The Best One Yet
👵🏻 “Betty White Bump” — The Best Super Bowl ad ever. Waffle House’s egg fee. Shein’s tariff trauma.
Thu, 06 Feb 2025
The #1 Super Bowl ad? Snickers in 2010… because Snickers acted like a Freudian therapist.Waffle House is charging a 50-cent-per-egg fee… but we tell ya who to blame for Egg-flation is.New tariffs just hit Shein and Temu… hand it can all be explained with Barbie dolls.Plus, the newest job in America is “TikTok Coach”... because there is an “i” in “viral.”$CALM $MAT $SPYWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: “The Best Idea Yet” — The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with. From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the 'Betty White Bump'?
This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Thursday, the new Friday. February 6th, and today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-Boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. If enough Yetis leave a comment today that they want a Super Bowl podcast, Jack and I will make an entire business-themed Super Bowl podcast. I got a few stories in mind already.
Oh, I got a surprise for you too. What do you got? Oh, well, yesterday we did the story about the Philadelphia Eagles offensive line. Yeah. They weigh one metric ton, those five linemen together. You know their specialty, the brotherly shove. The city of brotherly love does the brotherly shove with those five guys. It's a work in progress, Yetis. We're going to get on this.
In the meantime, three fantastic stories for today's show. Jack, what do we got on the pod? For our first story, Waffle House is now charging a 50 cent surcharge for each egg that you order. Oh, my omelet. So Jack and I are going to tell you who to blame for America's current eggflation situation.
For our second story, Chinese tariffs began Tuesday, and they're hitting Timu and Qian with a double whammy. But the best person to explain the China tariffs is actually Barbie. And our third and final story, how did Snickers become the number one candy bar in America? It's because of Betty White, a Super Bowl commercial, and Sigmund Freud, the therapist.
But yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix of stories. Love today's mix, Jack. The newest job in America didn't exist two years ago. TikTok coach. TikTok coach. Not tennis coach, not executive coach, not even life coach or coach coach. A coach for TikTok. That's it. There is no I in team, but there is an I in going viral, Jack. That's what a TikTok coach tells you.
Get this, Yetis. CEOs are hiring TikTok coaches to help them sell on social media. Or to figure out how to handle a selfie at that perfect 37-degree angle. According to NBC News, one water bottle entrepreneur hired a TikTok coach. At the time, she had zero followers. But that coach trained her on how to strategically post at the optimal time three points during the day.
And the results were insane. Now she has 80,000 followers, a deal with Target to sell her product, and an appearance on the CNBC TV show Shark Tank. Her TikTok coach turned her into a TikTok pro. Now, Coach TikTok won't make you run sprints. No, they make you record hook lines. Coach TikTok doesn't make you do push-ups. No, they make you do CTAs.
And Coach TikTok doesn't yell at you from the sidelines. No, Coach TikTok will yell at you from behind a ring light. The only coach we didn't expect is the most viral one. The TikTok coach. Whistle not included. Unless the algorithm wants that jacket.
15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in a dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50%, that's a fat tip. T-Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.
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Chapter 2: Why is Waffle House charging an egg fee?
The Great Recession was still happening in the wake of the financial crisis. Apple had just launched the iPad after the success of the iPhone. Yeah. And you and I were close to graduating college. We were still in our roommate era. It was an economic feat. Well, for Snickers, 2010 was a bad year. What is a nougat? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. But Sales of Snickers.
They'd hit an all-time low back in 2010. This is a weird stat we found. Back then, half of Snickers buyers wouldn't buy a Snickers the following year. So basically, the candy bar was getting crushed. Well, to fix that problem, for the 2010 Super Bowl, Mars decided to throw a Hail Mary. Mars, the parent company of Snickers, spent $2.5 million on a 30-second Snickers Super Bowl commercial.
Now, you may have heard this yet. You've definitely seen it. We'll play a little clip for you. Mike, what is your deal, man? Oh, come on, man. You've been riding me all day. Mike, you're playing like Betty White out there. That's not what your girlfriend said.
Baby. You snickers. Better?
So what happened is after eating the Snickers bar, the guy transformed back into himself. He was no longer Betty White. He was no longer Betty White, the 88-year-old golden girl comically playing a tackle football in a muddy field. And what was the tagline in that commercial, Jack? You're not you when you're hungry. And what was the result of that commercial, Jack?
Snickers sales surged after that commercial. Get this, after falling double digits for a decade, Snickers sales surged 16% after that ad. Suddenly, after the Saints won the Super Bowl, Snickers was selling out in aisle six. Within two years, Snickers had become the number one chocolate bar on planet Earth. So this was the year 2010, the early days of social media. Yeah, good point, Jack.
Snickers commercial was so good. It got 400 million unpaid impressions. People love talking about it on Twitter and Facebook. And that unpaid media value was worth 11 times Snickers' initial investment in the commercial. Here's a wild bit about this story. It wasn't just Snickers that got a bump. Betty White's career got a bump too. Yeah, Betty White got her own Betty White bump out of this.
The Super Bowl ad resurrected the career of the late, great Betty White. She went on Oprah. She went on Jay Leno. She went on Ellen. She even hosted Saturday Night Live at the age of 88. All because of a 30-second commercial on TV for a candy bar. Now, why was this such a powerful commercial, Nick? Well, the first thing we noticed is that it repositioned the job of Snickers in your daily life.
Before this commercial, people thought of Snickers as a candy bar. It was a nice-to-eat treat for yourself. But after this commercial, Snickers was seen more like a protein bar. you need to eat it for critical energy. So after laughing about 88-year-old Betty White getting gang-tackled into a mud puddle, you changed your mind about that Snickers bar.
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