Ziggy Prieto on Why Frequency Wins in a Fragmented Media Landscape

In a candid conversation with a longtime industry peer, SVP Group Media Director at Mediahub Worldwide Ziggy Prieto shares how he navigates multi vertical portfolios, challenges every buy, and keeps teams focused on what actually drives impact. From persona driven audience thinking to closed loop measurement and a blunt take on frequency, this is how Ziggy evaluates partners, platforms, and performance in today’s media ecosystem.

Highlights:

• Why frequency over frequency is still the most honest lever in driving attention
• How challenger brands pressure test media plans across vertical learnings
• Using persona modeling to sharpen audience strategy before the buy
• What sellers miss when they pitch tech instead of client business outcomes
• The operator mindset behind closed loop measurement and real accountability

EPISODE 60 TRANSCRIPT

Adam Katz
Welcome back to Breaking Through the Mayhem. We have a friend of mine that I’ve known for, what is it, almost a decade now?

Ziggy Prieto
Almost, almost.

Adam Katz
Mr. Ziggy, how are you?

Ziggy Prieto
Thank you, Adam, thank you for having me.

Adam Katz
Of course, couldn't be happier to see all your success and see you rise up the ranks.

Ziggy Prieto
My success? This guy, this guy, the CEO What's that?

Adam Katz
Now we're sitting here together talking, I think it's just super cool Yeah Tell us a little bit about yourself, Ziggy.

Ziggy Prieto
Yeah, no, so I'm the SVP at Mediahub Been there for almost six years Love it You know, I went there because it was a challenger mentality and it continues to be so It's a very startup-esque type of vibe. You go in there and, you know, you challenge all the media buys. You have great clients to work with. You have a great team, And I continue to love it there, so yeah.

Adam Katz
I love that I mean, six years, you've obviously went through a lot of different iterations there.

Ziggy Prieto
Well, six years in agency years, right? It's like dog years It's like 18 years right there, right?

Adam Katz
I was thinking like 250 Something like that. Dog years, I was thinking like 40 years at a time But for you, I mean, you work on a lot, right? So knowing that you work on a slew of different clients and in a very diverse mindset across those, what kind of keeps you grounded in the way that you think every day?

Ziggy Prieto
Yeah. I mean, I think that that keeps me charged. The fact that, you know, you, you gotta put your liquor hat on.

Then you go, you gotta put your finance hat on, you know, and then there's, you know, subscription base and there's just so much happening on a day to day and I love it. But here's the thing though, the fact that I have that visibility and purview and into the different verticals, I'm able to take copy and paste, put it into this vertical copy and paste, put it into that, you know?

So it's, it's, uh, you sort of introduce a paradigm shift. Now my emails, it's like off the chain as I'm sure everybody else who's watching this is very similar. But, um, I do like that there's multiple verticals.

It's, it's, uh, makes you a little bit more versatile, keeps you on your toes and, and keeps me there. Cause obviously, you know, six years is a lot.

Adam Katz
How do you stay organized then with all that?

Ziggy Prieto
I don't have a good answer for that.

I do think that my to-do's though, like my notes, they are organized. Like, what do I have to do for the week? What do I have to do for the day?

What is so-and-so doing for the day or for the week and keeping status sheets on point? Like that's helped me for sure. But, uh, inbox, if anybody has some tips out there for inbox, I'm not your guy.

Please tell me.

Adam Katz
I get it. Do you find yourself traveling a lot with this many clients or, or it's not as frequent as you would have thought?

Ziggy Prieto
Not really. I do feel that maybe like pre COVID probably a lot more. Um, that said, I have offered a lot more face-time to my clients.

Like I just went, um, to Jagermeister a week or two ago.

Adam Katz
Where are they located?

Ziggy Prieto
They're in White Plains. So I drove out there. Yeah, I drew, I drove from Jersey shore to White Plains.

Adam Katz
You're such a soldier.

Ziggy Prieto
It was a two hour ride. It was a little crazy, but, um, uh, no, I loved it. The fact that you have face-time, you get to talk with them and you know, it's, it's not like your virtual zoom meeting and then you talk about whatever you're there for, and then that's it by it's, you know, you get hallway conversation.

So I love that, but no, I don't, I don't get to travel as much as I think. Uh, no, let me not say I would want to, but, um, as much as you would think for sure.

Adam Katz
It's interesting knowing how big of an innovator you've always been, how are you finding yourself in today's new era? Obviously you got the AI, whatever everyone's talking about, but there's so many things going on. How are you teaching yourself today?

Ziggy Prieto
I think AI, like tapping into AI for sure. And teaching yourself with a, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, look, let me get my AI to speak with your AI and then we'll come up with a game plan and maybe they should do the podcast, but no, um, I think tapping into AI, trying to figure out how certain personas think about the brand is been very helpful to me.

