POUR ONE OUT FOR THE CREATIVE DIRECTORS

0:28Was that what do you way to go microphones yeah that's how they work how do they work kevin you don't know how microphones work stop pretending like you know how microphones work yeah i do

0:47three two one kevin what's up dude i can't believe you're challenging your producer on how microphones work i know your ass doesn't know how microphones work dude rebel rebel without a cause kevin are you wearing a shirt with shirts a some of my best friends are cows yeah drink milk it's a great shirt where do you find these fucking shirts they're really great uh this one was from a vintage friend um i don't he changed his name all the time so so instagram instagram dude yeah he changes his name all the time yeah kevin yeah yeah be more mysterious kevin i found it from some guy he changes his name all the time that's i don't know what to tell you we're uh we're instagram friends i guess okay yeah i don't know what it used to be snake bite vintage and now he's something else all right well it's a bills fan okay well he's on the run yeah uh did you also get a new tattoo i did get a new tattoo let me see let's put that up to the camera real quick peacock yeah beautiful yeah It's funny.

1:50I thought it looked a little shinier than your other tattoo, which makes sense. Yeah. When did you get that? Like two weeks ago. It took me two weeks to notice. Well, it's been cold in here. Okay. Oh, you've been wearing so long sleeves. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. How was Bike Kill? Bike Kill was pretty great. I rode a very tall bike. I saw you riding. It's on top of the world. Yeah, a bike that had like two or three stories to it. Yeah, I was king of the world. How did you get that? Me and my friend helped each other up on the bike. Okay, but did someone with a bike say, like, does anyone want to ride this?

2:23No, you just, like, ride them around, and then, like, you get off, and you just hand it to somebody. Oh, really? It's a team sort of, like, democratized bike ride. Yeah, it's just like, do you want to ride this bike? Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I rode a couple other bikes. I rode a chain bike. A chain bike? Yeah. What's a chain bike? A bike made of chains. Oh, that makes sense. Like, wheels were chains. Wow. Bars were chains. The whole thing was chains. So people bring these bikes to Red Hook and then they just leave them there for people to just ride them around? There are a lot of repeat customers.

2:56I recognized a bunch of bikes from last year. Yeah. How do you get up on one of those tall-ass bikes? You get it moving. And then usually they have a step. They have a step to put your left leg up or your right leg. And then you swing your left leg all the way up. And then you're on it. And then once you're up there. How do you get down? You just kind of like lean and bail. Lean and fall. Yeah. That makes sense. Pretty much. Yeah. Or like, I don't know. Young man's game. The tall bike we were on was a little, I'll say it wasn't the best tall bike. It wasn't in the best shape. Yeah. So me and my friend were helping each other.

3:35Nice. We were pushing the bike, holding it steady. Beautiful. You know, we walked, we were, you know, side by side as we went down and did the loop. You didn't seem dressed up. No, I didn't dress up. I should have. You're dressing up tonight? Tonight is Halloween, aka yesterday. You'll hear the story. I don't believe I'm doing anything tonight. Wow. Kevin, growing up, like I said, it's part of it. I did dress up on Saturday night. I was Peter Griffin, but I just got too much swag to be Peter Griffin. What? People didn't recognize you as Peter Griffin because you had too much swag? I just wore green pants and a white shirt.

4:10I'm going to need to see a visual. I shaved my face. Oh. Yeah. Let's see that. can we get a visual for the YouTubes out here? I don't know if I have any I don't think I took a photo you can take one single photo, no one took a photo of you? no, I just kind of looked like a I think I just looked like a finance bro I looked like I was getting money I just like I just gelled my hair to the side and was wearing a fucking button down wow, yeah, I'm looking at Peter Griffin I'm looking at you I'm thinking this could be tough yeah, there's not like any super defining features of Peter besides being like kind of overweight.

