Do Companies Need Storytellers, Ford’s EV Flop, Kushner Paramount Pullout | Diet TBPN

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in under 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Figma - https://figma.com Vanta - https://vanta.com Linear - https://linear.app Eight Sleep - https://eightsleep.com/tbpn Wander - https://wander.com/tbpn Public - https://public.com AdQuick - https://adquick.com Bezel - https://getbezel.com Numeral - https://www.numeralhq.com Polymarket - https://polymarket.com Attio - https://attio.com/tbpn Fin - https://fin.ai/tbpn Graphite - https://graphite.dev Restream - https://restream.io Profound - https://tryprofound.com Julius AI - https://julius.ai turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com fal - https://fal.ai Privy - https://www.privy.io Cognition - https://cognition.ai Gemini - https://gemini.google.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02John Coogan?

  You're watching TBP Head. You know what else is the gift that keeps on giving? Hiring a storyteller, which apparently is the hottest topic in Silicon Valley. Thanks to our friend Katie Dayton over at The Wall Street Journal, who made this go mega-viral by posting an article in The Wall Street Journal, all about how startups are hiring storytellers. Companies are desperately seeking storytellers is the headline, of course. We are going to dive into it. Jordy wrote a take. "Storytelling is the only way to impose meaning on abundance," says Signal. "Coherence on noise, legitimacy on power, strategy, ops and capital are all downstream. Without narrative control, none of it will ever stick. This has been one of the core premises of my account. In a world of infinite output, story is the scarce primitive.

• 0:47John Coogan?

  Whoever can compress chaos into something people can feel, remember, forgive and rally around actually runs the system. This skill is worth more than the entire C-suite combined." Okay. So lay off the CEO, the CFO, the CTO. You just need a storyteller, you're good to go. No, people are having fun with this one. What was your take, Jordy? Break it down for us.

• 1:09Jordi Hays?

  So I went-

• 1:10John Coogan?

  How do you frame this? How do you process this?

• 1:11Jordi Hays?

  I mean, should we read through the article briefly or at least summarize it?

• 1:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:15Jordi Hays?

  So Katie writes, "Companies are desperately seeking storytellers. Brands trying to wrest greater control from their narratives are seeking storytelling skillsets without a campfire in sight. Maybe some of them have a warm hearth like we do." Anyways, corporate America's latest-

• 1:30John Coogan?

  What is the campfire thing? What is-

• 1:33Jordi Hays?

  Normally you'd be telling a story.

• 1:34John Coogan?

  Oh, around a campfire. Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:36Jordi Hays?

  Light a fire and be telling a story that way.

• 1:38John Coogan?

  I usually think of smoking cigars around campfires. That's what I associate, mostly focused on the cigar.

• 1:43Jordi Hays?

  But you like to yap between puffs.

• 1:45John Coogan?

  I do, I do.

• 1:46Jordi Hays?

  "Corporate America's latest hot job is also one of the oldest in history: storytellers. Some companies want a media relations manager by a flashier name. Others need people to produce blogs, podcasts, case studies and more types of branded content to attract customers, investors and potential recruits. All seem to use the word differently than in its usual application to novelist playwrights. As storytellers, a Google job ad said last month, "We play an integral role in driving customer acquisition and long-term growth. The listing sought a customer storytelling manager to join the company's Google Cloud storytelling team. That sounds like a fantastic opportunity in another life. Personally, I'd be on the Google Cloud storytelling team."

• 2:26John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 2:26Jordi Hays?

  In some ways, in some ways we are. One article the unit published this year was titled Lowe's Innovation: How Vertex AI Helps Create Interactive Shopping Experiences. Microsoft's security organization meanwhile is recruiting a senior director overseeing narrative and storytelling described as part cybersecurity technologist, part communicator, and part marketer.

• 2:45John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:46Jordi Hays?

  Vanta is also hiring a storyteller. Notion recently-

• 2:50John Coogan?

  Head of storytelling at Vanta.

• 2:51Jordi Hays?

  That's right. Productivity app Notion recently merged its comms, social media, and influencer functions into one 10-person team, a so-called storytelling team. Katie goes on and on. She talks about how more and more of these listings are popping up. They're growing year over year. They're showing up in earnings calls.

• 3:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:11Jordi Hays?

  And I went and tried to find-

• 3:13John Coogan?

