The Best One Yet - 🎀 “Summer of Barbie” — Mattel’s movie blitz. Model A’s flying car. America’s Jobs surprise.

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Mattel’s Barbie movie just put on a master class in marketing — It’s not an ad campaign, it’s an “ad champagne” Today’s Jobs Report is expected to be huge — but it’s also expected to be the most confusing, so we’re jumping into it TBOY-style. And the “Model A” flying car just got FAA approval for a test flight — but just like the spork, the best of both worlds can actually be worse. (FYI: Here’s that Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse Airbnb we were talking about: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/857387972692815761?source_impression_id=p3_1688703735_WWZd9Vxe9caTsIF0) $MAT $HAS $SPY Want merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.com Follow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypod And now watch us on Youtube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Friday, the real Friday, July 7th. And today's pod is the best one yet. July 7th. 7th. Double lucky number next. And Jack, you just went to Costco and spent $700, didn't you?

I told you not to remind me. I mean, I can't believe you roll up to Costco and you spent $800, man. That is absolutely incredible. This is Costco-flation that's occurring right now. I'm co-hosting with a guy who spent $900 of Costco. Not too shabby, Jack. You are predicting this weekend, I'm pretty sure. I think I know what your Saturday is going to be.

Jack, first story, what are we got for the five? The Barbie movie isn't out for two more weeks, but the Barbie movie is already a master class in marketing. The Barbie movie is not a marketing campaign. This is marketing champagne. For our second story, today's jobs report may be the 15th in a row that stumps economists. And it's all thanks to your mid-summer vacation. And our third and final story is flying.

The flying car. The flying car. The FAA just handed out its first ever flying car learner's permit. But does the flying car face the spork paradox? Or can we call it a foon? These are the questions, Jack. But yet he's before we hit that fantastic mix. Just the perfect mix of stories to go into a weekend with, man.

Nick, can you tell me the worst part of traveling? Well, Jack, I can tell you the worst part of traveling. It isn't the TSA lines and it isn't the airline delays. It's your luggage. No, Yetis, it's your luggage. Packing, schlepping, forgetting something back at home. Bags, they are the worst part of the entire travel experience. But get this, one Japanese airline will now help you travel without packing any bags. We repeat, Japan Airlines wants you to travel with zero, count of zero luggage. It's called anywhere, anywhere. It's kind of clever, and this

company wants to arrange your wardrobe for your trip. Besties, we know what you're thinking. You're a little confused we were two. We're going to break it down for you. When you book your ticket with Japan Airlines, you also give them your clothing size and your hotel's address. It sounds a little creepy, but here's the reason why. When you arrive at your hotel, you're going to find laid out on the bed are eight outfits waiting for you. That's two weeks of outfits for your trip provided by your airline. That is zero bags that you have to pack provided by your airline. And this sounds pretty useful because you never pack enough undies for your trip. And you never bring the right shoes for your trip. But you always bring too many pairs of socks. I mean, I would have been fine with just one pair,

Jack. I'm always fine with just one pair. Now, this is actually intended to cut down on the airline's carbon footprint. No luggage, lighter plane lighter fuel save the planet. But to emphasize sustainability even more, the clothing they're going to provide you is secondhand clothing. Not only are they not your pants, they used to be someone else's pants. Japan Airlines. No luggage, no idea what you'll be wearing. Luggage, you just got disrupted in aisle 34. Sign me up for a pair of 3432. Hey, Japan Airlines, fly us to Tokyo?

We're willing to test this thing out. First class guinea pigs right here. Let's hit our three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more.

So just start the show. Start the show. For our first story. Have you noticed a lot of Barbie stuff lately out there, Jack? It's not just you. It's Barbie. Yeah, like literally. It is Barbie and it's a specific thing.

