💣 Will a star-studded franchise bomb?

Branded residences aren’t just for hotels anymore

Have you ever wanted to live in a Porsche dealership? Of course not. But what about a Porsche condo?

Around Miami, developer Gil Dezer — the guy who first licensed former President Donald Trump’s name, a la Trump Towers — has built Porsche- and Armani-branded residences, per The New York Times.

• The Porsche Design Tower (132 units, $4m-$32m) features a “Dezervator” that takes cars up to owners’ condos where they can be parked on display.
• Giorgio Armani himself designed tapestries and chose furniture for Residences by Armani Casa (308 units, $36k-$11.7m)

Sounds intense, but the market for luxury branded condos is actually expected to grow 12% each year through 2026.

Branded residences…

… aren’t new, but are typically associated with hotel brands, either as standalone properties or incorporated into an existing hotel. Hotels are already kinda like condos — plus, who doesn’t love the amenities?

But now, many other luxury brands are getting in on the action. Obviously, they earn licensing and other fees from developers, but more importantly, it helps them evolve into lifestyle brands.

Take Equinox…

… The gym chain with the motto, “It’s not fitness, it’s life.”

It operates wellness-focused hotels, residences, spas, and coworking spaces. Gym members get access to perks like Dorsia, a members-only restaurant reservation platform seemingly named after the restaurant serial killer Patrick Bateman could never get into in American Psycho.

When Aston Martin debuted its Miami condo, the $50m penthouse came with the keys to one of 24 Vulcans and a membership to a private track club.

Meanwhile:

• Japanese restaurant chain Nobu is building a 700-unit condo project in Toronto with a 15k-square-foot restaurant.
• Hotel design company Yoo has several residential properties inspired by various designers, including Jade Jagger and Steve Leung.
• Magazine publisher Conde Nast, which already operates a handful of bars and cafes, is also eyeing the space.

Obviously, we hope they call it Condo Nast.

Sink your teeth into these 3 AI marketing strategies

The AI experimentation extravaganza rages on. Real Wild West vibes out here.

HubSpot began by analyzing hundreds of use cases (and picking three). Zapier held internal AI hackathons to surface inventive ways to integrate.

Their CMOs recently ran a live podcast on the future of AI, defining the mindset marketers need moving forward.

Key AI concepts to digest:

• Paranoid optimism. Become comfortable being uncomfortable.
• Prophets make profits. Shouts to chief brand evangelists.
• Personality-led growth. The creator > the content.

Watch this Marketing Against the Grain special, filmed at INBOUND.

Nice: The MetLife & US Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index hit 69.2 in Q3, indicating the most positive outlook among small biz owners since the pandemic began.

Anheuser-Busch said it will stop cutting the tails of the Clydesdale horses that have been featured in Budweiser ads for decades. The tail-clipping practice can harm the animals and has faced criticism from PETA.

Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as the chairman of News Corp. and Fox Corp. The move comes months after Fox paid $787.5m to settle election defamation claims made by Dominion Voting System.

OpenAI released DALL-E 3, the third version of its generative AI platform, which now allows users to convert written prompts to images directly in ChatGPT. Integrating the tools means ChatGPT can generate visual prompts for users, simplifying the process.

Speaking of: Authors including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R. R. Martin have joined the Authors Guild’s complaint against OpenAI, accusing the company of training its AI on their copyrighted work.

This again? American households can receive free covid tests by mail again starting Sept. 25 as cases surge once more. From Sept. 3 through 9, hospitalizations increased by 7.7%.

Kraft Heinz is recalling 83k+ cases of American cheese slices due to a wrapper that could stick to the cheese and cause customers to choke. The machine causing the issue has since been fixed.

When a $789m film franchise turns risky

You wouldn’t expect an action franchise fronted by Sylvester Stallone — one that has also tapped Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes, and Jason Statham — to be anything but money in the bank.

But this weekend, Lionsgate will be sweating out the returns of Expend4bles, hoping it won’t become a Hollywood cautionary tale.

Wait, there’s another Expendables movie?

With the high-wattage cast — including Stallone, Statham, Andy Garcia, and Megan Fox — not actively promoting the film due to the ongoing actors’ strike, you may not have even realized the franchise has returned after nine years away.

• The biggest pop in its marketing push came from cast member 50 Cent’s since-deleted “WTF did we run out of money?” Instagram post, trashing the movie’s promo materials.

That’s a rough start for a movie already facing an uphill climb: The studio reportedly spent heavily on it, despite the third film making $100m+ less than the second.

The summer has been flashing warning signs

With Expend4bles leaning heavily on stunts performed by a 77-year-old Stallone, it couldn’t have been comforting to see moviegoers unenthused by 81-year-old Ford leading the action in the latest Indiana Jones, a film that struggled to make a profit.

Other action franchises’ receipts have been underwhelming. In a business where the rule of thumb says you need to more than double your production budget to make a profit:

• Fast X made $714.5m on a ~$340m budget.
• This summer’s Mission: Impossible installment made $566m on a $290m budget.

With its rumored $100m-$200m budget, Expend4bles has its work cut out to show that the franchise isn’t out of gas.

BTW: Looking for a positive? Consider the greatest movie of all time, John Wick 4, which got the ratios right, costing ~$100m and pocketing $432m+.

In case you missed ‘em, here’s this week’s best…

• Tweet: Seriously. Do anything.
• Chart: Political ad spend is on the rise, expected to hit a record $10.2B this election cycle.
• Story: How Hollywood insures its stunts, including that time Tom Cruise jumped off the Burj Khalifa.
• Video: Why newsletters can be million-dollar businesses.

📃 On this day: In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, announcing all enslaved people in rebel states would be free within 100 days.

🐈‍⬛ Cure boredom: You’re a kitten in a catnip field.

🧑‍🎤 Wow: Did you know people can sing two notes at the same time?

📚 That’s interesting: A deep dive into book blurbs. Authors, who rarely have time to read the many books they’re asked to blurb, hate them.

🐶 Aww: And now, a sneaky spy.