A corporate takeover, karmic justice, and comedy art—all at once.
Alex Jones, founder of the extremist conspiracy-theory-peddling digital brand Infowars, has proved again and again that there is no lie he will not embrace and no moral line he will not cross.
For his own, personal benefit, he has victimized the grieving parents of children who were killed in school shootings. He has deliberately stoked fear among his followers in order to sell them snake oil. He has promoted insane conspiracy theories about everything from 9-11 to the moon landing.
And this month, karma FINALLY came around for him in the most epic way possible.
The families of some Sandy Hook school shooting victims—the very people Jones hurt the most—are teaming up with the Onion, America's leading satiric comedy publication, to purchase Jones's Infowars brand at his bankruptcy auction.
So in this episode, we're talking to Leila Brillson, CMO of The Onion, to learn all the delicious details.
In this interview dated November 19, 2024, we'll explore what led to the bidding process, the line between corporate strategy and comedy, and the Onion's blooming partnership with Everytown for Gun Safety. And we'll critique this corporate acquisition not just as a business strategy, but as a cunning publicity stunt and a brilliantly-conceived work of art.
Transcript:
Dusty Weis
Alex Jones, founder of the extremist conspiracy theory peddling digital brand Infowars, is an irredeemably bad person.
For his own personal benefit. He has victimized the grieving parents of children who were killed in school shootings. He has deliberately stoked fear among his followers in order to sell them hundreds of millions of dollars in snake oil. He has promoted insane conspiracy theories about everything from 911 to the Oklahoma City bombing to Covid to the moon landing.
In the 25 years since he launched his brand, he has proved again and again that there is no lie he will not embrace, no moral line he will not cross in his pursuit of fame, fortune and influence. And somehow, bafflingly, karma has never really come around for him... until now.
CNN News Anchor
The satirical news site the Onion has just won an auction to purchase the outlet Infowars from right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The Onion's bid was backed by the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the very people Jones defamed.
Dusty Weis
Yes, as truly befits a monster of pure, unbridled hubris, Alex Jones's comeuppance is not just to have his legacy of greed, ignorance and hatred taken from him. It is to have it publicly pilloried, mocked and burned to the ground at the hands of the very people he hurt the most.
And with the help of a plucky, irreverent media brand that's been jabbing its thumb into the eyes of bastards like Jones for more than 35 years.
In this episode, we talk to the CMO of the satirical fake news publication The Onion, about why they chose to buy Alex Jones's company out of bankruptcy, what they plan to do with it, and how they single handedly pulled off one of the greatest pranks in history, and one of the very worst people in the world.
I'm Dusty Weis. From Podcamp Media, this is Lead Balloon, a podcast about incredible stories from the worlds of PR, marketing and branding told by the well-meaning communication professionals who lived them.
Thank you for tuning in. Make sure that you're following. Lead Balloon In favorite podcast app, and make sure to check out Podcamp Media on YouTube, where you can find video versions of this and some of our other episodes.
We are joined today by Leila Brillson, the chief marketing officer of The Onion, the nation's leading satiric news publication and a legendary institution in the world of comedy and media. She is a social marketing strategist with experience at leading brands including Netflix, Tik Tok, Bumble and The Walt Disney Company. In addition to having served as a leader in the publishing industry at outlets like Hearst Magazines, Playboy and Nylon.
So, Leila Brillson, thank you for joining us here on Lead Balloon.
Leila Brillson
Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Dusty Weis
We are really excited about this one again. I have been a fan of The Onion for 25 years now, all the way back to when I was like an awkward, sort of wannabe edgy teenager, and I could snag a free copy off the newsstand next to the Cinnabon at the mall food court.
So in all that time, there have been some classic jokes published in The Onion, but I have never laughed as hard or as long as I did last week when I heard on NPR that The Onion was buying Infowars. What has been the reaction?
Leila Brillson
Oh my gosh. Just the reaction has been incredible. You know, I first of all, I mean, the positive reaction has far outweighed the negative. People just finding this to be a quote unquote epic troll, a cosmic joke, you know, satire in… its most powerful form, and just something that it has provided kind of a bookend to what has been a really upsetting, chapter in the media landscape.
And for, the families we're working with. A truly tragic chapter in their lives.
