Author: Richard

Former eBay and DreamWorks executives start odd new digital tv service

While at a business meeting in Dallas with rich people looking for interesting ways to invest their money, I was asked if I knew Meg Whitman. Not knew of her – but like, knew her personally, because, quote, “she’s big in computers and technology in California” and I should “talk to her about some of the stuff yer doing”. So 1- I’ll have my secretary Rosa schedule a lunch with her right away on a day that I’m free and 2- for as dense as that comment was, it gave way to discovery of a completely and totally bizarre new company that she’s now the CEO of…

Katzenberg & Whitman at the helm…

Background/Catchup: Meg Whitman is the former CEO of eBay from back when eBay was one of the 5 biggest websites that existed on a brand new world wide web. More recently she was the CEO of HP where she was… okay. Not revolutionary or as successful as she was in the booming years of eBay but the general review of her tenure at HP appears to be mostly positive, just not exciting.

Jeffrey Katzenberg is the former head of Disney animation when it too was the king in its field, doing its best work of all time (Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King) and then founded DreamWorks in 1994 to challenge Disney when he felt disrespected by the company.

Together they are launching a digital/streaming video service.
/End of “who are these people?” catchup section…

Quibi: a bite-sized video network

The new company is called Quibi and I don’t know how to pronounce it any more than you do but I’m assuming it’s “Kwibbi” and if so – they should have just spelled it that way instead. If its “Kibbi” then the phonetic spelling with the “K” is, again, superior. And if its pronounced “Quee-bee” then that’s just ill advised all together.

Update: I’ve been informed that it is short for “quick bite” and pronounced as such.

The branding…

Oh, and also its logo is a weird circle with a tail and the company name uses an ugly generic font that doesn’t at all match the style, but other than that it sounds…like something.

The logo isn’t the worst, but it sure is odd. It’s primary colors are pink and blue that smash together with a diagnal gradient purple belt on a “Q” that is really a perfect machine-cut pineapple ring looking “O” that leaves the crisp circle to make an organic looking curl like a pugs tail, to make it a “Q”.

What is known about Quibi so far…

Strange name, strange logo, and it’s a venture of the strangest of people to partner together on something like this, plus the biggest players in Hollywood, $1.5 Billion in capital behind it, and all servicing what sounds like the dumbest way to do, market and contract something like this that I could imagine…

The “thing that’s different” about the platform is that the videos on it will be made short and for cell phone consumption. Specifically, they’re 10 minute long videos and the service wants to debut with 5,000 of those (so about 833 hours of content – which is a lot to start with when its all-new creations starting brands no one has ever heard of on a platform no one has ever heard of).

What makes sense about it..

This makes sense as a venture because Instagram stories and the lengthier Instagram TV videos are getting huge marketshare of watch-hours and before those two existed, it was SnapChat doing the same thing that was the reason Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, even thought to make that a feature. SnapChat’s Discover page contains not only short, several minute human interest stories, news coverage, and YouTube style talk show/vlog clips from partners but also from SnapChats own production arm that makes mostly news talk related videos from a Left-wing/Democratic point of view on politics and culture.

So, making a platform specifically geared toward this market makes sense when 2 competing tech companies are themselves scrambling to tack on this exact feature to their existing user services the same way Apple is now doing with Hollywood style content in its Apple TV+ service launching later this year.

In other words – like I’ve been telling my business partners for a damn decade and a half: creating a useful service to attract a lot of users is great and all, but the real way to leverage that gathering of humans is to keep them within your ecosystem with entertaining stuff to watch.

What doesn’t make sense about it

Quibi won’t have that benefit of being a service that’s tacked onto something that already exists and is popular with a lot of people, so it’s going to have to attract those people to its content based on the merits of its offerings alone.

The company is getting around this problem by signing on big names and studios to make new shows for it.

The Content

Steven Spielberg, the famous Producer/Director and a longtime friend of Katzenburg’s, is going to write scary stories for Quibi. Can he write 10 minute scripts as good as he Directs 2 hour long movies? We’ll find out.