4:48Yeah. Which, you know, Kevin, and no tattoos. I am. Yeah, I'm thick. No, you're slim these days. Slim Kevin. Yeah. That's what we call you around here. He's slimmer. Do you see Flavor Flav sing the national anthem at the Bucks game? I think it's probably the best national anthem rendition I've ever heard in my entire life. Yeah, it's funny. I didn't watch it. I just assumed he was terrible. And I'm really sorry. I am here to apologize and put some respect on Flava Flav's name. Yeah, he should have. He brought some Flava. He did. He kind of killed it. He absolutely killed it. Yeah. I would like to see him get some more national anthem gigs.

5:23Yeah. Maybe Super Bowl. Super Bowl, yeah. For sure. Or the NBA finals or all-star game. Yeah. I mean, I think he's, it's quite a story because it's what he lacked in singing talent he made up for. Charisma. And charisma, yeah. Yeah. Which goes to show you that it's not all about talent. Yeah. Yeah. Remember he was a VH1 reality star? Like, kind of. I didn't really absorb much. I remember seeing him and watching that show, but Flavor of Love. Yep. Yeah. Before Travis Kelsey had his Catching Kelsey, there was Flavor of Love, which... Yeah, they should do more celebrity dating shows. I feel like those have fallen by the wayside a little bit.

6:04I think they should... Like, I would definitely like to see more of them. Who wouldn't want to do that? I feel like if you're like a D-list celebrity and you're like trying to, you know, get some fame and you're an eligible bachelor or bachelorette, I feel like people would want to watch it. Yeah. You know? I don't know. I think they would rather see them like go through like military training. I think that's like one of the shows now is they take D-list celebrities and like. How's the cousin show? Like what's the show called? Claim to Fame. Claim to Fame. Claim to Fame is good. Yeah. I can't believe you watch that Nick Cannon's brother I believe if my memory serves me correctly and this was just like celebrities, brothers, cousins friends and you're like Celebrity's brother, I believe it was his brother Nick Cannon's brother should have been one of Nick Cannon's kids it could have been one of a hundred of them I think they might be too young probably right, speaking of celebrities Kevin, are you upset that Charli D 'Amelio was working at Walmart?

7:05No, I'm done with being outraged. I'm sick of it. I'm outraged with outrage culture. Yeah. I get it. She's doing a promo for Be Happy Snacks, which I guess is probably her brand. What the fuck is a Be Happy Snack? It's probably just a popcorn that is like every other popcorn on the shelf, but has her name tied to it. So this is all just for a launch of her brand. Yeah. This is good for her business. Yeah. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah, I mean, people get so upset when she was cosplaying as poor, right? That's what they're saying. People are upset that she is so rich that she can't make fun. She wasn't making fun of it.

7:51She can't pretend to take the job or do a job at a Walmart checkout cashier. I mean, people literally do this all the time and nobody blinks an eye. Like, you know, people go work at Canes for a day after they win a championship. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of activations where people go and, like, pretend to work. Yeah. Post Malone at Raising Canes or something like that. Canes is the biggest offender. Really? For working class stolen value. But I don't know. I'm just like, just find something else to be mad at. Yeah. I don't even like the D 'Amelios. I think they suck, but I'm not going to waste my precious energy being mad that she's in a Walmart cosplaying as a checkout, working checkout.

8:38It's stupid. Yeah, I agree with you. Waste of energy. I think people love to hate them just because they're very hateable. And rich. Yeah, because they're rich. I mean, fuck. I wish I was that rich. Fuck. But I mean, I feel like they can't do anything right. I feel like when you're in that position where you're super hated by the internet, it's like if they did a partnership with a high-end retailer, they'd be like, oh, it's approachable or too expensive for their young fans. And then they do a Walmart deal, and it's like, how are you trying to cosplay as sort of poor people? It's like, come on.

9:11They can't win. Yeah, I mean, they suck, and I don't like them. Yeah, I mean, I don't even have an opinion on that. Just eat the popcorn. Yeah. Be happy kids. What's it called? Be happy snacks. Be happy snacks. Be happy and eat the popcorn. There it is. Eat the popcorn, now available in stores. Good promo. You know, it's good for them. The packaging looks terrible, so call us D 'Amelios. Yeah, I'm sure they're such a pleasure to work with. Yeah. Kevin, this weekend I watched a vaping documentary. Yes. Netflix. I believe it's called Big Vape, I want to say. Big Vape. It's about Juul, and it turns out Juul's bad.

