Matt Krayton - Founder and Principal of Publitics

I sit down with Matt Krayton, founder and principal of Publitics, a leading public relations firm specializing in business, political, and government PR strategy. We explore his remarkable journey from an aspiring high school teacher to a leading political consultant. Discover how the 2008 financial crisis reshaped Matt’s career aspirations, leading him to the tumultuous world of political consulting, where strategy, public opinion, and digital media converge. Dive into a conversation filled with insights, personal anecdotes, and Matt’s candid reflections on the dynamic landscape of political campaigns and public relations.

 "Digital media was bound to be a losing campaign, but it taught me a lot." 

Matt is the Founder of Publitics. He provides counsel to campaigns at the local, state and federal levels as well as to clients in the private and public sectors.  Most recently, Matt worked on special projects during the 2020 presidential campaign including having helped create President Joe Biden’s viral “We Just Did” hat.

http://www.publitics.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkrayton/

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Transcript

Jason Frazell: 0:11

Hey everybody. My guest on the show today is Matt Creighton. Matt Creighton is the principal and founder of PublicTix. And we're going to get into a lot more about what that is. We are, I always love it. We're sharing a time zone. We could probably drive to each other's house, which is not always the case. I talk to people around the world. You're maybe an hour and 15 minutes from me right now. And so we're almost, we're almost like neighbors, Matt, but welcome. So good to have you here today.

Matt Krayton: 0:36

Thanks for having me looking forward to it.

Jason Frazell: 0:38

Yeah, excellent. So Matt, let's start out by let's just talk. Where are you in the world and Anything else you want us to know about you as we kick off here today?

Matt Krayton: 0:47

Sure. Yeah. I am in beautiful New Jersey. So as you noted, not, not too far from, from where you're at. And in, in today's age of, of zoom, where you could talk to someone halfway across the world we are basically neighbors. So we're

Jason Frazell: 0:58

basically neighbors. Yeah,

Matt Krayton: 0:59

there you go. So I'll, I'll come over and ask for a cup of sugar. Next time I'm baking. Perfect. I love it. There you go. So yeah, beautiful not so sunny, New Jersey at the moment. But yeah, this is where our headquarters are. This is where I, I live in, in Northern New Jersey. So yeah, that's where I'm spending my time.

Jason Frazell: 1:16

Excellent. So let's talk now about what's gotten you here today. And we were catching, we've never met each other until 15 minutes ago. We were just catching up a little bit about what you do and getting to know each other off before we press record. So you're the principal and founder of. So let's talk about what that means, what the company does and what's led you to becoming the principal and founder of that company.

Matt Krayton: 1:38

Sure. Yeah, that, that's a really good question. One that I often field from family, in fact you know, every, every holiday, right? Every holiday. And this, so this is good practice for for the Easter holiday coming up because I'll, I'll be sitting around the table and I'm sure somebody will look at me and say, so what is it that you do? Again, like happy to be of service to your

Jason Frazell: 1:57

family.

Matt Krayton: 1:57

This is great.

Jason Frazell: 1:58

So

Matt Krayton: 1:59

I'm going to work it out right now. So we're we're we'll we'll get the script straight before before I walk in there. So public ticks is a full service public affairs, public relations strategy and political consulting firm. I started the business back in 2011. So the, the journey to this point is Kind of interesting. And I like to say a little bit of a sort of quintessential millennial story. So I graduated from undergrad in 2010 did my master's 2011 and then, you know, a couple years before that there's a little financial meltdown, you know so. I heard,

Jason Frazell: 2:36

yeah, I heard. Yeah,

Matt Krayton: 2:37

yeah, yeah, you hear me. It seems so far off, right? We've been through a financial meltdown global pandemic all sorts of other, other stuff. So everything kind of seems a little little surreal at the moment, but anyway, that's, that's life. So I, my original plan was to become a high school social studies teacher. So that was the that was the, that was the plan. So I did political science and history undergrad did master's in education. Got certified, teach, did the whole student teaching thing. And confluence of things kind of led me in a different direction. So number one is there were no jobs or very few jobs, right? So at that point a bunch of teachers had been laid off in, in New Jersey where, where I was you know, living at the time. Still, I'm still here. So when you're applying for jobs, you were up against hundreds of experienced educators who had been in the classroom already. So I was like, Oh, this is, you know, so you're submitting hundreds of applications anywhere that, you know, we'll, we'll give you the time of day. So I went through that process for a little while. But as I was student teaching, I realized that I like to teach, but I did not like. The paperwork that went along with it, right? And so the increasing amount of paperwork and standards and testing and all of that. So the act of teaching a whole lot of fun, helping students, whole lot of fun, paperwork, not so much fun. So,

Jason Frazell: 3:55

yeah,

Matt Krayton: 3:55

I was like, you know what? Maybe, maybe I just won't do this. You know, again, for combination of factors. So I just took the first job that came along which was doing fundraising work for my Alma mater. So as you can imagine, so, so I this is wild. So I was brought in. With with another gentleman. So there were two campuses. I went to a fairly Dickinson university in New Jersey. There are two campuses. So they brought one of us in from one campus and another recent grad from another campus. And our job was to prospect and then call young alumni for donations.

Jason Frazell: 4:30

Fun.

Matt Krayton: 4:31

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, as you can imagine you know, student loans, financial crisis lack of jobs, all of those things people had a shocking creativity with which they approached telling me to do certain things to myself, right? Like, you know, jump out a window or, you know, play in the street or pounce there. And I won't even mention many of them. And we're

Jason Frazell: 4:55

also talking about New Jersey folks too, which have a very special, a very special type of language as, as a fellow New Yorker that they'll tell you very straight how to do things.

