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- [00:02]
A
Recently I got an ad for the best lawn fertilizer. But here's the thing. I live in an apartment in New York City. I don't have a lawn, let alone need fertilizer. That's why your ad needs the right audience. And LinkedIn ads can help. LinkedIn has 130 million decision makers and you can reach the right ones for your business target by job title industry company. The list goes on. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com mbd that's LinkedIn.com mbd Terms and conditions apply.
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B
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
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C
And I'm Toby Howell.
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B
Today, gold smashes a new record. Why? That isn't good for the economy.
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C
Then France just voted to ban social media for kids. It's Tuesday, January 27th. Let's ride.
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B
As you walk about the wintry streets because this snow ain't going anywhere, keep your eyes out for snackdowns. What is a snake down, you ask? There's sections of a street that cars don't use, and you can tell cars don't use them specifically after a big snowfall because it's the areas at intersections that trucks don't feel the need to plow. Urban planners and walkability advocates love snack down since they oh so elegantly reveal space that is currently reserved for cars, which could be handed over to humans, making streets safer for pedestrians. What an awesome natural experiment.
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C
It is awesome. Instead of engaging in these expensive traffic studies to see where cars are actually going, you literally just take an aerial picture of a city or a town after it snows. Snow is sort of like nature's tracing paper. But what do you do if you don't have nature's tracing paper? Well, in the 1980s, city planners in Australia actually threw cake flour into the road to create their own flower neck downs. A fleck down, if you will. Also keep an eye out for letdowns, which are the fall leafy version of this. There's neck downs in every season, Neal. And now a word from our sponsor, Sandals. Neal, you're looking a little pale there, bud. I think you need to get some sun.
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B
Yeah, I wish, but I'm stuck here in New York where there is no sun.
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C
If only you could go to Sandals Resorts, you'd get some color and maybe perk up a little with a vacation to look forward to.
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B
Yes, if only I were at Sandals adult only resorts, exploring the Caribbean's most beautiful islands from Jamaica to St Vincent and and enjoying globally inspired dining across more than 10 restaurants per resort.
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C
Plus you can dive into new adventures. Whether that's pickleball, snorkeling or PADI certified scuba diving. It's all about what you want to do.
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B
There is no better place to experience the Caribbean than at resorts founded by a family from the Caribbean. The Winter Blue Sale is now on, so visit sandals.com for the best all inclusive value in the Caribbean.
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C
That's sandals.com France has had it with kids these days being too obsessed with their phones. Yesterday, French legislators voted to fast track a ban on social media use for children under 15, with a goal to have it in place before next school year begins in September. The vote was supported by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said the brains of our children and adolescents are not for sale, warning their emotions are not to be manipulated, whether by American platforms or Chinese algorithms. The bill passed overwhelmingly with a vote of 130 to 21. It will now go to France's upper house. Ahead of becoming a law, France is taking up a rallying cry that is gaining momentum in much of the Western world and the us Jury selection begins today in Los Angeles for a landmark civil trial brought by parents who accused Meta, TikTok and YouTube of causing children to develop social media addiction. The UK government is considering a similar social media ban for kids, and Australia is a month deep into navigating their own law that restricts under 16s from having social media. That ban is in full swing now, with over 4.7 million teen accounts deactivated or removed since it went into effect. Neal the world is clearly souring on these platforms, especially after the Aussies showed that a ban is possible. Not since Hugh Jackman starred in Les Mis have we seen France take inspiration from Australia like this.
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B
I can hear the people saying, Toby, no, I know this. This story is about the power of social media. But I first want to start by talking about the power of a book, and that book is the Anxious Generation. Jonathan Haidt, now he is a psychologist at NYU and in 2024 he released this book called the Anxious Generation, which proposed a ban on smartphones in schools and on social media for people for kids under the age of 16. The wife of the South Australian premier was reading this book and telling her husband, yo, you got to do something about this. Like I'm reading about all these problems according to Hate that social media is inflicting on young people. And he was the guy, this premier that introduced the bill in Australia that eventually they became the first country to ban social media for kids under 16. Now that Blueprint is being adopted by France, by England, by Denmark, by all these countries around the world, not only banning social media for kids under 16, but also to take phones out of schools, which this France bill does as well. So really, these ideas are what sparked a global moment here.
