BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Answers to the Trippi money questions

14 comments on Answers to the Trippi money questions

Answers to the Trippi money questions
: Ed Cone asks Joe Trippi him about Trippi’s compensation in the Dean campagin. “Talk to us about the whole Joe Trippi getting rich thing,” Ed says. Good reporting on Ed’s part.

Trippi talks about how a fundraising dinner works: You spend $350k on a room to get $1 million and it’s considered a success.

He talks about spending $100,000 in Austin, Texas, to buy media and get attention and raise funds in Bush’s backyard. It’s an investment, he says — better than “eating steak and potatoes at some big gala.

“On the get-rich quick scheme. I don’t know what bothers me more, the implication that I’m a thief or that I’m a really bad thief…. I made about $165,000 on the Dean camapign, personally…. That’s a lot of money. But that’s not $7.5 or $7.2 million.”

He says the LA Times story was an attack:

“How do you stop the movement dead in its track? Well, you convince people it’s a Trippi get-rich-quick scheme.”

He says he never had the authority for budget and spending — a very important fact. That does deal with potential conflict of interest.

He says if he were a bad thief, he would have gotten a lot more spent on TV.

“This isn’t just trying to knock me down. This is trying to knock the whole thing down. They’re trying to get people to buy into this notion that it was all some get-rich-quick scheme and it wasn’t.”

There’s news from eTech.

This should have been reported better before.

14 responses to “Answers to the Trippi money questions”

  1. Roger L. Simon Avatar
    Roger L. Simon

    Was there a real dialogue or was it just a “Talk to us” open discussion? I hate to admit this, but sometimes webloggers (present company included) are not informed enough on an issue to conduct a real interview. In other words, doesn’t the interviewer have to have real background in camnpaign finance to get to the bottom of this? Also, as the proprietor of my own personal corp, I know full well that what you are paid as an “individual” is the least of it. In fact the idea is to avoid that, as I’m sure you know.

  2. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    News is a conversation and we had another snippet in that conversation now: We now know how much he made.

  3. Tim Oren Avatar
    Tim Oren

    Depends on how his partnership is structured. He described the $165,000 as his partner’s share (1/3). If Trippi, McMahon, Squier is structured as an LLC (I can’t find any mention of its structure on the net) then it will be a third of the net profit on the Dean media buy. So 3 * $165k = $495k, plus any expenses, over a $7.2m TV media buy (his number), to get the commission percentage. It anyone wants to dig further, the expenses allocated to this buy inside the media firm are where to look.

  4. Eric Deamer Avatar
    Eric Deamer

    Geez, I guess Trippi really thinks the big bad biased media is out to get him. These guys are starting to sound more and more like conservatives.

  5. Terry Heaton Avatar
    Terry Heaton

    As an aside, the stream of the conference has been humorous. Occasionally, the bitstream would slip into half speed, resulting in those of us “out here” listening to it at double speed. The Chipmunks comes to mind. At the end of the morning session, the tech guys from IT Conversations came on to apologize, and they said the problem was the bandwidth outbound from the hotel’s T-1. While they were smart enough to get their own hard wired connection, they’re competing with all of you bloggers and your WiFi laptops for bandwidth! Hilarious.

  6. Tim Oren Avatar
    Tim Oren

    The odd thing is the hotel’s propaganda in the rooms says they have optical networking here. T-1 backhaul? Someone sure missed the point.

  7. JayT Avatar
    JayT

    As I predicted:
    “I made about $165,000 on the Dean camapign, personally…. That’s a lot of money. But that’s not $7.5 or $7.2 million.”
    I don’t know what planet Blogarians come from, but $165K is a LOTta money, to me. But that’s not the point.
    How much did his partners get? “Up to 15% commission” has been reported, but was that 1 contract at 5% and the rest %15?? (Iow, the AVERAGE commission has not been reported, afaik, so there’s no way of knowing what the TOTAL COST to the campaign was, of commissions to Trippi’s ad firm.)
    So Trippi may have gotten “only” $165K, but his buddies probably reaped a good sowing.
    In addition, the $7 Million USD was (as I’ve gathered of the facts) from the 4Q 2003 FEC filing outta a total of $18M. Since then, a total of $40-something MILLIONS was spent, so the $7M doesn’t signify.
    Tough questions and honest answers gonna come from this conference? Iow, news?

