🐻‍❄️ “Artificial Santa” — Coca-Cola’s AI holiday ad. Axon’s bipartisan tasers. Beta’s e-airplane IPO. +Line-Waiting Biz

0:28This is Nick. as consequences of the elections in tomorrow's pod. But we do have three fantastic pop business news stories. I mean, these are so good. Jack, what do we got on the pod? For our first story, Coca-Cola's new holiday commercial, it's got Christmas critters, a big red Santa, but it's all AI. The headline and the comments say we hate AI art, but the data says we actually don't. For our second story, on this day after election day, one stock defies politics. It's Axon, the maker of tasers. Because Axon figured out how to make a divisive business bipartisan. And our third and final story is the newest Wall Street IPO.

1:08It's an electric airplane called Beta. Electric plane? A plane that you plug in. But Beta's real secret, it's making money on electric airplanes, even if you don't buy one of theirs. Cha-ching button. Okay. Oh, yeah. All right. I got the button right here. All right. You get the button today. Yeah. Well, that's the one time you get the button. That was satisfying. That was good. But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix of stories. Love the mix on the pod, Jack. The odds are, statistically speaking, with a 99 % degree of confidence, you are in line right now. That's right, besties.

1:39You are sitting, standing, waiting somewhere on a line. Because if something is hard to get, I want to get it. And you're willing to stand in line to get that thing. The most active thing you can do right now is doing nothing in a line. Which leads to the newest industry, line waiters. Yep. Get this, at the Rose Fashion sample sale last weekend in New York City, there was a three-hour line wait. But people were willing to pay$800 for someone else to wait on that line for them. I think we may need to press the cha-ching button again, Jack, because that is now a business, line waiting. In fact, a startup called Line Dudes has been hiring professional line standards.

2:16Qualifications, you need to have two working legs and a whole lot of patience right now. Line Dudes says that paid line waiting demand is at an all-time high. Waiting online for a Broadway musical? Boom, they charge you$20 an hour. Waiting online for that viral new taco? $23 an hour. It's raining or below freezing? Another$10 an hour upcharge. There's even a line waiting business at the Supreme Court when they're in session because rulings are read in person first and news agencies want that data first. That'll be$27 an hour, Your Honor. You may return to the bench. $27, besties, that is nearly double the minimum wage just to wait online.

2:52And you don't have to do anything. You can watch Netflix if you want. I mean, in fact, Jack, if you've got a remote job, you could also become one of these professional line waiters. You mean you could wait online and do your job at the same time? I'm suggesting the double dip, Jack. Yetis, you may have heard that time is money. Well, never a better time. Get paid for your time. And it's time for us to hit our three stories. Jack, let's hit it. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm that had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm.

3:23Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50%, that's a fat tip. T-Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

3:40Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

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4:57And then, Jack, we got to make sure each coworker is countersigned, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then we have to track down each employee and make sure they know their health insurance options. Oh, right. Did everyone know open enrollment ends tomorrow? Nope. No one did. Yetis, we are just podcast hosts. We also run a media company here. And full-time employees mean full-time benefits, too. Which means roughly 46 ,000 forms, documents, and tasks to process for each team member. Oh boy, if you're a small business, you'll want outsource all that to Gusto. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses.

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6:02One more time, gusto.com slash tboy. For our first story, Coca-Cola and Oreo. They're going all in on AI-generated advertising. Coke Christmas commercial? Yeah, that is an AI Santa. It sounds like everyone hates AI ads, but the data shows we actually don't. All right, Yetis, signs of the holidays. We're seeing them right now. Mariah Carey's on the radio. You're trading pumpkin spice for candy cane flavors. And Jack, Oh, you are wearing a huge vest. Dude, I just got this this past weekend. Yeah. They asked what size. I said as big as I can get. Bessie, if you're watching on YouTube right now, you may not see Jack.

