughtful way.

Corey 58:36

his actual plan like his four points maybe consider doing all of them you know like honestly like i look at this for the liberals and i say you are so fucked on housing and well i don't

Corey 58:49

don't actually blame you for being getting us to this point i do sort of say you've been holding the reins for eight years and you didn't do anything about it and your your few mediocre limp solutions didn't make things better like oh we're gonna solve the housing problem by making easier for you to borrow money, fuck

Corey 59:06

fuck off. That's not a solution in any way, shape, or form. It's just going to, that pours gasoline on the fire. That exacerbates the particular situation.

Corey 59:14

So you've got to neutralize this particular issue. This is not a, I get to win on housing issue for the liberals. It just simply isn't. And lucky for them, they've still got a couple of years to the election. Their best hope is to actually resolve the problem or get to a point of stalemate where the other, you know, other person's solution, I'm putting solution in air quotes here it's just not something that they can run on very much either and all they're going to have left is the liberals did the thing i wanted to do which is actually not a particularly compelling message for anybody right so maybe

Corey 59:44

maybe maybe you went and you surrendered on the carbon tax in atlanta canada that was a mistake that was signature to you housing is not signature to you this is the thing you surrender on this is the thing where you say i'm you know imagine

Corey 1:00:00

imagine it like like a negotiation where you desperately want to get to yes anything they propose you should probably just do it right until they do something that is so outrageous that they're actually on the wrong side of canadians but just take this issue away from the conservatives and that actually starts with policy yeah

Zain 1:00:16

yeah it's it's you make a good point i mean he introduces all these terms that he's trying to coin including the gatekeeper gap and all these other things where he talks about how government's the most expensive thing in housing but to

Zain 1:00:26

to your point right

Corey 1:00:27

right right right that That's Seedy Howe. Don't get me started on that report.

Zain 1:00:31

There's four things that he says, policies-wise, you should do. You're suggesting they kind of adopt this. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I've got one final sort of question for you, which is a conversation hearkening back to our favorite hedonistic friend, Stephen Carter, which is about stickiness.

Zain 1:00:48

You know, one of the things

Zain 1:00:49

things I noticed about this video was,

Zain 1:00:52

while it is partisan, as we we fully acknowledged, both in the problem and quote-unquote solutions. It doesn't go as hard on Trudeau as his rhetoric has in the house, in other videos, etc. It doesn't mock Trudeau in that same way, so others might disagree. But to me, in my interpretation, I think all of that's deliberate, because I think their core goal, strategically, Corey, is shares. Shares and persuasion. Watch watch this, buy the problem in the way we're selling, buy the solution we are selling. And with that in mind, if you agree with it, how sticky do you think something like this is in terms of warming people up? Kind of like how those ads with his wife doing a VO for him as he was walking in the park with these kids was meant to kind of soften folks up on his image. I think this also has a persuasion element in it as it relates to shareability. Talk me through that that in terms of how sticky you think something like this could be to the overall sort of Polyev brand? Or do you think it's like a one and done 15 minute or hey, he did a good job on this file, but it actually doesn't make me feel anything about him?

Corey 1:01:57

Well, let's talk about, I think it will make people feel things about them. They will think he sounds smart on this issue and he understands this issue. Let's talk about the shareability thing, because I do believe that there were some very conscious choices made to make this thing more shareable.

Zain 1:02:11

Talk to me about about yours yeah what

Corey 1:02:14

i shared this thing by the way like i quote tweeted this and i'm like oh

Zain 1:02:17

oh you like today i don't know okay yeah along the way yeah yeah which

Corey 1:02:20

which i probably wouldn't have done if it was like it's starting off with a bromide and going nuts but here's a couple of things that made it more shareable one

Corey 1:02:27

one is that there was actually like a nutritional value to it like

Corey 1:02:32

actually explained things where people could say oh i didn't know some of these these things i'm going to share them out there right two is it's you know it's partisan attacks don't come until about that seven minute mark at least in any kind of substantive way there there are a few things early on with trudeau's head bobbing around at the 2015 as

Corey 1:02:50

as it's shooting up but by and large the the heavy partisanship comes later and so most people i won't say most like a lot of people are going to make the decision to share based on the first couple of minutes they might not even get through all of the video right away they might share it later they might just they're going to feel safer sharing it because it doesn't necessarily feel like sharing a political attack ad because the political attack ad comes later and it's embedded and it's in between a couple of different components it's somewhat buried almost like when you're writing a uh you know a paper in high school and you put your weakest argument in the middle right they put the political attack in the middle so

Corey 1:03:26

so at the start there's not a political attack at the end there's not a political attack and so if

Corey 1:03:31

if you've just watched a bit of it you feel good sharing it if If you watch the whole thing, the last bit you've watched, you can feel okay sharing it, right? Makes a lot of sense.

