🫟 “Slug life” — Vaseline’s creator hack. Agentic shopping bubble. Official hotel cars. +LIVE from NY AdWeek

0:28This is Nick. 267 years, Vaseline is going viral for the very first time. Because Vaseline's best marketing move was switching cabinets. For our second story, is this the week that we hit peak AI shopping bots? Well, we'll tell you why agentic AI shoppers won't actually do your shopping. And our third and final story. Hotel chains and car companies are hooking up right now. It's the official car of blank hotel. Because there is no better free sample than a fun sample. But besties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories, what a mix of stories.

1:08Happy New York Ad Week to all those who celebrate. Which is everyone with a budget to deploy. Because New York Advertising Week is the biggest industry event of the year. Jack, it's the Super Bowl of selling. It's the Coachella of closing. It is the Olympics of manipulating human behavior. And we just crunched the numbers. advertising is arguably America's ultimate industry. Get this, you pump gas twice a month. You eat food 21 times a week. But according to USC, the average American sees 5 ,000 advertisements every single day. 5 ,000 ads per day. And only five of them are on this podcast. You see ads more than you see your girlfriend.

1:52You're spending more time with marketers than with your husband. Because as Jack and I have said before, where there are eyeballs, there will be ads. So there is no industry more exciting, creative, and frankly confused right now than the one in this room. So Jack and I are going to go full madmen on today's show. We are in our Don Draper era because this is an ad week full of firsts. Jack, this is the first ad week since the event was acquired by a private equity firm. So if your lanyards feel a little thin right now, That's the cost cuts talking. Yeah, that's the PE. Also, this is the first ad week that we're here because creators have kind of taken over.

2:27Two and a half thousand influential influencers are influencing each other right now. And it's the first ad week where OpenAI is now an ad platform. Sam Altman just changed his name to Sam Ogilvie. Yeah, because OpenAI wants to hit a hundred billion bucks in ad revenue within four years. Which took the magazine industry 200 years to achieve. So today, Jack and I have whipped up for you the three most surprising stories in America's most prolific of industries. The three stories that, as always, will make you the most interesting person in both the boardroom and the brunch table. Because, as we learned, advertising affects everyone 5 ,000 times a day.

3:05So, in the spirit of seed tech, our fantastic host, let's hear some noise to confirm that human butts are in these seats. Yeah. Not bots.

3:19Doesn't sound like bots, sounds like bots, Jack. Let's hit our three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm. Jack 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.

3:50Start the show. Start the show.

3:56Monarch. Yetis, did you guys get that grandma check for your birthdays growing up? A white letter envelope stuffed inside a wonderful handwritten card. Great penmanship. Great penmanship. Oh, I just wish I'd had a way to add all those checks up or track them or store them in a piggy bank. If I had Monarch as a kid, I would have known my account balances and watched them grow in probably a savings account before splurging on something awesome to treat myself. Because Monarch is the money app that we'd always wish we'd had. And when I say something awesome, I mean like a bunch of free spots, probably.

4:23Yeah, using Monarch today, we know how much our money was going to taxis, or it could have gone to scooters and subways instead. With all your accounts securely linked to Monarch, it's like having a financial advisor in your pocket and on your computer. With weekly AI recaps to update you on your spending spikes that you definitely ignored. And while most apps tell you only what you've already spent, Monarch helps you set future spending goals. It's the kind of money app that your grandma would have loved with all her heart. Write your own money story. with Monarch. Use code TBOY at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just 50 bucks.

4:52That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code TBOY. You know what's a fun habit? Getting to hang with you guys every day on this show. It's what we do. Another fun habit? Listening to audiobooks about habits. Like Atomic Habits, the legendary piece about building habits that better your life, right? And the Atomic Habits audiobook is on Audible. We're excited to collab with Audible because it's how we find our road trip companion. The written word, spoken. So besties, you can create a habit of enjoying audiobooks while you multitask. Which I believe is chapter three of Atomic Habits.

