AI transcript
0:00:03 Support for this show comes from Klaviyo.
0:00:07 You’re building a business. Klaviyo helps you grow it.
0:00:12 Klaviyo’s AI-powered marketing platform puts all your customer data plus email,
0:00:15 SMS, and analytics in one place. With Klaviyo,
0:00:21 Tindfish Phenom Fishwife delivers real-time, personalized experiences that keeps their
0:00:26 customers hooked. They’ve grown 70 times revenue in just four years with Klaviyo.
0:00:31 Now that’s scale. Visit klaviyo.com to learn how
0:00:36 brands like Fishwife build smarter digital relationships with Klaviyo.
0:00:46 Your team requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It’s through their Uber Teen account.
0:00:50 It’s an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision
0:00:55 with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today.
0:01:03 In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left.
0:01:05 There’s some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald’s.
0:01:06 Really?
0:01:10 Yeah. There’s the sausage bacon and egg, a crispy seasoned chicken one.
0:01:13 Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour.
0:01:14 They sound amazing.
0:01:15 Bet they taste amazing too.
0:01:18 Wish I had a mouth.
0:01:22 Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald’s new breakfast wraps.
0:01:25 Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax.
0:01:28 Add participating McDonald’s restaurants. Ba da ba ba ba.
0:01:32 What sector boasts the strongest brands in the world?
0:01:41 Tobacco? Universities? Tech companies? No, the strongest brands in the world are people.
0:01:54 People are the new brands by Ed Elson as read by George Hahn.
0:01:58 Scott’s away this week on a safari.
0:02:03 I’m not sure what a ProfG safari looks like, but it likely involves
0:02:08 tinted camps with fine china, zikapa, and remote NAD treatments.
0:02:12 In his absence, I’m keeping the lights on.
0:02:16 Yes, me, Ed Elson, Scott’s 25-year-old co-host on ProfG Markets.
0:02:20 I get paid to make Scott appear younger and more relevant,
0:02:22 i.e. keep him abreast of trends in business and tech,
0:02:27 plus wardrobe advice. The guy dresses like an aging skateboarder.
0:02:32 This week, I’m sharing my thoughts on a long-brewing trend that came to a head in 2024.
0:02:40 It’s simple. America has fallen out of love with brands and in love with people.
0:02:44 This is evident in every corner of American life,
0:02:47 from politics and business to technology and media.
0:02:50 People are the new brands.
0:02:57 Some context. What I lack in age and wisdom I make up for in screen time.
0:03:01 I spend almost seven hours scrolling the internet yesterday.
0:03:05 Average for me, below average for my generation.
0:03:10 I am a product of the greatest digital transformation in history,
0:03:16 and the erosion of traditional brand value is happening downstream of this transformation.
0:03:22 Scott concurs. Where our views differ, however, is that while he believes
0:03:28 digitally enabled products and services have replaced brands, I believe people have.
0:03:36 First, some numbers. Gen Z spends an average of 109 days per year looking at a screen.
0:03:44 80% of our waking hours are spent consuming information, up from 40% in 1980.
0:03:51 We see 208 ads per hour, 10 times more than our parents did at our age.
0:03:57 As a result, we are more anxious, distracted, and depressed than any generation in history.
0:04:01 We all know this, but do not comprehend it.
0:04:05 Like frogs in boiling water, we’ve been slow cooked by screens.
0:04:10 The most important number is 12%.
0:04:18 That’s the share of Americans who say they have zero close friends, up from 3% in 1990.
0:04:22 Meanwhile, half the country says they’re struggling with loneliness.
0:04:26 These numbers took off when Apple put computers in our pockets,
0:04:28 and they’ve been climbing ever since.
0:04:35 There is an epidemic of loneliness in our country that extends far beyond the lives of Gen Z.
0:04:42 We’ve underestimated its impact. Loneliness touches everything from the media we consume
0:04:46 and the products we buy to the relationships we don’t form.
