Pivot - Tesla’s Rising Value, Meta’s AI, and Twitter’s Ad Problem

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Kara and Scott are live at Cannes! They discuss Tesla’s market value going up a quarter of a trillion dollars, and Meta letting advertisers know how it’s competing in the AI space. Plus, Twitter��s Head of Ad Sales attended Cannes to assure brands their ads wouldn’t appear near all the bad stuff, and meanwhile GLAAD named Twitter the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ+ people. Then, some questions from the audience. We’ve got some listener mail episodes coming your way soon, so send us your questions! Call 855-51-PIVOT or go to nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm obviously Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. And we are here live from ConLions International Festival of Creativity.

Everyone, let's hear from you. The one thing I want to start with is Scott was promising me hawks at the Hotel DeKalb. Last episode, you talked about this dramatic death of hawks. The hawks come in and kill seagulls. I brought my children there so they could see this murderous, you know, carnage happening. None of that happened. They now have these porcelain owls that literally the seagulls try to hump. They're not working.

But basically, at this great hotel they have these incredibly handsome men who come out when the seagulls get too aggressive and they take a hood off a hawk and the hawk just instinctively rips the shit out of the seagull and the seagulls get the message and they go away and for i've been walking up and down the croisset and everyone is so nice and so friendly and they say one of two things the first thing they say is they come up like hi you're skyke allen my kind of like they say one of two things. The first thing they say is they come up like, hi, you're Scott Gowen. I'm like, yeah, we love Kara Swisher. That's the first thing they say.

Well, that's an obvious. And then they say, we're the Hawks. Yeah. Promise the Hawks. Yeah. They don't want to know anything about technology. We spent a lovely time. Scott was very good with my kids who are here.

Yeah. Took them in the pool. I think the people at the hotel were horrified. So many children. Confirmed a vasectomy. Good decision. OK. By the way, she's really old and she has babies.

I do. I do. I have two small kids. That's just a bad move. You should know better. It was a great move. What are you talking about? It was fantastic.

That's a lot. I have adorable children. You have beautiful children. And they love me. That's a lot. Yes. And they will be with me until the end of my life around the bedside. It'll be a beautiful scene.

Dude, you're doing the rich older dude thing that people are like whispering about. Well, okay. all right, fine. You're going to be out on a yacht taking pictures of your girlfriend in a thong pretty soon. Okay, soon, okay.

Now listen. How's it going so far? So let me ask you a question. What is your favorite part of this whole con experience for you? What have you liked this time? We saw Lizzo last night.

We saw all kinds of things. What's been your favorite part of this besides hanging with me in the south of France? I know that's one of your dreams. I enjoyed hanging with you and your kids. I used to do this Berlin Creativity Festival. I think Cannes actually does a really good job of bringing young people in and attempting to invest in them and take the industry seriously and foster young leadership. So I think what actually happens inside the Palais or wherever we are is really wonderful. And it's a chance to catch up with people in an informal environment.

You know, French culture, everything is just sort of beautiful and tastes good. So the air, the salt air, the sea, you know, it all kind of works. I would never come to Cannes for vacation. I would never come to this conference just for the conference. But the peanut butter and chocolate of Cannes and this conference, that is so money, Kara. It just works. What's your favorite thing? The South of France is beautiful. And it is interesting to run into people and talk to have conversations. These weird internet beaches have always fascinated me. Like Pinterest has a beach now and Meta has a beach.

It's super easy to tell what beach you're on. And we didn't rehearse any of this. Right. If it's one of the older guys, the WPPs, the IPGs, it's basically one big, it's like a needy girlfriend. Like, we're still relevant. Pay attention to me. And then if you're at...

They better food. Right. Yeah. They're trying hard. Yeah. And then if you're at Meta or Google, it's like, oh, we're your partner. Yeah. And this whole teen depression, election misinformation, you know, we're doing our best.

We're proud of the progress we've made and we're trying. You know, we need to do better. We need to do better. And then they kind of pet the head of all their agency partners as they stick a fucking gun in their face and shoot them. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to Cannes. But the rosé is delicious at those places, right? I'm here for it.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't I have no bias. Invite me to your party. I'll show up. I'm a whore and I'm a cheap whore. Obviously from your clothing. What what do you imagine has changed here, though? Because things have changed. Things are changing. You know, this is post-pandemic.

There's been obviously shifts. There's all kinds of regulation. We've got AI, which we're going to be talking about in a second. I don't know. I mean, the thing I noticed, there's no Twitter beach. Yeah. Yeah. What has changed? I mean, every piece

of content now is the content calendar could best be described as AI and the seven dwarves. So AI has clearly like stormed the beach. It feels, I would say more importantly, everyone seems genuinely happy to be together. I like going to these conferences. People seem appreciative of the importance of getting people together and bouncing off one another. I think people feel optimistic. The recession that's been a month away for 18 months doesn't appear to have happened. It feels I don't know. It feels pretty optimistic. But do you think there's positivity toward the ad market right now? People keep telling me we're too mean to the ad market, by the way, here.

