Pivot - Media consolidations, Snapchat's TikTok competitor, and Joanna Coles on retail during the pandemic

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about BuzzFeed acquiring the Huffington Post and other media consolidations as the industry shifts. They also discuss Snapchat's new feature "Spotlight" that will function like TikTok and pay top creators. In Friend of Pivot, we hear from Joanna Coles about what and how people are shopping during the pandemic holiday season. For Kara and Scott, the Biden cabinet picks are the win of the week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi,

hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm, welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond and see for yourself how traveling for business can always be a pleasure. Hi, everyone. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. house for Thanksgiving. So I sent him right to testing, right to testing. But he drove with a bunch of other kids. It feels very COVID-y to me. So he drove with a bunch of kids in an enclosed car with the windows up, singing to their favorite Cheap Trick album. One never knows what happened along that road trip. Let me just tell you that I immediately sent him and he's down in the basement. I throw food down there. He's staying down there until we get the results. And then I may keep him there for a few more days. That's what we're doing. And what kind of do you, what infrastructure,

I mean, by the way, testing, I mean, there's so many second order effects here, but I'm curious how you got them tested, because supposedly testing has advanced or escalated the adoption, and I've always been a big fan of this channel of urgent care. Well, yeah, I didn't do the fast one. I didn't do the immediate one. I did one that takes 24 hours. You have to pay for it. It's a really interesting little company called Same Day Testing. It's not really the same day. And your insurance will pay for it if it takes 72 hours and then 24 hours if you pay $195. See, that fucking makes no sense. Okay, so insurance, again, trading off short-term costs for long-term costs.

Right. Because the only way you prevent the spread of this thing and massive healthcare costs. Anyway, I'm sorry. Anyway, you have to pay more to get this. How is the young man? He's fine. He's down in the basement. I saw him from a distance.

I make him where he's not allowed upstairs. He's like, I have this basement that has a door and it has a back door, and so he can go in and out. And I literally stayed up all last night. I didn't know he was coming so quickly because he decided to do a night drive kind of thing. And so I put new rugs down. I left him all the towels. I stocked his refrigerator.

So I was up until like three in the morning fixing for my COVID-carrying son. He doesn't have COVID. But still, it's like we have to figure anything out. My mom's coming. It's really quite... I was just thinking the amount of time I'm spending making sure people are tested and then into cars. Oh, gosh.

It's crazy. It really is. Figuring out a bubble, figuring out when people get tested, if they should get tested again. Yeah. And then Amanda went away to see her family. She did all the testing and everything else. And then when she's coming back, she's going to have to quarantine. She's going to have to stay one place and I'm going to stay another.

But it's really quite, it's just a lot of time. Let me just tell you, it's a lot of time. It's a lot. It's a lot of time. It's almost as if we're in a pandemic. I know. It's really amazing. And how hard it is to navigate.

I finally found this place that you can pay for. And then it's, you know, just the lines around the block here in D.C. It's just, and I'm smart. And it's like, oh, my God, for people who are, this could be a disaster this Thanksgiving for a lot of people. Anyway, in any case, COVID's son is staying in the basement until further notice. Well, the good news is that one of the things that COVID has done in terms of it being an accelerant is there was a trend, and it's an unfortunate trend, largely driven by the fact that for the first time in our nation's history, kids at the age of 30 are not doing as well as their parents were at the age of 30. Think about that. That is really kind of ground zero of this dissatisfaction, I think, with our society.

When you look up and you think, I'm not doing as well as my mom or dad, it's incredibly upsetting. And then it's equally upsetting for the parents to look down because they feel as if they have not checked that box instinctually. True, though his parents were very, he was, my one son, my younger son was like, my parents are too productive. Like, we're too, like, he doesn't want to keep up. I wasn't talking, in this instance, I wasn't talking specifically about the Swisher family of overachievers. I feel my kids are too productive. What I was talking about, one of the trends, back to me. Yes.

Thank you. And the insight that everyone comes here for. Go ahead. Okay, so a big trend in our society was that more and more kids, especially young men,

were moving back home after college or before college. Do you realize now, now, there are more people between the age of 18 and 30 living with their parents

than living on their own? Yeah. I mean, that's really, I think that's really upsetting. Yeah. Well, back to me, he's going to stay here until January 21st. He's not coming. He's not going back for the two weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Oh, yeah.

That makes no sense. Yeah. And by the way, the schools are expecting that. We know that's happening. Yeah. So anyway, so he's going to be with me for a while. That's why we're doing all this basement testing thing. Anyway, speaking of which, you have a book coming out.

We're going to devote the entire Thanksgiving show to that. Oh, that. Well, thank you. No, let's talk more about one of your kids maybe having COVID. By the way, everyone's kid maybe has COVID right now. You literally started last week's show talking about your penis excessively. Big Ed and the Twins. First two purchasers of the book. Signed copy for

Big Ed and the Twins. Okay, listen. Post-corona crisis to opportunity. So that's kind of positivity. That's right. It's coming out this week. Everybody buy it. We're going to talk about it full show on Thursday. You're going to go through it.

Just by the way, by the way, it's dropping tomorrow. And this is very exciting. I'm number two in hot new releases in economics. But you know who's number one? Who? Well, who would be the worst person to go up against on Amazon in a book release? I don't remember. Jeff fucking Bezos is number one.

He has a book coming out the same day as me. Thanks, Jeff. But it's totally unfair. It's coming out in economics where my book is coming out. Shouldn't it come out in amateur photography, Kara? Shouldn't it come out in amateur photography? Seriously, that's what I have to deal with the day my book comes out. He's going to keep topping you.

It's called laundering and investing or whatever. It should so be called Feel My Midlife Crisis. That's what that book should be called. Last time I wrote a book, I was on Amazon. I was number two on the whole thing because it was so small. The thing was so small, but you know what was ahead of me? What's that? Sugar Busters.

What's that? I don't know. It was a book called Sugar Busters. I could never top Sugar Busters. You're going to have to live with this. Jeff Bezos will top you. It's a better person to be topped than by Sugar Busters. What's that? I don't know. It was a book called Sugarbusters, and I could never top Sugarbusters. You're going to have to live with this. Jeff Bezos will top you. It's a better person to be topped than by Sugarbusters. God, fucking Bezos.

Seriously. That's what I get. Speaking of topping people, the new Wonder Woman movie will release both in theaters on Christmas Day and available on stream on HBO Max. I'm very excited. I have HBO Max. What does this say about Hollywood releases? They had to.

It was just sitting there. This is a big deal. Yeah. This is a big deal. Explain the big deal-ness of it. Well, if you think about it, theaters had an incredibly important role. They were the sugar high right out of the gate.

So you could get, and it's kind of ruined everything because everything's about guys in tights running around. But, and I think that's created a huge opening for streaming video, but effectively they had a stranglehold for the first eight weeks. They had a mandatory window where you couldn't be in home. Yeah.