0:04:53 When we reflect on the winners and losers in 2024, we will bucket them into two categories,
0:04:57 those who capitalized on loneliness and those who didn’t.
0:05:02 Moreover, we’ll realize that in this society of lonely people,
0:05:07 we find a lot more to love in a person than a brand.
0:05:15 Meta naturally insists the loneliness epidemic has nothing to do with social media.
0:05:18 Common sense suggests otherwise.
0:05:24 We now spend 70% less time with our friends than we did a decade ago.
0:05:29 There is no question, the phone has replaced our friends.
0:05:33 Research shows our bodies are not okay with this.
0:05:38 Loneliness has a neurochemical impact similar to that of hunger,
0:05:41 in that it activates the same parts of the brain.
0:05:46 The longer we go without social interaction, the more we crave it.
0:05:51 Interacting with other people is not a human desire, but a human need.
0:05:56 For the past decade, we’ve starved ourselves of this essential nutrient.
0:06:02 The implication is simple. Whether they know it or not,
0:06:04 near everyone you know is craving a friend.
0:06:09 The best visualization of this subconscious craving is the Internet,
0:06:13 which has been overrun by billions of people in search of other people.
0:06:20 TikTok is an endless stream, not of landscapes or products or experiences, but people.
0:06:25 Same for YouTube, where the highest performing videos are those with thumbnails
0:06:27 featuring a giant human face.
0:06:31 Meanwhile on Instagram, pictures with human faces
0:06:35 are 38% more likely to get a like than those without.
0:06:39 The algorithm is the truest reflection of our cravings,
0:06:42 and the algorithm has been very clear.
0:06:45 We crave people most.
0:06:52 For lonely people, however, simply seeing someone is not enough.
0:06:56 What we really want is to know them, to understand them,
0:07:00 to be familiar with the intimate details of their life and for them to understand us.
0:07:03 In other words, we want a friend.
0:07:09 Many have watched in confusion the extraordinary rise of online influencers,
0:07:14 people who make millions posting videos of their daily coffee routine or workout regimen.
0:07:18 Much of this can be explained by our chronic lack of friends.
0:07:25 Research shows Gen Z views their favorite influencers in the same way they view their friends.
0:07:30 We know what clothes they wear, what food they eat, and what brands they buy.
0:07:34 This has radically transformed the retail economy,
0:07:40 so much so that 40% of us now consult an influencer before we make a purchase.
0:07:47 The technical term for this phenomenon is “parasocial relationship.”
0:07:54 Per the Tech and Science Dictionary, “A relationship a person imagines having
0:07:57 with another person whom they do not actually know.”
0:08:04 Parasocial is mostly used in reference to Instagram and TikTok,
0:08:06 but I believe our parasocial relationships affect everything.
0:08:12 If I had to describe 2024 in one word, it would be parasocial.
0:08:15 This is evident in my industry, podcasting.
0:08:21 Joe Rogan has become more influential than the world’s largest news networks.
0:08:28 His podcast gets three times more downloads than the average primetime viewership of CNN
0:08:31 and MSNBC combined.
0:08:37 Many have misdiagnosed this tectonic shift as a left versus right phenomenon,
0:08:42 i.e. CNN is woke or liberal, Joe Rogan is anti-woke, conservative.
0:08:47 In the context of loneliness, however, that’s a red herring.
0:08:55 The key distinction between CNN and Joe Rogan is that one is a brand and the other is a person.
0:09:03 This distinction is embedded in everything from the name, CNN versus Joe Rogan, to the logo,
0:09:09 red letters versus a face, to the product, the news versus normal conversation.
0:09:14 In a world of chronic loneliness, the person is more compelling.
0:09:17 It’s no accident the name of our pod is Prof. G.
0:09:26 One might argue that Abby Phillip is a person, but this neglects the intimate nature of podcasting
0:09:31 as a medium. Abby Phillip reads off a teleprompter, wears makeup in a suit,
0:09:34 and sits in a multi-million dollar production studio.