Well, I said this yesterday. I mean, the issue is advertising is a tax that the poor and the technologically illiterate have to pay. If you're watching a lot of ads, it means life hasn't panned out the way you'd hoped. And it just got awkward in here. Just got awkward in here. Look, so advertising, we need a new name for it because what you have is a group of very talented people who understand how to build the brand without advertising. So it's operations, it's analytics, it's scale, it's consulting.

I mean, basically what this is is the people who come here are essentially young people who are going to develop a series of relationships to understand your company, who are going to develop a series of relationships to understand your company, who are going to use the same needs from other companies to develop scale around things you wouldn't do internally. You wouldn't buy ads internally, but you also probably wouldn't do your own analytics

on certain things. You wouldn't make your own strategy decisions internally because it would get politicized. So I feel like we need another word than advertising because... To a different word. Well, here's the thing. I mean, everything I know about advertising, I learned from Mad Men, right? So Peggy was the genius, but Roger and Don owned the relationships, so they made all the money. So the importance of something like this is develop the skills such that you can develop a series of relationships. I was in the services industry for 20 years. I ran a company called Profit,

which was a brand strategy firm. And we were good at what we did, maybe even great sometimes. But the thing I found exhausting about it, so let me start. It's an amazing industry in the beginning because it gives you athletic skills. You have to be smart. You have to have good client skills, good analytical skills to be able to present. It's a great combat training or second MBA. The downsides are it's very hard on your relationships because you're in the services business. And when the CMO of Samsung calls and says, can you be in Houston? The answer is yes. And then the CMO of Audi calls and says, can you be in Ingolstadt tomorrow? And the answer is yes. So it takes a toll on you physically. It takes a toll on your relationships. I burned through my first marriage and all of my hair in

this industry, but it's a fantastic training. The key is, and what ultimately exhausted me was I felt like my entire business that grew to about a hundred people. And then when I left, it grew to about 400. I was developing these father-son relationships with CMOs and CEOs that I found exhausting. That this is such a relationship business. That shifted so drastically, right? I mean, things- Well, for the people who are making money. Right.

Now it's run by algorithms versus relationships. Right. So this used to be a relationship-driven business and a creatively-driven business. Now it's a processing and algorithmically-driven business. All right, well, let's talk about what's here. Obviously, why are we here? Because we're doing this besides that. But why is this good for people like us? Because you have finally decided to start investing in our relationship.

I did. We're going to go on a romantic journey. I asked you to come and you said yes. Yes, I did. Absolutely. But one of the things that's important to think about is the things that have been talked about here, because things have shifted really drastically in the short time I've come to Khan. So how do you think things have shifted? You know, initially, the tech companies were sort of friendlies, right? They were, you know, cute. They were adorable.

I was remembering a Sheryl Sandberg party, you know, at their beach when it wasn't called Meta and when it was called Facebook, which I think it's probably going to go back. Is it true if you go to those party held by Cheryl two or three times, you start self-cutting? No, no, stop it. Oh, my God, Scott. I'm sorry, 20 million parents would like a word with all of you that are like disappointing. All right. So anyway, it's just it's shifted and I don't think people know where it's going. I think there's a lot of confusion. So we're going to talk about those things today here in Cannes. From brand safety, that's been something that's been a big topic with a lot of people. Whether people want to be next to news, where is the safe place?

And especially, we talked about Dylan Mulvaney last week, and then we've talked about Nike and all the various brands. It's a really difficult time to figure out how to do social media strategies, advertising strategies. So we're talking about that. And obviously, AI seems to have, it's sort of the new crypto, although we think AI is critically important as opposed to- It's not crypto. It's not crypto. That's what I mean. But I'm talking about trendiness in terms of discussing it. But first, let's talk about some things in the news. Tesla's market share has gone about

a quarter trillion dollars over the past month. And, you know, you're always one betting against that stock and it hasn't gone very well for you this past quarter. Yeah. It's notched a few wins. The new Twitter CEO means Elon can focus more on Tesla. That's Linda Iaccarino, who was a mainstay here when she was at NBC. You're a big fan of. I am a big fan of Linda's. when she was at NBC, throwing a lot of... You're a big fan of...

I am a big fan of Linda's. Tesla signed new deals that will let GM and Ford drivers use its supercharger network. It signed Rivian today. It's probably going to start the rest of them. I think the only people pissed off are Tesla drivers because it'll mean harder to get spaces. But it's going to be the new standard, in the U.S. at least.

