The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Prof G Markets: Twitter’s Rebrand to X, Mattel’s IP Playbook, and What’s Next for Snap

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

This week on Prof G Markets, Scott shares his thoughts on Twitter rebranding as “X,” and takes us through some of the best and worst branding moves in corporate history. He then takes a look at Ma...ttel’s media strategy on the heels of Barbie’s blockbusting performance at the box office. Finally, he makes a prediction about where Snap is headed given continued weakness in the digital ad market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:48 Claire, what is going on? I'm hanging in there, Scott. I'm here on the mic for the first time in, I think, a year, covering for Ed while he's off in Mykonos, as he would pronounce it. I texted him last night to see if he's had any luck pulling any ladies. Haven't heard back yet, so I don't know if that's a good sign or not. Good money's on no. Good money's on no. Well, we'll just have to stay tuned until he's back. I know our listeners are on the edge of their seats.
Starting point is 00:02:19 There you go. Talk about the markets. Let's start with our monthly review of market vitals. The S&P 500 gained about 5% in July, bringing it close to a new record high. The dollar fell around 1%. Bitcoin dropped 4%. And the yield on 10-year treasuries gained 4% after the Fed's latest rate increase. Shifting to the headlines. Meta posted double-digit revenue growth for the first time since the end of 2021. The company also lowered its capital expenditures forecast for 2023, but noted expenses could grow next year due to investments in data centers and AI. The stock rose 8%. Google beat expectations for revenue and earnings per share. It also posted its second consecutive
Starting point is 00:03:12 quarterly profit for its cloud unit and showed strength in its core search business. The stock rose 6% on that report. Meanwhile, Microsoft's stock fell 4% on news that revenue growth in its cloud business slowed quarter over quarter by one percentage point. Microsoft also gave weaker-than-expected guidance, signaling it will take time for revenue from its AI investments to materialize. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another 25 basis points, bringing the federal funds rate to a 22-year high. It was the 11th rate hike in a bit more than a year. Still, it might not be the last. And finally, UPS and the
Starting point is 00:03:52 Teamsters union reached a tentative agreement for a new contract, narrowly avoiding a strike that was set to derail a significant piece of the economy as early as tomorrow. Notably, existing part-time workers will see their pay raised to a minimum of $21 an hour up from $15.50. Scott, any thoughts? Well, let's take these in reverse order. I love the fact that the Teamsters have been able to do what the federal government should be doing, and that is get people a living wage. I don't think it should be $21 an hour. I'd like to see federal minimum wage with some exceptions in rural areas where the cost of living is much lower at $25 an hour. If minimum wage had just kept pace with GDP growth or productivity,
Starting point is 00:04:35 it'd be about $23 an hour and I think it's $7.25 right now. I think it's core to the American experience. Specifically, we're a generous, innovative, freedom-loving people, but we're also about work, and I think we need to bring dignity back to work. So, as I always like to do, I always like to contrast it with the leadership of the WGA and the Saginastra, who, despite being famous and likable, have their heads up their asses. And that is the Teamsters realized they had leverage. Contrast that with the studio, specifically Netflix, that just announced because of the writer's strike, they have $5 billion in cash on hand now because of this multilateral pause on spending that the strike has created, which is very good for Netflix. And they're going to start doing share buybacks. So one group of people, the Teamsters, had real leverage. The WGA has absolutely no leverage, I would argue, negative leverage. And get this, get this, the demands of the riders include limits on the use of AI by the studios and a certain number of riders in every rider room. This is what the Teamsters asked for and got, an increase to $21 an hour. I think that's reasonable. And two, get this, they demanded and got air conditioning in the trucks. Okay, that seems reasonable. What is the WGA asking for? A pause of AI and minimum number of riders. That would be the equivalent if the Teamsters had asked UPS for a pause on
Starting point is 00:06:00 any development around autonomous driving, which they knew they wouldn't get, they didn't even ask for it, and two, if they demanded two drivers on every UPS truck. That is how, in my view, ridiculous the riders are being, much less not recognizing that they have no leverage. Anyways, anyways, I'll stop ranting. The Federal Reserve, it feels to me like we have the Goldilocks economy right now, other than the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Our economy is the strongest in the world. Our GDP growth has been consistent, if not remarkable. Inflation, as we predicted, has come down as quickly as it went up. under a Democratic administration hoping for hyperinflation such that they could get their guy or guys back in office. And let's be honest, on the Republican side, it is all guys. And then on the far left, we have Senator Warren, you know, screaming and yelling that this increase, this irrational increase in interest rates was making it hard on working families who all of a sudden had to pay higher credit card bills. Yeah, you're right, Senator Warren. You know what's even harder on families? Hyperinflation. That's one way to really ruin an economy. And Chairman Powell was steadfast, kept raising rates, and we have historic low unemployment. Real estate prices seem resilient. And for the first time, over half of economists are now saying that we're going to have a soft landing and no recession.