0:09:40 Rogan wears a t-shirt and talks with his buddies in a room that looks like a converted garage.
0:09:46 For millions of Americans, Rogan isn’t a newscaster or even a celebrity, he’s a friend.
0:09:51 And you will find this dynamic at all the top podcasts in America.
0:09:57 Side note, I surveyed 10 friends on their preference between Abby Phillip versus Joe Rogan,
0:10:00 none of them knew who Abby Phillip was.
0:10:06 Hollywood is suffering at the hands of the same trend.
0:10:12 The 2024 Academy Award for Dumbest Purchase goes to Larry Ellison’s son David,
0:10:17 who after getting caught up in a bidding war with the children of two other billionaires,
0:10:20 spent $8 billion on Paramount Global.
0:10:26 Every character in this transaction suffered from Hollywood derangement syndrome,
0:10:30 believing the Paramount brand still holds any cultural currency.
0:10:32 It doesn’t.
0:10:37 Meanwhile, they didn’t comprehend that Hollywood is up against the same unbeatable
0:10:40 enemy that cable news faces. People.
0:10:48 The individual who’s levied the greatest damage in Hollywood
0:10:53 is YouTuber MrBeast, whose portfolio includes hits like,
0:10:59 “I survived seven days in an abandoned city and I built 100 houses and gave them away.”
0:11:05 MrBeast has mastered the art of the parasocial relationship.
0:11:09 Put simply, he’s a friend who gets up to interesting stuff.
0:11:15 Last year, MrBeast racked up more than one billion hours of viewing time,
0:11:18 more than any of the top shows on Netflix.
0:11:23 He’s one of the millions of YouTubers swinging the pendulum of power away
0:11:26 from brands and toward individual people.
0:11:29 This trend has been well documented.
0:11:32 Search the creator economy.
0:11:39 But it was ratified this year when analysts valued YouTube at $455 billion.
0:11:47 That’s 20% more valuable than Netflix and more than twice as valuable as Disney.
0:11:51 Streaming or AI didn’t take down Hollywood.
0:11:52 People did.
0:11:58 As with podcasting, this presidential election was also less
0:12:01 about left versus right than it was about people versus brands.
0:12:06 No one understood this better than Donald Trump,
0:12:11 who doubled down on his parasocial relationship with millions of Americans
0:12:14 while actively disassociating from the Republican brand.
0:12:18 It was the ultimate people over brand strategy.
0:12:23 What drove this home for me was a leaked video of Trump
0:12:26 watching the Democratic National Convention with his team.
0:12:30 “Too many thank yous,” he says about Harris’ speech.
0:12:32 “Is she crazy?”
0:12:35 At first it looks like a watch party.
0:12:36 Then the tone changes.
0:12:39 “Get that out right away,” he orders.
0:12:42 A staffer types out his exact words,
0:12:45 then blasts them across social media channels.
0:12:49 Throughout the rest of the speech, Trump live dictates his thoughts.
0:12:55 She’s talking about how great San Francisco was before she destroyed it.
0:12:57 With each thought, another tweet.
0:12:59 “A lot of talk about childhood.
0:13:01 We’ve got to get to the border.
0:13:04 Inflation in crime.”
0:13:07 “Say, Cindy’s out.
0:13:10 The things of which she complains, the things of which she complains.”
0:13:16 The team’s job is to publish anything and everything that pops up into his head.
0:13:18 No edits or cuts, just the raw Trump.
0:13:22 Call it narcissism or flooding the zone with shit,
0:13:29 but what’s most striking is Trump’s determination to livestream his persona to his followers.
0:13:33 He’s so determined, he hired someone to type out his thoughts.
0:13:39 Think of the millions of lonely people watching that convention craving Trump’s live commentary,
0:13:41 perhaps because they share his politics,
0:13:45 but almost certainly because they want his friendship.
0:13:52 Now compare this to the Harris strategy of carefully written speeches and manicured interviews.
