The Best One Yet - 🏈 “7 years younger” — Amazon’s football stats. Polaroid’s musical pivot. Steelcase’s ultimate office stock.

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Big Tech is gang-tackling the NFL: First Amazon won Thursday Night Football, now Apple owns the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Camera icon Polaroid just pivoted from cameras to speakers, but the real product it’s selling is an emotion. And Steelcase is #1 in office chairs for your butt, but it needs offices to get fun fast for it to survive.$AAPL $AMZN $SCSFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the because in many ways it is. Do you want to hit it like the George Costanza when he's analyzing it? Okay. That's what I was going to. That's exactly what I was going. I know. I was like, Jack's going to just know that we're channeling George Costanza on this one. Yeah, he's like, treat your next couple years like it's the last couple of years of your life.

Because in many ways. It is. Here we go. Three. Two. This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back.

It is Monday. September 26th. And today's pod is the best one yet. It's a T-boy, Nick. But Jack, who is having a worst week? The stock market or Adam Levine? Great question, because stocks fell big for a second straight week on worries that a recession is inevitable. Can we just get some stock market monogamy?

Is that too hard to ask for? This love is taking its toll on my portfolio, Nick. On our first story, Jack, what is our first story? Remember how Amazon just hosted its first ever NFL game exclusive to Prime? Well, Apple just bought the Super Bowl halftime show. For our second story, Steelcase makes the seats that hold your butts when you're in the office. So Steelcase thinks they figured out the future of the office. Our third and final story is Polaroid.

That classic camera company is the most classic of cameras. So, Jack, why did Polaroid just launch a speaker and a music app? But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix. I love this mix. We're dusted open the old Horters' Alman. to week 130. Things were running out of because the pandemic. Jack and I have been keeping track for you.

You thought we forgot. We didn't forget. We didn't forget. There's more chapters to be written. This week, we are running out of butter. Not margarine, not ghee, not some rando substitute butter. Hide your egos. Hide your toast.

We've got a butter shortage. I can't believe it's out of butter, Jack. Yet he's according to the Wall Street Journal, dairy farms are a shrinking breed in this country. And a lack of dairy milk is trickling down to the the butter dish. Because apparently butter sits at the bottom of the moo chain. Yeah, because milk gets first turned into yogurt or into ice cream or into cheese or back into more ice cream. Only then does the leftover dairy that we still have get churned into butter. Butter gets no respect,

gets no respect, man. There's no leftover milk to turn into butter right now. Ipso facto butter prices have risen twice as fast as everything else in your grocery car. That's right, butter is breaking the bank. And it's the worst timing because what are you smelling, Jack? Apple pie? Yeah, I think that's apple pie? It's bacon season. It's bacon season, baby. Yet he's in his prime time for bacon, blackberry pies out there.

And Crisco, it's not the same as butter. Don't even try. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all of our buddies baking with butter? There's not enough butter for our mothers or our brothers. Yeah, there's not enough churn, so we're feeling the burn. Grab a piece of bread and wipe up the rest of that butter from your plate. Cherish that Bricolando lakes gold like it's real gold. Because in many ways, it is.

spread our three stories. have spiked, have tackled the NFL. But we want to focus on one number. One number. The number seven. Okay, Yeties, it's not a weekend unless you go into the weekend with a stat. Like, you got to have a good staff.

You ready for this weekend, stat? Give me with a good stat. What do we got, check? Of the top 100 television programs last year, 75 of them were NFL games. Okay, three out of four, the top five most-watch TV programs were football. That is domination.

And that is why Amazon is paying a billion dollars a year to host Thursday night football. And that is why Jack and I did a story previewing the first ever NFL game exclusively streaming on Amazon last week. So Yeti's want to know, how did Amazon do in their big debut? Well, besties, we just got the numbers back from Bezos. And Mr. Bezos stood up, sat down, and stood back down again. Amazon shocked itself.

It did. In the first Thursday Night Football that they streamed exclusively, they got 13 million viewers. Sprinkle on a little context. That is 50% more viewers than the same game last year. Now, Jack, that's great for the NFL. But why is that better for Amazon? A record number of people signed up for Amazon Prime to watch the game. Get this.

