Raking it in

Nike rakes in $3 billion after Colin Kaepernick calls foul on shoe [Denver Post]

We have written about the Colin Kaepernick / Nike saga before. It was the headliner for our inaugural piece that discussed how winning in a Widening Gyre requires politicians, companies and people to control their own Cartoon – before someone else does it for them. Nike did it, and they won.

Some few months later, they’re back in the Zeitgeist, with coverage language powerfully connected to all other social and financial news. I think you can make a meta-game argument that their tactic this go around was a bit transparent. Maybe even long-term counterproductive, given some internal inconsistencies in the cartoon they’re created. What you can’t do, I think, is argue that it wasn’t effective in promoting and controlling that same, highly effective, polarizing cartoon today.

One of the easiest ways to spot a well-controlled cartoon is how it auto-tunes others’ perceptions to that Narrative. The Denver Post gives us exactly that:

Remember, this is at the top of our Zeitgeist query. This language is making its way across financial media. Whatever we think about the reality or fairness of Nike’s decision or Kaepernick’s belief here, the narrative about Nike is that its wokeapitalism strategy is working. Outlets are attributing market price changes over a couple days to a specific event. Outlets are calling day-to-day volatility in total market cap ‘raking it in’, which says about as much as it does for financial literacy as it does the strength of the cartoon. Articles are even intimating that Nike is winning from the popularity of protest actions (and they may not be wrong):

The simplest takeaway from our first brief on this topic was that controlling your cartoon is an indispensable corporate tool in the widening gyre. The takeaway from this one is probably more important: there is now a strong narrative that controlling your cartoon works. A cartoon about cartoons now sits at the top of the Zeitgeist.

Don’t be surprised, friends. The world we live in is now the kind of world in which Jar Jar Binks is trending on social media because…well, because everyone wanted to know why Jar Jar Binks was trending on social media.

Alas, I fear it’s Jar Jars all the way down. Brace yourself for more of this.

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The Daily Zeitgeist

ET Zeitgeist: Raccoons Never Sleep

By Ben Hunt | May 28, 2021 | 5 Comments

Lemonade (LMND) isn’t just an insurance company. No, no … they’re an AI Company! ™.

Plus Chamath is up to his old tricks.

I hate raccoons.

Inflation as Ad Campaign

By Ben Hunt | May 24, 2021 | 0 Comments

An ET Pack member sent me this. Anyone else come across ads that directly call out inflation expectations? Would love to collect more screenshots like…

Many People Are Saying … Bitcoin is Art

By Ben Hunt | May 24, 2021 | 0 Comments

The Bitcoin Is Art thesis that I put out back in 2015 (The Effete Rebellion of Bitcoin) and recently put forward again (In Praise of…

How It Started. How It’s Going.

By Ben Hunt | October 20, 2020 | 11 Comments

Once Daryl Morey’s new idea became the common knowledge of the NBA – once everyone knows that everyone knows that the way to win NBA games is to maximize 3-point shots and lay-ups – then it became a permanent feature of the way professional basketball is played. It became an equilibrium.

It’s exactly the same with politics.

The Frustrated Money Manager

By Ben Hunt | October 8, 2020 | 12 Comments

The frustrated money manager is almost always a smart, accomplished professional in his own field who believes VERY much in the existence of The Smart Money ™.

The frustrated money manager is almost always a liiiittttle bit on the make.

Like a Vatican cardinal.

Scapegoating the Zeitgeist

By Ben Hunt | October 2, 2020 | 5 Comments

One day we will recognize the defining Zeitgeist of the post-GFC Obama/Trump years for what it is: an unparalleled transfer of wealth to the managerial class.

This Wall Street Journal article is not an attack on that system. It is a defense. It is telling you that the system is fine … we just need to do something about these bad apple CEOs.

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