0:13:58 The Harris team managed its candidate the same way a corporation manages its brand.
0:14:01 Every detail was consumer tested.
0:14:03 Every message board approved.
0:14:09 By November 5, it was clear that the candidate was not Kamala Harris, but the Democratic Party.
0:14:14 She had become a brand, not a person, and the person won.
0:14:19 The corporate world has started to wake up to the power of the person,
0:14:22 but the movement was started years ago by Elon Musk.
0:14:27 From the beginning, Musk knew he was Tesla’s greatest commercial.
0:14:30 This is why the company never ran ads.
0:14:37 Instead, like Trump, he plastered himself everywhere, at every conference and on every network.
0:14:42 His tweeting frequency went from mildly obsessive to clinically insane.
0:14:48 He quickly amassed nearly 200 million Twitter followers, then bought the platform.
0:14:53 People wonder how Tesla commands evaluation premium 10 times greater than its peers
0:14:57 while spending only four ad dollars per vehicle sold.
0:15:00 The answer is Elon Musk.
0:15:05 Other companies have picked up where Elon left off, most notably Metta.
0:15:10 Metta’s worst rebrand happened three years ago when the company tried to wash away its sins
0:15:13 by switching from Facebook to Metta.
0:15:16 It didn’t work and brand trust tanked.
0:15:23 Its best rebrand, however, came this year when Mark Zuckerberg went from awkward
0:15:29 coat and tie wearing Senate hearing prop to gold chain donning T-Pain-loving Jiu Jitsu fighter.
0:15:35 In addition to leaning into his personality, Zuckerberg has made himself more public.
0:15:42 He posted 71 Instagrams this year, documenting everything from Taylor Swift concerts to UFC
0:15:49 fights. In 2021, he posted just 29 times, mostly product announcements.
0:15:55 The extent to which the Zuck has put himself on display this year is astounding,
0:15:58 but more important, effective.
0:16:06 Since the rebrand, Zuckerberg’s favorability score among what was once his most hostile cohort,
0:16:15 18 to 34 year olds, has increased 73%. This is what it means to choose person over brand.
0:16:24 Honorable mentions go to Spotify and Shopify. I’ve spoken before about the need for CEOs to
0:16:30 ditch highly polished press releases and embrace TikTok instead. In line with my belief that
0:16:36 people are greater than brands, TikToks show us who is running the company in a way press releases
0:16:43 can’t. This is starting to happen. Spotify’s Q2 earnings update this year came in the form
0:16:51 of a short selfie video filmed by CEO Daniel Ek. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein did the
0:17:01 same. Memo to CEOs. This is the way to do it. Brands and logos and press releases do not resonate
0:17:07 with us anymore. We are interested in your people, who they are, what they care about,
0:17:15 and what they have to say, not your brand. The most overvalued firm in tech, Palantir,
0:17:23 isn’t a tech company, but a CEO, Alex Karp masking as a public company. The premise of my
0:17:29 argument is more important than the argument itself. We have become a society of lonely people
0:17:36 and our loneliness is permeating everything we do. This is a harrowing truth and I’m grateful
0:17:42 that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has lent the issue the gravity it deserves by declaring it a
0:17:50 national epidemic. I remind you that more than one in 10 Americans today have no close friends.
0:18:01 Single person households now make up 29% of all households up from 13% in 1960. We are more socially
0:18:06 isolated than ever before. These are important facts for businesses to know if they’re to
0:18:12 understand their customers, but they’re also important facts in and of themselves.
0:18:20 It’s the holidays, which means cheesy movies and trite truisms. I personally find myself
0:18:26 increasingly confident that these movies and truisms are correct. This Christmas I’ll be
0:18:31 watching It’s a Wonderful Life and I look forward to Clarence’s always timely reminder to George
0:18:38 Bailey at the end of the film. Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.
0:18:50 Happy holidays, Ed. Life is so rich.
0:19:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:07 You’re building a business. Klaviyo helps you grow it.