Dusty Weis
Well, and and that's just it. Like, as much as it is hilarious, it is also wonderful and appropriately fitting. Yeah. For what we're dealing with here. Let's set the stage a little bit for how this was able to happen. Last June, it was announced that Alex Jones would be forced to liquidate his assets via chapter seven bankruptcy, that because he was sued by the families of victims of the Sandy hook school shooting in 2012, which killed more than two dozen people, most of them grade school aged children.
And Jones did what exactly?
Leila Brillson
Well, he kept saying it was a hoax. He says now that he never said it was a hoax and he never talked about these people. But you can look up compilations of him saying it was a hoax over and over and over again.
And even more upsetting as that is deeply upsetting, having having someone discredit your your extreme anguish in that way.
He's sent and I can understand this now, on the other side of this, he sent, a very rabid, listenership viewership after, families going through the worst things in their lives. And, you know, the thing about Infowars is that it purports to tell the true story, the story underneath the story.
So a lot of folks feel like they're getting, you know, the people who are kind of, absorbed into this kind of web of untruths... lies... are feeling like they're getting the real story. So they, they take it upon themselves to, to, you know, I know I know what you've done, is, is a kind of, ongoing way that they've, they kind of have treated any kind of slights towards Alex.
And so I can only imagine what the Sandy Hook families have had to deal with at his unwitting... or witting... behest.
Dusty Weis
All right. The abuse. The stalking. The absolute terror that these families were put through again in the very, very bottom of the worst kind of grief that any family can be put through. And. And a group of these family members banded together and sued Alex Jones for defamation, because he called the whole thing a hoax. Because he called them liars.
They won their suit and he was found liable for 1.5 B billion dollars in damages, which he now has to make good to these families. You said something there that I'm going to key on for a second, because I think it's it's part of what's really brilliant about The Onion. You said that Alex Jones and Infowars, they purport to tell the truth to expose the hidden truth.
Now, The Onion is a publication that has never purported to tell the truth. It is designed to be as outrageous and as over the top as possible. And yet, in its own way, it is exposing truths. Because after Sandy Hook, after Uvalde, after Marjory Stoneman Douglas, after Virginia Tech, after every single mass shooting for what, the last 20 years, The Onion has run a story.
But it's not silly like your other stuff. It's not trying to get laughs. It's trying to make a point. Because while the names, the places, the numbers change, the story is exactly the same every time. And so is the headline. “There Is No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Happens Regularly.”
Leila Brillson
37 times, 37 times we’ve run that.
Dusty Weis
What does it say to you that you've had to run that story 37 times?
Leila Brillson
It says it's true. This is the only nation that this, purports to happen regularly, and it's extremely upsetting every single time. And, you know, it is unfortunately, our most popular and most landed on page. The comedy slash culture critic Josh Gondelman has identified this as one of the most tragic pieces of art in the last 20 years, and I think that he's correct.
Dusty Weis
So certainly The Onion has a record of making its voice heard on this topic. And for people who may not be familiar with The Onion, it is worth pointing out for a publication, the bread and butter of which is being irreverent and pointed and even silly, it's certainly not gobbling up other publications. So I am dying to know, then, what prompted this radical departure from business as usual?
And specifically, was it actually the tweet? Not the tweet, but whatever it is that we're calling these posts on Bluesky.
Leila Brillson
Skeets.
Dusty Weis
Skeets?
Leila Brillson
Yeah, we're calling them Skeets.
Dusty Weis
I do not consent to that. We got to do better.
Leila Brillson
Yeah. No, nobody has. Yeah. So let's take a step back a little bit. The radical departure actually happened in April May when the group I'm a part of, which is myself, Ben Collins, and a tech product impresario named Danielle Strle. We got together well, that had happened a bit earlier. Us getting together and deciding to free the Onion from kind of a shackles of private equity.
We saw an opportunity, a brand that was in a lot of stress and a lot of turmoil being raided for this kind of brand awareness, it's incredible social channels, the bangers that it's produced year after year and, you know, forced to run slide shows, pivot away from video because they were so dependent on impression-based ads. And we worked with a like-minded investor who helped us acquire it.
And for the first time in over 20 years, The Onion was independent. And the joke is we were like, we're not looking to acquire any more places. It's like, we want to work here for the rest of our lives.
And the truth is, this was supposed to be this kind of like, nice little business, if you will. Where we were helping the Onion re-achieve that status of not just doing great headlines that you love, but the books like the Our Dumb century or, you know, relaunching ONNn or Onion News Network or any of the video spaces and bringing the paper back, which was something that we did not understand was such a desired outcome.