9:51Oh, no way. Yeah, man. I went in thinking they were sort of an upright, sort of very promising company, but it turns out bad for kids. Damn, that's crazy. Yeah. I thought it was good for kids. Yeah. Originally, it was intended to help people quit smoking cigarettes, because cigarettes are bad. Allegedly. Traditional cigarettes. They called them combustible cigarettes because they light them on fire. Yeah. Sure. But the problem was, Kevin, they did too awesome of a job at marketing. Creative too good. The creative was too awesome. They actually had the creative director there, which was pretty funny.

10:31And he was just kind of like, yeah, we had three weeks to do this. Wow. We didn't have a lot of time to think about it. Damn, I guess people should give us more time. That's what happens when you keep doing sprints. Yeah, that's true. You make mistakes. Yeah. No. And you accidentally get an entire generation hooked on vapes. That's really what happened. Ultimately, at the end of the day, like they really blame this campaign. It was called Get Vaporized. Hashtag Get Vaporized. That's lit. And it had like a bunch of like black and white lifestyle photography of kids or young people using vape and using a Juul.

11:03And then basically they had it to like uptempo music and colors. And it looked like an Apple campaign for an iPod, but just was for vaping. Yeah. And they had a bunch of influencers. I mean, Juul is the apple of vaping. And that was intentional. That's what they wanted. They were from Silicon Valley. They went to Stanford. That was the point. And their marketing just was too fucking good. Yeah, it just got out of hand. I don't know what happened. Yeah, I don't understand why all these kids want to vape in high school. Who could say? Yeah, I remember when I was living in Williamsburg, there was a bar they used to go to all the time.

11:41had this beautiful big backyard. I forget the name of it. But Jewel used to have a little station there, like a little pop-up with a tent. And they were giving out Jewels all the time there. So yeah, they were - Did you hit one? Of course. Yeah, they were trying to get kids or the cool Brooklyn crowd. Yeah. And then what does a young high schooler kid want to do? It's like he wants to be a 25-year-old. Yeah. They want to get buzzed with no smell. Yeah. They had creme brulee and mango flavors. Yeah. It turns out kids shouldn't be inhaling nicotine. Jewel is so good. And yeah, eventually, spoiler alert, they sold to the parent company of Philip Morris.

12:21Wow. Yeah. It all comes full circle for them. They get rich. And yeah, it's pretty evil. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck around and find out, I guess. Yeah. That's the documentary. Check it out. It's pretty good. Did you gain any empathy for the people behind Jewel, though? The original founders? No, I don't know if I had empathy for them, but I think they just did too good of a job. Yeah, they were just misunderstood. They built a great brand, which arguably that was... I actually felt like the creative directors did a pretty good job of what they were intending to do. It's hard to blame the creative directors when the founders obviously approved that.

13:02obviously there was at least some sense of this is what we want to do so it felt like they were very quick to blame like the creatives because the marketing ultimately was what led they claim to kids wanting to use you know what they say shit runs downhill yeah so great story i love a documentary about a sort of failed company that like you know doesn't sound like they failed something they uh all made out like freaking some of them did but um you know who gets hurt is the people that like us the kids yeah the creative directors the kids the creative directors are the ones who really got hurt here yeah yeah poor creative directors oh my god yeah fuck those kids poor poor creative directors you follow kareem did you see his post about um it was like one of those fake he did them on those tiktok that's like what do you do for a living and he's like uh how much money do you make and he did like a parody one with the guy he's like 450 000 i'm a creative director he's like freelance he's like what do you do he's like i come up with ideas he's like what if subway did a collab with uh ralph loren he's like and they just like he's just like humping the air being like i like it i like it he's funny yeah super funny i gotta check that one check it out yeah collabs man that's that's yeah who's thinking about the poor creative directors yeah exactly um yeah poor one out for them you know yeah we gotta i have to actually defend creative directors.