0:00:12 Klaviyo’s AI-powered marketing platform puts all your customer data plus email,
0:00:15 SMS, and analytics in one place. With Klaviyo,
0:00:21 Tindfish Phenom Fishwife delivers real-time, personalized experiences that keeps their
0:00:26 customers hooked. They’ve grown 70 times revenue in just four years with Klaviyo.
0:00:31 Now that’s scale. Visit klaviyo.com to learn how
0:00:36 brands like Fishwife build smarter digital relationships with Klaviyo.
0:00:46 Your team requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It’s through their Uber Teen account.
0:00:50 It’s an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision
0:00:55 with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today.
0:01:03 In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left.
0:01:05 There’s some awesome new breakfast wraps at McDonald’s.
0:01:06 Really?
0:01:10 Yeah. There’s the sausage bacon and egg, a crispy seasoned chicken one.
0:01:13 Mmm. A spicy end egg. Worth the detour.
0:01:14 They sound amazing.
0:01:15 Bet they taste amazing too.
0:01:18 Wish I had a mouth.
0:01:22 Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald’s new breakfast wraps.
0:01:25 Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax.
0:01:28 Add participating McDonald’s restaurants. Ba da ba ba ba.
0:01:32 What sector boasts the strongest brands in the world?
0:01:41 Tobacco? Universities? Tech companies? No, the strongest brands in the world are people.
0:01:54 People are the new brands by Ed Elson as read by George Hahn.
0:01:58 Scott’s away this week on a safari.
0:02:03 I’m not sure what a ProfG safari looks like, but it likely involves
0:02:08 tinted camps with fine china, zikapa, and remote NAD treatments.
0:02:12 In his absence, I’m keeping the lights on.
0:02:16 Yes, me, Ed Elson, Scott’s 25-year-old co-host on ProfG Markets.
0:02:20 I get paid to make Scott appear younger and more relevant,
0:02:22 i.e. keep him abreast of trends in business and tech,
0:02:27 plus wardrobe advice. The guy dresses like an aging skateboarder.
0:02:32 This week, I’m sharing my thoughts on a long-brewing trend that came to a head in 2024.
0:02:40 It’s simple. America has fallen out of love with brands and in love with people.
0:02:44 This is evident in every corner of American life,
0:02:47 from politics and business to technology and media.
0:02:50 People are the new brands.
0:02:57 Some context. What I lack in age and wisdom I make up for in screen time.
0:03:01 I spend almost seven hours scrolling the internet yesterday.
0:03:05 Average for me, below average for my generation.
0:03:10 I am a product of the greatest digital transformation in history,
0:03:16 and the erosion of traditional brand value is happening downstream of this transformation.
0:03:22 Scott concurs. Where our views differ, however, is that while he believes
0:03:28 digitally enabled products and services have replaced brands, I believe people have.
0:03:36 First, some numbers. Gen Z spends an average of 109 days per year looking at a screen.
0:03:44 80% of our waking hours are spent consuming information, up from 40% in 1980.
0:03:51 We see 208 ads per hour, 10 times more than our parents did at our age.
0:03:57 As a result, we are more anxious, distracted, and depressed than any generation in history.
0:04:01 We all know this, but do not comprehend it.
0:04:05 Like frogs in boiling water, we’ve been slow cooked by screens.
0:04:10 The most important number is 12%.
0:04:18 That’s the share of Americans who say they have zero close friends, up from 3% in 1990.
0:04:22 Meanwhile, half the country says they’re struggling with loneliness.
0:04:26 These numbers took off when Apple put computers in our pockets,
0:04:28 and they’ve been climbing ever since.
0:04:35 There is an epidemic of loneliness in our country that extends far beyond the lives of Gen Z.
0:04:42 We’ve underestimated its impact. Loneliness touches everything from the media we consume
0:04:46 and the products we buy to the relationships we don’t form.
