NBC's hiring and firing of Ronna McDaniel
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies. On today's episode, Fast Company contributing writer Brian Stelter. It's a period of incredible change, turmoil, reshaping, in some cases laying off people, in other cases bringing on talent you didn't need 10 years ago. Fast Company senior staff editor Jeff Beer. Motion sickness pill brand Dravamine released a 13-minute doc called The Last Barf Bag.

And of course, keeping tabs. So he owns a motel off of the Lincoln Tunnel in northern New Jersey. But first, here's the download. The news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation.

President Biden is rolling out a new student debt relief program. The plan would erase or lower the balances of more than 30 million American student loans. Plan targets loans with surging interest, which in theory could make it more likely to withstand legal challenges. But oh, there will be legal challenges. Oh, there will be legal challenges. I hope he succeeds. For my sake, really. For Josh's sake.

In more Biden administration news, a review board appointed by the president released a report calling for a change to Microsoft's security practices.

The report alleges a, quote, cascade of errors by tech giants, which let Chinese-backed cyber operators break into email accounts of senior U.S. officials last spring. I love when official reports use flowery language with cascade because you know they were really leaning into it. Oh, they had the best time. These fuckers are going to get it. Cascade of errors.

Next, have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd love to have a big tech company implant a chip in my brain, but there just aren't enough options. Well, you're in luck because Neuralink's chief rival Synchron is preparing to recruit patients for a large scale clinical trial of its brain implant. This startup is currently further along in the process of testing than Musk's Neuralink,

and launched an online registry this past Sunday. So if you have anyone getting married and they're wondering where to register, this registry, baby. Let me tell you, Synchron sounds like a fake company. It sounds kind of like an evil company in like an NBC procedural like Chuck.

Oh, wow. What a reference. Yeah. Next, more potential antitrust news. Last week, Google's parent company, Alphabet, was reported to be considering an acquisition of HubSpot. HubSpot is a marketing software company with a value of $34 billion.

That's a lot of money for a company. I did not know exactly what they did. Yeah, I still don't know. I mean, a marketing software company. Okay, whatever. Anyway, the potential deal is likely to spark opposition from regulators, even though many experts don't really think it would curb competition. Google is already facing several antitrust challenges, including two lawsuits from the U.S. Department of Justice.

And finally, over the weekend, the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments concluded with South Carolina completing its undefeated season with a win against Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes and UConn completing a repeat title by beating Purdue. Did you watch the games, Yaz? You're not a sports fan. Did your husband watch the games? No.

Yes, I think so. Sometimes he'll like when we're watching a TV show because I'm like, you know, I want to watch TV. He'll watch it on silent on his laptop while we watch the TV show. I do that with Celtics games with my wife sometimes while we have Daniel from Phil in the background. So yeah, relatable content. Relatable king. Maybe he turned it off because these games ended in double digit wins for South Carolina and UConn. So not super climactic.

in the finale of an otherwise entertaining tournament. And that's the news you need to know today. Josh.

What would you do if Fast Company or Inc. hired a flat earther to work with you? So you're assuming they haven't already. It's true. It's true. Now it's time to out myself. I don't know, but it raises an interesting question, although framed in a rather silly way. What happens when a company hires someone that you disagree with? And when do those disagreements happen?

into a place that is untenable to work in. I think there are obvious things. Like personally, I would be very upset if someone hired someone who was an outspoken transphobe online. Like if we hired Dave Chappelle or J.K. Rowling, I would be upset because I think that that sort of appearance

opinion, that sort of rhetoric makes an unsafe workplace for others. You're basically choosing to create a place that would be less hospitable for trans employees, which I think is a valid reason to be upset about. Let's be real. Flat earther would be really funny. But see, those things are always connected to something anti-Semitic, so it comes back to the same thing. And related to that, remember Ronald McDaniel?

Oh, do I? So last week, the former Republican National Committee boss, Ronna McDaniel, was hired and then basically pretty much immediately fired as an MSNBC contributor after staff literally revolted on air. And that staff included people like Chuck Todd, who I never thought had a rebellious bone in their body. Todd pointed out that McDaniel had pushed Donald Trump's debunked claims of voting malfeasance in the 2020 elections.

At the same time, there was a backlash from people on the right who claimed that her dismissal was proof of a left-wing media bias. Presiding over the chaos was NBCUniversal's news chairman, Cesar Conde, who's been trying to make the network, quote, a place for all viewpoints. But is that even possible in the Trump era? So we talked to Brian Stelter about all this yesterday. He profiled Cesar Conde in our upcoming spring issue, and here he is telling us more.

So I want to start by talking about Cesar Conde. He's been the chairman of NBC Universal News Group since 2020. Yeah. But tell us a bit about his background and sort of his career leading up to that appointment. It's an unusual background for a television news leader. And that's one of the reasons why I was interested in profiling him.

He has been basically anonymous for the past four years while running some of the biggest news outlets in the United States. And his background is not a traditional journalist background. It's also not the traditional older white guy that has basically always run U.S. news for the entirety of television news. I mean, I'm a guy that has covered TV news for 20 years.

and written about, profiled, interviewed a lot of the executives. Mr. Conde is a very different type of newsleader. He grew up in Miami to immigrant parents. He went to Harvard for undergrad. So he clearly started out from a place of privilege being at Harvard, but didn't really know what to do with his life.

tried investment banking for a couple of years, which he now describes as almost regrettable, ended up at a startup during the dot-com boom in 2000, but went to Wharton. And I went back to Wharton with him, to his alma mater, watching him talk to students. And when he was there, he basically told a story of a person who didn't know what his path was at first, tried multiple things, tried the banking route, tried the dot-com route, ended up being a White House fellow working in the State Department. And that was critical because he

forged a relationship with Colin Powell, who was the Secretary of State at the time, who guided him toward media and Hispanic media. Cesar Conde coming with this immigrant background, speaking Spanish fluently. He doesn't go directly into NBC. He goes to Univision.

which was this growing Spanish language network, but frankly, not at all mainstream in the early 2000s. And he works his way up there, first as a chief of staff and then as an executive in his own right. After a number of years at Univision, becoming the president of Univision, he jumps to Telemundo, which is the big rival to Univision that's owned by NBC now. And that's how he gets to NBC News. But he starts out on what is considered the margins of the

the media industry. But what was important about that was it was fast growing. It was where the future was and is. It's where the audience was and is. It's where the money was and is. And so he was able to learn the business that way. The last big news executive profile I can remember at least is the Atlantic's profile of Chris Licht.