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C
Why else is this so popular around the world? It's because it is literally popular with voting bases. France is sort of looking at this as a win for a very fractured government because both the pro Macron parties and the right wing populist parties are rallying behind to support this legislation. The Wall Street Journal also recently conducted a poll of American readers, and 71% of respondents support banning most social media for kids under 16. So these are seen as political wins for deeply divided, you know, political bodies right now around the world, which is why we're seeing it from France all the way to Australia and maybe some momentum in the US as well.
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B
Companies are absolutely on the back foot. Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube are the ones that were sued in this particular case. But. So this is the first case that will go to trial over personal injury related to social media addiction. But there are 3,000 lawsuits waiting in the wing in California alone, and another 2,000 are pending in federal court. So this is going to be a landmark trial. It's a new era for social media companies defending their algorithms. And how this case goes is how the jury rules in this particular case will have a widespread impact on those thousands of cases that are pending.
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C
And a lot of people are drawing comparisons to a similar kind of movement against tobacco companies back in the day, because the, the argument is that they knew the risk of cigarettes and knowingly concealed it. If social media are in, the companies are in the same boat where they did studies that found that, yes, these platforms in these like infinite scroll and the algorithms we developed are negatively impacting teenagers mental health. And we still put it out to the world. That's where you start to see some liability pop up. The big question here is correlation or causation. So far, no studies have really been able to pin the mental health issues of teens on social media companies from a causation perspective. So I think that's the hurdle that still needs to be jumped in order for these cases to actually land the knockout blow that they're going for.
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B
Yeah, the companies are absolutely going to cite those papers and they're also going to say that over the past decades, we've spent billions of dollars putting safety features in in our in our social media platforms to protect kids. We'll see what a jury finds, but is absolutely a bellwether trial Moving on. The only thing climbing higher than Alex Honnold is gold. Yesterday the precious metals surged above 50$100 a troy ounce just three months after it hit $4,000, a level most thought was unthinkable a few years ago. And then there's silver, whose prices are going haywire. It popped nearly 14% Monday and its biggest one day gain financial crisis in 2008 before tumbling back down to earth in a historic reversal. While several factors are boosting the volatility of precious metals, the umbrella theme seems to be uncertainty. Uncertainty over the Trump administration's tariffs, geopolitical adventures and attacks on the Fed. Concern over rising debt loads among governments around the world and worries that major currencies will decline as those governments fail to address deficits and tried to inflation their way out of debt problems. And what do you know, the US Dollar tumbled to a four month low yesterday. All those jitters are causing a flight to Safet, humanity's comfort food dating back millennia, and it's not exactly a good sign. Some economists see the gold rally as a reflection of something profoundly rotten in the global economic order, claiming it heralds the start of a global debt crisis. Robin Brooks, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief strategist at Goldman Sachs, called the rise in precious metals, quote, breathtaking and profoundly scary.
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C
My breath is taken and I'm profoundly scared sitting here. Neal, you are right though. The safe haven bid has returned in force for gold. Max Bel, a First Eagle investment manager, told Bloomberg, gold is the inverse of confidence. So that's another way of framing it. But I do want to just like zoom out and look at these price charts that are happening. It looks like mania, it smells like mania because these things have gone up parabolic and it sort of is a little bit of a speculative mania right now. The place that is the ground zero for mania in in the Investing World is WallStreetBets Reddit forum. The two most popular tickers by far in that forum are gold and silver ETF. So those are what's being mentioned over the past 12 hours, the past 12 days. It truly is just becoming, you know, the Tesla or the Gamestop of these retail investment crowd, even though there are all these geopolitical forces feeding into it as well.