The major studios, including AT&T’s WarnerMedia and Katzenburgs former boss turned rival turned partner, The Walt Disney Co. and its recently purchased subsidiary, 21st Century Fox, along with smaller Indie studios including Lionsgate will be creating original content for the service.

Quibi’s Business Details

Don’t let the bite-sized video fool you into thinking this is a low-budget venture though. Whitman says they’re not building Quibi to be another YouTube – they want it to be more like another HBO. Their budget backs up the claim as the videos they’re making are expected to cost $100,000 a minute to produce, according to the LA Times, which is about 30x what most producers spend on similarly short length content made to be consumed on smartphones.

The deals Quibi is making with these content creators are the most competitive I’ve seen. Quibi pays for 100% of the cost of the productions, but doesn’t own them afterward – they’re merely sponsoring the content creation just so they can license it exclusively for 7 years. After that, they have no claim to it and the creating studios can do with them what they please on their own streaming services or whatever they want. After two years of the agreement, the deal allows for the creating studios to expand their shows from the 10 minute “bits” to full-length tv-episode 20minute+ durations to shop around for distribution elsewhere like networks or other streaming offerings. 

The funding for all this content is coming out of over what will probably be around $2 Billion raised by big name funding players Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. (the bank), and the Alibaba Group (Alibaba is a huge Chinese e-commerce company that is often described as being “the Amazon.com of China”). They’ve already raised $1Billion for content creation and $500,000 for the technical build the app and service will require.

The Absolutely Terrible / DealBreaker…

It ain’t free… Quibi will be a paid service. Exclusively. No free version.

If you want access to its library of 10 minute videos to watch on your phone, you’ll have to pay $5 a month and still have to watch ads, or pay $8 a month without ads. Maybe there’s a game changer that makes their content so “must see” that it justifies these price points, but at this stage, that doesn’t appear likely despite the investments and participation of such big content making sources on the platform.

Put me on record as noting that this is a bad idea.

What they should have done instead…

1- Absolutely make it a free service. Especially since all of the content offering is going to be made by other billion dollar production corporations who get to keep the distribution rights of what they’re making on Quibi’s dime, the deals with those studios should be more favorable to the Quibi user base who is essentially test-screening show concepts for those studios and paying for the pleasure. They should get it for free, with minimal ads courtesy of those big studios – not regular-amount-of-ads + a subscription fee because of those big studios. Keep the option to upgrade to an ad-free option, but don’t wall the whole thing off as a premium service exclusively. That’s not smart unless you have some really powerful hooks that haven’t been announced yet.

Examples would be bite-sized episodes from intellectual property the public is already familiar with – eg: Disney making a Star Wars animated series similar to their 2003 Clone Wars series that aired on Cartoon Network in small 2 minute long episodes (stitched together and shown below), NBCUniversal doing the same thing with a Minions series and other properties they own like The Secret Life of Pets, Despicable Me, and so on with characters who are much better suited to inhabit 10 minute stories than hour+ long movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpXrz2Sfv8Y

Instead of banking on familiar franchises spawning new short-format spin-offs and supplementing that main push with original entertainment ventures, they’re doing the reverse (if pre-existing franchise IP even comes to the platform at all).

2- Incorporate Influencers & New Talent.

Quibi doesn’t want to be YouTube because no one wants to be YouTube, including YouTube – we get it. Big Studio production is where the money is. They want to be a premium outlet just like everyone else. Fine. But getting people to pay a monthly fee for content they don’t know anything about is risky and unnecessarily so when you could mitigate that risk by adding personalities who already have followings to your platform with enticing deals that encourage them to stay there and maybe even leave YouTube all together some day.

The high-production-value aspect Quibi is going for is fun and fine and good luck to them with it – but it should be supplemented by a tier of millennial up & comers from social media, now boosted with big fat Hollywood budgets to do extensions of what they’ve been doing themselves from their bedrooms and whatnot.