5:22That's right, Jack. Wash pots and pans, awkwardly fold those fitted bed sheets, floss your teeth while you're winding down listening on Audible. If your hands are full while listening to Audible, then you're doing it right. So summer's not over. Replace doom scrolling by listening to an audiobook that a human put all their thought and effort into. Audible. It's stories that speak to you. And new members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. That's a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. Take it from a couple guys with a lot of habits who have become your habit.

5:52For our first story, the most viral skincare product right now is also the oldest. We're talking Vaseline. After 167 years, we'll tell you how Vaseline finally learned how to speak internet lingo. Yetis, the year is 1859. A young chemist named Robert Cheesebro, great name, visited Pennsylvania's oil fields and noticed this gooey residue. Yeah. Before Vaseline, they called it rod wax. This was not good stuff. It clogged the drilling rigs, actually. But workers realized if they rubbed it on their cuts and burns, I feel a little bit better. Feels good, Jack. So Dr. Cheesebro took this rod wax home, purified it, patented it in 1865, and boom, voila, Vaseline.

6:36One of America's first branded products. Jack, can you sprinkle on some context to the name Vaseline, please? It's a little bit of a butchered name, but Wasser in German is water. And so that's the vas. Okay. And then Aline is Greek for olive oil. And what is Vaseline? It's like watery olive oil, right? That's what it is. It feels like Dr. Cheeseburger was just showing off his linguistic skills there. But in the 1880s, Vaseline quickly became a household staple, a default remedy for skin issues. And it still is today. And get this. I'm not sure if any product can say this. This is wild. Vaseline is present in more than half of all households on earth.

7:12Sit down, stand up, sit back down again. Half of all households have a Vaseline. The only other two products that match that is water and olive oil. Okay, Jack, being in most homes, that is nice. But not if those homes only buy you once, as most do. Yeah, consumers love that Vaseline is shelf-stable. Marketers actually hate it. But Vaseline's brand director recently noticed some online videos that showed people buying Vaseline twice, three times, six, seven, eight times. For use cases that Dr. Cheesebro never could have concocted. So Vaseline, it started doing what you were doing on the subway just to get here.

7:48They started scrolling Instagram. They noticed some influencers were bragging about their Vaseline life hacks, like use Vaseline for a better shave, or get ready with me while I use Vaseline for some smoother nail polish. Or slugging, which is applying Vaseline as your last step in your skincare routine, which for me is 42 steps, it locks in the moisture overnight. Smart. I mean, Jack, three and a half million posts were online about these creative Vaseline hacks. Yeah, but others weren't so smart. That's true. A peanut butter and petroleum jelly sandwich that some believe moisturizes your whole body.

8:19Anyone here raise your hand if you've done peanut butter and Vaseline sandwiches. For the Yetis listening, it's zero. What was interesting about Vaseline is how they responded to this outpouring of life hacks using Vaseline. They didn't send a cease and desist letter for using Vaseline in ways that could be dangerous. And they didn't just like boost the post with some marketing budget. Instead, Vaseline tried out these hacks real life in their lab and asked themselves, do these work? Yeah. Vaseline rounded up a bunch of Unilever scientists, because they're owned by Unilever, to basically try out and test each one of these random hacks.

8:51And if they worked, they would award the creator who thought them up in the first place with a badge. This program was called Vaseline Verified. Vaseline Verified, giving their blessing to a bunch of creator rando inventions. Congrats. You're Vaseline Verified because you were the first to use Vaseline to make your perfume lock in three times longer. I mean, Jack, boom, suddenly Tina with 20 ,000 followers is getting an official stamp of approval from the brand. It's not that different than Instagram's blue check mark or an FDA of approval, but the results were amazing. huge 136 million views in the first month after launching this program they won 14 awards at cans advertising and those views became revenues they did vaseline got three mentions in unilever's latest earnings report its sales are up double digits every quarter for the last couple years and now unilever's oldest brand is one of its top performing and fastest growing and a product derived from petroleum is gen z's third favorite beauty product i feel like i should hit the profit puppy button.