Corey 1:03:39

there is also, and closely tied to that, this sense of optimism around it all and this sense of solution. And I'll tell you something that's really interesting.

Corey 1:03:48

One of the things that

Corey 1:03:50

that is a consequence of this shift from earned to owned, and it's all tied together here, the stories about the outrages of the world, really terrible things happening. mean somebody dying in care for example

Corey 1:04:04

those things don't actually get shared on social media because people share things on social media but not everybody so like some people will share it and say what an outrage right but by and large the majority of people share positive things about it that will reflect well on them and sort of help establish their own personal brand what

Zain 1:04:20

what they're trying to project to the world and to their network that's right yeah

Corey 1:04:23

yeah exactly and so not by by kind of posting something that is like long form politics and sentences as you've said complete sentences makes them look like a thoughtful political operator says oh this i don't always agree with pierre poliev but he made some interesting i

Zain 1:04:37

i was just gonna go exactly there that particular line you just said if i were to take a if i were to try to be prescient i'd say this video gets shared the most especially on platforms like facebook with outside of those that are just like you know just doing the retweet because he's a conservative he's our guy he's our guy. I think there's going to be a lot of, I mean, I don't like everything Pierre Polyev does, but this is hard to refute, or this is a really good,

Zain 1:05:05

because of part one, two, and three of what you just mentioned around nutritional value, political arguments, political hackery, or partisanship, or attacks being buried in the middle. I think we're going to see a lot of those hedges, but I think that's manufactured. That is a win. I think

Corey 1:05:21

think it was accidental. So

Corey 1:05:22

I think that they have a good sense of what makes something shareable, too i mean by and large you have to be sort of impressed with the craft of this right both the craft from like a understanding of the medium and a craft from the understanding of presentations and communications it's um you know it's going to make people pull their hair out and it's going to make a lot of liberal partisans who are listening to this really mad at us for kind of giving props where props i'm

Zain 1:05:45

i'm extending this episode longer than i need to but what part of this what part of this so if jagmeet singh today had released this video not the same reach same video exact Exact same fucking video, because

Zain 1:05:56

because it includes some progressive things in it. Exact same fucking video. We would not be talking about it in the same way. There is a halo effect we are applying to this, that, you know, maybe the hour, six minute mark is not the best time to address it. Maybe minute two would have been, but fuck it. Like, as we kind of, like, by the way, that's comma, but, comma, fuck it. Not, you know, okay,

Zain 1:06:17

okay, perfect, thank you. Very good. For those that are printing out the transcript of the show and want to quote me correctly.

Zain 1:06:25

But there is something to be said about, like, the fact that, like, this is an extension of Pierre on its own, right? And, like, the reason we're celebrating this is because of Pierre at the center of it, not just fundamentally the nutritional value of it. And I think the real sort of marker, as I try to work this out for myself, of success here is oration, content and nutritional value, not entirely, you know, partisan, so to speak, at its core in like an attack ad way, but still like, you know, done in a way that allows people to make it shareable and hedge. And I think a hedge for people is wins, right? Like it's for Paulie Evan team, as they keep people on side, or they kind of build new supporters saying, maybe I should be listening to some of the stuff he's talking about beyond this. Or maybe I should be considering him for some of my support. court

Corey 1:07:16

well and this is this is part of why this was such a if i suspect they're going to do more of these because success results in people doing things to the point where it just gets run into the ground and this is going to be is already seems like a success to your point about the views and all of that but this is such an interesting entry point for a lot of people right like even if you hate pierre polyev's uh position on 30 other issues you might actually have a bit of like no okay maybe he's got a point on this one and i suspect you're going to see that the next couple of videos are going to kind of just incrementally walk you down that road so this

Corey 1:07:50

this is the one where almost everybody's going to agree with him in some way shape or form maybe not entirely but you know let's call it 65 agree with him maybe

Corey 1:07:58

maybe the next one is just a little bit further about how like boy it sure has gotten expensive with taxes where not too many people are going to disagree and so on and so forth until

Corey 1:08:07

until all of a sudden we're at the very end of that line and we're all wearing shirts that say Hong Kong can support Hong Kong. Oh, you think

Zain 1:08:12

think he's going to go, this is like part one of his own algo in

Zain 1:08:14

in some ways. He's

Corey 1:08:16

He's like, not like...

Corey 1:08:17

Well, I don't think he's actually going to take us to that end, but yeah, I do. I think that he's starting with the content that's most approachable.

Zain 1:08:22

Yeah, that's fascinating. Oh, well, thank you, Corey. This was a good first episode of Corey Hogan, Look and Listen. Look, Listen. Yeah,

Zain 1:08:29

Listen, Look, who knows what it's called. That's a wrap on episode 1271 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velgey. With me as always, Corey Hogan, not Stephen Carter, and we'll see you next

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