14:23It's not our fault, especially when we do our jobs too well. Speaking of jobs going too well, Skims for men. Skims is the big story of the week. There's a bunch of stuff happening with Skims. It started about a week ago. Skims introduced men. Skims has been blowing up over the last couple of years. Kim Kardashian, her shapewear company. It's only been for women up until this point, but the brand is absolutely everywhere. They're crushing it, billboards, sort of millions and millions of dollars. I think they got a$3 billion evaluation. If you remember, we talked about her going to Harvard Business School and teaching the kids about business.

15:03A lot of people got upset saying that she shouldn't. I absolutely defended her honor and said that she has every right to. And so she's a genius. And so she's back with some more genius stuff, which is three collections for sport. They're sport-inspired. So they did a partnership with three athletes, Shea Gilgis Alexander from the NBA, Neymar Jr., the famous soccer player, and Nick Bosa from the NFL. The line launched last week and includes underwear, tees, and socks. And so we have a quote from Kim herself. She said, we've never had a bigger request than to launch men's. The idea that there is whether we would hear from their girlfriends or their wives or loved ones talking about skims.

15:46and 20 % of our traffic and 10 % of our customers are already men's. This is from Jen's greed, her partner. That means we have 50 million men coming to our site over the last few months. For me personally, I wanted more stuff to wear. I was running a little bit dry with my one T-shirt. So Kim Kardashian launching men's. They did it in a very Kardashian way, which was to find the absolute hottest men athletes, stripped them down to their clothes and post them on a white background on Instagram. There we go. And it looks great. Like, super well done. I think it got a ton of press. It got a ton of publicity.

16:26And then got a little bit of backlash. And I think that's because Nick Bosa, star NFL player. Beefcake. Professional beefcake. Is a Trump-loving racist? Question mark. And people started pulling up his old tweets. I'm not sure how she didn't know this, or maybe she just overlooked it because she's so damn sexy. But again, Kim Kardashian, mogul genius. What does she do? She knows her insane exposure and her media. She launches a bra with nipples on it, immediately diverting all attention away from Nick Bosa, the conversation, and immediately flooding the timeline with her campaign, which kind of seemed a little bit like a joke at first.

17:13I was like, is this real? Is this humorous? I thought it was a joke. But it's not a joke. It's an actual product. And people were praising her again. Genius. More genius. Yeah. Because nipples on bras had never been done before. And there was a lot of people saying, this is something I really, really want. And the commercial was kind of funny. The commercial was very funny. They did a very good job with the commercial. It was written by comedian Michelle Wolf. Ah, nice. I read. So when Kim did SNL, Michelle Wolf was a writer for her. So again, Kim's a genius. What can I say? She's a mogul. She's good at business.

17:51She's incredibly using her exposure. And she's also really good at hiding stories or bad press. Oh, for sure. I feel like when bad press comes her way, she's just so ready for it. She's got it on. She has sort of a McKinsey level sort of diversion. She knows. Brush that shit off. Yeah, she's got stuff in her pocket. She's like, oh, shit, bad press. Boom, nipple bra. She's just got that stuff in her back pocket ready to go and to divert attention. And that's fucking genius. And then just a couple days later, they announced that Skims was the official underwear partner of the NBA and WNBA. Wow. Right in time for the NBA season, which just started.

18:30I believe it's the first official underwear for both leagues. Boom. Genius. More genius. Boom. Genius. Oh, something goes wrong? Boom. Gotcha. More. So Kim, you're a genius. Go, Kim, go. Skims calls. Wow. Unarguably, one of the best brands on the planet right now. Sure. And I will defend them to the death. Yeah. I'm sure their production ethics are super great. Of course. I mean, it's Kim Kardashian. You know. Yeah. Yep. Yep. It's funny to see her with Adam Silver, though. I don't know. There's something about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's like, how did they get Adam Silver to just... It's like both the full gamut of attractive people.