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B
Yeah, I guess the question that traders have to suss out is it a speculative mana or is something more fundamental going underneath the surface? And that's Something more fundamental would be something called the debasement trade. Now, the debasement trade is the expectation that governments are going to continue to devalue their currencies because of high debt, fiscal deficits and inflation. Which means if you're an investor looking at all that, you're saying, okay, well, I'm going to get into harder assets. I'm going to hedge a little bit. So often during a debasement trade, you'll see assets like gold and real estate go up and also perhaps bitcoin. But if you looked at the debasement trade and wanted to bet on it and you put your money into bitcoin instead of gold, well, you would have left a lot of money on the table. A number of prominent investors have come out saying, yes, the debasement trade is absolutely happening. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, Ken Griffin of Citadel last year all said that there's what's happening is there's going to be a devaluation of the dollar, of the US Dollar. Its prominence in the global stage is going to be diminished because of all these geopolitical events and perhaps some of the policymaking of the Trump administration. And that's why we're seeing gold reach new heights seemingly every day.
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C
If governments keep printing and borrowing, I want assets that they can't print. That's probably the best summary basement trade that I at least can give.
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B
Moving on. The super bowl between the Patriots and the Seahawks is nearly two weeks out. So why are brands releasing their commercials now? Yesterday, Budweiser and the NFL unveiled their spots for the big game, while Grubhub, State Farm, TurboTax, Uber Eats and Pepsi Zero Sugar all released teasers for theirs. It's clear we're in a new era of super bowl marketing, one where impact is measured not just on the Sunday night of the game, but also by the conversation you drive on social media in the weeks leading up to it. In fact, according to Sportico, the just 10 to 20% of brands will keep their ads a secret before the game itself, hoping that the wow factor of seeing something for the first time is outweighed by the digital reach of an extended campaign. And with 30 second spots in the Super bowl going for over $8 million, you want to make the biggest splash possible. Why so expensive? You won't find a bigger captive audience anywhere else. Last year's super bowl on Fox drew nearly 128 million viewers, the biggest audience in the history of the game. This year, NBC is hopeful it can beat the record with teams on Each coast, two young intriguing quarterbacks and arguably the world's most popular musician, Bad Bunny headlining the halftime show.
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C
Those are kind of two conflicting reports you just gave there though. Because yes, the super bowl is still absolutely this must see event with a lot of eyeballs glued to their televisions. But brands are also saying we do need more bang for our buck, so we should release it two weeks into advance. Because the new, you know, meta in advertising right now is you have to create these cultural moments around your ads. You want it to be a multi week long thing, not just a one day thing. And the case study that I think best exemplified this is in 2024. Sarah V had this very successful ad campaign that featured Michael Cera that started months before the big game where they had these stunts of Michael Ceramic shopping for cerave at pharmacies. They were posted on social media, became this big mythos around the commercial. Once the commercial actually aired, then it got. Overall, the Entire campaign got 15.4 billion social impressions. Before the super bowl they saw a 25% sales bump. So I think a lot of brands are looking at what Sarah V pulled off and how they just put in so much legwork before the actual ad aired and they want to do the same thing.
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B
How do, what's the relationship between the legwork before the ad and the ad itself? Is it some sort of journey that leads up to the ad? Because Budweiser just released their ad yesterday. So what's my incentive, you know, what is sort of the impact of the actual ad itself in the Super Bowl? Because I've already seen it online.
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C
I don't like that brand, if we're going to be totally honest. I like what Sarah V did where they built up like Easter eggs and then revealed the ad at the Super Bowl. That to me is how you actually build anticipation for Budweiser who just put it on YouTube. Yes, you'll probably get more views overall, but it's just not as fun. There's no, there's no anything surrounding it necessarily. So I think some brands do it better than others.