Matt Krayton: 5:06

Oh yeah, definitely. No there was no shying away from, from getting to the point. So I, and again, I totally understood it. So, you know, we would call through these lists of people that didn't, that didn't go particularly well. And 10 months later, we were both laid off due to budget cuts. So I was like, Oh man, what am I going to do now? So in grad school, I had gotten some experience working for a polling institute called the Public Mind Poll at Fairleigh Dickinson. So that I got some experience. I mean, I had always had some interest in politics and public policy and all of those things. So but it was mainly academic, you know, an academic interest, you know, it's on, you know, some political science work and it was a lot of theoretical stuff, you know, some, some practical, but never, never worked on the campaign in my life. But I had worked for, for a semester or two at at the public mind poll where I got acquainted with how public opinion research was conducted kind of got a sense of how the public thinks about certain issues how, how to run polls. So I was of interesting. So I was like, you know, I'm, I've always liked politics. Let me just become a political consultant. Now that sounds crazy, right? Just, just be like, Oh, I'm going to become a, I'm just going to do this. So, but I did, I incorporated, you know, filed the paperwork and went, went out searching for, for clients. So I was fortunate enough to land two campaigns. One was very local, low budget campaign. And the other one was a congressional race. And I had thought to myself at the time, I'm like, I'm young. I have no experience. Why would anyone hire me to do any of this stuff? And I was like, well, I'm young. And social media is like a thing that people are kind of interested in now, like Facebook and digital. So like, I'm going to be a digital consumer. So I went to these campaigns and I'm like, I'll do your digital media. And of course, you know, what ended up happening was that the campaign manager and one of the campaigns was like, Oh, well, OK. You're young. I'm sure you know what you're doing. I'm like, yep. Sure. For sure. A hundred percent. Yep. Yep. Yep. So so I taught myself a lot about digital media was able to, so it was, it was the other thing was it was bound to be a losing campaign. Like I just knew that. So anything that would be competitive, even remotely competitive or kind of on the, on the on the fence of whether or not the candidate could win would never have hired me. But a losing campaign, you have a lot more latitude to try stuff. There's the, you know, you can take more risks. So that was pretty cool. The, the guy did lose ultimately, but I learned a whole lot on that campaign. We ended up winning the local campaign though, which was kind of an interesting surprise actually. So that helped network into other places. And ever since then the business has been growing. We've done, you know, campaigns on all the way up to the sort of national level. And then in 2014. Brought in a partner business partner, Henry, who then we started to expand into other, other places as well. So doing more corporate work work for nonprofits advocacy groups. So you, you name it, we've, we've pretty much done it. So ever since then we've been growing and been diversifying and, and have been very fortunate to work on some pretty cool projects over the years. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 8:00

Yeah. Yeah. So you, so you didn't know what you're doing, yet you've grown a nice thriving business without knowing what you're doing. That, that's something, there's something to be said for that, Matt. I have a, I have a question about the term political consultant. Hear that, you hear about that a lot in the news. For those of us who don't live in that world, which I certainly don't, what does that actually mean? That is, that's a

Matt Krayton: 8:22

really good question. So the way that it is presented in the news is sort of this monolithic thing, like political consultant, right? So you're some person sitting in a room, you know, providing this you know, sage counsel to whoever will listen to you. In reality it's a little bit more specialized. For, for the most part that, so the, the super like visible political consultants that you see like James Carville, for example sort of like a messaging guru type or or David Axelrod, you know, of, of the Obama campaign theme. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they were very much in that space, but political consulting is, is a pretty diverse field. So if you look at marketing, for example, there are different things in general that you could do in marketing. You could be you know, do organic like social media, or you could do paid pay per click type advertising. You could do content. So political consulting is similar in that you have like media consultants who handle like a lot of the TV ads or direct mail specifically. So there, there are specific firms that handle direct mail exclusively. You have polling firms who exclusively do polling and digital media firms who do digital media exclusively. And even within that, there are different subspecialties. So you have people who do email fundraising. Specifically. So, you know, they, they help I'm sure, you know, you've gotten in some of your audience have gotten those obnoxious emails that you never signed up for.

Jason Frazell: 9:40

Matt, I, Matt, I, I just have to tell you, I've gotten multiple text messages in the last two weeks from my friends, Kamala and Joe. Yeah, they're, they're in my, they're DMing me and inviting me for coffee and yeah. And then obviously emails, yeah, from blue, whatever it's called, or the if you're a Republican side, like, where you're like, I didn't. Sign up for this. I do have a question about this for you shortly, but it continue that since we've got you here in your expertise, I mentioned something, but please.

Matt Krayton: 10:07

Yeah. The text messages, the emails. So all of those are subspecialty persuasion, advertising on online. I'm doing that sort of stuff as a subspecialty. So and then their thing, the people called like general consultants who sort of help set up the campaign, develop management. So it really depends on the size of the campaign, what you need from our perspective or in our firm, we do almost everything except for we fundraising. So we don't really do fundraise. There's specific political consultants who focus on fundraising and compliance. So they sit with the candidate candidate calls through lists and asks for money and all of that stuff. So we don't do any of that compliance. That's it. They, you know, make sure all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed when it comes to filing with whatever, you know, campaign finance authority they need to file with. And then we don't do like field too. So there's a whole subspecialty of, of consultants who focus on door knocking volunteer organization. Yeah. Getting a paid, paid canvassers out, like, so, you know, getting paid an army of paid people out in the streets to knock doors and, you know, activate voters or have conversations with the voters and then phones and stuff like that. So we don't do that, but we do all the media stuff. So we do polling, media digital and general consulting. So that, that's sort of what we do, but against and certain firms specialize in certain things. We're, we're pretty much a Swiss army knife when, when it comes to that. Nice. Yeah. It's a pretty broad term. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 11:25

So who, who is it that hires you inside of a campaign?