More humans signed up for Amazon Prime than during any other three-hour period in Amazon's history. Yeah, that's right. A lot of uncles demanded their niece and nephew show them how to watch this damn game on the dang internet. It's making me reset password. I already put in my password. Like we said, Yetis, that is why live sports have always been the holy grail of streaming video. Nothing but live NFL and the silky smooth voice of Al Michaels could drive signups for Amazon Prime. I do love Al Michaels' his voice.

But funny timing, Yeties, because that wasn't the only big tech thing going on with football. Big Tech is gang tackling the NFL right now. On Friday, just before the weekend, the NFL announced the brand new sponsor for this year's Super Bowl halftime show is going to be Apple. It's Apple. Apple's the sponsor. It's not Pepsi. It's not Budweiser. It's not Little Caesar's Papa Domino's John either, Jack. It's Apple. Apple music got the Super Bowl halftime gig that we're going to see in February. Yeah, Puff Daddy's going to be dropping beats via FaceTime this year.

Bruno Mars is going to Shazam himself on stage with an iPad. Sounds vaguely inappropriate, but I know what you're talking about. Stevie Nix, she's going to wear AirPods and make those her microphone. Now, the real goal here isn't Apple to, like, play music in the halftime show. They've got a different motive, right, Jack? Apple's sites are set on NFL Sunday ticket. Okay, so Apple just dropped $50 million to be the sponsor of this year's Super Bowl halftime show. But experts expect that any day now, it's going to be announced that Apple's paying $2.5 billion a year

to take over the lucrative NFL Sunday ticket deal. That would mean Apple taking over basically every single Sunday NFL game. It's on DirecTV now, but that's a lame duck. It's coming to Big Tech. Apple is pulling a drone bettice here. It's following Amazon's block through the hole. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies tossing the old pigskin? The most important stat from Thursday night's game, the number seven.

Seven, S-E-E-N-7, the number seven as in seven. years younger. The average age of Amazon's Thursday night football viewer was 46 years old. Yeah. That is seven years younger than the average viewer of a typical NFL game. Now, here's why Jack and I love that number. If the NFL has any weakness right now, it's that Gen Z doesn't care about touchdowns. Yeah, that's the goal of the NFL. It's not trying to reach a bigger audience. Right. They're trying to reach a younger audience. So the NFL is big tech's ticket to taking over media. A big tech streaming is the NFL's ticket to a younger fan base. And that is why the number seven is the most important stat from Amazon's NFL debut.

For our second business story, Steelcase is the Pure Play office furniture stock that just discovered its existential mission. Steelcase must make your office fun. Okay, Yeties, you probably don't know Steelcase. In fact, like, few people. We didn't know Steelcase before this, but your butt cheeks do. Yeah, they do. In fact, steel case is probably your most touched product if you add up all the numbers. And that's because Michigan-based steel case is the number one company in office furniture.

They've been putting four legs on seats with a backrest for 110 years. Jack, these guys are a $900 million dollar dunder mifflin of the mesh seat chair. If it's got eight legs like a spider and it rolls around and swivels, that's a steel case. Yeah, it does. You will recognize their sleek conference tables of Rich Mahon. They're encased in steel. When offices closed during the pandemic, Steel case was encased in doom. That's right. Investors expected four years of frozen business because offices were going to be shut down.

But here's the strange thing happening with this once consistently profitable business. We got a vaccine and a few boosters. Uh-huh. Yeah, we do. The pandemic is mostly in the rearview mirror now. And yet, Steel case's stock is still at its lowest level since 2009. Other office-related stocks have recovered. because the pandemic is waning.

But Steelcase hasn't. Now, the latest reports show that office occupancy is up, but it's still only at 47% of where it was from before the pandemic. So people aren't buying from Steelcase. Why would an office splurge on an ergonomic chair where cities have millions of unused chairs right now? I can swivel all the way around, Jack. Speaking of swivel, Steelcase is trying to pull a pivot right now. Yeah, this is what Jack and I find fascinating about Steelcase.