0:04:53 When we reflect on the winners and losers in 2024, we will bucket them into two categories,
0:04:57 those who capitalized on loneliness and those who didn’t.
0:05:02 Moreover, we’ll realize that in this society of lonely people,
0:05:07 we find a lot more to love in a person than a brand.
0:05:15 Meta naturally insists the loneliness epidemic has nothing to do with social media.
0:05:18 Common sense suggests otherwise.
0:05:24 We now spend 70% less time with our friends than we did a decade ago.
0:05:29 There is no question, the phone has replaced our friends.
0:05:33 Research shows our bodies are not okay with this.
0:05:38 Loneliness has a neurochemical impact similar to that of hunger,
0:05:41 in that it activates the same parts of the brain.
0:05:46 The longer we go without social interaction, the more we crave it.
0:05:51 Interacting with other people is not a human desire, but a human need.
0:05:56 For the past decade, we’ve starved ourselves of this essential nutrient.
0:06:02 The implication is simple. Whether they know it or not,
0:06:04 near everyone you know is craving a friend.
0:06:09 The best visualization of this subconscious craving is the Internet,
0:06:13 which has been overrun by billions of people in search of other people.
0:06:20 TikTok is an endless stream, not of landscapes or products or experiences, but people.
0:06:25 Same for YouTube, where the highest performing videos are those with thumbnails
0:06:27 featuring a giant human face.
0:06:31 Meanwhile on Instagram, pictures with human faces
0:06:35 are 38% more likely to get a like than those without.
0:06:39 The algorithm is the truest reflection of our cravings,
0:06:42 and the algorithm has been very clear.
0:06:45 We crave people most.
0:06:52 For lonely people, however, simply seeing someone is not enough.
0:06:56 What we really want is to know them, to understand them,
0:07:00 to be familiar with the intimate details of their life and for them to understand us.
0:07:03 In other words, we want a friend.
0:07:09 Many have watched in confusion the extraordinary rise of online influencers,
0:07:14 people who make millions posting videos of their daily coffee routine or workout regimen.
0:07:18 Much of this can be explained by our chronic lack of friends.
0:07:25 Research shows Gen Z views their favorite influencers in the same way they view their friends.
0:07:30 We know what clothes they wear, what food they eat, and what brands they buy.
0:07:34 This has radically transformed the retail economy,
0:07:40 so much so that 40% of us now consult an influencer before we make a purchase.
0:07:47 The technical term for this phenomenon is “parasocial relationship.”
0:07:54 Per the Tech and Science Dictionary, “A relationship a person imagines having
0:07:57 with another person whom they do not actually know.”
0:08:04 Parasocial is mostly used in reference to Instagram and TikTok,
0:08:06 but I believe our parasocial relationships affect everything.
0:08:12 If I had to describe 2024 in one word, it would be parasocial.
0:08:15 This is evident in my industry, podcasting.
0:08:21 Joe Rogan has become more influential than the world’s largest news networks.
0:08:28 His podcast gets three times more downloads than the average primetime viewership of CNN
0:08:31 and MSNBC combined.
0:08:37 Many have misdiagnosed this tectonic shift as a left versus right phenomenon,
0:08:42 i.e. CNN is woke or liberal, Joe Rogan is anti-woke, conservative.
0:08:47 In the context of loneliness, however, that’s a red herring.
0:08:55 The key distinction between CNN and Joe Rogan is that one is a brand and the other is a person.
0:09:03 This distinction is embedded in everything from the name, CNN versus Joe Rogan, to the logo,
0:09:09 red letters versus a face, to the product, the news versus normal conversation.
0:09:14 In a world of chronic loneliness, the person is more compelling.
0:09:17 It’s no accident the name of our pod is Prof. G.
0:09:26 One might argue that Abby Phillip is a person, but this neglects the intimate nature of podcasting
0:09:31 as a medium. Abby Phillip reads off a teleprompter, wears makeup in a suit,
0:09:34 and sits in a multi-million dollar production studio.