6:43You may only see his vest. Dude, hunter green. It's my favorite color. We had to go widescreen for the video footage for today's show. Now, Bessie, the other sign that it's the holidays is that the big guy in red, Santa Claus, is out and about in the economy. Dude, did you know that the modern depiction of Santa Claus wearing a red suit was invented by Coca-Cola? Coca-Cola is who got Santa wearing red. That's how he got into it. I think Santa's like a German thing, but the red velvety suit with the white pom-pom, that was 1931 Coca-Cola's advertising department. True story. The strategy? Boost Coca-Cola's soda sales in the winter by making the brand more interesting.

7:21And Coca-Cola plus Santa is a marriage that's stuck. You got Red Santa, you got the Red Sleigh, Classic Holiday, ah, a classic brand. But last year, there was some Santa drama. Oh, are you talking about the polar bears? Eh, they looked a little off. Yeah. The soda? Eh, what's going on there? And the truck wheels in the Coca-Cola ads, they just weren't turning normally. Here's the deal. It was Coca-Cola's first AI-generated Christmas commercial. It was one year ago, and it faced a ton of backlash for replacing Madison Avenue ad people with large language models in San Francisco. But here's the shocking news.

7:56After having had one full year to think about it, And despite AI Santa gate tearing down the company last year, Coke just ordered up another AI-generated holiday commercial. That's right. The video of Coke's new ad is already on YouTube. It's hidden TV this weekend. You're going to see it if you're watching the NFL football. There's a bunch of Christmas critters in the snow smiling as a big Coca-Cola tractor trailer drives through town. And according to the Wall Street Journal, more of these AI Coca-Cola ads are coming this holiday season. Now, yes, the AI is better this time. The wheels on the truck are actually spinning in the same direction.

8:29The wheels actually go round and round, round and round. Now, Coke won't say how much money they're saving by using AI instead of advertising people. No, they won't, Jack. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, this commercial took 20 people plus AI software to create. It usually takes 50 people without AI software to do a commercial like this. And according to PFWTMs, people familiar with the matter, this took one month to create the Coca-Cola ad instead of the one year that it typically does. But hold my double-stuffed Oreo. Because the owner of Oreos, which is Mondelez, just invested$40 million into their own AI software to replace their advertising department.

9:09We repeat, Oreo is going to have their own multi-million dollar AI ad technology. And unlike Coca-Cola, Oreo is totally open about the money they're going to save. Yes, they are. They say they'll cut their costs long term for advertising by up to 50 % by using AI. And that's why Oreo is spending the equivalent of five Super Bowl ads on this brand new AI ad technology. So if you see an Oreo dipped in a glass of milk on TV and the cookie doesn't quimble quite right. Yeah, the new Oreo AI is, you know, still working out the kinks. Or as the AI industry says, this is the worst AI you'll ever have.

9:45Why do they always say that? They always say that. That's what the thing is. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in AI? AI advertising is like french fries. You say you don't want any, but you actually do. Yesterday, Jack and I did a whole story about how the American public has broad bipartisan hatred of AI. This story shows there's actually nuance to the issue. We have a different feeling when it comes to AI-generated creativity. You see, if you read all the press about Coca-Cola's AI advertising, you'd think it was universally hated. But if you look at the data, the consumer research from Coca-Cola, it turns out that feeling was far from universal.

10:23People actually liked it. it's actually kind of understandable. Like the media, which relies on the ad industry, seems to be more negative on AI marketing than the general public is. Because the media industry has anti-AI bias. AI threatens to replace them and their jobs after all. But we can't mistake that for how the public feels about AI advertising. According to System One and Ad Tracker, Coke's AI ads last year scored very highly with the public. Jack, maybe people didn't know it was AI or they just didn't care, but either way, that Coca-Cola AI ad was still loved by most people. According to the data.

10:57Now, the press suggests we're disgusted by AI-generated advertising. The research shows we aren't. For our second story, the inventor of the taser gun just continued their epic 30-quarter streak of 30 % revenue growth. That is wild. Yesterday was election day, and Axon may have found the most uniting message of all. Nick, this is such an interesting story. Oh, this is fascinating. And this is a wild story to do after an election, but it really begins back in 1993. That's when two men were sadly killed in a road rage incident. And that event led to the creation of the Taser gun. Yeah, because those two guys happened to be friends of Rick Smith, the co-founder and CEO of this company, Axon.