They have pivoted their core purpose. Selling office chairs is now Steelcase's secondary mission. Yeah, Steelcase isn't doing like work from home sofas or home office ottomans or like an office chair but with like a really nice big cup holder. They're still doing office furniture. Right. But their number one mission now is inspiring. Exactly. Their number one mission is inspire office managers to make offices fun places to be.

Cupcakes in the conference room get their stats. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Steelcase office furniture? Don't punish workers with return to office. Entice them. Yeties, Jack and I jumped in T-Boy style to the investor deck from Steelcase. And we were fascinated with Slide 13. Slide 13 shows that Steelcase is consulting their clients on how not to do return to office. Slide 13 had nothing to do with furniture all about inspiration.

Slide 13 said, don't make return to office mandatory. Instead, build an office that attracts your workers' back. Don't create open office spaces, build phone boost because people want privacy. And this is key. Don't expect your workers to return to the office if it's the same office they remember from before the pandemic. Yeah, because the only way people will return to the office and the only way steel case will sell office chairs again. As if the office is a fun place to work from. It needs to be different from before the pandemic and better than a home office. If you build it, Carol from accounting will come.

Don't punish your workers with return to office. entice them. Now, a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. You know, honestly, your salad, it says so much about you. Nick, you like to blaze your own trail at the salad bar. I'm ordering a salad. I go off menu, man, like a combo of kale and croutons that has never been made before. Me?

I'm not reinventing the wheel. I like to go classic. Sweakerian thinks it's a good combo. Jack's not going to change that. Kind of like investing strategies. Someone to build a custom portfolio of stocks, crypto, and options. Others don't want to reinvent. Just give me the most standard ETF.

Whether you're tweaking your one-of-a-kind portfolio every day or prefer a more hands-off approach, Robin Hood has the tools. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy to choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-I. Limitations apply. Stocks offered by Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC.

Crypto offered through Robin Hood crypto. All investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned or part of Robin Hood, and we are not employees of Robin Hood. For our third and final story to kick off the week, Polaroid, the ancient throwback camera company Polaroid just launched its first non-camera product. It's the least functional speaker on the market. It is. And that's the point.

Yeties, we just had ourselves a record wedding season. But Jack, what was the highlight? Well, the bride was beautiful. She looked fantastic. But I love those Polaroid cameras left about the reception. That was like the new thing. You leave a Polaroid camera on the table. Everyone has a great time.

Snap a pick of yourself sliding into the photo app. The Polaroid instant camera, the opposite of an iPhone. Everyone loves it. Everyone uses it. It's a crowd pleaser. Invented in 1937 by a Harvard dropout. Polaroid invented the Insta picture. Shake it like a Polaroid picture.

The Polaroid brand became so synonymous with photography that Instagram zucked it for its very own Instagram logo. Yeah, pre-Facebook acquiring Instagram. The old logo was a Polaroid. picture. Now, all that innovation led to Polaroid hitting its peak in 1981. 21,000 people worked for Polaroid. That's a huge company. How much money were they bringing in, chap? Three billion dollars a year. Polaroid was bringing in more money than Lyft did last year. And that was 40 years ago we're talking about. But then, 2001, your dad got himself a digital camera. So did everyone. So Polaroid went bankrupt.

And then things changed in 2017. It got bought by a startup called Impossible Project and here we are today. Now Polaroid still makes cameras. Sales have been coming back, but Polaroid's newest product is the opposite of its core product. Polaroid cameras launched Polaroid speakers last week. They went from doing 100% visual to 0% visual. They used to do AV. Now they just do the A.

This is 100% audio. It's a portable speaker that is as colorful as a Tic Tac. The smallest one could fit in your purse. And the biggest one is the size of a boom box. Now, this isn't just a physical speaker, we should point out. It's also a music streamer. Polaroid went full Silicon Valley. They did.

And just launched a music app that is designed to be like an old school FM radio. But like they didn't go full Silicon Valley. They're like beep, beep, backed it up a couple steps. There's an app, but it's trying to be like the FM radio. There's only five stations. So you don't choose the music. They choose the music for you. You only choose one of the five stations they offer.