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B
And a bunch of brands actually released teasers, like the actual movie teasers for their super bowl commercials. A number did that, including grubhub. And I want to talk about grubhub because they're part of a new kind of theme that I want to talk about, which is that they're bringing in huge directors to direct Super bowl commercials. GrubHub is working with Yorgos Lanthimos, who is the director behind Bugonia and Poor Things Now. He does really weird stuff. These movies are quite bizarre. So I'm interested to see what Grubhub is doing there. And then Instacart is bringing in Spike Jonze, who's most famous for his movie, her. So these are Hollywood directors that are parachuting into Super Bowls. And then let's talk about the one of the best directors of them all, Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast has been hired by Salesforce to direct their commercial. They're giving away $1 million. So not only are companies bringing the big guns to act in these commercials, but they're also bringing in big name directors behind the scenes.
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C
That is such a cursed sentence. Mr. Beast is directing a Salesforce super bowl ad to give away $1 million. Will I be entering? Probably. I also feel for these brands in a certain sense though, because remember this creative direction process starts eight, ten months ago and they're trying to thread the needle of what the current moment is. The current like cultural temperature is like, should we be funny? Should we be serious? Should we be pro America like Budweiser's ad is? So this is not necessarily something that is easy to basically split the difference.
- [15:24]
B
Well, they don't have to spend $8 million on a 32nd.
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C
I guess you don't. And actually I go back to Sarah V. They haven't done a Super bowl ad since because like we did really well last time. Like we got our brand name out there. We don't need to spend $8 million going forward. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's trends right after this. Man, Neil. Bonds sure are tricky, huh?
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B
You can say that again. Not to mention the market is huge. Rate shift and risks hide in plain sight. That's why having a partner with scale and expertise matters. Luckily, Vanguard can bring both.
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C
That's right. Vanguard Bonds are institutional quality. Their Lineup includes over 80 bond funds. They're actively managed by a 200 person global squad of sector specialists, analysts and traders.
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B
So advisors out there, if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio. That's vanguard.com audio all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor Neil, I'm ready.
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C
To make an announcement.
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B
Toby, we all know it's okay that you're afraid of horses.
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C
No. And I am not afraid. I just don't trust them. Them. I'm announcing my personal endorsement for Spectrum Business. I've seen firsthand how they keep businesses of all sizes connected seamlessly with fast, reliable Internet, advanced Wi Fi, phone, TV and mobile services, all backed by 100% US based support.
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B
Spectrum Business offers tailored connectivity solutions with packages built for your business budget. In fact, millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to keep them connected.
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C
So whether your business is big or small, visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more that Spectrum Dotcom slash business restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas what is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger. It's the motto of the ironborn in Game of Thrones and also Co Working Spaces which are having a surprise comeback. A rags to riches tale I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. A lot of you likely remember peak co working. It was 2018. We work was the largest occupier of office space in Manhattan, commanded a valuation of just under $50 billion, and CEO Adam Neumann's mission was to elevate the world's consciousness. Yeah, that didn't work. The pandemic soon upended office demand. Coworking bore the brunt, even more so than traditional offices, and in 2023 we work filed for bankruptcy. However, coworking has since flickered back to life. Hybrid work has become the new normal for most employees, meaning companies are on the hunt for short term office commitments with the option to scale space up or down quickly. Industrious, a We Were competitor has quietly been on a heat or two, expanding to 50 new locations last year to bring their total footprint to over 250 spaces. Even we Work is making a comeback post bankruptcy, renting smaller spaces, sharing some risk with landlords, and staying away from deals that rely on instant full occupancy. Neil feels like co working was always a good idea, just maybe not on the massive scale that We Work tried.
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B
Yeah, at least to my brain. Coworking was a concept that always made sense intuitively because it clearly scratches an itch. Companies want flexibility when it comes to their office space. And yes, coworking is slowly coming back from that big blow up a few years ago. Three years ago, coworking space in the US totaled about 115 million square feet at about 5,800 locations. Today, coworking space in the US is about 158 million square feet in nearly 8,800 locations. So there's been a ticking up. That's according to the data firm Yardi, and Yardi expects this growth only to continue. Currently, Co Working accounts for about 2.2% of U.S. office stock, which is up from 1.7% three years ago. But Yardi Expects that this number, this share, will actually go to 10% as things kind of shake out and companies find the right business model for coworking that can actually, you know, work.
