#4 Sleeping Giants' Founder Nandini Jammi on building ad-tech movements
Election bells, food farewells, and brand safety sells
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Catching Fire 🚀 your must-sees
🇺🇸 Haley and Harris in the House
We’re 56 days away from the 2020 election, yet several people have mentally checked into 2024. Can’t say I blame them.
Two weeks ago, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley delivered a captivating speech at the Republican National Convention. Pundits read it as a preemptive stump speech, speculating that she’ll make a bid for the Oval Office come 2024. Whether or not you agree with her politics, the former governor will be a formidable opponent. Interestingly enough, VP Candidate Kamala Harris is likely to be her fiercest rival, win or lose.
If elected this November, Biden would become the oldest sitting president, making it entirely possible that he wouldn’t seek re-election. Harris would probably become the choice candidate for the Dems in 2024. Even if they lose this election, Harris has already competed in the presidential primaries once. If at first you don’t succeed…
All in all, this means that two South Asian women could be competing for the nation’s highest political office in four short years.
📰 Politics and pandemic in India from the NYT
The pandemic and politics are inextricable. This piece from the Jeffrey Gettleman illustrates the dire effects of Covid-19 on India’s future economic prospects and how policies enacted in the early innings of the pandemic might have sealed the country’s fate. Sound familiar? It should.
🔔 Loss in the Sauce
At some point, I’ll stop covering all the things Brown people have lost in 2020 (Patriot Act, their sanity, etc). Today, we mourn the loss of the beloved Mexican pizza among other items from the Taco Bell menu. If you can’t comprehend the utter nostalgia here, read this piece on how the chain represents a quintessential part of the South Asian experience in America. To the corporate’s credit, 7 million pounds of paperboard will be conserved by axing the dish. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have nice things and save the environment?
Hot off the Pod 🎧 Sujata Day
My conversation with Sujata Day, the actress-writer-director extraordinaire. She is best known for her starring roles in Issa Rae’s series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and on HBO’s Insecure. Most recently, she directed her first film, Definition Please, a South Asian dramedy.
In this episode, she sheds light on how she paved her path to Hollywood, from her early cameos on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer to her shift into the director’s seat. She underscores the challenges she faced as a South Asian woman, and how those same experiences inspired her to tell her Brown girl story. Listen in to hear hers.
Fireside Chat 🔥 with Nandini Jammi
Nandini Jammi is a brand safety and digital advertising expert and activist.
Nandini began her foray into this world after the 2016 election, when she co-founded Sleeping Giants. The social media campaign alerts companies about how their ad placements might fund hate speech. In 2017, their efforts resulted in a 90 percent drop in Breitbart News’ ad revenue.
Since then, she has led campaigns that have convinced advertisers to flee outlets like The O’Reilly Factor and spearheaded efforts to de-platform problematic white nationalists. In June 2020, she launched Check My Ads to help brands understand and redirect their digital media spend. You might remember her from our first issue, which highlighted a piece in which she reclaims the narrative around her co-founding of Sleeping Giants.
How did your experience in advertising at a start-up lead you to start Sleeping Giants?
I was running a Google ad campaign for the company and I was determined to know where my ads were going. I didn't know much about advertising, but I didn’t trust it. As it turns out, if you look at your site placements, which nobody really does, you will see that your ads are being placed in domains that aren’t even visited by human beings. I wasn’t sure what to do with that information because nobody was thinking about it. Whereas I was hoping to see my ads on CNN, Slate, and the Washington Post, that's not where they were going and I never really understood why. I found it deeply upsetting as a copywriter who spent all this time writing the ads hoping it would lead to conversions.
A couple months later, after the 2016 election, I visited Breitbart.com. The first thing I noticed were ads for all these massive companies and brands. I realized: these guys aren't checking their ad placements. So I had this idea that if we all go in and block this site from our media buy, which you can do through Google, then we can stop funding this website. That’s how programmatic advertising works. I took a screenshot of an Old Navy ad next to a hideous headline, tweeted it out to them, and next thing I know, they pulled the ad.
Eventually, we ended up building a community of thousands of people who wanted to work with us, take screenshots, and let companies know where their ads are to help the movement keep growing.
You exited Sleeping Giants earlier this year because your co-founder erased you from the movement. What advice do you have for women, especially women of color, who are facing similar challenges?
I recommend that all people, especially women, write frequently and publicly — even if it's not good, even if it's not an essay. It doesn't have to be a blog post, it doesn't have to be any of that. It could just be you offering up your insights and your perspective on Twitter. I know no one asked and no one probably cares right now, but do it anyway to practice asserting yourself and to assert your opinions and perspectives.
You know the drill - the pod drops in the next issue!
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