  I have a different take on this. I think as soon as there's a Wall Street, I mean, we love Katie, but as soon as there's a Wall Street Journal piece about a trend, the trend is effectively dead. And so there is no more alpha in hiring storytellers. You need to hire a yarn spinner. You need to hire a fabulist, someone who will go around to group chats and tell wild lies about your product, your company, how successful you are. You recruit this person, and then they go around seeding little anecdotes, little tall tales, and they spin yarns.

• 3:46Jordi Hays?

  I think that's called securities fraud.

• 3:48John Coogan?

  I don't know. It certainly depends. Maybe if there's no securities changing hands.

• 3:53Jordi Hays?

  I tried to find a storyteller from a long time ago.

• 3:55John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 3:56Jordi Hays?

  And I found none other than the legend Steve Clayton, currently the vice president of Microsoft's communication strategy. But back in 2010, what was he hired for? The chief storyteller-

• 4:08John Coogan?

  No way. They were using that term 15 years ago. That's crazy. It feels like a very modern term.

• 4:13Jordi Hays?

  He held that title from 2010 to June 2021. I was trying to also kind of understand the, from like the early 1900s to the 1950s, you had copywriters. Like it was, it was like pretty elite to be a copywriter. This was like a high-status job you were using.

• 4:31John Coogan?

  Don Draper. Isn't Don Draper like more or less-

• 4:33Jordi Hays?

  He was a creative director, but also a writer, and the people that he worked with were copywriters. Because at that time, print media, being able to use your words- To get people to take action that you want, that you benefit from is a very elite skillset.

• 4:47John Coogan?

  One more example that I mentioned earlier, early storytellers in Silicon Valley, Guy Kawasaki, he was one of Apple's employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He actually popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an Apple evangelist and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism slash platform evangelism in general. And he became, you know, this idea of like word of mouth marketing, not quite storytelling, different keyword around it, but he was also sort of, you know, one of the early, you know, turning points in internet marketing. Anyway.

• 5:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And around that time, you started to get content strategists, right?

• 5:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Jordi Hays?

  And if you look back to the 80s and 90s, it was about, that was kind of like the boom of brand strategy, brand identity. Think like the Nike era of marketing.

• 5:47John Coogan?

  And Bology recently went viral because there was a clip from an older podcast that was reposted on X went viral. And it was his take a few years ago during the creator economy boom, arguing that companies need a founding creator or like a co-founder.

• 6:07Jordi Hays?

  Creator and resident.

• 6:08John Coogan?

  No, it was higher than creator and residents. It was like, it was like on the co-founding team, you should have a CTO and then you should have a creator. But it went viral and everyone was saying like, oh, this is so, he's so behind. And I had to correct someone. I was like, no, no, no. Like that clip is actually a couple of years old. When he was saying it, it wasn't. So it was sort of interesting that way.

• 6:26Jordi Hays?

  Early insight. I wrote a piece for the newsletter today at tbpn.com and of course I titled it, "You Don't Need A Storyteller." Said according to a friend of the show, Katie at the Wall Street Journal, companies are desperate to hire storytellers. Hiring a storyteller is not a new phenomenon, but it makes sense that companies feel the need to hire them right now. Why? Because it's never been more obvious that the best storytellers in the world create billions of dollars of value for their companies and create massive advantages using only their words. Their words are so powerful that no matter where they appear on the internet, they draw millions of views and create a vortex of talent, capital, and customers.

• 7:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, there's this thing where like, if you have a hot take, you don't actually need to own the platform. You can just go do a circuit of appearances.

• 7:11Jordi Hays?

  A podcast tour. Anyways, I'll continue. The reality distortion field that emerges often results in 100 x P/E ratios. Of course, every company in the world wants this. The problem is that it's impossible to hire the most elite storytellers because they are founders. Think Elon, Karp, and Palmer. New coinage alert. I call these types Joe Rogan CEOs, right? You know if you have a Joe Rogan CEO. It's fine if you don't. There's great CEOs that are not Joe Rogan CEOs, but there's a certain type of CEO that's a Joe Rogan CEO.

• 7:42John Coogan?

  And to be clear, you're not saying that the CEO has to have the same aesthetics as Joe Rogan or the same style as Joe Rogan.

• 7:49Jordi Hays?

  Well, even Karp has not been on Joe Rogan.

• 7:51John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 7:51Jordi Hays?

  But you know that if he went on,

• 7:53John Coogan?

  He would crush.

• 7:53Jordi Hays?

