Laptop-Buying Tips from a Hologram

📰1/ Headline Roundup:

A brief review of a few interesting headlines you might have missed this week.

🏷️Best Buy unveils holographic mascot as part of tech-forward rebrand

• Best Buy has gone through a rebrand, and part of the strategy is a new spokesperson - a hologram named Gram.
• He comes shooting out of a yellow Best Buy tag, and he’s here to talk tech and gadgets with you.
• The tagline you’ll hear from him is “Imagine that”, centered around how tech can help customers “level up their lives” per Jennie Weber, Best Buy’s CMO.
• My two cents: I like the actor, and I bet we’ll see a lot of Best Buy ads out there: Part of the plan is to release 500 YouTube videos between now and year end.

🎥TikTok Exec Shares How Brands Can Be Creatively Brave on the Platform

• TikTok’s global head of business marketing, Sofia Hernandez, is tasked with helping brands show up well on TikTok.
• On P&G using TikTok as an ad platform for Tampax and Always: “It was so great to watch them be creatively brave.”
• Creator partnerships have moved far beyond “influencer marketing…1.0,” where brands essentially hand a creator a script, she said. Now, brands have to find which creators will resonate with their consumers.
• On her conversations with CMO’s: “There are a lot of CMOs like, ‘Oh yeah, my teenager is on TikTok.’ And I’m like, ‘But you’re not. How could you possibly know what it’s about and build a marketing campaign if you’re not actually in it?’”
• My two cents: I learned in this article that there was a panel at Cannes called “Now trending: #Authenticity.” This is a bit cringey if you ask me. If you have to hashtag authenticity, that might indicate a lack of authenticity.

💩Jake Paul’s W Brand Raises $11 Million to Compete With Axe, Old Spice

• The personal care line, whose name is “a nod to winning”, aims to elbow its way into a category dominated by big CPG’s like Unilever’s Axe and P&G’s Old Spice.
• Internet sensations keep having success launching CPG brands: His brother Logan made Prime energy drink a huge success, and Mr. Beast’s chocolate brand Feastables is growing and getting global distribution.
• Paul compares working an influencer to earning ”a Ph.D. In understanding what to give to people.”
• There is some rationale to it: Investors see a ready-made audience that’ll follow Paul wherever he goes. Theoretically could solve the issue of getting new customers.

💵 2/ Cheap Strategy 

Each week, I'll write up a short business strategy recommendation for a firm, brand, or startup I've got no connection to and very little experience with. I'll make two promises each time - it'll cost them nothing and may be worth the same.

Today: Battle lines being drawn by car manufacturers on whether they will, or won’t, put Apple CarPlay in their cars. First up, an interview snippet with RJ Scaringe, founder of Rivian Motors, on why they don’t include it:

What to know:

• Apple said back in 2021 that 79% of US car buyers “only consider CarPlay-capable vehicles.”
• General Motors recently made the controversial decision to ditch CarPlay with the rationale that it’ll make drivers safer, they’ll look at their phones less.
• In addition to GM and Rivian, there’s another big holdout: Tesla. Per Top Speed, “Tesla's preference for in-house software is the most obvious reason for omitting CarPlay and Android Auto. Their own system already provides many desired features, ensuring a complete user experience.”

So, the strategy: Is it a good one? Depends on the auto manufacturer. The bottom line is, the western world has seen and used CarPlay. It’s widely liked. If I can’t get CarPlay in a rental car at Hertz, I’m very likely to pick another car. The next time I buy a car, it’ll likely be a factor for me. I‘m sure there’s some real data GM has to validate the safety component, but if a car manufacturer willingly chooses to not offer a capability that’s widely loved, there’s a few things in the mix for me:

1. Is the user experience good? Absolutely critical. Tesla doesn’t seem to get too much heat for not offering CarPlay because their software is very good. They have proven they can do it. Respect, earned. Remember using an old TomTom or Garmin GPS with buggy touchscreens? There are car manufacturers who haven’t improved maps capabilities much beyond that. How often do you see some arcane navigation tool like a oreo-sized scroll wheel near your shifter that clicks, moves, and rotates - couldn’t we just have a touchscreen? Even modern vehicles like the Polestar 2, with Google Assistant and Maps built in, is far less pleasant to use than it should be. Any car manufacturer that wasn’t started in this millennium likely has a graveyard of bad ideas for their user interface. Can they do well enough to make people forget about CarPlay or Android Auto? Track record is decidedly mixed.
2. What’s the plan for data? This’ll affect drivers day-to-day less, but in terms of data privacy, how will driver data be used? Will Chili’s get to buy access to the dataset of where people start their journeys when they’re going to a Chili’s? Will advertising on all that touchscreen real estate become more common in these cars? So far, the user experience is pretty pure with an Apple CarPlay, and to Tesla and Rivian’s credit, I’d argue the same. But would Starbucks be interested in getting an auto-downloaded app on all new GM’s? You betcha they would.
3. What’s the plan for subscriptions? GM hopes to make as much as $25 billion per year by the year 2030. Back in 2021, it was $2B. At the time, GM’s SVP of Innovation and Growth, Alan Wexler, said “Our research indicates that with the right mix of compelling offerings, customers are willing to spend $135 per month on average for products and services.” So if we’re reading the tea leaves, the perspective is that there’s another $135 per month in people’s wallets that we’re just itching to fork over to car companies, and the plan is to find lots of new ways to earn that after people have purchased. Tesla’s done it with their Full Self Driving subscriptions, and BMW tried to charge you $18 a month to use your heated seats before negative public reception resulted in an about-face. This’ll be really interesting to watch, because car manufacturers are unequivocally going to try it. Will American consumers go for it? It seems so counter to the American ethos of car ownership - you buy it, you own it, it’s yours, you can do what you want with it. Charging someone to enable their heated seats is laughable but also ominous - will I need to pay for the A/C someday? Good luck, car manufacturers - I’m glad I don’t have to solve this one.

Also, a bonus one in case anyone who works at Volkswagen sees this someday: If you ever decide to eschew CarPlay and Android Auto (you shouldn’t), here’s your path forward.

🍫 3/ An Andes Mint Before You Go

At Tex-Mex restaurants in Dallas, it's very common to be presented with one Andes Mint per person when paying your tab at the end of a meal. I think it's a lovely touch after I've housed five bowls of tortilla chips, and this is my attempt each week to round this thing out the same way.

Beautiful lecture from Graham Weaver at Stanford. “What would I do with my life if I knew I wouldn’t fail?” is a deeply motivating, soul-searching question. Not an easy one to answer, either.

Go get 'em, y'all. We'll do this again next Friday.