Starting point is 00:07:25 So Chairman Powell has put on a masterclass, in my view, and not only a broader understanding of the economy, but having the backbone and demonstrating the leadership to just screen out all the people second-guessing him from the right and the left. Microsoft, okay, their stock's maybe down 4%, but it's up since what is the greatest corporate venture investment in OpenAI. They have started announcing that they're going to bundle AI into their Microsoft Office franchise, which is the strongest corporate recurring revenue business in the world. I bet 95% or 97% of companies that do over $10 million a year in revenue have a recurring revenue relationship with Microsoft vis-a-vis Office. Microsoft is one of those stocks you just probably want to have in your portfolio and ignored for 20 or 30 years. Google, on fire. Cloud unit showing strength. Its cloud unit went profitable for the first time, and it's never going to look back at unprofitability. Something like 70% of all generative AI unicorns are powered by the Google Cloud. Meta, big tech company of the year from a stock perspective. One of our stock picks in late 2022 was Meta. Overly Punished was trading at like 80 bucks. What is it now? Three or 400. I mean, it's just, you know, the peanut butter and chocolate of maintaining growth as you cut costs, that means champagne and cocaine for earnings. My top line revenues continue to grow while I cut costs. Oh my God, Claire, that is seriously, that is seriously crazy. So Meta is the stock of the year. I think it's increased more than any, I think it's up three or four X in the last 12 months off of lows from the end of 2022. So they're doing really well. And also, the market is giving them a greater multiple because they believe now that Mark Zuckerberg has waken up from this fever dream of the metaverse and is going to start reducing expenses around what will be kind of probably the greatest or the worst investment in corporate history, and that is this investment in
Starting point is 00:09:19 the metaverse where he's still burning, I think, $1.2 billion a month. But here's the thing, when you sit on this cash volcano called Facebook and Instagram, they can spend that kind of money and still be fine. I just want to check in on the S&P 500. It was a big week for earnings across the board. Obviously, we're focusing on big tech, but is big tech the only one seeing a bull market, or is this a broader rally? Yeah, the bull market is being kind of driven by a small number a bull market, or is this a broader rally? Yeah, the bull market is being
Starting point is 00:09:46 kind of driven by a small number of bulls, and that is the vast majority of the gains in the S&P and the NASDAQ are represented by a small number of companies. Those gains or that champagne and cocaine party, the majority of the S&P 500 has not been invited to that party. And again, it's more evidence that more and more prosperity and shareholder gains are being crowded into a small number of companies. So everyone has sort of participated in this, but it's really a small number of companies that have been driving the gains. We'll be right back after the break with a look at Twitter's rebrand. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day,
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Starting point is 00:11:40 ConstantContact.ca I just don't get it. I just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey y'all, I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own.
Starting point is 00:12:03 We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found. We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It To Me, presented by Klaviyo. We're back with Prof G Markets. Elon Musk changed the name of Twitter to X. That's it, the letter X. He got rid of the iconic bird logo, replacing it with a black and white X. And he's trying to do away with all words and verbs associated with the brand as we know it, such as tweet.
Starting point is 00:12:42 According to analysts, this rebrand wiped out somewhere between $4 billion and $20 billion in value. Scott, there are all kinds of obvious problems with this new name, from trademark violations to its association with porn. Where do you want to start? So believe it or not, I'm considered a professor of brand strategy. I started a brand strategy firm. Oh, I've heard, yeah. Yeah, so I supposedly know a little bit about this. This is just, this is like so stupid. It's not even crazy.