19:16Kim, who's probably towards the top. Most attractive person on the planet. Most attractive all the time. And then you got Adam Silver, who's down towards the bottom. Perfect for Halloween. Yeah. He was dressed up as a skeleton. Yeah. Poor Adam. He does a good job. He does a great job. I was a little intrigued why the in-playoff NBA thing is starting next week. Did you see that? Yeah, you told me about it. What the fuck? I was defending the in-NBA season tournament. Yeah, you just want something that the Knicks can win. I love it. I think it's great. I was just saying that the regular season is sad for the Knicks because I know they're going to finish at best in the playoff first round knockout or if they have an unbelievable season second round.

20:01So what? Maybe we can win the in-tournament NBA season. Hang the banner. hang the banner. But here's the thing. Side talk. That side talk after the Knicks won the in-season tournament would go crazy. It's your favorite video of all time when they won one playoff game. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great, but why so soon? Like, the season kicked off a week ago. Why are we doing this in-season tournament this week? Like, save it for fucking December or some shit. Yeah, I don't know. Do it on Christmas. Yeah, sure. Fucking, you know, too soon. Like, I'm thinking in the middle of the season when we're bored.

20:34Like the all-star game is terrible. Yeah. This should be in place or it should be at some later point. This is too soon. Yeah. I mean, I just could not care less about the in-season tournament. I think it's smart. Like I think it's this NBA season is way too long. Yeah. Just shorten it. But they don't want to do that because then obviously money. Yeah. Skims commercials they can run during those games. So it's like they're not going to do that. So come up with crazy ideas. I like when sports get creative. I mean, baseball was great. it yeah the clock is great yeah but they didn't do an in-season tournament no but i'm saying like i like when rule change i like a rule changes yeah yeah i guess rules are meant to be broken right sure that's right that's fuck that in-season tournament so stupid all right um one one tournament one tournament for all the marbles okay moving on kevin there's no marbles your boy your boy all for all the marbles yeah you can't gain any marbles in an in-season tournament did Did you play with marbles as a kid?

21:33Yeah. Did you play with Hot Wheels as a kid? Yeah. Boom! Transition right there. You didn't even see it coming. Wow. Daniel Arsham. This story comes to the Dying Line at dialine.com, the number one place for packaging news, sustainability resources. The Dying Line Packaging Award Show is open 2024. Submit your entries today to save money because, listen, creatives are lazy. We can just say it. We're not like lazy, lazy, but we're procrastinators. We will wait to the last minute for any sort of deadline. Yes. And these award shows, not just the deadline, all of them know that. So they have the entry level of price, and then the prices go up as you get closer to the award show.

22:15So guess what? You know you want to submit something. Submit it now. Why wait? Save the money. Then go out and buy some hot dogs. Sure. That's what you should do. Or buy yourself some Daniel Arsham Hot Wheels. Buy yourself some Daniel Arsham Hot Wheels, which is our next story. Daniel Arsham is the artist. We've talked about him a ton on the show. Creative director of the Cleveland Cavaliers. That's true. The land. We didn't talk about how awful all of those jerseys were. The NBA All-City jerseys. Yeah, pretty bad. Terrible design. It's funny. We talk about sports, but then when there's actually a design sports story, we don't talk about it.

22:50Didn't make it. Didn't make it. Didn't make it. Too many hot topics here. Hot wheels, hot topics. Wow. He's on a roll. Yeah, Daniel Arsham collabed with Hot Wheels, which is Mattel. I feel like Mattel is still riding the post-Barbie wave here. And as they should, they obviously own the summer. Barbie, Taylor Swift, Beyonce. Oh, it definitely owned Halloween. There were as many Travis Kelsey. Top three costumes I saw, Travis Kelsey, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Hailey Bieber. Everyone seemed to do that costume, which I don't know how that happened. And then the third one is Barbie. Yeah, for sure.