9:52That's a cha-ching. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our dewy buddies over at Vaseline? Vaseline applied the YouTube model to your face. Look, yeah, it's great news for Vaseline. Some people aren't just buying it once, forgetting about it until they grab a hot pan and then need to treat a burned fingertip like every year. Some people have moved Vaseline from the medicine cabinet to the beauty shelf, and that's key. But Vaseline then took the insights from Vaseline verified and turned it into a packaged product. Basically, they made it easier to do these life hacks and they called these original beauty products Vaseline Originals.

10:30But these are the result of user-generated innovation. Like at, from head to toe, develop that brow tamer jelly. Let's give them credit. So just like YouTube gives a portion of the revenue to user-generated content, Vaseline is giving a percentage of the revenue of these user-generated hack products. Besties, this rewards the community for taking action that benefits the business. It's working for YouTube and now it's working for Vaseline. Yes, it is. For our second story, AI agents are ushering in the dawn of a-commerce. That's agentic commerce. And it's created an Amazon versus Shopify showdown, But we actually think agentic commerce is a fallacy.

11:15I'll tell you why. Now, besties, as of last week, we now have two labubu cute agents who are AI and will shop for you. One of them is named Muse, and one of them is named Dot. And just like Ari Gold had Lloyd and Miranda Priestly had Andy, they both promised to be your personal assistant. You see, OpenAI's Dot announcement, it included the word work 43 times. And meta's included the word work 11 times, as in, these guys will work for you 24-7. But Jack, sometimes working is shopping. Yeah. Like in Devil Wears Prada, when Andy had to go snag a Harry Potter book for Miranda's twins. An unpublished Harry Potter book.

11:52Thank you for the fact check. But if everyone has an AI agent, as Mark Zuckerberg anticipates, all of us soon will. Then when AI goes shopping for you, how does it decide what to buy? This is the question that is top of mind for advertisers, marketers, and consumers right now. Look, if agents shop on behalf of their human masters, how can advertisers actually influence them? Now, advertising to humans is about emotion. Yes, it is. Like, buy this Jeep, it represents freedom. Buy this Diet Coke, it represents coolness. But advertising to bots, Jack? Half-Naked Sidney Sweeney is not going to compel them to download a sports gambling app.

12:30You see, bots are compelled by price, product descriptions, and data. Bots are boring. They want facts, not feelings. This is not e-commerce. It's e-commerce for agentic shopping. But besides how to advertise to AI, another very open question is, is AI even going to be allowed to shop on our behalf? Jack, are you talking about bot blocking right now? Bot blocking. Bot blocking. Because do you remember that incident last week? Amazon blocked Meta's Muse from accessing the e-commerce platform. Remember, Yetis, Amazon makes$68 billion a year in advertising. They don't want those ads being shown to boring old bots.

13:06But guess what happened? Shopify stock is up 32 % since September 8th, the day that Meta announced Muse. Because Shopify is interestingly positioning itself as Amazon Prime, but for bots. And that's become a bull case for the stock. And we just got some evidence that it's working, at least for one CEO that was interviewed by Business Insight. Yeah, this dude delegated all of his shopping to Meta's Muse, and Zuck loves it. He told Muse to find me this certain bottle of rare wine, these discontinued Levi's jeans, this vintage armchair, but only if the price drops 20%. Okay, but since Amazon blocks Meta's Muse from making purchases for them, Meta is shopping through Shopify instead.

13:48So that CEO has switched from being an Amazon customer to a Shopify customer. And Jack, if that's an early indicator, then 200 million citizens of Amazon Prime Nation, who here is among them? I mean, it's like everyone. You could expatriate to Shopify. So here's the question. Could Shopify, the e-commerce platform for so many brands, become the digital cash register for the agentic era? What do we think, Jack? Nope. No. Nope. We don't think AI will take over our shopping carts because of our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our adorably cute shopping bots over in e-commerce? Agentic shopping is not the future human shopping is.

14:27Now, Besties, do you want AI to buy Christmas gifts for your loved ones? Like, yeah, can you picture us asking a muse little bot to get Buddy Timmy something? No. I mean, that's about like, you know, it's the thought that counts. Right, and no one really understands Buddy Timmy. What I want AI to do is take out the trash and empty out the dirty diapers. Yeah, that's what we really wanted to do. You see, Ben Thompson pointed out a truism of this in a recent interview. He said, people love shopping. They don't want to be productive. They want to be entertained. When I had a desk job at Comerats Bank here in the city, half of the time I walked by one of my colleagues, they were shopping.