0:09:40 Rogan wears a t-shirt and talks with his buddies in a room that looks like a converted garage.
0:09:46 For millions of Americans, Rogan isn’t a newscaster or even a celebrity, he’s a friend.
0:09:51 And you will find this dynamic at all the top podcasts in America.
0:09:57 Side note, I surveyed 10 friends on their preference between Abby Phillip versus Joe Rogan,
0:10:00 none of them knew who Abby Phillip was.
0:10:06 Hollywood is suffering at the hands of the same trend.
0:10:12 The 2024 Academy Award for Dumbest Purchase goes to Larry Ellison’s son David,
0:10:17 who after getting caught up in a bidding war with the children of two other billionaires,
0:10:20 spent $8 billion on Paramount Global.
0:10:26 Every character in this transaction suffered from Hollywood derangement syndrome,
0:10:30 believing the Paramount brand still holds any cultural currency.
0:10:32 It doesn’t.
0:10:37 Meanwhile, they didn’t comprehend that Hollywood is up against the same unbeatable
0:10:40 enemy that cable news faces. People.
0:10:48 The individual who’s levied the greatest damage in Hollywood
0:10:53 is YouTuber MrBeast, whose portfolio includes hits like,
0:10:59 “I survived seven days in an abandoned city and I built 100 houses and gave them away.”
0:11:05 MrBeast has mastered the art of the parasocial relationship.
0:11:09 Put simply, he’s a friend who gets up to interesting stuff.
0:11:15 Last year, MrBeast racked up more than one billion hours of viewing time,
0:11:18 more than any of the top shows on Netflix.
0:11:23 He’s one of the millions of YouTubers swinging the pendulum of power away
0:11:26 from brands and toward individual people.
0:11:29 This trend has been well documented.
0:11:32 Search the creator economy.
0:11:39 But it was ratified this year when analysts valued YouTube at $455 billion.
0:11:47 That’s 20% more valuable than Netflix and more than twice as valuable as Disney.
0:11:51 Streaming or AI didn’t take down Hollywood.
0:11:52 People did.
0:11:58 As with podcasting, this presidential election was also less
0:12:01 about left versus right than it was about people versus brands.
0:12:06 No one understood this better than Donald Trump,
0:12:11 who doubled down on his parasocial relationship with millions of Americans
0:12:14 while actively disassociating from the Republican brand.
0:12:18 It was the ultimate people over brand strategy.
0:12:23 What drove this home for me was a leaked video of Trump
0:12:26 watching the Democratic National Convention with his team.
0:12:30 “Too many thank yous,” he says about Harris’ speech.
0:12:32 “Is she crazy?”
0:12:35 At first it looks like a watch party.
0:12:36 Then the tone changes.
0:12:39 “Get that out right away,” he orders.
0:12:42 A staffer types out his exact words,
0:12:45 then blasts them across social media channels.
0:12:49 Throughout the rest of the speech, Trump live dictates his thoughts.
0:12:55 She’s talking about how great San Francisco was before she destroyed it.
0:12:57 With each thought, another tweet.
0:12:59 “A lot of talk about childhood.
0:13:01 We’ve got to get to the border.
0:13:04 Inflation in crime.”
0:13:07 “Say, Cindy’s out.
0:13:10 The things of which she complains, the things of which she complains.”
0:13:16 The team’s job is to publish anything and everything that pops up into his head.
0:13:18 No edits or cuts, just the raw Trump.
0:13:22 Call it narcissism or flooding the zone with shit,
0:13:29 but what’s most striking is Trump’s determination to livestream his persona to his followers.
0:13:33 He’s so determined, he hired someone to type out his thoughts.
0:13:39 Think of the millions of lonely people watching that convention craving Trump’s live commentary,
0:13:41 perhaps because they share his politics,
0:13:45 but almost certainly because they want his friendship.
0:13:52 Now compare this to the Harris strategy of carefully written speeches and manicured interviews.
