Episode 4: Do You Need a Villain?
Host: Joe Zappa
Guest: Jess Ness
Length: 29 minutes
Published: August 3, 2026
Joe and first-time pod guest Jess Ness discuss whether your adtech story needs a villain. They explore why Hollywood and political stories always have a villain, what adtech companies can learn from the Spencer Pratt mayoral campaign, why CEOs and marketers are shy to name villains, and how incorporating a provocative critique into your messaging can demonstrate empathy for your customers. Plus, Joe shares about the time he got fired for asking for a raise.
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Full Transcript
Joe: Welcome to the Adtech Marketing Podcast, the only podcast exclusively devoted to the very niche topic of adtech marketing. I am Joe Zappa, and today I am joined by my esteemed team member whom I have forced to do this because I pay her salary, Jess Ness. How's it going, Jess?
Jess: Hey, Joe, good. How are you doing?
Joe: I'm fantastic. Today, I want to talk about politics. And I do want all the listeners to know that I did invite someone else on our team to talk about this, and he was like, "No, I'm scared. I won't talk about politics in public." But Jess was brave enough to do it without the fear of getting canceled.
Jess: I am not scared of getting canceled because I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to share this on my LinkedIn.
Joe: Okay. Here's what I've been thinking about. The topic of today's pod is: Do you need a villain? And this is something I often say to clients when we do a brand narrative or a messaging exercise. Part of it is always like, what's wrong with the status quo? And then, who is responsible for that status quo? So whenever I'm thinking about a company's messaging, I'm trying to encourage them to have a provocative take on what's wrong with their industry, and then also to think about whom are we railing against? Because if there is a status quo, presumably someone is responsible for it. And the main thing I see when I talk about this with companies is that either they don't have a provocative enough critique of the state of the industry or they are way too abstract about it, right?
Like the most classic example in adtech that I always mention is you'll be like, "What's wrong with the industry?" And they're like, "Fragmentation." And I'm like, well, you can talk about fragmentation as being the issue, but it's really not specific enough for your customer to grab onto and to sort of really internalize. And I always say, if you think about Hollywood or politics, the villain is never fragmentation. Like Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani aren't getting up there and being like, "The issue is fragmentation." And in a Hollywood movie, it's never a superhero film where they're like, "The villain is fragmentation." It's always something very concrete. Usually, it's personified, right? But even if it's not personified, then it has to be more specific than that. What do you think?
Jess: Yeah, no, I have a lot of thoughts about this. I spend a lot of time on the programmatic subreddit, and I think that brands and marketers that they hire all feel there's a villain, right? They get mad about things. And on Reddit, I think it's probably the easiest place to identify who people think is the villain. So if you spend any time on the r/programmatic subreddit, you'll know there are villains in the industry.
Joe: I think you're zeroing in on something that's really important and interesting, which is that your customers probably actually do have a villain, right? So if you go on Reddit, you're getting what programmatic traders are seeing, and they complain about all of the companies in the adtech industry all the time, right?
Jess: Yes. I think that means that having a villain is actually a really trenchant piece of messaging that can actually help you sell better. But yeah, it's a matter of, as you said, having the bravery to name them. I don't know. I think you make a really good point about Hollywood and movies where there are really great villains and how that's just such a galvanizing trope.
Joe: The reason I always reference Hollywood is that they're infamous for sort of having the pure good and evil dichotomy, right? That has then been complicated in the last few decades. You know, like Tony Soprano is often referenced as the start of the anti-hero trend in premium content.
But I think the thing is, you want to be the hero or you want the customer to be the hero. And for people to get excited about what you're saying, the main thing is even if you don't have a villain, you need to have something that people can get on board with, that they can rail against, and that they can see themselves in, right? So if you are—let's take our part of the marketing universe, right? PR. Okay. If you go to most PR agency sites, it's like the most cliché, bland, undifferentiated, milquetoast messaging you could possibly imagine. It's like, "We believe in stories," or "the power of people," or some shit like that. And it won't offend anyone, but there's absolutely no one that's walking away from one of those sites being like, "I see myself in this. These people have a vision of how marketing and media works today, and I am on board with that."