The Wall Street Journal points out that some investors may be associating the recent AI boom, which anyone that puts AI just puts on the front, just like with crypto, is a quicker path to driverless cars, even though Tesla is pretty far behind Cruise and Waymo in that area. I just spent a week in San Francisco riding their cars. They're fantastic. There are no Tesla robo taxis anywhere to be found. So what do you think is happening? Because a lot of people are now calling Tesla or any companies AI companies. It's an AI company, when in fact, I think it's a car company. And that's going to be its eventual problem. Yeah, it's been remarkable. So Tesla's up 112%

in the last quarter versus the S&P up 8%. In the last 30 days, it's added $300 billion market cap. So in the last 30 days, Tesla has added the value of GM, Ford, Volkswagen, thrown BMW, and the only one you couldn't include in there is Toyota. It's added the value of Toyota and the American auto industry in the last 30 days. So the question is, how does that happen? And in a weird way, I think if you try and reverse engineer it, at least in my mind, I reverse engineer it to Satya Nadella. And the best corporate VC investment of all time was when Satya Nadella and the folks at Microsoft decided to make what at that time seemed like an irrational multi-billion dollar

investment in open AI. And AI has breathed new life into the markets that it might be the starting gun for a new wave of technology disruption and massive value creation. So you have all of this money that was sitting on the sidelines because it was worried the markets were going into pretty serious structural decline. And they said, oh, wait, we don't want to miss out on the boom. And they were starting to go into fixed income and credit. But now they seem to be coming back into the market. And part of that will be looking for winners that aren't afraid to go well above their multiples. And Tesla is one of those companies that defies gravity. I don't think Tesla has anything to do with AI. The Model Y was the best-selling car. It's its own mean stock.

The momentum there is it's totally detached from any rational multiple. The majority of the auto industry trades at somewhere between four and seven times the enterprise value to EBITDA. Tesla, as we sit here today, trades at 50. It doesn't make any sense. The other thing that is super impressive, I think, about Tesla is that the entire industry is thrown in the towel and decided to use their charging stations. And the analog I would use there is that the iPhone is credited with the majority of the

$3 trillion market capitalization of Apple. But you would probably give a trillion or maybe even a trillion and a half to the operating system that underlies all apps in the App Store. Google hasn't been able to catch them. They effectively have a monopoly on apps, which gives them the ability to deploy a monopoly-like tax of 30%. And even amazing companies like Spotify have a difficult time realizing their potential because they pay a 30% tax to Apple. realizing their potential because they pay a 30% tax to Apple. Now that everyone has decided to effectively throw their hat in and sign up and deploy all of their cars and make them compatible with Tesla charging stations, I wonder if

the analog is that Tesla has become the new app store and it's going to be able to employ monopoly-like pricing and set the standards for charging. Sure, but unless it becomes a commodity, like charging is a commodity, there'll be so many of these around, it might become the standard and it'll get a license fee. It's a nice business for them. In other words, the chargers become the standard. If everybody's using them and installs them, then they'll have them. But I think that where will they make the money on the licensing of the technology? That's the right question. I don't know if they have limits around what can be charged. But if you want to be a trillion dollar company or you want to add a trillion

dollars, you just use the word, you become the operating system of the standard. If they become the standard, is there, and I asked this in Seattle If they become the standard, is there an IASA? Sincerely, I don't know. Is there a limit on what they can charge when a Hyundai pulls up to charge? Essentially, this is going to give them the infrastructure, the capital, and the user adoption where it's game over in charging. They're going to own charging. In charging, yeah.

Charging is a big deal in an electric car, right? You want to go more than 80 or 200 miles away, you got to use a charger. And some people don't. If you really go into mass adoption, most people don't have the money or even the garage space to have their own charger set up. So this is, I think this is huge. So everybody's pointing they're an AI company when in fact they aren't. And they're a car company that's going to get their ass kicked with other car companies, right? They're going to be in competition with Mercedes eventually, not today, because everyone I talk to says they're ahead by three years,

but eventually Lucid, well, Lucid's the more outlier, but the Mercedes, the BMWs, the Hyundais, the Kias will all have competitive cars, but it's the charging that will be their saving grace. Well, I'm trying to understand and rationalize how a company adds the auto industry and value over the last 30 days. And the honest answer is I'm reaching a little bit. But you talk about where AI has really increased. I'm not talking about open AI, which is $30 billion. That's nothing in this world. I mean, that's great for a startup, but the folks who have benefited the most from AI

and added the most value over the last 12 months have been probably first and foremost Microsoft, because Microsoft's visionary investment in open AI, if they can take Bing from 3% share to 7% to 10%, that will create such a halo across the whole company that Microsoft understands AI better than already any installed platform. So for example, I love Notion AI. I like to write. We like to write.

I think it's an amazing tool. Microsoft may have a Notion AI killer that they're bundling into Word that just takes them out, just takes them out, just cuts them out. And Google has one now. Google's been trying to rewrite my emails for weeks now. But Google so far hasn't. Google in the world of investment, the investment community sees them

as having been caught a little bit flat footed. Yeah, and this is Microsoft's chance to return. Classic innovators dilemma that they all of a sudden overnight look like they've been under managed for 10 years because they were caught flat footed. So number one, despite the fact that they did make these early investments in deep minds and Google AI, they were very first. They have deeper, arguably deeper AI expertise than anyone. The question is, and this is a negative, is they were afraid to deploy it for fear would cannibalize their existing $150 billion toll booth called Surge.

