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The article uses charts to show a modest uptick in US manufacturing—driven mainly by AI machinery—while factories and non-AI equipment remain underbuilt. It also highlights a spike in canned cocktails, the rise of zero-click search driven by AI summaries, and increased volatility across public SaaS stocks.
- US manufacturing's uptick is mostly AI-driven (turbines, HVAC, semiconductor gear), while basic industrial machinery investment stays flat and the US remains a net importer of machines despite doubled machinery construction spending since 2022.
- Alcohol sales growth is an illusion: overall spirits volume rose 4%, but that's entirely from canned cocktails (+26%) and non-alcoholic spirits (+70%+), while straight liquor sales fell about 10%.
- Zero-click Google searches jumped from ~45% to ~70% over a decade, starving publishers of referral traffic as AI-generated summaries answer queries directly on the results page.
Mike Cessario, founder of Liquid Death, discusses his unique approach to branding by leveraging humor and entertainment in a crowded beverage market. He emphasizes that product differences are minimal and highlights the challenges of distribution in the beverage industry.
- Comedy is a defensible moat against giants like Coke and Pepsi because corporate approval processes kill real humor before it ships.
- Treating your product as a commodity (since taste/formula differences barely matter to consumers) frees you to compete on branding and entertainment instead.
- Liquid Death's Super Bowl ad cost only $300,000, proving entertainment-first marketing can be cheap yet effective.
- Getting retail authorization is easy, but actually landing on shelves is the real battle, since DSD networks controlled by Coke and Pepsi systematically deprioritize smaller brands.