11:40So he invented the stun gun called the Taser. The Taser. To give police non-lethal alternatives to guns. But then in 2017, Taser changed the company name to Axon. And Jack, why did they do that? Because they added body cameras. That's right. And they added software to manage body camera footage and software that could easily submit that footage as evidence in the court of law. Well, perfect timing because yesterday on election day, Axon announced their earnings. What kind of numbers are we looking at? This taser business has one of the wildest streaks on Wall Street right now. Get this, besties.

12:14Axon has had 30 quarters with an average 30 % growth rate in revenue. 30 quarters is seven and a half years, and 30 % revenue growth is really good revenue growth. Now, besties, here's what Jack and I find fascinating about this. Yesterday, like we said, was election day. But on election day of 2024, Axon was the winner of the Trump trade. The stock of Axon jumped 40 % in the days following the 2024 Donald Trump election. Yeah, basically, Axon got a pro-police pop. The expectation was a surge in funding for police as Republicans swept not just Washington, D.C., but the whole nation. Moe money in the budget, moe money to buy Axon stuff.

12:53But guess what the big growth category of Axon is right now? It's the body cameras. Yeah, it's the body cameras, not the tasers. Axon has sold$287 million worth of body cameras for police officers so far this year. It turns out judges have been ordering body camera usage in response to Trump's immigration crackdown. Axon has also expanded to police car dashboard cameras, interrogation room cameras, and drone cameras as well. Okay, but Jack, let's go back to that wild 30-quarter growth streak that Axon is enjoying. Like, what's the wild thing about it? It's not just a Trump thing. It was there for all four of the Biden years, too.

13:31Jack, I'll do you one better. Ten years ago, when President Obama was president, that's when Axon began its rocket ship growth. The stock has 28xed in the last 10 years. I can't believe we didn't invest when we first heard about it on that bachelor party a decade ago. Who was it that was telling us we should buy it? I don't remember, but they owe us, I think. 28 X-ing is, I think, 2 ,700%. Besties, this is fascinating because a seemingly divisive stock has grown regardless of which party is in power. Because of our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Axon? Axon has taken something very polarizing and made it very unifying.

14:10Now, yet, Axon could have become an outspoken pro-police rah-rah type of arms company. USA, USA kind of thing. They could have tried to turn America's police into the modern Robocops. Or, from a political perspective, they could have taken the opposite approach and been all about police accountability with their body cameras. Which, as you said, would have been received completely different politically. Exactly. But instead, Axon found an overlap in the Venn diagram. And here was the message. Reduce the number of deaths involving police. Here's their mission statement, which they actually call a moonshot.

14:41Cut gun-related deaths in America between police and the public by 50 % within 10 years. They found the one message that both sides want, everyone wants. Tasers reduce fatal shootings and the body cameras improve accountability. Axon's real strategy was taking a polarizing issue, policing, and making it unifying, reducing deaths. Now a quick word from our sponsor. Walmart business. Yeah, it is. We cover business trends on our show and they move faster than you can spell GPU. One minute it's vibe coding, the next it's agentic. Tomorrow it's probably gonna be in-person old school again. Yeah, well, while you're managing this to stay ahead, the last thing you need to worry about is supplies for your company.

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17:13For our third and final story, the youngest stock on the stock market, it's Beta Technologies, an electric airplane company that IPO'd just yesterday. But Beta's real secret is winning money, even if they lose the deal. And we'll tell you how they pull it off. But Jack, I noticed when we were researching this story, do you just want to ask me the hockey question? You can just ask me. If a guy plays hockey and he's six foot six, is he the team's enforcer by default? Well, Jack, having watched, yeah, every one of the Mighty Ducks movies, I can tell you, yeah, a six foot six hockey player is an enforcer.

17:46The six foot six dude in question is Kyle Clark. a former Harvard hockey player who was drafted into the NHL. Now, like Happy Gilmore, hockey didn't work out for this guy, Kyle. Unlike Happy Gilmore, Kyle Clark became an entrepreneur. Yeah, by returning to his home state of Vermont and building electric airplanes. Basically, the Rivian of the skies. Perfectly put, Jack. Now, this guy caught my attention in the local newspaper. He caused a local stir in 2022 when he asked the town he lived in if he could build a private airstrip in his 100-acre backyard. Yeah, like instead of driving to the Burlington Airport where Beta's office and airplane factory is, he wanted to fly his electric airplane in his own backyard.