Matt Krayton: 11:31

It depends. So sometimes it's the candidate directly. So you're having ground floor conversations with, with the candidate directly. Sometimes you are referred to a campaign manager. So they already have like staff. So we, we don't so we're not like staff on campaigns anymore. That was something that we all kind of did running around or in our early days where. You know, you manage campaigns or you're like directly paid by the campaign. Now we're, we're just consultants, right? So we do a number of campaigns, you know, every cycle. So sometimes it's, it's through, through a campaign manager. Other times, you know, you're referred through different groups or campaign committees that help groups of camp candidates win win their races or run their races. So it really depends. The smaller campaigns, typically you're, you're having a conversation directly with a candidate and, you know, there's been some referral from previous business and. And that's sure. They make the decision about who to hire. And then, you know, for the larger campaigns, I mean, if you're talking about a presidential race, that is a big sprawling organization, all, you know, 50 states. You know, so it's, you're dealing with various levels of staff and leadership on the campaign. And in, in that case, it's, it's, Probably not likely that you're dealing directly with the candidate who is who really should be focused on other other stuff like giving speeches and You know running raising tree and all that. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 12:45

Yeah raising millions and millions of dollars. Yeah. Yeah billions

Matt Krayton: 12:48

in this case. Yeah So

Jason Frazell: 12:51

I was gonna ask you Just because you mentioned it the like the outbound the outbound marketing email text and such This happened in the last cycle when Trump, Trump Biden in 20, 2020, I ended up on a list of a bunch of Congress folks in states that I am not in. And I, and I'm, I was just, I was so curious about this from your perspective because I come from a world of like this, I think it's called the spam can act. Like there's the marketing email rules around that. And I say, and I say to myself, well, my name obviously got sold somewhere to someone, but what a waste of money. Like send me, send me the emails or mark it to me as a congressperson or a representative somewhere in Texas. And I live in New York. I can't do anything for them. I'm not going to give them any. And it wasn't like asking parties, like come to the polls and vote for me type of stuff. I'm so curious, like what the, to me, it felt disorganized. And so I'm curious from your perspective as somebody who's worked inside of campaigns, is there a lot, is there a lot of like operational deficiencies that happen because it's so, to me, it seems it's so fast moving, there's so many things going on, things just get missed. I'm curious what your perspective is on that.

Matt Krayton: 14:09

Yeah, that's really good. I could, I could you know, tell the joke like what is spam actually when it comes to campaigns, right? What, what, what are we, what is the spam thing? I've, I'm not familiar with the term. So yeah, it's a really good question. So it looks like it's, it's a little disorganized. So what's happened in the past several election cycles is we've seen A lot more selling of, of lists or, or leasing of lists. So you can, you can actually lease an email list and you know, if you have, for example, if you're a candidate in, in New Jersey and you are known for a specific set of policies or positions and there's another candidate somewhere else or, or a group. a pack or something in a different part of the country that stands for those same things, similar things. Maybe you're a little more progressive or something like that. You might ask if you can lease their email list to see if any of their donors would be interested in, or any of their email list members would be interested in donating to you. So so it's not a hundred percent effective you know, you're going to miss some, but the, the, the real thing is it's, it's. Low cost for, for the most part, to, yeah, send cast a wide net in, in that case. So sure, you know, you might not be donating to that candidate in Texas, but someone else might. You know, and, and a lot of that is very ideologically driven. Particularly if you have, like, if you're running against a, a well-known opponent, like that's a big one, running against you know, sort of a villain, you know, from, from the other, other party. Like the, the big thing for Republicans for a while. You know back in the tea party wave was like ragging on Nancy Pelosi, which never really ended, but it's like, you know We're running against Pelosi. Let's you know, even yeah, I actually I had the opportunity to you know Get speaking in a class at Rutgers Law School yesterday and we were talking a little bit about about this Like oh, yeah, when when did you see like a negative campaign work really well against candidates and I was like in 2014 We were doing a couple of local races and every single piece of mail that was sent out against our candidate had Nancy Pelosi on it. I'm like, is she running for council in like town council or city council? And they'd be like, what, what is, but it was effective because she was sort of like the, you know, the villain of, of that cycle for, for Republicans. So you do see that a little bit, like when like in Texas, like if it's like calling all red, for example, is probably like one of the things that you got you know, running against Ted Cruz. I mean, Ted Cruz, I think that's a little bit of a villain, even among, you know, his own, own people. But not, not to get super, super political on that, but that's what you, that you tend to see that. And like, there are, so for every, you know, one of you, there are like five of you, there's maybe one person that will, will. give, you know, a small amount, 5, 10, and it all adds up at the end of the day. So, sure. So the real thing is it's actually fairly low cost and there's, there's generally, or at least historically has been a fairly low risk to, to just casting a broad net. Eventually, I mean, you're, we're going to see open rate. I mean, we've already seen this, like open rates decline. And stuff like that you know, certain types of like hair on fire, messaging is not working like it used to. So if you look in your spam folder, I bet you'll see at least a couple of emails with like the subject line, like we're packing our bags and going home or like we're defeated or something like that, you know, big capital letters. And that worked for a while. You know, but then you get desensitized everything. So like if you're the first mover in almost anything, you can, you can make hay out of it. And then as you know, More than everyone else. Does it? It becomes a little bit harder to stand out in the inbox. So those are areas that we've kind of are, are keeping an eye on to say, okay, well, you know, it's fairly low cost, but at a certain point the cost will outweigh the benefit, you know, based on again, open rates. And we'll just have to figure out some other way to reach people. The same thing with the text, right? When that first came out, big winner, right? And that, and now it's kind of leveling off because there are just so many texts coming, coming through. So it's a constant game. Very friendly. It's so friendly. Hi. Hi, Jason. Hi,

Jason Frazell: 18:10

Jason. This is this is Vice President Kamala Harris Would you like to join me in for coffee at New Jersey? I'll be there and you know, I'll be there next week or whatever It's so so friendly. It's like you're

Matt Krayton: 18:18

old friends, right? It's like, hey, it's your old buddy,

Jason Frazell: 18:21

Kamala. Yeah, exactly. I have a couple more questions about the politics that I want to expand into some of the other work you do because like This obviously applies to doing this with private, private companies or nonprofits. The two questions I have one is curiosity. My own is when you're going out and doing political consulting work in any, any discipline, like you said, there's a lot of disciplines. Do the candidates or campaign managers really care if you actually are aligned with them?

Matt Krayton: 18:54

That's, that's a good question too. So politics, even within a party is a fairly diverse space, you know, you're not going to agree 100 percent with every candidate. So I mean, you do try to filter on, on things where you feel like, So from our perspective, right, like in our firm, and I can't speak to how other, other consultants work in, in this space. But from our perspective, we generally try to, we ask, the first question we ask ourselves is, can we advocate vigorously for this client a hundred percent of the time? If the answer is yes, then we should, we should take that and we can, even if we don't agree with everything, we, we, you know, know that we can actually do our jobs and not feel uncomfortable doing that. I was going to say, without taking

Jason Frazell: 19:37

a shower four to five times a day, yeah, like just feeling gross.