And the pandemic is not only, not only are they closed, but there's some question about people are ever returning. And AT&T, Warner has decided they're taking a film that the sequel. Was a big movie theater movie. 700 million. This one could do a billion and they've said it all right. And there's a lot of lessons in here. Not only the transformation, the first order effect is obviously movie theaters.

I don't know, what's the term? Fucked. We know that, right? We know that. Some of the second order effects that we're not focusing on are from a societal standpoint, all the places where we used to run into people

who maybe didn't look, smell, or feel like us, different economic class, which is really important for America, malls, theaters, are going away. We're becoming more and more segregated. And that's a really terrible thing. That's a trend. I haven't been in a mall in forever. But in addition, I think CEOs are getting the memo, and that is revenues are not created equally. the memo, and that is revenues are not created equally. If you think about all the money and all the shareholder value that's being driven by streaming video platforms, whether it's Amazon,

Prime, Apple, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Netflix, the revenues they're fighting over is actually about a third of the revenues of the EBITDA anyways that the cable bundle produces. But the marketplace says not all revenues are created equally. And one of the things I do when I'm talking to the CEO is I say, okay, keep in mind, you have so much pressure on you to deliver a certain expectation around EBITDA. And that's what they're totally focused on. But are you studying to the wrong test? Because what AT&T and Warner have deftly decided is that if they can drive another one or two million signups for HBO Max at $15 a month, $180, $180 million in recurring revenue, that's worth a billion to $2 billion in shareholder value. Even if they lose $500 million of that billion they would get by keeping it exclusive in theaters.

And they couldn't wait, right? Like, they couldn't wait this thing until next summer. Well, somehow, Black Widow's been delayed. I know. I would like to see it. This one I was really excited to see. And the Top Gun one, there's the James be delayed. I know. I would like to see that. This one I was really excited to see. And the Top Gun one, there's the James Bond movie. I think that's still undetermined.

But you know why this has happened? What? Because Tenet, they decided to go into theaters with Tenet, and it didn't work. Didn't work, yeah. Didn't work. This is, and Pixar is taking a lead here, and it's releasing their latest on Christmas Day. I'm totally watching Wonder Woman. That's what I'm doing, Christmas Day, watching Wonder Woman.

Yeah, and it could drive. I bought Mulan. Didn't love Mulan. Oh, you did. There's so many models here. There's a hybrid concurrent release, which AT&T is doing. There's exclusive to the release. And think about this. Think about what an advantage. I mean, it's just so shocking. AT&T had so many advantages. One, they came into

streaming video about the time broadband was really escalating because nobody thought you could even stream a movie at home for a large population. In addition, none of their competitors were offering that quality of movies in home because they were all focused on running it through the sugar hive of theaters first. I mean, this is actually a really big deal. It is. And then what do you do with all these, what do you do with all this real estate?

Do you basically movie theaters? Not just movie theaters. So many things. So many offices. I mean, go down to any downtown. Like downtown, there's, New York is sort of downtown everywhere. There's like, people live everywhere. But in the heart of downtowns like Washington, just nobody.

Like when you go down there, nobody. And you wonder like what they're going to do with all the real estate, what commercial estate is going to do, what malls have already been on the dying end. There's been a million stories about the end of malls and everything, but it's really quite, it's a whole reset. And I'm, you know, I thought about buying, like the home stuff, I thought about buying a better television this week, like a really good one, a big one. And so just to just give it in. There are so many changes economically

and societally about what happens to a new world post-corona. Someone should write a book about this. Yes, someone should. We'll talk about it next week. Listen, we're talking about it Thursday. There are Thanksgiving togetherness. We're not leaving each other

even on Thanksgiving because we love you. Well, I like to think we're spending it with our family, Cara. I just threw up in my mouth. We will talk about Joe Biden a little bit next week, about who he's picking. He's picking Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State. Gangster move.

All these people that look very different from each other. It wasn't like a series. He happens to be a white guy, but this cabinet so far looks pretty diverse and interesting. Now, he has to pick his Treasury Secretary, which is going to come up, and apparently it's going to be accepted by all elements of the Democrat. Who? I'll give you some hints. Janet Yellen, I heard. Oh, 100%.

Oh, you stole my thunder. Sorry. Won best instructor twice at the Hospital of Business. Right. Won his one best instructor. I interviewed her. You don't realize how hard that—I realize it. You know how many times I've won best instructor?

Yeah. How many? One, two, three, none. I've never won it, Kara. Right. Can I just say, having interviewed her, she does not take, she is one tough cookie. She is lock on. Lock on.

I felt so stupid when I was interviewing her. She is going to be, she is going to be a treasury secretary, Professor Janet Yellen. This woman is incredible, thoughtful, reasonable, has respect from both sides of the aisle. She is going to be Treasury Secretary Professor Janet Yellen. This woman is incredible, thoughtful, reasonable, has respect from both sides of the aisle. Yeah. Does not take outside pressure. Just looks at the data. She really does. She would be a fantastic pick.

I'm really excited about that. I really enjoyed it, but I felt really stupid. But speaking of really, really stupid, let's talk some moves in media. Let's get on to big stories. BuzzFeed announced they bought the Huffington Post last week. As you know, BuzzFeed is expected to break even this year after cutting costs by $30 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. BuzzFeed picked up the company from Verizon. Another one of those deals, like we talked about last week, AT&T shedding itself of the deals they made.

This was under Tim Armstrong, if you recall. Both BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post are unionized. Meanwhile, Vox's founder and editor-in-chief, Ezra Klein, is the latest of the blog founders to announce he's headed to the New York Times as a columnist. He's also going to do a podcast. Sounds like someone we know. The New York Times now employs the former editors-in-chiefs of Vox, BuzzFeed News, Gizmodo, Fusion, The All, and Gawker. So, Scott, what is happening here? This is also a big deal because the market over time responds to, we're a capitalist society. Everyone wants a broader set of selection mates.

They want their kids to have more opportunity. They want to party in St. Bart's. So, compensation drives all behavior in corporate America. Compensation is largely driven by the equity value of the company. So basically strategies are largely cats chasing this red dot of where they think they can get the highest multiple on their revenues. And an example of this is everybody putting dot com at the end of their company and figuring out that $1 of e-commerce revenue was equal, at least for a while, to $10 of terrestrial revenue. And everybody made the spin, not everybody. A lot of people made the mistake of thinking that

the media companies that were the new guys, right, the HuffPost, the BuzzFeeds, were worth a lot more. A lot of investment capital has just been evaporated there. What they failed to realize is that the arbitrage and the disparity between low multiples and high multiples isn't on the medium any longer. It's on the business model specifically. And this is a proxy, a forward-looking indicator of who survives and who doesn't in media. It's not old versus new. It's one thing. It's the percentage of revenue you are getting from subscription. Yep, like the times. You know who's one of the most bulletproof,

and this is the segue into this next story, you know who is the most bulletproof media company in the world right now other than Netflix, which gets 100% of the revenue from subscription? New York Times. Gangster. Exactly right, Kara. 68% of the revenue from subscription. Why do you think I went over there?

