The Creativ Brief: George Santos, Bad Behavior, and Hollywood
George Santos became one of six people in the entire US history to be expelled from Congress this week.
His documented antics include lying about his education, employment, age, being Jewish, ties to Sept 11th, founding an animal charity, swindling disabled veterans, using campaign funds on Hermes, Botox and OnlyFans, and embezzling from the unemployment office.
His bad behavior and shameless diva attitude has made him famous. He is charged with 13 counts of fraud. Hollywood will reward him with reality and guest appearances.
Much like Trump, whose celebrity, headline grabbing rambles, and wonton shamelessness catapulted him to reality TV then the White House, it appears our media system rewards people for being awful.
The media knows that disasters grab attention and have chosen to spotlight narcissistic attention seeking trainwrecks. This week George Santos received wall-to-wall coverage for joining Cameo.
Meanwhile, news programming executives wonder aloud why trust in media is at an all time low.
Just because we’ve become accustomed to consuming garbage, doesn’t mean we don’t know what it tastes like. It’s time we stop rewarding bad behavior.
3 Stories Dominating Media and Tech Headlines
In its third round of layoffs this year, Spotify is eliminating roughly 1,500 jobs, 17% of its workforce. Many tech companies such as Spotify, Netflix, Google, and Meta have faced job cuts this year due to several reasons:
Economic volatility
Higher interest rates
Evolving Customer Patterns
Why it matters: Despite a rise in paid customers and monthly active users, slow economic growth and rising capital costs have impelled companies like Spotify to increase efficiency and decrease labor costs. Like Meta, Apple, and Google, Spotify’s employment cuts will add to overall company profitability and boost their share price.
Verizon announced a bundle of Netflix and Max, both with ads, at $10 a month via its mobile phone plan, MyPlan. . Bundles are popping up everywhere. Instacart just announced a free peacock membership to compete against Walmart and Amazon’s video service.
Why it matters: While consumers have a threshold of services they are willing to pay for, bundles allow buyers to combine multiple services at a discount. This is similar to how traditional cable packages worked, offering a slew of channels for a single price. Welcome back bundle.
ByteDance is set to launch a new "bot development platform" that allows users to create their own generative AI-powered chatbots. The move aligns with ByteDance’s strategy to explore new generative AI products and compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Why it matters: Uncertainties about the release and regulatory scrutiny from Chinese and U.S lawmakers over national security and data privacy persist. Despite this, tech companies see innovative products like AI as essential to their overall competitive advantage.
Stat of the Week - Which Retailers rely on the Holidays the Most?
Chart by Miles Mahoney
According to the data, the holiday season is most important for Hobby stores, department stores, and gift stores, whose fourth quarter sales amount to 34.5%, 33.3%, and 31.5% respectively as a percentage of annual sales in the US in 2022.
Hobby shops and department stores rely on the holiday season to increase foot traffic to with bulk deals and large product discounts.
Expect large retailers to lean more heavily into on-site advertising opportunities during the holiday season.
Client Spotlight - Havoc Robotics Concludes Most Successful Year to Date
The National Havoc Robot league hosted their All-Star event on Dec 5-7, which featured a variety of NHRL’s best performers and some of the largest STEM Youtubers in the world such as William Osman, Backyard Scientist, and Allen Pan!
The All-Star series caps off the leagues most successful year to date with over 1,000 bots competing, 13,000% audience growth, over 400 million views, and $2 million dollars in grants given.
One Fun Thing - LEGO x Fortnite
The adventure is building! Block off your calendars, a new LEGO version of Fortnite, 18 months in the making, launched yesterday. Described as a survival, building mode, the game mode brings together two of the largest kid franchises in one package.
We expect this is going to be a breakout success. A few of our team members said they were going to jump in and play.