Matt Krayton: 19:42

Yeah, that's, that's right. If the answer is no, then I'm a big believer in like, you should not cash the check. I mean, that's simple as that. I mean, not, not everyone feels that way. Like in, in, it is a business to some extent and there are a limited pool of candidates and things like that. But so do you always agree with everything that your candidate candidate is it believes in? Probably not. But. At the end of the day, you have to believe that they're going to be better than the other person running. And, and that's, that's the end. So it's a comparative exercise, right? It's not like you're running against the it's, it's the old Joe, Joe Biden quote, right? You know, don't compare me to the almighty compared me to the alternative. And yeah, and that's very much true, right? There are alternatives. Every election is a choice between one thing or another thing. And as a consultant, you just make a decision about who represents the better thing in, in that in that equation, then you ask yourself, can I do this? And if the answer is yes, then you, then you do it. So you don't agree on everything. There are always going to be areas of policy that, that you know, you'll, you'll perhaps butt heads on. You really do try though, as a consultant, not to let your personal beliefs get in the way of, of, sound strategy as well. So a big part of, of the political political consulting communications and reaching out to voters is understanding when you, where you need to meet voters, where they are, and then when you need to lead them to another conclusion on something. And that's a very hard thing to do because you can't convince everyone of everything. It's, it's a very hard thing to, to push someone off of a belief that they have about something, a very strongly held belief. So you have to be selective too, in, in what sorts of things you talk about, what things are most salient or least salient with voters, and then you know, kind of go from there. So that sort of factors into, into that. But in general, if you share the same principles, you know, with, with with a candidate and then the candidate approaches things with integrity, then. You know, by and large, everything is going to be fine. And, and, you know, it's pretty smooth sailing, but again, you don't always agree on every policy and, you know, there are certain red lines. I think every consultant is like, I will not work with people who do X or believe X or whatever. So that's, that's sort of where we're at.

Jason Frazell: 21:52

Yeah. So the second thank you for that. And the second question, and I think this kind of leads us into the overarching scope of what you do outside of politics is. You know, you'd mentioned that you kind of kicked us off in 2011. There's been such a, such a shift. I think it started with president Obama in 2008 with, so that was the first, really the social first social media campaign. And, and then of course we've got, you know, Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016 and all these things that didn't exist even 15 years ago. So I'm curious, like, what's the thing that you see as that's going, like, what's the next. Innovation in this space that you think will make a difference. And we're recording this. We're in an election cycle. We're recording this March 26th, 2024. And there's a president presidential election happening. And I guess that would be eight months from now. So I guess my, like, what do you see is like, what might be an innovation or something that are the general for those America Americans listening here, like what, what might be see that could be new or innovative. In this next cycle, because it seems like every cycle, especially the presidential, we're getting new things. Like you said, you got the text, you had the emails, we had social media back with Obama, what do you, what do you see as what's next? I hope

Matt Krayton: 23:11

I'm wrong about this, but I'll just preface it like, I hope, I hope I'm wrong somewhat. But but I think this is, this is probably where we're going to see some good things and some pretty bad stuff too is, is AI. And I think, I think everyone knew where I was going with that one. Right. It was not, not hard to see where we're headed, but yeah yeah, I think AI is potentially You know an area that is going to change things significantly from, from a number of perspectives. So, number one, and here's the danger, generative AI, generated, being able to generate images video, and voice. is very concerning,

Jason Frazell: 23:55

Barrier to

Matt Krayton: 23:55

barrier to entry on that stuff now, as it stands, especially on the, on the voice generation and even some of the video stuff you can still kind of tell a little bit, but it's, it's getting better. Every iteration is, is getting better. And as you mentioned, Human beings, we don't evaluate things very closely either on social media. You know, you're scrolling through your feed and you see something very quickly. It's not like you're going to examine things in, in a super critical way. So that is terrifying in that that that's ripe, unfortunately for bad actors to take advantage of, of those. those types of things. So cause actually this is funny. This is like another topic we were talking about last night in in that class was that I think they're just broadly taking a step back has been a little bit of an erosion of this idea of a shared reality and a shared set of facts that we live under. Like I think our realities and how we experience the world is diverging significantly. And it's, it's very much colored in by what we want to believe that we're seeing in any given moment. And AI certainly can feed into some of those preexisting biases that we have. So if you believe, for example, specific candidate is a certain way or believes a certain thing, or you just have this like kind of feeling in the background. And then you hear some AI generated voice, you know, in a robo call, say something that fits with that preexisting biases. See, I knew it. Frightening. So that's a little, it's a little scary. In other ways, AI can be quite useful in terms of, of, well, also useful and scary at the same time in terms of, of scale. So you can analyze and so, so that, so that, that can certainly cause issues down the road, because, because you'll be able to. zero in on messages that are most effective. And sometimes the tweaks are minimal between, you know, slight variations of words that that make a difference in how people think about different issues. So that could be one thing. In, in other ways, it could be very useful too, in that you can collect data or, or, or develop understanding of particular issues at scale

Jason Frazell: 26:04

in ways

Matt Krayton: 26:05

that you were never able to before. So I'll give you an example of this. So, so we've done some early stage so we've invested in some early stage startups over, over the last couple of years to kind of stay on the cutting edge of some of these technologies. And one of them, is a generative AI company that you know, basically, I don't know how I would characterize it would, would be sort of like lightweight, lightweight language models where you can quickly program stuff. You don't need reams and reams of data to train, train the model. But basically what you can do is train it to be a moderator for, for a focus group. So typically if you're doing a focus group, like qualitative research, you get a bunch of people, like 10 people in a room, you try to get some diversity and, and have that, have those people be representative of the broader population that you're trying to understand. Yeah. And then you dig in deeply to their beliefs about certain things. So polling is a little bit different in that you ask a whole bunch of people what their opinion is. Like yes, no, you know, ranking scales, things like that, that are very easy to do from a quantitative perspective. The qualitative stuff though. really helps you dig below the surface and truly understand why the why of, of beliefs. So I think of like polling is like helps you understand what the beliefs are and then like subtle shifts in language that could help you know, frame things in different ways that that'd be more persuasive or less persuasive. But the focus groups really help dig into the why of, of why people feel the way that they do. Now, Imagine instead of doing 10 people in a room with one moderator, you can actually collect a huge sample, a thousand people, right? With one AI, oops, sorry, AI moderator who, which then can collect all of that data and help people dig into the beliefs of why. So now you have that understanding qualitative research at scale which, which is very interesting to us. And, and probably beneficial because it can help understand a broader range of things and, and reduce, you know, the amount of error that you would get just by having like 10, 15 people in a room. Instead, you have thousands of people and you can do it very quickly. So.