  It would be a, it would be a grand slam.

• 7:55John Coogan?

  Electric moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. So it's more about being able to put on a performance in that particular environment.

• 8:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Can you capture people's attention for three hours?

• 8:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 8:06Jordi Hays?

  Just like rambling, basically.

• 8:08John Coogan?

  Whereas there have been CEOs that have gone on Joe Rogan successfully, but they just haven't delivered a Joe Rogan experience.

• 8:15Jordi Hays?

  And I think if you think about, I think if you think about like early-stage founders, who would go on and just crush Joe Rogan?

• 8:25John Coogan?

  Augustus Duro.

• 8:26Jordi Hays?

  It just like immediately comes to mind. You know who these people are. And there's CEOs, founder CEOs of his generation.

• 8:33John Coogan?

  He's a JRC.

• 8:34Jordi Hays?

  That are amazing, even though they wouldn't necessarily. They're not necessarily a JRC.

• 8:39John Coogan?

  He's a JRC.

• 8:40Jordi Hays?

  So I continue, "The internet is noisier than ever with thousands of startups competing for mindshare. When every startup has a great launch video, no one does. And yet, these storytellers consistently break through and dominate the timeline. Even though GenAI allows marketing teams, big and small, to massively increase their output, it is often not even 1% as effective as one of these elite storyteller founders going on a podcast or just posting stream of consciousness on X." The white pill for savvy marketing teams is that even as we're seeing an exponential increase in content production, I'm not sure we're seeing an exponential increase in great ideas. That means that companies, large and small, that don't have the luxury of having an Elon or Palmer on the payroll, still have a chance to break through the noise and be

• 9:20Jordi Hays?

  remembered. As I was personally reflecting on 2025, there were only a handful of truly corporate storytelling moments that I remember, and each of them worked for different reasons. One, "Don't Work at Anduril." Iconic campaign. Palmer makes a cameo in it, but he's not the star. He's just like a, he's like a, kind of, he's just like a character in it. But it's, you could remove Palmer, and the ad would still carry weight. I thought that was one of the best campaigns of the year. The other one was Astronomer. Their reaction to the crisis and the viral moment they had. The campaign is titled "Thank You For Your Interest In Astronomer." It obviously featured

• 10:04Jordi Hays?

  Gwyneth Paltrow. I think this one will be studied in 10 years. It was like, really a perfect reaction to that moment. And I did not know Astronomer before then. I do now. I will never forget them. I thought Ramp's expenses should do themselves with Saquon. That one was this combination of luck. Incredible execution and timing. And ultimately, it just like having the Eagles got it done. And that like was the cherry on top. It was a great campaign. It was a great, you know, first Super Bowl commercial for them. And then finally, Avi Schiffman's campaign, which I call buy every billboard. He literally bought every billboard.

• 10:47Jordi Hays?

  Friend did something absurd, which we can call the buy every billboard strategy. Many people criticized the campaign and the product, but the results from an awareness standpoint are undeniable. Avi spent one to two million was my estimate and became a household name, at least on the coast. And a lot of other brands have spent like 10 times that amount. And you don't even know who they are. And I think like, it's very possible that billboards can have increasing returns to scale. So you might buy two billboards, not really see any noticeable like lift in awareness and attention and traffic. But if you buy like 200, it's sort of undeniable. You can't miss it.

• 11:24John Coogan?

  When he came on the show and was like, it's the biggest billboard campaign in history. I was like, there's no way. And then I saw it everywhere and I was like, okay, maybe it is.

• 11:32Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, I said, hiring a storyteller to craft narratives and tell your story internally and externally is fine. But if the goal is to be remembered and you lack a Joe Rogan CEO, remember that one great campaign is worth 10,000 posts. Yeah, I would just like to see companies instead of, you know, frantically just trying to make a lot of noise in a bunch of random ways. As you go into 2026, how do you have one breakout moment campaign and truly be remembered?

• 12:00John Coogan?

  I'm trying to square like the problem that these job posts are trying to solve. So in the Wall Street Journal articles, is the percentage of LinkedIn job postings in the U.S. That include the term storyteller doubled in the year ending November 26, I guess. To include some 50,000 listings under marketing and more than 20,000 job listings under media and communications That mentioned the term storyteller, storytelling. Clearly people are, you know, business leaders are interested in storytelling, both as a, you know, a narrative for investors, but also as an actual physical job. But I'm wondering, like, you get in the seat, it does feel like a little bit of what this, this journal article is saying is like.

