The American Identity
Should you buy a Peloton this month?
Probably not. But if you want to, go ahead.
What’s a worse holiday gift than an exercise bike?
The answer is an automobile, as Blair duQuesnay wrote in her blog:
“And then, there are the commercials. I cut the cable cord before it was popular, back in 2010, so I have not been exposed to traditional television commercials on a regular basis in a decade. But while visiting family over Thanksgiving, I was reintroduced to the barrage of holiday commercials. Most notable were the car commercials. There is a 30-something looking couple where the husband buys not one, but two brand new GMC trucks/SUVs — ‘One for Me, One for You’ is the title. It has me thinking, who are these people?
A large purchase such as a car is a major financial decision, not a gift. Even if money were no object, most drivers want to select their own car — make, model, color, and accessories. Most people finance or lease, which means these ‘gifts’ are going to cost the giver every month for the next 3–6 years. That’s a large chunk of the household budget to sacrifice without consulting your spouse…
Brian Portnoy reminds us in The Geometry of Wealth that the hedonic treadmill — the endless pursuit of more — does not make us happy. In fact, once the short-term, experienced happiness of a large gift wears off, we may end up at a lower point than we were before. This is akin to a drug user chasing the next great high; it never lives up to the first time. The American identity is almost inseparable from consumerism and ‘keeping up with Joneses.’ It takes a rebellious spirit to break with the mold.”
Cord-cutting and thus subscribing to Netflix ($NFLX), Disney+ ($DIS), Hulu, HBO ($T), etc. can result in fewer minutes watching commercials.
But those who subscribe to YouTube TV, Alphabet’s ($GOOGL) digital alternative, have the same network watching experience.
The benefit of YouTube TV is more portability for members of a household.
As an outlier in the automobile market, Tesla’s ($TSLA) advertising is made up of its newsletter, live stream announcements, and running social media commentary on reforming the transportation and energy industries, championed by Elon Musk.
All these efforts add up to fewer marketing costs that cut out the middlemen on Madison Avenue responsible for every cliché auto ad on television.
Ben Thompson at Stratechery takes a look at tech’s twist on advertising:
“Consider the three regulatory issues that I implicitly suggested deserve more attention in this piece: Apple’s App Store policies, Facebook’s acquisitions, and Google’s third-party advertising offerings. None of them fit under a popular conception of a monopoly: Apple sells a minority of smartphones, Facebook acquired Instagram when it had only 30 million users, and the advertising market is both not consumer-facing and has an infinite supply.
That doesn’t mean harms don’t exist, though: the apps and services that aren’t created, the advertising-based consumer services that are under-monetized (Snapchat and Twitter) or that aren’t even being funded, and the multitude of websites that can’t realistically even try innovations that entail going around Google.
That, though, is why I am writing this piece. Cases like the European Commission Google Shopping case are excellent examples of how a lack of clear standards leads to sub-optimal outcomes that don’t actually change anything; at the same time, the European Commission’s investigation of Apple’s App Store will surely benefit from increased flexibility in defining relative markets.
Ideally, there would be stricter adherence to better rules, instead of finger-crossing that Brussels gets it right. That, though, likely requires new laws. Indeed, while that seems like a slog, it should, in my estimation, be the focus of those interested in a future where we direct tech’s innovation towards making a larger pie for everyone, as opposed to cutting off slices because it makes us feel better, even if only temporarily.”
As a new Regal Unlimited subscriber this month, I’ll get to see most of the Golden Globe film nominees in the theater as award season comes around.
This year, as a distributor/network, Netlflix has the most film nominations (17) and also the most television nominations (also 17).
Meanwhile, the old school American television trio of ABC, CBS, and NBC earned a total of zero nominations.
How will old school advertisers respond to this new, unsurprising statistic?
