🏈 $7m well spent

👋 Looking for a new dream job to strive for? Meet Victoria Schade, the Puppy Bowl’s lead dog trainer and wrangler of 19 years. Schade is responsible for coaching the rescue pups to sit at attention during “The Star-Spangled Banner” and have good, clean fun on the field. Emphasis on the clean — Schade said her strong suit is “reading butts” to get ahead of any accidents.

🎧 On the pod: Are your cheap Temu and Shein goods about to get pricier?

NEWS FLASH

🚘 A warning to our many readers who regularly mod their Ferraris: Ferrari is tired of excessive customizations eroding its brand identity. CEO Benedetto Vigna told the Telegraph Ferrari is considering limiting color combinations and protecting the resale value of used Ferraris by banning owners who make too many changes from ordering another. Meanwhile, other luxury automakers, including Bentley and Rolls-Royce, are doubling down on their wealthy clienteles’ individuality, with Bentley crediting pricey personalizations for its $3.1B revenue, per Fortune.

🥚 Crack this case: When the delicate balance of supply and demand falls out of whack, things get a little weird. That’s why the latest large-scale heist involves… eggs. Namely, the 100k of them that were stolen from the back of a Pete and Gerry’s Organics distribution trailer in Pennsylvania on Saturday. The loot — worth ~$40k — is precious, as egg shortages continue to drive record-high prices. The omelette-obsessed thieves have yet to be caught.

📸 Another app for people who dislike other apps: Flashes, a photo-sharing app developed by Sebastian Vogelsang, is now available for beta testing. Users can post up to four images or videos of up to one minute long per post. The Instagram alternative is built on Bluesky’s network, meaning posts and comments will appear on both feeds. Vogelsang said he wants Flashes to serve as another “entry point” to the Bluesky network for people who weren’t into Twitter.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

The latest Big Tech DEI reversal: Alphabet is rolling back diversity goals, removing language from its annual report that stated its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Google parent company cited “recent court decisions and US Executive Orders” as the reason for the change.
Hanging ten no more: More than 100 Quiksilver, Billabong, and Volcom stores in the US will permanently close after parent company Liberated Brands filed for bankruptcy.
Lyft has a new hire, and his name is Claude. The ride-share company announced a partnership with Anthropic to use its AI assistant, Claude, for driver inquiries. Claude might be gunning for employee of the year: The bot has already reduced the average request resolution time by 87%, according to Lyft.

MINT MILLIONS

Strategies to help you build from scratch

Instead of fielding mid tips from AI summaries and suspect blogs (which are also probably AI summaries), see seven savvy lead-capture plays used by the guys behind My First Million. AKA very serious serial entrepreneurs. AKA our founder and his friend.

Sam and Shaan-certified methods:

Scaling via blog and email (Hustle Con)
Piggybacking + events (Bunk)
Sticky, deep-niche content (Roommates)
Door-to-door/floor-to-floor sales (Cloud Sushi)
Early adopters → Ambassadors (Beer Hunt)
Curating a like-minded community (Trends.co)
The David Blaine method (Milk Road)

Acquisition secrets

THE BIG IDEA

A hand pointing a remote at a TV displaying a bag of money on a football field.

Does the Super Bowl offer enough bang for its hefty advertising buck?

A 30-second spot during Super Bowl LIX this weekend costs ~$7m, matching the all-time high of the last few years.

Based on ratings data, that means companies have been spending about 5-10 cents per viewer.

Is that worth it?

Studies have determined that Super Bowl ads are actually kind of worth the money:

The 2023 ads led to an average 6.4% increase in consumer demand, according to a Veylinx study.
That number was even higher for women, up 21%, but much lower for Gen Z.

But when competing brands both advertise, they cancel each other out. If there are ads for both Pepsi and Coca-Cola, neither one gets a boost.

The ads themselves…

… can be pricey to make. The top 10 priciest Super Bowl ads ran between $19m and $28m (adjusted for inflation).

The list is mostly recognizable brands, plus a surprising appearance from 84 Lumber.
The company spent $16m+ in 2017 (~$20m in 2024) on a long spot that’s barely about lumber.

But which Super Bowl was the most worth it?

Probably when the coveted ad spot was still under $1m and the novelty of the big game was still fresh.

Your best bet would be Super Bowl III in 1969, when 41.6m people watched the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts, and a 30-second ad averaged just $55k. (That’s a fraction of a cent per viewer!)

Or perhaps 1993’s Super Bowl XXVII, when viewership jumped to ~91m people and ad costs stayed stable, at ~$850k — but, more importantly, when O.J.

Simpson did the coin toss and Michael Jackson did the halftime show.

🔗

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Price that a Stradivarius violin made in 1714 is expected to fetch at auction today, a sum that could beat the $15.9m record set by a similar violin in 2011.

Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari worked between 1666 and 1734, creating a variety of stringed instruments of which ~600 remain. His instruments are coveted among musicians. Violinist Joshua Bell told NPR that playing one is akin to a painter “having access to thousands of colors” as opposed to dozens.

This violin was previously owned by violinist Joseph Joachim, then Si-Hon Ma, whose estate intends to use the proceeds to build a student scholarship program.

AROUND THE WEB

🐴 On this day: In 1974, Mel Brooks’ comedy-western Blazing Saddles premiered at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank, California, where guests watched not in their cars, but on horseback.

🧠 That’s cool: A study to test how well you can perceive the tone of music and colors.

🥔 That’s interesting: What caused the Irish potato famine.

🧠 Game: Spatial puzzles designed to reduce motion sickness.

😍 Aww: A cuddly walrus.

SHOWER THOUGHT

Super Bowl Sunday must be one of the best nights of the year to go out to dinner and a movie. SOURCE

Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Sara Friedman, and Sam Barsanti.
Editing by: Ben “Future Puppy Bowl head coach” Berkley.

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