And by the way, what are they doing with all that cheap capital? They're coming in and they're buying the editor-in-chief of all those, quote, new, shiny, sexy digital companies who, by the way, have shitty business models because they're ad-based. They're ad-based. It's not old versus new. It's whether you're advertising-based or you're subscription-based, full stop. Well, there you go.

What do you think about Verizon, which has deep pockets, getting rid of Huffington Post? That was a big deal. Remember, Yahoo was involved. I wrote about it. I spent so many hours of my life wasted, obviously, at this point, writing about all these different consolidations among these telcos. Not just Verizon, but Verizon bought Yahoo. AOL, yeah. AOL.

Yeah, but there's a big difference. Okay, so Verizon— And then they bought Huffington Post as part of that. I broke that story, actually. But Verizon, their adventures in media and failed attempts to differentiate is a $5 billion mistake. I think they bought Yahoo! for around $5 billion. AT&T's adventures in media was a $110 billion mistake. Yeah.

So, quite frankly, they said Yahoo! Coming like Verizon, that's like three weeks of you, but it doesn't matter. They look at it and say, okay, sell it. Who cares? It's a distraction. When AT&T has to sell or spin or do something funky with everything

from Turner to TBS to HBO to CNN, they're going to have to be very elegant about how they communicate that and be very thoughtful around it. The decision to sell HuffPo was literally on, I don't know, I forget who the CEO of Verizon, on his way home from the Hamptons. He's like, no, fuck it.

I'm sick of this shit. Just sell it. That's about how long that took. Yeah, the revenue apparently dropped off. It wasn't doing badly, actually, given how big it is and how many. It wasn't doing badly, but I think the revenue dropped I keep talking about the Yellow Pages business, but if companies are valued at two to three times EBITDA, you can go in and you can cut costs faster than declining revenues.

And that's what's happening here. That asset class is now officially a distressed asset class. It's going to be about, they took HuffPo and they took BuzzFeed and they said, okay, the two CFOs, one of you gets voted off the island. They're going to cut costs, consolidate. You're no longer running sports. The editor there, you're running sports and lifestyles or whatever. And they'll start acquiring other little guys that don't have a chance in hell.

But that class now, non- or ad-supported digital media is now distressed. First of all, what do you do then if you are an ad-supported? They just don't exist? Because look how many people they've thrown off, the really good people, including myself. I'm not here with a message of hope. I think it's an infinitely American thing that whenever these boards or companies invite me in to talk to them, they think for sure I'm going to come with ideas and answers about a great future. And the reality is something like BuzzFeed or HuffPo or Refinery29, they don't have, they're like single title publishing in the magazine business.

That is being a pilot on Spirit Airways. Your days are, not even Spirit Airways, TWA. It may have been great for a while, your days are numbered. And those companies really only have one choice, and that is, they probably don't have the capital. I mean, my initial go-to is go to a Rundle subscription. They don't have the capital to offer anything that compelling. So what they have to do is get a private equity-backed sponsor and consolidate and bulk up and cut costs. And then what do you do when you bulk up? Well, you have, you basically have one sales team selling more. Because they've tried that. Remember Fusion? That whole, there was a whole bunch of those going on.

But I'll give you an example. Our company, Vox, when they bulk up with New York Magazine, they've got a much bigger inventory to sell. They've got more revenues to spread across the fixed cost base. You know, that's the right strategy. So what's next? What is the next one among these companies? I don't know. That's a good question. I think the next story, and I realize it's sensitive for you.

So you're Jonah Peretti. What do you do next? And you're Jim Bankoff. What do you do next? Let's give him free advice, our owner, Pivot. Well, realistically, if you're just totally selfish, you find one of these SPACs that is cheap. I don't want to call it stupid money, but there are so many SPACs right there. You sell those SPACs. Yeah. Because the market is so horny. It's the feces move. Like, throw feces

at tourists at the Unicorn Zoo, specifically, you know, which is kind of the ultimate core confidence of every VC. I'm texting Bank up, throw species. Let's create momentum. Let's get a higher valuation. Let's get into the public markets, sell, sell, sell, and let the public markets figure out if this shit works. And some CEO's got to work 110 hours a week, unless, of course, you have a beard and a nose ring, and then you work 20 hours a week.

But another story. So they have to bulk up. 100% they have to bulk up. They have to either occupy niches and get a higher CPM. I mean, we're very good at turning everything back to us. We get fantastic revenues on Pivot because we appeal to basically white tech guys. And advertisers love that. They love because they generally influence a lot of budget.

But yeah, they either have to go, the specific crowds out the general, they have to go very niche or they have to bulk up. But in the short term, that's a business strategy. A financial strategy, quite frankly, is to return the calls of all these SPACs that are floating around trying to find a company. Bank off SPAC. I know some SPAC people. We know a thing or two about SPACs. SPAC it up. Bank SPAC.

Bank SPAC. Bank SPAC. Bank SPAC. Wait. Off. Bank off SPAC. SPAC off bank. Oh, that sounds dirty at Bank spec. Bank back. Wait. Off. Bank off spec. Spec off bank. Oh, that sounds dirty at this point.

Yeah, there's a website. Spank bank. Though you never ask me questions, I will ask myself a question because it's written here by me. I'm sorry. That was rude of me as usual. So you are ground zero for this. And I was literally avoiding it because I didn't want to put you in a coverable spot. Early.

I was early as usual. I'm always early. But everybody's following you. But this goes back to the initial notion. I also sold early because I sold. You usual. I'm always early. But everybody's following you. And, and, but this goes back to the initial notion. I also sold early because I sold, sold, you know what I mean? But the New York Times, everyone says what's happening here. You know what's happening here. The New York Times is finally paying up.

Yep. New York Times is clearly saying, hey, Ezra, hey, Kara, here's some real cabbage and real opportunity and scale and reach and infrastructure. And they have to, by the way. It's theirs to lose in the, in the podcast space. I, that's what I told them. I'm like, either let Spotify do it or you can own it. Like, don't let another pitch go by.

This is the one you can win in. This is one you can really win in and own in a really significant way. So that was my. Well, I mean, okay. So just Adventures in the New York Times in 2002. And I know this painfully. New York Times stock was at 55. It was. An activist came in and put a crazy professor on the board in 2008. We bought stock at 18, and within 13 months,

the stock was at three and a half, $3.50. Great recession had something to do with that. And now it's at, and it's 40s again. Yeah. So they now have the capital. They're off their heels, onto their toes. It's interesting that they're going after clearly. The other learning here, and I'm sorry, I totally interrupted you. But one of the first observations I made as a young- Because I'm like right in the middle, but why ask me? But go ahead. And I actually did it two years ago, but okay, go ahead. I'm in the basement. Anyways, one of the things we'll do- I'm putting you in the basement. We'll come back. I promise we'll come back Anyways, one of the things we'll do. I'm putting you in the basement. We'll come back.