23:31So basically they teamed up with Daniel Arsham. And what does Daniel Arsham do? He makes them white and then he cracks them. That's his thing. Also, the track was Tiffany Blue. Does that mean Tiffany was involved here? I don't know. I first came across this in their out-of-home campaign. And I saw Tiffany Blue and I was like, what? like hot wheels x tiffany x daniel arsham yeah uh i don't believe so yeah i think it's just the track color interesting interesting choice i uh daniel arsham is known for his cars i don't know if you know that about him i do follow him on instagram kind of a hate follow for me uh and mostly because i'm jealous of his long island home if you have not seen stop the podcast right now or just if you're listening on your phone, do a little Google search.

24:20Daniel Arsham Long Island Home. It is absolutely stunning. Gorgeous home. Beautiful interior. Incredible place to live. And I'm incredibly jealous. Is everything cracked? No, nothing is cracked. Wow. It's all like mid-century cool wood, just really well designed. Nice. Yeah. Love some cool wood. Yeah, it's really well done. It's an old house that he obviously remade or sort of spruced up and it's perfect. So it's fucking incredible, and that's why I hate Dana Arsham. But give respect on his name. He did his eroded ceramic-style Hot Wheels, and they look pretty cool. I also really like the Hot Wheels Arsham logo.

25:03That was something that when I was looking through this, like the Hot Wheels logo, if you ever look at it for a while, is so sick. Goated. Yeah, it's a goated logo, and it kind of looks like all these new, modern, funky, sort of retro-y, gloopy logos. if you look at it closely it's one of those things that you don't look at because it's so iconic you don't even ever look at it but take a look at it it's pretty sick and then it's great the they did an r sham kind of logo and i'll give i'll give him some credit he does have a good um ability to do collabs like he's got his style obviously that he can kind of do with most brands and then i do think they do a good job with packaging and branding it's a little it's you know he's obviously close with Ronnie and Kith.

25:43And Kith does this well too, which is like the collab, co-branded design, sort of putting brands together in an interesting way. And so, yeah, check it out. The Hot Wheels R-Sham logos is quite nice. Yeah, I agree. Well executed. I never played with Hot Wheels as a kid. I wasn't really a Hot Wheels kid. I don't know. Interesting. Just not really my thing. I don't know. I think it was a little bit younger. Like, I don't know. I think it was popular in like the 70s, but 80s. I don't know. I wasn't into it. I was more of a teenage bird. You're a turtle kid. That was kind of my thing. I definitely set up a bunch of tracks in my house.

26:19Really? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know why. It just wasn't for me. It just flowed directly from Thomas the Tank Engine, setting up those tracks. Oh, yeah. The Hot Wheels. Yeah. Natural progression. Train kids. Yeah. Yeah. I have a nephew. He's a diehard train kid. I mean, trains rule. Trains. He just, every time I ever see him, he's just like train, train, train. He's got train tracks. And yeah, you're right. Hot Wheels. Thomas goes hard. Yeah, you should get him some Hot Wheels because he'll probably be into them shortly. No, you're probably right. This would be a great gift for the holiday season coming up soon.

26:50Now, get him some regular ones. Yeah, I don't need Daniel. Yeah, you don't need Daniel. And the cracks in the actual cars don't serve well for the aerodynamics. I don't think the cars would go as far, which is problematic if you know anything about setting up Hot Wheels tracks. You want those things to go far. You wanted to make the entire track. Yeah. It's a good gift, though. You're right. Hot Wheels. Holidays are coming up. So start making lists in your phone about what to buy people. That's what I do. You know what you should buy people, Kevin? What? A Patreon subscription to their favorite podcast.

27:28Wow. I know. I know. I know. Next story. It's actually been a couple weeks old. We've been potting with guests, and we've been kind of doing a bunch of different things. Kicking this can down the road. We kind of kicked it down the road. And essentially what it is, is probably something you're all very familiar with at this point, which is a rebrand for Patreon. Patreon. I'm not entirely sure what it is, except for it's a way to subscribe to your favorite creators. So it's like only fans, but without the sex it's like for creators that put out podcasts or basically content. Is that like, I only know it through podcasts.