Mattel has pulled off a masterclass in the marketing blitz. Jack, jump into that pink tankini and grab me some pom-poms. Let's talk Barbie, my friend. Barbie is the top-selling toy at publicly traded Mattel. Mattel, the $7 billion toy giant. They have been pulling away from Hasbro for the last couple years. And the new CEO of Mattel, the current CEO, took over. in 2018, as sales for Mattel had been falling for years. Okay, so the new CEO takes over five years

ago and here's what he does. He comes up with a new strategy that can be summed up by this single quote. The bigger opportunity for Mattel is going outside the toy aisle. The bigger opportunity is outside the toy aisle. The bigger opportunity isn't selling toys. It's selling other stuff related to our toys. And that is why Mattel is whipping up 17 different live action movies about its toys coming out over the next few years. And the first one, you know what it is. It's pink. It's pink. It's Barbie.

Barbie, the live action movie starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and a whole lot of abs and biceps. It's not out until July 21st, but it's all the rage already. Yet he's here's why Jack and I wanted to talk about this story. Barbie, the doll, has already pulled off the largest marketing blitz in advertising history. Mattel's Barbie team has launched a... over 100 brand collaborations before the movies even come out. Can just repeat that, Jack?

How many collaborations? 100. But here's the key yeties. It's not just the quantity of collaborations Barbie's doing, which is a large number. That's a hundred. That's a lot. It's the diversity of industries representing in those collaborations.

Exactly, Jack. Now, of course, they're doing the collaborations in the fashion and beauty industry. That's Barbie's bread and butter. Right. For example, you can buy a Ken T-shirt from the Gats. Or browse the collection of a hundred and forty, and 45 different Barbie clothing items over at Bloomingdale's.

You can brush your hair with a hot pink Barbie brush from Alta Beauty. Or when you head to the beach, you can put on a swimsuit outfit that you bought at Target with their Barbie partnership. But Barbie also launched collaborations with boring traditional old industries. Okay, that's where we got curious. Really boring, really old industries are partnering with Barbie. Like rugs. Barbie partnered with rugable for a pink Barbie branded rug. Or cars. Barbie partnered with General Motors for an official Barbie electric car.

Barbie even partnered with progressive insurance to bundle Barbie's policies for home and auto insurance. Is that Jake from State Barber? No, it's not. It's Ken. But Barbie did not stop there, did she, Jack? Even the tech industry has partnered with Barbie. Microsoft just made a pink Barbie Xbox with six different pink controllers. Airbnb will let you rent Barbie's Balibu Dream House on the beach. And if you think we're making this up, we're not.

We'll include the link to that Barbie real-life dream house in today's podcast description. According to Muckrake, in just the past month, 86,000 articles have been written about the Barbie movie. And get this, only 2% of those articles were actually about the movie. 98% of them were about these brand collaborations. And that's not even the wildest part. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Mattel? This isn't an advertising campaign.

This is advertising champagne. Hey, Edie, do you want to know the real wildest part? Here it is. Mattel isn't spending money on any of this brand awareness. In fact, it's the opposite. Mattel is making money on all of these brand collaborations. On each of those thousands of items sold, Mattel is getting a reported 5 to 15% cut of that sale.

Every pink ferole, every pink t-yip. shirt, every pink policy of insurance that you buy, Mattel takes a 15% cut. So here's what Jack and I are saying, and we just want to double emphasize this. Mattel gets the brand awareness of you seeing that Barbie Dreamhouse on Airbnb, which might lure you into the theaters to buy a ticket on July 21st. Mattel is also getting paid for each Barbie dream house that gets rented on Airbnb. That's the double dip. And that is why this isn't an ad campaign. No, the way Jack and I see it, this is ad champagne. For our second story, we just got a preview of the monthly jobs report. And honestly, this thing was huge. Jobs data is better than ever, but people are still afraid they might lose

their jobs. I mean, Jack, let's whip out the calendars over here. Looks like today is jobs day. The first Friday of every month, it's a monthly tradition. It's like a monthly tradition. I call up Jack. He calls up me. We talk about the numbers. We decide if we're going to put it on the pot. This morning, the government is going to tell us how many jobs were added in last month, the month of June. But yesterday, we got a preview from ADP, the payroll firm, about how many jobs were created in America? Jack, how are we looking? And according to that private company, in June, the jobs market was booming. Yeah, can we jump into the numbers, my friend? What do we got, Jack? Last month, 497,000 new jobs were created in America. To sprinkle on a little more context here,

that is double economist expectations. Oh, and half of those. new jobs created last month? Where were they, Jack? We are curious. They were in the leisure and hospitality industries. Half of those new jobs were in the hotel and restaurant industries. South Beach and Broadway. You're seeing Lion King and then you're doing a matinee with Book of Mormon, baby. Revenge travel is still powering the economy. Jack and I actually whipped up an equation for this. Here it is. 7 o'clock dinner plus 9 o'clock show equals GDP. Cha-ching, cha-choo-ching. But a funny thing that Nick and I are struggling to square. Yeah, Jack and I are looking at these incredible numbers and we're like, wait, there's something strange going on here.

Both economists and workers in this economy can't understand what's happening. Everyone is confused because for 14 straight months, economists have underestimated the U.S. economy. For 14 straight months, we've heard CEOs constantly mention recessions in their earnings calls. And yet, for 14 straight months, more jobs have been created. than economists expected. And over the last 14 months, the unemployment rate has been below 3.7% the whole time. I mean, Jack, you and I were a couple of millennials here. Have we seen unemployment at that level before? We've never seen unemployment below today's levels. In our entire lifetimes, we've never seen unemployment like this. So today's jobs report, it's probably going to be huge.

Huge. And that's going to confuse economists, CEOs, and everybody. It's so good. It makes no sense. Why is the economy doing so well? No one gets it. It feels like we should just cut to a takeaway. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are everyone in the economy? Everyone is clinging to their chairs in case the music stops. It is the other key detail in yesterday's jobs report. It's that the number of job resignations fell. Yeah, the great resignation from the pandemic.

That's over. People have quit from quitting their jobs. And here's why that's happening. For 14 months now, people have been expecting a recession. Despite the still strong economy, people are afraid that layoffs are coming for them. So here's what's happening. Everyone who has a job is clinging to that job. No one wants to not have a job if the economy does eventually drop.

No one wants to get caught without a chair if the music stops. For our third and final story before the weekend, the first truly flying car just got FAA approval to test out real flights. But Nick, as the spork shows us, the best of the first. of both worlds can actually be worse. It can actually be worse. But Jack, before we kick this off, let's do a little trivia here. The first flying car. Who invented the first ever flying car? The Wright brothers? Oh, no, that's just an airplane. That was just an airplane. You're going to have to go further back on this thing. Oh, are you talking about the Da Vinci, like helicopter thing? Yeah, Leonardo Da Vinci. It was a flying car, Jack. Let's give the guy full credit. It was a flying car. He

drew the whole thing up. Didn't he just draw it though and never actually built it? It was a doodle and he got distracted, but the idea was there, man. The idea was there. He had really distracted. Yeah, he had some other things to, like, cut open and write and draw about. In the meantime, yet he's humankind has been obsessed with creating a car that can fly for decades. Yes, ever since the Jetsons whizzed across our parents' TV screen in those cartoon flying cars. George Lucas stoked even more thirst for the flying car with the Star Wars cruisers from episode two. That's right. And in real life, entrepreneurs have put a whole bunch of sweat, but most of the mostly tears into trying to build a flying car.

Because the reality is, no matter how much venture capital money you got, nobody has made something that both drives on the streets and flies in the air. But this week, we got a milestone. We got progress towards that elusive goal. Jack, what's the latest news on the flying car? The government just handed its first approval to test a flying car in the air. Yiddies, we are talking about Aleph Aeronautics. Since 2015, they've been working on a flying car called the Model A,

and this was a technological breakthrough. The Model A, probably Model Air. The Model A just got approved to test out real flights in the air from the FAA. We're talking about the first car that will legally be allowed to fly as well as drive. You'll need a driver's license and a pilot's license to sit behind the wheel. Like, the only person who can use this right now is Tom Cruise. Like, legally, he's the only human being who can actually work this thing. Now, here's the value proposition that Aleph Aeronautics paints out for you on their website.

Have you ever been stuck in traffic and dreamed that you could fly over all the other really slow, annoying cars? I have. And that is exactly what this flying car is designed to do. Because we're talking about an innovation that is street legal and can get up to 200 miles on an electric battery. But when you're stuck in traffic and not moving, it can lift itself up vertically and then drive in the air over all that traffic. You're on I-95 outside New Haven right now. See you later, suckers. See you, suckers.

But Jack, as always, the real question here, it's the price. Is avoiding traffic worth the estimated $300,000 of this electric helicopter car thing? I-95 can get pretty annoying. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the flying car industry? The flying car is the spork of transportation. It's the spork, the spork, the spork. Oh, this spork. This spoon with forky spines.

Jack's obsessed with the spork, by the way. I prefer to call it a spoon. It gets me every time. It just sounds so right to say, but so wrong. On paper, a spork or a spoon sounds amazing. Yeah, it's a spoon and a fork. It's got the best features of both. But in reality, nobody keeps a spork in their silverware drawer.

Because it's an inferior spoon and an inferior fork. People prefer a good spoon and a good fork, not one that tries to combine both. So as Jack and I are evaluating this industry, we're thinking a flying car could have the same fate as the spork. The spork paradox. Right. When you combine two great products and get one mediocre product. Well, I have a bad car that also flies poorly when you can drive a good car to a perfectly good plane. One reason we still don't have a flying car, it could be that it's the spark of transportation.

When the best of both worlds is actually worse. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for the Real Friday? The Barbie movie has launched over 100 brand collaborations and, it's getting paid for those collaborations. That's not an ad campaign. That is ad champagne. For our second story, the jobs report today will probably baffle us with really strong jobs growth. But people are hanging on to their jobs in case the music stops.

And our third and final story is the flying car. It may never succeed because of the spork paradox. Oh, the spork paradox. When the best of both worlds is actually worse. The spoon paradox. The food is kind of the sport paradox of the sport paradox, Jack. You know what I mean? You don't know, Dave?

Yeah. Yeah. But yeties, here's the two stories we didn't cover on the pod, but we think you need to know today. First, Twitter's lawyers are accusing meta of illegally hiring ex-Twitter people to build their rival threads. Nick, Zuck versus Elon. It's literally going to be a physical fight. It's already a business fight.

And now it's becoming a legal fight. And finally, stocks fell yesterday because the hot jobs market that we're, We just mentioned it's bad for inflation. Wall Street thinks the Fed might pump the brakes again with higher interest rates. Now, time for the best fact yet. And instead of the best fact yet, Jack and I decided to whip up a prediction for you. Everyone's talking about Instagram threads. Threads, the knockoff, the copycat, the stage five zucking of Twitter.

Threads hit 30 million downloads in just the first 12 hours, which sounds huge. 30 million downloads. But Jack, what's our prediction on this thing? We predict a billion people will actually download threads. Because Instagram makes it so easy to download threads. But only one tenth that number will actually use threads. Because Threads is the same as Twitter and Twitter hasn't grown in 10 years. So we're setting the over or under at 100 million threads users.

Threads is going to get to a billion downloads, but only 100 million will actually use it. Yeties, you looked fantastic all week. Jack, it was just, it was special. It was amazing. was delicious to be back on the microphones with you. Well, you're the podfather now. But Jack, that means you are the Padre. I'm the Padre. You are the Padre. Yetis this weekend, celebrate some wins.

Hit us up at Tea Boy Pod. Jack and I will see you Monday. We'll see you Monday. I can't wait. And before we go, congratulations to Yeti's Kate Corrigan and Peter Larson, who just got engaged on the island of Iskia in Italy. Peter is stationed there serving in the Navy. Thank you, Peter.

And thanks for saying. Yes, Kate. And Adam Rosini just got a new job at a company in Belmont, which is just outside Boston. And congratulations to Emily Somack, who just had a new baby girl down in Brooklyn. And Dylan Mellinger is celebrating a 35th birthday at the Monaco Grand Prix, not too shabby. Happy birthday to Agia Poccarell in Toronto, Canada. And David Nodden turned in 46. Happy birthday in Oxnard, California.

Happy birthday to Weston Atwood, celebrating on the way to work just outside Boston. to Boston. And to anyone else who's celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Just outside Boston. Celebrate the wins. This is Nick and Jack and I both own shares of Airbnb.