Welcome to Five Moments, I hope you are having a great Sunday!
What a week, folks. I have deliberately chosen to keep this newsletter free of politics as there are many far smarter people than me covering all the machinations of national politics.
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Poolside.FM Moment
Poolside.FM provides pure joy via a free, online radio station. This is a great respite from the winter with fun design and a great soundtrack. They released a killer iOS app this fall - so now you can take the pool party with you anywhere!
Ali Montag authored a nice piece on Poolside.FM:
Poolside.FM is an online radio station. It’s also a one-way ticket to 1987. Summery pop music curated from Soundcloud and YouTube streams over video clips from 80s infomercials. Every pixel is designed to invoke the analog joys of a pre-iPhone era: There is a text only chat room. Windows within Poolside are closed by clicking a tiny martini glass. There are no pre-roll ads.
Extra Credit: pressplaytopauseyourthoughts.com
CIA Rebranding Moment
The Central Intelligence Agency has introduced a new logo and website that, according to some social media observers, could belong to a direct-to-consumer brand rather than a government institution.
“It's hysterical to think about these archaic institutions rebranding as a millennial DTC brand or ad agency,” says Roif. “It's a painfully common and trendy visual language they've chosen which is sort of the opposite of what you expect from a governmental institution.”
Is the CIA going to try and sell me a toothbrush subscription?
Extra Credit: Is the DTC brand aesthetic bad for business?
SoulCycle Moment
Vox exposé’s highlights the fanatical rise and crash of SoulCycle. Their decline has all the makings of a page turner: prestige, celebrity, sex, corporate in-fighting, and a surprise guest appearance by DJT.
SoulCycle was never built to be for the masses. Keeping people out was, it seems, just as important to the business as loyal riders. The bigger SoulCycle got, the less desirable it became. The less desirable it became, the less people had tolerance for the culture it fostered. The minute the company became mainstream, the magic dissolved.
The pandemic has been devastating to fitness studios. However, in SoulCycle’s case it appears that the pandemic may have just pushed them off the cliff they were already sliding down.
The Points Guy Moment
For the uninitiated, The Points Guy is the premiere credit card points / travel website with more than 12 million unique visitors each month. TPG is in the business of recommending travel destinations, credit cards, and how to best utilize your credit card points for travel.
The Times put together a profile of The Points Guy, Brian Kelly, and his business. The actual profile is less interesting, but the author does a superb job of laying out the economics of the travel points / credit card / affiliate marketing industries.
Kelly is a middleman’s middleman — an intermediary in an industry that exists to turn intermediation into profit. There are three major players in the travel-rewards game: credit cards (banks), airlines and consumers. Points, the set of novel currencies minted by airlines, transform their vague-but-strong mutual interests into something fungible. This web of partnerships can become tangled
A major source of revenue for these websites is affiliate marketing, whereby if a reader applies for a credit card via their site the banking institution pays The Points Guy a finder’s fee. This is how all affiliate marketing works, but with credit cards and other financial instruments the finder’s fees can be substantial ($25 to $150+ for a single application).
It’s a common misconception that premium credit cards earn money mainly through interest payments and annual fees. Their meat and potatoes are interchange fees, the surcharges levied on merchants per transaction. When you pay with your credit card in a store, the owner pays the bank a percentage of your total. For certain credit cards, this fee is low — maybe 1 to 2 percent. For premium cards, like Chase Sapphire or American Express, the fees can be higher, depending on the merchant, to cover the cost of a card’s amenities.
I will definitely keep reading TPG and other websites to maximize my points accumulation, but it is helpful to understand the incentives for any organization that is providing you information, especially when it is in relation to financial decisions.
Extra Credit: Who actually pays for your credit card rewards?
Music Moment
Solomon seamlessly blends Laugh Now Cry Later x Same Drugs.
What was your favorite Moment this week?
🏖 Poolside.FM
🕵️♂️ CIA
💪 SoulCycle
💳 The Points Guy
🎵 Music
Thanks to Zack Zlevor of Zlevor Designs for the great logo and banner!
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Next Distribution 01/17/2021