• 12:43John Coogan?

  Is like you're going to be storytelling every single day. It's kind of counter to what, which I guess is what your whole point was, but it's very much counter to your point of like one big campaign, one breakthrough idea. I don't know, is there, is there a world where you need both, where you need inspiration, but you still need like, you know, at a certain, at a certain point, um, you know, there, there was an example here. It's like, you know, they did a Lowe's case study on how Vertex AI helps create interactive shopping experiences. Like, is that going to be?

• 13:14Jordi Hays?

  Well, the standout, standout moment for me this year from Microsoft was Satya saying, I'm happy to be a leaser. And I'm good for my, I'm good for my 80 billion. So when you think about when I, you know, I, I think.

• 13:26John Coogan?

  What does that do for Lowe's partnership, you know? This was actually Google's cloud storytelling team. They published an article and so if they just have to get out a blog post, maybe there is some benefit to just like shifting their mindset to at least being like, hey, instead of just doing like a list of facts, like, why don't you try and like, tell it like a story, meaning like the React structure, conflict, resolution, characters, antagonists. Like, you know, like, because like a lot of, like, it sounds like a low bar.

• 13:54Jordi Hays?

  They didn't want Lowe's to have efficient cloud infrastructure.

• 13:58John Coogan?

  They didn't want the, the shopping experiences to be interactive. But then Google came in and changed it up and changed up the game.

• 14:05Jordi Hays?

  You know, if I'm at a big company, if I'm employed at a big company, it would be cool to have a, like a centralized resource. That's like, here's how we talk about this product. Here's how we talk about our mission. Here's how we talked about, talk about our roadmap in the near term and the medium term and the long term, right? But ultimately, when you think of the companies that are great at storytelling, it is because the CEO is a great storyteller. I would argue that Apple, who's historically been an amazing storyteller, is not currently an incredible storyteller because Tim Cook is like 11 out of 10 operationally.

• 14:39Jordi Hays?

  And he's not the guy to go on. I, I, I don't see Tim Cook popping up on a bunch of.

• 14:45John Coogan?

  There also aren't paying him enough to go do extra stuff. Like if, you know, if I, if you, if you're making that type of money, like you're not gonna be like, yeah, I'm gonna go work on the weekends.

• 14:54Jordi Hays?

  You're gonna, five o'clock rolls around.

• 14:56John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 14:56Jordi Hays?

  You're bailing.

• 14:57John Coogan?

  You're bailing.

• 14:58Jordi Hays?

  It hasn't mattered.

• 14:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Jordi Hays?

  Like he's told the story through the company's performance.

• 15:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Jordi Hays?

  Which is that he is one of the most elite operators.

• 15:05John Coogan?

  Last night, last night, I feel like we had dinner with a great storyteller and he told us his entire life story. And what was interesting and why I thought it was a really great story was two things, like one, the facts of the story, just the truth was a lot of up and down, a lot of conflict.

• 15:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it was riveting.

• 15:23John Coogan?

  It was riveting.

• 15:24Jordi Hays?

  Failure, wins.

• 15:25John Coogan?

  He's the protagonist, but there were antagonists and there were, and there were mentors and trials and tribulations. Like it really did fit the hero's journey. So, so the facts were there and you could go fact check them and be like, oh yeah, there were, there were these story points, but then also the way he told the story didn't hide those. There was, there's another version of that story where he only tells you the good moments in the story and he doesn't tell you about any of the trial and tribulations. And we're like, okay, yeah, we get it. You're successful. You know, it's boring. Um, instead we were like, whoa, like another, another downturn, another up, another swing. It was emotional. It was a roller coaster. It was a great story. If, if there, if there's anything that comes out of like the storyteller era of corporate marketing,

• 16:09John Coogan?

  it should be giving marketers, writers, storytellers, permission to actually inject conflict into their marketing materials.

• 16:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Look at the way that Palmer responded to that journal piece about how Andorl had a fire at one of their test sites, right? He was like paraphrasing, but it was effectively, yes, we had a fire at the, at the missile test site or whatever it was, at the explosives test site, right? Like, yes, we, and he was trying to do that, he was trying to do that in the journal article when he, clearly when he was talking to them, but they, they pulled out moments where it was like, we fail a lot.

• 16:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Jordi Hays?

  Whereas Palmer was trying to tell a good story, which is like, yeah, we fail a lot because we test a lot.

