Pivot · Oct 22, 2021

Live from Advertising Week: Netflix’s Q3 Numbers, Facebook's Name Change and Trump's Social Network

Automatic transcript of the end of the episode, from 34:51. Speakers are labeled by software and may contain errors. Highlighted passages are Scott’s predictions.

Scott Galloway · 34:51 Selling more paper towels or quite frankly getting you to use a certain payment platform. So you have PayPal. I mean think about this eBay which used to be the parent company is worth $50,000,000,000 PayPal's worth $250,000,000,000 PayPal will file 28 times the number of patents as Goldman Sachs. It's worth more than Goldman and Morgan Stanley combined. Or is that right? Think or it's worth more than Goldman I think. Anyways, this is now it's just fascinating. Content has become a point of differentiation, not its own business. And the term everyone's going to be using over the next year is super app. This absolutely opens up the notion that you're going vertical and if you can control more attention, get closer to the purchase, create maybe more of an on ramp to more sign ups for PayPal, create another 400 or 500,000,000 people that have easier access to their payment method and that's worth 50,000,000,000 to them. This is gonna shake up the industry, Kara, and Kara Swisher · 35:51 this So is is gonna mean they're the right purchaser then? You don't see an Amazon moving in here or Google? Because that's the... That's where I always thought Pinterest was headed towards. Scott Galloway · 35:59 They're absolutely overpaying and they should because they have over... They have inflated stock right now. And so Kara Swisher · 36:04 But why isn't Google or Amazon moving in here? They would be natural purchasers of that company. They can't? Scott Galloway · 36:11 I I think that's a good point. I think they are very... Unless something just makes too much sense, I think they are pretty careful about raising antitrust flags. Would create a whole new vein. Should Amazon be buying a $50,000,000,000 I don't know. I think this would be I always thought Amazon remember, I thought Amazon was going buy Pinterest. I think that was a prediction two years ago. Kara Swisher · 36:35 That's what we talked about. Scott Galloway · 36:36 Pinterest is not worth $45,000,000,000 but it might be worth $45,000,000,000 a company like PayPal. You know what this means, Kara? Kara Swisher · 36:46 What? Scott Galloway · 36:47 It means Twitter is gonna acquire... I'm sorry. It means Square is gonna acquire Twitter, and it also is gonna put Snap into play. This is an this is an attention economy, and the attention that media captures is worth more to fintech companies than it is to the investors of a pure play media company right now. — Predictions segment begins — Kara Swisher · 37:02 All right. Well, then let's go right to predictions. Is that your prediction this week that these these other companies? And then we'll take questions after this. So start dropping them in chat now. Go ahead, Scott. What is it... What is this your prediction that these will come into play? You mentioned several. Snap and what else? And where do they go? Scott Galloway · 37:20 Well, there's sixteen hours of free time a day. And call the industry here worth, I don't know, 16 the total tech industry call it $16,000,000,000,000 a trillion an hour or about $100 or $15,000,000,000 for every incremental minute you get. So the bet from PayPal is essentially are we going to get on average across America another three minutes a day from people if we put soapstone and wedding imagery in front of them and that increase our sign ups and our payment, our GMV volume through the PayPal network because we can monetize it at a much greater ratio than them. Twitter and Snap are both relatively speaking, have a low market cap relative to their attention. And so you're gonna see in addition it solves the CEO problem. Jack with Square acquiring Twitter, Square is about $120,000,000,000 I think. Twitter is about $50,000,000,000 And then they're all going to try and position themselves as one thing. Can we all be the next WhatsApp? Can we all be the next Tencent? Can we all be the next Alibaba? Everyone's gonna be in a race to be the operating system for our digital future, our digital, you know, our digital interface in the term super app. But this is gonna put Snap and Twitter in play. Kara Swisher · 38:38 Super app idea. You know, interestingly, oddly enough, I did an interview with Ken Buck, representative Ken Buck. He's a conservative congstomer. He's been doing a lot on tech. And it was... One of the things he said, he was talking about competition solving all this problem, you know, whether it be bias, whatever. He says, I don't even wanna talk about that because if we have competition, it'd be great. He goes, what I'd like to see is more comp... Instead of just having an Amazon and shopping or a Google and search, I'd like essentially