And that one got him fired. I'm curious, was Condé wary of you coming in? What were those negotiations like? That's got to be a bit of a conversation, I'm sure. Look, I think he has been press shy for four years, in part because of what's happened to others who seek out press attention. I'm choosing my words carefully because...

Chris Licht, who, by the way, was the executive who ended my program at CNN and ended my time at CNN. Nice. Some vindication for you. A little bit awkward. No, just a little bit awkward. But Tim Alberta was working on something with Chris Licht's full participation for the better part of a year. And nobody expected it to turn out the way it did, including Tim Alberta. What Tim hit on were really long-festering grievances inside CNN that were going to come out at some point. And Tim Alberta's profile was the reason it happened. Right.

But the reason I'm bringing that context is Chris Licht is an executive, and there's a lot of others like him, who court and seek out press attention and have done so for years. I knew Licht for 15 years before he took over CNN because I was a reporter on the beat, and he was really smart about seeking out media reporters.

And ultimately, maybe that bit him, right? But it's interesting how there are a lot of executives in the media business who will seek out press, who will talk to reporters off the record, will try to have those relationships. My impression is Cesar Conde is not one of those figures. He is not someone who is out there trying to get lots of attention and ink for himself. Now, that's not to say he's not savvy about his image. I think he is very savvy about his image. And he wants to be on certain lists and be at certain places.

But he has not been out there doing interviews, seeking press attention for his own brand or for NBC. And so when this profile came up, when there were these conversations last winter, the sense from his PR person that he wants it to be about NBC and not about his own image or his own brand. And frankly, that's the direction I took this profile because Cesar Conde did not open up a lot about his brand.

personal feelings or his personal life or his personality. He constantly, every time I would bring up more personal questions or questions that were more sensitive, he always made it about NBC. And I think in that way, there's a real difference and a distinction from some of the other executives in this industry. Can I ask you to editorialize maybe for a second, just from your experience? Which approach do you think is smarter? Is the Cesar Conde sort of Walt's garden approach?

maybe more fruitful to a career like his, or should they be seeking out more media attention? Well, I think in this moment for television news where there are seismic changes happening, where there are some businesses that are shrinking rather quickly on the linear television side, where it's hard to keep your ratings steady. On the other side, there's this opportunity in streaming and with lots of other expansions, there's opportunities to grow the business. It's a period of incredible change tremendously.

turmoil, reshaping, in some cases, laying off people, in other cases, bringing on talent you didn't need 10 years ago. With all of that in mind, I think it makes sense to keep your head down. I think that's what Cesar Conde has been doing, keeping his head down. And to some extent, even with me, obviously, when the Ronald McDaniel mess happened, he didn't want to follow up with me and give me another interview. But I think the broader point is when your entire industry is being revolutionized and

And we have seen multiple examples of TV news executives kind of be the face and be front and center and then get burned for it. It's not just CNN. It's happened at ABC News as well. The head of ABC News, Kim Godwin, is a regular player on those puck media columns with lots of insider complaints and anonymous quotes complaining about her. When you're the face in that way, when you're out in front...

It can often be distracting. It can often be demoralizing. And so I think it makes sense to be heads down. And in fact, Condé talked about that repeatedly in the interview. He said, we've tried not to make noise. He was talking about NBC News Now, which is the streaming network that's about four years old, five years old at this point.

It is an alternative to the CNNs and MSNBCs, which are behind cable paywalls. It's free. It's on YouTube. It's ad-supportive. And he acknowledged several times, we've waited to talk about it. We've not been very public about it. We want it to scale first. We want to have something really to share first. And so I do think that's a logical strategy in this fractured period. So we've got to talk about Ronna McDaniel. NBC Universe was in the news most recently for the hiring and firing last month of the former RNC boss. Ronna McDaniel is a contributor.

Tell us about that situation. Why did they want to bring her on in the first place? Yeah. I admit this is when my profile plans went totally awry. I was intending to write a story. I had already written this story. I already sent in the draft of this profile. And I had this crazy fantasy that this could be the one story I write all year without the words Donald Trump. Oh, yeah.

Not going to happen.

I think the election is like a stain. It's like a toxin that stains everything it touches, and that includes NBC. NBC was able to land a Republican debate last year. After all the Fox networks had their debates, it was NBC. It was not ABC. It was not CBS. It was not CNN that was able to work with the Republican National Committee to hold a debate.

Of course, Trump refused to attend the debate, so it ended up not being a very big deal. But for NBC, it was a big deal. Why? Because they don't just want to be a network for Democrats, right? They don't just want to be a network for anti-Trump Republicans.

in the tradition of broadcasting, they want to be broad. They want to appeal to everybody. And I had a quote from Condé to that effect in the profile. He said, we want to have something for everyone. We want to have CNBC for financial junkies and fast company readers. We want to have MSNBC for liberal moms and dads and grandpas. We want to have, and these are my words, not his, we want to have all these different branches, all these different options.