  8. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    But Jay T, also without knowing how many people worked on it– and I feel fairly certain that the firm has more than 3 people– we still have no idea if that sum of money, whatever it is, is a windfall or a fairly low hourly rate. I guessed, purely out of the blue from experience in the ad biz, that TM&S could have had something like 10-20 person-years put into the campaign. Even a million dollars only comes out to $50,000 to $100,000 per that way, which shrinks pretty fast when you start taking care of overhead and everything else.
    We still have no idea whether they made out like bandits or not, because we’re missing way too many pieces of the equation to do the math ourselves. That is the ONLY fair thing one can safely say at this moment.

  9. JayT Avatar
    JayT

    Mike G,
    Thanks for presenting the views of Blogaria so succinctly. (Sorry for the delay.) I, personally, am not a good businessperson.. but I have a fair bit of theoretical background. (I am Not an academic, or I’d have a blog…;-)
    I agree it would be helpful to have some honest discussion of the actual amounts, in total. I hafta allow, I s’pose, that “we still have no idea if that sum of money, whatever it is, is a windfall”. But I think pinning down the numbers to the exact pennies actually obsfucates the question in some ways. (Would still like to see some actual, verifiable, dollar amounts, of course.)
    I believe I know this much:
    The “news” came out of Blogaria (and, iirc, reputable media) that Joe Trippi was volunteering his time as Campaign Manager. This was, I believe, common “knowledge”. And MUCH LATER it turns out that Mr. Trippi got paid $165,000 personally, and his firm made (probably) 1 or 2 million or so USD. And none of this came out until Mr. Trippi left the campaign, which I don’t believe is coincidental.
    I’m relying on Mr. Jarvis’ quotes, but Mr. Trippi claims the following:
    “‘How do you stop the movement dead in its track? Well, you convince people it’s a Trippi get-rich-quick scheme.’
    He says he never had the authority for budget and spending — a very important fact.”
    (First of all, it’s pointless to try and stop a movement, and also quaint to try to blame “the authorities” for the debacle.) Secondly, I’m being asked to suspend disbelief, and just assume that it was sheer coincidence that the firm of TM&S just HAPPENED to land the ad contract?!?
    Thirdly, while Mr. Trippi “ONLY” made (reportedly) $165K personally, and what TM&S is assumed to have made “ONLY comes out to $50,000 to $100,000 per” “20 person-years”.. (emphasis mine, and that assumption is probably Way low)
    ..Well, call me crazy but I would guess there would be a LOT of ad firms that would call that a windfall in this economy!
    And then there’s the question of what future financial benefit there might be for TM&S to gain if, say.. they are the ad agency responsible for taking an unknown and inexperienced Presidential candidate and marketing them successfully to be the President of the United States. I’d think that alone would incent a few ad agencies to do this work pro bono, because of the future financial potential (and especially if they believed in this Deaniac stuff in the first place).
    So this is what leads me to believe there was enough windfall going around (not to mention Mr. Trippi’s plum job at MSNBC), to where’s it’s a question of HOW MUCH of a windfall there was, rather than whether there was one.
    I doubt those questions will be asked, let alone answered. (Let alone actually getting to the tough questions…)-;
    I don’t think this is a tough question: Was Trippi’s ad agency worth the expense, and did they work as long and hard as the Deaniacs??

  10. JayT Avatar
    JayT

    I sit corrected.
    I have no way to know if Trippi’s AD AGENCY was worth the expense. Even if I had a sheet of the specific media buys and timeslots and marketshares and all, I wouldn’t know.
    However, the Campaign Manager was “apparently” (I believe it’s pretty clear) responsible in LARGE part (but not entirely) for the campaign strategy. (So I don’t see where the hidden-salary of $165K for the Campaign Manager was worth the expense, imho.) But the TM&S ad agency might have done a great job, but to no avail, because the campaign strategy was so unbelievably “hosed”.

  11. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    If Trippi was working for “free” it was surely because his firm and he were making it up somewhere else. This strikes me as not exactly crooked by a long ways. Considering that the media commission is something the client would pay one way or another anyway, one can certainly argue that it’s a reasonable practice to get a free campaign manager by choosing his firm for media placement. One could also argue other things about how that might compromise this or that, and one might well be right, but the point is, such an arrangement would not normally strike anyone in the biz as unusual, underhanded, or anything else.
    No, I don’t think $50,000 to 100,000 per full time person is a windfall. I’ve worked at big agencies and tiny ones and currently on my own, so I have a pretty good feel for salaries in the biz. If you assume that at least half again as much as the salary is needed in income per employee to cover benefits and overhead, then that’s employees earning roughly 30,000 to 70,000 annually. That’s not very expensive ad people at all– what it is is a couple of Trippis and a lot of young people making $35,000 a year at their first job. Even $165,000, though a very nice salary and a little more than I’ve ever made in advertising, is not incredibly high by any means– I’m sure my bosses took home half mills and five or six figure bonuses. Try and get a lawyer for 35,000 a year, is all I can say.
    As for the idea that Trippi and a whole ad agency should work on the Dean account for free because they would get all kinds of work when the guy’s president… what ads does a president run? Seriously, think about that. Five or ten candidates, everybody working for free in the hopes their guy will be president, and once he gets there the instant he gives them anything there’s screaming about favoritism and so on. (See Halliburton.) You can’t run a business giving it all away for years in hopes of a 1-in-10 chance.
    You can argue about whether it’s fair that Deaniacs worked for free and the professionals made out like bandits (maybe), but fair or not, it’s how the world works. As the ad in the airline magazine says, “You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”