So we're heading down this path and when the bankruptcy was announced, yes, Ben made a joke and.
Dusty Weis
Made a joke on Bluesky. Somebody actually tweeted, or skeeted at him.
Leila Brillson
“The Onion has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever.” And...
Dusty Weis
He posted back the Elon Musk meme of…
Leila Brillson
Looking into it, looking into this. Yeah, I don't know what happened. Ben is incredibly connected. He comes from the space of reporting and media and…
Dusty Weis
The new CEO of the Onion.
Leila Brillson
Yeah, yeah, my partner and all of these things. Even though he's CEO and I'm CMO now, he is incredibly well-connected and incredibly beloved and well known, especially in the disinformation space. So once again, I don't know the full exact order of things. I'm sure I was told it at some point. I am a new mom, so my brain does weird things.
Dusty Weis
I feel you right there. Congratulations.
Leila Brillson
Yeah. Thank you. And so he came in and was like, what if we bought Infowars? And I was like, haha! What if? And then he was like, no, what if we bought Infowars? He was not the one to make the first move. I'm not exactly sure exactly what happened. I can't really speak to that.
But I do know that he managed to bring together a coalition of the folks from Sandy Hook, our legal team, their legal team, and have a conversation.
And then through that, we decided to do an incredible ad partnership. And to be very clear, Everytown is not necessarily interested in, you know, they're not involved in the ownership. They're not involved in the acquisition at all. But they do have that ongoing legitimacy in this space. And we have this ongoing legitimacy in the space through this, a sad, tragic art performance that we discussed.
And we came up with a partnership that is, you know, based on the earned media around this, based on the owned media around this, based on the fact that, you know, we have the ability to really build a narrative that's really compelling and help them reach new audiences.
Their audience is very female. It is very upper millennial. We have a very young male audience.
And the truth is, is that a lot of these things are served better with humor, with a wink and a nod or with awareness. And we sat down with them and we said, hey, let’s dream up some really cool stuff, some stuff that's never been done before. This is maybe one of the more interesting, quote unquote sponsored content buys I've ever seen.
Dusty Weis
To say the very least, it's it's incredible. It's unprecedented. It's never been done. They get an opportunity to reach a new audience with their very important message. You folks at The Onion essentially get the opportunity to not only pull off one of the greatest pranks of all time, but to burn to the ground the legacy of a bastard who absolutely has it coming.
And so I want to get into exactly what your plans are for the Infowars brand. We are going to be back with Onion CMO Leila Brillson coming up in a moment here on Lead Balloon.
Dusty Weis
This is Lead Balloon, and I'm Dusty Weis. And we are talking with Leila Brillson, CMO of The Onion, which just pulled off the joke of the century by moving to purchase Alex Jones's Infowars brand. And Leyla, Infowars is an outlet where for 25 years, conspiracy theories have been churned out, millions of people have been scammed and misled, and innocent lives have been destroyed.
What does a publication like The Onion do with that kind of IP?
Leila Brillson
Well, you know, there's two things. The first thing is that we talk about The Onion as a business, and then we can talk about The Onion as an editorial voice. The Onion, the business will, you know, is very excited about operating in a more influencer- or personality-driven space that is, you know, in the TikTok conspiracy world and Joe Rogans like the things that have become very ubiquitous.
The Onion called them refs, as in references that you reference… and the classic Onion is like the New York Times, CNN Cable News, and those things are not the cutting edge of news anymore.
Dusty Weis
They're still part of the mediascape. But there's this other force that is gaining an increased share in public attention span.
Leila Brillson
And this gives, to us, I think it gives us an opportunity to integrate in that space without diminishing what The Onion is as a brand. You know, what is our Joe Rogan take? The Onion tends to kind of envision itself as kind of above the fray and this omnipresent, massive conglomerate that is like two elevated to think about, you know, the Tate brothers or whatever bizarre thing is going on on TikTok, whether it's people doing raw milk or thinking sunscreen is an inside job or whatever.
And so that has served the Onion really well, but it has kept it in this space that it has owned so exceptionally, but has not necessarily allowed it to jump into those places because it would be so disruptive to what the Onion as a brand.
