enRICHed: Volume 8

Written By Rich BFF

How Is It Already November?

Crazy to think we started receiving holiday emails on Tuesday as the clock struck midnight and we apparently immediately transitioned into Mariah Carey season. Did you know she makes ~$2.6M a year off of All I Want For Christmas Is You ?! We aren’t quite there yet as New York temperatures hit the 70s this weekend, but we don’t hate the early sales coming our way.

A few administrative reminders below:

  • HYCU, pronounced ‘haiku’: how the news impacts you and your wallet, aka How You Can Use

  • Spilling the Prosperitea 🫖 : our hot tips for you on all things money. Think discount codes, hacks, non-boring finance articles, sales, etc. 

Now that you’re up to speed, let’s get you enRICHed.

Latinos are Listening to More Podcasts

  • A new report shows that 59% of Latinos over the age of 18 have listened to a podcast, and 34% have listened to one in the past month.

  • The report also shows that Latino listeners are engaged with the ads they are hearing, with 55% saying they have made a purchase because of a podcast sponsorship. Further, while 66% say they have recommended a podcast-promoted product to loved ones, that number jumps to 74% when the podcast host is also Latino.

  • Where is the problem? Ad dollars aren’t following this trend yet, still focusing on the predominantly white male audience that most podcasts have.

  • HYCU; companies that see the benefits of diverse audiences are going to see these types of reports and capitalize on the opportunity to engage new listeners in a market expected to reach $4BN by 2024.

Another Fed Update

  • On Wednesday, the Fed hiked rates again. While the central bank lending rate was close to 0% in March, it has been raised 3.75% in the last 8 months to 4%.

  • Unfortunately, the goal of these rate hikes has been to curb inflation, and the opponent has been stubborn - inflation was still at 6.2% in September. NPR reports more on reactions across the political and economic landscape.

  • HYCU; Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that while there is still a possibility of cooling the economy without entering into a recession, the chances are narrowing. While you are going to see a higher cost of borrowing for cars, homes and credit cards, savers are seeing the best yields since 2008.

Sports & Politics?

  • With Election Day quickly approaching (November 8th!) this weekend marks the last time candidates can get in front of voters via their television sets. An interesting find is that college football, the NFL and the World Series seem to be ripe with opportunity.

  • Experts have found that “live sports is one of the best venues to find voters who have somehow tuned out the noise of the campaign throughout the fall.” It’s where you can find the non-partisans who aren’t tuning in directly to the news.

  • HYCU; candidates have paid as much as $50K for a 30-second ad on CBS during college football. With so many important races this midterms, it will be interesting to see who capitalizes on this relatively niche idea where you can target voters from one or two very specific states.

What is “Bleisure”

  • In the new world of hybrid work, we are learned a lot of new vocabulary. Bleisure, the blend of business and leisure in the world of travel, is one we hadn’t heard quite yet.

  • American, Delta & United believe that this new pattern of travel is here to stay, while Southwest isn’t ready to dive head first just yet. All of the airlines are still trying to track seasonality as it changes what they see as the on and off seasons, which in turn affects both staffing and scheduling.

  • HYCU; if you can travel for both work and pleasure at the same time, you can put trips on your company’s dime or fly on off-travel days to save money. Whether it’s a trend or here to stay, there is no shame in playing the game to help your wallet while also seeing some new places.

Twitter’s First Week Under Elon

  • Last week, we featured the announcement that Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn dollars. This week, he started to flex his control - cutting 3,700 jobs, almost 50% of Twitter’s global workforce. The teams most impacted were product trust and safety, policy, comms, ethical AI, tweet curation, social good and accessibility. So basically all of the teams that keep Twitter a safe space.

  • The rollout of these layoffs was a disaster, with now-former employees being locked out of email, meetings, laptops and more.

  • HYCU; as we expected last week, advertisers have already paused spending with Twitter, mostly citing brand safety concerns. Guilt or harm by association is only easily avoidable by fully withholding dollars. If Musk cannot keep the chaos we have seen all week under control, his highly leveraged purchase of Twitter could prove to be a huge issue.

Rich BFF
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