15:03You want a disclosure? What disclosure? Okay, I didn't know if you were shopping or were there right now, Jack. Neely Patel, by the way, has another funny headline. He says, the people do not yearn for automation. Now, the point, people don't want to run their personal lives as if they were running a business. So Jack and I think there is a huge market for business AI. Of course there is. AI is an incredibly powerful productivity tool. But here's the key. Do people want to answer something that gives them a dopamine hit like shopping does? We don't think so. No. Do people want to give up a fun habit that is a fun way to spend your time and feels like a treasure hunt?

15:37Now, Jack, there is one distinction we should make here, like commodity shopping versus specialized shopping for our buddy, Timmy. Maybe AI handles your toilet paper and dishwasher detergent refills. Okay, but then Jack, for spending on fashion, vacation, cars, and restaurants... Agents are not going to do that shopping. Humans always will. Besties, get out, agent. We're going shopping. Great job, Mike.

16:07Now, a quick word from our sponsor. You know what's a fun habit? Getting to hang with you guys every day on this show. It's what we do. Another fun habit? Listening to audiobooks about habits. Like Atomic Habits, the legendary piece about building habits that better your life, right? And the Atomic Habits audiobook is on Audible. We're excited to collab with Audible because it's how we find our road trip companion. The written word, spoken. So besties, you can create a habit of enjoying audiobooks while you multitask. Which I believe is chapter three of Atomic Habits. That's right, Jack. Jack, wash pots and pans, awkwardly fold those fitted bed sheets, floss your teeth while you're winding down listening on Audible.

16:44If your hands are full while listening to Audible, then you're doing it right. So summer's not over, replace doom scrolling by listening to an audiobook that a human put all their thought and effort into. Audible, it's stories that speak to you. And new members can start listening with a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. That's a 30-day free trial at audible.com slash tboy. Take it from a couple guys with a lot of habits who have become your habit. Him's hair. Yetis, you're looking at a photo of yourself from five years ago, and you quote George Costanza. I think it moved. You're not talking about that, though.

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18:18Every hotel now has an official car brand, and they will pay your speeding through story. All right, Yetis, in order to tell the story, there's actually this strange phenomenon up in Napa Valley. People are driving 95 miles per hour, but not getting in trouble. The police cameras catch them speeding. They send the ticket. They take points off the license of the hotel. Because the car's license plate isn't registered to a driver. It's registered to the nearby resort. Nick got this intel from the valet at the Aubertage Hotel during a recent family trip. Yeah, we were at the Stanley Ranch Hotel. And when we arrived, the thing I noticed in the parking lot, I'm like, that's not one.

18:56That's not two. I'm counting seven Mercedes in a row, all different types. It's an official partnership. Seven different Mercedes belong to each Aubertage Hotel. And any guest can take them out. The E-Class Coupe, the electric SUV, the$100 ,000 G-Wagon, and a Maybach. We're talking like pretty nice cars. Not too shabby. Renting a car is a bad retail experience. It's the worst retail experience. You go online and you book a Cadillac or similar, and you end up with a Kia with lingering stench of marijuana in the entire car. This happened to me over the holidays. Thought you were going to pick me up, Enterprise.

19:31But with no friction, the hotel now lets you drive that G-Wagon for the whole day. And all you need is one thing, a driver's license. And according to the valet Nick talked to, if you get a speeding ticket, that speeding ticket goes to the hotel. And then the manager has to decide, are we going to chase down this speeder and ask him to pay the tab? Or are we just going to pay for that? And it turns out, they'll just pay him. Yeah, it's what we're saying here is hotels and cars are the surprise hookup of the year, and it's only accelerating. We found 27 of these partnerships out there. 27. Jack, you want to whip out the whiteboard?