YouTube Red failed because no one wants to see “their favorite YouTube stars in low budget Hollywood style movies” – they want to see their favorite YouTube stars doing more and better versions of what they already know and like those stars for doing. They don’t want to see PewDePie in a romantic comedy – they want to see PewDePie play video games and comment on news or whatever he does. Thus, a PewDePie YouTube Red late night style talk show format where he has a monologue, interview, and variety-show-esque segment could have been a big draw – but YouTube wasn’t interested. YouTube didn’t understand that YouTube fans don’t want to see Logan Paul in a horror movie (which YouTube Red tried to do with “The Thinning”) – they want to see Logan Paul do goofy heightened-reality silly-douche stuff. And so on.

A free version with lots of new stars empowered to do their own thing with minimal constraints on a platform that entices you to upgrade to a premium version without ads and with more content seems so obvious to me as the way to go here that it will be interesting to see what Quibi actually turns out to be and whether it is successful or flops.

Developing…

Apple TV+ Announcement is Apple’s most uninspired ever

The March 2019 Apple event announced 3 things:

Apple Card
a credit card with no fees and the sort of spending tracking that a dozen other apps offer. It’s a partnership with Goldman Sachs and MasterCard.

Apple Arcade
a paid subscription service (price not announced) that gives you an all-you-can-eat style access to a list of premium and paid games on the app store.

Apple News+
a subscription service for digital versions of newspapers and magazines.

and…

The Big Announcement!: An unexciting mainstream version of what is already available to consumers with no advantageous features or innovation

Apple TV+

The main attraction! And what is it?… It’s an app.

It contains Apple Channels which does what Amazon Channels service and Hulu both do. But now its by Apple!

This is like how early DVD’s would try to stretch out their non-existent “Special Features” with checks like “chapter selection” and “dolby digital audio”

In addition to the ability to buy channels through Apple, there will also be original programming at a subscription price that was conspicuously absent from the event… Whatever that price is, will it be worth it? Here’s what we were given to make that determination:

The Original Programming on the debut of Apple TV+ is a snooze-fest

The shows in this announcement are nothing special. That doesn’t mean any of them will be bad – it just means they’re not exciting.

Stephen Spielberg’s Amazing Stories… basically another Twilight Zone style anthology “but with SPIELBERG!”…

The Morning Show… A Comedy(?) or Drama(?) or Both about a Morning Show… Reese Witherspoon & Jennifer Aniston & Steve Carell do a show about a morning talk show. No clues as to what kind of show it is except the painfully unfunny “oh, hey guys, am I late??” bit that ushered in Steve Carell to the presentation stage after Aniston and Witherspoon had said a few words about their involvement in the series. That clue suggests that the show is a comedy but who the hell knows. There was no detail about it. We don’t know if this is going to be a goofy reboot along the lines of Back To You (a show that barely lasted 1 season, literally no one knows about, and I’m only mentioning here because I kindasorta almost got a speaking role on it) or if they are going for more of an Alan Sorkin tone like HBO’s The Newsroom. Probably the latter, but only because that’s a safer route to take and Apples other lineup items look equally bland and pedestrian.

Something about Immigrants… I guess its a docu-series? The Indian fella from HBO’s Silicon Valley (Kumail Nanjiani) introduced it but what exactly his role in the series is wasn’t made clear. I guess he hosts explorations into immigrant-centric human interest tales or something? Whatever it is – this was the peak of his career as his dramatically lighted face recieved equal billing with Spielberg, Anniston/Witherspoon, Big Bird, and frigginOprah, so good for him at least even if the show looks uninteresting.

A Sesame Street Spinoff… This segment was so horrible and so indicative of everything wrong with this event that I had to spin it off into its own post about how awful it was…

A Science Fiction drama about blind people… Jason Mamoa stars in series that is a new spin on the essential concept of “A Quiet Place” in where a tribe of people live in a dystopian future where a handicap is the central driving plot contrivance.

Little Voice… I have no idea what this is but director J.J. Abrams pitched it alongside a singer-songwriter I’m not familiar with named Sara Bareilles. Are you excited yet?