18:29Which is basically like Bruce Wayne-level epicness. Well, Beta IPO'd just yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange. And Jack, how are we looking? This pre-revenue company is now worth$7.5 billion. I gotta pause the pod for a sec, Jack. I know we're in San Francisco right now, so there's a lot of pre-revenue talk, but why does Wall Street think a company with almost zero revenue is worth more than Clorox, more than Whirlpool, and as much as Lyft? Because this company is not waiting for electric airplane demand. They're creating it with a network of charge cubes. Charge cubes, more in that in a sec.

19:06Not ice cubes, charge cubes. Jack, let's sprinkle on some product context here. Beta, it? They're selling two electric-powered flying machines. What are they? One is an eVTOL, which is an electric vertical takeoff and landing machine. It takes off and lands like a helicopter, flies like an airplane. The other product is an airplane that's simply electric instead of jet fuel. And it flies as quiet as the clouds. You see, without gas, it's a simpler machine, so the competitive advantage is a lower-cost flying machine. It might be more expensive up front, but it's 74 % and 42 % cheaper to operate in the long term than a regular plane or helicopter.

19:42Now here's what Jack and I find fascinating. The Sky is now filled with publicly traded electric airplane companies. Joby and Archer are competitors to Beta. They're both electric aircraft companies and they're both already on the stock market. But the difference is that those two companies sell a service. The difference is in the business model. Joby and Archer are basically air taxi fleets. They fly New Yorkers to the Hamptons to avoid the Long Island Railroad. But on the other hand, Beta's focus isn't on the service. It's on simply selling the product. Beta is basically Boeing. They don't sell a service.

20:15They sell aircraft. You see, UPS bought some Beta electric planes to ship their cargo. And some medical companies have pre-ordered Beta aircraft so they can quickly transport organs when they need to. Air New Zealand, they want Betas so they can replace their gas guzzling jets with ones that fly on electric maple syrup. But none of these aircraft are going to work without some pretty huge three-pronged plugins. You got to charge these things. You got to charge the airplane. Which is why Beta has built charge cubes already at 51 different airports. Yeah, I don't want to be a 30 ,000 feet, Jack, when the low battery sign comes on.

20:50No, you don't. No, you don't. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Beta Electric Airplanes? Sell the car, but own the gas station too. Yetis, Tesla is the biggest electric charging company in America by far. Even if people buy a Rivian, a Lucid, or a Hyundai electric car, Tesla still makes money on the charging because they're simply the best charging station. Apple sells a bunch of services and also sells iPhones. But since Apple also owns the operating system, it makes money even if you use non-Apple apps and don't buy another iPhone. Similarly to those two, Beta put itself in the position of owning the network with its charging stations.

21:29Like Tesla with the supercharging network, Beta sells charging cubes to charge airplanes at airports. Basically the only electric gas station at 51 airports. It's these Beta cubes. Beta said the word cubes twice as often as they said the word airplanes in their IPO paperwork, which shows how important this charging network is. You see besties, Tesla, they've got a charging network. Apple has got its operating system and And Beta has these charging cubes, all very expensive investments. But they pay off. Because even if you buy the competition's aircraft, you got to charge them on Beta's charge cubes.

22:03Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for Saviche Wednesday? Coca-Cola and Oreo are both leaning into AI to generate their Christmas commercials. Because people don't mind at all. The headlines make you think we hate AI ads, but the data shows we don't. For a second story, Axon, the inventor of tasers and body cameras, has a wild streak. growing 30 % for 30 straight quarters. Axon found political common ground on a divisive cultural and political topic. And finally, the newest IPO is Beta, the third e-aircraft company with a publicly traded stock. But Beta is the first to build the supercharging network of the skies.

