Scott Galloway (8:12)
Yeah, I just, I'm fascinated by corporate communications. And corporate communications has been one of the greatest ROIs for corporate America. And that is they are spending money on AI, obviously, increasing that, increasing money on direct to consumer technologies, what have you. But the greatest increase on a percentage level across corporate America has been in corporate comms. And that is they recognize that increasingly companies used to a stock that was in the steel sector or in the weapon sector or in the technology sector would trade within a fairly narrow bound of a multiple and ebitda, and who traded at the high end usually had better positioning, better brands, and a CEO who's a little bit more charismatic. Now, the band of the multiple on EBITDA or earnings is so dramatic, and much of it is about the storytelling capabilities of the CEO. Amazon was essentially a company built on a story. And that is, if you read Amazon's or Jeff Bezos 1997 letter to shareholders, you just wanted to go out and buy stock, and you did, which gave them access to such incredibly cheap capital. They could buy more planes, build more warehouses, hire more logistics people, and get you basically anything in the world for free with Amazon prime within 48 hours. And no one else had the capital to go to war with Amazon. And they just kind of blew everyone out of the water. So you're sort of your storytelling capabilities here have become incredibly powerful. And so corporate communications departments have been just booming and hiring more people. It's all about the story. And then when Alexander Karp, is that his name, the CEO of Palantir, does this really innovative thing where he walks around his office doing the earnings call live on Instagram, everyone's like, wow, this company is so innovative. And the company trades at 100 times revenues, which makes absolutely no sense. And also, Elon Musk commands $1 to $3 billion in earned media by just being crazy. And being on Twitter all the time and has a huge advantage versus General Motors. And no one really cares what Mary Barra says or threads or tweets. So Tesla gets all this incredible free advertising because of, in some ways storytelling or just having a blowhorn. So this press release from Disney, it can go wrong, though. And this press release I would describe as being gang banged by what must have been two dozen crisis management experts who were parsing every word and ended up with a press release that was milquetoast and totally disingenuous. They said after discussions with Jimmy Kimmel, we further understand, we decided to bring him back. They don't give a flying fuck what Jimmy Kimmel thought. I mean, what they didn't think to do this before they fired him. And then they'd also said that because of some ill timed and insensitive comments, they decided to bring the show. Ill timed and insensitive. We have said there isn't a. I don't think there is a progressive media personality or even a conservative comedian who hasn't said things much more, quote unquote insensitive. And here's the thing. You don't need a First Amendment when people say things slightly insensitive. You need a First Amendment when people say really stupid, provocative, angry shit. There are some limits. You can't incite violence. You can't spread lies about somebody that hurt their economic livelihood. That's defamation. But other than that, a hallmark of a free society is you can pretty much say anything about pretty much anyone at pretty much any time. And so the infraction here of not even a speeding ticket and then firing him and then pretending that after speaking to him and that these were ill timed comments, they continue to lie. This is the bottom line. This is about money, full stop. And that is they recognized someone called and said, our site is crashing because so many people are trying to cancel Hulu, ESPN and Disney. We are getting calls from our cruise line saying people are canceling. We heard from, I don't know, Zendaya that she doesn't. Her agent is worried that she should pull out of a movie because of what is going on here. And they got together and said, oh, it's costing money. Let's backtrack. This is a prime example of how societies continue a downward spiral into fascism. They have a strong man. And this isn't the first time Bob Iger has really fucked up. He's the one who initially started this bullshit by settling with the whole George Stephanoma settling with Trump. And when you throw, when you think the alligators around you, and if you just cut off a finger and give it to them, be clear, they're gonna come back for the arm. And so they started this. They were the first ones. They could have been the front lines and said no and sent a signal. And just FYI, Jess, I'm going to buy $10 million in equity and then be the beneficial owner of another $10 million in Disney stock file a 13D to replace the entire board and fire Bob Iger, who has shown that he is not only a terrible fiduciary for all Americans, has no fidelity to the principles that have made him a billionaire. So he could walk around in cashmere sweaters and go to the Oscars, but he should be fired. They fired the wrong guy. This guy, okay, Any one of these things you could say, all right, he made a mistake. This guy is clearly. The 73 year old Bob Iger clearly doesn't understand the atmosphere. Let's ignore the fact that he is a terrible American. Bob Iger, you are a terrible American. You have turned your back on the ideals and the principles that have made you a fucking billionaire and have given you an extraordinary life. But in addition to that, he clearly has lost all ability to read the room and read the culture and understand new technology and new platforms and what it means to be in the business of media. There has never been. I can't think of a CEO in the Fortune 500 that is more ripe to be fired. There absolutely is someone at Disney right now that should be canceled and it should be the CEO. And also there should be more scrutiny on the board. A board is there to save the CEO from him or herself to go, this could be really bad for us. And instead they were listening entirely to what they thought were their consumers. And that is the broadcast station, Sinclair and nexstar who distribute Jimmy Kimmel across local TV stations. But this indicates to me that Bob Iger absolutely needs to go. A terrible American, a terrible fiduciary for shareholders, and someone who has. Whose judgment, that expiration date has clearly passed. Your thoughts?