YouSaid · the spoken record

Seth Matlins

lines on the record: 46
first: 2026-06-18
most recent: 2026-06-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, just to follow through on what I said before, I'm kind of obsessed with this right now. I would destroy the ability of algorithms to use data, big data, to try and inflame us against each other. I would try, you know, and I'm not a technologist, I don't know. And then conversely, I would try and create social media brands that appeal to the better angels of our nature and not the worse. And I would market them that way, you know. And again, I have no idea if that could... You know, I mean, I'm now flying in the face of a lot of deep research that says that, you know, negativism and antagonism and hate and anger and conspiracy theories work. But, you know, I'm just, I'd love to see us have a revolution of common humanity against all of that. And I'd like to see vehicles to promote it that can prove the theory that I'm advancing here.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The story of your candidate offers validation to the messages that you're going to deliver. Tom Vilsack was an orphan who was adopted by a very troubled family and his father ended up selling everything he owned. He found out after the fact to help him go to college. And education was a huge issue in Iowa. He told that story, but then he talked about Iowa. And he said, I'm going to do for Iowa what my dad did for me. I'm going to put education first. And that became a steady theme throughout our campaign. And people believed it because they heard his story.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yes, and the habits, consumer habits in terms of information is so fractionalized now. But listen, and this may be Sound like a cliche because it's used so often, but understand what your authentic comparative advantages are. Understand what your authentic brand is and try and develop all your messaging within that frame. Try and tell it consistent story about why people have been would be drawn to you. Don't try and reinvent your message again and again and again because you will not develop any kind of brand loyalty unless people really come to believe this is what it's about. This is why I'm drawn to it. And then understand the people you're talking to and their lives and how the two things fit together. When I say I'm a storyteller,”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Running ads that are offensive to me as a husband and as a father. You know, that's his plan to win this election. He says, but you know what I want to talk about? And then he went on to talk about their lives and where they differed on stuff. And had finished with him saying, My opponent's counting on the 11th hour attack ads to win this election. I'm counting on you. And it was very, very powerful. You know, so part of it is understanding how to respond within the context of your message”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The example of a small child who had been molested and killed. Some horrible story, and they said, you know, if Tom Vilsack were governor, he would not give that person. It may have been a fictitious story. The death penalty. And there was a panic among Democrats there. And they said, you've got to fire back. You've got to hit him back on his crime record and this and that. My instinct was, no, that's not part of our brand. That's not who we are. Villsack was very much in the same kind of category as Obama. He was, you know, tonally in that same place. And instead, we did a direct-to-camera in which he said, you know, my opponent.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you don't often have, I mean, I guess you do somewhat, but it's less common to have the one toothpaste going negative on the other toothpaste. It happens. But you are constantly under fire from the other side. And if you're not, it's because you're not doing very well. So that's something you have to respond and react to and how you do it is really important. You know, I ran a campaign for Tom Vilsack, who became the agriculture secretary later, but governor of Iowa. And it was forever an attack that Iowa Republicans ran against Iowa, Democrats at Iowa Democrats opposed the death penalty. And they came at us on that. And they used...”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was antithetic to our brand. And we lost both those and we deserved to lose both those. And we learned from that. But I'm sure I can think of analogous situations that from smaller campaigns as well. Because, you know, in these kind of dynamic situations, you're constantly making strategic decisions, maybe more so than in brand advertising or brand messaging because of the kind of pace of political campaigns and the calendar of political campaigns.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, yeah I imagine I'm not a woman, but like childbirth, you remember the pleasure and you try and forget the pain. You asked me for not a. Let me give you a presidential example because it travels. We had a two-week period in March of 2008 when we were running against Hillary Clinton and Texas and Ohio were voting on the same day. If we had won either of those, she would have had to, and they said we'll drop out if we don't win those. We spent a lot of money and time and effort trying to win in those two weeks, but we also changed what we were doing and we went after her in a very traditional kind of way. You know, we hooked her up to NAFTA and we, and it became a very sort of familiar and dreary kind of campaign for those two weeks that was completely antithetical to our brand. Yeah.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Qualitative researcher. He does polling as well, but I hired him only for purposes of doing qualitative, and he was on the road doing three focus groups a night, you know, around the country. But when we had to make key strategic decisions, Pluff would be there. I would be there if we wanted the research guys in there, they would come. But it wasn't a large group. And oftentimes in the campaign it boiled down to Pluff and me and the candidate. And that's the way, I mean, someone has to drive the train. And if you have one sign of distress in a campaign is if 20 people are sitting around a table trying to make a strategic decision.