The Most Expensive Boardroom Fight💰
This Week in Review☕️ : People are ditching pork | Super Bowl LVIII | Advertisers bet big on celebrity power | Colleges suspicious of ChatGPT-used applications | Van Gogh art brought to life in Paris
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Quick Bites:
Food🥓: People are quitting pork.
In America especially, the Super Bowl weekend meant indulging in enough pulled-pork nachos and pigs in a blanket to go into a foodcoma until Easter 🐽
However, this year is different as people are ditching pork for healthier alternatives.
Hmm.. we guess deep-fried bacon isn't the healthiest way to start the day afterall.. 🙄
Maybe we need to rethink our usual full english breakfast of bread, bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs and hash browns 🍳
You know a death wish summed up on a plate that's delicious but essentially one big cholesterol shitstorm 💩
Key Highlights, reported by WSJ:
💡Demand for pork is down 9% but production is up 25%
💡The pork industry is facing the lowest profit margins since 1998
💡The drop in demand is also because protein sources like chicken are a cheaper alternative
💡Consumers also overcook their pork, leaving the meat not juicy and not as tasty
The pork industry brings about $57 billion to the US economy and employs more than 600,000 people.
To salvage the industry, companies are doubling down on easy-to-prepare bacon in supermarket aisles, while the National Pork Board is running targeted ads, complete with recipes, WSJ.
Umm doctors are saying each bite of pork takes away 7 minutes off your life.. Based off that math, we should've died in 1695 👋
Our Thoughts💡: Umm if you had to choose between eating bacon or being skinny for the rest of your life, would you choose Applewood or Hickory smoked?
That feeling when the coffee's brewing, the ham & cheese sammie is sizzling and you've got a day of no plans ahead 😍👇🏻
Marketing🏈: Football's biggest day was also marketing's biggest day.
The Super Bowl is watched by over 100 million viewers nearly every year since 2010.
With those record numbers, the Super Bowl is.. well it's super for advertising! With advertisers flexing their muscle to grab viewers' attention, the thrill to outbid competitors is REAL 🔥
A recap of some marketing trends from this year's game:
💡Snack-able Food: Oreos, Pringles, Mountain Dew, Doritos and M&Ms dominated the line up
💡Celebrities: Celeb endorsements from Jennifer Lopez for Dunkin' Donuts and Beyonce for Verizon
💡BMW: selling electric vehicles
💡UberEats: reminding you that it delivers anything and everything
💡NYX: make-up commercial showing its new lip plumper
💡Alcohol: Bud Light sent wishes for its beer-loving fans
💡Taylor Swift (who has a category of her own this year): produced a better than 50% spike in NFL viewership among girls 12 to 17.
Her presence to support her boyfriend- Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce drove an increase in ads targeting young women, according to Axios.
Meanwhile, a look at some companies that advertised in the early 2000s:
💡Blockbuster
💡Gateway Computers
💡VoiceStream Wireless
💡CompUSA
💡Radio Shack
Heard of any? Us neither 🤷🏻♀️
Our Thoughts💡: Welcome to the world of sports in 2024.. Where the commercials are the entertainment and the actual game doesn't matter 😎
Education 📚: Colleges increasingly suspicious of applications submitted using ChatGPT.
While colleges haven't banned or embraced AI yet, what we can ascertain is a whole line of applicants using it to sound smarter.
ChatGPT is no secret amongst teenagers, so no lazy high-school senior is paying a professional proofreader to grade his admissions essay when they can have a bot do it for free now.
We are so troubled by what we are seeing everywhere, all at once. College essays, high-school homework, legal documents, parking tickets, eviction notices, coercion, blackmail, death threats, programming etc.
ALL FAKE. ALL HIGHLY CREDIBLE.
However, with the increase in AI-generated essays, colleges are slowly catching up with the red flags.
Words like “Tapestry”, “Beacon”, “Comprehensive curriculum”, “Esteemed faculty” and “Vibrant academic community” are among the list of flowery and fanciful phrasing that are likely to tip off admissions committees, Forbes reports.
Infact, students are now hiring people to un-ChatGPT their essays and make them sound more "human" to avoid getting caught.
Meanwhile, colleges globally are struggling to arrive at a united AI strategy.
Each university is having its own policies, ranging from “zero-tolerance” to encouraging the use of AI as a "helpful collaborator", Forbes reports.
Finance 💰: There is a $70 million battle brewing for Disney's board.
It is being called "the most expensive shareholder fight ever," The Wall Street Journal.
Two activist hedge funds- 'Blackwells Capital' and 'Trian Fund Management'- are separately going toe-to-toe with Disney to grab spots on the board and challenge CEO Bob Igor.
Disney's stock price has nearly halved from its 2021 high, under Igor's leadership.
While the 72-year old Bob Igor claims he will "definitely" step down at the end of his contract in 2026, he is facing pushback from shareholders who want to shake up the board this year.
Disney shares are up about 4% this year, underperforming the near 19% rally in the broader stock market, Financial Times reports.
The entertainment giant responded by saying they have “a proven track record of delivering long-term value [..] and is in the midst of a significant transformation”.
Both hedgefunds are hoping to gain the support of some of the millions of individual investors who together control more than one-third of Disney's stock (also, a very unusual situation for a public company).
The board will vote on April 3.
Art 🖼️ : Virtual Reality brings Van Gogh's masterpieces to life.
The famous Musée d’Orsay in Paris marked a “historic record” for almost 800,000 visitors for its exhibition “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise”, ARTNews reports.
The show attracted a daily average of around 7,000 visitors over 108 days since its October 3 opening.
The show explores the last few month’s of van Gogh’s life in a small town near Paris before he committed suicide at 37 years old.
In the time leading upto his death, van Gogh painted 74 canvases in just 70 days including Doctor Paul Gachet, The Church of Auvers-sur-Oise, and The Cornfield with Ravens.
Along with these iconic paintings, the museum created an interactive animated section through artificial intelligence created a dialogue with the late artsist.
This is a milestone for the museum, with the largest attendance since it opened its doors in 1986, ARTNews report.
Quicker Bites:
Jeff Bezos will save over $600 million in taxes by moving to Miami, CNBC reports.
Sony pays $600 million for half of Michael Jackson’s music catalog, including publishing rights, Billboard reports.
Tiger Woods signs footwear and apparel deal with TaylorMade after split with Nike.
Bitcoin surpasses $50,000 level.
Biden campaign debuts official TikTok account.
Israeli airstrikes kill more than 100 in Rafah.
Musk ordered to testify in Twitter probe.