  12. JayT Avatar
    JayT

    “If Trippi was working for “free” it was surely because his firm and he were making it up somewhere else. This strikes me as not exactly crooked by a long ways.”
    A swing and a miss: What was crooked was CALLING IT FREE in the first place. I don’t think I can make this point unless you understand it in the first place:
    Saying the Campaign Manager was doing it FOR “FREE” helps drum up volunteers and contributions. So it’d better be true.
    Instead, the TOP of the Dean campaign went by the motto “It’s ‘FREE’ as in ‘Open’ Source ‘free’”… I’m not actually making any money by doing this, and my buddies in the biz are not making money from me (or just a few million). This is an old game in politics. It was the game that the Deaniacs were SUPPOSEDLY against. The politics-as-usual was being practiced in the Deanic campaign, nonetheless. That’s not to mention the reported POSSIBLE (and nobody know’s) conflict-of-interest regarding the National ID company Mr. Trippi was a BOD in.
    It is even the mere APPEARANCE of such conflicts of interest which besmirched the credability of the candidate and his primary advisors. The rest of your first two paragraphs document the facts fairly well. Presidents and Presidential candidates are judged, a lot if not almost entirely, by the taking the good advice they get from their close advisors and rejecting the bad advice. So a President and his advisors are held to a somewhat HIGHER STANDARD than the typical ad exec.
    In the ADVERTIZING BIZ, “this might not normally strike anyone … as unusual, underhanded, or anything else.”
    In ELECTIONS (the “politics ‘biz’”…;-), this is considered poor practice and is one of the main things the Deaniacs were SCREAMING about.
    “what it is is a couple of Trippis and a lot of young people making $35,000 a year at their first job.”
    This could be so… Probably.
    How much you think was the average wage of the poor Deaniacs who sweat blood?? But Trippi and Dean were both made out to be a “man of the people”, just like “one of ‘us’”. Do you see the disconnect between Trippi and Teachout and the woman Trippi mentioned?? “He tells a tear-jerker story about a woman who ‘sold my bike for democracy.’”
    Sheet. I am just about stunned speechless, which some may be thankful for.
    However…
    I am not suggesting that ALL political ad campaigns MUST be done for free. That’s stupid, because only software developers MUST work for free.
    But I’m saying, given the way the candidate was cast as a man of the people..
    ..well I wonder if there was a plan as to how these “normal” $40-something MILLION in total a-wad-of-which-went-directly-and-indirectly-to-Trippi were going to be explained to the Deaniacs. If not, that’s bad planning.
    I’m still waiting for the explanation of what happened to the $40 Million, but I don’t expect one.
    Politics-as-actually-practiced by the Dean campaign is the politics of negotiation, the politics of the money’d and both “the old” and “the new” politics, Mike G. I prefer the politics of voting rather than the politics of negotiation, myself. And this “new politics” of Mr. Joe Trippi’s is just more of the same-ole same-old dressed up, afaikt.
    Yeah, right.
    What happened to the chorus?? All I hear is “meet the new Boss…
    dum-da-duh…
    same as the OLE BOSS”
    (“We won’t get fooled again” by the Who.)

  13. HH Avatar
    HH

    Pretty hilarious how the “movement” was stopped well after Iowa and New Hampshire. Bud, the movement was past stopped then.

  14. Mike G Avatar
    Mike G

    Well, I agree with you, JayT, to the extent that if they were talking about scores of full time pros working for free, they were conning the Deaniacs. Maybe the Deaniacs shoulda known better too, there is such a thing as being credulous, but that doesn’t excuse the attempt to sell a bill of goods, regardless of whether it’s purchased or not.
    But then I’m from Chicago, where the only “volunteers” on campaigns are city workers making sure their bread remains buttered.