20:03Mercedes and Aubergh, BMW and White Elephant, Porsche and Nobu. Cadillac gave 60 cars to the montage hotel chain. Lexus, they didn't choose one hotel. They're promiscuous. Yeah, Lexus has a deal with Post Ranch Inn, Cavallo Point Lodge, Hotel Jerome, and like a dozen other independent spots. Everyone is taking a Lexus for a ride right now. Literally. And we're not talking like pick up, drop off at the airport with a chauffeur holding the sign with your name, which is a little awkward. I wish I went to the hotels Nick goes to because this sounds really fun. This is like Aston Martin product placement in a Bond movie, Jack.

20:37You are Bond, though. I felt like Bond. So interestingly, the early adopters of this trend were electric car companies. Think about it. Lucid and the Four Seasons, they partnered because there's no product with a greater learning curve than figuring out how to drive an EV. And Jack, it turns out the hotel lobby becomes a showroom. You turn a two-night stay into a three-day test drive. Now, it's unclear if any money is being exchanged here. Interesting. Because both sides benefit in kind. You see, the car marketing gets an attractive audience, and the hotel gets an attractive guest perk. Yeah, our guess is that the company pays for the car, and the hotel pays for any speeding ticket.

21:11Anyone here work in hospitality or the car industry and can tell us, is no cash exchanged? Nobody knows. but we do know that there are five stars, four wheels, zero salesmen, and one heck of a takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in the hotel car hookup? Forget the Costco free sample. Give us a Costco fun sample. Yeti's Costco is famous for giving away free samples. Try this bagel. Get a bite of this cookie. You want a chip? Take a chip. Have a chip. And it's a perfect merchandising opportunity because the recipient of that free sample has intent. Intent. They're in store deciding right now, what am I going to buy?

21:50But this is what Jack and I find fascinating. Maybe the stronger advertising angle is actually the opposite, when we have zero intent. Like a traveler at a hotel who's definitely not buying a car because they need to fly home after this. You're not spending 75K on that random Mercedes because you just got out of the pool. But this moment may be the perfect time for a test drive. Right, because you have no intent to purchase, so you just get to appreciate the product. You're not associating testing this car with how much does it cost? Do I find any things I don't like about it? Purchasing decision stress.

22:22Instead, you're associating the test drive with ease and joy and consequence-free speeding. Yeah, I don't want to see the ticket. Forget the Costco free sample, besties. What is your Costco fun sample? Nice. Nice.

22:47But is this pod over, Jack? This pod is not over yet. We need a couple of you to help us take this home. Is Jordy here all the way from Barcelona, Spain, who has the best fact yet? I think so. Let's get a round of applause for Jordy. And do we have one volunteer who wants to help us whip up the takeaways? Yes, we do. All right, come on up. So Natalie, what are the takeaways for the new Friday? First, Vaseline is upgrading from the medicine cabinet to your beauty bag. It's all Vaseline verified, and it's encouraging more with a rev share, YouTube style. Yeah, let's get a round of applause. There's two more.

23:28There's two more. Good takeaway and a good delivery. Second, car brands are gifting vehicles to hotels with no strings attached, except speeding ticket liability. Because sometimes the perfect free sample is when they have zero intent to purchase. That was a great takeaway. I love that takeaway. And finally, Natalie, personal AI shopping agents. They're cute and introducing a potentially huge disruption. A-commerce, agentic commerce. But there's limits to that. Because people enjoy shopping. They don't want to automate it. Fantastic takeaway. Thank you, Natalie. From Philadelphia.

24:05And now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Jordi Captavila from lovely Barcelona, Spain. Odds are the next ping you got online was from a robot because 64 % of all requests from web pages now come from bots, not people. Humans are barely a third of our own internet that we created. The CEO of CloudFair had predicted bots could overtake humans in terms of web traffic in 2027. But it actually happened in June of this year. It's mainly AI agents opening a thousand tabs in the time it takes one person to open five. Which is why I love working at SITEC. We make sure your ads see that 36%.

24:51That's your shouty. Jordi, Natalie, thank you for whipping up the tables for this fact yet.

25:00Yetis, thank you so much to coming to this first T-Boy Live from New York Ad Week, hosted at SeedTag. Thank you very much to SeedTag for being our host.

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