The second company that's added the most value is NVIDIA, a company that went into graphic processing units for video games, finds out that that technology works really well leveraging AI. Probably the most interesting or the strongest new product release of 2022 was probably, and I hate to say this, it was probably Instagram Reels, which has increased engagement on Instagram. It's increased time by 23%. By the way, MetaStock is up, I think, 160% in the last three months. Not on the back of this consensual big gulp ayahuasca hallucination called a headset, but on the back. Wrong. On the back. Wrong. You think Oculus is going to work? Not Oculus. No, that sucks. Okay. But anyways, but Facebook's stock has skyrocketed the last three months on the back of what I think is actual AI. Well, it is, but it's because he got out of Meta.

Well, people think he's going to stop. Yes. What do they call the company now? What should they call it? What should they call it? Yeah. I don't know. Teen Depression?

Okay. All right. Besides that. They have to name it something. They can't keep it calling it Meta, right? Yeah. Meta? Well, Meta's kind of like, I don't know.

Meta is sort of a baller move. Yeah, but it was after Metaverse. I think they can call it Meta. All right. Okay. All right. But let's move on a little bit. We do want to get into Facebook because there's some really interesting things around reels. But let's talk a little bit about, because everyone is thinking about, and we'll get to advertising and AI in a second. The White House said last week that President Biden's staff is meeting multiple times this week to develop an AI strategy. Chuck Schumer suddenly said the word AI,

which was, I think, one he never knew before last week. And they're all talking about it. Of course, here in Europe, they've moved forward rather quickly. In China, they've moved rather quickly. We talked to Senator O'Warner about that, how quickly China has moved in that way. And here at Cannes, Meta wants advertisers to know it's competing in the AI space. It's doing a lot of announcement. Alvin Bowles is their ad sales lead. Earlier this week revealed the tech giant will be focusing on Reels and AI assistance. Reels obviously is where they're facing competition from TikTok, which sort of governs everything right now. They have a very nice booth here in the middle of the Carlton Hotel.

The TikTok house? Oh, yeah. They took the whole place over. They're giving away pillows, apparently. That's really lovely. Yes. They have, you know, except for the surveillance part inside the pillow. It's fine.

AI assistants are the way to compete with Google and Amazon in this space. Meta originally got into chatbots. Remember those back in 2016? Remember chatbots? Bob? Yeah, Bob. No, that was Microsoft. In 2016, as a way for brands to talk to customers, now the idea is to use AI to expand chatbots? Bob? Yeah, Bob. No, that was Microsoft. In 2016, as a way for brands to talk to customers,

now the idea is to use AI to expand chatbots so they can help businesses internally and help creators engage with fans. There's no timeline out, but they're saying all the right words. It's a different strategy than Microsoft, which is leaning into search, as you noted with Bing. Do you think that, how do these different companies approach this? And then advertisers in general, how do they start to think about AI and incorporating it besides their daily business practices,

which I recommend everybody use these things so you understand how they work. But how does it impact advertising? This is Meta's approach. Microsoft is doing search. Google is probably going to focus in on search. It's a longer conversation. I don't know, it's a longer conversation. I don't think I have a term for that.

But my go-to on this is that as it relates to impacting younger people, AI really is, you want to be skilled with this. This is your lightsaber, This is your bazooka. If you can start playing with AI, generative AI, and really understand it, and I say this a lot, AI is not going to take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job. And I think that going back to, I just want to talk about TikTok for a second. TikTok is already a trillion dollar company. It's the first tech company in history that sandbags their numbers because they knew they

were inserting a neural jack into the brain of every American under the age of 25, such that slowly, incrementally, and insidiously they could raise a generation of European and American youth that felt a little bit shittier about Europe and America and capitalism and democracy. I think this is the biggest security threat we've faced in 20 years. And I realize how tinfoil hat and paranoid that sounds, but I think they would be stupid not to be doing that. More people under the age of 25 are spending more time on TikTok than they spend on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, Canal, Netflix. And now there's a good story in the journal i'd recommend you all read today uh about how products are now being formed on tiktok and then staggering yeah you know i think it was chipotle had to respond to something that a guy named keith keith adia guy named keith made a new quesadilla and they had to and then the people in the stores that's good

the stores were like i don't want to make your stupid quethodia. But then all the young people were like, we're not eating here if you don't make a quethodia. And then they just introduced the quethodia. But it's already a trillion dollar plus company. And if there's standoff between the U.S. government, they believe that like the Trump administration, the Biden administration will be like a cat and follow the next red dot and want to give it to their buddies and it will be legally unsustainable. And they're like, just tire out the Americans. Just let them cry for a while and tire them out and hope that they forget about this. If it gets to the point where it gets banned, and it might, you're talking about a $950 billion, not only decline in value,

but a transfer in value. To someone else. And so Reels is doing a great job. And all of a sudden, Meta has embraced regulation and has their army of regulators saying TikTok is a national security threat. The company that hasn't had the stock uplift that I think will recognize the stock uplift, because it's easy to be rear view looking. And there's some bias here because I took my 12-year-old to the exhibit and my 12-year-old loved it. So I feel...