2 Oprah Documentaries… one about sexual harassment, and one about I-already-forgot-cuz-no-one-cares.

Any of these sound like must-see-TV to you?…

The entire Event was among Apple’s most dull ever

Product announcement events for tech companies aren’t expected to be entertainment. Except Apple’s. They decidedly are supposed to be exactly that.

How terribly, painfully, cringe-ily ironic that *this* – an announcement of a video entertainment service – of all Apple’s events, would be it’s most boring.

Chris Evans and Michelle Dockery, who will star in the limited series Defending Jacob, that wasn’t even talked about at the event (or if it was, it was so brief a mention that I didn’t notice), sum up the excitement level of the event perfectly in this GIF:

the face you make when you’re contractually obligated to be someplace that suuuuuuuuuucks...

^That’s at an applause moment, mind you… and they look like they’re at a school assembly having to humor a motivational anti-drugs speaker who is doing zero to change your opinion but you don’t want to make it any more awkward than it already is.

It didn’t need to be like this…

The absolute bone dryness of this event was an unforced error. At Apples 2017 product announcement event, they kicked off with a cold-open presentation of a funny, fast paced, inventive, high-budget comedy sketch depicting how civilization would collapse without any apps. It was legitimately entertaining, fast paced, and took some risks in the places it was willing to go to dredge for comedy in just a short little bit that was exciting and made people want to watch again and show other people who didn’t see it.

That event announced the new/upcoming iPhone X, an Apple Watch with cellular connectivity, and the Apple TV box finally getting 4K capability.

So… if Apple kicked off a presentation of routine hardware upgrades with a such a high-end, high-concept, pizazzy video, you can only imagine what kind of epic excitement stirrer they cooked up for an event that announces their streaming Hollywood style video service… except you can’t imagine it… because you would never in a hundred thousand years guess that this trillion dollar company entering the entertainment video space would ever ever ever make such a bizarrely wooden, nerdy, socially awkward, WTF choice of an opening for such a release…

This Apple event opened with… I kid you not… a slideshow… (which is bad enough, but hold on – it gets so much worse) that led a discussion of CEO Tim Cook lecturing about what a “Service” is… conceptually, and philosophically….

Apple… What. The Motherkking. Fkk. AreYouDoing??

Sociopath Democrats want MORE years of jail time for non-violent crime

On the heels of President Trump passing criminal justice reform, freeing thousands of non-violent criminals from unfair lives of imprisonment, Democrats are calling for MORE caging of non-violent offenders of laws that only the ruling class thinks are that important.

President Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of avoiding taxes in an illegal way, and for that, he is going to be locked in a cage for 3.9 years. Democrats, instead of calling this sentencing for the unreasonable exercise of government power that it is, are calling it ‘disrespectful,’ ‘lenient,’ ‘an outrage’.

Paul Manaforts mug shot in front of a prison-orange superimposed background and behind superimposed jail bars. Source: TalkingPointsMemo.com illustration of an AP article about the Mueller probe that was formed to find “Russian Collusion” in the Trump campaign, which is a hoax that never happened, and thus needed to find some other peoples lives to ruin so it didn’t look quite so feckless and insane as it actually is.

Specifically, Manafort was convicted last August on eight felony counts, including filing false tax returns, failure to register foreign bank accounts and, related to that non-registration maneuver – bank fraud. So basically, he tried to keep more of his money than the State wanted to confiscate from him, got caught, and now has to spend several years of his life in a cell.

The headline to the NBC News post I linked to above has as its byline the commentary of one unnamed observer saying “If you rob a bank you’re going to spend twice as long in prison as someone who steals millions otherwise,” – completely ignoring that bank robberies involve the threat of death and violence to abscond with money, but more importantly – the fact that Manafort didn’t steal from anyone, he just didn’t “comply with the law” that dictates how much the government can steal from him. This is the sort of thing that could be both fixed and punished by a fine – but the sadistic opposition doesn’t want to enforce a law or see a financial deficit filled – they want people associated with Donald Trump to suffer.