And I think that's what this hiring and firing was all about. There was an attempt to have a high profile political analyst, Ronald McDaniel, the former head of the Republican National Committee, deep insights into Donald Trump. On paper, maybe that makes a lot of sense. But there was this staff revolt almost as soon as her hiring was announced.

from people, including but not just at MSNBC, who were saying, she's an election denier, or at least she helped Trump with his election denialism. And that is a line that we shouldn't cross. I would argue it was the biggest crisis of Condé's four years at NBC News. There was also some backlash to the backlash from the right wing, too. It's like Condé was sort of in a position where he couldn't win. This was 100% a no-win situation because...

Fox News was out there. So, you know, this went on for about four or five days. Ron McDaniel was hired. She was on Meet the Press. Kristen Welker delivered a really fierce interview, challenging Ron McDaniel. But even despite that interview, or maybe even because of it, there was even more turmoil internally saying, why is this person on our payroll? By the way, there were just some layoffs at NBC. Why are we paying this person?

This went on for days, and eventually Condé decided to pull the plug and kind of unhire her and say she will not be a contributor. This was interesting internally because Condé has a bunch of direct reports, a bunch of different divisions that report to him. This idea of hiring her came from NBC News, came from the meet-the-press, kind of the DC world, but it was also supported by lots of other people internally, a bunch of the direct reports. There was buy-in among the senior executives to bring McDaniel on.

And Condé was the one that blessed it. And so he's the one that then came out and said, you know, I apologize to any staffers who were offended by this and we're not doing it. So there was this kind of, Puck had a great line about this. Dylan Byers of Puck wrote, if you are to blame, you're in trouble. If you are the one taking responsibility, then you prevail, then you come out ahead. And basically that's what Condé was doing. He was taking responsibility for this misstep.

I think it comes down to what he says in the profile about servant leadership. He says, I'm a big believer in servant leadership. I'm here to serve my people, my staff, the people at this network. And clearly the people of this network rejected Ronald McDaniel as a political analyst. The open question is, why didn't the senior staff see that coming? Why was there a disconnect between the senior executives and the rank and file? I may be wrong about this. I may be naive, but I think this is a good faith question.

problem in a world of bad faith actors, meaning journalists are trained to want to represent all points of view, to bring in diversity, to bring in wide array of opinion. From a good faith perspective, we want to represent America in all its glory.

But we're coming up against a situation where there's this anti-democratic force in America, this rejection of elections, this rejection of norms personified by Donald Trump. And what you see are newsrooms, in good faith, struggling with what to do about that. And I think sometimes the view from the C-suite looks very different than the view from the anchor desk or the view from the newsroom.

Well, isn't it really a question of, you know, the sort of extremities of think about Bush days, if you were going to have a Republican, a Hugh Hewitt, a bowtied conservative sort, you know, they were mostly in the mainstream in terms of their thought process. But now when you have

tinfoil hat, cuckoo bananas people within the mainstream of the conservative movement, it creates this question of like, well, they're in the mainstream and they represent a large portion of people's point of views. But at the same time, it's like the climate, like covering climate news. Like it's a fallacy to cover

climate change as a both sides things because some people believe that climate change doesn't exist. That's just not reality and doesn't need to be represented necessarily on a panel about climate change. Is that sort of like the struggle to keep up with

the mainstream's changing that's really occurring here? I think that's true. I think about it as Earth 1 and Earth 2. And there's some folks who are over on Earth 2. And it might be a fun place to be or it might not. Alternative facts. And so how do you cover Earth 2? And then the question becomes, is hiring a political analyst the right way to do it? And is Ron McDaniel the right one? If she's been basically fired by Trump, Trump made it very clear she was not to remain as the head of the RNC. He basically booted her the way he fired people on The Apprentice.

So in that case, she's probably not the best representative of actual Trumpism. How involved was she actually in the election denialism? All of those kind of questions bubble to the surface within NBC. And to the illusion about Disney, that's why I was busy rewriting this profile. There's also a quote that I added at the very end that I think is the more significant part going forward. And that is that Donald Trump has attacked Comcast, NBC's parent company, mercilessly. It is one of his favorite targets.

And there's not much Comcast can do. There's not much a Cesar Conde can do about this attack from the president, the presumptive GOP nominee. But it's going to keep happening. He's going to keep complaining about MSNBC. He's going to keep threatening to investigate today.

And there's really nothing that Cesar Conde or his bosses at Comcast can do to stop these attacks. You know, it's just going to be a reality that Comcast is going to be one of Trump's targets. He's going to keep vowing to investigate NBC if he's elected. And I think that's going to be a real source of pain and tumult. But again, little that Conde can do. And that's what he acknowledged to me when I brought this up in the interview. He said, we just stay focused on the job we have at hand. Our job is the public trust.

That's all he and they can do. But I do think that's going to be a pain point. And I think Ronald McDaniel and that mess, it is a preview of what's to come potentially. So I want to push on that a little bit or just ask a little more. You brought up the fact that Cesar Conde has this mission of providing something for everyone. You cited MSNBC, CNBC, NBC's local stations, NBC's News Now, all appealing to sort of different segments. But do you think this mission is even possible? Yeah.

I do accept along this political fault line that we've just identified. And I think that is one of the tensions that we identify in the profile. But if it's possible, I mean, let me attempt for a moment to take politics and put it off to the side. In every other realm, in every other world, I do think it's possible. So this is why I think NBC News is a really interesting company, because it's become so much bigger than its rival's.

20 years ago when I started blogging about TV news, NBC only cared about CBS and ABC. It was Tom Brokaw versus Peter Jennings versus Dan Rather, the kind of Mount Rushmore of old white guy TV anchors. And every day, all they cared about were the ratings for the night before. Who was number one? Who was number two? Who was number three? And that world is so far gone. Those are like dinosaur bones now.

