☕Weekend Links 1/30
Pandemics, the stock market and Cookie Monster rocks: The Neal Ungerleider Newsletter #75
Gamestop something something! The distinctly American worship of The Stock Market as a pure moral good rather than a not-especially-comprehensible-to-newbies-aka-the-vast-majority-of-Americans-casino game which can be fairly easily manipulated without breaking any government laws! Reddit Wall Street Bets and the clash between retail and institutional investors! Maybe next time the angry mob manipulating systems and structures online won’t be that sympathetic!
Anyway, it’s been a busy week. On to the links.
New Futures:
COSTCO’S AMAZING PANDEMIC YEAR: Costco announced the company’s highest annual profits ever at their first all-virtual shareholder meeting. Even in a pandemic, customers will crowd warehouses for cheap groceries. CEO W. Craig Jelinek also announced a curbside pickup pilot in New Mexico.
Neal’s takeaway: Costco’s one of the very rare mass market retailers which customers build their identities around. In a global crisis, that’s a kinda sorta beneficial thing.AMERICANS’ CRAPPY PANDEMIC YEAR: The United States Department of Agriculture revealed that federal spending on SNAP increased nearly 50% in 2020. Even as unemployment numbers fall from 2020’s shitshow, the income of Americans isn’t catching up—leading to a sharp increase in the number of SNAP (aka food stamp) recipients.
Neal’s takeaway: Growing up in a family that was on food stamps sometimes, literally the only good thing about this is the surplus peanut butter. That stuff was tasty.GATES WARNING ON POST-PANDEMIC WORLD: 2021’s Bill and Melinda Gates annual letter warns of immunity inequality: Situations where the wealthiest (read: economically secure citizens of wealthy countries) have access to a COVID-19 vaccine, while the rest of the world doesn’t.
Neal’s takeaway: The transition out of the COVID era is going to be a dimmer switch and not an on-off button; a lot of the world is unprepared for that.MAKING THE NBA BUBBLE WORK: The Athletic looks at how the Toronto Raptors relocated to Florida for the 2020-2021 NBA season. Due to the temporary restrictions on the US-Canada border, the Raptors are making the Tampa area their temporary home.
Neal’s takeaway: Relocating a NBA team for a season gave a whole bunch of event planning and logistic folks some much-needed work. Sweet.
Advertising/Marketing/PR:
SUPER BOWL AD PREVIEW: Marvin Media cofounder Geoff Cottrill unpacks what the Weirdest Super Bowl’s ads are gonna look like.
Neal’s takeaway: It’s the Super Bowl! In an oddly empty stadium for completely understandable reasons! And ads! Ads remotely distributed teams have been working on for months while doing onsite work under stressful safety protocols! 2021!TUMS BINGO SWEEPSTAKES: Tums’ is trying an interactive online bingo game tie-in to their Super Bowl ad. The move is an attempt to target younger audiences.
Neal’s takeaway: Eager to see how this works.NEWSWEEK OPINION EDITOR DOUBLING AS LOBBYIST: Axios’ Ashley Gold looks at the ethical gray area surrounding the fact that Newsweek opinion page editor Josh Hammer doubles as a counsel for the Internet Accountability Project, a tech lobbying group.
Neal’s takeaway: In an ideal world, media jobs would pay well enough to prevent issues like this from popping up… but here we are.HYBRID EVENTS: Event Manager Blog’s Angela Tupper looks at how hybrid on-person and online events will be used to boost event attendance in 2021.
Neal’s takeaway: One of the interviewees in this story, Megan Hanshall, mentioned the term “livestream lethargy” and holly hell that’s what I’m feeling right now.EVERYTHING IS PR: Genius Steals’ Faris Yakob argues that “everything is PR” because “In an age of crises, everything is crisis communication.”
Neal’s takeaway: Remember when protesters overpowered the police, invaded the Capitol building and started taking selfies, and all these brands started frantically putting their campaigns on pause? That was fun.
Media:
MARQUES BROWNLEE’S BUSINESS DEEP DIVE: The Verge’s Nilay Patel interviews YouTube uber-reviewer Marques Brownlee about how his review video business works. Some stats: 13.5 million subscribers, a video posted nearly every three days in 2020, and four employees.