Appreciate the gravity of that totalitarianism: This person is going to spend years in a cage – not because he took what wasn’t his – but because he kept what was his. Cool…

Jurors deadlocked on 10 other counts they tried to snag him with, and Investigator Mueller eventually agreed to not retry those charges as part of the plea bargain stuck with prosecutors.

The state could have sentenced the 69-year old Manafort to up to 24 years in federal prison, so the 3+ years he will get now was a let down to those licking their chops to see him thrown away longer. How can elected servants of the people justify such a ghoulish desire for harsher punishment of people who didn’t physically or even financially endanger anyone? Just tack-on some sort of Social Justice meme to the case of course…

Conjuring imagery to illustrate the divide between street crime and financial impropriety crime, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said on Twitter “Crimes committed in an office building should be treated as seriously as crimes committed on a street corner”, but how does she know Manafort was in an office building when he failed to inform the state about money he had in certain bank accounts? Because she’s trying to make the ludicrous claim that assaults, robberies, and murders are morally the same as not paying as much taxes and the government wants you to, without sounding precisely as ludicrous as that actually is of course.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez follows the same goofy logic, tweeting that Manafort somehow bought his way into “only” spending almost 4 years of his life in federal prison…

The dishonesty of this comparison of course bypasses the reality that people with low incomes, by definition aren’t getting large portions of that income stolen by the government and thus don’t commit the crimes of “bank fraud” to evade that theft. Rather, people of low income who receive higher prison sentences aren’t results of a judge looking at their yearly earnings and giving longer sentences to lower earners nor is their sentencing a result of not having enough money to buy a bunch of fancy lawyers to argue in a more articulate way for lighter jail time. People typically get longer prison sentences for having lots of prior convictions, usually that involve violence or the threat of violence. If they can’t control themselves to the degree that they are repeatedly caught by the state harming or threatening to harm other citizens, then yea – they get typically harsher time in punitive cages. If Cortez wanted to be honest about such a comparison, she would have compared Manafort to other first-time-offenders with no violence or threats of violence in their crime, but then she wouldnt have an excuse to call his sentencing “light”, nor have an excuse to rally her supporters about an alleged injustice that they need people like her to advocate against, so… truth goes out the window for dishonest emotional appeals while 70 year old men sit in prison for not surrendering enough of their money to the State.

Cool.

Brietbart.com went mainstream and forgot its punk rock roots

Andrew Breitbart was a merry prankster who challenged political correctness and the worst aspects of Leftist censorship, control, and bully culture with bold assaults and humor and did so in ways no one else was even trying – specifically – without being a doctrinaire right wing hack like Bill Buckley, an obsequious establishment partisan like Sean Hannity, or a moralizing religious zealot like much of talk radio. Instead he was fresh and funny and most importantly: not very political. He was political in the sense of challenging power and clowning on powerful members of the State infringing on rights. He wasn’t against same sex marriage and wasn’t a vicious school marm of a scold on issues regarding sex or cultural influence and involvement of marginalized groups of americans – which up until him was basically the cost of admission for any right-of-center political figure who combatted the dogma of big government shackles on individual liberties of speech, self-protection, and finance.

Former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay social commentator, agitator, admitted provocateur, and impressario, is the only figure who comes close to Andrew Breitbarts legacy of lampooning, trolling, and seriously discussing deep issues that force thought from different perspective amidst the other storms of chaos and mischief towards orthodox traditions of both political norms that they create and instigate.

And yet Breitbart.com abandoned him a year ago when he was attacked for joking and otherwise making light of his own experience as a victim of sexual predation by an older man. While Breitbart didn’t fire him or completely throw him under the bus and Milo left to save them the hassle of increasingly uncomfortable defenses of him that almost certainly would have culminated in a request that he leave, the publication still didn’t do anything to protect one of their own from the character assassination he experienced, and that was a severe error for their position politically, let alone the moral implications of not protecting “one of the family”.