That is a relic of a very distant era. NBC News now is like five or six networks in one. ABC and CBS are much smaller now. And to me, it's just it's reminiscent of what's happened to The New York Times, what's happened to The Washington Post. These big American news brands have had to become a lot bigger. They've had to become a lot more diversified. They've had to become more like bundles.

Think about the New York Times with Wordle, right? Or else they are doomed to irrelevancy in an era of YouTube and TikTok. So to me, that's what's interesting about what Condé has. And to be fair to the old timers or the veterans at NBC, a lot of these assets were there before he took over the news division. CNBC has been booming for years, MSNBC. But Comcast decided to bring them all together under his umbrella.

And that was a significant change in 2020. CNBC used to be its own entity. It would live across the river in New Jersey. There are real separations between these divisions. So now what Condé's been doing and his lieutenants are creating synergies between, let's say, NBC's local station in St. Louis and then CNBC or, you know, between the international news coverage and Telemundo.

He's been able to put them in these together, not always easily and not always perfectly, but that's been the effort. And I think that is a really interesting effort to create synergies among basically half a dozen different networks. That is what allows him to say, we have something for everyone. And if

If it weren't for the stench and the smell of politics and all that comes along with that. And when we say politics, what we really mean is the presidential election. But I guess that's what's interesting about these jobs for these news executives, whether it is someone like Chris Licht who didn't last long at CNN, whether it is someone like Suzanne Scott, who's been quietly running Fox News for years and does almost as few interviews as Cesar Conde. These individuals, they are operating big, big,

expanding businesses. They're having to diversify their lines of revenue. They're having to come up with streaming strategies in an age of Netflix. And then, every so often, the Trump thing happens and they have to deal with one of these fires. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of...

Facebook and Meta basically in the past year being like, we're just not going to touch politics at all. Obviously, NBC doesn't have that luxury and it still remains to be seen whether Meta does as well. But Zuckerberg's trying.

That is such a great point. And you're right, the social networks, these tech giants, they have more ability to withdraw. They can, to some extent, withdraw from it. It's not an option for the NBCs of the world. I want to talk a little bit about NBC Now. You know, you mentioned that 20 years ago, ratings were all that mattered. But it's kind of funny because now NBC has to compete with the whole internet. You know, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Tell us about...

NBC News Now's strategy. Tell us how it differs from something like a CNN+, which didn't work out. Tell us about all that. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. I think the CNN plus question is humorous because I was briefly a host on CNN+. I'm sure no listeners remember this. I'm sure this has been forgotten.

But in the four or so weeks that CNN Plus was a thing, I had a daily show on it. And we knew when CNN Plus launched that it was a life raft to get to somewhere else. Like we knew that it was not meant to be the real boat forever. It was meant to be kind of a transition vehicle. We're going to take this life raft somewhere else. And ultimately, the life raft, I don't know if we can give up on that metaphor. It's more of a Titanic door situation, really. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Then someone came and shot holes in the life raft for financial engineering reasons. But what's interesting about CNN Plus is that when NBC is over on the sidelines doing its own thing, doing something very different, and they're watching CNN Plus happen. They're watching hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. And they're thinking, what do they know that we don't know? Are we doing it wrong? Are we the ones screwing it up?

At CNN at New York, we had an entire floor. The 16th floor was bought and then built out for CNN+. Hundreds of employees for this brand new subscription streaming service. And subscription is the key word. CNN Plus was a subscription platform. The goal was to migrate programming over to there. And then in a few years, all of the real flagship CNN program would be on there and it would be a subscription service.

NBC News Now, very different. Free, ad-supported model, using the existing infrastructure of NBC, using reporters who are already doing packages for the nightly news, who can then come on streaming and talk. It is purposely profitable within a couple of years. Akande said 18 months, it was able to turn a profit. And then with that profit, add a few more hours. So go from two hours of four to six to eight to 12.

the opposite of the cnn plus model right and uh but it was striking to me to hear condé say we were watching cnn plus wondering like have we screwed up have we bet on the wrong horse and ultimately what nbc was doing and is doing makes a lot more sense right now is not a proven market for paid video news but there are a lot of people who want to watch news clips and watch information

online, on YouTube, on NBCNews.com, and they don't mind the ads around it. So, you know, in the same way we've seen Netflix and all the others go to this kind of combo ad subscription model, NBC News Now has gone with the ad-supported model, and it has made sense. I just, anecdotally, I've been on NBC News Now a bunch just as a guest,

unrelated to this profile. And I love that I can share the YouTube link right before I'm going on live, you know, because in an age where like, if you're on, if you're on CNN, if you're on Fox news, basically a paywall, right? It's basically only accessible through cable. It's really nice about a share that you're on something. And there's something that's very, just very natural and intuitive about that. And, uh, and I, you know, yeah,

We don't really have great metrics for how many people are watching on any given day or time, but you can feel the growth happening with it and you can feel the investment NBC is making in it by moving some of their top anchors over to the platform. Right. We've covered a lot about Condé's decision. You did say he's a little bit inscrutable, but what is he like as a person? What can you tell us about that?

You know, he's the kind of person that remembers your spouse's name, who remembers you're going on a vacation, that gives you tips, and then asks how it was afterwards. Weirdly, nice and suspicious at the same time. Well, maybe...

Maybe. I was going to say he has very high EQ, like very, very high EQ. And, you know, that's what I heard from staffers, you know, when I would ask them about Conde. Even before agreeing to work on this piece, you know, I wanted to know what is their boss like. But he is inscrutable. He operates at a high level, meaning he's not a micromanager. And that's, again, very different from a lot of TV news executives and the culture of television news historically.

Going back to the 70s and 80s with Rune Arledge and the days of Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer and all of that, what we're used to in television news are these hard-charging, in-the-weeds, in-the-control-room, barking-orders executives. And some talent might prefer that. Some talent might prefer a micromanager and sometimes...