So we're excited to kind of use Infowars to kind of expand in that multimedia place and to meet that moment of like those very personality-driven spaces, the yes, Alex Jones, but also, you know, all of the different faces that we see in this kind of more fringe media environment, both on the right and the left, just, you know, there's plenty of commentary to be had.
And then The Onion as a business is, of course, completely…You know, we in world we are owned by Bryce Tetraeder of Global Tetrahedron…
You have no idea how many press requests we got for Bryce. Oh, yeah. His, you know, people want to travel with Bryce, and so out of world, we understand that this is kind of also protecting the brand of the Onion, which, you know, it will be a long time until the cable news ref loses relevancy even to younger people. They identify it as still a serious news delivery mechanism.
This kind of allows us to keep the Onion doing what it does best, and then be a little more scrappy. Respond to trends more than the publication has done in the past.
Dusty Weis
Essentially you're evolving to meet the moment. And for a publication that started off as a print publication, staying relevant in whatever the heck age of media this is that we're living in now. And I love it.
And you did reference Global Tetrahedron and the statement that was put out announcing the acquisition, and I did. I just wanted to call back to that.
It was a statement in the character of Bryce Tetra-whatever-the heck. The CEO of Global Tetrahedron, my favorite quote from the thing, “Infowars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society, values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron,” which Chef’s kiss.
Leila Brillson
So good.
Dusty Weis
Another great moment is when they hint that they will stop the sale of Infowars’ stockpile of anti-aging nutrition supplements so they can give them all to their CEO. And he can live forever. But it does raise an interesting point that you're not just getting a media channel here. You're getting all kinds of assets. What are you actually going to do with, as a for instance, a line of dubious nutritional supplements?
Leila Brillson
You know, Dusty… Ben made this mistake on another podcast and said, we don't know. Send us your ideas and our inbox became filled.
But that is something we're trying to figure out, right? Like, we want to make sure that whatever we're doing, you know, that we continue to work closely with the families to make sure that we're not propagating kind of the extremism that put them in the place that they are now.
Honestly, I can say on the record here, I don't know. That was not a part of our business plan here. We want to handle it responsibly. But what a turn of events I like. Texted my family. I like guess you guys know what you're getting for Christmas. You know.
Dusty Weis
Boxes and boxes. Enough to fill a garage!
Another facet of this that's really interesting to me because of course, there's all this comedic potential of this acquisition, but there's also the opportunity to do some real good as well. For instance, I would imagine the Infowars email mailing lists are abundant. Are you exploring ways to leverage those email lists to try to deradicalize some of the people that have been drinking from this propaganda firehose for 20 years?
Leila Brillson
You know, that's a good question. It's interesting because typically email lists would fall into this space of the CMO, right? I think with this, though, they need to be handled extremely sensitively. And so I don't feel extremely comfortable speaking on that. I don't think we will have a tremendous amount of people who are willing to listen, but you never know.
So I think the email lists are an interesting conversation, but I don't think that they're going to be an efficient marketing channel like our current email lists are. So that is a question that is continuing to evolve.
Dusty Weis
So you've got the opportunity to do some good. You've got the opportunity to do some brilliant comedy and satire. Those are all great. But the purchase of Infowars, in addition to being the funniest joke yet, it is also a brilliantly conceived publicity stunt in a lot of ways. I mean, a quick glance at Google Trends shows search volume for the Onion spiked plus-400% last week.
Are there any other metrics that you're tracking or planning to track, or anything that you can share with us? As far as just the immediate brand impact for The Onion?
Leila Brillson
Gosh, I mean, incredible brand impact. Well, our number I mean, the number one thing is do people reach into their wallets and yeah, I will tell you, equivocally, yes.
I can't give you numbers. Our subscriber list people who are paying for the Onion membership has grown a significant amount. I will certainly say in the double digits since this has happened, which means people are reaching into their wallets and saying, we want to support you, which is really exciting.
That's another metric we're considering.
All this Earned Media, which was very exciting.
You know, it's interesting because I don't know how this is going to fare in the partnership space. I don't want to say ads because we're really moving away from ads, in terms of like traditional display advertisement.
But, you know, I don't know what like, Disney is going to think about us purchasing Infowars, if that's a brand they want to be next to, especially I think marketers everywhere are going to be thinking about, does it make sense to align yourself with quote unquote progressive companies after the election?