I promise we'll come back to Adventures in Kara Swisher's career. I'm just telling you, I was there. I'm in the middle of this. I did all these things. But go ahead. You tell me. Okay. So one of the first observations I made as a business person was I was hired to build

and do the strategy for Williams-Sonoma's internet. Built their first website. Pat Connolly, totally visionary CMO, got into the internet before any specialty retailer. Now more than 50% of William Sonoma's revenue is done through e-commerce. Arguably, it's one of the highest margin e-commerce companies in the world. Anyway, one of the things that Howard Lester told me, the CEO, and Pat, is that the moment we can get someone to purchase items from Williams-Sonoma through more than one channel, that person becomes, the retention is greater, the lifetime value skyrockets. The moment we can get someone to buy in the catalog and in the store or in the store

and on the website, a multi-channel buyer. And here's the thing, here's the thing. You're going to get to your point. You're going to land this media airplane soon. Go ahead. Here's the point. The New York Times get to your point. You're going to land this media airplane soon. Go ahead. Here's the point. The New York Times and Spotify and everybody else is going to realize that people, IP creators, that in the result of their IP creates revenue is worth X. But IP creators such as Kara Swisher that write and do podcasts are multi-channel media properties are worth substantially more. And so if you notice all the big money,

all the recruiting of individuals, who's it going to? It's going after people who are multi-channel, who understand how to communicate their IP and their ideas through multiple channels. Yes, indeed. I did see this early. But I'm not an employee of the New York Times, interestingly.

People think I am, but they hired Ezra, they hired Ben Smith and all the others. I am not an... Don Ben Smith and all the others. I am not an, I just declined. Don't try and tame the cat. I declined to. I have a, I have a strategery around it. The cat will not be caged. I don't want to be caged.

I got other things. She needs to run. Don't stand too close to your flame. You'll get burned. Let me just say they were totally, initially they were reticent and cause they want to like sort of have you as an employee, but then they were very, uh, I explained my, my piece to them and they liked it and we're making great content now. So you can do this a lot of different ways, people in media.

That's all I have to say. You can do it in different ways. You can be a little more safety by being an employee, but you also can be, a lot of these companies are now very open to doing things in fresh new ways, which I really appreciate. And they really are, I have to say. Yeah, when you have huge leverage like YouTube. They're incredibly open to people. Well, what do you want?

They're more common. Have you noticed how nice they are lately to us at Vox? We're making a shit ton of money. I don't see my turkey. You're so interesting. Let's grab drinks. Where's my pies? Yeah, they do that with you.

They never call me. In any case, we are the catbird seat. We are the catbird seat, you and me. And unfortunately, it's with you, but here we are. Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We get back, speaking of people that are interesting to talk to and have a lot of different ways to sing, dance, and act at the same time. We'll be back to talk with our friend of Pivot, Joanna Cole. Talk about shopping.

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Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Scott, we're back. We have to do this very quickly because Joanne's coming very soon. Snapchat is launching a TikTok competitor called Spotlight. Snapchat says it'll divvy up a million dollars between the most popular creators on the app per day through the end of 2020, kind of interesting way. The app is launching in 11 countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia. Unlike TikTok, though there'll be no public comment section and profiles will be private by default. That is, that TikTok does have comments, although nobody really uses those as much. So what do you think? What do you think about this? Snapchat's actually copying something for the first time. It usually gets

copied from by Facebook. So what do you think about this? I'm excited, but I think it's not about it. I think the secret sauce here is the algorithm. So I'm obsessed with TikTok. I just can't get over it. Yeah, I know you are. Well, I just think it's so... A, I like the videos, and then I figure out, oh my God, I'm interested in this. I'm like, I am interested in this. How did they know that before I did? In my view, Snapchat... I'm sorry, TikTok is really the first example, other than when I get to episode four of The Queen's Gambit and Netflix figures out that I should start watching episode five and three, two, one. The best, the most obvious means of AI changing my life, quite frankly, is TikTok.

I just think it's incredible, given the volume of stuff that they've managed to zero in on this. I enjoy watching chiropractors adjust people's necks. Who would have known that? That's interesting. Who would have known that? But TikTok knows it. That's interesting. TikTok knows it. Why don't I get those? That's interesting. Who would have known that? But TikTok knows it. That's interesting. TikTok knows it.

Why don't I get those? That's interesting. And here's what, you know what Reels does? Reels just goes, my sense of Facebook is it just goes more extreme. Like I watch,

I like watching people talk about Black Lives Matter that are almost naked, like really hot men and women who are almost naked talking about social issues. Wait a second, you do that on Facebook?

No, I do it on, I do it, I guess, well, it's not, I don't do it, I guess, well, it's not, I don't do it. It's done to me. They decide I'm interested in watching this hot guy

without a shirt talk about Black Lives Matter. This is on Facebook. But anyways, Reels or Facebook, the algorithm is good. It just goes dirtier or it goes more extreme.

I mean, that's what they do, right? They're like, oh, you like politics. Anyway, I don't find Instagram delightful anymore. I don't. I don't like. That's interesting. I will watch TikTok for hours and i will not watch instagram yes oh my gosh you don't

read you do not read my work in the new york times months months and months and months you do not read my work i talked about the delightful element the entertainment the emphasis of media on social media the algorithm and then i said i use a burner phone because I'm Chinese. That's incredible. I have to tell you, I love it. I sit there and just, I get tie-dye, but you get like chiropractor. Oh, I would like that. Why don't I get that?

And I get snakes eating small animals. Oh, I don't get that. Yeah, you get weird shit. I get tie-dye and bake and cooking. Oh, see, yeah, we get much different things. I would like to get chiropractor. how do I get a chiropractor? Send me a link and then I'll start watching chiropractor ones and I'll get more.

I would like that. Yeah, I don't think you need to see what I'm saying. I doubt it. I'm sure. Yeah, no. No, you know, it doesn't go that dirty ever for me. That's another thing that I like. It doesn't go extreme.

It doesn't go dirty. It goes like very PG-13. Like, let's pretend you're interested in this issue, but the person talking about it forgot to put on her bra. Okay, okay. It's very good that way. Let's talk about Snapchat. What is their unique contribution to this? Well, they're fantastic in terms of product.

They're fantastic in terms of design. They've basically been Facebook's product development department for the last 10 years. It's a good opportunity now that TikTok's on its heels. And again, it might be that it's like, you know, the functional families are the ones you don't know. Yeah. I find that AI, I assume AI takes deep, scary, intense research, algorithms, investment. I mean, I don't understand how they do it.

And I assume that that is a real barrier of entry. And I wonder if Snap has the technical chops, the resources, the capital to come up. Because if Facebook can't figure out an algorithm, I've been on Reels, it keeps me engaged for like 30 seconds, I'm done. I gotta tell you, Facebook is the least entertaining group of people ever. Let us just say. They are the least. Say more. Say more. They're just like, they couldn't create anything creative if their life

depended on it i'm sorry they just can't they can make nice lists and create you know dumb groups where people talk about antifa coming to their town but nothing interesting i always find things interesting on snapchat even you know i'm on it right now i have to look at it to see how it's going there but i think the interesting paying these people is smart people did that youtube did that other people have tried to do that, to pull people off of YouTube. I think, you know, getting some of these popular creators to come over there and try it, why not? Why not? Why not?

