This Changes Substack Forever

Pivot to video, pivot to video, pivot to video, pivot to video...

In Today’s Newsletter—

• Substack Pivots to Video

• Hats at the US Open

• A Prolific Designer Finally Breaks Up with Kanye West

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Substack’s Big Pivot to Video

• It feels like every social media platform is becoming a video platform— and now Substack is making a big push into the video world.

• Time and time again, the rise in popularity of short form video on TikTok, has inspired competing social platforms to find ways to incentivize video content.

• Instagram added Reels in 2020, Facebook is courting creators to upload their video content, and now even LinkedIn is rolling out in-feed short form video carousels.

• Substack announced their new Originals program: Essentially its a video series featuring popular Substack writers, produced by Cash Studios, highlighting their backgrounds, interests, etc.

• While the Originals content has little to no impact on how other creators use Substack, one new feature does: a media tab built into the app.

  

• This new tab will curate video and audio content from creators you subscribe to and around the platform.

• And the implications of this new tab are huge. Substack is making a big bet creators who create just text content will experiment with turning their publications into video content.

• They’ve created tailored features to entice podcast/video creators to seamlessly move their operation to Substack.

• Take for example,

  Throwing Fits
  , who used to host their paid-content on Patreon but have moved their content exclusively to Substack recently.

• This is something I’ve personally experimented with recently.

  • How to Run the Perimeter of Manhattan in 5 Steps

  • WTF is Going on in Fashion Retail

• Any tech company (especially social media ones) are vying for attention, new users, and additional revenue: and all signs point towards audiences of all demographics spending more time on platforms where video is the primary content medium.

• But it will be interesting to see how this media tab’s algorithm works, and if writers can create video content that gets them more subscribers.

• Maybe the future of Who Do You Know? is primarily video?

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Hats Are In Demand at the US Open

• The NYT eloquently wrote, “Did You Even Go to the U.S. Open if You Didn’t Get a Hat?”

• Over the last 10 years, hat sales at the Queens based tennis tournament have gone from 71,184 in 2013 to 185,350 in 2023.

• Here in New York, acquiring and wearing a US Open hat is almost like a status signal. You want mfs to know you went to the US Open, are tasteful, and can spend $40 on a hat $300 on 6 Honey Deuces.

• I can speak from experience, try to go earlier rather than later. You want the normal baseball hat version, not the Under Armour sport hat.

• There is a better hat that drops tomorrow you should be saving your money for though…

jakobcbell

A post shared by @jakobcbell

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The Designer Who Made YEEZY Finally Quits

• Since 2022, Ye (Kanye West) has hit some major turbulence. After antisemitic rants, the prolific rapper and designer has seen his billion dollar fortune dwindle, his ties with Adidas cut, and has allegedly picked up a nasty nitrous addiction.

• At its peak, Yeezy was worth around $4B, and was selling 1 million shoes a month, accounting for 10% of Adidas revenue.

• And the man responsible for this massive success was Steven Smith, a footwear industry veteran behind iconic ‘dad shoe’ models at Nike, New Balance, and Adidas.

• Smith and Ye collaborated to introduce some truly innovative footwear to the market, that in the late 2010’s were sought after by hypebeasts and the general public.

• Models like the Yeezy 700 ‘Waverunner’ and later the Foam Runner were disruptors that had reverberated effects on the entire footwear industry.

  

• Would Crocs be so in vogue right now if not for Smith’s foam design work at YEEZY?

• And after a brief independent comeback, which saw Smith design $200 sock shoes, which were later marked down to $20 (generating $19M in revenue in a single day), the YEEZY stalwart has parted ways with Ye.

• In an interview with Fast Company, he said Ye has ‘lost his mind’

  “The whole of Yeezy is circling the drain and this is just part of it. He has surrounded himself with toxic, C-grade losers.”

• With Smith’s departure, the Yeezy era is pretty much officially dead.

• What’s staggering is how successful it may have been without its owners antics, think of any other company that goes from a multibillion dollar fashion house to worth nothing in under 2 years.

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Jake Bell is a content marketing, creative strategist, designer, and writer based in NYC. He specializes in brand building, content strategy, creative direction, business development, and making things cool.

Want to chat? Email me: jake@jb.studio