Now, the thing is, if you have a message like Sharp Pen does, where it is a little bit more provocative, where we have a diagnosis of the state of marketing and media, where we're saying most PR playbooks could have been run 20 years ago, and companies need to modernize their PR practices to reflect the reality of today—which is that trade publications are at most a part, and maybe even a small part, of the B2B media universe, right? Like now you can go on social, you can go on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, as you mentioned, you can do podcasts, you can do newsletters. All of these things are ways that your customers are getting information. And our thesis is you need to be leveraging those, and that the job of a PR firm is not merely to connect you with journalists or the trade press—though of course that's still a part of it—but it is mainly to help you be on those channels that are more modern where your customers are consuming information.
The thing with that message is it will turn some people off. And I experience that. Like as the person who sells our services, I sometimes talk to a VP of comms or marketing and they're like, "No, I don't want to do that at all. I just want you to pitch stories to Adweek, and I don't want you to be provocative. And our CEO has no personality, and we can't run the CEO evangelism playbook." And I'm like, that's fine. Good for you. You go do your thing. And I will identify the 30% of potential customers who really vibe with our argument, and we will work with them instead. So that's what I think it is. It's like the ultimate form of this is you have a villain. But even if you don't have a villain, you need to have a divisive argument—which scares most people—that some people are going to love and other people will dislike, as opposed to a milquetoast argument that everyone is like, "Yeah, that's fine," but it doesn't really get anyone out of bed.
Jess: Exactly. I think having a villain and naming that villain in your marketing and comms is not a way to win all the business. It's a way to win the business that really matters and that will probably stick. You know, I think I've seen that at Sharp Pen, but I've also seen that with our clients, right? Like when you name the big bad villain, say for a lot of our clients, it might be Google, right? DV360. If it's a DSP, you're saying the thing that is maybe a little bit scary to say because you might be alienating Google, which is scary. But yeah, you're probably attracting brands or other partners that you...
Joe: You're speaking to those people on Reddit who hate Google or, you know, insert a very large company in the space. And so you're getting people on your side because they feel like you're being candid and you're speaking to the problems they're experiencing.
Jess: Exactly. And I think if you put it that way, it's actually really not that scary to name a villain, right? I think for some reason, it maybe feels scarier than it is. I don't think that people are going to be that upset if you're saying, you know, Google is really not operating with transparency, not giving advertisers control. Like, it's not that scary.
Joe: Well, let's drill down on that. Why are people in practice afraid to name villains? One reason is that in the adtech industry, everyone kind of partners with everyone else, right? So DSPs and SSPs have been forced into a kind of opposition in recent years, especially as The Trade Desk has launched OpenPath, Magnite launched Clearline, and PubMatic has its own buy-side product now.
Like, as the different sides of the programmatic ecosystem have converged, this tension has increased. And yet, at the same time, they all kind of work with each other, right? And the DSPs do still source supply from the SSPs and vice versa. And so they don't want to alienate their partners. But I think there are a couple of ways around that. One is just to understand that not everyone is your partner, so the excuse doesn't work for all parties. But the other thing is, you punch up, right? This is a fundamental rule of communication. If you're going to throw a punch, you're not punching down at the little startup or whatever. You're punching up at the biggest companies. And guess what? Everyone punches up at them. So if you're the 20th biggest SSP and you're writing a LinkedIn post excoriating Google, I don't think the product managers at Google are losing their minds over that. And so as long as you're punching up, you're usually safe.
Jess: Yeah, I don't think the product managers at Google are losing their mind. I also don't think it's really going to jeopardize your chances of being a Google-certified partner. You know, I think you can vilify what Google represents and name Google. What do you think, though? Like, can you?
Joe: Yeah. Well, I think what you're zeroing in on is there's a way to critique also without completely burning bridges. Part of Google's job as one of the leaders of the ecosystem, and as a company that overall is just so, so much bigger than the vast majority of adtech companies—you know, like a thousand times magnitudes larger—part of their role is to field this criticism, right? Like Alex Cone, who is the product manager of the Privacy Sandbox, he was just like... I always thought about that Succession episode where they're like, "We hear you, we are here for you," or whatever. Alex was like the "we are here for you" guy at Google who was just trotted out to deal with all of the complaints from everyone in the programmatic ecosystem. And so the big companies, part of being the big company that everyone punches up at is like, they get that, right? They know that a certain amount of that is going to happen.