So Jack, why is a camera company now selling a speaker? Because it's actually selling something else. Feels like a takeaway moment. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Polaroid? You're never really selling a product. You're selling a feeling. Besties, Polaroid always only sold cameras, but it didn't really sell cameras. Polaroid was in the business of spontaneity.

You snap a shot, you get your photo in a moment. spontaneous. In this world of camera phones, the Polaroid camera product has become obsolete. But the feeling of spontaneity is never obsolete. A Polaroid speaker with music you don't decide? Yeah. That's not just more noise. That is spontaneity in a product. It's portable so it can be busted out any time. And there's only five stations. So you don't know what's going to play. What is more spontaneous than that? Polaroid made a speaker. They're not really making a speaker. They're selling spontaneity like they always have. Jack, can you whip up? the Monday takeaways for us over there. Amazon's NFL debut was the equivalent of throwing like seven

touchdown passes. But seven years younger, seven, the number seven, that was the most important step. For our second story, steel case does furniture, but it's focused on pep-talking offices. Don't punish workers back into the office, entice them. And our third and final story, in an on-brand move, Polaroid just launched a cute speaker. Because they were never selling a product, they were selling a feeling. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Sam Arias in the 818 Pekoyma, California. Nick, you know what animal is native to Orlando, Florida?

Talk to me. What are we thinking here? Mice. Mice. And Disney theme parks had a very interesting way of dealing with that mice situation. Yeah, in order to control the mice population at Disney's parks, they use an innovative and corky form of pest control. They use an army of cats at Disney World.

Disney used to employ an army of cats that would roam the park, find the mice, and destroy them. Disney would even monitor feed and refer to the cats as cast catmines. The Animal Kingdom included mice, and that was a problem for Disney. The teacup ride looks delicious to a mouse, but less delicious if you're eaten. We got to ask, what about Mickey Mouse? Why do you think Mickey got so big? I don't know what that means. She's like, yeah, take a lot of cats to 10.

to that torso. We've got a little off the rails here, Yetis. That smile, wasn't a smile. Underneath those light gloves? Yeah. Talons. Yetis, you look fantastic today. If you haven't yet, drop down and give us a five-star review. We love those reviews.

We love reading those reviews. We do. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. Before we go, congratulations to legendary, long-time original Kramer Yeti, Nick Kramer, Jack's brother, who just proposed to his girlfriend. My big brother, Nick, is bringing Martha Lamb into the Kramer family. Round it off.

Pump to have a new sister. And congratulations to Virginia, Catherine, who just left her corporate job and jumped into startup sharefront in New York City. And congrats to Blake Positac for the first year anniversary of his podcast over in New Canaan, Connecticut. And Adam Prude Home is turning 26th on the 26th in Ottawa, Canada. Happy birthday to Mariana Fonseca in Aventura, Florida. And Alex Cranzler's got a birthday in Los Angeles. Happy birthday to Hershey in Atlanta, Georgia.

And Howard Lau over in Portland, Oregon. Happy birthday, man. Happy 28 to Janet Moe in San Jose. And Jessica C's turning 30 over in Santa Monica. And shame on us, because Carly Gronholm just pointed out that we missed the Hobbit's birthday last week. Happy birthday to Bill Bow and Frodo. And don't forget Sam. Never forget Sam.

This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Disney, and Nick and I both own stock of Apple and Robin Hood. Now, a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. Okay, so Jack and I both worked in finance for a while. And we know the six-monitor Bloomberg jockey with charts, numbers, balances, and more charts. They got coffees in both hands while they're executing some complex trade on a soybean future. Well, we're not trying to impress with our mission control trading center. Just give us an app, please. Robin Hood, with its mobile first and intuitive design, it lets you trade with just a few quick

taps on their app. And even if things still don't seem easy, Robin Hood has your back 24-7 with its live and robust customer support. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's robin hood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Limitations apply. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, all investments involved for us. By the way, this podcast is not owned by or part of Robin Hood, and we are not employees of Robin Hood.