Saturday, May 13, 2023

☕ Wrong Easter egg

Get to know Twitter's new CEO...
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Morning Brew

Remi

Good morning. The Social Security Administration released its list of the most popular baby names for 2022, and Liam and Olivia continued their reigns as the top names for boys and girls, respectively.

But look at the fastest-rising names, and you'll see the impact of pop culture. Dutton, popularized by the TV Western Yellowstone, moved up the most of any name, jumping 986 spots from 2021 to No. 835 this year.

Hopefully the Duttons will fare better than all the poor Khaleesis out there.

Matty Merritt, Sam Klebanov, Cassandra Cassidy, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein

MARKETS

Nasdaq

12,284.74

S&P

4,124.08

Dow

33,300.62

10-Year

3.468%

Bitcoin

$26,781.47

Robinhood

$8.74

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 2:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: Stocks tumbled yesterday as regional banks continued to look iffy and new data showed consumer sentiment dropping, pushing the Dow and S&P 500 to their second straight weeks of losses. Robinhood fell despite a recent healthy earnings report after Morgan Stanley analysts said the company's new 24-hour trading feature wouldn't give it a big boost.
 

C-SUITE

Musk taps ad exec as new Twitter CEO

Linda Yaccarino photo in Twitter logo Illustration: Francis Scialabba, Photo: Santiago Felipe/Getty Images

It's gotta be a culture shock to leave a multinational media conglomerate for a place that automatically replies to press requests with a poop emoji. Elon Musk announced yesterday that NBCUniversal's former chair of global advertising and partnerships Linda Yaccarino would succeed him as Twitter CEO, despite coming from the media world Musk despises.

Who is Yaccarino? She's a heavyweight in the advertising industry, nicknamed "the velvet hammer" for her negotiating tactics. She formally announced leaving NBCUniversal yesterday after spending the last 11 years at the company. But she might be a culture fit after all: Yaccarino backed Musk's views on free speech when she interviewed him onstage at a conference in Miami last month.

Yaccarino brings something Twitter has desperately lacked since Musk started sleeping in the Twitter office: credibility with advertisers. When Musk took over the platform, ad sales brought in more than 90% of Twitter's revenue, but after a shaky takeover, advertisers bounced.

  • Monthly ad revenue from Twitter's top 1,000 advertisers dropped from roughly $127 million in October 2022 (the month Musk bought the company) to $48 million in January 2023, according to digital marketing analysis firm Pathmatics by Sensor Tower.

Musk tried to replace some of those lost dollars by making people pay for their blue check marks with Twitter Blue, but that flopped. If Musk really wants to turn Twitter into an "everything app," a good place to start would be getting the best in the biz to bring back advertisers.

Looking ahead…Musk will move to the CTO and executive chairman positions (and perhaps start focusing more on his other companies), but Yaccarino isn't necessarily set up for success. Becoming the CEO of Twitter kinda feels like inheriting a beautiful Victorian house that is rapidly flooding because the previous owner intentionally smashed every single pipe. Also, a bunch of angry people (some wearing badges!) currently live there.

She's got her work cut out for her wooing companies: Just yesterday, Twitter removed its autocomplete suggestion function after NBC reported the app was suggesting animal abuse videos to anyone typing "dog" or "cat" into the search bar.—MM

For more on how this impacts the advertising world, check out Marketing Brew's in-depth coverage.

     

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WORLD

Tour de headlines

Philip Jefferson shaking Jerome Powell's hand Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Jerome Powell may get a new No. 2. President Biden said yesterday that he would nominate economist Philip Jefferson, who is already on the Fed's board, to become second-in-command at the central bank, replacing Lael Brainard. He also plans to nominate the current US rep to the World Bank, Adriana Kugler, to an empty board seat. She would be the Fed's first Latina governor. If confirmed by the Senate, the pair will jump into their new roles as the Fed continues to try to curb inflation without tipping the economy into a recession, so no pressure there.

Border update: The expiration of Title 42, the policy that allowed the US to expel migrants seeking asylum on public health grounds, was followed by relative calm at the southern border yesterday after border crossings surged earlier in the week. But the Biden administration is facing legal challenges to its current border policies from both the right and left that could determine what happens next. In one case, Florida and other Republican-led states won an order Thursday forbidding the US from releasing migrants without court dates for two weeks.

Mom with "doomsday" beliefs convicted of murder. An Idaho jury found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty of murdering two of her children and conspiring in the murder of her husband's first wife. Prosecutors chalked her motives up to "money, power, and sex," while her attorneys claimed she was led astray by cultlike beliefs—including that the two children were turned into zombies by bad spirits and that she was a goddess who would trigger the apocalypse. She now faces the possibility of life in prison when she is sentenced.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Turkey votes on its future

Turkish women at a demonstration Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Turkey heads to the polls tomorrow to decide whether to send its strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan into retirement. Erdoğan faces the biggest threat yet in the 20 years he's led the country: His opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is slightly ahead in the polls.

The two politicians are selling wildly different visions for the nation with the second-largest army in NATO, and it looks like democracy itself is on the ballot. Given that Turkey is a major trade and geopolitical partner for the US, the EU, and Russia, it's no wonder that political pundits, investors, and newsletter writers are all watching closely as its citizens choose its future.