The key is really in how you're doing it. Like, people sometimes ask me, what about the people who do CEO evangelism wrong in such a way that it's actually a net negative for their companies? And I'm always like, look, there are like three people in the adtech industry who fit that description. And the reason they fit it is because they're going around just being a-holes, right? Like, they're going around just being really personal and nasty. People are adults. They can tell the difference between a sort of ad hominem, nasty attack and when you are saying like, Google, one of the biggest companies in the industry, isn't being transparent. Or if you're Doug Lauritano, who's an entrepreneur in our space who just created this company—I think it's called Truvid DSP—he... I was talking about this villain issue on Twitter, and he shared this page from his site critiquing legacy DSPs for XYZ practices. No one is going to squash the career of an entrepreneur because you're criticizing various actions by legacy DSPs. Everyone understands you're carving out white space, you're critiquing the status quo, yada yada. And that's perfectly fine. So I think there is a lot more room to be provocative and to be critical than most CEOs and marketing teams assume.
Jess: Yeah, I think it's... yeah, like I said, it's not that scary really once you start doing it. And also once you start looking for it, I think it can feel scary or maybe like you're being divisive. But like you said, if you really have a take on the industry and you have an idea of what's wrong with it and where you think it should go, that message resonates. It resonates with your customers, but I think it resonates with your colleagues as well. And I think it probably can only lead to—and I'm an optimist, by the way, if you can't tell—I think it can at best lead to moving the industry, inching the industry in the direction you want it to go, right? Like you said, Google needs to coordinate with lots of other players in the industry. And if you're not actually saying what you think is wrong with the industry, Google's not going to hear it.
Joe: It's not pushing them to be better, right? They're an incumbent. The reason any company is founded is because you see white space, you see an opportunity. There is something that your competitive set is doing that you think is outdated or suboptimal. And so for you as a CEO or founder, or as the marketing team in service of the company founded by that person, to say, "We are unwilling to be divisive or critical"—I think you could even say in that position, you're not honoring the reason the company was founded. Like, any company was founded for that reason.
So again, taking our own company, right? It's like we obviously have a vision of PR that we think is more modern. We think the other agencies out there are outdated, and they are essentially underserving their clients by taking an outdated approach, right? So if we are unwilling to make that argument and sort of, you know, rankle some of those incumbents, then we don't really have a reason to exist. And on the marketing front, no one has a reason to pay attention to us. And that is the outcome of all the milquetoast messaging that so many people pump out: no one pays attention to them.
And that gets to another marketing principle, which is that attention is the point of departure for all value generated by marketing. If no one is paying attention to what you're saying, then it doesn't matter that no one hates you, right? Because no one knows you exist in the first place, which is especially relevant to startups. And that's why there's also like a lifecycle component to this question in terms of what startups do versus what enterprises do.
Jess: Yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking about a startup, and maybe like an early-stage startup that's figuring out their messaging. We've worked with a lot of companies like this, and they have a big vision, but maybe it's sort of raw, you know? And maybe it's informed by the product, and they have their ICP figured out, but they don't really know their messaging yet. How would you go about picking the villain, or what questions would you ask them? Because I know we've done this before. I think you have a really good way of helping a VP of marketing figure out who the villain is for their company.
Joe: Yeah, great question. So I think part of it is, again, asking that "What is wrong with the status quo?" or "Why was the company founded?" question. You know, what was the white space that you saw? And sometimes something I'll hear from companies is, "Well, you know, it's more of like a net-new opportunity than someone doing something wrong." But even if that's the case, even if you're inventing some kind of new technology, that technology exists to update something. Like if you're Firsthand, right, and you're creating agentic site experiences, you believe that with the advent of AI—which is this generational technology—there is something about the way we use websites, something about the way we interface online, that is fundamentally outdated and that requires a huge leap forward. That is the critique of the status quo.
Now, that might not be as clean a "there are villains" story as Doug's startup that I mentioned, where you're like, "I have a new kind of DSP and the old kinds are bad." Like, that is very cut and dry. So something like a Firsthand might be less directly oppositional, but you should still have a very clear take on like, this is what's wrong in the world. And again, to the point of being productively divisive, having productive controversy, and steering some people away, there might be some people who hear that agentic site experiences argument and say, "No, I don't think the future is agents. I think my website is fine, and in seven years, actually, we're going to be doing the same shit we're doing today." So that's not for me. And again, that should be fine. Like, you should be okay leaving a certain percentage of the potential audience aside and moving forward with the potential clients who are really energized about your critique of the status quo and vision of the future.