I would say that people still are very values-based. So there's pros and cons to that. And for anybody listening, we're open for business. I'm very curious to see how this reflects in the people who are excited about partnering with us, because the eyes are on us. You know, the enthusiasm is there. We are a brand that can deliver, but is being in the crosshairs of a hateful misinformation peddler negative for you?
Dusty Weis
Well, just in terms of the subscription thing, I certainly know a lot of people that I've talked to personally over the last year who maybe weren't even aware that The Onion was back in print form, and that you could get a monthly copy of it for just $99 a year. Certainly, it's something that we could use in our green room here at Podcamp Media, and so we'll look forward to getting ink on my hands again here for the first time in a while.
You yourself, as you mentioned earlier, you're relatively new to The Onion. Is this the sort of project that you expected to be working on eight months into the new job here?
Leila Brillson
Can I tell you honestly, is it Infowars? No. Were we expecting to do some crazy stuff? Yes, because The Onion has the chops and the writers and we haven't really talked about the writers and our company is mostly creatives. I mean, it's the Danielle, Ben and I and like 1 or 2 other people, our business affairs and out of world conversation.
But there is a strong writing team there and they are up for the task. And we knew that in order for The Onion to succeed, we would have to unshackle them from these kind of like more onerous goals that a company that was entirely interested in getting the revenue back via, you know, selling off the bits and parts, would not let them do.
So we knew that we were in for a ride and we wanted to be we wanted to be in for a ride. We wanted to give these incredible humorists… they would murder me if I they heard me call them humorists… these incredible writers and, comedians or satirists, the space to tell more jokes in more places.
Dusty Weis
And again, to continue to be more relevant in an evolving mediascape. Certainly the Onion is unshackled. Certainly, as someone who has followed the Onion for multiple decades now, since I was a teenager roaming around Madison, Wisconsin, where it all started, it's delightful for me to get to see it. But last question that I have for you personally, Leila, what does it mean to you personally to get to jam your own thumb into Alex Jones's eyeball.
Leila Brillson
Oh geez. You know, I'm going to say it probably means a lot more to somebody like Ben who's been in the disinformation space. Me, I've been in, like, lifestyle media and entertainment, and I haven't had his work directly affect mine in a really long time.
What I am going to say instead, I think, is a little more of a big picture.
I lived in New York for ten years. I spent five years in LA doing the, you know, Netflix of it all. And then I just moved to Chicago, where I'm from and where The Onion is now.
So I'm speaking to you from Chicago, Illinois, right down the street from my office, the Onion office.
And I think that there's something really powerful about a new mom and a handful of scrappy writers coming together.
And, you know, Danielle Strle who lives with her cat, Stefon.
I'd like to describe us as a ragtag, perhaps, group being able to organically and not with the help of like, George Soros and, you know, the New World Order… jab a thumb into a really toxic space.
It's something that you don't see a lot like, you don't see justice served from the bottom up. And I really think this is a bottom up opportunity. This is something I think, for anybody who feels like their small, independent business can change the fabric of the space that they're in. That is where I feel like the win has been for me.
Dusty Weis
Well, I hope that in the middle of this whirlwind, you have had a chance to just sit and soak in the W here because I don't use the word heroes lightly, Leila. But in this world it is very seldom, far too seldom, that we get to see someone so vile get so completely owned and embarrassed in such a public forum.
And this is a year that has been especially… It's been especially. And I know that working in the media is a grinding, nonstop lunch pail job. I know that writing comedy on any kind of a cadence can be a soul crushing and exhausting exercise.
And so I just want you and the rest of the leadership at The Onion and everyone on staff to just have a moment of complete and total satisfaction knowing that you have done something truly, epically karmic.
It’s art!
And so, on behalf of grateful nation, thank you. Thank you for doing what you do. Leila Brillson, CMO of The Onion. And thank you for joining us on Lead Balloon.
Leila Brillson
Thank you for having me, Dusty.
Dusty Weis
Thanks for tuning in. Here on Lead Balloon, we tell the stories of strategic communication heroes facing long odds and learning something from it. So we hope to see you back here in this feed again sometime soon. Follow us in your favorite podcast app.
Lead Balloon is produced by Podcamp Media where we provide branded podcast production solutions for businesses. Our podcast studios are located in the heart of beautiful downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We work with brands all over North America to help them launch and build podcasts that work. Check out our website podcampmedia.com.
Music for this episode by Ghost Beatz. Dialogue editing by Matt Covarrubias.
And until the next time folks, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.
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