Hello from London, where it’s 80 degrees, sunny and coworking spaces close at 2pm on Fridays.
I’m on my way to Cannes for the ~16th time. At this point, I should have my photo up on the wall of the Carlton lobby like the framed celebrity photos in Famous Famiglia. I could be brought out on the Croisette with veterans of the Gutter Bar in the 2000s like WWII veterans on the D-Day anniversary. Those long nights amid all that broken glass…
I’ll be hosting a series of conversations and gatherings during the week.
On Monday, we are boarding the CivicScience yacht – TRB’s is in dry dock – for croissants, coffee and to discuss why AI has so many brand problems. Later in the day, I’ll discuss a case study of how P&G and Albertson’s used shopper data to create a microdrama, Rico’s Tacos.
On Tuesday, I’m heading to Bloomberg Media’s café to discuss how agentic AI is changing B2B marketing at HSBC and beyond. That evening is the TRB Brand and Media Leaders Mixer, which is arguably the hottest ticket in town and will feature canapés that cost an obscene amount.
On Wednesday, we are shooting a video series with media leaders, followed by a seaside Revenue Leaders Dinner in partnership with EX.CO. We will not replicate last year’s clubstaurant experience, despite its uniqueness and rousing rendition of Born in the USA to sparklers and champagne.
Finally, to cap off the week on Thursday, I’m heading to the People Inc villa for our annual poolside state of the industry discussion with People Inc CEO Neil Vogel and special guest Sara Fischer, Axios media correspondent. We’ll have drinks and snacks.
I’ll also be writing an SMS Cannes Diary that will capture the true Cannes, not the make-believe PR stuff that I’m convinced is part of a conspiracy to prove to finance that a trip to the Riviera is absolutely business critical. Sign up for texts.
Expect a Cannes postcard from the event to arrive by email. I know many dislike Cannes out of principle or just pique, but I’ll do my best to make them entertaining, because Cannes is garish, mostly indefensible yet still very relevant. It’s best treated seriously but not literally.
Thanks to TRB’s Cannes partners: CivicScience, Bloomberg Media, People Inc, Albertson’s Media Network, EX.CO, Beehiiv, Omeda, Sociology of Business, Conscious Minds, DanAds, Tracksuit, Subtext, Airops and Supertab. Special thanks to our production partners: Clear Sky Collective, Azur-Plus and Podhouse.
For more information on partnering with The Rebooting, shoot me a note: [email protected]. You hear about those journalists who hate the commercial part of the business. I’m not like them.
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How KCRW took a community approach
The past five years, in the hangover from the scale era, publishers have been focused on direct connections. That often meant email, which remains a foundational tool for building media businesses.
The next phase will be using those direct connections to foster communities. The test for a brand is understanding whether they have an audience or a community. They’re not the same thing. A community is one that shows up in order to connect with each other. That’s easier said than done for publishers with engrained habits to see their job as creating content that’s distributed to an audience.
KCRW is a local institution in Los Angeles, home to Morning Becomes Eclectic, the long-running music-discovery program. The public radio station is using its standing to lean into a community model that includes 100 events per year, such as a pie baking contest that drew 400 bakers and 10,000 attendees and a summer series of 18 free, all-ages events at cultural centers across Southern California. Its membership program has 55,000 paying members.
"We use media to cultivate this community,” Jennifer Ferro, president of KCRW, told me on The Rebooting Show. “ We don't build a community in order to make media."
That’s helped by the foothold KCRW has in LA culture. It has been a fixture since 1945. Jennifer knows that some even have KCRW mentions in their dating profiles. That’s the kind of foundation that most media brands do not have.
"We're not trying to become a community center necessarily, but more of a community institution that binds people together and something that you need to check out to know what's valuable in your community,” she added.
Reports from the field on replacing the phone,
PvA Field Notes is alive. This is our experiment at both pushing Troy’s vibe-coding skills to the maximum – he texted me last night about adding a fintech component? – and testing the hypothesis that brands will increasingly become communities. The idea: create a space where those who also connect the dots in media, tech, culture and beyond can join in our conversations that are the core of the show. People often ask me how much we prepare for each show. This is the answer: We have a wide-ranging group text.. I’m of the belief that group texts are the best media formats of the moment. Over the coming weeks, we’ll integrate FN more into the show. Join the conversation on PvA Field Notes. (The real ones will get the Joe Jaffe Web 2.0 reference.)
Here’s some of what we’re discussing.
The race for the new phone. Phones + social media are the new cigarettes. The question is what replaces them for a population that’s information addled. Banning them in schools and at Phoebe Bridgers’ concerts is not enough. Silicon Valley loves to create problems while they make lots of money and then make even more money “solving” the problems they created. It’s like Backdraft. Good business. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is thought a product genius, which might be rethought with the release of Specs, which caused investors to barf. The face computer is still too awkward. The AI pin didn’t work. Jack Dorsey thinks people would rather use a princess wand to pay. OpenAI is supposedly sticking with the phone but looking to replace apps with… AI agents.
Pivot to community. Charl XCX is releasing B-sides of her music on a private Instagram account and vinyl. Underlying this: getting back control from Spotify and Apple Music. The 1,000 True Fans thesis is coming to fruition up and down the distribution curve. Fun twist: This investigative news operation is tying membership to support its work with a coffee subscription service.
AI image glowups are coming. Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist, but at a time when AI is as popular as a rash, I’m noticing an uptick of AI-for-good stories. This mom is using agents to manage her household, which one FN contributor noted is a perfect setup for a horror movie. The solution to AI slop has arrived in the form of Taste Labs, which is “building the data and infrastructure layer to give AI models and agents taste.” As Puck’s Dylan Byers would say, good luck with that.
Talent has leverage. Thank you to Emily Sundberg for noting that I sorta predicted Kyla Scanlon’s recruitment to TV in our recent conversation with Breaker’s Lachlan Cartwright, although I’d suggested she be a new 60 Minutes correspondent. Instead, she’s done a deal with CNN, so it’s still possible. Bottom line: Creators who achieve escape velocity will work with legacy media as talent while maintaining their autonomy. Kyla combines economics knowhow with an approachable and modern communication style that continues to win in the marketplace. No surprise that Kevin Roose is leaving The New York Times to head out on his own in partnership with his cohost Platformer’s Casey Newton. They saw the numbers that Scott and Kara are getting.
Substack’s not-an-ad network. Like nearly every platform before it, Substack’s gone to great pains to avoid the A word for its ad network. ”These are not arbitrarily inserted ads,” Substack CEO Chris Best wrote. “They are direct partnerships between brands and publishers.” Noted. Either way, I’m unclear on Substack’s take rate and have doubts this kind of hand-crafted integration will scale beyond the people at the fat end of Substack’s power law. “If they are anti-ads as we suspect, then this might be enough to please their investors that there is a viable marketplace for ads,” noted FNer Danny.
The Great AI Bifurcation. Troy sees cities going either all-in on AI and robotics or remaining stubbornly analog like NYC. Something similar will happen in media. Many top artists will avoid AI while the animal spirits of capitalism will open new opportunities for outsiders. I’m not an AI doomer for media in the long run – there’s a lot of pain to come for companies built for a platform era – because there are so many signals people will value unique experiences and personal connection. No, I wouldn’t want to be an SEO chop shop, a Course Guy, or a newsletter bro with dreams of growth hacking your way to riches. People already feel the internet is increasingly “fake” and want more humanity. There is even space for high-minded old-school magazines.
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