Aug 4, 2023 · 56m · more-or-less
#8: Where's the Barbie business pop? Why brands beat marketplaces · More or Less Podcast
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the More or Less Podcast, hosts Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, Brit Morin, and Dave Morin evaluate the economics of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, analyze Mattel's IP and marketing playbook for 'Barbie', examine trust crises across e-commerce, and debate the scientific and market fallout of the LK-99 superconductor breakthrough.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.1 Guest teaching 4.7 Guest disagreement 3.5 The hosts pushing back 3.7
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 39:20 Sam rejects live shopping utility
Sam aggressively questions why anyone with internet access would watch live shopping streams, dismissing the entire category premise as absurd.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 4:20 Pushback on Taylor Swift software comparisonSam pushes back against Brit and Dave's high valuation of Taylor Swift, emphasizing her overhead costs and tax burdens compared to software assets like WhatsApp.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 40:30 Brit breaks down QVC live demonstration economicsBrit cites her personal investment relationship and on-air HSN experience to teach Sam why visual before-and-after demos create massive conversion rates.
The host holds their own ▶ 10:58 Brit outlines the Disney operating modelBrit demonstrates deep operational expertise by breaking down Disney's parks, experiences, and products division based on direct briefings from Bob Iger.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taylor Swift's Eras Tour: Banter, Outfits, and Cultural Buzz | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Friendly banter as Jessica opens the show and Brit and Dave recount attending the Eras Tour. The group playfully teases Sam for not knowing Taylor Swift's eras, with Jessica warning him to stop talking before embarrassing himself. | |
| Valuing Taylor Swift: Tour Economics, Margins, and Social Capital | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Dave and Brit run through tour economics, noting Taylor's high ticket averages and 50% margins. Sam challenges valuing her above tech companies like WhatsApp due to physical production costs, prompting an analytical debate over social capital versus balance-sheet capital. | |
| Mattel's IP Strategy: The Disney Playbook and Franchise Libraries | 7 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Brit provides deep insider context on Disney's three-legged stool model of content, experiences, and merchandise from her time pitching Bob Iger, explaining why Mattel is shifting toward an IP playbook despite retail margin squeeze. | |
| Nostalgia Cycles, Post-Internet Tribalism, and Millennial Moms | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Dave lays out a 20-year nostalgia cycle hypothesis and the post-internet craving for shared physical tribalism. Brit argues the movie primarily targeted millennial moms rather than girls, while Sam and Dave debate whether the IP value lies in toys or high-margin physical theme parks. | |
| Barbie's Marketing Playbook: Brand Partnerships and Cultural Waves | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | The panel explores the aggressive 150 million dollar marketing campaign behind Barbie. Sam puts forward the thesis of going either extreme-budget or zero-budget on marketing, mocking moderate marketing budgets. | |
| Why Brands Beat Marketplaces: Amazon's Quality and Trust Crisis | 7 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Brit and Jessica break down Amazon's drop in consumer trust caused by flooded white-label Chinese factory duplicates, prompting Sam to articulate why trusted creator brands beat commoditized open marketplaces. | |
| Shein's Hyper-Fast Fashion: Disposable Aesthetics and $32B Scale | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | The table analyzes Shein's 32-billion-dollar fast-fashion model, with Sam characterizing it as a disposable single-wear product aimed at Instagram photos rather than traditional durable apparel. | |
| Live Shopping and Creator Economy: Demo Culture vs. Attention Economics | 7 | 6 | 5 | 5 | Brit draws on her direct QVC and HSN experience to explain demo culture and conversion mechanics in live shopping after Sam expresses total incredulity that viewers watch live social shopping streams. | |
| Wrapping Up the Previous Discussion | 7 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Dave outlines the technical implications of LK-99 room-temperature superconductivity while Sam extols the romantic archetype of outsider loner-scientists overturning mainstream incrementalism. | |
| More or Less Poll: LK-99 Replication and Market Fallout | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | The hosts vote unanimously 'more' on LK-99 replicating by 2025, speculating on second-order market disruptions including short targets and the future impact on SpaceX and infrastructure. |
Statements from this episode (28)
Dave Morin: Taylor Swift's Eras Tour grosses $13.6 million per show
“She's grossing an average of 13.6 million per show. The average ticket price is 1300 dollars.”
Dave Morin: Kim Kardashian only owns roughly 13% of Skims
“Kim Kardashian only owns something like 13% of Skims”
Sam Lessin: Rich and poor choose identity over money, only middle class hesitates
“Pretend a devil came to you and said, you can either give up all of your cash, like all the money you have or your identity, which do you give up? Right. And what's interesting is very poor people, right and very rich people generally say they'd give up all th…”
Brit Morin: Mattel will open an Arizona theme park in 2024
“It's opening a Mattel theme park next year in Arizona, by the way, to start driving its experiential business.”