Starting point is 00:13:14 It's just stupid. I've never either, Elon Musk is going to rewrite the basic principles of brand equity, or we're going to look back on this as one of the most obviously visibly stupid decisions in corporate history, you know, probably 95, maybe 98% of all purchases are across brands you've heard of. You don't go out and buy a car, order a beer, or buy a shoe of a brand that you haven't heard. It's unlikely. If you've heard, if you get an email from somebody and you know them, or you've heard of them, you don't even have to know them, if you've heard, if you get an email from somebody and you know them or you've heard of them, you don't even have to know them, but you've heard of them, you're exponentially more likely to respond. So awareness is an incredible asset and it's also really expensive to build. And Elon Musk, to his credit, has been a master at creating awareness, mostly through the use of Twitter and these reckless, sometimes brilliant moves. He's in the news every 24, 48 hours
Starting point is 00:14:05 and recognizes that if I maintain awareness across my brands, I won't have to spend money on marketing and my margins will be at the highest in the industry, specifically Tesla, which saves a billion dollars a year spending on traditional advertising, which is what GM has to do.
Starting point is 00:14:21 So he's been a master brand builder and then this is a master class in what not to do. Twitter has global awareness. Almost everybody knows what Twitter is. In addition, the bird logo is arguably one of the strongest visual metaphors in the world. It has been at the bottom of every TV, news show. That Twitter logo has had trillions of impressions. And it's a nice logo, and it connotes a new economy, a microblogging app, news, information, innovation, all of these wonderful associations. And to take that awareness and those associations and that asset in the form of a visual metaphor and just burn it in the street for a brand that has been banned already in Indonesia because they're worried it violates porn rules, for a brand that other companies are already saying, we have rights to that trademark, for a brand that sounds like the strip club a bunch of people go during a crypto convention.
Starting point is 00:15:18 I mean, this just makes no sense at all. I just don't. Claire, if I said to you, here's $10 billion in 10 years, and I need you to build a brand that has global recognition and positive associations, you probably wouldn't be able to do it. Right. you stupid. I think you start believing your own press. You start making decisions out of gut and instinct because everyone around you is telling you that your gut and your instinct are infallible. And this guy is like the king of fallibility right now in terms of some of the decisions and some of his behavior. And this is just the latest example. The other thing, I wonder if there's just too few people with too much money. When you can spend $45 billion and basically start spreading conspiracy theory and make, you know, there's a wisdom of crowds. If he had a board, anything resembling a credible board that had anything resembling any domain expertise around basic marketing, I think 33 billion in equity, and have no board, no oversight, no one on his shoulder to tell him what to do, or everyone around him is just
Starting point is 00:16:30 telling him he's awesome or he doesn't listen to anybody else. This is just such an interesting lesson in how power corrupts your thinking and hubris really does kind of contaminate your logic and your reasoning. So Elon Musk will go down as one of the greatest brand builders in history who has made arguably one of the worst brand decisions in history. Yeah. This X logo, to me, it literally looks like a wrapper for a condom that's going to break. It looks just dangerous and gross. And I see it and I don't even want to click on it like my girlfriend keeps sending me x posts i guess and it i don't want to even open them because it just yeah x's like that and he's he's trashed like the the words the language that we use to talk about how we navigate this space like we can't even call it a tweet anymore. But let's pivot a little bit.
Starting point is 00:17:27 Let's go through some of the best and worst rebrands. Well, there's been a lot. First off, I just want to acknowledge a condom that's about to break. That's good. That's good, Claire. Thank you. Oftentimes, changes are just for simplification or for M&A reasons. So Apple Computer has just gone to Apple. That makes sense, right? PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, Dunkin' Donuts. All right, we want to be known for more than donuts. Dunkin'. Some of the brand changes that didn't work, Datsun becomes Nissan. Datsun was a great brand in the U.S., but because of ego, the folks in Japan wanted a global brand, and they convinced themselves
Starting point is 00:17:59 they should change the name to the brand that was everywhere else but the US, and they changed it to Nissan, which created confusion. And it literally took Nissan probably a decade to recover from that. Facebook to Meta, I mean, that's sort of a minor fail, but they kept the consumer equity. They didn't change the name of Instagram. Google to Alphabet, that was primarily a means of creating more CEO roles. I saw that as a retention vehicle. You could have Sundar be the CEO of Alphabet, but also have CEOs of Google, YouTube, et cetera. And that, even if it was the wrong idea, it wasn't going to have that much of an impact because the corporate brand is for investors and employees. And so there's not as much risk there.