Jason Frazell: 28:04

Yeah, that's brilliant. So my assumption would be for larger scale campaigns that data scientists and such are now full time positions within campaigns. And that probably wasn't, It was maybe a thing, but in a different way now because of all the, like the information available. So if you're talking about a, like a, a federal, like a, a national campaign or a Congress, Congress or something with a large budget, they have data scientists on staff that are constantly looking and making recommendations. And now you're adding the generative AI on top of that, around things like my assertion would be, and I'm a big AI person, I love it, is like, what should I say to these people? What would be, what are the, what are the words in this speech that are most likely. Going to hit the folks that I want that are in that are, you know, like swing voters or something Which is interesting. I think like writing speeches and writing content writing emails that used to just have to be done by people. Now, generative AI can do a lot of that and do it with the data set.

Matt Krayton: 29:03

Oh yeah, a hundred, a hundred percent. So it really is scaling a lot of that stuff. And you said you know, sort of during the Obama campaign was when a lot of the digital stuff started to happen. And, and that's when they started taking a look at a lot of the data science to the modeling of, of the electorate. So that, that's sort of a subset or, or related sort of discipline to, to the polling and research pieces is then extrapolating those findings in, in a large scale poll and modeling exactly how specific voters feel about very particular issues which is, which is really interesting. And then you can score people based on, on, you know, how you, whether or not you think they're going to turn out to vote what they think about gun safety, for example you know, and different things you can model all of that. You can create dynamic modeling to Kind of track how a race is developing overall. So kind of get more real time insights into how opinion is moving or isn't moving. So AI definitely will, will help you know, scale, scale that process a little bit in, in a way that, that we haven't seen before which, which could be, could be helpful. Now, what I will say, this is kind of an interesting thing though, is like looking at campaigns from, how they used to be. And I'm talking way, way back, you know, this is pre Obama, pre me being alive, actually, on this planet. It's you know, as a candidate, you used to be able to, for the most part, go on a couple of, of news shows and the majority of the voting population would see your message. Yeah, and here and it would penetrate in a big way, right? So like, it's a big broad thing, not specifically micro targeted to any one thing or the other, but you're kind of winning the overall conversation. And you know, that was the case for years. And then we kind of got into micro targeting, right? So then how do we persuade people that are interested in very niche kind of issues in the grand scheme of things and target them repeatedly with ads that specifically focused on that issue. So, We did that for a little while and I think I still think that's important, but I think we're actually coming full circle now back to a place where you really have to win the cultural, the broader cultural conversation in in these races because our media environment is so fragmented that you're never going to be able to force your message into each of these spaces online that you have to be in. You almost have to do something so big and so broad and so interesting that it does filter into, like, if you look at podcasts, for example, like some of the biggest podcasts in the world they have their audience that listens to them on wherever they get their podcast, but then you, then the clips, right? The audience is so much bigger because of all the clips that filter into different, different places and talk about the cultural relevance of all of that. And it's not like it's being filtered, forced into those spaces. It's that people are taking, you know, stuff and spreading it out. So I think we're kind of coming a little bit full circle and that we have to figure out how to kind of tap into the zeitgeist and when the overall cultural conversation and really like broadly. Communicate to the vibe of the moment, right? Like this is what we kind of do. It's like vibes based politics, right? It's not, you know, specific policy stuff anymore.

Jason Frazell: 32:05

Yeah, it's really that's that's brilliant I was thinking about and I do have a couple of friends who actually do this, but I know I don't I don't know many people that Turn on Newsmax and watch an hour of Newsmax and then go and read the New York Times, right? It's like, generally, you go to the, you go to the place that gives you the story you, like, that kind of vibes with you generally. Like, like, that's, that's how I consume news and I think most people do. So it's actually really hard. Like you said to, to get the, the larger scope of that, because I'm getting it fed to me through the thing that I've kind of chosen into that already feels good in a way, or like, you know, I mean, I don't know how it is for you, Matt, but like, I like to listen to news that I agree with, which is a limiting thing for me, but it is nice to go like, Oh, this person's talking about this thing and they have this point of view and they're interviewing this expert and this expert saying what I already, what I already believe to be true, which is like, make me like, Oh, my cognitive bias. And and you can see this, like, I'm thinking about the presidential, the presidential debates in 2016 with Hillary and Trump is, it was kind of a, it was kind of a disaster, but I don't know that any of those, I don't know that any of those debates swayed anybody because you're already were like, okay, these people are this and that they're going to show up this way and they did it. It was kind of like, and then the election kind of showed that. Based on the results of those, those debates.