• 16:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Jordi Hays?

  And we're trying to iterate faster than our competitors.

• 16:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Jordi Hays?

  And through that we'll succeed. I think tech needs to fall, like fall in love with advertising again. Advertising is amazing. Like I want to see companies hiring advertising specialists. I think this gets lost because we're in this era of. Uh, rapid testing, iterating through a bunch of assets, you know, volume.

• 17:10John Coogan?

  So, so do you think, do you think it's going to be hard for companies to hire great storytellers? The Venn diagram of people who get tech, get people, can explain complex things simply, and can make people care is tiny.

• 17:25Jordi Hays?

  It's easier to be a great storyteller if you have motion and if you have aura.

• 17:30John Coogan?

  It is. Tech bro obsessed with storytelling but hasn't read a book in the last five years.

• 17:35Jordi Hays?

  Instead of a launch video, somebody should just write an announcement in the full hero's journey.

• 17:41John Coogan?

  That actually sort of works. I mean, I would, I would, I would use the story circle when I would write YouTube videos. It's basically like a three act structure, but in eight parts. There's a clue Eric Zaworski says, there's a big clue in the middle of the viral Wall Street Journal article by Dolly Diten, uh, that explains, uh, why the people who would otherwise crush the role of storyteller, the hot new job at hot startups, rarely get the gig in the end. As designer Stefan Sagmeister observed back in 2014, it's all the people who are not storytellers who now suddenly want to be storytellers.

• 18:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I just, I just think a title like this, I, I think a good, a good test, if you're trying to hire for a role like this, is would the person be, do they want the title storyteller?

• 18:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Jordi Hays?

  Or would they be okay with the title copywriter?

• 18:29John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 18:30Jordi Hays?

  Because in my view, if you're hiring somebody to be a storyteller, their job is to like write down words in a structured, impactful way, and help the entire organization like share those words in a, in a, in a consistent manner. A lot of people like want the title creative director, but do they want to be a project manager? Like, no, they want to be a creative director, right?

• 18:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Jordi Hays?

  There's just like a, uh, status associated with that.

• 18:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Jordi Hays?

  There's maybe a status associated with storyteller.

• 18:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Jordi Hays?

  But at the end of the day, if you're trying to hire for this, do you want somebody that is obsessed with?

• 19:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Jordi Hays?

  Writing.

• 19:04John Coogan?

  You should be willing to take the job of storyteller. If I come to you and you say you want to work for me as a storyteller, I say, I'm going to start you off with the title fabulous. And if you're cool with that, then maybe we'll upgrade you to storyteller. Chat GPT has a new image model. They just launched this. Sam Altman teased it with a photo that, at this point, you know, him and a bunch of, uh, him and a bunch of polos. What is the actual announcement? How is this, how is this framed? I know, I know the model got better.

• 19:32Jordi Hays?

  Elf.

• 19:33John Coogan?

  But what if?

• 19:33Jordi Hays?

  Elf. It's a good model, sir.

• 19:36John Coogan?

  Today, we're releasing a new version of ChatGPT Images powered by our new flagship image generation model. Now, whether you're creating something from scratch or editing a photo, you'll get the output you're picturing. It makes precise edits while keeping details intact, and it's four times faster. You know that's a big deal.

• 19:52Jordi Hays?

  There's a Sora video from Ramp Capital. Let's pull it up. Impressive.

• 19:57John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 19:57Jordi Hays?

  Very nice.

• 19:58John Coogan?

  That's pretty funny. I like it.

• 19:59Jordi Hays?

  Now, let's see more slop.

• 20:01John Coogan?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 20:05John Coogan?

  The ability to use Sora to make jokes at Sam's expense is truly new territory for... I mean, I guess there were probably people that were in MS Paint making fun of Bill Gates. So, these transformations work on both simple and more intricate concepts and are easy to try using preset styles and ideas in the new ChatGPT Images feature, no written prompt required. In an effort to make it easier to prompt, we are now instantiating more UI. So, as that image shows you...

• 20:40Jordi Hays?

  As the models get better, we need more sass.

• 20:42John Coogan?

  With this, it feels like OpenAI and the ChatGPT app are definitely sort of embracing this idea that you will need to bring a little bit of idea generation.

• 20:52Jordi Hays?

  OpenAI hires an executive from Google to lead M&A. OpenAI hire comms chief Hannah Wong is departing the company.

