Episode · 2026-08-05
Spiderman Ads in BMW Cars
Spiderman Ads in BMW Cars | Taco Bell’s PR Plan: $1 Pizza | X Ads Performance
Rundown
Chris Hall, Colin, and TJ Bonjorno cover Spider-Man ads appearing inside BMW infotainment screens, Taco Bell's $1 Mexican Pizza promo push following its lettuce-shortage PR stumble, and the growing dependency on agencies to survive on TikTok Shop and Amazon. A data-company guest (Derek) shows real transaction data proving Taco Bell's discounting is driving 2-3x more transactions despite a lower average ticket, and new Hollow Socks CEO Josh Haskins joins to discuss how customer feedback pulled the brand into hunting and tactical sock lines.
Takes from this episode
In-car ad placements like the BMW Spider-Man screen ad are acceptable when high-quality and non-intrusive, but must never force a wait before a basic car function.
If they're bad ads, I don't like it, but if they're really nice, I'm a fan of it... As long as it doesn't make me have to wait to watch an ad to do anything with the car.
Taco Bell's lettuce-shortage controversy is already forgotten by the public and caused no lasting brand damage.
by the time we're reading this article everyone's forgotten about it... I don't think any permanent damage was done.
Sub-$100k/month brands can't afford the agency support needed to succeed on TikTok Shop or Amazon, and even massive Meta spend gets no dedicated account rep.
I give more than $300,000 a month to Mark Zuckerberg and I get no rep. That's insane.
Postscript expanding into email would be a serious competitive threat to Klaviyo's dominance in the ESP space.
If Postscript is going into email... that's huge. I don't think Klaviyo is shaking right now.
Real transaction data proves Taco Bell's $1 promotions are working: average ticket size fell about $2 but transaction volume rose 2-3x.
average order value... is down about two bucks over the last 6 weeks... the number of transactions, however, it's two to three X... whatever they're doing is working.
Hollow Socks let customer feedback pull the brand into new categories like hunting and tactical socks rather than pre-planning the roadmap.
we really learned that they were using it as a hunting product. So like, 'Great. Let's launch a hunting product.'