Matt Krayton: 33:23

Yeah. I mean, that, that's a hundred percent true. So it kind of goes back to this idea of, of you know, a shared reality eroding. So, so much of our information is governed by these algorithms that sort us essentially into like, Oh, you like this video, I'm going to show you more of this and more of this and more of this. And then we're going to go further and further down that rabbit hole. So it's so yes, I, like, I like to listen to stuff that I agree with and, and watch stuff that I agree with and read things that that generally jive with and also like provide a sort of, so we talked a little bit too about you know, activating emotions versus like contentment type emotions, so like anger activating emotion. So like if something makes you angry. in a way that makes people like you angry, right? You're more likely to share that around. And so those are things that trigger reactions in our brain of like, Oh, MSNBC showed me this thing. It makes me angry. I want to share it like, Oh, you know, and, and it goes on and on and on like that. If you're just happy and content with something, you're not very likely to share and maybe not even likely to click through to read the thing. Right. Unless there's some element of surprise or some, something interesting about it. But other than that, like, if you're just happy and like content. That does nothing for, yeah, exactly. There's no engagement in happiness. So it's yeah, it's kind of sad. But it's, so I, I agree with that. I mean, like now for professionally you know, I have to try to get on the other side of tick tock, the other side of Instagram and see what's going on over there. Yeah, I don't, I don't like it. I don't like it at all, but like most people don't seek that out. And in fact, it's very hard to get there unless you are consistently consuming, consuming that sort of stuff. So but it is very self reinforcing that people do. Go to go to the spaces that that they like to go to. Now, I will say that there are certain I think I would be remiss in saying that, like, we can't both sides everything to. Like, there are certain outlets that are doing as close to objective journalism as is possible, you know, as human beings. And then there are outlets that are and and influencers and personalities that are simply not. It is just bad faith. It is nonsense. It's not real. It's not based in fact. No, it's just a lot more money in that

Jason Frazell: 35:36

though.

Matt Krayton: 35:37

Oh,

Jason Frazell: 35:37

yeah A lot more money in the polarizations. Yeah, and the polarization a lot more money in that the middles. I say the middle is boring Oh, well, you're mentioning podcasts the some of those popular podcasts in america are polarizing podcasts Because that's interesting. Very much for people. Yeah, very, very much

Matt Krayton: 35:52

so. Controversial sometimes bordering on, on conspiratorial too. Like, you know, certain, certain things. I'm, you know, obviously not going to, you know, start naming names and getting myself in trouble here. But but there are like, there is a conspiratorial elements to some of this. Like there's certain nefarious things. So it almost actually makes you part of the in, in club, right. The in group when you're a part of the conspiracy. It's like we, as a community who listened to this. Not this podcast, but a particular podcast knows something that the rest of the population doesn't. Right? We're in on the, we're in on the, like, we know that there's some nefarious thing going on beneath the surface. And like, there's some plan to, I don't know, depopulate the earth or whatever crazy stuff goes on. Like, or the, the COVID, we did a lot of public health communication around COVID vaccination. Yeah. That was a big one where a lot of conspiratorial stuff going on just beneath the surface. People forget that the Trump, this is really funny, people forget that the Trump administration, they were the ones that fast track that. Totally. You know, and rightfully so, right? We were facing it. And, and that's the only time you'll ever hear me say anything like that, but that really was a thing that they should have done. And, and they, and it was smart because. People were dying and they had to move, move quickly on trying to find something that would prevent death. And guess what? It did. We're in a much better place today because of vaccinations than, than we were before. But, but you go into some of these spaces online and you hear, there must be some other thing going on. There must be some other ulterior motive. Like why would, you know, they, they can't be safe. They're putting microchips in us or you're going to be magnetic or it's all sorts of stuff like that. And it kind of makes people feel like they're in in group. It's like the rest of you. You know, you you know, lemmings out there. You're just following people right off the cliff. But me, I know exactly what's going on. I see the real thing. I am smarter. So it's, it's kind of an interesting thing to see how that how that plays out in online. And it is self again, self reinforcing because if you listen to one thing like that, then it pulls you into other spaces where they're talking about other stuff. That's just like, Yeah. Completely off the wall.

Jason Frazell: 37:59

Just real quick on the conspiracy thing, then I want to pivot a little bit into some of the private work you do. I forget if it was a comedian or is it somebody I was talking to? And like, I'm, I know there's things going on, you know, Department of, Department of Defense and CIA and there's things, NSA, there's things that happen. That are actual conspiracies. I'm sure. But this big federal government conspiracy, I think the quote was like, these are people that can't even pass a simple law sometimes. And you think that this federal government has the wherewithal or the organization to like create this worldwide global conspiracy or things like, like this, this statistically improbable based on the only way this is possible is if all the rest of the way it goes is actually fake, which would be just, you know, Absolutely not. Like, that would be astronomically improbable. Like, some of these conspiracies that come out, I'm like, the level of organization that it would take. And the level of nobody saying anything to have that actually be true would be unbelievable. And maybe it was a comedian. They're like, these are people who get like, these are people who can't always show up to vote or like, can't pass a temporary budget. So we don't shut down the government, but you're saying that they all are in this thing. I'm just like, huh. Like, it's like, it's awkward. Razor is like, what's the most simple explanation. It's not that there's a massive government conspiracy around some of these things.

Matt Krayton: 39:19

Oh, yeah. I'll, I'll take it a step further with Occam, Occam's Razor. So also, oftentimes it's not even the simplest explanation, it's the dumbest possible explanation for something. It's, it's just that somebody stumbled into something and a cascade of events occurred as a result of that. But I mean, even if you think about like a, a group of, of friends or acquaintances, right. And and that group of friends, like, you know, you have some secret, right. There's some whatever. Yeah. Somebody in that group. is bound to say something, right? Because like over time, so totally, and I'm not saying that like aliens don't exist or there isn't some sort of extraterrestrial life out there. I mean, there's a lot that we don't know, but like, we also know for certain that we don't know everything. That's fine. Like, that's okay. But like, you're telling me that a group of any, People, any amount of people on this planet are stashing the corpse of an extraterrestrial somewhere. Right. I haven't said, and nobody, nobody said anything. Nobody, nobody said anything. Seems pretty unlikely. Like, again, if you just think about like like you go out for drinks with with your buddies or, and someone does something embarrassing and then that friend, please don't, you know, can you just like not tell anyone about this? And it's like, Oh yeah, no problem. And then the next day it's like, Oh man, did you see what Bill did last night? Man, that was crazy. And it's like, come on, man. It's the same thing. Same concept. It's like just cannot believe and you're right. Like it's it's what what you can Chalk up or would oftentimes people chalk up to again nefarious intent is oftentimes just pure incompetence Exactly it's well I joke about so this is really funny whenever people ask me about like different sort of portrayals of political activity or, or government or on, on in popular culture or different shows, right? They're like, Oh, is it, is it like house of cards where it's, it's, you know, they're, they're plotting and, and, you know, thinking through all these issues and they're like, it's like 3d chess and all that. Or it was like, actually, it's kind of like, It's veep for the most part, totally. Yeah. And yeah. And parks and rec. Right. Parks and rec is another. It's just like, think about every human being, you know, and it's just like, that's what it is. It's not some crazy. Yeah, exactly. You know, but I mean, there, and there are smart people doing smart, but it's all above board and stuff does get done and but it's not, you know, the, the super nefarious stuff or like if something bad happens, oftentimes it's just a result of like a stumble or a screw up or something. Yeah. You know, funny thing. It's not like some plotting of like, you know, Frank Underwood pushing a journalist onto the tracks of the Metro and then wearing a trench coat, like no one will catch you. So yeah,

Jason Frazell: 41:53

exactly.

