The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Prof G on Marketing: Rebranding the Democratic Party

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Welcome to the final episode of our special series, Prof G on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today. In today’s episode, Scott answers your questions on how marketing principles apply to everyday life, how artists can sell their work without selling out, and how he’d rebrand the Democratic party.  Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [e-mail], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Neil Ipatel, editor in chief of The Verge and host of Decoder, my show about big ideas and other problems. We have a special exclusive episode for you that we're really excited about. It's an interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai. I sat down with Sundar during the Google I.O. developer conferences here to talk about all of the company's major AI news, as well as the state of the industry, the future of the web, and Google's ongoing antitrust trials. There's a lot going on in this one.

I think you're really going to like it. Check out Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Office Hours with Profgy. Today we're finishing off our special three-part series, Profgy on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today. What a thrill! Question number one, our first question comes from Dan Weil on Instagram. They ask, what lessons from marketing can the average person use in their day-to-day life? So the basis of marketing is most people, most people think okay how do I find consumers for my product? The basis of marketing is alright how do I create a product after identifying a market

and a need? And so I think, essentially, my most popular session in my course is the brand you, and that is trying to think of yourself as a brand. It just shocks me how many people spend their entire lives in brand management thinking about every component and touch point of a product or service to create intangible associations or a brand.

Brand is emotion. Brands are intangible, such that you get kind of unfair advantage, right? And then they don't think about what their brand is. So think about what is your market, right? Are you in the market to find a job in accounting? And then think, okay, how do I create a product, me, that attracts or is very attractive to the market of potential employers in accounting?

Is it certification? Is it a CFA? Is it the way I dress looking very orderly? Is it having knowledge, specific knowledge about a very deep niche in accounting? Is it beginning to create content around accounting such that people notice me? It's figuring out what is your market, like in the mating market, in the professional market, across the world. What do you want to achieve? What's the market for getting that level of achievement? And then reverse engineering to what certification, character attributes, physical appearance, activities and behaviors will in fact make you most attractive

to your potential market. And being really strategic about it, right? Being really kind of thoughtful about it. What is, I want to appeal to thought leaders, I don't have a lot of influence and I want to appeal to young men. But I did a little bit more analysis. What I really want to appeal to is I want to appeal to young men and I want to appeal to young men. But I did a little bit more analysis. What I really want to appeal to is I want to appeal to young men and I want to appeal to their moms. And the way I appeal to young men is I start thinking about, okay,

young men are very focused on finance and economic security. They also, I think, they're the white space for young men and straight men, quite frankly, is to be more emotive and more vulnerable. So I talk about stuff that's a little bit uncomfortable. I'm also irreverent and profane. Now, some of that is authentic because I am a profane and vulgar person, but quite frankly, some of it is marketing

because I'm an older dude. So to resonate with younger people, I do think they like a guy or attracted to a product that is a little bit irreverent, a little bit fearless, and quite frankly, funny. So marketing isn't finding consumers for your product. It's figuring out what market you wanna go after and then reverse engineering to yourself and saying,

how do I become the best product that that market can't resist is more attractive to that market? Who are you? What's your core value proposition? What do you wanna be known for reputationally? And then how do you, the way you behave, the way you dress, the certifications you get,

the characteristics you attribute, how do you reinforce that association and that brand? You create such a strong brand that when people are faced with a myriad of decisions around who they hire, who they hang out with, who they mate with, they decide to look at the shelf and they pick you. Question number two, our next question comes from Threads. Lee asks,

As a professional artist, we are told that we can never look like we are marketing, yet we must market to make sales. How do we do that? Oh my God, you want to talk about an industry that is so like full of shit, that is so like all marketing. I mean, literally, okay, I'm sure there's like, you know, 0.001% of artists are so fucking brilliant

that their work itself just breaks through. Folks, get over yourself. If you're not willing to be a total whore and go to openings and meet people and be on Instagram and totally pimp your... If you don't feel like you need to shower every day because you've done so much whoring of yourself and your work, then just expect to be a struggling artist that eventually digresses into some sort of substance abuse and is poor the rest of your life. I don't think I can think

of an industry that is more marketing than art. I mean, it's creating its illusion and this character and why you're so in, my piece of, I have, basically what do I have? I have two pieces of art, literally only two. One is a picture of Otto Frank returning to the basement where he and his family hung out and that has real meaning for me.

And then whenever I, literally whenever I feel sorry for myself, which is one of the many things I hate about myself, given my blessings, I go look at that photo, and boom, I stop feeling sorry for myself. The second piece of art I own is this thing, it's called Map for a Politician, and it's buying item Grayson Perry. And it's a netching, and it's beautiful,

and it's very political, and it kind of speaks to me. It means a lot to me because I went with someone, someone I care a great deal about when I was in Istanbul with her said, I think you'd really like this artist and he's having an exhibition in Istanbul. We went, I loved it. Then she bought me a piece. I think it's probably the most valuable physical thing I own, or at least most valuable physical thing I own,

or at least most valuable to me. One of the things I love about it, and I just was so intrigued, is this guy Grayson Perry lives half the year as a man and half as a woman. Anyways, I found that just super cool and I found him fascinating. I learned more about him. Yeah, I bought the piece, but what I was really buying was a small piece of Grayson Perry,

because I was just fascinated with the artist. So your ability to market yourself, go to stuff, get awareness, get pictures of your shit out on social media, I think it's everything, or nearly everything. So if you're banking on the fact that you're 0.0001% of artists, yeah, have at it. And if you believe that, guess what?