Snapchat exhibit. Yeah, Snap. Snap stock has gone into a trough. And if you look at their use of AI, their use of AR, not VR, they have not registered yet the same uplift as the rest of tech. And I would argue that in AR, they're pretty competent. And love brands they do co-op this was a disney brand they're the least awful of all the platforms okay don't you think someone's gonna buy them or linkedin apple should buy them that's my feeling that that would be a brand fit i don't think apple wants it wants to wade into the cesspool maybe they do know maybe this is their ai and they've got the glasses they've got the glasses.

They've got the Snapchat glasses. That's interesting with the headset. Think about with the headset, which again is fantastic. Okay. All right. You need to try it. I love that Scott talks about the headset. I've never tried the headset.

You don't need to try it. Yes, you do. You just need to have common sense. No, you don't. You have to try the headset. Notice how Tim Cook didn't put it on his head? What? Didn't put it on his head? What? Didn't put it on his head.

Didn't get near it. If he'd launched an Apple car, he would have rolled out in it. Wouldn't get near the headset. Oh, come on. He knows this is ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. Just a quick message. I see a lot of bad attempts at mating at the Carlton after around 11 p.m.

Yeah. Just some tips to the guys. Don't get caught dead near a headset. That is how your gene pool ends. Right. By the way, if somebody asks you if you have allergies also and this will trigger some people say no, because here's the here's the bottom line, gentlemen. No woman wants to fuck a guy afraid of toast. Back to you. I don't even know where to fucking go with that except for, Scott, we need to go on a quick break.

We'll be right back from cons. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.

These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them.

But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home.

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Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. All right, we're back. I'm getting you a headset for Christmas. All right, we're going to go to questions in about five, six minutes. Twitter's ad sales team here in Cannes on a brand safety push. Brand safety from Twitter. The new CEO, Linda Iaccarino, isn't here in spite of our many invitations to join us on the stage,

but she is coming to the Code Conference, very exciting, which is later in the fall. Chris Reedy, the head of ad sales, is, and he wanted to assure brands that ads won't appear above or below any of the bad stuff on the platform. The platform has asked its vendors to submit proposals for brand safety solutions, specifically products that give advertisers more control over how their ads are displayed on Twitter. Is that enough? We're going to work with third-party vendors to make sure that ads aren't next to bad content. Just some quick stats on how much bad content is actually on the site. A recent study found that Twitter fails to act on hate speech posted by 99% of Twitter

blue accounts. Those are the ones that pay the $8 for boosted visibility. Just in time for Pride Month, GLAAD has named Twitter the most dangerous social media platform for LGBTQ people. Even if your brand can use their tools to avoid certain keywords and accounts is enough to feel confident where your ads end up. And just speaking of bad content, self-described misogynist Andrew Tate is someone who's still on the platform. He and his brothers have just been indicted on charges of rape and human trafficking

in Romania. He was. Welcome back to the site by Elon. In response to the charges, Tate tweeted out his nearly 7 million followers. I'm sure this case has absolutely nothing to do with stealing my wealth. I don't know what to say. What do you think? What do you think? They're not here. They don't have a presence here. Linda's going to do her level best to make people feel. I don't see the ads showing up in my feed. It's usually really weird little ads and strange things, I assume, because there's a lot of inventory and it's cheap. How do you look at that? What's the best case scenario for them to do to advertisers here who think the platform has been effective in the past?

It's not the first buy for most people I talk to. But what do you imagine is going to happen here? I think there are a few organizations that have made teen girls feel worse about themselves than Meta. And I feel there are a few organizations that have made our discourse more coarse than Twitter. Twitter has fomented a culture of cruelty, a lack of civility, a lack of grace. Because from 1945 to 1995, the ultimate theme or zeitgeist for advertising was sex, right? The majority of great advertising kind of involved this implicit association that if you drive this Buick or this car, you're more likely to have a random sexual encounter.

And that speaks to us on a very basic level. And then, unfortunately, the algorithms, since Google, have figured out that it's not really sex that sells, it's rage. And then you have individuals, specifically the last U.S. president and now the wealthiest man in the world, who foment this culture of cruelty and rage. And Twitter is the embodiment of everything that is bad about these algorithms. In addition, you have, I'm not going to say they're immoral people, but the management of these companies are amoral.