Um, so Navy Federal Credit Union, longstanding partner of ours, uh, love them to death. I love the client. I love their media.

I love their whole ethos, our members of the mission, uh, and what they represent, uh, for the military and active duty and, and families of veteran and active duty. And so what we've done is we've created certain personas with AI and say, think like a veteran, you know, you're active duty or rather, uh, you're, you're in the air force, you're a veteran. Think like this here, here, all the cross tabs analysis that we've done, think like that persona and let's call you James and for instance, whatever, Jimmy, whatever it is.

Um, and then I'll ask it questions and try to figure out like what really makes that veteran, you know, like

Adam Katz
Tick, move, thought.

Ziggy Prieto
Yeah. So that's been very helpful to me from a persona audience standpoint, but just in general, I mean, uh, learning in the industry, um, a lot of MAGNA reports, there are some great reports out there.

Adam Katz
I find the MAGNA stuff to be super interesting.

Ziggy Prieto
Yeah, there's a, I think there was a study, it was a year or two ago. They use eye tracking technology and it was done in cinemas, uh, in movie theaters. And it showed that a cinema ad captures your attention three times longer than a connected TV ad.

So I'm like, well, if, if you're trying to get attention on, you know, an ad, uh, why isn't cinema on your buy? You know, uh, now I'm not advocating for everybody to have cinema in, in their media plans, but those type of studies are amazing for when you're planning, where you're thinking about your client, what their goals are, what you're trying to achieve. And then what are the tools that you have in place as a media buyer, media planner, media buyer to then, you know, uh, be able to fulfill those goals for clients.

Adam Katz
In terms of like, you know, also I've, I know you as being in somebody who likes to educate people as well. Also learn yourself. Who do you find mentoring you nowadays?

Ziggy Prieto
Wow. Um, uh, now it's soon to be after this podcast, Adam. How do you become the CEO? Um, no, I, um, I think teaching's another form of learning, right?

So it's very helpful when you, especially if you get to speak in front of a camera, you're like, all right, guys, we're here to talk about media play and this, you know, like you are essentially learning as you start talking through, you start, you know, explaining what it is that you do.

Adam Katz
To coach somebody else You have to know it yourself.

Ziggy Prieto
A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and especially when they start asking you great questions, you're like, that's a great question. Let let's answer it together.

You know, let's workshop it. Um, I don't know if I have necessarily a specific mentor, but I do have specific people that I, um, attribute my, my growth in the industry. Um, certain people on the sales side, certain people on the planning side.

And, and it's just, you know, I take little bits of here and there and, you know, I put it in my back pocket and I carry on.

Adam Katz
And what would you say has been a piece of advice that people would be surprised that you're taking.

Ziggy Prieto
Um, I, you know, we were just talking about this, right?

Like, uh, we, we went to the U S open, what, almost a decade ago with Ralph, uh, you know, the principal investor. Right. Um, and his whole desensitize yourself to no, to the word no, uh, has definitely been, um, impactful in my life, you know, like don't take no for an answer, but desensitizing yourself to it.

So the more you hear, no, you know, the, the closer you get to yes. Uh, I sort of like, if you want to run a parallel to that, it's like when you go in, you're, you're an actor and you're auditioning, you audition a hundred times and you hear, you know, 99 no’s. So how come in sales or how come in media, you know, like we, we don't do that.

Adam Katz
You know, it's, I think, I think you're, you're alluding to something pretty powerful, which is resilience.

Ziggy Prieto
Yes.

Adam Katz
Right. And bouncing back.

Ziggy Prieto
Yes.

Adam Katz
And I think, um, obviously knowing you, like we've discussed, you've been around different things and done a lot of different things. How do you think being a father has impacted you at work?

Ziggy Prieto
Oh man. I love my little ones so much.

Adam Katz
I know, that's why I wanted to give you a chance to talk about it.

Ziggy Prieto
Um, I think it's like, I think integrity as a whole is something that you think about when you have kids, you know, like you try to steer them down the right path and you, instill the principles within them that are unchanging throughout time. And as you do that, teaching is another form of learning, right? So like, as you're telling them to do X, Y, Z,

Adam Katz
You're like, I better do it myself.

Ziggy Prieto
A hundred percent, you know? And it's kind of like that reminder, even if you've always done that, it's sort of like that reminder that it continues to build your, your cement, your, your foundation within principles. Like, you know, if anything, like think of it like the quicksand approach where you're standing your foundation, but you know, it's, it's, uh, that that's not dry cement, right?

It's a little wet. And so you're continuing to build out foundation you on top of that foundation with integrity, for sure.

Adam Katz
I love that. What are you excited about, about learning more about in the future of marketing, knowing you've been doing this for a long time and I know you have some principles that you love to think about, but what excites you about the future?