0:13:58 The Harris team managed its candidate the same way a corporation manages its brand.
0:14:01 Every detail was consumer tested.
0:14:03 Every message board approved.
0:14:09 By November 5, it was clear that the candidate was not Kamala Harris, but the Democratic Party.
0:14:14 She had become a brand, not a person, and the person won.
0:14:19 The corporate world has started to wake up to the power of the person,
0:14:22 but the movement was started years ago by Elon Musk.
0:14:27 From the beginning, Musk knew he was Tesla’s greatest commercial.
0:14:30 This is why the company never ran ads.
0:14:37 Instead, like Trump, he plastered himself everywhere, at every conference and on every network.
0:14:42 His tweeting frequency went from mildly obsessive to clinically insane.
0:14:48 He quickly amassed nearly 200 million Twitter followers, then bought the platform.
0:14:53 People wonder how Tesla commands evaluation premium 10 times greater than its peers
0:14:57 while spending only four ad dollars per vehicle sold.
0:15:00 The answer is Elon Musk.
0:15:05 Other companies have picked up where Elon left off, most notably Metta.
0:15:10 Metta’s worst rebrand happened three years ago when the company tried to wash away its sins
0:15:13 by switching from Facebook to Metta.
0:15:16 It didn’t work and brand trust tanked.
0:15:23 Its best rebrand, however, came this year when Mark Zuckerberg went from awkward
0:15:29 coat and tie wearing Senate hearing prop to gold chain donning T-Pain-loving Jiu Jitsu fighter.
0:15:35 In addition to leaning into his personality, Zuckerberg has made himself more public.
0:15:42 He posted 71 Instagrams this year, documenting everything from Taylor Swift concerts to UFC
0:15:49 fights. In 2021, he posted just 29 times, mostly product announcements.
0:15:55 The extent to which the Zuck has put himself on display this year is astounding,
0:15:58 but more important, effective.
0:16:06 Since the rebrand, Zuckerberg’s favorability score among what was once his most hostile cohort,
0:16:15 18 to 34 year olds, has increased 73%. This is what it means to choose person over brand.
0:16:24 Honorable mentions go to Spotify and Shopify. I’ve spoken before about the need for CEOs to
0:16:30 ditch highly polished press releases and embrace TikTok instead. In line with my belief that
0:16:36 people are greater than brands, TikToks show us who is running the company in a way press releases
0:16:43 can’t. This is starting to happen. Spotify’s Q2 earnings update this year came in the form
0:16:51 of a short selfie video filmed by CEO Daniel Ek. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein did the
0:17:01 same. Memo to CEOs. This is the way to do it. Brands and logos and press releases do not resonate
0:17:07 with us anymore. We are interested in your people, who they are, what they care about,
0:17:15 and what they have to say, not your brand. The most overvalued firm in tech, Palantir,
0:17:23 isn’t a tech company, but a CEO, Alex Karp masking as a public company. The premise of my
0:17:29 argument is more important than the argument itself. We have become a society of lonely people
0:17:36 and our loneliness is permeating everything we do. This is a harrowing truth and I’m grateful
0:17:42 that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has lent the issue the gravity it deserves by declaring it a
0:17:50 national epidemic. I remind you that more than one in 10 Americans today have no close friends.
0:18:01 Single person households now make up 29% of all households up from 13% in 1960. We are more socially
0:18:06 isolated than ever before. These are important facts for businesses to know if they’re to
0:18:12 understand their customers, but they’re also important facts in and of themselves.
0:18:20 It’s the holidays, which means cheesy movies and trite truisms. I personally find myself
0:18:26 increasingly confident that these movies and truisms are correct. This Christmas I’ll be
0:18:31 watching It’s a Wonderful Life and I look forward to Clarence’s always timely reminder to George
0:18:38 Bailey at the end of the film. Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.
0:18:50 Happy holidays, Ed. Life is so rich.
0:19:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]
By Ed Elson, as read by George Hahn.
People Are The New Brands
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