Milo wrote on Instagram (one of the last media platforms that allows him after Twitter and Patreon banned him) under a screenshot of a Breitbart story headlining how Mitt Romney is a RINO or something boring and mainstream-conservative-safezone as it gets, a pretty excellent summation of my feelings towards the Breitbart that was vs the Breitbart that is vs the Breitbart that could have been. Milo’s commentary:

New year, new start! On reflection, and with a heavy heart, I’ve deleted Breitbart from my bookmarks. I loved my time there and I’d return in a heartbeat, but, without me, the team there has simply forgotten how to be interesting, and without Steve, they’ve lost their fighting spirit. There’s just nothing that grabs my attention on the site any more.

When I was at Breitbart, we defined the culture. We were the epicenter of exciting, rebellious countercultural thought. We crushed campus feminism, defended the heroes of Gamergate, threw bombs into campus safe spaces, named and shamed abusive Leftist bullies, published dissident gay editorials, christened new movements… and it was FUNNY and a joy to read.

But what are the writers I hired and trained doing now? Where’s the energy gone? Now the site is spineless and boring, chasing after other, more interesting people six months after everyone else has already covered them—and betraying, denying, disavowing and unpersoning its former stars.

What a waste…

Business Advice: My 3 Point Plan to revamp and save MoviePass…

Theater subscription service MoviePass is losing $20 Million every single month and is on its way to an embarrassing shut down if it doesn’t make some big changes with some fresh ideas to shake up the current wtf-were-they-thinking system. Luckily I have those changes that can save them right here for them to ignore and close-anyway over but don’t say I didn’t tell-ya-so.

Some ways I thought of that I expected the company to try by now and still recommend to them here publicly and free of charge are:

Offer more services than just the theater Subscription thing

Pre-Orders – Compete with services like Fandango and offer users a one-account place to order theater tickets online without a membership and then add some perks to those who DO get the membership and want things like additional tickets for non-MoviePass holders.

Rentals – Compete with the all-but-ignored DVD mailing wing that still exists under Netflix and the once-popular-but-still-available RedBox rental system. Maybe even merge with or acquire RedBox and let any MoviePass members rent from any RedBox kiosk with their MoviePass card at a discount, with special-tier’ed members getting access to unlimited movie rentals (*just one at a time but otherwise “all you can watch”).

Streaming – Get in on this space. Currently there exists Netflix, Hulu, the WalMart owned Vudu as the top paid services. I recommend acquiring or duplicating the model of free/ad supported services like Pluto TV and Tubi, which both stream online and through smart TV apps. MoviePass should make the brand synonymous with movie watching whether its at home or in theaters and then cross market the platforms to each group so that a person watching an older movie on their MoviePass app on TV at home gets a steady feed of trailers and promotions for movies currently in theaters and coming soon.

Offer a Premium Pass Membership

MoviePass never let you see 3D or IMAX movies under any circumstances. This seems like a big waste instead of just offering an up-sell membership tier that would include those formats. Find some other perks you can pack into a package and make this the $40/month plan. It’ll take some mathing out to figure exactly what it would make sense to provide under this plan but in addition to definitely allowing 3D & IMAX showings, I would look into things like waving online pre-order fees, discounting a % on additional tickets, and rolling in some of the other suggestions in this list into coverage under this plan.

Create a “Priceline for Theaters” service and bring back the “dollar theater” model

Offer a basic plan – obviously call it something else – and make it the cheapest but with the most blackouts on locations, days, and showing time restrictions for $6.99/month.

If the service could create relationships with theater chains to gain insight to their slowest days and showtimes and then offer a MoviePass tier to fill those slowest slots, that could be a win-win for everyone that seems eminently doable. Just like how travel services like Priceline work with airlines and hotels to fill their unused seats and rooms at a discount.

Anyone grow up with a “dollar theater” (usually $3 or so) near them? The concept (playing older movies at an extreme discount and less fancy movie house) appears to be in very little practice anywhere anymore but MoviePass could bring it back. With the Basic ButNamedSomethingElse tier Membership, offer users 1 free movie a month on their card and additional movies at “dollar theater” prices for titles that are more than 2 months past their initial release date, or other metrics informed by the inside info you get from theater chain partnerships – ie: use your BasicPass for $3 movies on weekdays and before 5pm on weekends.

