Air – The Deal

Air tells the story of Nike’s partnership with Michael Jordan and the creation of the Air Jordan brand. Nike beat their competitors in the race to sign Jordan to an endorsement deal by agreeing to a partnership rather than a standard endorsement deal.

In this clip, Matt Damon (Sonny Vaccaro) negotiates with Viola Davis (Deloris Jordan) over Michael Jordan’s contract. Vaccaro explains that players don’t get to keep a cut of the sales, but Jordan’s mother emphasizes that the Jordan brand will utilize her son’s name, image, and likeness and he deserves to profit from that use.

Thanks to John Kruggel for the clip and summary!

Adam Ruins Everything — Overfishing

 

Adam Ruins Everything is a half-hour informational comedy were host, Adam Conover, debunks popular myths. Each episode is divided into 3 segments with some common theme. In the Spring of 2018, James Tierney and I sat down to go through all three seasons of Adam Ruins Everything to pick out examples in each episode that could be used in an economics course. If you’re curious about the paper, you can read about it here.

Adam covers the topic of overfishing and how it forces restaurants to market less popular fish as select or premium brands. Adam’s dad (an actual marine biologist) joins the scene to discuss overfishing.

 

MedicoreFilms — Free Hugs

My students favorite clip when discussing product differentiation is this clip from MedicoreFilms where a guy offers Deluxe Hugs for $2 more. One of his opening lines best illustrates the concept of monopolistic competition:

Deluxe guy: How’s businesses?

Free guy: Mine are free, this isn’t a business.

Deluxe guy: Different people want different stuff, so it’s cool.

Businesses can differentiate their products by quality, style, location, etc. The guy offering deluxe hugs is trying to fill a portion of the market from people willing to pay more for “better” hugs.

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