You know, it's a good idea. I think we'll see how it goes. I think they have a group of people that are huge fans. Like, my kids use them almost exclusively. They're way off of Instagram now, and they used to be much more so. But I think Instagram is popular with teenagers for sure. But I think they've stuck with Snapchat, and the more you can offer them, the better it is. And I think they will watch these things, especially my younger son, who's 15. But the lesson to any consumer company,

any individual who's in the business of IP, any professor, I've been talking to my colleagues about this, you are not going to be able to create the level of awareness for five, 10 times the amount of investment you need right now on TikTok that it'll take in two or three years. This is Instagram in the early days. You're going to look back, you know, when we first launched Red Envelope, you could buy Mother's Day gifts, a keyword on Google for 10 cents. Within three years, it was like a buck 80. Yeah. This will be, you will look back and think, why weren't we doing everything we could?

Well, now they did have some trouble with some other stuff, as you recall. They've tried a whole bunch of this. Remember, they had the whole creator area and it didn't work. And so I do think they do have issues that they don't always get everything right, for sure. They don't. Well, yeah, who does? I know, but they've tried a bunch of this media stuff and moved it around.

I think a lot of it was where it was placed, where it was put on the thing. The things my kids complained about when they were in, I think it was Discover, I guess. I can't remember what everything was called. But when they did that, my kids were more annoyed of where they put it rather than the thing.

Like, they messed up this, and why do you have to go over here, here? It was all about logistics because they were used to using it as a utility for communications, and it got in their way. And so that was interesting. And then they just were... The issue is for Snapchat, I think, and I'm going to be talking to Evan

Spiegel soon about it, is people, even if they do it well, and I thought a lot of their Discover stuff, I think it's called Discover, was well done. I think people come there to communicate. I don't think they come there to be entertained.

And so that's really how I wonder how well it's going to do. You like Evan. I do, I do. You know, he and I, the first several years, we had a very testy relationship. And one time he had a lunch where he just yelled at me in Los Angeles. The food was delicious, but he just yelled at me.

But he has evolved. That's what I would say. That's an image. Yeah, I know. He was just yelling at me over this beautiful, it was down in, not Santa Monica, the next, Venice Beach. It was so. Yeah, that's where their headquarters are. Whatever.

On Abbott Kinney. And it was a delightfully delicious lunch, but he yelled at me. It was like a, uh, uh, an Abbott Kinney. And it was, uh, it was a delightfully delicious lunch, but he yelled at me. It was like a teenager yelling at me. I was like, I don't really feel like listening to you, Evan. Um, but he has evolved and I like that about him. He's an evolved, he's evolved. He's added a lot more women to the thing. They definitely had some cultural problems there. You so have a type. You like young, dark and lovely guys. Dark and lovely. He's blonde. He looks like a California surfer. What are you talking about?

He's not even dark. I'm a little bit country. You're a little bit hetero. You love those young dudes with the dark hair. I do not. I do not. Oh, my God. You so love those guys.

I so don't. You're so hot for daddy as long as daddy is young with dark hair. He doesn't have dark hair. He has blonde hair. You're completely wrong. But he has hair unlike you, which is a very different style. He looks like he should be in a boy band. He does not have his light hair.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. On a visual media platform. Who's he kidding? He's married to a supermodel. His name is Bradley, and he's the sullen lead of a boy band. He is not. He's married to a supermodel.

Stop pretending to be Kevin Spiegel. In any case, I never count him out in terms of creativity, and that's what I like about him because he's creative. I was a very early and loud critic of Snap. I thought they were going to get absolutely run over by Facebook, and I was wrong. Yeah, they're doing really well. I like when you say you're wrong. I think that's nice. Well, speaking of which, someone who's on the board of Snapchat

and a friend of ours is going to be coming on. So let's bring on friend of Pivot, Joanna Coles is a tech and media entrepreneur and former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine. But here on Pivot, she is lovingly known as the Queen Bee. Joanna. Joanna, welcome to Pivot.

We were just talking about Snapchat, upon which you are on the board. They're talking about their new spotlight. Do you care to comment? Oh, yeah. Well, I'm very, very pleased with the impact it's had on the stock price. We're very excited about it. It's such an innovative company. I've been on the board now for five years. And it's just one thing after another.

And if there's any fault, I would say with Snap, it's not that, well, it's that we haven't always been brilliant at telling people about all our innovations. And now we're getting much better at it. So Spotlight is exciting. So what is it different? How do you conceive it? Because Snapchat usually gets copied from, this is a TikTok thing. Ripoff. Snapchat usually gets copied from, this is a TikTok thing. A TikTok ripoff. Ripoff is what Scott just said. I mean, you know, Snap was actually doing this a long time ago. The whole sort of notion of it. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Joanna. We're friends. We're friends. Come on. Oh, yes. Just so you know, Kara, I have guest speakers come to my class, 280 kids on Tuesday night. And you know who Joanna was good enough to come on and be a guest speaker? And you know who was the most popular speaker of the entire semester? Joanna. Andrew Yang. But

number two was Joanna. The students absolutely love. Anyways, back to the pivot. Okay. So. Do you know, Scott, I will just say I was walking down Mercer Street the other day and someone shouted at me and it was from, it was one of your students who said how much she loved your class and i was like are you sure and she was emphatic she was emphatic that she enjoyed your class i've been i've been voted most i've been voted most innovative anyways uh ask a question okay okay so 10 years not even five years ago if not 10 years ago or 10 years ago if not five years ago joanna Coles was at the epicenter of printed magazines and fashion. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say those were not great, great, you know, carts to attach your horse to. I mean, great horses to attach your cart to.

Do you mean wagons to hitch my ride to? There you go. Whatever. The wrong rocket fuel, the wrong horse to ride, whatever it is. And now you're kind of a ground zero of not only media, Snap, but you're also on the board of a hardware company, Sonos, which is one of my favorite brands in the world. You have, I don't want to say reinvented yourself because you've brought the same skills, but you clearly have an ability to see around the corner and see what's next and how to position yourself what do you see what do you see as kind of the next the next thing or things in media or shopping too what in fashion or wherever yeah well i will say i mean magazines were in decline i got the

last great years of them obviously it was managing an industry in decline. And at the end, I was the chief content officer for her. So overseeing 300 magazines globally. And as fast as you could pull them into the digital era, it was very hard, obviously, to keep up with the scale of something like Facebook or Google, which, as we know, has sucked all the advertising out of these businesses. But enormous fun to work there. And, you know, you really came across very creative people and fashion is such an interesting thing to be involved in. You know, and I spend a

lot of my time now thinking about the future of fashion online, the future of retail online. Clearly, COVID has given us a glimpse into the future. I think it's sped up or it's accelerated, as everybody's saying at the moment, shopping trends probably by 10 years. And that's what the head of Shopify was saying the other day. And I think he's right. And you see all these... I wonder where he got that. I'm sorry, go ahead. He got it from you. He got it from you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm a regular listener. He's a yawning maw of insecurity, Joanna. Keep going.

