In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Justin Oberman — fourth-generation salesman, former big-agency copywriter, COVID layoff survivor who built a 7-figure agency entirely through LinkedIn posting, burned out, and came out the other side describing himself not as a marketer but as a publicist. The conversation is a collision of advertising history and modern digital strategy, from carnival publicist Harry Reichenbach’s penny trick in 1910s New York to why Justin targets journalists at Adweek rather than buyers when running LinkedIn ads.
Core thesis: all advertising, marketing, PR, and branding is showmanship. The person who puts on the best show wins. In the AI era, the best SEO strategy is the same as the best publicity strategy — do things that get talked about.
Harry Reichenbach and the Penny Trick
Justin’s foundational story: Harry Reichenbach was the real inventor of Hollywood — a former carnival barker turned press agent who made Valentino, Tarzan, and a dozen other stars famous through manufactured spectacle. His most illustrative move: he walked a no-name actor through the New York studio district while slowly dropping pennies out of his back pocket. By the time he arrived at the studio, a crowd was following them. He introduced the actor as if they were already famous, and the studio believed it because of the crowd.
This is what Justin does on LinkedIn and for his clients: manufacture the perception of fame, and the actual fame follows. Attention is engineered, not discovered.
Showmanship Is the Foundation
Justin’s reframe: marketing isn’t about persuasion. It isn’t about selling. It isn’t even about storytelling. Those are techniques for the main thing, which is showmanship. The person who puts on the best show wins — in every era, across every channel. Storytelling, direct response, PR, and advertising are all tools in service of that. The mistake is treating the tools as the goal.
AI Search as a Consensus Engine
Jeremy’s framing, which Justin immediately extended: traditional SEO was engineered findability — keywords, structure, technical compliance. AI search is different. LLMs are contextual systems trained on what people talk about. They surface consensus. You can’t keyword-stuff your way into an AI recommendation. The implication for strategy: the best way to show up in AI results is to do things that get you into conversations — media coverage, mentions, being the person journalists quote and the person your industry references. SEO and PR are converging on the same outcome.
The Press-Targeting Ad Strategy
One of the most specific tactics in the conversation: Justin takes client LinkedIn posts that already perform well organically and boosts them as paid thought leadership ads — not targeting the client’s buyer audience, but targeting the editorial staff at Adweek, AdAge, the New York Times, and relevant trade publications. The spend isn’t about clicks or conversions. It’s about repetitive exposure: every time a journalist at one of those publications opens LinkedIn, they see the client’s face and their post. After enough exposures, they become “that person” — the one journalists call when they need a quote or a story angle. LinkedIn activity turns into press coverage through manufactured familiarity.
Fame as a Business Multiplier
Justin draws on Bob Hoffman’s take: all advertising is guesswork, but the one thing that reliably works is fame. Tums and Alka-Seltzer haven’t run major ad campaigns in years — they remain default choices because decades of television presence bought fame that compounds. Geico commercials don’t directly sell insurance; they ensure Geico is the name you check when comparison shopping. Fame is the rising tide: direct response performs better, SEO performs better, the team works harder. Everything improves when the brand is famous.
Hate Is Better Than Indifference
Justin’s clearest statement on attention dynamics: it’s easier to go from hate to love than from indifference to love. The worst position for any brand is to be nothing and not thought about at all. Controversy generates attention that can be redirected. Indifference generates nothing. This isn’t an argument for being deliberately offensive — it’s an argument for having a point of view strong enough that some people will disagree with it. That’s the precondition for being known.
When Attention Doesn’t Lead to Sales
Justin’s limit statement on his own work: if you’re getting attention but not making sales, the problem is not the attention. The attention is working. The problem is somewhere in the middle — messaging, product-market fit, pricing, a friction-heavy sales process. His answer: change the business. Don’t pull back on attention because the conversion isn’t following. Diagnose the gap between awareness and purchase, and fix what’s actually broken.
Personal Branding Is the Wrong Frame
Justin’s challenge to the term: brands spend billions trying to seem human. Why would a human want to become a brand? The original Tom Peters framing of personal branding was about applying branding techniques to how you present yourself professionally — not actually becoming a brand. The current version of the concept flips that, asking people to reduce themselves to logos and taglines. Justin’s alternative: give yourself permission to have a public self and put it on display. Brands are discovered by doing things, not by writing brand strategy documents.
Key Quotes
“I don’t think advertising or marketing is about persuasion. I don’t think it’s about selling. I don’t think it’s even about storytelling. I think those are techniques for the main thing, which is showmanship. The person who puts on the best show wins.”
— Justin Oberman
“It’s easier to go from hate to love than it is to go from indifference to love. The worst thing to be is nothing and not thought about at all.”
— Justin Oberman
“If you’re getting attention but it’s not leading to sales — you need to change your business. Because attention, when it works, is working. The problem is somewhere in the middle.”
— Justin Oberman
About Justin Oberman
Justin Oberman is a fourth-generation salesman and self-described publicist who builds visibility and authority for B2B brands through LinkedIn content, press strategy, and paid thought leadership. He built a 7-figure agency through daily LinkedIn posting before pivoting to ghostwriting and publicist work. He operates at the intersection of advertising history, attention economics, and modern digital strategy.