Matt Krayton: 41:54

Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 41:55

Why? The thing I'll, I'll bring up here to wrap on this is I think about the your home state and my neighbor state, Chris Christie, you know, they shut down the New Jersey government And then there's a picture of him sitting at the Jersey Shore in a chair by himself. People are like, oh yeah, he did this so that he could have, I'm like, no, I just think he doesn't have good judgment. Or he doesn't like, either, either he doesn't have good judgment and or he doesn't have people around him who tell him what he should and shouldn't do, because that was just poor judgment. I highly doubt that he was like, actually scheming to shut down the New Jersey, like, Shut down the parks, and I think it was because of COVID, and then he's gonna go out there and be like, Oh, and I get the beach to myself. Highly doubt that's what he was thinking. He wasn't thinking.

Matt Krayton: 42:35

Yeah, 100%. He wasn't thinking

Jason Frazell: 42:36

about the optics of it.

Matt Krayton: 42:37

Yeah. Oh, or he didn't care. Like, that was, that was the thing. He didn't care, right, or he didn't, Cuz he can go there anytime he wanted to. Like, that is for the governor to use on Island Beach, Island Beach State Park. That, that whole area is for the use of the governor. You can go there anytime you want. You never have to deal with anyone else. It's like, there's no reason to shut down an entire government because, because of that. So it was just, it was pure stupidity to your point. And it was like, okay. But you know what? It's, I think there was an element of two of like, I actually don't care what people think. I'm just going to go do this. He's like,

Jason Frazell: 43:04

whatever. Yeah. And I'm going to do it in my do it in my swimsuit. Yeah. Yeah. That was

Matt Krayton: 43:08

iconic. Yeah. So many good memes on that one. It was

Jason Frazell: 43:11

amazing. So many good, yeah. So Matt, to wrap, to wrap up here for today how does this all, then, you know, you mentioned you do a lot of private sector work, nonprofit work. How does the work in politics relate in terms of what's same and what might be a different consideration when you're, when you're meeting with somebody in one of those spaces?

Matt Krayton: 43:29

Sure, yeah, we really do bring a lot of our experience from campaigns political campaigns to private sector clients. So there are a lot of parallels. So a campaign, really all a campaign is, it's, it's a startup in a condensed period of time where you have to achieve a shared goal of getting someone elected, which is essentially selling a person, right? Selling an idea. Yeah. It's the same thing. You're dealing with crisis almost every day on a campaign, whether it's big or small, there's always something happening. So you learn very quickly. You figure out what works, what doesn't work. So, you know, we bring a lot of, a lot of those skills and a lot of those lessons to, to you know, the boardroom and we're talking to our private sector clients. Again, a lot of things are just comparative exercises, right? Like, are you going to buy this thing? Are you gonna buy that thing? Are you going to you know, have a positive view of this brand or a negative view of the other brand. So it's, it's all sort of comparative for, for the most part a lot of educating people about specific issues, you know, figuring out how to frame things in a way that, that makes sense, sense to people which, which is, which has been kind of interesting. And, and again, like battling back against a lot of the stuff you deal in the political deal with in the political sphere, like disinformation, for example, like in renewable energy. Oh man, the amount of stuff that goes on there. I mean, the, the wind offshore wind stuff that we went through, I don't know if you followed that a little bit in New Jersey, but up and down the East Coast with the whales washing up and stuff, you know, nothing to do with offshore wind, but there was an information vacuum. People filled it and and it turned into a thing. I, now, in terms of net effect, I don't think it actually did much other than make offshore wind a little bit more unpopular among one side of the political spectrum. Right. You know, whatever, but like stuff is moving forward still. But I don't know. In a state where you do have change of, of government, you know, control from one party to the other, that, that could in fact have a huge impact on whether or not, you know, you can get stuff done. So so we deal with all of those things in the private sector too, is like navigating those issues, navigating online Again, conspiracies, misinformation you know, stuff that, that just makes it really hard to to make progress on, on uncertain things. So so we, we do have those conversations and we have a lot of, again, lesson, hard lessons learned on campaigns that we can bring To the boardroom to inform. And, and, and I think the other thing too, is in the private sector, things are moving much more quickly from an information perspective

Jason Frazell: 45:51

than

Matt Krayton: 45:51

they did before. So that's, that's a very useful skillset to have you know, for us coming into, because every day, again, is, is sort of this frenetic pace of, of, you know, one thing or the other that we have to deal with in the political world. And I think that a lot of executives, people in the C suite, they're, they're starting to acclimate to this world of, Things are moving quick, like, you know, things can get out of hand really quickly. You know, communications can get away from you. Even if it's like a, a well meaning campaign or well meaning tweet or well meaning, whatever it is you know, a lot of things can, can kind of take on a life of their own. You know, things might be tone deaf, right? And, and totally blind to sort of, again, the cultural moment that we're in. So, and that's all part of capitalism, which is kind of funny. Like people complain about like certain things getting canceled or not canceled. It's like, well, a lot of that is driven by consumer demand. So. Right. That's capitalism, right? Like it's what people want and there's no law saying that you can't say this or can't say that. It just, yeah. Like there are consequences to saying things that are, you know, not that the general population or your market or some other segment of the market doesn't like and, and you know, that's, that's the game unfortunately. So,

