👋 Morning, sunshine. Payday is right around the corner, so it’s just about time to treat yourself. How about a 36-inch-tall model of E.T.? Not what you had in mind? Sotheby’s auction of the screen-used extra terrestrial might change your mind, although it’s no bargain: The model is expected to sell for $600k-$900k.
🎧 On the pod:Is Vrbo’s ad strategy — being mean to Airbnb — the right move?
NEWS FLASH
🎮 GameStop won’t stop: The company will shutter a “significant number” of store locations in the coming months after closing 1k stores globally in the last year, bringing its global location count to 3,203 as of Feb. 1 — down from its peak of ~6k 10 years ago. While GameStop joins many longtime retail staples in closing its stores — pour one out for Forever 21 — it has other plans in mind. The company announced that it will invest a portion of its $4.8B in cash into crypto, sending its stock soaring 16% in premarket trading Wednesday.
🥄 “Where business happens”: Chili’s has been making a comeback, and now it’s opening a new restaurant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on April 7. “The Office,” which is set in Scranton, features Chili’s in several episodes, despite the fact that the chain never had a location there. This new restaurant will include references to the series in its decor and menu, as well as art and menu items from the early 2000s, when “The Office” began airing. Several actors will also star in Chili’s promos, so if you’ve ever hoped to see Brian Baumgartner (who played Kevin Malone) gently proffering an Awesome Blossom, you’re in luck.
☺️ Can social media exist without rage? Sez Us is trying. The social media app’s most unique feature is a “reputation engine” that allows users to rate posts based on five factors: approval, influence, insightfulness, relevance, and politeness. Users receive a reputation score based on the ratings their posts receive, which affect how much visibility and reach they have across the platform. For example, users with low scores could find themselves unable to respond to other users’ posts. Sez Us co-founder Yevgeny Simkin toldWired that users may learn, based on community feedback, that they need to be more polite and “less bombastic.”
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Blockbusted: 2025 is off to a tough start for movie theaters. Movies have generated ~$1.3B in the US and Canada so far, down 7% from last year. March, in particular, is expected to flop with a 50% year-over-year decrease.
Another day, another dollar: Dollar Tree Inc. is selling off Family Dollar for $1B after acquiring the chain for $8B+ in a bidding war with Dollar General in 2015.
Rivian is launching Also, a micromobility startup that will begin producing its flagship vehicle next year. What is that? Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe was vague: “There’s a seat, and there’s two wheels, there’s a screen, and there’s a few computers and a battery.”
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM
This isn’t the movie dubbing you’re used to
AI is going to the movies — but it’s leaving the subtitles at home.
AI company Flawless developed TrueSync, an AI tool that could end film dubbing as we know it:
It adjusts lip movements to match English dialogue, keeping original performances intact.
Actors record their own lines in English, no voice swapping.
The nifty tool could change the future of foreign films — read on for more.
THE BIG IDEA
Vrbo’s ad strategy: Poking fun at Airbnb
Is it good marketing to antagonize your biggest rival, perhaps by placing a mocking ad right outside their door?
That’s what Vrbo has done. It erected a billboard outside Airbnb’s San Francisco HQ that reads, “Think of us as Airbnb’s hotter, cooler, friendlier, long-lost twin that never has hosts.”
Bold…
… but well-received? Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky posted a photo of the ad with a laughing emoji to social media, but Airbnb provided a statement to Business Insider saying Vrbo had spent millions on ads “as confused as they are desperate.”
Actually, that’s a good point. Vrbo is the underdog, holding 9% short-term-rental market share in 2024 compared to Airbnb’s 44%, and its ad could read as though Vrbo is bitter about not having anyone to host its properties.
But that’s not the case
A Vrbo spokesperson said the campaign was meant to address “common frustrations” travelers experience not just with Airbnb, but the vacation rental industry, such as “awkward encounters” in shared spaces.
Vrbo typically rents whole homes, which are less likely to have on-site hosts. Other billboards in other markets highlight Vrbo’s model, such as an NYC billboard that reads, “Want a family-friendly villa you can’t find on Airbnb?”
Advertising expert Ashely Rutstein told BI that Vrbo’s misses the mark, because while customers have plenty of complaints about Airbnb — for example, chores — users can find host-free options on the platform.
Comparative ads…
… aren’t new, even for Vrbo, which has targeted Airbnb in its ads before.
Such ads often work when brands lean on well-known frustrations and provide a valuable alternative — or when they’re at least clever and funny.
Jaguar (before its weird rebrand) released an ad featuring a jaguar hunting a chicken in response to a Mercedes commercial that used a chicken to demonstrate its “Magic Body Control” suspension system.
Samsung dropped a commercial mocking Apple’s loathed ad depicting a hydraulic press crushing creative objects into an iPad. It featured a woman playing guitar while reading music from her Samsung tablet. The tagline? “Creativity cannot be crushed.”
Popeye’s saw major traffic after adding a chicken sandwich to its menu, launching the “chicken sandwich wars” with Chick-fil-A. One Popeye’s ad poked fun at Chick-fil-A for being closed on Sundays.
Here’s a fun ad: Hilton, depicting a vacation rental as a creepy haunted house… with weird rules.
Morning Brew’s co-founder shares the three marketing channels he’s betting big on for 2025.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
The increase in solo dining reservations in the US since 2019, according to OpenTable data.
And according to Resy, reservations for one jumped 21% between 2022 and 2023. Plus, those figures are likely higher as many solo diners walk in without reservations.
Diners are likely ditching company for a whole host of reasons, perThe New York Times. More than 46% of adults in America are single, per 2022 Census data; there’s a renewed focus on the practice of self-care; and a post-pandemic resurgence of business travel means more solo diners saddling up to the bar.
AROUND THE WEB
🌸 On this day: In 1912, Helen Taft and Viscountess Chinda planted two Yoshino cherry trees along the Potomac River in Washington, DC, commemorating a gift of 3k+ cherry trees from Japan to the US.
🐮 That’s interesting: San Francisco is home to the world’s largest collection of taxidermied two-headed calves.
🗞️ Newsletter: It’s the best time to invest in women’s sports — but you need to know how and where the money is flowing. Subscribe to The GIST’s 3x-weekly women’s sports biz newsletter for free.
When life gives you an egg shortage… brands like the Ordinary, a vegan skin care brand touted for its affordability, scramble to capitalize on it. Over the weekend, the brand announced on Instagram that it would be selling “ordinarily priced” eggs, at $3.37 a dozen, from its two locations in NYC — where some delis have attempted to temper demand for the grocery staple by selling them as “loosies” (a la cigarettes), perThe Cut.
The stunt, seemingly in collaboration with art collective-slash-troll company MSCHF, which was tagged in the Ordinary’s IG post, comes amid the ongoing bird-flu outbreak that’s killed millions of chickens and made eggs unaffordable for many.
How cheeky of them?
SHOWER THOUGHT
If humans invented anti-aging technology, family pictures would look like groups of friends who happened to share the same last name.SOURCE
Today’s email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman, with help from Singdhi Sokpo and Kaylee Jenzen. Editing by: Ben “Welcome back, Awesome Blossom” Berkley.