Oh, they all are. They all are, Cara. Number two behind Jeff Bezos. You and I know that. I'm sorry. But clearly what's interesting about shopping is that for the most part, it's habit driven. And what COVID has been able to do is break those habits. So, you know, you used to think of e-commerce in particular as sort

of about one-off purchases. Then it became about staples. And now I think you're looking at real innovation around really high value purchases. So you think of something like Open Door, Carvana, people buying houses. I was talking to someone the other day who'd moved from Brooklyn to LA, bought their house online, never seen it, got there, admitted it needed a bit more work than he'd anticipated. But nevertheless, you see people are thinking of transacting in completely different ways now because of COVID. I think it's fascinating. So are you a fan of Opendoor and Zillow? Are you a fan of this iBuying trend? Well, I'm a fan of anything that empowers the consumer and gives the consumer more context.

I think as a consumer, what you're trying to do is get value for money, get what you're after, and you need the context of the market. And for the longest time, really, it was about realtors holding onto that context. There just wasn't enough information out there. And now as a consumer, you can complain that you're overwhelmed by information, but much better to have information to make a decision about what is going on in the neighborhood, what are the comparative prices, unbelievably impactful for consumers to have information like that. So I'm a big fan of them. What happens to retail itself?

And also, can we just have a moment about how miserable it is going to buy a car? I mean, everybody talks about the experience of buying Tesla, whose stock I noticed had gone up again today. But the way that you buy a Tesla is so much – sorry, Scott – is so much more – it's so much – it's so bad, the experience of buying a car when you go in. You don't really know what you're trying to do. You're trying to bargain. Should you bargain? Are they telling you the truth? It's like this weird dance that neither of you know the steps to.

And the music is changing rhythm on you the whole time. And so the ability to go to Carvana or just buy online and be very specific and have a price is so much easier. What do you imagine you have to retail? I just interviewed Raj Chetty about how people in affluent areas, all the stores there, because rich people stay home and take care of themselves and get themselves tested endlessly. But what happens to the retail, the street-level analog? This is also a trend. Malls were dying and street life was better. But what do you see happening to the world of retail and then the world of fashion? What do they do? Well, it's a great question. I mean, I live in, I live downtown in New York and all the stores have been boarded up. And even when they unboard them, which they did about a week ago, a lot of

the storefronts are just completely empty and all sorts of stores are just saying, we're not coming back. We're not coming back, partly to do with COVID, partly to do with the fact that we were looted. And so it's this eerie sort of desolate sense of these storefronts that are open. The buildings are often overvalued. The realtors are greedy and it's really depressing. And obviously there'll be some kind of pop-up scenarios, people come in and out for the holidays, but it's depressing. And I think the cities need to get together or the local politicians need together

with local business and realtors and figure it out. What do you do if you're in a retail or a fashion business right now? What are you hearing from your fashion friends? Well, I think the fashion business, especially the luxury fashion business, has been incredibly slow to go online. I mean, I remember talking to the CEO of Celine, you know, very senior executives at Prada saying,

we'll never go online. This is ridiculous. No one's going to spend $2,000 on a bag online. They were so late to the table. So I think they are investing all their resources on going D to C, which is where clearly the best relationship with the customer is. It's where you get data on the customer. It's where you can stay in touch with them.

That's obviously the future for a lot of fashion. And you can see Amazon. And last time I was on Pivot, we were discussing Amazon's move into the fashion space. But it's clear that that's where fashion, especially the more affluent brands, you know, Paris, Milan, that's where they need to be spending their time. And actually, I remember the CEO of Armani telling me that the most effective way for them to sell was to personally call their customers and say, hey, we know that you bought this skirt last season. This season, we've got a shirt coming in that would go really well with it. Now you can do that on text. It's much cheaper, a much more efficient way to stay in touch. And actually, as a customer, it's very useful to know that that's what they're doing. Those customers are used to that now, that kind of behavior.

Correct. They don't need to be champagned and dined and dragged in. Some of them do, but they're not doing that right now. Yeah. I mean, nobody's doing that right now. Now, of course, there are some people that love that. But mainly, you just want to know, what have you got in? Will it fit with the rest of my closet? Can you give it me for less?

Or can I find it for less elsewhere? Absolutely. Good, Scott. So, by the way, you brought up absolutely my favorite accessory in the world, the Celine picot belt bag. In my view, best in the drum calfskin black. Guys, take it from me and Joanna Coles. You want to step up to the plate. That's the gift this holiday. Joanna, I'm serious. I love that bag. I'm curious, what do you think of the Farfetch? I think it's artemis and alibaba deal

uh well i what a clever deal for farfetch i think it's a brilliant idea for them i mean why wouldn't you do that if you were them and um again this is about how you two you two insiders farfetch well farfetch is a brilliant business where you can or it's brilliant for the consumer in terms of if you're looking for something, you can basically find it for the cheapest price. Yeah. Okay. And you can access those great local stores, right? Great purveyors of artisanship.

Yeah. I mean, it's a whole world of shopping, which now has Alibaba's resources, which will allow it to try and dominate the environment. Yeah. Yeah. But Scott, I came across a very interesting new app yesterday, which made me think about you and Red Door, which I know you always talk about. The mind runs crazy about what's about to spill out of your mouth.

Go ahead. Well, it's an interesting app that's called Goody. And it's actually, it's a bit like Venmo for gifting, which is you can gift a real gift by text. So someone gifted me a robe by text, right? So I got a text saying, hey, someone's gifted you a robe. And then I fill in the details of the robe that I want. But even more importantly, I fill in the address of where I want it to be sent.

And I think, you know, as you look down the barrel of holiday shopping this season and you think, God, everybody's moved everywhere. You know, so many people are not living where they were living this time last year. And the bore of collecting people's actual addresses. This way I can say, hey, I'm sending you a gift. Here's the gift. You fill out where you want it to be sent. You fill out the size. You don't need to tell me you're an extra large through COVID.

You know, here's the gift. And I just thought, what a great solution to holiday shopping. It's sort of the red envelope of our time. Go on. With more longevity. I loved when I bought from the red envelope of our time. Go on. With more longevity. I loved when I bought from your red envelope. I needed you to buy more, Joanna. I was a fan.

I needed you to buy more. I know. I just couldn't buy enough. I couldn't buy enough. What can I say? Another thing that you're on the cutting edge of is SPACs. Explain what you're doing. I couldn't believe that you were involved.

When Scott mentioned it, I was like, what? There's a lot of funny business in SPACs, but why are you in SPACs? These are special purpose acquisition companies. Yeah, which enable high growth companies to go public faster. to go public faster. The traditional IPO process, as you know, is laborious and very distracting for a CEO and for senior management. And it takes a long time.