Starting point is 00:18:40 It's when you start monkeying with consumer equity that it really makes no sense. This will go down as one of the kind of the biggest failures of a company of this size. It just makes absolutely no sense. So you've gone through rebrands at your own businesses most recently. Section, you've got Profit, L2, Red Envelope, which I learned yesterday was originally called 911 Gifts. Walk us through the best and worst of Scott Galloway's rebrands. Yeah. So starting a brand strategy firm or being a professor of brand strategy doesn't exclude you from really stupid brand decisions. And I've made a bunch of them. Section 4, our online learning platform where we're trying to offer 60, 80% of an elite MBA course at 10% of the cost. Simply put, section wasn't available, and now it is. We went out and bought it, so we changed the name from Section 4 to Section. So that was just pure simplification. I think that makes a lot of sense. I don't think there's a lot of confusion there. Going way back, Profit Brand Strategy was initially called Profit Brand
Starting point is 00:19:39 Strategy, and then we started doing a lot of internet strategy. We got hired by Levi's and Wayne Sonoma to build their first e-commerce website. So we just said, let's just call it Profit. The real brand clusterfuck that I was responsible for was I started in 1995. I went and saw John Doerr, the founder and senior partner at Kleiner Perkins, speak at Berkeley. And he said that the internet is all about saving time and it's all men. So I thought, okay, what do men need to save time around? And I thought, buying gifts. So I'm gonna create a database-driven website
Starting point is 00:20:15 where you type in the name, the person, the type of person, their interest, your price range, and it uses a database to spit back gift ideas, right? And I called it 911 Gifts and the tagline was the right gift right away. And the idea was it would save you time and you could be a great gift giver in a short amount of time. The sales escalated really quickly. And then I was at, it was the late nineties and I went to these stupid engagement parties where we all pretend that we're interested in watching people open gifts because they're getting married. And someone opened a gift and it said 911 gifts.
Starting point is 00:20:50 And I'm like, oh my God, what a nice moment for me. Someone got them a gift from 911 gifts. And it was this beautiful Nambe Forge Metal Bull. Nambe is this great brand. And the bride or the bride-to-be said, oh, this is lovely. And she said, where did you get it? And she turned it over and it said 911 gifts. And she looked up and jokingly said, you thought about me last minute? Question mark. And occasionally, Claire, in life, you have a blue flame moment. You register people's emotions and you're like, oh, you know, she likes him.
Starting point is 00:21:21 Or, oh, this person is insecure about this. Or, oh, this person is lying. or, oh, we should absolutely do this. You have a blue flame moment where you just feel like you know the truth. Right. brand has negative recipient associations. And so we changed the name to Red Envelope. We were still pretty early in the company's history. It was easy to raise capital. We had just raised, I think, $20 million from Sequoia Capital, so we could do the name change. And Red Envelope is actually one of the brands I'm most proud of. But name changes are generally a bad idea, and you really want to be thoughtful at the beginning. You want to opt for something people can spell. Ideally, it has some positive associations or associations congruent with
Starting point is 00:22:09 the category and give you a lot of latitude because you don't know what products or what industries you're going to go after and then don't change it. Is there a world where you would rebrand us, Prof G Media? Probably. Yeah. I mean, at some point that feels very tied up into a guy with anger and ED issues. You know, I don't know. I'm not sure I ever see us as a large consumer company. And I think that vessel around prof and G, you know, it's associated with me, but I think we could take it other places. But yeah, at some point it might become PG media, but that means parental guidance suggested. I don't know. I don't know. Sounds like I fucked up again. No, I don't know. I'm changing it to X. I'm changing it to X. There you go.
Starting point is 00:22:49 We'll be right back after the break with a look at Mattel's earnings. Thank you. have shifted their career trajectories? And how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it.
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Starting point is 00:24:15 We're back with Prof G Markets. Barbie and Oppenheimer, together known as Barbenheimer, hauled in $244 million at the box office in their first three days. That was the best opening weekend for the domestic box office since 2019, when Avengers Endgame premiered. But perhaps the biggest winner here will be the toy company behind Barbie, Mattel. The Barbie movie hype cycle sent the stock up 18% year-to-date. And for the past month, while we were distracted by NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Meta, Mattel actually outperformed all of them.
Starting point is 00:24:52 Now, the toy maker doesn't expect to see significant sales growth for Barbie toys until the second half of the year. In fact, Barbie sales actually dropped 7% in the second quarter, which ended weeks before the movie's release. But Mattel's CEO said that this quarter, and crucially, the Barbie movie, established the company's media strategy going forward. He said, quote, this moment will be remembered as a key milestone in our company's history. So Scott, let's talk about that strategy of basically repackaging and reselling old IP. Mattel seems to think it'll work. How far do you think IP can actually take a company like this?