They long for the days of someone who's going to give them that feedback and direction in real time. But that's not this era of cable news or television news. Those executives don't really exist anymore. And Conde is this newer generation of businessman leader, you might even say politician leader,

who is giving directions at a high level, giving feedback at a high level, checking in, for example, when Hamas attacked Israel that morning, that awful Saturday morning, October, on the phone, making sure reporters are in the right places, but not dictating what the banner should be at the bottom of the screen. You know, as an executive, he's that kind of news executive. There's a change from an earlier, a different generation. And then I think on a human level, uh,

I quote a critic of his from NBC saying he's like a chat GPT automation, that he's a robot. And, you know, I both understand why that critic says that and I can understand why that might be frustrating for someone who works there. But I also understand why he's guarded. Like, I get why he's careful with his words.

He is a Hispanic executive in a sea of white media. He's running all these different networks which have all these political controversies and sensitivities at a time of immense change. I get it. I think I might be guarded if I were him too. He's on the board of, I think you wrote PepsiCo and Walmart, and there were a lot of

theories internally that he might sort of jump ship to run a publicly traded company. What can you say about that? Yeah, that's another reason for being careful with his words. And I think it goes to this idea of being an outsider insider hire, you know, that he did work for another part of Comcast, NBCUniversal, before taking over the news division assets. But he was an unknown to the staff when he arrived. And so another reason to be careful and to not be a micromanager. But those boards

seats are really curious. This is, again, very rare for someone who runs a CNN or NBC type place to be on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. And when he took over, there was a sense internally this might be really controversial. This might be a problem. I checked with a lot of the relevant staffers who cover, for example, Walmart,

And they have not run into issues at all. They say that this does not come up. They say he's not involved in coverage. He doesn't tell them what to say or what not to say. And so it hasn't been an issue. And that's his stance as well, that he just does not involve himself in coverage of the companies that he's on the boards of. But he did say that being on those boards does give him a front row seat to understand what's happening with the economy.

A little bit of an inside kind of edge on knowing where markets, where business stories are going. And so I thought that was an interesting note. And that he's learned from those CEOs and benefited from their leadership skills.

So my last question is, in the piece, you brought up the fact that Conde does not come from a traditional news background, and people may have been wary of that. Is that typical for news executives? Tell us what him not having a background in journalism means. Yeah, I think what it means, what it meant, is that he has had to prove himself.

to news anchors, to producers, to engineers, like to people who bleed this, you know, to bleed journalism blue, right? Or whatever the metaphor is. He, of course, was very gentle in the way that he talked about this when he was at Wharton talking to students. He said, people sometimes discount the experience you have if they don't have the same experience. And what he was very gracefully saying was,

He came from this fast-growing world of Hispanic media, Spanish language television, telenovelas, where the audience was booming, where the audience was underserved, where there was incredible business and marketing potential.

And to a lot of people who run places, these kind of old school media companies, English language media companies, they didn't understand it. They didn't appreciate it. They didn't appreciate what was going on at Univision or Telemundo. I know I experienced this myself when I was at the New York Times. I was a reporter covering television from 2007 to 2013 at the Times. And I knew that I needed to incorporate Univision and Telemundo into my beat. I knew I needed to be covering this world.

And I didn't know where to start or where to begin because I didn't speak the language. I felt this sense that the growth in the industry was happening elsewhere and it was something I needed to cover and it was hard to do. So the way I put it in the article is elderly white male media gatekeepers didn't speak the language or care to learn. So his experience was underappreciated. It was underappreciated by some of the big wigs who were running media companies years ago. And I had a number of people say to me for this story, they said people underestimate him.

because he's coming in from a, I don't know, maybe he's coming in through a side door. Maybe that's the way to put it as opposed to the typical front door in the media business. But this business is also changing in dramatic fashion and it's creating more space for a much more diverse array of talent.

And so that's something that I think Conde has prioritized at NBC. He came in and said, we're going to make sure that we are hiring a wide array of people and bring in diverse, underrepresented staffers that just weren't prioritized as much in the past. And he does this with something called the NBCU Academy.

I think what he's trying to do is make sure there's a ladder there to bring up others. It is significant, I think, to the news industry because the executives who run these places, who make decisions, who think about who to hire, who think about what stories to cover, what stories to prioritize, they should represent all of America. You know, I think journalism in America is always on a quest to be better representing the audience that it serves.

whether it's at NBC or the New York Times or these other big brands. So, you know, the faces in the C-suite matter a lot to that end. Well, this was great, Brian. Thank you so much for coming on our show. Thank you.

Now we're going to talk about one of Fast Company's recognition programs, Brands That Matter. This is where Fast Company recognizes companies that build a connection with their audiences, either by being culturally relevant or making an impact or communicating their mission and values clearly. Here to share more is our advertising and brand correspondent, Jeff Beer. Hey, Jeff. Hey, how's it going? Jeff, how would you describe your personal brand? Yeah.

Chaos, chaos, organized chaos, Canadian organized chaos.

So this is going to be a recurring segment that we're kicking off this month. And I guess our question is, what are some brands you've noticed really hitting the mark right now? Right. Not yours. Well, mine all the time. I'm not going to be talking about Brands That Matter necessarily. But what I did want to do was, here we are in the Most Innovative Companies podcast. Brands That Matter is another probably lesser known recognition program. So I thought a brand collaboration like everybody else in the brand universe.

It's a co-production, if you will. Exactly, exactly. I like to think of it, hey, look, if PepsiCo can make Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew, we can have a monthly Brands That Matter segment on social media. Oh, God. Flamin' Hot Mountain Dew at Fast Company. How's that? Amazing. Mustard ice cream. I love that. I prefer the mustard ice cream cob. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Okay, so I want to come crash your party once a month to just kind of talk about the brands and brand work that's making an impact, that's kind of getting into culture, that's on the

The edge of culturally relevant brand work. That's kind of my goal here is to think about this more often than the once a year that we talk about brands that matter. Yeah, because brands matter all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I guess that's fine. So this week, I'll start with the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament or the Final Four of the NCAA tournament, because the both the men's and women's ended over this past year.

past weekend, men's on Monday. But I really want to focus on the women's side because it was a record-breaking year. First of all, you have stars like Angel Reese, Juju Watkins, Paige Brookers, and of course, Caitlin Clarke from Iowa.