Offer a Concessions Perk Addition to the Pass

Work within the established relationship with national chains from my #2 idea and allow the MoviePass card to grant users concession perks like free upgrades on the sizes of their sodas and popcorns, and/or free refills on regular-price purchases, and/or a loyalty punchcard that gives them a freebie of something on their 15th visit or so. To do this you will have to develop a rewards system tech in your app that can apply anywhere and then offer the partnership to any theater anywhere, whether its a national chain, a single-location mom&pop location, a drive-in – whatever. Only AMC, Harkins Theaters, and maybe one other big chain have rewards membership.

Avengers Marketing Wars go to Infinity

I think I tried too hard with that title and it didn’t quite pan out.

But the point here is to cover the interesting extensions of marketing tying into this years super hero blockbuster which is a culmination of 19 previous films leading to this plot convergence that combines almost all of the main characters from all of those other movies. Here is how some major companies are paying big bucks to get consumers to associate their products and services with the empowered feelings associated with super heroes and tying their products to the movie event in various ways, but all with a “be like a hero and buy our stuff” theme:

SODA…

Previous Avengers movies sported Dr. Pepper, (which was recently purchased and merged with the Keurig coffee company) as their official beverage sponsor. “The Avengers and Dr. Pepper… Together we’re one of a kind” with ads tying the soda to being a hero.

This time around, however, competitor Coca Cola outbid Dr Pepper to secure a $40 Million dollar contract with the franchise which includes its global markets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw6zAJKsal0

Before Infinity War, Coke ran this Marvel integrated commercial during the 2018 Super Bowl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3KSdUtEb0

CARS…

Action movies and car manufacturers have a history of tie-in marketing.

This tie-in is my favorite one as they partnered with – Infinity. Heh.

The QX50 is also evidently featured in Infinity War, not that I would be able to spot it.

CAR INSURANCE…

Geico, in Geico fashion, runs a campaign that typically has nothing to do with its product but gets the name out there in the public mind via a goofy sketch, their cute mascot, and slogan over the logo at the end.

LOANS…

Quicken Loans jumps in the fray. Makes me wonder why Rocket Mortgage missed out on tying in with Rocket Raccoon on this one.

Here, a hip racially ambiguous millennial female casually strolls through disaster under the smooth crooning lyrics “Its your thing… do what you’re gonna do” – but like the Dr Pepper theme – she is basically a super hero herself because she uses this one product/service. “The mortgage process doesn’t have to be a battle”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOi1yJmA-yk

Honoring funeral procession motorcades is a really nice gesture

I attended a funeral last June and was in one of the cars going to the cemetery. Evidently I have had the luck to have so far, not attended very many funerals (or at least very many where the burial site was driving-distance from the funeral service) – so much so to the point that I didn’t even know the motorcade was a thing. I had only consciously registered it when President Reagan died in 2004 and the motorcade passed near where I was living in Thousand Oaks on its way to the Reagan Library where he would be buried. But as I learned – the body isn’t just delivered and everyone just shows up at the burial but rather is taken from the church to the cemetery by the hearse along with a line of cars – which…is what a motorcade is… am I explaining this poorly? I feel like I’m stumbling over this description and clunky set of recollections which I’m only now live-piecing together.

Point is – when we drove down the main street of town, an older gentleman on the sidewalk stopped and bowed his head and put his hand over his heart until the procession passed and that image stuck with me as such a classy gesture. He presumably didn’t know who was in that hearse, and had no obligation to give it any mind, yet he paused and showed respect – not really to a stranger, but to the strangers loved ones. After all, life is for the living – and funerals aren’t really about “showing respect for the dead” but rather they are gatherings that use that conceit as a way of giving excuse for the surviving friends and family of the deceased to congregate, grieve collectively, and console each other. To have a stranger show the human kindness to other strangers that silently says “I’m sorry for your loss” in such a completely “you didnt have to do that” way is really touching.