You know what's really gonna bum you out? Is people who are less talented than you are gonna make a lot more money and get a lot more relevance because they did the hard part and that is they got out a big spoon and they ate shit, they marketed themselves. So of course, this is an industry that's huge around marketing. I immediately go to social,

but I think it's being social media, but I also think it's being very social, going to a bunch of stuff. I can't tell you how to do this, but quite frankly, I think being quirky and being social media, but I also think it's being very social, going to a bunch of stuff. I can't tell you how to do this, but quite frankly, I think being quirky in the art field or being really standing out in terms of the way you dress, you are your own brand, is really important. And just meeting with as many people as possible.

I think this is the ultimate sales and marketing industry, and that is what is art? It's 49% the art, it's 51% marketing. Get over yourself, start marketing. All right, we'll be right back after a quick break. The Hot Honey McRisbee is so back at McDonald's. With juicy 100% Canadian-raised seasoned chicken, shredded lettuce, crispy jalapenos and that completely craveable hot honey sauce, it's a sweet heat repeat you

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Plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Welcome back. Our final question comes from Voiddeer1234 on Reddit. They ask, If a new alternative party were to emerge in the USA, that was centrist in nature. How

would Scott package the brand? Name, messaging, media tactics, etc? It's an interesting question and it's a question that's relevant to me. I'm friends with Andrew Yang who wanted to start something called the Ford party and asked me to get involved and I'm basically very cynical on third parties. I don't think they work. I think everyone has an idea. Remember Howard Schultz? He decided he was gonna run as an independent. God, that was stupid. I don't think they work. I think everyone has an idea. Remember Howard Schultz, he decided he was going to run as an independent. God, that was stupid. I'm a billionaire and I built an amazing coffee company so I should lead the nation. Okay, that makes sense. Anyways, the question for me is if the Democratic

Party is going to reinvent itself and become more, become the new third party or a more robust party, what would it look like? I think in general, Democrats or this new third party you're talking about need to be less focused on trying to acquire social status and studying to a purity test around an orthodoxy of what your political party is supposed to represent for society and lecturing at people and trying to be social engineers or evangelists of an orthodoxy, and focus on the following. How can government and the platform that is the United States provide more emotional and material success for people?

That's it. How can we give people, young people, a sense of purpose through national service, through good schooling, through opportunities to meet and mate? And then how can we implement a series of policies that fill in the gaps such that young people can have a reasonable shot, more than a reasonable shot, a probable shot at achieving what is the most rewarding thing in the world and that is finding someone to fall in love with and having a certain level of

prosperity where you can raise your kids, take a vacation, not worry about healthcare. Forty percent of American households have medical debt. What does that mean? We need a party that gets very serious about stopping lobbying and ensuring that Ozempic and Humira don't cost eight times more than what people in other nations pay for. I think about how outrageous it is that we pay more for pharmaceuticals than any other nation despite the fact that we invent them. So I think that this new party would have to be focused on what I call a unifying theory of everything. And that is anyone under the age of 40 should have the path, the trajectory and the infrastructure to find someone to fall in love with, more third places, more sports leagues, more churches,

more nonprofits, mandatory national service so we can meet people from different ethnicities, different economic backgrounds, different sexual orientations and find out, you know what, I may not agree with your politics. I may not like you, or whatever, but you know what? I have a bond with you. Why? Because this is what we have in common. We're Americans. We need to lower taxes on young people,

such that they have more of a shot at getting housing. Let's talk about housing. Seven million manufactured homes in the next 10 years. Little cool communities with young people, they pop up their cool coffee shops and their cool cultural institutions. And we massively bring down the cost of housing. Federal legislation that does away,

that does away with this NIMBYism, such that we have more housing and people can actually afford a fucking house. $25 an hour minimum wage. If it had just kept pace with productivity or inflation, it'd be a 23 bucks. But oh, small businesses to go out of the business. No, they wouldn't. Minimum wage programs in Washington state and California have resulted in economic growth. Why? Because the wonderful thing about poor and middle income households is they spend

all their money creating a multiplier effect. The economy actually gets a stimulus. All of these things could be done. We need leadership. We need data driven government that is willing to stand up to special interest groups that stops this ridiculous transfer of money from young to old. For the first time, a 30 year old isn't doing as well as his or her parents were in 250 years. That means America isn't working. So here is the unifying theory of everything for your new party. Anyone under the age of 40 should have an obvious aluminum path where they can meet someone, fall in love, have a reasonable lifestyle,

have a house and afford to have children and feel good about America. That's it, not that hard. We've fucked it all up, we can unfuck it. That's your third party. and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. Oh, good God, that's exciting. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG pod

from the Box Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our ProffGMarkets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.