Jason Frazell: 47:00

yeah. Well, Matt, I want to wrap up and ask you about. Some of your, like something that's been done well in this space. And this can be something you worked on. You don't need to tell us it for confidentiality reasons, or just an example of like a good, I don't know, call it a PR campaign, a good campaign that you thought was really effective and done well, and. You know, again, something you worked on doesn't have to be like, what's something you point out and you'd go, Hey, if you want to look at how to do this really well, Jason is a outside, like somebody on the outside looking in, go look at how they're doing it. Cause I can, you know, it's funny as you're talking about this, I can think of so many examples of how to do this so terribly, and you know what I love about this topic, is that. You know who does a great job of highlighting all the terrible ways this is done? John Oliver, on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He just did the one on Boeing and he was just highlighting just how absolutely tone deaf. Or just thinking of other examples of things like the Aaron Rodgers stuff with like, you know, talking about Jeffrey Epstein with Jimmy Kimmel, just like, And I know these guys don't really care, but like, how dumb, like how dumb and how improvable. And there's so many examples of how this has done so. Alex Jones, great example, which cost him his career and a ton of money. How to do this so terribly. But what are some examples that we could look at of like how this has been done well, either politically or in your private sector or nonprofit?

Matt Krayton: 48:25

Yeah, so I think one of the just kind of going back a little ways, one of the, and this is sort of in the political social sphere of things is is same sex marriage was, is you know, thinking about how the Overton window, right, shifted public attitude shifted on that issue over a relatively short amount of time was, was really the effort of a lot of very dedicated groups who did a great job of relaying human stories about how life, how certain, certain people experience life and how those things are not all that different from, from the people that they were talking to. So they did a lot of work in doing like deep canvassing, right? Talking to people, kind of showing those similarities and overlap and, and lived experience. and removing the fear from that situation. So I would say like in terms of overall, like an effective campaign from a human rights perspective and, and just from the perspective of just basically like getting government to leave people alone, to, you know, do whatever they want to do in their personal lives. I think that was an extraordinarily You know, powerful campaign, and it wasn't all one big unified thing, but there were pockets of campaigning and activism and communications that work really well in that space. Again, looking at, again, the short window in which attitudes shifted dramatically in this country on, on that particular issue. And so I, and I think it had a tremendously positive outcome again in, in that You know, you have people, you know, your neighbors, your friends, your, you know, even family members who are in this position where at one point they literally could not marry the person that they loved just because of some outdated thing. And, and so I think that was extraordinarily effective. I mean, again, it's, it's so much easier to see, like, that wasn't, that wasn't super obvious though, that that was the, the mistakes are always more obvious to your point, right? Like the, the screw ups, the, like the stuff with you know, Kensington palace and the, and keep mental, again, not to cast dispersions than that. Cause that's an incredibly difficult topic for, for people to deal with. But like, again, all the back and forth and the images, you know, coming up on, on you know, photo, coming up as photoshopped and stuff like that, that really, like that sticks in your mind, but it's the stuff where you have the subtle victories where, where attitudes shift, where you can tell human stories, where you can, can kind of develop that you know, shared understanding and empathy for, for people around you, I think was, was extraordinarily effective. You know, and, and I think You know, a lot of the public health stuff during the, during the pandemic you know, we were involved in, we had, we're very fortunate to work with some really great organizations on, on that and really truly understanding the barriers to getting, getting people vaccinated earlier, early on you know, from that and, and the, the number of lives that were saved as, as a result of, of those efforts and understanding that, you know, Some people had like sort of good faith concerns about the vaccine. Like, I mean, I'm sure I did my own research. I know it's like a dirty words. I like I did my own, but I like I did. I talked to my doctor. I talked to, which is a natural thing to do. And I think having empathy for people who are just like, I'm not so sure. And then there were certain groups too, that had actual like historical reasons to have concern because of abuses. of people in authority toward them, right? Like, like a lot of communities of color, a lot of black communities suffered at the hands of, of people who were doing, doing actual nefarious things to them. So there were some very good faith concerns there. So you can't dismiss that. So I think like in those cases, like being able to have those conversations and again, getting to a place of mutual understanding and lowering those barriers to understanding was, was extraordinarily effective. You know, during, during that yeah, I mean, those are, those are big ones that I would point to, and they're not always obvious, right? It's not always just some, like, it's not fireworks go off at the end.

Jason Frazell: 52:17

Well, because they work. And, and when they work, it's actually not that obvious because they're just doing what they're supposed to be doing. I thank, I really appreciate that. To wrap this up, you brought this back and we'll do a call back here. I was thinking about what we were talking about, about 20 minutes ago about government conspiracies. And then I think about outside of like the Kensington palace stuff, that's obviously a very serious thing. So not. Making a comment on any of that in terms of the actual health thing and the privacy and all that, it's very serious. And then you look at that, you, you look at that from a, like a public perspective and you go, these are folks that have arguably unlimited resources, unlimited resources, and they can't Photoshop a photo correctly. And you're telling me that these, and they're not obviously monarchy, not the government, but you're telling me that there is a global conspiracy. That is done to perfection. Like when people and the federal government, you can argue has unlimited resources in certain ways and they don't get it right most of the time. And I just, I just, I just laugh about that. Like it's so improbable that there's this major secret hundreds of or thousands of people are holding onto. And like you said, it's much more likely that it's, it's it's Veeper, Parks, and Rec, just a bunch of normal human, normal, normal people with their thoughts, feelings, and egos walking around, trying to make it work just like the rest of us. This is awesome. I'm so glad we got a chance to do this. Thank you so much for coming on, really appreciate the work you do out there. I'm sure that we'll be likely, we being people listening and myself, we'll likely see something that you're involved in here in the near future. And we won't even know.

Matt Krayton: 53:54

That's possible. But it's

Jason Frazell: 53:54

a, you, but you somehow had a hand in it. It's, that's a super cool. So I really appreciate you and the work you and your firm are doing there and keep up the good work.

Matt Krayton: 54:01

Thank you.

Jason Frazell: 54:03

Thanks so much, Matt.

54:05

Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to Cool People with Jason Frizzell. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and give us a shout out, or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode piqued your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast at jasonfrizzell. com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.