The Backpack: Issue #93

• Trend Alert: Cup season is here
  
• What's new in commonsku: Meet AI Bobby!
  
• Can’t Miss Content: Herbstreit's dog, Bitcoin Jordans and a Coffin Toy

The Bearista Sequel had a Plot Twist

Starbucks put Snoopy on a glass cold cup for the Great Pumpkin's 60th and it was gone before the morning rush. Fans lined up at 4am, hit five stores, went home with a grande and a grudge. By Wednesday the cup was $200 on StockX. Here's the thing about that number: Starbucks could charge triple and still sell out. It charges $40 because the cup was never the product. The visit is. A chain that's spent two years coaxing people back through the door just got thousands of them to tour five locations before sunrise on a Tuesday, for a cup. (Resellers keep the $160. Starbucks keeps the foot traffic and a week of headlines. Fair trade.) So here's the pitch for any client with a store count and a traffic problem: stop counting units, start counting door swings, and let the drop sell out on purpose.

Duolingo had a Better Week than Apple

Duolingo showed up to Fashion Week with a lime green purse that says air-mess and a jacket that says zhee-vahn-shee, after a survey found 62 percent of Americans swear they can pronounce Hermès and 15 percent actually can. (Same, honestly.) Two days later Apple announced the iPhone Duo and the owl posted, It's called the iPhone what? Same people write the tweets and make the merch, which is why both land every single time. Duolingo doesn't have a merch team and a social team, it has a voice, and the voice makes whatever it wants. The part to steal is the pop-up: you didn't buy the pieces, you bid your streak. The one number their users protect like a pet, now spendable on a purse. Your clients track something like it too (visits, orders, years as a customer). Nobody's put it up for auction.

The US Open's Best Seller comes with a Straw

The US Open's best seller was a $23 vodka lemonade with three melon balls on top, and nobody was there for the vodka. Grey Goose started pouring it in 2007 and sold 24,000. Last year: 738,459. This year the USTA ordered 800,000 cups and said out loud they plan to break the record. Same cup the entire time, every champion's name printed on the side, fans stacking them into towers in the stands. Then Moët turned up with a tennis-ball-can cup, twenty years late to its own idea. Real talk tho: the Honey Deuce won because nobody at the USTA got bored of it. Most merch programs get redesigned before they get a chance to become a habit. Every event your clients touch needs one drink, one cup, one thing worth keeping printed on it. Then leave it alone for a decade.