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, in a good campaign, there's usually a strategic hub. There is a, you know, I'll use the Obama campaign as an example, but my business partner, David Pluff, was the manager and managed a lot of the operations of the campaign. you know, the kind of message strategist. I managed that part of the campaign. There was a core group in my group that involved a pollster. I did an interesting thing, I think. It was interesting to me anyway, but normally you'd hire a pollster and that pollster would do both the qualitative and quantitative. I hired a pollster, Joel Benson and a qualitative guy, David Binder, who was a brilliant, brilliant.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's different because you don't have to get 51% of the market when you're selling toothpaste. So it's a little different in that way, but you do need the whole thing boils down to comparative advantages on.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, the parallels are what I just referenced, which is. People are going to make a choice. There are a lot of brands of toothpaste. So, what is it? What are the qualities about your toothpaste that appeal that would appeal incrementally?”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's binary. And so you really need to think about that. And so I always used to work back from what do I want people to be thinking when they walk in that polling place? What I want them to think about, not just my candidate and the other candidate, but what is the choice about? And I tried to drive those conversations that way.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Human, yes, more human for voters at the end of the day. They won the race through not so subtle racial appeals, but which was very much consistent with who Nixon was. But so I resist those terms, but obviously when you are trying to make a sale, I mean, and it's very intensive because you can have a product that lives for decades in an election, you've got a matter of months, you know, maybe in a presidential race years, but generally a matter of months. People are going to have a choice and they are going to decide.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think of myself as a storyteller. Yes, I mean, I was in the marketing business for sure. And, you know, I resist, I only resist terms like marketing and brands because out of reverence for the mission of what politics should be. And I never wanted to, you know, there was a great book in 1968 called The Selling of the President by Joe McGuinness about how they marketed Richard Nixon and so on. You know, and it was a really interesting book. And they did, they kind of, they sanded down the rough edges on Nixon. They put him on laugh and they did some things to make him tand-dressed.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Campaigns and messaging and campaigns is an art as well as a science. And you need to have a feel for what people are telling you. And I worry a little bit that we become so empirical that we test everything. And if something does a tenth of a percentage point better than the other thing, then we're going to go with that and so on. And I think that we are. We are burying ourselves in analytics in a way that destroys the art of marketing.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I grew up like in this focus group culture. And when I became involved in politics, I was a real devotee to qualitative because ultimately, and part of this is, you know, I'm a journalist by training too. I want to hear in people's own words what's going on in their lives, what's important to them, you know, what are the challenges they face. We during the presidential races, the second one in particular, Joel Beninson, who was our poster also ran this ongoing ethnographic kind of project where people were just journaling. And we learned so much from all of that that helped shape the qualitative, but the qualitative Wouldn't have been a, I mean, the quantitative, I should say, the polling, but it wouldn't have been nearly as rich.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'll tell you something. My mother was a newspaper reporter who ultimately, when her newspaper folded became one of the pioneers in qualitative research.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are we the default currency? And why are we, you know, we were viewed as the reliable country, the country, a country that people could count on, even if they had disagreements with us to operate a certain way. Is not the end of the story in a very interconnected world.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think it will go down as one of the stupidest decisions foreign policy decisions in the history of the country. But here's the fundamental issue is that Donald Trump has a philosophy and that philosophy is the world is a jungle and the strong take what they want and the weak fall away and rules and laws and norms and institutions are for succors. And that is a very dangerous philosophy. That is the philosophy of Vladimir Putin. And to the degree that he has bent the US government to his philosophy and operated that way, it's been a blow to American democracy, but also to America's brand in the world because people, you know, why?”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was done in overnight by a bunch of gamers and Elon Musk who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it is, in a way, philanthropy. We've saved millions and millions of people all over the world from starvation and disease. We've also, in doing it, won the goodwill of those people. We've also in doing it prevented conflict and disease that would ultimately wash up on our shores. That's why I think it's a thing of”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Use the occasion rather than celebrate the mad king we have today to celebrate the values that animated those founders 250 years ago. And I'm not going to, you know, I said I'm an idealist. I'm not a nut. I understand that we have greatly devalued the American brand. I keep telling people that the blast radius from this administration is going to be felt for generations to come and it's going to be the work of all of us in the future to rebuild that. The destruction of USAID and foreign aid. And I know foreign aid is politically a very, very freighted subject because people have this notion that we're giving tons of money away to people. Philanthropy. Yeah. Yeah.