Record ratings. I mean, I think many games throughout the tournament beat past ratings for NBA playoffs, NHL, Major League Baseball playoff games. And the title game on, what day was it? Anyway, it was a few days ago. Sunday. Something like 18.7 million viewers. Like really, most watched women's basketball game ever. And so how does this tie into brand? So as the tournament was going on, I talked...

talk to brands like State Farm and Gatorade who have invested quite a bit. They have NIL deals with players like Clark and Paige Brookers. And I mean, Gatorade, for example, talked about this in the broader sense of women's sports. And I think this is a conversation that's happening quite a bit where the viewership and hype around women's sports is, I mean, it feels like it's never been bigger. And Gatorade, for one, I mean, has increased their media investment in women's sports by 900% over the last five years. Okay.

And they're not like new to it. I mean, I think their second athlete ever that they ever signed was Mia Hamm after Michael Jordan. So they're not like,

fair weather friends. They've been doing this for a while. So I did want to talk about, I think that both, for example, yeah, State Farm and Gatorade have really done some really good things, but I kind of want to just highlight generally that brands have been investing in these sports. And I think there's like a virtuous cycle here where ratings feed brand investment, brand investment feed ratings. Like the more we see these players' stories and the stories of these rivalries, the more people want to watch and see what's going to happen next. And

I talked to Draymond Green, who plays for the Golden State Warriors in the NBA, and he started an AT&T ad for the Final Four campaign that also started Juju Watkins from USC. And I asked him about what he thought about this, and he had some really interesting things to say. He thought that – he's been saying it all along that if you invest in the stories, if marketers invest in the stories of women athletes, and in this case, basketball players,

Regular people are just going to be more invested. And he said to me, he said, and I'm quoting Draymond Green here, said a huge factor in the continued growth of the NBA has been we know that LeBron James grew up in Akron, Ohio, in Spring Hill Apartments with a single mother and all these things he had to overcome. We know these stories and it makes that connection more personal. So now we're starting to learn more about the stories of female basketball players. I know where Angel Reese is from.

I know she was at Maryland, and then she went to LSU. We know Caitlin Clark's story. We're starting to see these stories more in marketing, and we're in the phase of women's basketball that I think is the best it's ever been. So I just want to – and we're heading into the WNBA draft where Caitlin Clark's going to go number one. I just think that the way brands are approaching women's sports, women's basketball specifically, is going to get more and more exciting. So I wanted to call that out.

Do you think brands approach it differently at all from men's sports? Like do some of the ads have a different tenor or not really? Is it all sort of very similar? It's a great question. Off the top of my head, I would say it's very similar. It's sports. It's, you know, inspiration. It's all that. But where I think it will get more interesting is when it's less about like the overall sport vibe of like we're going to win and when they focus in on the individual stories of these athletes.

and we really get to know the difference between say, you know, say two K-8 athletes like Paige Breckers and Kaitlyn Clark or like what, how does Juju Watkins approach her game as opposed to how Kaitlyn Clark approaches? I don't know, like what those differences are. I think that's where it will get interesting. The hardcore NBA fans know the difference between say Kevin Durant's personality and Steph Curry's personality, that kind of thing. And then when the ads sort of really play those differences up,

is when things will get fun. Now, I want to talk about Kristen Wiig's Target Lady, who I love. Welcome to Target! Yes. Well, last week, Kristen Wiig, former Saturday Night Live star, brought her much-loved character back. Iconic. Iconic, some might say. Iconic character. Yes. As a branding expert. Yes, totally. So,

For none other than Target, which is great. It's a perfect brand for the Target lady to come back with. And to promote, I guess this week is Target Circle Week, a big brand member. You're on the app and you get the promotion. There's a big sale week, promo week. And so they got Kristen Wiig to reprise her role. And that's actually, the ads are really funny and self-aware, which goes a long way. I think sometimes swings at...

Comedy nostalgia can kind of... Are a little dire, yeah. Huge reaches. I don't know if you remember T-Mobile used the Scrubs guys for their Super Bowl ad. Yeah, that was weird. We talked about this, yeah. And as some may recall, I hated them. I thought they were awesome. No offense for all the Scrubs heads out there, but not for me. I mean, I guess all the people who know Kristen Wiig's Target Lady are like,

probably older and shopping for their families at Target. Do you know what I mean? Which is sad, but true. Absolutely. I think there was a... I can't remember. Some brands used the cone heads, which is terrible, like a long time ago. Oh, God. It might have been a cell phone company. Nobody's alive who remembers that. No, I know. Exactly. Exactly. So...

But this is like the Target lady for Target. It actually makes perfect sense. And the only thing that I wish that these ads had were... Because the Target lady...

If you remember those sketches, like the stuff she would say throughout the sketch would kind of get weirder and weirder as it went on. And I was just hoping for a little more. I mean, they were funny and family friendly weird, but I was looking for a little more weirdness. But all things being equal, I think it's a hilarious, really funny kind of short lived return of this character. The next one you have on this list is a drama meme.