Jess: Yeah. Well, and hey, if you post something about that on your LinkedIn and someone comments and says, "Hey, I actually don't think this is true," it gives you a chance to have a dialogue with them. And it gives you comments on your LinkedIn, you know, which is great. And it gives you more visibility.
Joe: Right. And that's exactly it. To go back to politics, this is something that the far-left and the far-right do really well: they generally have some sort of severe critique of the status quo, hence being on the odd ends of the political spectrum. And they create controversy. They fight with people. And they understand, for reasons that are completely lost on people who are more toward the middle of the political spectrum, that that is a good thing. You want to fight with people. If you're a socialist candidate, you want not only Republicans but also the center-left Democratic candidates to be mad at you and elevate you. And when they get mad about you, they just drive more attention.
Like Mamdani constantly uses phrases that are just so obviously designed to just piss off not only Republicans but also the kind of moderate Democrats or whatever—like "the warmth of collectivism." That's hilarious. Like, I don't personally like that direction, but I'm like, I understand what you're doing. You know that centrist ghouls are going to lose their minds over that, and then they're just going to amplify your message, and everyone in the country is going to be talking about you despite you being a local politician. And when you're in B2B software, as humble and boring as it can be, that is the same kind of effect you should be trying to generate.
Jess: Exactly. Yeah, I don't think we've gotten into the politics too much of it, but I think it's actually a really good example. And the more I think about it, the more examples from politics I could think of where having a villain or being a villain is also like a really great way to garner attention. I live in Los Angeles, and we had a mayoral primary election recently, and this reality star, Spencer Pratt, made his villain homeless people. That got a lot of attention. And he did surprisingly well in the primary.
Joe: Okay, hilarious take, because obviously the pro-Spencer Pratt people would say it's not the homeless people per se; it's more like Karen Bass and the Democratic establishment. I've seen a lot about Spencer Pratt too, because I'm on "Centrist Ghoul Twitter" and everyone loves Spencer Pratt. But no, that thought is very illustrative, right? Because it's like, whatever side of that debate you're on, you have Spencer Pratt being this sort of fringe candidate, right? I believe he was running as a Republican in LA, which is obviously a heavily Democratic city. And it didn't work out for him, but he did have way more success than you probably would have anticipated and generated way more attention—and national attention at that—than you would have anticipated. And you're picking up on how he did it, which is like, he had a very clear message about the homelessness problem not being fixed in LA, also the fires issue, and he created a clear dividing line and controversy over that.
And obviously, a lot of people in LA—hence he lost the election, right?—a lot of people in LA were not for that. But, you know, I don't know what percentage of the vote he ended up getting, but let's say, whatever, 20 to 30%. Those 20 to 30% were a very loud minority that was into him. And ask yourself this: in politics, you've got to win 50%, or 40% if it's a primary and you've got to be the number two candidate or whatever. Business does not work like that. And that's very important to understand, because if you look at Spencer Pratt's campaign from a business perspective, if he was coming out of nowhere and then winning like 20 to 30% of the target audience, that would be an immensely successful campaign from a business perspective, right? Like if you had two DSPs who dominated the market, and then you have this startup that no one's heard of, and they take a totally adversarial position on a hot-button topic and call them out, saying, "Here's what DSPs one and two are doing wrong," and then they win 20% of the target market, it would be a massive success. And that perfectly illustrates this: you might not win the majority, but if Spencer Pratt had been more boring, if he hadn't been divisive, he would have won nothing, and no one would have ever known about him. And it would have just been a normal LA mayoral election with two Democrats who got past the first post, and everyone would have just gone on with their lives and never known about him.
Jess: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it made for a very exciting election. But yeah, I agree. I have another question for you, Joe. Do you have villains in your personal life? And what does that do for you? You don't? No, I've been thinking about this a lot. I can't think of a single person that I hate.
Jess: Yeah. Oh, okay.
Joe: I don't know if I would talk in terms of hate because that's a little extreme, but I am definitely, like many entrepreneurs, partially motivated by bitterness. And I think that's... like when you watch... I talked on the last episode about the Jordan documentary, The Last Dance. Jordan became super memeable because they kept asking him in the documentary about various people and whatever, and he kept being like, "And I took that personally."