  • Kılıçdaroğlu leads the chorus of critics accusing Erdoğan of governing like an authoritarian, and he blames the country's runaway inflation on the leader's unorthodox policies. He's branded himself as a secular, democracy-first alternative to the religious, traditionalist incumbent.
  • Erdoğan is wooing voters with promises to replicate the economic boom Turkey experienced earlier in his tenure, even as the nation rebuilds from the devastating earthquake that threatened his popularity.

Looking ahead…there likely won't be a clear winner tomorrow, necessitating a second vote later this month. And some political scientists are worried Erdoğan won't concede the election even if he loses.—SK

     

TOGETHER WITH SALESFORCE CONNECTIONS

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BOOKS

Swifties haven't been this disappointed since the release of 'ME!'

Best seller sticker with Taylor Swift's face over picture of BTS members Morning Brew/Image: Getty Images

Yesterday, the publishing world crushed Swifties' dreams when it was revealed that an unpublished, untitled book believed to be a Taylor Swift memoir was, in fact, not.

The hype surrounding the potential Swift tell-all shot the book up to No. 2 on Amazon's bestseller list this week, forcing Flatiron Books to announce the the book's real author, K-pop superstars BTS, a month earlier than planned.

What made people think Swift wrote it? Swifties love a conspiracy. Amazon listed the book as 4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023 Hardcover by "Flatiron Author to be Revealed July 2023." Fans found a number of Easter eggs pointing to Swift in the book's few known details. For example, the digits in the number of pages (544) add up to Swift's lucky number (5+4+4=13). And the book's release date, July 9, is 1) mentioned in her song "Last Kiss" and 2) close to July 7, the date that Taylor's version of Speak Now is set to be released.

But…July 9, 2023, also marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of an equally adoring fanbase: ARMY. The $45 book, actually titled, Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS, is now No. 1 on the Amazon and Barnes & Nobles bestseller lists.—CC

     

GRAB BAG

Key performance indicators

A mailbox over stuffed with flowers Hannah Minn

Stat: If you remembered to get your mom a Mother's Day gift, there's a good chance you got it from 1-800-Flowers (and if you forgot, maybe go take care of that now). The company expects to deliver 23 million flowers for tomorrow's holiday, according to the Wall Street Journal. It's the nationwide florist's biggest floral delivery day of the year, accounting for 10% of its annual revenue and trumping Valentine's Day, which brings in ~9%.

Quote: "Talk about AI is everywhere right now."

In addition to knowing what guilty pleasure song you secretly play on repeat, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek knows what people are talking about…or at least what people with podcasts are. Ek tweeted Thursday that he checked his company's data, and the number of daily podcast episodes about AI has spiked 500% over the last 30 days. Someday all those hot takes will probably become fodder to train future AI models.

Read: The plot to steal the other secret inside a can of Coca-Cola. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

NEWS

What else is brewing

  • Tesla recalled nearly every car it has sold in China, some 1.1 million vehicles, to fix a braking defect. But no one will have to bring their car back to the shop: Tesla will push an over-the-air software fix to the vehicles.
  • YouTube star Trevor Jacob admitted to intentionally crashing an airplane for views. He could face 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to destruction and concealment with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation.
  • McDonald's was found liable by a jury for a hot chicken nugget that fell out of a Happy Meal and caused second-degree burns on a young girl's leg.
  • Dan Snyder has agreed to sell the Washington Commanders to a group led by Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Josh Harris, bringing Snyder's controversial run with the team one step closer to its end.
  • Correction: In yesterday's newsletter, we inaccurately wrote the San Diego Chargers instead of the Los Angeles Chargers, forgetting that the team moved. Then again, so has everyone in LA.

RECS

Saturday To-Do List graphic

Behind "The Red Lion": This explains why hundreds of English pubs have the same name.

Connies on Connie: Women named after Connie Chung got a chance to thank their namesake (you may want tissues handy if you watch the video).

Fit for a king: Here's a list of the world's most beautiful castles.

Avoid the crowds: Recipes for Mother's Day brunch at home.

Make the hard stuff easy: Our Difficult Conversations at Work course will teach you to navigate tough conversations masterfully and effectively in just one week. It starts in exactly two days: Reserve your spot now.

Consistent cheddar: The Upside app gives you cash back on gas, on groceries, and at restaurants. Earn an extra 25¢/gal on your first tank with code dailybrew4.*

*This is sponsored advertising content.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Brew crossword: If you enjoy solving our Minis on Tuesday and Thursday but get intimidated by the full crossword on Saturday, here's your kick in the arse to at least give it a shot. Try it here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section ready to move out to the country where no one can bother us. We'll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess the price.

Country home in rural ColoradoZillow

Today's property is a 1,200-square-foot, ranch-style home in Arriba, Colorado, a town that once was the home of the roadside attraction "Grandpa Jerry's Clown Museum," which held over 3,000 collectible clowns. The museum closed in 2015, but there is no record of what happened to all that clown memorabilia… Anyways, you could live near the remnants of that. Amenities include:

  • 2 beds, 1 bath
  • 16 acres + barn
  • Covered porch to watch for rogue clowns

How much for your serene (maybe) farm life?

AROUND THE BREW

Wake up with Excel and espresso

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ANSWER

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Written by Neal Freyman, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Abigail Rubenstein, and Cassandra Cassidy

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