On Epstein and content marketing. For real.
A lot of column inches have been spent writing about the Epstein files. And as Trump works out his story, get used to it. In this moment of pause (or maybe we’re in the eye of the storm), between the House Oversight Committee’s document release and the Epstein files release, the scandal is having a surprising impact on content marketing. Granted, that’s probably not what you were thinking, but the files say so much about how news is consumed, framed and manipulated by all sides.
SEO and Epstein.
Among the 20,000 House documents, is the revelation that as early as 2010, Epstein was worried about what came up when you Googled his name. That, along with his team using SEO to try and bury, and outrank negative coverage of him. In a lovely turn of phrase, The Verge describes this as a campaign to ‘launder his digital presence’, promoting his philanthropy, ‘non-mugshot’ pictures and ‘hacking’ Wikipedia. Restaurants, publicists, governments, and brands do it, why not Epstein? This is not a then problem. Now, in the age of GEO, generative AI can amplify the authority of some publishers over others by surfacing them more in responses, and with even less transparency.
Then there’s Jmail.
How information is presented changes the impact it can have - think of campaigns like Dumb Ways to Die or The Best Place in the World to Have Herpes.
Jmail is a spoof site of all of the House documents visually presented like Epstein’s Gmail inbox. Folders for the main players like Steve Bannon and Larry Summers. Find something you like or think is relevant, make it a ‘starred’ email. The site was created by software engineer Riley Walz and Luke Igel, converting the PDFs to structured text with an LLM.
The implications are about simplicity when creating content. Remove the barriers, make it easy, make it familiar and make it relevant. Not everything always needs deep analysis. Transparency, authenticity and access can be just as important, or even more so, when the Epstein documents themselves have become a political plaything.