And I am a power user of that medication, but I've never thought of it as a cool brand. Yeah, it's not quite sneakers when it comes to brand work. But last week,

For those unfamiliar, those who don't get car sick, motion sickness pill brand Dramamine released a 13-minute doc called The Last Barf Bag. And it comes aimed as a tribute to, you know, airplane sick bags, of course. And the premise was about Dramamine...

and the air stick bag were invented in the same year, 75 years ago. And so, I mean, basically this talk is kind of a weird way of saying our pill works so good that we're putting the barf bag out of business. And so they worked with an agency called STB Chicago, and it kind of tells the story of the barf bag, how it was invented, what motion sickness is, and

and sort of highlights the barf bag collector community. Is that a, Oh yeah, that's a real thing. It's a thing. I actually, and I wrote this, but I went to school with a kid, uh, in elementary school that I think he got this from his older brother, but his dad used to bring home barf bag from business trips and empty. And, uh, he'd bring them, uh, he'd bring his lunch in. Yeah.

He'd bring his lunch to school in these bar bags. It was always funny. Like, I think I was probably 11. So, of course, it was always funny. Yeah.

Killed every time. Hysterical. That kid is definitely in jail, but that is a really funny guy. That's what you're going to say. And that kid was Dave Chappelle. I know, it's something stupid. Some problematic thoughts about gender, but killed with the barf bag. The barf bag material does not get old. It is not the business. The doc is actually quite cool and sweet, and it's just a really kooky approach to a...

To your first point, yeah, it's like to a product category that is, we have no expectations, first of all. Zero. So anything that's even remotely entertaining is like, cool. There is like precedent with unexpected brands making interesting little docs. And I think the little doc into a niche community like, say, Barf Bag Collectors,

is a way to get attention and kind of tap into a little bit of weirdo culture that I just, I'm a sucker for. That's a good way of getting your film financed. The next one we have to talk about is that Levi's stock went up because of Beyonce. I was reading about this this morning and I thought maybe it was fake news, but you're telling me it's not. So I cover brands and advertising and you know, some people, there's a lot of nerds that pay attention to this stuff, but like, and certain things hit with certain audiences. This was the type of

That, to your point, that comes up like my local radio station, like had it on the morning show discussion about the 20%. Yeah. So for those who don't know, on her new album, Cowboy Carter, Beyonce has a song called Levi's Jeans. And Levi's is spelled with two I's. But other than that, it's literally the brand name.

It features Post Malone and all kinds of headlines are like, oh my God, this helped this company's stock go up 20%. I should say, I will clarify that the song release coincided with first quarter sales results that beat analyst expectation as well. She planned that. This is psyops. This is like a... You need to stop calling things psyops on the podcast. Yes.

We're not that type of show. Listen, there are plenty of other podcasts where you can hear about people talk about pop culture psyops. This is not one of them. Me becoming the Muslim Alex Jones. This is psyops. For those just listening, this is audio. None of us are wearing tinfoil hats. Nope. Not a one.

But Levi's has an 8% decline year over year, and there was a loss of $11 million. Beyonce is magic, but let's just put it in perspective. Though the stock did get a bump. And I think

One thing that's interesting about this is it's funny how a brand reacts to something like this, right? Like, first of all, as someone who follows this kind of thing, there is really almost no logical reason that a stock should go up because Beyonce mentions the brand. In fact, because a strength of the brand is reflected. The song is only exists because Levi's is a brand.

Well, let's strong brand. Yeah. The Western thing and all that. Our colleague Liz Segrin has written about this. But but it's a strong heritage brand. If you're going to think about denim, I mean, Levi's is probably the brand you're going to name check. The company's chief marketing officer, Kenny Mitchell, said, you know, they're all the right things. He said the brand was honored to be included in it. And he said something like, oh, it was something that happened organically. And it's a testament to the brand's enduring relevance.

All true. He's right. But then, you know, they can't really help themselves. The CEO, President Michelle Gass said, one of the things that really is significant about the Levi's brand, that we play with a lot of emphasis and investment in making sure that the Levi's brand remains in the center of culture. I don't think there's any better evidence or proof point than having someone like Beyonce, who's a culture shape group, to actually name a song after us. Now, to me, that just...

I start to dry heave when I hear language. It has nothing to do with your ads or anything you did. This is the culture determining who your brand is. Now, I think there's a way where Levi's can take credit for not ruining their heritage brand, creating good products that are classically designed that people still wear. That's great. So it's almost like incrementally they've kept themselves relevant enough that they tapped into their history and their heritage and style in a way that someone like Beyonce can recognize it. But for the

For the most part, the brand has sort of played it really cool. They switched their social handles to the spelling of the song for a little bit, which is kind of a cute nod. But other than that, I respect the way the brand has just played it cool and let it live on its own. But it is an interesting way of speaking of brands as a matter of cultural relationships.

relevant, sometimes that relevance can come from a single piece of work or something the brand has actually actively done. And sometimes it can be a reflection of work over a very, very long period of time that doesn't really seem that significant. But if you keep your place and culture in a certain way, that something like this can, a lottery win like this can happen. Totally. What was the song?

When Old Town Road came out, I remember like searches for Fendi sports bras were like way up. Oh, yeah. I first thought of the only one. And I'm just this ages me horribly. But I was trying to think of brands that were actually in the name of the song. And the first one is my Adidas from Run DMC, which was like that. Oh, yeah. They wore the shoes.

And they sung about the shoes. It wasn't like how it is now where going back to sponsorship discussion. It was a reflection of the brand's current state and culture, not something that was trying to do it. Yeah. Now, wow, we're hitting all my favorite brands, Dramamine and Sunchips.

Tell me about it. What a combo. Oh my God. Me, me in a long car POV or on a road trip with me. To target. Yeah, to target. Exactly. What's going on with SunChips? A perfect product, by the way. Exactly.

They're so good. I do love a Sun chip. Okay, so yesterday, we're recording on Tuesday. On Monday, the eclipse happened, in case anyone missed that. Boo, lame. Josh hates the eclipse, which is so dumb. I'm riding so hard on this take, which is so stupid. People came together in a way that was so nice. Ugh.

