Gucci 🤝 Tesla: Bad Starts to the Year
Tesla Shuts Down Marketing Amid Crisis, Seinfeld's Bizarre New Project, Trouble at Gucci, and NYSE's Shocking 24/7 Plan Unveiled
GM everyone. Hope you’re having a great start to the week. In today’s newsletter I’m covering Jerry Seinfeld in GQ, Tesla’s content team cuts, trouble at Kering, and more. Let’s get it.
Tesla is shuttering its newly formed marketing department. The 40 person ‘growth content team’ is being laid off after Elon Musk called the ads they were creating “too generic” The EV maker has seen a 30% decline in stock price over the last few months as vehicle sales have slowed and the company has been plagued with recalls on their new divisive Cybertruck. In response to slowing sales, Musk had announced last year the company would try “a little advertising” and has since spent $200,000 on X ads and began running Google campaigns. I’ve seen some of the creatives and I do agree they were a bit uninspired and made some dubious claims around potential gas savings. Effective growth content can entertain, inspire, and educate top-of-funnel audiences if done correctly, but bland creative is a waste of time.
Jerry Seinfeld is directing his first film. The upcoming comedy follows the creation of the Pop-Tart, which feels very on brand for the comedian with an affinity for breakfast.
GQ: What is so funny about breakfast?
JS: Everything! I love the great dumbness of life.
In the expansive GQ profile, Seinfeld also discussed his role in Curb Your Enthusiasm’s recent finale, and its parallels and meta critique of the 1998 Seinfeld finale. Fun fact, I was born the day Seinfeld ended. One of my favorite NYC images is of crowds of people gathering in Times Square to watch the iconic show come to a close.
The New York Stock Exchange is considering going 24 hours. The stock exchange’s analytics team has been polling market participants on the premise of trading around the clock. Options on the table include 24 hours on weekdays versus 24/7. Other assets like futures and cryptocurrency can already be traded anytime, but the NYSE’s potential new hours would fully signal a new era for finance bros and day traders. I can only imagine the relationships that are about to be ruined when the market ticker runs around the clock.
There’s a whole lot of Gucci at the discount rack. The fashion brand’s parent company, Kering (Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta) has experienced significant headwinds over the last few months, with the firm losing around a third of its value recently. A new Bloomberg story points to the positioning of Gucci and Kering’s other portfolio brands as the core issue. While luxury heritage brands like Chanel and Hermes have been resilient to economic headwinds and reduced customer spending, Gucci has faced a different story…
The wild swings in Gucci’s — and hence Kering’s — fortunes over the years can be traced to its effort to find a sweet spot straddling fashion and luxury, two segments with business models that can be at odds with each other. One relies on trends that are ephemeral and need to change constantly while the other is more timeless and enduring.
Now the luxury fashion group is considering a drastic corporate overhaul that could end their CEO’s 20 year run at the company. Kering receives nearly 70% of its profitability from Gucci, which has conglomerate says slumped 20% in Q1 sales.
The issue with being so trend oriented is that fashion is inherently cyclical, which leaves a trove of undesirable product left to discount, which further erodes the status derived from purchasing the clothes.
This vegan butter’s product photography evokes Dutch still-life paintings. Andrea from Snaxshot shared product photos from Bu Deli which feature the brand’s vegan butter in a moody, dark, lived-in aesthetic. I’m a big fan of the art direction and photography here. Also I checked the ingredient list and it doesn’t contain any seed oils from what I can tell.
OKAY BYE!
Who Do You Know? is a daily newsletter covering marketing, business, branding, products, design, founders, and culture.
Its written by Jake Bell, a content marketing and brand strategist in NYC.
To get in touch visit www.jb.studio or email jake@jb.studio
The vegan butter does contain seed oil - sunflower oil is in the middle of the ingredient list
First thing that came to mind was that Tesla needs fonzie.la! The basic marketing stunts with Tesla and many others is not moving the needle, and if anything, is hurting brands