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And their prospects differently. And the world will look at us a little differently. His election was an affirmation of America at its best, the ability to progress, to self-correct, the idea that really anybody can succeed. All those things are have been tarnished. There are practical things about us being a world leader in terms of research and development and technology and all of that. That's all at risk. I mean, there's a lot, but at the core of it were the values that we're celebrating in the 250th year that cherishes freedom, freedom to worship as you would, freedom to pursue your dreams. And we need to”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She, instead of a torch, should be holding out her hand and telling people not to come. That is a very destructive impulse, and it certainly undermines, it undermines our brand. And there are many other ways in which that is true. I speak, by the way, as the son of a refugee from Eastern Europe who came here with nothing when he was a child. One generation later I was the senior advisor of the president of the United States who happened to be an African American man. So, you know, that is part of the American mystique. In fact, I will tell you that when we were talking about Obama running for president, Michelle Obama said, well, what do you think you can bring that no one else can bring? And he said, well, I don't know. But there are a lot of ways to answer that. But he said, there's one thing I know. He said, when I take that oath of office, millions of young people look at themselves differently.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, look, I think the American brand has been flawed as we are because we're human and we haven't always lived up to our best ideals, but we've done awfully well compared to other societies in the long march of history. And it's reflected honestly in our success that one of the tragedies of the last few years is the degree to which immigrants have been demonized. There's always been a sense that America is a place where you can make it and will have the freedom to make it. And now we are basically instead of that great inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty, you feel like...”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we're going to advance as a country, but pitting ourselves against each other, neighbor against neighbor, you disagree with me. I think you're going to destroy America. I think you're evil. I don't recognize your common humanity. I think people are tired of that. And I can't make an empirical case right at this moment, but I see a lot of focus groups and I hear a lot of discussion. And I feel there is a weariness of it. I think actually decency is going to have its day. I think people are so tired of who Trump is and how he operates. Integrity, honesty, the ability to unite rather than divide. I think those are going to be at a premium in 2028. And the person who emerges is going to reflect those qualities.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, so I mean, there are forces that should be challenged. You know, we are awash in money that translates into power. That should be challenged. The algorithms should be challenged. The fact that we have AI rolling out as quickly as it is without any serious policy about how we're going to create some guardrails in a mechanism that is taught to think like people but has no moral or ethical construct. I mean, there are all kinds of things that we should be against in the service of reform that is really important if we're going to...”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Idealist. Idealist Yeah, no, no. Look, I think that there is plenty to be against that doesn't pit you against your neighbor.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Person. And I think that a candidate who tries to draw our draws together is going to have to develop a following. So I think the answer to your question is yes. I think it's possible that especially by making the algorithms algorithms, the social media platforms, a target for criticism. And I think that there are a lot of people who may feel that it's time that we rein some of that in and that we find our common humanity.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My bias is showing. Well, yeah, it's not very subtle. But his view of leadership is exactly that you find your community and you You animate them by creating straw men and draw everybody outside the circle who's opposed to you in ways that galvanize people. I think that every election, I can tell you, I mean, this is my very, very strong feeling based on my experience. Every presidential election interestingly oftentimes mayoral elections too, but every presidential election, especially when the incumbent is leaving, is about the incumbent who's leaving and it's never that people want to replicate what they have. They always want the remedy to whatever they see or the deficiencies in the person they have. But one of the deficiencies that Donald Trump has that is deeply felt is he is a very, very divisive.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oftentimes against our wishes, even our awareness, we are being shoved into silos. But I also think there's a weariness with the kind of siege mentality of our politics today, this sort of constant battling that we have. And I think, now it could just be that I am apologetic idealist about what democracy can be, but I think people also hunger for community. And we've lost community. We have faux community, but we don't have real community. And I think people are, and you know, the president is sort of a human algorithm. He finds those things that divide us.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yeah. Well, I mean, one thing we're fighting, Seth, is we live in an age of social media. We live in an age of big data and algorithms that thrive on separating us and shoving us into silos. I actually think we're reaching a point where it's possible that a candidate in 2028, for example, could actually run against all of that. And because I do think there's a, I think that people, we are sort of”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, look, primary elections are different than general elections, and there are different circumstances. And I'm not saying that you should not try and appeal to groups of voters who are important in a party or generally, but you should not do that to the exclusion of a larger story. What is a story that holds us together? What is the story that most of us share that allows us to have A sense of community rather than a sense of adjacent parts.