Eye roll. I live on the track of the totality, which I've been saying, I said all day yesterday, constantly in the voice of Mortal Kombat fatality. I was talking about the totality all day. And we saw it. We went out and we, and it was crazy.

So Sun Chips tried to, yeah. Branded all kinds of stuff. One of the best was Sun Chips. And the reason is they basically made a flavor mashup, limited edition flavor, combining pineapple habanero and black bean spicy Gouda, combining them in one bag. But here's the catch. They're only on sale for like the four minutes of the eclipse online. That's the only time you could order them. Yeah.

That sounds good, too. Also, the flavor sounds awesome. Yeah, it really does. It does sound awesome, but also, like, it's only available for that four minutes, and it's like, do I want these sun chips, or do I want to watch the eclipse?

You must choose. That's so good. Well, I mean, if you were somewhere there, you weren't going to see the totality. You might as well get some good chips. Yeah. No, I agree. I would have opted for the chips. And side note, at that same time, so there's the snack fans and then the other brand freaks out there, at least I would say the audience that has the highest number of brand freaks on the sneaker side of things. Nike, while the eclipse was happening, dropped a CryptoPay.

I loved this, the alien. It was so cool. I mean, it's so fitting because like when he moves, he does look like

um one of the aliens from science guys it's psyops again so then we don't know i think it was before he was even drafted for a sports illiterate profile they have to look wrong what he thought about uh wendy and and he said you know people talk about him being a unicorn i think he's more than a unicorn he's an alien and that's kind of where that nickname came from that's cool the other thing is i have it on

off-record authority that the video is not like VFX. Like, they had some fun in a park. They made a crop circle? Yeah. They contacted people from a distant planet to make them a crop circle? I can't confirm that 100%, but I do have sources that say close to the action that it was real. I'll choose to believe it was real. I'll be the Fox Mulder here and believe it was real. If it is real, if they really did make that, there are some other podcasts right now having a very different conversation. LAUGHTER

They're coming for us. Well, thanks, Jeff. We'll be back with Keeping Tabs after this short break. Okay, we are back with Jeff and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each one of us shares a story, a trend, or bit of pop culture that we are following right now. And Jeff, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on?

I'm getting my kind of travel and adventure sensibilities sort of, I'm living vicariously through a couple of different YouTube shows and I wanted to call it one, this guy, Dylan Graves, who is a pro surfer that he's got one of the best kind of travel surf channels I've seen, mostly because it's less about like the waves themselves, but more he goes to all these different surf scenes around the world and it's kind of part of his

park travel and the scene and the people who make up the surf community there. And his most recent episode was in Rome, Italy, which I had no idea how to surf scene. And it was just super fun and awesome to watch. And a great extension of his old Vans YouTube show called Weird Waves that I would recommend to anybody. It's super fun. And the other thing,

Along those same lines, I never watched it before, but there's a menswear site called Huckberry, which is kind of, I don't know how I describe it. I'm sure you guys, you have a colorful way of doing it. I feel like you would make fun of it. That's all I'm saying. Bit lame. Yeah.

Anyway, they have a show called Dirt. And it's basically this guy, Josh Rosen, travels the world. And he goes to a set location each episode. And he travels around and gathers, like, food and stuff. And at the end, there's a big meal. And their Japan episode recently...

kind of hooked me and I went back and started watching all the old episodes. So they're kind of fun and branded travel adventure shows that I've been kind of digging deep in. I like that. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? So I'm keeping tabs on Brian, the motel guy.

Does anyone know about this? I love this. I sent this to you over the weekend. You sent it to me? It's so funny. Oh my God. It's my new... Jeff, we have to send these to you. It's a corny guy who advertises his motel, but it's so much more than that.

So he owns a motel off of the Lincoln Tunnel in northern New Jersey. And it's such a really shitty motel. And so it's this young guy, Brian, and his motel maid sister.

who I can only describe as exactly who you'd think would work at a North Jersey motel off the Lincoln Tunnel, making these TikToks about their brand and really leaning into the seedy motel vibe.

It's really aesthetic. It is so funny. It's some of the funniest content I've seen on TikTok in a while. Brian, the motel guy. I don't know if there's anything good to drop in here. I was like, we should profile him. I was like, he's been recently on the Kelly Clarkson show.

This sounds like Dwight Schrute's Beat Farm type stuff. It's like, but it's like fully ironic. Like the guy, Brian, who runs it is like probably around, like he's probably like a mid-generation millennial, like feels like it was, it's like a super ironic play. I don't know exactly how he came to own this motel, but it feels like a content play as far as anything. However it happened, the content it's creating with a real motel is,

is so good. It's so good. Yas, what's your keeping tabs? So I have two. The first one is just want to say Eid Mubarak to all my brothers and sisters. This episode will come out tomorrow. Yeah. Which is Eid Mubarak.

I hope you're not listening to this. I hope you're at a party somewhere. And my second one is, so Curb Your Enthusiasm ended, J.B. Smoove, who plays Leon, one of my favorite characters, did an interview with Variety where he said he wants to play a Bond villain next. Hell yeah. I want to shoot somebody in the ass, which is so funny. J.B. Smoove is one of the best improvisers ever.

in the world ever. The show got so much better when he joined. It was such a good addition. I feel like he's less Bond villain and more like fast and furious side villain. Yeah. And I mean that in the best way possible. Yeah. But honestly, though, imagine if him keep the same tone of Bond movies, the same exact tone, and then just drop J.B. Smoove.

And keep his tone as Leon. And that would be the best movie ever. Yeah. A villain searching for Mary Ferguson. Oh, my God. That'd be terrific. Yeah, I'm a thousand percent for that. Yeah, me too. So campaign starts here. JB, come on the podcast, buddy. JB, come on the podcast challenge. And that's it for Most Innovative Companies. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, guys.

Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. And our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week.