Ziggy Prieto
Yeah. I mean, we were talking about my hot take, my hot take being that, you know, I think marketing, advertising overall, I think the effectiveness of it just comes down to as simple as frequency, frequency over frequency over frequency. It doesn't matter if it's a good, creative, bad, creative, good message, bad message.

Uh, you know, one of the 40 laws of power is what court attention at all costs. Right. And so the more attention you get on something, the more people talk about it, whether it's good or bad, but frequency over frequency, that's what's going to get your message across.

And then you could always revamp it and be like, Hey, I've rebranded myself, you know, but now you got everybody's attention. Right. So that should sort of like be the, especially for non mature brands, I think that that should be like the number one principle.

It's really interesting.

Adam Katz
Yeah. You know, it's the other thing that I've been seeing so much about, I wanted to get your opinion on is this concept of brand governance, like basically which NAI creative and how much is out there today. How do you think brands are going to be able to protect their message into the future with AI and then also show up in the places that they actually want?

Ziggy Prieto
I don't know about the protection of message. I feel like no one's really safe in that, in that category, in that field. You know, I just, I took a static picture the other day and, you know, I put it into a Firefly, Adobe Firefly, and I said, make this person walk through, you know, it was like a fish market.

Sure enough, the person started walking through and then, you know, the, the camera starts zooming in and then it messes up the face. And I'm like, no, no, no. Don't touch the face.

If anything, I want this person to not look at the camera and I want them to walk through, did it again, you know? And so like, I don't know whose picture that was, you know, like that's not, that's not protected.

You know, that could have been a message. I feel like it's the wild, wild West on that front. Um, so, but I'm also not a specialist in that area.

I just, I'm a user of the tools out there.

Adam Katz
I know you use everything.

Ziggy Prieto
I am, I'm experimenting.

Adam Katz
This guy has got a laundry list of recurring charges on his credit card with every single one of them. If you want to get somebody trying something first it’s Ziggy.

Ziggy Prieto
yeah, I for fun, I was talking to a colleague of mine and he said, we're talking about voiceovers, AI voiceovers. And he said, oh, you know, they sound soulless, you know? And I was like, all right, we'll see.

Um, you've done a podcast, right? To so-and-so. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

I grabbed that podcast, downloaded it, took the script, the transcript, uploaded, duplicated, cloned his voice, sent it to him. I said, does this sound soulless? It was insane.

He couldn't believe it.

Adam Katz
This guy is using AI to jab at people now. You better be careful.

I'm worried about what's next. I'm going to watch it. I'm going to watch this.

Ziggy Prieto
Can we get a transcript of this?

Adam Katz
I'm worried about this. Well, listen, this has been a lot of fun. A couple of things that I just wanted to kind of think about here at the end.

You know, it's, it's been interesting talking to you obviously about all these different clients that you work on, different things, frequency, understanding and the way you go, where do you think you'll be in a few years? What's your prediction about yourself in the industry?

Ziggy Prieto
I think, uh, probably a CEO of Sightly.

Adam Katz
Um, I can come work with your team. Any day. Mediahub has got a great team. I’m in.

Ziggy Prieto
I'm, I'm not sure what the future holds for me. Um, but I, I do think that, you know, I'm very passionate about the industry. Um, you know, you, you referenced like, what are the things that I'm looking at in the industry throughout?

I think more and more with, uh, things being fragmented, trying to find more closed loop solutions, closed loop measurement solutions, and, and activating on that intelligence is something that I'm pretty passionate about. Uh, there's a huge gap in the industry on that right now, but may not be in the next five to 10 years. Yeah.

So if anything, I would like to be at that forefront, um, in terms of trying to find out some effectiveness studies with closed loop measurement that we could then implement and specifically to the media hub clients, you know, who are our challenger brands.

Adam Katz
I'll close with this. If you had any advice to people that sell to you, what would you want them to treat you like to get, to get Ziggy to care?

Ziggy Prieto
Care about our clients, learn about our clients, ask questions.

We essentially are giving you the information that you need to sell us into something that we would buy for our clients, right? Like we are in this business for our clients. I always explain to everybody who's like, well, you know, your division or your department, what is it?

I always say we're the client before the client.

Adam Katz
You're not only the truth, but you're also protecting them and you're also trying to present to them what you believe in.

Ziggy Prieto
Exactly. So if you learn about our clients, you learn about what's important to them, their business goals, uh, and how you can activate on those business goals with your media platform or media features, capabilities, whatever. So then I think we are all ears, but if you're just coming out here and pitching out something that's, you know, just technologically savvy, uh, but doesn't really align with how we can impact our client's business goals, then I don't, you know, It's kind of a moot point, you know, it's like, great that you have that, but then how can we leverage that to impact our client's business?

Adam Katz
I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

Ziggy Prieto
This was awesome. Yeah. Thank you, buddy.

Thank you.

Adam Katz
I'll see you soon, my man.

Ziggy Prieto
Yeah.

Adam Katz
You're the best.