• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 20, 2025

One of my favorite terms to evolve in reaction to our always-on, all-in, omnipresent digital media world is "face-to-face media." It's a funny term, because it likely is not something new, but truly our oldest form of media -- the kind in which people share information, ideas, emotions, etc. in the most humanly present way possible.

The term really took on new meaning during the COVID pandemic, when people had to rely on faces-in-front-of-screens-to-faces-in-front-of-screens media, which kind of sucked, and was followed by a joyous outpouring of reconnection as people gathered -- often in large masses -- in to be together in public places once again.

I'm drawing this observation today for two reasons. One is that it follows the ad industry's biggest such annual gathering -- the Cannes Lions Festival -- which once again reminded us how important it is to show up in proper numbers. The other is that it followed last weekend's nationwide "No Kings" protests, which coincided with the narcissist-in-chief's lackluster military-style birthday bash.

I've been thinking a lot about the relative importance and impact of American democracy's reinvigorated face-to-face media experience because, well, it's one of the few potentially impactful institutions, much less media, that we've got left to resist an increasingly autocratic regime that is seizing power and control over ones that were supposed to be its check-and-balance.

Honestly, I can't say what the ROI of protests have been, or potentially could be, but it was the focus of Scott Galloway's "No Mercy/No Malice" newsletter today, and it triggered me to weigh in with this column -- in case you didn't catch it in your own inbox.

If like me, you're one of Galloway's fans, you already know how brilliant he is at simplifying complex issues with easy to comprehend eye charts, so I've pasted this key one above.

It shows the number of meaningful American protests during the first 140-plus days of Trump's first and second terms. And while both were worth turning out for, Trump 2.0 currently is running about 3X the reach and frequency of 1.0's.

Importantly, with the exception of a few isolated -- and heavily covered on right-wing media -- incidents, they have been fabulously peaceful protests, which is exactly the kind that generate an ROI.

"The No Kings turnout was significant, even if it didn’t reach a critical threshold," Galloway writes, adding, "When at least 3.5% of a country’s population actively engages in a peaceful protest movement, it has always resulted in political change, according to Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist and professor at Harvard. Chenoweth analyzed 323 nonviolent and violent mobilizations between 1900 and 2006, highlighting a range of campaigns, including the People Power movement against the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Philippines in 1986; the Rose Revolution in 2003, in which the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze; and an uprising in Sudan in 2019 that forced its president of 30 years, Omar al-Bashir, to step down. She also concluded that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent movements. Every senior — in every high school, in every country — should be forced to read the previous sentence 100 times."

I know that in today's screen-based experiential world, it's easy to dismiss the value and impact of a face-to-face medium like citizen protests, but you know, that's the way the American experiment actually started out. And while that one involved the destruction of property -- mostly tea -- it was largely a peaceful protest that got us to where we are today.

In other words, if you feel powerless against the current un-Constitutional power grab, try taking to the streets and letting the folks in charge know you still have the power to do something about it. Until you know longer do.