Neal’s takeaway: Brownlee sums it up that “Being a YouTuber is a bunch of different jobs in one. Let’s say you’re a tech YouTuber. Part of your job is writing, part of your job is being on camera, part of your job is shooting the video, part of your job is editing the video, and part of your job is promoting, uploading, sharing, and content strategy.”INSTAGRAM LAUNCHING BUSINESS DASHBOARD: Instagram is rolling out a new professional dashboard for business owners which combines metrics with account information in one place.
Neal’s takeaway: Nice! But it took them until 2021 to roll it out? Huh. I need a drink now.COMCAST PROFITS RISE: Comcast announced their great fourth quarter results, which are largely due to (pandemic surprise!) people staying home and watching television and going online. The cable giant is also exploring making their in-house streaming player Flex available to non-subscribers and turning it into a Roku competitor.
Neal’s takeaway: It’s a damned good time to be any company involved in the sitting-at-home-and-watching-video ecosystem.EVERYTHING BUNDLE SPINS OFF: Axios’ Kia Kokalitcheva has the details on popular newsletter brand Everything Bundle getting $600,000 in seed funding and leaving Substack.
Neal’s takeaway: Have we reached peak newsletter yet? Probably not, and expect similar deals in the future. And if anyone wants to invest $600,000 in this newsletter, email me!HARD TIMES ACQUIRED: Digital media company Project M is acquiring The Hard Times, a satirical punk rock/hardcore news website for a little over $1 million.
Neal’s takeaway: Content sites are popular, but damned hard to monetize! Ever wanna have a good cry? Look at how much money publishers actually make from annoying online ads. Not much!
Tech:
FACEBOOK PURSUING APPLE ANTITRUST LAWSUIT: The long-expected Facebook antitrust lawsuit against Apple looks like it’s about to go to court. Public argument Facebook’s making is that Apple is forcing app developers to abide by rules that Apple’s own apps have to follow.
Neal’s takeaway: Hey, that sounds like a possible way for third-party companies like Facebook to open their own iOS app stores! But that couldn’t happen!GOOGLE’S SAUDI ARABIA DATA CENTER DUST UP: Like a lot of global internet companies, Google’s opening data centers in Saudi Arabia. A press release mentioned Snap as a primary client, advocacy group Access Now sent public letters to Google and Snap, and then the press release got scrubbed but Google never really addressed Access Now’s points—which led to third party press coverage of the press release getting scrubbed.
Neal’s takeaway: Oof.KROGER TESTING ALL SELF-CHECKOUT STORES: Supermarket chain Kroger is testing a 100% self-checkout store in Dallas with belted self-checkout lines for longer purchases. The chain hasn’t announced plans for any other self-checkout only stores at this time.
Neal’s takeaway: Retailers love self-checkout because it allows them to employ fewer humans and shift the cost of labor onto customers who are already shopping at stores… but noone’s actually proved switching to self-checkout makes money yet.INSIDE CALENDLY: TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden looks at how Calendly became a $3 billion company by playing nice with Zoom and Google Calendar and adopting what CEO Tope Awotona calls the “Dropbox approach.”
Neal’s takeaway: That freemium-at-scale monetization model! That freemium-at-scale monetization model!MIAMI MAYOR’S TECH BROMANCE: Wired’s Arielle Pardes unpacks Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s successful wooing of Bay Area tech investors and founders, and looks at what it means for a city with very different dynamics than San Francisco.
Neal’s takeaway: Shh don’t that those demos like the lower business taxes, lack of regulation and more comfortable outdoor spaces to ride the pandemic out in!
Fun:
The KLF are back on streaming services!
Drumming up tourism by promoting bigfoot hunting season.
Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately:
Inside the world of Ethiopian bootleg brands.
The Revolutions Podcast on the years leading up to the Russian Revolution and how people in power playing epic games of see-no-evil-hear-no-evil can lead to very stupid things happening.
That’s it for this issue. Email me here and please don’t hesitate to contact if I can be of assistance. Thank you for taking the time to read this damned thing.
And do me one solid: Send some money to West Town Feeds (Zelle + Venmo info in link). It’s a bitterly cold week here in Chicago with temperatures below 20 farenheit, and West Town Feeds is buying out stock from local tamale vendors so they can go home for the day and donating the food to nearby homeless shelters and encampments. Good cause, everyone wins, etc. etc. Do it.
Love and coffee,
Neal
About This Newsletter: Neal Ungerleider is a strategic communications consultant who works with individuals, brands and agencies. He writes this weekly newsletter about the media communications industrial complex and hopes you find it useful. Check out his bio, his portfolio, and current projects.
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