Starting point is 00:25:35 I mean, this was a genius move. Barbie is sort of an anachronism, and that is a lot of the associations of Barbie. And a doll that says, kind of communicates to the world, be anorexic and then go get a boob job. That's not exactly like a modern statement on feminism. But to their credit, I mean, this movie, it could have easily been so bad and so panned. And the execution around it, I haven't seen it, but everyone I know that's seen it, they've managed to thread this needle where it just seems like everybody likes it except Ben Shapiro and Matt Gaetz, which is a plus, right? Yeah, exactly. That's a win. And it's just raised a ton of awareness. And you've highlighted that the stock is up. It's
Starting point is 00:26:12 going to create a lot of revenue for them. It might be a franchise. My guess is there's going to be a Barbie 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Oh, God, that depresses me just thinking about it. But it is so hard to have a profitable movie. It is so hard to have a profitable toy. So what Disney's been great at, and now it looks like Mattel, is taking IP and leveraging it across different sectors and different mediums, specifically taking Barbie to the movies. And then what Disney has been great at doing is creating movies and taking that to the toy store. The execution here sounds like it was just flawless. It sounds like this movie took a topic and an item that could have easily been panned and just thread the needle.
Starting point is 00:26:53 My co-host, Kara Swisher, Pivot, won't stop talking about Barbie. Literally, she's just— I won't either. You loved it. Yeah, I loved it. I did the Barbenheimer double feature. That's a lot. That's five hours of movies. Yeah, no kidding. That's a lot. But it was worth it. Yeah, I loved it. I did the Barbenheimer double feature. That's a lot. That's five hours of movies.
Starting point is 00:27:07 Yeah, no kidding. That's a lot. But it was worth it. I experienced a sense of camaraderie. I think it was a huge win. And I think the reason that people went to the movie and it wasn't panned is basically Greta Gerwig. I mean, she's one of the most, I think, visionary directors we have right now. And then that's this brand marriage between her and Barbie.
Starting point is 00:27:30 You were talking about the value of a brand with Twitter. Barbie has 99% brand awareness worldwide. She's the perfect leading lady because almost everyone in the world immediately knows who she is. Yeah, so look it was something you said is is really powerful about this and i felt the same way people often say it's a shame that box office people aren't going to movies anymore because in person because there's a certain collective there's a certain feeling of comedy of sharing that experience with a group of strangers and one of the things that was most inspiring, and I didn't see the movie, I took my son, we visited LA, and I took my two sons to the Century City Mall,
Starting point is 00:28:08 and everyone was roaming around in pink, both women and men. And that was really nice to see something that brings people together. And my son said, it's amazing, isn't it? People, I didn't know there were so many messy fans in LA. He thought they were all wearing Inter-Miami kits and jerseys. I'm like, no, this is because of the Barbie movie. So I agree with you. I think it's really nice. We need more reasons to come together. It's also, Mattel really needed it. The Barbie brand earned 1.5 billion, a decline from 1.7 billion in 2021. So they needed something, and they have found this, and they want to create something called the Mattel Cinematic Universe. And my guess is, similar to Marvel or DC, they've now convinced a
Starting point is 00:28:50 lot of studios in capital that they have a bunch of assets they can turn into movies. They have some iconic franchises, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl, Thomas and Friends. So this is good for Mattel, good for the stars of Barbie, good for the planet. And good for me. I bought the stock in April. You did. That's right. Last question, Scott, are you going to see Barbie and what are you going to wear? I am going to see Barbie. It's going to involve edibles, and I may just throw on a wig to pretend I'm Ken. can. Spotify reported record audience growth for the second quarter, but its stock fell 14%
Starting point is 00:29:35 on news that its podcast division is still suffering from weakness in the digital ad market. Results were even worse at Snap, which posted its second consecutive decline in quarterly sales and also saw its stock decline 14%. That's in contrast with Google and Meta, which posted advertising revenues that topped analyst estimates. Scott, why are these results so mixed? Well, it's just really good to be an unregulated monopoly. And that is, look at the company that dominates search. Look at the company that dominates search. Look at the company that dominates social. Look at the company that dominates software.