And SPACs have been around for some time. They weren't sort of very highly thought of, but they've been growing. And then this year, you've seen $60 billion worth of investment dollars move into SPACs. You saw, I mean, you've seen $60 billion worth of investment dollars move into SPACs. You saw, I mean, you've mentioned on the show, Bill Gurley's sort of seminal essay on why he would never take a company public with a traditional IPO again after Lemonade. And the staff were left sort of high and dry because the bank has said, well, we're taking you to market at 27.

It ended at 69. And the people that get screwed in that situation are the people who've been working there. Yeah, and the companies. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So there's much more discovery in a SPAC for the management team. And it's cheaper and it's more efficient. So it struck me as a very interesting thing to do.

I think there are a lot of companies in the sort of one to two billion dollar range that are really disruptive in the beauty, the health, the fitness and the wellness space, which is really where I'm looking, and in the subscription space. And I do think that, you know, I'm looking for tech-enabled, data-driven commerce that uses media and content to create communities that sort of push that flywheel of growth. Quite a lot of jargon there, but I think you know what I'm trying to say. And I just thought it would be really fun to do one. And oddly, that space is not really heavily crowded with SPACs. There are a lot of SPACs out there, but many of them are looking for different things. There's a lot in the electrical vehicle space. There's a lot in the energy space. There's a lot in the healthcare space. But women make 80% of the household

decisions, consumer decisions. And I thought, why not look for some companies in the consumer space? So I'd love to do a lightning round with you. So by the way, Joanna is one of my, I don't know, small group of Yodas that I turn to when I need the straight skinny on a consumer company. So I want to give you a bunch of consumer brands. A baby Yoda or a grown up Yoda.

There you go. So the baby Yoda. Have you been watching The Mandalorian, by the way? It's genius. The second, no. It's genius. Yes.

And do you know what? Sonos did a partnership with it and I was so pleased. I thought, what a smart thing to do because we have these great soundbars for your TV. Pedro Pascal, like a working soap opera actor. I watched The Crown last season, even though I didn't watch any of the other seasons. Oh, The Crown, so good, isn't it? So good.

But now I'm going back and watching the other seasons, which I never did. Yeah, well, Helena Bonham Carter is an absolute triumph. The episode where Margaret Thatcher goes to stay at Balmoral with the royal family, it's so good because it captures this awful nuance at the heart of Britain about the class system and how Princess Margaret was able to patronise Margaret Thatcher, who'd done this astonishing feat of coming from a gracious daughter to be the first female prime minister. And there was Princess Margaret in her kilts, you know, swelling to her full bosomy size and dismissing the first female prime minister. Yeah, it was quick.

It was wild. All right. Answer his question. Such a good show. Yes. All right. Scott's question. So I'm going to give you some brands.

And I just, before you have a chance to be filtered and think I'm, you know, I'm a big deal on a bunch of boards. I just want to hear three, five seconds. Well, first of all, can I just say, I don't ever think I'm a big deal. Here we go. Okay. Yeah. Enough of the British accent describing how wonderful the crown is for God's sakes. Tiger King. Anyway, so. Innovative.

Innovative. All all right just give me your gut reactions here rent the runway can we just talk about can we just talk i get you two on a podcast and i get this at home i don't need this here all right anyway get this from your children at home what do you want what did you say what was the rent the runway i love rent the runway i think rent the runway i don't know why everybody's going around saying the runway run the runway is over i don't think it's over at all i think it's been hit by a really bad uh yeah of course because of covid where is it in a year you think it's stronger than ever go sideways gets acquired what do you think no not not in a year i don't think in a year i think it will take longer to bounce back than that. But I hope she holds on to it.

And I hope she, I would think that in two to three years, that thing will have bounced back. All I can tell you is that I have walked into many different kinds of offices and the mail rooms are just full of those navy blue bags. Their monthly rental for office wear was one of the best things to happen to fashion. Truly disruptive. truly disruptive. I mean, it's possible that someone else will come out with the same thing, but I think Jen Hyman is brilliant. All right, next. Warby Parker. I would say my jury's slightly out on Warby Parker. I know they have very high

ideas for valuation. I don't know what the moat is for Warby Parker. Other people can do it. Glossier. I like Glossier very much. I think the way they've incorporated their community is super smart. I also like the fact they really listen to the consumer. And one of the great things about Glossier is the way the community goes off and does its own thing. And one of the great things about Glossier is the way the community goes off and does its own thing.

So I don't know if you've watched Glossier Boyfriends, which is a feed of just bored but quite hot-looking guys sitting around or standing around as their girlfriends. But you had a pause. What was your pause? You had a pause. I heard a pause. Well, my pause is that I think it's hard for single-brand makeup companies companies i think it's good to have more brands i think they've got permission to do that um but you know i'm sure they'll get acquired or they'll go public probably with the spec actually yeah maybe maybe with the spec yeah uh away uh i agree with you on the way i i don't understand why i mean i like the product um but i

think uh i don't understand why it's the sort of you know thought of as a tech company it's just a luggage company it's like casper it's got the same issues you don't buy that many suitcases and um what i do notice is that the people who have them feel very tribal. They look at other people and sort of there's a slight nod of the head or a kind of a semi wink, not a full wink, a little wink of recognition that this is someone who's not using a to-me bag, right? Because up until now, it had always been about the black zip-up to-me bag, which felt very cool. Yeah, but to-me people are all douches. But anyway, next one,, which felt very corporate. Yeah, but Tumi people are all douches. But anyway, next one, Scott. They're not all douches. They're not all douches.

Tumi, I'm going to defend Tumi luggage, but it's very corporate. I don't want a Tumi bag because it's too corporate. I know a luggage Joanna owns, and I don't even know what luggage. You so own a Ramoa. Am I right, or am I right? In my dreams. Actually, I do own several away bags because I want to indicate I'm a creative. I'm not a corporate. I use Patagonia. Patagonia only.

And I'm sure you use a backpack, right, Cara? Have you ever used a suitcase? I think you just throw it on your back and off you go. I have a paper bag. I put it in the paper bag. It's a third grade boy on his way to school. No, it's Kevin Swisher. All right, last one. We got to go. Come on. Well, can I just say that if I do a transaction quickly in the SPAC, which is very much my intention, then I will buy myself an entire series of remote or luggage. How about that? Okay, good.

All right, last one. Last one. This has totally come off the rails. All right, last one. A media company. It's arguably one of the most valuable media companies in the private sector right now, Calm. I think Calm is a brilliant app, actually. I know so many people that use it.

I don't know where it sits in terms of headspace. I don't know whether or not they do a roll-up. But I think Calm has got permission to go into all sorts of things around the fitness and the health and wellness space. I think they've done a great job and obviously, you know, hugely helped by COVID. Perfect. Joanna? There you go. As usual.

You are brilliant. In fact, I'm now feeling calm. Just even you saying the word calm just calmed me down. Good. I like that commercial. We all sit and stare at it. the word calm just calmed me down. Good. I like that commercial. We all sit and stare at it.