I am like that. I think to be an entrepreneur, you have to be so self-motivated. You need to have a giant fire lit under your ass. And whether they would admit it or not, for most entrepreneurs, part of it is there's some group of people where you're like, "You didn't believe in me," or "You wronged me," or whatever, and "I'm going to show you." Right? And sometimes that's more front of mind, and sometimes it's in the unconscious. But yeah, I think that is definitely a part of my motivation engine.
Jess: Yeah, I think especially for entrepreneurs, that's probably really common. I think mixing business and personal life... I'm thinking about Succession again, and that first episode where Kendall is trying to show his dad he can sign a deal.
Joe: Yeah, trying to land an acquisition.
Jess: Yeah, and just vilifies the CEO of the smaller company and just comes to hate him. I think for entrepreneurs, it must be maybe a necessity.
Joe: No, I think it is. Yeah, I think there needs to be part of you that wakes up every day and is like, "I want to achieve something more," right? And I think if you're not at least partially motivated by something... it's like you have to be propelled by some sort of oppositional force, right? And that might be directly someone, but more often, I think it's some sort of psychological root, and then occasionally that takes on the color of some sort of specific person or incident or whatever.
But, you know, I've also been thinking about early in my career, like arguments I had with people or times... like when I was a freelance writer, there was a time where I was making like $2,000 a month as a contract writer to do 10 to 12 blog posts a month, right? So, not a pittance, but not a terribly large amount of money. And my career started growing, and I had more opportunities coming my way, and then I asked the CEO of the company if he could go up to $3,000 a month. And he was so pissed at me for having the gall to ask, and basically on the call was like, "Okay, so if you want this and I'm not going to give it to you, then I guess you're done." And I was like, whoa, would you consider raising my rate from 2,000 to 3,000? I don't think the inevitable conclusion of that is that the relationship is over.
But I guess I have a couple of points on that. One is that, yes, I think these kinds of anecdotes do motivate you for years longer. But then I think another thing that happens is you often realize, in retrospect, you generally have more empathy for the person on the other side and you see where they're coming from. So I don't know what that has to do with spinning a message. Maybe it's that when you're spinning a narrative, you can have a fierce critique of someone, and then you can have other formats where you are also more empathetic and sort of explore the nuances. And I think that's part of what a podcast is good for versus a tweet. The way you articulate this sort of narrative rooted in productive controversy can differ across channels, and it can also evolve over time. And I think that's fine.
Jess: Yeah. I also think there's like a really clear takeaway from that story, which is that having a villain does not preclude having empathy. I actually think having a villain and naming a villain, and really believing in the big bad in the industry, is rooted in empathy for those who are also victimized by the villain. In naming a villain, you're tapping into a shared experience with others in the industry and the problem with the status quo, and that's actually speaking to—not mistreatment per se, but the unfortunate circumstances that others are also in.
Joe: I think you taught me something through this conversation that I had never thought of, which is that if you're encouraging a CEO or a VP of marketing to talk about a villain, I often frame it in terms of the benefit to the company insofar as articulating a villain or having a harsh critique of the status quo can be key to generating attention. And so we already made that argument—you know, you want people to pay attention to you, that's the point of marketing. But you're unearthing another angle, which is that by articulating a critique of this villain, who's usually an incumbent or a big company in the space, you're also showing empathy for your customer. You're helping your customer understand that you understand their struggles and their complaints.
And that's where, to go back to the beginning, the Reddit example is really evocative. If you're a startup DSP or a challenger DSP and your customers are on Reddit complaining about DV360 or whatever, you want them to know that you feel their pain and that you've built a product that addresses their pain. And so naming a villain, it's not just for you and it's not just to generate attention. It's for your customer. And if it really is for your customer, it will resonate to the benefit of both parties.
Jess: Exactly. Yeah, I do really think that's what makes it so resonant and what actually makes it practically a good thing to do for a business.
Joe: Well, Jess, I think that's a good note to end on.
Jess: An optimistic note.
Joe: Thank you for your wisdom. You crushed your first podcast. You probably won't get canceled for saying Spencer Pratt wanted to exterminate the homeless.
Jess: Oh, thank God. Thanks for having me, Joe.
Joe: All right. See you next time.
Jess: See you next time.
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