Starting point is 00:30:09 And all of those companies had huge quarters. And then look at the company that's super innovative, great product, great management team, great founder. But they're subscale and their oxygen is being sucked out of the room. So Snap is one of those companies. Snap is sort of, in my opinion, exhibit one for why we need to break big tech up. It's a great company and it just can't compete with these monopolies because what you have is people
Starting point is 00:30:38 who are in charge of digital spend just say, all right, we're just gonna give it to Google and to Meta because they control everything and they have the money to invest in better ad tech. And the smaller guys just can't compete. So Snap fell 14% after reporting Q2 earnings as investors reacted to weaker than expected guidance. The revenues declined 4%. Their net losses narrowed to $377 million. It's still very dependent upon digital marketing spend, which has declined over the past year. The U.S. advertising market is expected to grow 6% in 2023,
Starting point is 00:31:11 lower than the 9% growth seen in 2022, although digital marketing is just being... When you're growing your revenues top line by 12%, such as many of the big tech in media, and the market's growing 6%, that means that someone is declining in revenues, and Snap is one of those folks. There are some real bright spots here. Daily active users at Snap reached 400 million, up 14% from a year earlier, and over 150 million users sent more than 10 billion messages to Snap's AI bot. So in sum, and this is kind of the prediction here, something's going to happen, I think, with Snap over the next 12 or 24 months. Now, the reason why this prediction is less certain is that it's one of these dual-class shareholder companies, and one person, Evan
Starting point is 00:31:55 Spiegel, controls that decision. It would be the right decision. This is a great product, a great company with a subscale platform. It should absolutely be tied up with a bigger platform. But he gets to make the decision. And unfortunately, founders are often already billionaires of these companies. So if it's a question between being worth $2 billion and $4 billion, he'll probably opt for the $2 billion and maintaining control. Control is an addictive substance. But this feels to me like a company that should be part of a bigger company. Who comes in and buys it, do you think?
Starting point is 00:32:29 Well, I think the logical one would be Disney, whose market cap is around $160 billion. And Snap's market cap is $17 billion. And you can imagine that Disney says, all right, our traditional channels of distribution, movie theaters and broadcast cable, are in structural decline, what if we could directly communicate with 400 million younger users who advertisers love and start pushing through snippets and IP and movies and series to Snap? I think that could be really intoxicating and also market all of our properties across those 400 million users. The brands feel good to me. After Bob gets done cutting costs, he's going to have to come up with a growth story. And at $17 billion, keep in mind, the stock's at $10. It was at $85 at some point in 2022. That was obviously wildly overvalued.
Starting point is 00:33:16 But it's at $17 billion, so it would be about a 10% or 15% dilution to Disney. It feels very brand on. They get 400 million younger users that are very much congruent with their products, and they would get a new channel of distribution for their IP and their content. The other outside shot would be Apple. The brands line up perfectly. I think Evan would be very successful at Apple. They could obviously blow this thing up by featuring it on the front screen of every iOS product. The thing is, Apple is not acquisitive. They think they're so correctly precious about their culture, they don't like to make large acquisitions. But the thing about it is, when you're talking about a company with a $3 trillion market cap, they could pay a 50% premium for the company, and it would be a 1% dilution.
Starting point is 00:34:11 They would have to issue less than 1% of their shares to pay for this acquisition, even at a 50% premium. And if the thing didn't work, if the thing was a total disaster and a write-off after two, three, five years, I mean, the real cost would be the diversion of focus, but it would mean nothing. I mean, they could acquire Snap and pay for it with just, you know, change they find in their couch. Or there might be an unusual deal. Iger said he wants to get rid of FX, and I think it was ABC. Maybe he spins it to Snap, and Snap becomes kind of an interesting media play for young people and starts running the content of those companies through their Snap platform. But my prediction in sum, Claire, is that something happens with and around Snap over the next 12 months. It's just subscale
Starting point is 00:34:50 and something needs to be done here. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our executive producers are Jason Stavers and Catherine Dillon. Mia Silverio is our research lead
Starting point is 00:35:03 and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to Property Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Wednesday for Office Hours, and we'll be back with a fresh take on markets every Monday. Claire, thanks for stepping in and being the co-host. You got it. Lifetimes You held me In kind Reunion As the world turns And the dark flies True story, Claire, before we bust into it, let's talk about me.
Starting point is 00:36:03 I was the president of the Interfraternity Council at UCLA. I was the king of the jarheads, the douchiest douchebag in Doucheville. That's right. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you, and managers. Listen in as I talk to co-workers facing their own challenges with one another and get the real work done.
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