The biggest threat to our society is not immorality. Bad people get starched out. It's amorality. It's people that are like, I'm so rich. that my connection and attribution to the people, the teenage girl, the person who has to move from their home because I accused him of a sex crime after I fired him, I don't have any contact with this person, so I lose my civility, my sense of grace.

And I think that it is an impossible task to come here and ask a brand to advertise. The clearest blue-line path between you and losing your job I think that it is an impossible task to come here and ask a brand to advertise. The clearest blue line path between you and losing your job isn't sending a transgender girl a beer, it's advertising on Twitter. Because the upside is limited. It's still a shitty subscale platform,

but the downside is enormous. You might end up next to a swastika. So they recognize that. They don't want to come here. And in addition, he doesn't pay his bills. But the poor people at Twitter here that have to come and try and pretend. I mean, what you just said, I think those are all lies. I don't think there's any veracity around what you just read from them. From that they are here to protect you. I think it's, I think it's, I think this, this culture we have fomented by Trump, that the longer you repeat a lie, the more veracity or it seems more like a truth. If I can just, if I'm a rich guy or I'm the president, if I repeat a lie long enough,

there's no fidelity to the truth anymore. I think that is a series of falsehoods that have no basis in any reality about what's going on. So what do you do if you're a brand and you want to use this? I mean, for example, earlier today, this guy that was attacked, they wanted him to debate RFK Jr., who's a lunatic. Right. He's an anti-vax lunatic in the United States who happens to have a good name. Right. And is running for president. And that's why he's getting some numbers because he's a Kennedy.

They kept yelling and including Elon, debate, debate, debate. And this guy's now getting death threats all over Twitter, which is a bullet, pictures of bullets. They're not taking them down. So if you're a brand, how do you think of that? You stay off the platform. There's so many amazing places here where you can spend money. So what does a brand, how do you think of that? You stay off the platform. There's so many amazing places here where you can spend money. So what does a brand do? This is one of the questions. What do you do then if you're a brand? That was one of the questions from Sarah that I saw before.

I think this is an easy one. I think there are more good places to spend your money than there is money, right? I mean, anyone who's in ad sales, you're probably selling a good product and it's really hard. I mean, it's really hard to find dollars. There's a ton of good places to put your money. So why on earth would you go somewhere that has this level of risk

and fuel this culture of cruelty? I can understand why people advertise on Meta. I can understand. If I'm starting a business, people call me all the time or email me all the time. We have a small business. We're getting bigger. And we agree with you. I have teenage daughters. I have a problem with Meta. And I'm like, oh, advertise on Meta. I don't believe in coal-fired plants, but I still turn on my lights. These companies have a monopoly. They have unbelievable ad stacks, huge ROI. Twitter has all of the calories of meta and alphabet, but none of the great taste. So why on earth? There's a ton of great places.

So when would be a good time to go back there? When? Well, when there's a new owner. That's it. Okay. What do you think? If I got it wrong? I wouldn't advertise on there. There's just too much.

I don't have comments on it. I have been on Twitter since the very beginning. And it's really hard. And we love it. We love the product. People think we hate it. We do not hate it. We hate what they've done to the place.

And so I think one of the problems is that I'm not sure it was ever a particularly good place for brands to be necessarily, except for sort of some fun moments. Like if you're, you know, you're a Steak'Em or whoever the brand happens to be or movies coming out. That's the kind of thing people see it as they scroll through. You can see a lot of great uses for that. But what's really hard is that you are next to. I've never seen so much neo-Nazi anti-women. And what's interesting, I was at an event yesterday and someone was like, why do you don't like Twitter?

I like it. I have a good time on it. And it's, of course, a white guy. I'm sorry. I showed him my Twitter. He's like, what? What has happened? Like the experience that certain people get on that platform versus others is very different.

And I don't think it's safe. I don't think it's, it's actively unsafe for many, many people. You said something that's really- And I'm not a shrinking violet. I just don't like being called a bitch and the C word three times a day. You said something that was really powerful once to me.

You said, you know, these guys have never been victims. So they don't understand the potential for victimization. That's correct, correct. Because the majority of them, I feel entirely safe in Manhattan. I walk around with my AirPods and I never even think about safety. But I'm 6'2", 190. Very few people I don't think are going to fuck with me.

Right. I'm walking with my sister, who's not a big person, and someone darts out of a building and she jumps. Yep. And I'm like, Jesus, that was a bit of an overreaction. And she's like, easier for you to say boss. Yeah, I would agree. And when I see the shit you have to put out, I feel sorry for myself

because I say something about Tesla or Apple or the headset, people kind of come after me. I go on your feed and I see the sewer of toxicity. And I'm like, how can they, so they're going to take somebody who's a journalist, who has a big following, who's credible, and they're going to let people say these things to you? Yes. In a feed of a person that's well-known and has a lot of followers. And by the way, that person doesn't come in and say, hey, stop that. Where else would you find this?