- [19:21]
C
One thing, one thing that I think we work did get right is the fact that they made their spaces very nice to be in. I mean, morning brew started in a we work. You had like the coffee on tap. There was like the kombucha. There was just. It felt very bougie and nice. And a lot of coworking operators are saying we still have to bring the heat there. Because if you ask people to return to offices these days, they better be nice, you better have the amenities here, or else they're going to get very, very mad. Back in the day, you used to be able to have a satellite office that just a chair and a computer and that would be enough for an employee. But now that there's a little bit of leverage now with the rise of remote work and the rise of hybrid work, you have to make it a nice space for people to want to be in. So if you force back people back to the office and it's a crappy experience, that is not going to go well, which is why still people are kind of wework of find their coworking spaces.
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B
And you mentioned satellite offices. That's one of the biggest drivers of growth in this industry right now. Say you're a company based in New York, but you have employees and you have like 10 employees in Austin, you have 10 employees in Denver, you have a couple more in l. A and you're not going to bring, you're not going to tell them to come and move to New York, but you could supply them with an office space. And what is a perfect office space for 10 people in Austin or 10 people in Denver is a coworking space. So that is one of the main drivers of growth of this mini boom, I guess we could call it. And another is single site operators. That is a big driver here. We're gone from the days of we work expanding. I remember we were in a we work, right? 2017, 2018, we would walk into the office, the we work, and we just hear that, oh, we work is expanding to Buenos Aires. Every single day. There would be another city around the world that we work was expanding to. And that clearly was a business model that did not work. Now we have these independent single site operators that are just operating one space, and it seems a lot more sustainable. According to Yardi, single site operators have grown 66% in the past three years. To over 3,500 locations. So it's not these big national coworking chains that are driving the growth. It's these independent operators that just have one space. All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines like Toby at an all you can eat sushi buffet. Saudi Arabia may have taken a little too much on its plate. The Financial Times reported that NEOM Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's mega project along the Red Sea coast coast is going to be considerably downscaled as financial realities set in. The original design called for a 105 mile linear city called the Line, a ski resort and a logistics zone. Now the Line could transition to be just a hub for AI data centers that leverages existing infrastructure instead of this futuristic urban utopia that was once envisioned in a modernization push to diversify from oil. Saudi Arabia has spent trillions of dollars at. It may not have given depressed fuel prices over the last few years. As the scaling back of NEOM shows, it's in for a crude awakening.
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C
I mean, the fact that this proposal contained a ski resort probably should have been something that would have tipped people off that, hey, wait a second, this probably isn't going to happen. It is very funny that eventually everything becomes an industrial center for data centers at this point, which is kind of the buzzy investment right now. I feel poor one out for consultants and architects and construction firms though, because this was a massive cash cow for them. I think they probably knew that they were never going to achieve the scale. But a consultant is ready to go in and say here's how it would happen. An architecture firm is happy to drop the designs from the construction firms are not so happy to actually have to build a thing. But this was definitely a major, you know, cash infusion for this industry that is now being scaled back a little bit.
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B
Yeah, I'm so sorry for them.
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C
I know you don't. You don't have to pour one out for them. All right, moving on. Once upon a time, there was a celebrity that wanted to start a successful company that didn't involve sports drink or makeup. And that company is Once Upon a Farm, an organic kids snack maker co founded by celebrity Jennifer Gardner. The good for you snack brand, which focuses on expensive products ranging from kid friendly pouches to frozen meals and smoothie packets, filed to go public yesterday, hoping to debut with a market cap north of $760 million. But in order to achieve that lofty valuation, it needs to buck a trend of celebrity IPOs going worse than Garner's 2005 portrayal of Electra. Many IPOs have had the stars, but not the businesses to back it up. There was the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood's debut, backed by Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis, which has just three locations today. Mark Wahlberg tried to be the face of gym operator F45, but it's since delisted after its IPO in 2021. And while Jessica Alba's Honest company is still tradable, it's down 84% since its debut. Neil is once upon a time going to be the fairytale farmer Jen, as she's called in the company filings. Actually, once.