Brit Morin: Target knocked off Brit & Co products with private labels
“Brit and co had a lot, had many lines with target and what happened target hired a new chief merchandising officer targets, bottom line started hurting. So they decided to go private label for like half of the products they formerly were buying and just kind o…”
Brit Morin: Direct subscription audiences beat retail distribution for consumer brands
“If you can own your audience, right, which if you can get them into a subscription that's one way to own them and then upsell them on products like that is a much more viable strategy than being beholden to retail.”
Dave Morin: Nostalgia cycles peak after 20 years when buyers reach peak earnings
“The trends that start, you know, trends that happen 20 years after, they tend to happen 20 years after the products become popular because the people that were buying them, and in this case the nineties, are at their peak earning potential.”
Dave Morin: Post-internet hunger for real-world connection drives massive live event economics
“People really desire this like tribal connection to other people and to have a shared experience in the real world again. And that to some extent, this is one of the inputs driving this business output that we're talking about.”
Brit Morin: The Barbie movie targets millennial moms to drive toy sales
“I think it's trying to win back over millennial moms so that we buy Barbie products for our children.”
Brit Morin: Theme park profit margins exceed 50%
“Oh my god, the margins of the parks yeah, they're over 50%, and the ups, it's the upsell, so it's not only the ticket price, but then you're upselling them on products, food, you know, all the, you know, upgraded VIP passes.”
Brit Morin: Barbie Movie Production Cost $130M and Marketing Cost $150M
“A hundred and thirty million spent on the movie, a 150 on marketing.”
Dave Morin: Avatar Cost $500M to Produce and $500M to Market
“Avatar or whatever, and it was like five hundred million for production, five hundred million for marketing.”
Sam Lessin: Spend either zero or an absolute fortune on marketing
“I think the lesson is you either spend nothing on marketing, or you spend, like, more money than God on marketing. Do not spend a moderate amount of money marketing anything.”
Sam Lessin: Consumers will pay brand premiums as marketplace trust collapses
“I think we went through an era where the internet was like, ah, marketplaces, buy anything from anywhere, Amazon kind of lightly reps that this is like, okay, because you're buying it, and like, you're like, fuck, I don't care, it's some knockoff, it's fine. N…”
Sam Lessin: Commerce curation will shift from platforms to trusted creators
“So it's like in the end of the day, whether it can't be Amazon because it's too diverse and heterogeneous, right? Like it's not going to be the Apple app store, even if they want to rep privacy or something, right? Like, it's going to be individual people in a…”
Jessica Lessin: Amazon operates dozens of white-label brands under different names
“They also, by the way, rep dozens of other, sorry to interrupt, but dozens of other brands are their white labels with different names.”
Dave Morin: Shein launched a marketplace on May 4th
“They did launch a marketplace on May fourth of this year, so they're actually trying to compete more broadly.”
Lessin: Shein is first in line to IPO in the US
“They're also one of the first in line to IPO when the, in the U.S., when the market, well, I think in the U.S., I'm not a hundred percent sure about that.”
Lessin: Shein generates $32 billion in revenue
“Yeah, in the U.S., and then it says 30, thirty two billion in revenue.”
Sam Lessin: Shein may make more on Barbie than Mattel does
“Yeah, I mean, maybe Shien's gonna make more money on Barbie than Barbie makes on Barbie.”
Lessin: Live shopping is TikTok's business model for major growth
“This is TikTok's business model, to be clear. This is what show thinks will take it to the moon. It's huge in China with Doyen, and-”
Morin: Live shopping has never really taken off in the US
“Yeah, it's always been the case in China, but it's never really taken off here.”
Sam Lessin: Caterpillar's brand and IP are underleveraged
“Caterpillar. Okay. All day. That is a brand I think is under levered. We should look at what that is trading at. Because there's a real brand with IP value.”
Morin: LK-99, if verified, rivals the transistor and electricity in impact
“If it's true, it could be on the order of the transistor, you know the discovery of electricity, like these kinds of things, like it's up there in terms of the impact that it could have.”
Lessin: Room-temperature superconductors would effectively solve the climate crisis
“Candidly, it's like people are so worried about the climate crisis. It's like, you want to solve climate? Yeah. Like get like room stable super, superconductors. Like the downstream effects of that are like so good for climate change.”
Lessin: Fringe outsiders drive world-changing breakthroughs over mainstream institutions
“It's like the story of, like, the crazy people, like, let them do their thing and justify them doing crazy stuff. Right. And like being the fringe characters versus like the mainline Borg or like the mainline empire, because they're the ones that really change…”
Sam Lessin: LK-99 superconductor will successfully replicate before 2025
“I'll say yes on one-time replication, and I'll go further to say, like, this is my AI killer scenario, where, like, it's so disruptive if it happens, right, that, like, it's worth putting a lot of effort in trying to figure it out.”
Dave Morin: Lawrence Berkeley supercomputer simulations support LK-99 superconductivity is possible
“There's also a the national lab you know, Lawrence Livermore Berkeley, they did a, they used their supercomputers to simulate I guess they call it a heavy duty compute from the Department of Energy, and they simulated whether this was possible based on the LK-…”