• 21:00John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 21:01Jordi Hays?

  This came out yesterday. She's stepping down. She's going to depart the company at the end of January. Wong was the AI giant's first chief comms officer and guided the company through the launch of ChatGPT, heightened regulatory scrutiny, controversies, and a slew of deals and lawsuits. The bigger picture, departure comes as the company is pushing on a variety of fronts.

• 21:19John Coogan?

  Do you think that she asked for the storyteller title and she didn't get it, so she quit in protest?

• 21:22Jordi Hays?

  Very, very possibly, John. It's very possible. Yeah, I feel like she deserves, she deserves like a little bit of a vacation at this point. I can't think of a more stressful job since 2021.

• 21:36John Coogan?

  We had some gray hair. There is a fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal. We got to go through it. Advertisers start Christmas season early. This was written for us. This is fantastic news. Brands chase inflation-weary shoppers with plentiful TV spots. There's a whole bunch of interesting article, interesting stats in here. Are you tired of Santa's and relentlessly cheerful snowmen filling every screen?

• 22:01Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 22:03John Coogan?

  Blame the advertisers. Advertisers kicked off the holiday season even earlier this year and they are inundating televisions with commercials. The activity comes despite continuing efforts by many businesses to rein in costs to contend with tariffs. Holiday TV ads started in earnest in early October and companies have spent a combined 1.47 billion dollars over the past nine weeks. A 13% jump compared with the year ago period. Guess how much holiday retail sales are expected to be this year? Is it? I'll give you a hint.

• 22:45John Coogan?

  In 2020, it was, uh, it was point seven trillion, 700 billion. Then it went to 850 billion, then 900, then 950. Last year came in around 99, uh, something really close. What was it? It was point nine eight trillion, 980 billion dollars this year. It's expected to be over a trillion. There are massive investments in digital promotions flooding social media, email inboxes and text messages. So of course the 1.47 billion that's happening on TV is just a small slice of the overall advertising that's happening this holiday season. Retailers spent 5.8 billion on digital ads in the U.S.

• 23:29John Coogan?

  From November 1st to November 7th, a 4% increase from last year. Holiday shopping season remains a critical moment for retailers with inflation still weighing on household budgets, but brands aren't taking any chances of losing out on the action. The National Retail Federation is, is projecting- Let's give it up for the National Retail Federation. ...that holiday sales will surpass 1 trillion. A handful of retailers are proving particularly busy on the TV ad front so far. Walmart's ads feature a Dr. Seuss-inspired world starring Walter Goggins as the Grinch. Target, meanwhile, brings brass, brings back Chris K., a jolly bearded Christmas enthusiast introduced in a 2024 campaign.

• 24:13John Coogan?

  In Target's spot, a woman who with whom he is on a coffee date gets a peek at his gift list and leaves him confused by referencing his naughty list. Interesting. They polled consumers, how do you feel about the timing of holiday ads? When holiday ads start? So, Amazon, one of the largest advertisers in the country, aired its first holiday TV ad on October 13th.

• 24:39Jordi Hays?

  Okay, but you gotta, you gotta give me more. Was Santa in the ad? I'm, I'm kind of a purist. I like, I like to go full speed ahead on, on, on the Christmas spirit.

• 24:49John Coogan?

  Would you say that the Christmas ads are A, much too early? B, slightly too early? C, about the right time? Slightly too late or much too late?

• 25:02Jordi Hays?

  I think you can start doing holiday advertising without putting snow on the ground and without.

• 25:06John Coogan?

  How would you do that? How, wait, describe a holiday ad that doesn't at least have a little bit of snow.

• 25:11Jordi Hays?

  I would like to see Amazon do a star, a plain text ad that's Star Wars style where the text is just scrolling and it's like, get ready to buy stuff. This is about to be the Super Bowl of just buying stuff. Do it on amazon.com.

• 25:23John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 25:24Jordi Hays?

  It's time to buy.

• 25:24John Coogan?