When you do your SPAC, when you decide when you're going to do that, will you come back and tell us why you picked the SPAC you picked? Explain it to us in detail. I will happily do. It's got to be within two years. Yeah, you do. You have two years. That's a long time. Can I be out of HR? Let's really be out of HR. No, do not let Scott near HR.

Do not. Let me give you some advice on that issue. You can do something. You could be strategic elf. How about strategic elf? Strategic elf? Where'd that come from? On that note, Joanna, thank you so much.

That was perfect. Merry Christmas. Gangster Drankel, second most popular guest speaker in brand strategy. All right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy?

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built Clawed with an emphasis on safety. The leadership team founded the company with a commitment to an ethical approach that puts humanity first. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash clawed. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. Okay, Scott, wins and fails. What are your wins and fails? Well, my win, as we talked about it, is I think that a lot of media companies are recognizing its business model, and they're showing a lot of leadership, and they're taking their premier IP and holding hands and crossing the fire, whether it's Pixar, whether it's what you talked about with Milan, whether it's AT&T and Warner Media, Jason Kalar, and obviously Jan Steinke had to

give their approval for this. But I think they're showing real leadership and saying, okay, if we can sign up another one to three million subscribers, it's worth more than the $700, $800 million. I think this is a big, this is a key move. And what people don't, the bar is, you know, people don't, you know, what's the worst thing that happened to HBO in addition to terrible brand moves in my mind? The government, the DOJ, which decided, I know, let's trash our credibility and file antitrust against AT&T because with 130 million, they should have to sell Adult Swim and the Cartoon Network, despite the fact that Apple has a billion and Android is two and a half billion. But anyways, them holding up HBO Max for a year to 18 months probably cost

HBO Max between five and 20 million subscribers. Yeah, they were slow to the get there. You don't recognize the get there. justice and you politicize them, you weaponize them, and you say, guys, can you stick your heads up your ass for the next 12 months and distract the entire corporate market, pervert it, make it weird. But HBO, I mean, HBO, in my opinion, there's few brands that have fallen further faster than HBO. I just think that made a series of missteps. But also the fact that they were held back for 12, this is probably, that was an incredibly important 12 to 18 months when all the streaming video platforms were short of coming out and getting subscribers or not. Basically, Disney filled that void. Disney Plus filled that void and signed up like 70 million subscribers. Anyways, my win is I think these firms are demonstrating leadership. Yeah. Well, Jason Kylar would be like

enough, enough of that. And he knows how to fail and he knows how to succeed. So, you know, he knows how to get in and out pretty quickly. That's my win. And do you have a win? I think that I do like the Biden selections of who they're having, who they have selected. I think it shows a lot of care. You know, everyone makes fun of his basement strategy, although Trump has completely disappeared. That's a win, not having to hear from Trump, except on Twitter. And then you can totally ignore that, not hearing his loud, obnoxious, fallacious voice. But I think very

careful and interesting. We'll see how it goes. I think he's got an uphill battle because of the situation. But maybe, maybe, maybe. It's just promising. It's promising. It made me feel good. It's not just feel good, feel good. They're really good selections. They're really, it's not everybody I knew. I was expecting a lot more people like cronies, you know what I mean? And it was a little more interesting,

some of these people. And I've had to read up on a couple of people I didn't know a lot about. They seem very, like the woman who's going to run, oh, which one? Oh, the woman they just picked for one of the national security, but whatever. In any case, all the selections I have had to look up, which is great, which I think is good, and they all seem incredibly competent people,

experts in their area. The only one who sort of showed up was John Kerry, but okay, you know, as the climates are kind of thing. In any case, I'm very happy about that. And the fail for me is, well, is this, these Republicans have got to like, I don't know what they're doing to themselves. I don't get it.

I get they're focused on Georgia, but this is not any way to build a party through crazy Sidney Powell who got, you know, they dumped but not really dumped the Kraken lady, who they, you know, they had her out front and now they're saying she never was with them. I mean, they're just crazy. So that's it. That's what I would say.

Okay, Scott, do you have a fail? I do. My fail is that our xenophobia and also obviously our COVID-19, but specifically our incompetent response to COVID-19 has resulted in a 43% decline in international students this fall. And international students, in addition to the dirty secret of education, as we claim we welcome international students for diversity, that's bullshit. They pay full freight. They're our cash cow. So in addition to putting pressure on the university system, if you think about a brand, we literally have absolutely no, we don't register a fraction of the incredible power that the American brand has on our everyday lives in terms of people paying more margin for anything that comes from America, in terms of

their inclination to not help our enemies, in terms of them letting their best and brightest children say, all right, if you want to go to America, you can go because I believe in that promise. People don't realize we're the apple of whatever you want to call it, geopolitics. And the brand is a function of awareness when we have kind of this 24 by 7 commercial because we're great at media running around the globe. But also the best and brightest from around the world come here for four years and they generally speaking love it. And a lot of them stay,

but a lot of them go back and say, you know, these are good people and we want to work with them. And the notion that we are taking this incredible asset, and also if you look at the NASDAQ, about 60% of the market cap of the NASDAQ is run by people who are first or second generation immigrants who came to school here. Yes, our xenophobia is cut.

So this is, again, we suffer from this inability to, you know, this nationalism, this swagger, this bullshit, this xenophobia is literally trading on our kids' prosperity moving forward. So it's a big fail that international students don't want to come to college here. It's 43%. It's almost been cut in half, Cara. I know. This is the damage one person can make. This is why elections matter. And this one's still going on. Not really, but it is in the mind of Donald Trump. But it will be over and we will hopefully get back to business in a way that will focus in on these things. That's a very good loss. Speaking of

when, next week, on Thursday, we will be here Thanksgiving talking about Scott's new book, which has just come out, Post-Corona, A Crisis to Opportunity. We also might have to mention, the story broke while we were talking, Amazon has hired Pinkerton detectives. There's all this drop of all these internal leaked documents

from inside its Global Security Operations Center revealing the company's use of Pinkerton operatives, private intel to spy on workers, and extensive monitoring of labor unions, environmental activists, and other social movements. Oh, dear, dear, dear Amazon. So maybe we'll discuss that in relation to your book and things like that, the power they have.

All right, Scott, thank you so much. We'll be back. What a difference a week makes, as always, email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show. And maybe you can be as sexy as Bob from Brooklyn, who did a really good one last week. And we want more like that. Scott, can you read us out? Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Fernanda Finite engineered this episode. Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify. If you like this show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for a breakdown of all things tech. Open quote. We are not the leader of first choice because we're always right or because we're universally liked or because we can dictate outcomes.

It's because we strive to be the best of our ability to align our actions with our principles and because American leadership has a unique ability to mobilize others and to make a difference. That is from Anthony Blinken, our new Secretary of State. Yes. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. It's not always easy to harness the power and potential of AI. For all the talk around its revolutionary potential, a lot of AI systems feel like they're designed for specific tasks performed by a select few. Well, Clawed by Anthropic is AI for everyone. The latest model, Clawed 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price.

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