What made me think of this story was this post on Facebook in where the same thing happened except the single guy on the street is replaced by a bunch of kids who stopped playing basketball and knelt.

While attending a family funeral the procession passed a group of young boys shooting hoops. Take a look closely. They took a knee not out of disrespect but honor. They was not an adult insight to tell them to stop playing. This meant a great deal to our family. May God bless each one as I feel they will achieve greatness.

California ranked “worst state in the Union”

More specifically: California has the worst quality of life.

California – the state I live in –  has the highest state income tax in the nation, the highest sales tax rate in the nation, the highest gasoline tax in the nation, the 8th highest corporate income tax rate in the nation, the highest “minimum corporate tax” in the nation (each corporation must pay at least $800 to the state just to exist – even if it does not make a dime in profit) — and all for what? State revenues continue to decline, crime and traffic and other misery makers remain stagnant and trends arent heading in a positive direction for the Golden State.

Greg Gutfeld notes:

It’s a case where being No. 1 means, really, you’re No. 2. A new study ranks California dead last of all the states in quality of life, making it tops at being on the bottom.

States were ranked on everything from education to opportunity, from infrastructure to crime. But California scored low for one simple reason: It’s impossible to live there unless you are super rich or homeless — then come one, come all.

New Presidential limousine spotted with digital zebra camouflage

Prez Trump is getting a new ride. Normally I would have no interest in a “new car coming out” story, and I still don’t, but secrecy around the launch had this interesting tidbit. Pictured below is the new Presidential limo (read: one from the upcoming fleet, that is), spotted on public roads near GM’s “proving grounds” (I guess that’s the property where they prove their cars actually run?). Unsurprisingly, it is cloaked to conceal itself before officially launched, but surprisingly-to-me, it’s this:

I’ve seen jacketed yet-to-launch cars being stealth-tested in the Los Angeles area before and they’re draped in all black. Wtf is up with this television static design? It looks like its wearing a giant QR-code. Can I snap a shot with my phone and go to a Prez-car website? I assume it is supposed to be urban camouflage that dizzies your eye in the same way zebra stripes confuse predators from being able to hone in on a single one but this manifestation of that concepts seems like it would attract more attention to itself than project a “nothing to see here, folks” vibe.

While poking around this news item though, I found out the vehicle is also more badass than you might have expected:

The presidential limousine has tear gas cannons and a night vision camera, as well as a pump-action shotgun. Extra weapons, an oxygen supply and bottles of the president’s blood type are also on board. The fuel tank is armor-plated and encased in foam to prevent it from exploding. The kevlar-reinforced tires are puncture and shard-resistant, with steel rims that allow the car to continue driving if the tires are destroyed. 

More specs of the new Trumpmobile can be read here.

Disneyland launches “Dole Whip Donut”, but there’s a catch

The Dole Whip – a frozen pineapple flavored soft serve (I guess it’s not actually ice cream, but rather a grainy ice cream style product) treat is available at Disneyland I guess (my familiarity with the stuff is from having it in Hawaii, #humblebrag) and has spawned a newly released bit of sugary glory:

The Dole Whip Donut.

Except – Not so fast…

It looks good and I’m sure it’s delicious, so I’m not trying to be a buzzkill when I remind that: this really only a Dole Whip product in name only. There’s no actual Dole Whip in or on it. It’s just a pineapple donut. And that’s what I found interesting about this, because it changes the story from “amazing new confection item at an amusement park” to a case study in “the power of branding”.

A genuine “Dole Whip donut” would chiefly – duh – include the Dole Whip frozen soft serve product within or around, presumably a donut.

This food item is not that.

It’s a donut stuffed with pineapple fruit filling, topped with a creamy pineapple icing and a tall swirl of fluffy “marshmallow-y” meringue, according to the Disney Food Blog – which totally sounds like an excellent treat – but calling it a “Dole Whip donut” when its really a pineapple donut cupcake, is misleading.

I still intend to eat one.