  It's time to buy. Luko Capital is arguing that AI is not a bubble. He says, real businesses are seeing real impact from AI. Coding and tech support help are the, are the two clear immediate role beneficiaries. Advertising is another clear beneficiary. Meta has talked about it in detail. Traditional boring companies like C.H. Robinson are pointing to AI and agentic workflows as making them more efficient. The market is responding quite rationally and scrutinizing these AI input companies diligently. See Broadcom and Oracle this past week. So that is the sign of, yeah, I agree with him. Like the fact. People are taking a victory lap dunking on Oracle. It's like this is how the market should be

• 26:08John Coogan?

  working. Like it should, it should sort of be like, okay, we're regarding this future RPO five years out with some skepticism. We're not going to give you that much credit for it upfront. You got to actually deliver some real value. You got to get some cash flow into the business. Mag7 minus Tesla have reasonable valuations and the hyperscalers have more demand than they can handle. He says, I've been vocal that indiscriminately gunning all AI input companies is a dumb thing to do again, as Oracle Broadcom Neo clouds have shown this last week, but it doesn't mean AI is a bubble. I like it. I think it's a good, a good take. Ford learns a brutal EV lesson. The carmaker takes a $19.5 billion write down on its electric vehicle business. And in this

• 26:51John Coogan?

  op-ed, they say, not long ago, automakers were touting electric cars as the future. Well, now they are slamming the brakes hard on that future as market reality has hit them like a 16 wheeler. See Ford Motors stunning announcement Monday that it will take a $19.5 billion charge on its electric vehicle business instead of plowing, quote, instead of plowing billions into future, into the future, knowing these large EVs will never make money. We are pivoting, Ford CEO Jim Farley said, as he explained the company's plan to boost its lineup of gas powered cars and hybrids. Ford will also scrap its all electric F-150 Lightning pickup.

• 27:29Jordi Hays?

  Full scrap.

• 27:29John Coogan?

  Has been full scrap. They're not going to sell them anymore. So Ford has lost $13 billion on its EV business since 2023, with bigger losses expected in years to come. Last year, Ford lost about $50,000 for each EV sold. Wow. The truth is that the business case for EVs has always rested largely on government subsidies and mandates. Now that is, now that this combination of government favoritism and coercion is mostly going away, most carmakers have much less reason to make EVs.

• 28:01Jordi Hays?

  More breaking news. Kushner's affinity withdraws from Warner Bros.

• 28:07John Coogan?

  No way.

• 28:07Jordi Hays?

  Takeover.

• 28:08John Coogan?

  Wow, this is breaking news right now. That is wild.

• 28:11Jordi Hays?

  Jared Kushner is exiting from the takeover battle. Affinity was helping to finance Paramount's bid for Warner Brothers, but now believes the dynamics of an investment have changed since it became involved in the process. The battle for Warner Brothers stands to reshape the entertainment industry regardless of which bidder emerges victorious.

• 28:28Jordi Hays?

  With both bids raising.

• 28:29John Coogan?

  Reading between the lines, I think we know what happened. Jared Kushner, clearly a Foghorn Leghorn fan.

• 28:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 28:34John Coogan?

  With not enough Looney Tunes in the deal. Not enough Porky Pig.

• 28:37Jordi Hays?

  I'm out.

• 28:37John Coogan?

  Not enough Foghorn Leghorn.

• 28:39Jordi Hays?

  And on that.

• 28:39John Coogan?

  Said I'm out.

• 28:40Jordi Hays?

  I'm out.

• 28:40John Coogan?

  I'm out. I can't, I can't support this.

• 28:42Jordi Hays?

  You can just do things. Go from Olympic snowboarder to head of cartel, $50 million reward from FBI on your head. Life is short. Let it rip.

• 28:49John Coogan?

  Absolutely do not let it rip. I do not recommend becoming the head of a cartel.

• 28:54Jordi Hays?

  Maybe become the, the head of a $50 million annual revenue business in a, in a sort of legal domain.

• 29:00John Coogan?

  Maybe an enterprise software company.

• 29:01Jordi Hays?

  Enterprise software, SaaS.

• 29:03John Coogan?

  Maybe a database company.

• 29:04Jordi Hays?

  Life is short. Go from an Olympic snowboarder to a SaaS icon. Let it rip.

• 29:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:08Jordi Hays?

  Life is short. Uh, and we'll leave it at that.

• 29:10John Coogan?

  Have a good rest of your day. Merry Christmas.

• 29:12Jordi Hays?

  Thanks for hanging out with us today.

• 29:13John Coogan?

  We will see you tomorrow at 11 a.m.

• 29:14Jordi Hays?

  It feels like a Friday.

• 29:15John Coogan?

  It does. When you put on the Santa suit.

• 29:17Jordi Hays?

  We will see you guys tomorrow.

• 29:18John Coogan?

  Tomorrow. Goodbye.