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B
I mean, this is worse than the Madden curse. Even Ryan Reynolds, who took Wrexham from the dumpster of the English soccer tables to the championship, has had a rough go on it in the public markets. He is the chief creative, chief creative officer of adtech company M&T, and that stock is now trading 37% below its IPO price. Perhaps the one celebrity that's done pretty okay with an IPO of a company they're involved in is Roger Federer. He backed on holding, which is this Swiss shoe company, and that stock is nearly double from its 2021 IPO. So maybe we should all take our cues a little more from Roger Federer. The funniest part about this story is that Garner is called a co founder of this company of Once Upon a Farm. But they she and the current CEO joined the company in 2017, two years after it was started.
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C
Classic.
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B
How do you square that circle?
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C
You put. You sign your name on something when you just. That's management, Neil. You know, people do the work and then you put your name on.
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B
Right. All right, well, good luck, Jennifer Garner. Finally. Hey, guys, don't try to get fake pipe bombs through airport security or we'll have to talk about you on the podcast this weekend, TSA released its annual list of the most unusual things it confiscated at US Airports last year. And number one was an imitation pipe bomb that someone put in their checked baggage in Boise, Idaho. The fake bomb, which was made of PVC pipes, wires, and wooden blocks wrapped in papermark C4, set off a checkpoint alarm before the traveler informed officials it was just a training aid. TSA also highlighted several turtles that people tried to sneak through security for reasons unknowable. At Newark in March, a man tried to hide a turtle wrapped in a blue towel in his pants, while a few months later, a woman got caught sneaking two turtles stuffed in her bra. I'll give you one moment to think about what city this was in. Yep, Miami.
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C
Why Are there multiple turtle instances? What is going on with people? The TSA kind of on social media said, please, we can't emphasize this enough. Stop hiding animals in weird places on your body and then trying to sneak them through airport security. They have regular pathways. If you want to bring your, your pets on board, you don't need to put them in your undergarments. But on the scale of turtle to pipe bomb, I guess turtle is on the milder side. But oh boy, just, you know, pack it in your checked bag.
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B
It looks like airport security around the world is loosening its rules a little bit. Remember, we don't have to take our shoes off anymore and the regular line. And then just a few days ago, Heathrow airport said it was going to allow liquids of 2 liters through into the airplane through your carry on instead of just 3.3 ounces. So this whole industry that has these airport size shampoo and toothpaste and little water bottles I think is going to go kaput.
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C
They'll. Have you ever tried to smuggle anything through airport security and gotten stopped?
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B
Actually, no, because I've reflected a lot over the past year and I am a rule follower. I am a rule follower. So I, you know, look into my bag before I go into security and I see if there's any liquids or anything that might set off the alarm and I put it away because not only am I a real follower, I just want to get to the gate as fast as possible so I can look at planes. So I don't want anything delaying that. So I am, I'm someone who's pretty careful about what they put in their carry on to go through security because I just don't want to be delayed.
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C
My mom always would give me Magnolia Pudding, which is a bakery here in New York. She would send that to me in college or like before I was coming home. And she would argue that it's not a liquid, which it's actually a good debate. Like what is pudding?
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B
There's a huge debate around peanut butter.
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C
You're right. Peanut butter pudding, it's all in the same class. And every once in a while I get it through. Every once in a while I wouldn't get it through. So I'm a pudding smuggler. That's what I've reflected on myself and found.
- [28:01]
B
Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. If you want to get in touch, send an email to Morning Brew daily at morning broadcom or DM us on Instagram @mbdailyshow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair makeup is on the hunt for Snackdowns. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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C
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.