super apps. That's what he was saying. If there were a lot of people competing with each other... And he goes, I hate to use the China as the thing, but if there was a company that had a lot of things and a lot of companies like that, he doesn't mind big companies. He minds big companies in singular areas. And if they had a... If they were... He was actually quite sophisticated. I was surprised and interested by the idea of that is that Amazon is also in entertainment, is also in search, is also in this, and it competes with Google. Anyway, it was it was, it was it was just interesting. I think you're right. I think that's... You're right. They're gonna buy... I don't know if would... So Square buying Twitter. Who buys Snapchat? Scott Galloway · 39:39 Well, the the big name here that has the currency and has just sharpened their pencil around their shopping list and has the mother of all credit cards right now is Shopify. Kara Swisher · 39:48 I knew you'd say that. Scott Galloway · 39:49 And so you're going to see just as Comcast is going to announce a major transaction as Peacock is just not is a turkey and they have a $250,000,000,000 market cap, they are players, they control distribution, You're going to see some pretty serious deal making I think in the next six to twelve months. I think Square taking out Twitter is pretty obvious but I think Shopify shows up and does something. There are going to be transactions, huge like transactions like the one today where you kind of go what? And then you lean you put your head to the side and think is this either crazy or visionary or the answer is probably yes. But the names you're going to see are going to be Shopify, Square, Twitter, Snap. This is somebody's gonna hook up here. Someone's Alright. Someone is gonna be — Predictions segment ends — Kara Swisher · 40:36 I know, kid. Scott Galloway · 40:37 Making out in the ballroom or or the ball box. What was it we used to sneak into and make out? I forget. Or other people that Kara Swisher · 40:43 I never snuck. I never. I didn't sneak. Nobody snuck. We did it out in the open. We'll be back in a moment. Stay with us. [Ad break] Kara Swisher · 41:22 I get so many headaches every month. [Ad break] Kara Swisher · 42:26 Now we're gonna get some questions from the audience at advertising week. Scott Galloway · 42:30 You've got you've got I can't believe I'm gonna be a mailman. You've got mail. Kara Swisher · 42:34 These are coming in via app, so I'll read them aloud. Let me start with one to me. Kara, I know you use Getr. Will you use Truth? I will use all of them. I put my name in, although I'm nervous because I think this is a shifty group of people, and it... And I'm worried about who they are. So I didn't give them very much information. I don't mind giving people one of my... I have a lot of emails that I use for this kind of thing. And, yes, I will try to use it. I will try to use it. I don't think Getter's a bad product. I just think it's hard to... Without Donald Trump there, it's gonna be hard. And without everybody there, it's gonna be hard. And it's hard to scale, just as what Scott said from a to b. Alright. Next one, Scott, for you. Given recent high profile examples of fraud, Ozzy Theranos, should hire... Although I'm not sure Ozzy was fraud yet. It's not been proved. So let's say alleged fraud in both cases. Should higher education include ethical standards and practices as part of their curricula? Scott, professor Galloway? Scott Galloway · 43:30 They do. And all they are is departments that have no accountability and give someone who has no real pedagogy or rigor around the courses an excuse to hang out at a university and build a department that has no measurable outcome. Think other than Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and the work he's doing at Yale, I think leadership departments are a giant waste of money and people looking for no accountability and one of the reasons that tuition has consistently outpaced inflation. I can't get my 14 year old to do what I want, but the notion that in business schools, we're gonna take 28 year olds and make them more ethical people, I think it is just... What... What's the term? I think it's fucking ridiculous. Kara Swisher · 44:09 So what do we do? Come come with this illusion instead of crapping all over these things. I agree with you. I do. I did a story in chief ethical officer. What do we do? Pot Jail. Scott Galloway · 44:18 We know. Kara Swisher · 44:18 Jail is Scott Galloway · 44:18 your thing. We we do a bunch of things. Provide we make sure that that child tax credit stays in the stimulus plan and we create loving, secure homes for children. We encourage people to pair up and have deep, meaningful relationships and create secure environments for children. We encourage character. We salute people that demonstrate character. But the notion that me with a bunch of kids twice a week that I'm