Right, so it's difficult from a brand perspective. I haven't used it for that. And that's a shame. No way. That's a shame. I've never, I've always wondered when it was going to get good. Let's ask some questions to the audience. We don't have a lot of time.

What would be your, this is anonymous, what would be, and make them pithy, Scott, what would be your advice to middle or senior executives in their mid 40s? In the ad business? Yeah, I guess so. These aren't truckers. You go first. No, um, learn AI, learn it, learn it, learn it, learn it, learn it, learn it, like really use it and understand it and how you can use it for your job i was in the brand business my superpower was attracting and retaining good people and i didn't realize until i was in my 40s that sitting young people down who had the opportunity to go to google or go to meta that the superpower was to

ensure you had a vested interest in understanding what success looked like for them. And that is, do you want to manage people? Do you want to work from home? Do you want fame? Do you want to present on stage? Are you all about money and willing to work 12 hours a day and we'll pay you more? And I think there's a role for that person. All right. Do you want to live in London? Because the key when you're a manager, and by the time you're in your 40s, you are a manager, you have to be able to attract and retain good people. Good people. That's the whole shooting match is good people. All right. Pithy. Okay, what's the biggest untapped opportunity for brands right now?

What are we not talking about here that we should be talking about? You answer that one, Mr. Brand. I'm wrapping myself in the flag right now in terms of, I mean, it's impossible not to be politicized. I think there's a big opportunity to start loving our countries again.

And this sounds very boomerish. I'm actually Gen X. But I think this is a wonderful moment for the West. And that is we have more together right now in the West than we've been since World War II. And more when you think about the fact that our enemies are now our allies against an autocratic murderer. And we're winning. And it strikes me that we're not embracing our flags, the West, democracy, that we aren't celebrating our collective victories. So in a brand, doing that as a brand strategy. Well, brands used to wrap themselves in their flag a lot. And now that has become, unfortunately, we're sort of raising a generation of young people that don't seem to like their

countries very much. But I think a lot of, for lack of a better term, wrapping ourselves in the flag of the West, democracies. I think we have a lot to be proud of right now from a brand standpoint. All right. So this is Scott's legs. This is someone called Scott's legs. Let's just take a moment with that. I'm a brand strategy director at an agency, Scott. If you were in my position today, where would you direct your energy to set up your career for success? Pithy. If you're just an economic animal, disruption where they create a lot of new value is a great place to position your human capital. Most of you have more time than money right now. So your human capital is where you want to be thoughtful around you,

invest it where you invest it. The, if you're just an economic animal, the place to invest your human capital is the most disruptible industry in the world. And that's healthcare leveraging AI. I think AI, I'm an AI optimist. I think AI is going to help a mother whose kid has diabetes, who spends five months a year of her life managing that child's diabetes. I think the dispersion of healthcare with AI-assisted tools and technologies, the smart cameras and smartphones, is going to create a series or dozens of 10, 50, and 100 billion dollar companies that aren't even named yet. So if I was just an economic animal who was certified, who could get to a big city, who had skills, who was willing to work hard,

who understood brands, who understood technology, I would try and get into AI and healthcare. And healthcare. All right. Doug M., Apple's Vision Pro has the potential to finally establish AR as the consumer masses worldwide. Jokes aside, do you see any potential in the technology? I want you to give me one thing you think it'll be good for, and don't say porn. Don't. Yes. No, porn.

Porn. You like this shit. I don't. We don't want anything that can eat you or you can eat came from your peripheral vision that's why outdoor advertising still works today there's nobody like wandering around your peripheral vision if you have if you hear footsteps behind you in the same pattern for longer than 10 seconds with these glasses you're not going to put on ai and see someone behind you can actually you answer this had you used them you would know that what do you think it's going to be used for? I think it's going to be used for

work. For work. Okay. Work. I think the meeting stuff, it's going to get rid of screens everywhere. It's going to put screens everywhere, everywhere. And that's a good thing? Well, you don't need a screen anymore. Like you don't need a physical screen. You find that depressing. I find it freeing that you can work from anywhere and do your work and then take it off and then move on not have everything not being attached to a phone is like I think the greatest thing for society to do you take it off then it's done you've tried it I haven't you're a tech journalist I'm not entertainment I defer to you the immersive qualities of entertainment the best I've seen I I've seen them all. I think it's really something.

It's really something. And education. I think it'll be good for you. I think the good money is on what you say here. Yeah. All right. I'm going to give you this one. It's anonymous.

We have two more. We've only a few seconds left. Is there a female leader and even better lesbian leader that you don't think is getting enough attention? We need an anti-Elizabeth Holmes. What do you think? Taylor Swift. We need an anti-Elizabeth Holmes. What do you think?