22:41But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, can someone please check on Ben the Bitcoin? Jack, Ben's price just fell below$100 ,000 for like a moment yesterday. Bitcoin is now down 20 % from its all-time high and fell 10 % in just the last seven days. The wildest part? It was October. Bitcoin has historically risen nearly every single October in history. But this is the first October in seven years that Bitcoin actually fell. And second, a wild day for fast food chains. I mean, Jack, let's whip up the whiteboard over here. Yum! Brands is reportedly trying to sell Pizza Hut.

23:19after eight straight quarters of declining pizza sales. And then Denny's, the breakfast chain, is going private. It's no longer going to be a publicly traded stock. And finally, Starbucks. They sold a majority of their China business, which is 8 ,000 locations. Because selling coffee in China, I guess, is not a profit. If you buy one product from each of those three companies, you will hit your 2 ,000 daily calorie limit. And finally, Martha Stewart is having a moment again. After publishing 101 books, she's now republishing her very first book. How does she manage to stay in the news so consistently?

23:51AI. She's just AI at this point, I think, Jack. The fun part, Martha noticed that her original cookbook was reselling on eBay for like 500 bucks each. So she spoke to her publisher and they said, hey, there's clearly demand, let's republish this thing. So now Martha Stewart is reselling her old book to become the Martha Stewart of Gen Z. Now time for the best fact yet. This one whipped up by Jack and me because we discovered this nugget in our research on the Oreo story. Look at this. No one knows why Oreos are called Oreos. And if someone tells you they do, they're lying to you. Nobody knows.

24:21Nabisco has never confirmed it. Here are the theories. The Greek word for mountain is kind of Oreo. Yeah, and early Oreo cookie prototypes kind of looked mountain-shaped. Another theory, the French word for gold is Oreo. Yeah, like the first packaging in 1912 for this cookie was gold, so maybe it comes from or from French. If we've got some Sherlock Holmeses in our audience, let us know about this mystery. The Oreo, the branding mystery of corporate America. Yetis, you'll look fantastic today. And if you are now a new Yeti or bestie, Jack and I got a quick favor to ask of you. Fill out our two-minute survey.

25:00We'd love to learn more about you and discover how you discovered the best one yet. We got a link in the show notes. In the meantime, Jack, we got a reservation at Little Original Joe's tonight. Not to be confused with Little Joe's or Original Joe's. For Joseph's, for Josephine's, is the little original Joseph. It's original inflation happening at every Joe's restaurant. All right, we got to hit that reservation. Besties, we'll see you tomorrow.

25:28And before we go, a congratulations to the newest Yeti, and we mean literal Yeti, Mike Mooney, who is now officially on the T-Boy team. He just joined today. The New York Yankees have a general manager, and now so does the best one yet. Mike Mooney, the new manager of the best one yet. Sorry, the Mets have a GM. He's a Mets fan, everybody. Yeah, he's a Mets fan. We should point that out. And Trevor D 'Ambert down in Knoxville just got engaged, celebrated in Harry Potter World. Let's see the ring picks. Or is it a wand pick? I guess we got to clarify, Jack. And happy birthday to Brad Robinson in Honolulu, Hawaii.

26:01Your parents are proud of you, and no one even asked. And Chewy Jang down in lovely Los Angeles is the best neighbor yet with the best birthday yet. Happy birthday to Vinny Fong on Long Island, New York. who loves himself a self-driving car. And Tanoosh Garg just got a job at Microsoft to celebrate the wins, Tanoosh. Congrats to all the New York City marathon runners out there, including Cindy Lawrence and Greg the Beast from Goldman Sachs. And Victoria Ritter from Munich, Germany, sent us a correction on the pod. Thank you, Victoria Jack. What is the correction? We said that Peter Thiel was South African.

26:32While he did live there as a kid, he was actually born in Deutschland, but spent most of his childhood in the United States. And besties, always feel free to send us a correction We'll get it on the show. Critical for the time.

26:46This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix. Nick and I both own stock in Apple, and we both own some Bitcoin. Bitcoin, name Ben. Bureau premium non-alcoholic beer. All right, Yeti, it's a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do. And so for our live shows, we crack open something special. So we drank Biro, the premium non-alcoholic beer brand co-founded by Tom Holland.

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