going to impart fucking leadership on them, that is the height of arrogance and self aggrandizement, we specialize in in higher ed. These are much deeper issues. The notion this is about parenting. It's about a society. It's about putting people in jail when they break the law. But this isn't about, in my opinion, you can highlight things. I think you teach people about psychology. I think you teach them the liberal arts. I think you teach them history. But the notion that we're gonna have an individual tell us how to be a leader or to be more ethical, we have ethics classes and orientation at NYU. Give me a fucking break. Kara Swisher · 45:17 Okay then. Okay. But let me just give you... My most important course in college was one I took freshman year, and it was about existentialism. And it was about ethics. It really was. It was, you know... Scott Galloway · 45:27 That's philosophy. That's my point. Kara Swisher · 45:29 Yes. Yes. It was philosophy. And so it was a really... To this day, it can... It makes me think, like... And being exposed to a lot of ethical issues and discussing them among people was incredibly helpful. I think the problem is we allow computer scientists to just do that. We don't give them the wider historical historical or societal or psychology or philosophy. That is what happens. And so people get put into these sort of tracks that allow them not to understand a more... And then and then when it... Then they're faced with it when they're working, they're... They have none of the tools or any of the background necessary to understand what's happening except in a really twitchy way. You know? And so they're both stupid and powerful at the same time or or uneducated and powerful. So I agree. They have these chief ethical officers at at some companies, and I think unfortunate... It's like they sit in a sit nobody listens to them is really what happens. Scott Galloway · 46:25 You want to improve the leadership and ethics of tomorrow's generation? Fund after school sports. It forces teamwork. It forces character. It forces discipline. It forces empathy. But instead, I'm gonna take a 27 year old and say, okay, this is how Kara Swisher · 46:39 you with this question, questioner. All right. Last question. What is Dotdash thinking? We just have a few minutes. Buying Meredith? Scott? Scott Galloway · 46:48 Look. It's the same thing to a certain extent. It's the same phenomenon PayPal buying for Pinterest. These are brands and content. They have great content that commands people's attention. They have an infrastructure to produce content. But they're in a shitty business model called the advertising industrial complex. Hello, advertising week. So they can take those brands and that content. They have slimmed down. They've gotten in good shape. Meredith's is a really well run organization. It's also known as a content company that understands databases. And they get to pick it up at, I don't know, seven to times EBITDA. And Meredith gets to get the hell out of Dodge and pivot to a different business model. So you're going to see a lot of these kind of old economy content companies that have a following Kara Swisher · 47:33 Which have value. Scott Galloway · 47:33 Which have Yeah. Kara Swisher · 47:35 Yeah. This makes sense to me. So we get... Should we get bought by Bank of America then? Scott Galloway · 47:39 I'm ready. I'm ready. What would Kara Swisher · 47:42 you like? If we had to Scott Galloway · 47:43 get bought up commercials. I wanna be in those banking commercials where they bring in, like, ridiculously hot young people and spray Grey Seidman's on them and pretend they're retiring. Kara Swisher · 47:51 Alright. We could do one together. That would be... That would, I'm sure, sell a lot of bank accounts. Anyway Oh my god. Would be so bad. Scott Galloway · 47:57 That's right. Kara Swisher · 47:57 It'd be so bad. Scott Galloway · 47:58 That's right. Kara Swisher · 47:58 We would do... You know, I always like the lesbian couples they have in there. They're really, like... Seem really smart, and they're always sort of happy and running around. Scott Galloway · 48:06 Happy and hip. Kara Swisher · 48:06 Yep. Happy and hip. Yeah. Anyway, we have to wrap it up. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday for more. There's a lot of news this week, and we have a lot to follow-up on. Thank you to the folks at Advertising Week and Stillwell Partners. Scott, can you read us out? Scott Galloway · 48:21 Today's show is produced by Lara Naaman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Ernie Indratot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next Tuesday for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Advertising week, stick around. The next panel is a 73 year old Sally Draper who's gonna talk about her relationship with men after her father emotionally abandoned her and her mother died of cancer. That's up next. [Ad break]