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was that we should speak to the common experiences of large numbers of people who are struggling in the economy, who were opposed to the war, who were fed up with politics as usual, rather than this sort of micro-targeting that I think is a flawed way to approach campaigns.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, it's a question of whether you think that the, you know, whether you can assemble Piece by piece your base, or whether you emphasize those things that speak to the largest number of people. And our theory was always that we would do that. I mean, you know, we would have conversations with different constituencies. But as I said, we never emphasize the fact that he was a black candidate that was obvious to everyone. And we really kind of stayed away from a lot of sort of divisive social issues or niche issues because there were some big issues that everyone shared concerns that everyone shared. And what we were pitching and what we believed was”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm with her to try and tie into the fact that she would be the first woman. We didn't ever reference the fact that he would be the first African-American president. We figured if people were motivated by that, they would know we didn't need to remind them. But the tagline of yes, we can. Made it about everyone, not about him. And it was very positive at a time when people were very down and jaundiced about what politics was and what it could produce. And so that kind of, it was built on the essence of who he was in the story we told about him from the beginning. So we had a solid foundation for the theme.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In 2008, I'm always reminded Hillary's slogan was I'm with her. That was a tagline they used a lot. And his was, yes, we can. And it was not about him. It was about them. It was about what we could do together. And there was just a yearning for someone who could lead such a movement. So I always think back to that race in 2008. And, you know, we were the insurgents. We were the grassroots candidate. We were challenging what essentially was the big brand in democratic politics, Hillary Clinton, the Clintons. But they made a series of strategic decisions, one of which was there were posters everywhere saying,”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yes, we can. Yes, we can was both optimistic and it also was about them and not just us. And what we wanted people to see.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we were playing against was not just opponents, but against the whole political climate at the time where people were deeply jaundiced about the system, about the ability to get things done. And where politicians were not trading high and were seen as sort of self-interested parties were seen as self-interested.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Became the sort of tagline for much of what we did moving forward. In fact, it's one of the words that's embedded in the side of the Obama center that's opening in June.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things that he had done in his life, first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, things he had done in public life where he took on an issue that people thought was unachievable and helped achieve it, all building up to him saying, and now they say we can't change Washington. Well, I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message to say, yes, we can. And yes, we can.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Back in the day. But you know, when Obama, he really, you have to look at his rise from 2004 through 2008, began with his Senate race. And it came in a time when the country was deeply, deeply fractured by the Iraq war and by a sense that Washington was just at each other's throats. The parties were at each other's throats. They were gridlocked. They were very self-interested. And here comes this guy from the outside who challenges the whole Gestalt of Washington, the whole red versus blue, who's up and who's down kind of theory of Washington. And the idea that... That we can never deal with any big problems because of it. And so the first ad set that I ever did for Barack Obama was in his campaign for the U.S. Senate. And it was a biographical ad. And a lot of it was about”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With the folks who are going to decide the election, in other words, I would focus on not the people who I knew were always going to be for us or the people who were always going to be against us, but those people who were persuadable. Because you can say a hundred things about someone that are all real and authentic, but what are the two or three that are the most meaningful and how do they cohere in a message that people can grasp. And that's the process that I always applied in campaigns. And certainly that was the case in the Obama campaign.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This won't make me unique, but I once was screamed at by Steve Jobs because he, at the beginning of the Obama campaign, he, after telling me that my industry was crap and so on, he asked me what our communications plan was. And I started talking to him about it. And, you know, he interrupted and so on. And I said to him, Steve, you know, selling presidents may be just a little different than selling computers. And he hung up on me. So, I, you know, I'm always reluctant to speak of candidates as brands, but there's no doubt that They are. And, you know, the process that I went through with candidates is trying to understand what their comparative advantages were.”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a story that holds us together? What is the story that most of us share that allows us to have a sense of community rather than a sense of adjacent parts?”
2026-06-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT