The Best One Yet - 🗞️🚨 "We launched a newsletter" — Hot vs. Cold Coffee. Threads’ zucking playbook. White Paint’s climate solution.

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Sign up at news.tboypod.com for The Best Newsletter Yet Maxwell House coffee just unveiled instant iced latte technology — Because Iced Coffee is 75% of coffee ordered away from home, but only 7% at home. Meta’s Threads was the fastest app ever to hit 100M downloads as it took on Twitter — But we just got the numbers on how things have gone since (not well). And this July has been the hottest month ever recorded, by far — One solution to climate change may actually be the whitest white paint ever created (but only if it’s profitable). $META $KHC $SBUX 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. Welcome back. It is Monday, July 31st. And today's pod is the best one yet. It is a T-boy. Tomorrow is August 1st, which means tomorrow is vacation season officially. Dusting off that passport, are you, Nick?

Why don't we circle back September 9th? How does that sound to you? Oh, is that your out-of-office message? If it's really important, you can email my co-host, Jack, he'll get back to you immediately. Yeah, right. That's not the arrangement. First story. What do we got for the show, Jack?

Maxwell has just unveiled the biggest innovation in coffee since half and half. Because iced coffee dominates the streets, but hot coffee dominates the sheets. For our second story, Meta's Threads was the fastest growing app of all time as it took on Twitter. The Yetis, Jack and I got some new numbers, and we have got to share those new numbers. And our third and final story, this July, has been the hottest month on earth ever recorded by far. And one big solution may be a white paint from a coffee. college startup. That is a fantastic mix of stories. That is a wonderful mix of stories, Jack. Before we hit that mix, though, A-B-L-E. A-B-L-E, Yiddies, you know what that stands for? Always

B launching everything. This week, we're launching something, the biggest launch of the T-Boy era. Because Jack and I are launching the best newsletter yet. The T-Boy Daily Email Newsletter. The T-Boy newsletter, this podcast. now in words. It's going to have our fresh takeaways. In your inbox. Our best facts yet. In your inbox. Arco, okay Chris. Breaking your inbox. But Jack, you sprinkle on a little context for us over there. Nick and I have a long history in the newsletter game. Yeah, Jack and I whipped out the whiteboard. Together, we have written 2,438 newsletters. We have permanent carpal time. Yes, we do. Can't move my left pinky. Yet he's our first company was called Market

Snacks. It was a daily business newsletter. And Jack and I sold that. company to Robin Hood and it became Robin Hood snacks. Maybe you read it. So why are two full-time microphone loving podcasters adding an email right now? Jack, that's a fantastic question. What's the answer and the takeaway? You are the answer. It's because of you, Yeties. Last year, we did a survey of our audience in 2000 of you responded. In 2000 of you answered what you wanted from the best one yet. And guess what your number one request was? It was merch. Actually, it was merch. You wanted t-shirts and you wanted hats. That's what you wanted.

But the number two request was a newsletter. It was a newsletter, a newsletter so you can finally keep track of our takeaways. A newsletter so you can share our stories with your buddies more easily. And Jack and I decided that this newsletter, it's got to be that and more. Yet he's every day Nick and I curate dozens of potential stories, but only three of them make this podcast. So Jack and I are adding those extra stories that you need to know to the newsletter. Sign up now for the T-boy newsletter at news.t.tboypodpod.com. First T-boy newsletter drops this Wednesday.

News.totteboypod.com sign up right now. The newsletter's coming. In the meantime, Jack, let's hit our three stories. We've done 2,438 of these, but this is the best one yet. It's a T-Boy. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet.

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. Our first story, Kraft Heinz, is reviving the Maxwell House coffee brand with an iced foam breakthrough technology. There's a surprising economic difference between iced coffee and hot coffee. Yes, there is. But, Jack, if we're going to talk about this story, let's go back to 7.30 a.m.

Jack, what is the best part of waking up? Folgers in your coffee. No, it's not. It's Maxwell House. Oh, shoot. Bite my talk. three out of four times we get this wrong, man. Sorry, Maxwell House.

Well, Maxwell House happens to be owned by Kraft Hines, but it was founded back in 1892. 1892. That's before half and half got invented. Back then, all they had was quarter quarter. But yet is for 100 years, Maxwell House was the top selling coffee brand in America. Maxwell House was the coffee brand for a century. But today, Maxwell House has fallen to number three.

For 20 years now, Maxwell House has been losing to full. soldiers and Starbucks and your local organic co-op brand with the guy with six tattoos on his forum. But to get their groove back, they just launched a new product. A moonshot product. Instant at-home iced latte. Nobody's pulled that off before. No one's pulled this off, Jack. This is NASA level stuff. And what's the key part of this product? The highlight? Mixable foam. Mixable foam. Or as Maxwell House describes their technology, a gaseous form encapsulated in a matrix of starch and dairy. All you do is pour in a packet of powder into a glass of iced water and mix it up. And somehow you get an iced latte with foam.

Yeties, Jack and I have to make this clear. This is a technology breakthrough. Maxwell House didn't split the coffee bean. They split the atom with this invention. This defies the laws of physics, this new foam. This is the Manhattan Project. It's the Machiaato Project. Jack, who whipped this up a barista or Oppenheimer?

But yeties, we noticed a strange thing about how we consume coffee in America. Yes, there's a strange phenomenon in the coffee industry. Iced coffee and hot coffee occupy two different worlds, two different economies. Hot coffee at home, iced coffee when you're out. Let's jump into the numbers here, Jack. At coffee shops, the vast majority of coffee sold right now is cold coffee. That's what sold. You're making your hot girl walk out the store with an iced double-digit latte in your hand.

Jack, can you whip up the Starbucks earnings for us, please? Starbucks proves this, because 75% of the beverages they sell are iced beverages. Three out of four coffee sold at Starbucks are sold colds. But at home, it's the opposite. Only 7% of coffee consumed at home is iced coffee. Let's just repeat that, Yeti's. Only 7% of the coffee you're drinking at home is an iced coffee. Hot coffee at home, fro on the go.

Cold in the streets, hot in the sheets. Right. I think. Now, the reason we're consuming ice coffee only when we're out is because ice coffee is tough to make at home. I mean, this is your classic convenience factor, Yiddies. If you're going to commit the time, the time to make in an iced coffee, you also need to make it at scale. Yeah, if it takes five hours, you're going to make gallons worth of it, not just a convenient cup for your morning.

Only a coffee shop can pull off that kind of an operation. It requires logistics. But Maxwell House's Nobel Prize winning invention is going to change that iced coffee calculus. It's like a Trinity test in Event Day. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Maxwell House and Kraft Heinz? This instant ice latte displays the 80-20 rule of marketing. Ah, Yet is the 80-20 rule. Jack and I have talked to you about it before. 80% of your positive outcomes come from just 20% of the inputs.

Yeah, 80% of your success tends to come from just 20% of your efforts. Well, the way Jack and I see it, in this case, Maxwell House's new product is cold instant coffee. That's 80% of what's in the glass. But the marketing for this product is all about the foam. Just the 20% on the tippy top of your glass. But here's the key. Maxwell House knows that 20% can drive 80% of the consumer interest. So all the marketing of this new product is about this incredible foam that they somehow pulled off.

Boom, the 20% detail. Because in marketing, it's not always about the main thing. It's about those details. Exactly. It's the 80-20 rule of marketing. For our second story, we just got the numbers on threads. Meta's Twitter killer. and it was off to a hot start, but the engagement has thanked. Brace yourself, because Zuck is now opening up his infamous playbook. Threads, Facebook's Twitter copycat. Yeties, when we see a Zuckin like this, this is a stage five zucking, isn't it, Jack?

Threads was peak unoriginality from Mark Zuckerberg. Jack, apparently they were this close to just calling it other Twitter over a metal. Yeah. Well, they got 100 million downloads of threads in the first five days. Yeties, this was the fastest app ever to hit the century mark when it came to downloads. And it was July 10th when threads hit 100 million downloads in record speed. And the very next day, Jack and I predicted on this pod that threads would eventually hit 1 billion downloads. But we also predicted long term, just a 10th of those billion downloads would actually use threads.

Because getting people to download an app is fundamentally easier than retaining them as a user. Yeah, the reality, most people, don't want text-based social media. The reality is that most people want video-based social media. Pictures are hotter than letters. Like F, you look cool, but you look better under a filter.

Videos go viral more than the letter V. So here's what Jack and I find fascinating yeties. Just last week, Meta announced earnings, and Jack and I had one very particular question to get answered. Hey, Zuck, how many people are using threads? Yeah, like Zuck, you boasted about threads hitting 10 million downloads, 15 million downloads and 100 million downloads over the last three weeks.

Well, guess what? Meta would not tell us how many people are actually using threads. Which was inconvenient, wasn't it, Jack? But third-party data providers did tell us how many people are using threads. Which is very convenient, isn't it, Jack? Censor Tower just reported that engagement on threads is down 70% for a second straight week. We repeat Yetis, engagement on threads. The new fastest growing app ever is down 70%. And the time spent by those smaller number of users is down 75% on average.

All right, Jack, we got to sprinkle on more context here. So can you whip up the numbers for us from week one over threads? 150 million people use threads and average of 19 minutes per day. All right. Now, Jack, can you whip up the numbers for us from week three of threads? Just 13 million people use threads for an average of just four minutes a day. Besties, it looks like hot zuck summer is over as soon as it began. When you rip the threads in your pants, it's embarrassing.

Why the only one who that's happened to? So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at threads? Every product needs a playbook. And now it's time for Zuck's playbook. Yet, it's funny thing Jack and I noticed. Mark's meta-disciples said one word five times on last week's earnings column. What was that word, Jack? Playbook.

Playbook. They were referring to the way that metal launches, scales, and then monetizes new features and new apps. In fact, Zuck... Chuck said, we've run this playbook many times before with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, stories, reels, and more. So what's next in the playbook for threads? Hooks. Hooks.

The key to retaining users is hooks. For example, Zuck said he's going to start showing important threads in Instagram so that you'll tap into that thread and move from the Instagram app to the Threads app. And that's just one of Zuck's retention boosting hooks out there. That is page two of Zuck's infamous product playbook. Because every product needs a playbook. For our third and final story, there is a new shade of white paint that could literally save the planet. And that white paint reveals the most important force in our economy.

Yeties, if climate change had a PR team right now, they'd be thrilled with how much attention they are getting, aren't they? Every front page of every newspaper, it's about a climate change situation. And besties, that's because today is the final day of July, which happens to be. the hottest month ever recorded by far. And according to the World Meteorological Organization, July was the hottest month in 120,000 years. 120,000 years. The Sahara didn't even exist back then. We were like in interglacial periods.

And Nick, July 2023 beat July 2019's record by almost a full degree Fahrenheit. And not in the kind of way you want to get a medal for. Now, Yeti, scientists say that July's heat wave would be very, virtually impossible without the human-driven climate change. It is a sad summer out there. The air in Arizona is a sauna. The water off the coast of Florida is a jacuzzi. It's 100 degrees off the coast of Florida, which is actually a jacuzzi temperature.

And we covered the boom in air conditioners, which we called the duct tape of climate change. But that actually makes climate change worse with all the electricity it needs. But yet is Jack and I come bearing some hopeful information with a lovely takeaway. The hopeful information is the whitest. white ever. We repeat, the whitest white could save us. Yeah, it is, the most obvious way to slow climate change is to use less fossil fuels, but so far, we're incapable of that. So, in 2020, scientists over at Purdue University found another way, and that way was the whitest white. Those scientists invented a paint that was crazy white. There was any pigment of impurity in this white paint? Eat that

Sherwood, William. You think you've seen white before? You haven't seen this white before. Besties, this paint was so white, it bounces 98% of the light back off of it. It's so white that instead of absorbing light like a sunbather, it bounces all the light back out into space. And get this, Jack, could you whip up that stat we discovered in the New York Times? If this white paint covered just 2% of planet Earth, then global temperatures would stop rising. Because Yeties, if the roof of an Amazon warehouse was painted in this whitest of white color paint, they'd need way less air conditioning. Because all the heat bounces off the building, instead of being absorbed. If a Costco parking lot is painted in this whitest of white color paint,

it will be 8 to 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than it typically would be. Because the heat bounces off the ground. Yeties, what we're saying here is this is the best thing to happen to whiteness since white sliced bread. Or legacy admissions. Or Connecticut. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in everyone in the economy? The best hope for sovereign climate change is a profit puppy. Yeties, of the many things that can motivate people, the profit and incentive, it's the most reliable. Most innovations exist in this world today because the innovators thought their invention could make money. Even higher education feels the pull of the profit incentive. And this super white, whitest of white paint, it proves it. Purdue University is working on

patenting this white paint so that they can commercialize it. And if anyone deserves to profit from this whitest of white paints, it's the university and the scientists who actually created the thing. Many things can motivate innovators to innovate. Money, fame, all of the way. altruism, they're all motivators. But the most reliable incentive of all is the profit puppy. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us to kick off the week? Maxwell House invented what was thought to be uninventable, instant ice latte. And their marketing of this fabulous foam shows the 80-20 rule of marketing.

For our second story, Meta's Threads is way down on both active users and time spent. But every product needs a playbook. So Zuck is turned into page two of his infamous product playbook. And our third and final story, with the help of a federal grant, Purdue University invented a super white white that could save us from climate change. Honestly, the best hope for climate change is probably a profit puppy. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Valerie Yoken from lovely college station, Texas. Like Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper's Soda recipe is a closely held trade secret. But get this, they are extremely secretive about the Dr. Pepper Soda recipe. They are so secretive that they keep the recipe split into two parts. Half the list of ingredients is kept in a

safe at one Dallas bank and the other half of ingredients is kept in a safe at a second Dallas bank. It's like the nuclear football. You got to turn two keys at the same time. It's a bigger secret than that enchilada recipe, you still won't tell me, Jack. Never. I'll prepare it for you any time though if you come visit. You say that every time, but I want the recipe. I can't just wait three months. All right, I don't, we'll do with that later. In the meantime, Yetis, you'll look fantastic today. And you'll also look fantastic if you're reading and sharing our new T-boy newsletter.

Go to news. To news.com to sign up today. The best newsletter yet drops on Wednesday. By the way, it's free. As if we had to say that, it's free. Gwox always extra. Newsletter never. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti,

Yee Lee, the MC straight out of NYC. This is the OJB. pod father whose pod son Eli is a lucky boy. Nobody pods like this guy pods. And a happy birthday to our buddy, Daniel Briscoe down in Louisville, Kentucky. And happy birthday to Mike Bowdoin in Manchester, New Hampshire. And Damon Hall is celebrating while an active duty in the field in the military. Thank you for your service and your birthday, Damon Hall.

Happy birthday to Christy Freevolum. Drop and takeaways on her husband over in Marin County. And Julia Carpice is celebrating that birthday with a double-digit latte in the Capital One Cafe. Congratulations to Jose and Rebecca Mateo, celebrating two years together in Richmond, Virginia. And Emma Pellegrino soak up every minute of your internship over at Patagonia in Italy. Best internship ever? We'll take two.

And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a tea boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the... According to the World Meteorological. There you got it. Yeah. That was not easy.

And according to the World Meteorological Organization, mouthful. You got it. Give it one more. And according to the world meteorological, meteorological. Is that how you got it? Every other time you're saying it, yeah.