Taylor Swift. I love Marguerite Vestager. I think Angela Merkel was wonderful. I think Senator Amy Klobuchar is fantastic. Gretchen Whitmer. Governor Whitmer. Can you name a Republican woman or a European leader here? I'm assuming you're not going to say Marie Le Pen, but go ahead. I was a bit you're not gonna say Marie Le Pen but I was a big fan of the leader in Scotland who's in hot water right now

anyways yeah there's a ton of them I don't we are incredibly sexist when it comes to our leadership there are now more the one thing that all leaders have in common is they went to college and there's been more women coming through college now for 40 years in the Europe the U.S., and yet only 24 percent of our elected leaders are women. Because instinctively, we not only, A, don't want to put on a headset, but we conflate leadership with depth of voice and height. And so when you have a guy with a lot of hair and a deep voice, that's hello, Mr. Senator. When you have a woman who is five foot five and has a high-pitched voice, who has 140 IQ, that's hello, school board president. So until we educate younger people

that leadership, we have to modulate. Leadership is not a function of physical attributes. But anyways, my point is 76, that's the thing we got applause for. 76 percent. There are more women eligible and qualified for leadership positions, and yet there are a quarter of them. So we have to, I mean, something's got to change. Something's got to change. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply.

Details at Fizz.ca. All right, very quickly. Wins or fails? You only have a second. I mean it. Okay. My fail is that a lot of people at this conference want you to have a reasonable facsimile of your life. They want you to work on a screen.

They want you to swipe left or swipe right instead of trying to initiate a conversation with somebody. They want you to trade on an app instead of actually working to learn money, to earn money. They want you to develop relationships online. Everything is a shittier analog of the real life experience. And you should always opt for the analog experience around anything. I think you should get into the office.

I think you should approach people in person to establish friendships, mentorships, and romantic relationships. And I think at any opportunity, you should say yes to the analog side of things. I think we are sequestering from one another. We're mammals. We're meant to be together.

And I don't like headsets or anything that separate us. I think it's terrible for us as a species. These reasonable facsimiles of a life that tech wants you to lead, these low calorie, low risk entry into different types of relationships will ultimately make you more depressed and less happy. Endure rejection. That's what real victory feels like is after rejection. My win is Sally Ride. Four days ago was the 40th anniversary of Sally Ride. She was the first woman. She shattered the glass orbit. She was the first woman in space. As far as we know, she was the first gay person in space. She was also the youngest person in space. She was 32 years of age.

Got a PhD in physics. Spent years training. She operated the robotic arm. She spent more time in space to that point than anybody else. Died tragically very early of pancreatic cancer. And that is a real astronaut. I don't like these astronauts who pay a lot of money so they can go one six thousandth of the distance and then call themselves astronauts. And some, the guy on the yacht outside here, Jeff Bezos is not my astronaut. My win is Sally Ride. Okay, that's a good one. Very nice. I'll very briefly say, I have to say it's very hard.

It's really nice coming to Europe from the U.S. It's really kind of ugly there. The discourse is just exhausting and Trump has exhausted us and he still won't leave. So for a minute getting away, my win is not paying attention to something that asshole says. So I have to say, you get away from here and you think how noisy and ridiculous the U.S. must seem to all of you. And I'm not insulting the U.S. I love the U.S., but I'm hoping for better days in that regard. And we'll see where that goes. But you're not every second sort of in this state of partisan agony that has just not stopped for it looks like there's a lot of safety problems

and it's a failure of technology. It's a failure of letting people pay for these kinds of things. And we have to, and the amount of money that's going into these rescue efforts, although if I was a family member, I'd want that to happen. It's an incredibly sad and also touching story,

but it's a failure. those poor people are caught down there, no matter who they are. And obviously, they're very wealthy. I think it's a failure that we also make fun of them, make fun of the whole thing and decry them for that. But we should be focusing on other things than the past. And so I really, I do hope we really rethink how we're spending our money and how we're doing things going forward. Anyway, on that bummer of a fucking note. Okay, we want to say thank you so much for seeing us here.

We don't do live things very much. We do things remotely. And again, we're having a moment here right now. We're almost never together. And also just anyone that comes up and says hi. Thank you so much. It's so nice. We love it.

We love it. We love it when you do. And please send in questions and stuff. We're going to be doing a lot of shows with more questions. We really appreciate all the feedback we get from people. We know we're funny and everything else. We're trying to provide you insight and just a little bit of cooperation of people that don't always agree, largely because Scott is largely wrong about so many things.

Anyway, let me read us out. Or let me you read us out. There you go. That's great. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretod engineered this episode. You'd think I'd have this down by this point. Thanks also to Lauren Stark, Drew Burrows, Miel Silverio, and Gaddy McBain.

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. We're mammals. We're meant to touch.

We're meant to be together in person. We're meant to take risks. We're meant to have friends. We're meant to hug. We're meant to take risks. We're meant to have friends. We're meant to hug. We're meant to kiss each other and we're meant to drink a shit ton of Rose. Let's get to the good work of being mammals. All right, thank you.