Swagonomics: the wild world of corporate gifting
Good morning,
If a Labubu had a child with a Teletubby, it would probably look like Meta’s Muse AI agent mascot. While disarmingly cute, it’s already raising privacy flags.
In today’s letter:
- Exclusive: the insane world of corporate gifting
- New Ramp data on AI compute spending
- The top 10 most AI-pilled cities
Swagonomics: inside the wild world of corporate gifting, from AirPods to owls
The package arrived at Ramp’s Miami office looking nothing like a sales pitch. Inside was a huge cage housing a snowy owl, reminiscent of Hedwig from Harry Potter. Employees stopped working to gawk at it, wondering if the mystifying owl was real.
The recipient, Kendall Tucker — Director of Creative Experimentation at Ramp — opened the attached card and learned that the sender was a company called Wildcard, which builds one-to-one gifting campaigns for high-value targets. They had read one of her old blogs, where she’d written about waiting for a letter from Hogwarts as a child.
Tucker loved the gift. “When I sent the photo to what we call the Growth Watercooler channel at Ramp, a bunch of people thought it was a real owl, which I think would have been unhinged,” Tucker said.
“We had a real internal debate on if we should send a real owl, which I'm happy we did not, but yeah,” Wildcard co-founder Brennan Keough told Leading Indicators. “We really pushed the envelope, because that's what works.”
While the owl was fake, the attention it drove was real. The thought and effort behind the gift were evident, and Tucker was excited to get on a call. Wildcard had accomplished the most difficult part of selling: getting noticed.
Though most people don’t receive intricate life-size birds, you’ve probably received a gift from a company at some point in your life. It could be as small as a branded beer coozie at a conference, or as big as a YETI cooler after sitting through a sales call.
At a time when AI slop is everywhere and outreach is cheap, companies are leaning on physical gifting more than ever to cut through the digital noise.
But what are companies really spending on gifting? Does it take $100 to get a lead, a thousand, an owl? And more importantly, do these gifts actually work?
We spoke to the CEOs and founders of gifting platforms Goody, Wildcard, and &Open – which was behind the viral OpenAI milestone plaques campaign – to find out.
See the inside dive on the world of corporate gifting.
From tech heads and Linkedinfluencers to investors and politicians, everyone is talking about the data centers powering the AI buildout. More specifically: are we investing too much or too little? And what’s at stake if we get it wrong?
To answer those questions, we need to take a closer look at the commodity at the center of the AI supply chain: compute.
Cara Santone, Applied Scientist at Ramp, digs into the spend data to analyze who is buying and selling AI compute — and what that means for the future of AI infrastructure.
Read more from Ramp Economics Lab.
Watercooler Data
Shocker: San Francisco is has the biggest share of AI-pilled companies, closely followed by Palo Alto. But Raleigh, Indianapolis, and Kansas City also make the top 10 list.
Did any of the city rankings surprise you? Let us know on X.
Signals Shortlist
- Why airfares could rise even more, but airline profits won’t(CNBC)
- Oil is flowing from Hormuz again—just not the kind the world needs most (WSJ)
- New hazard for Treasuries hides in bond futures’ fine print (Bloomberg)
- Lucid’s deliveries fall 6.7% as EV maker cuts production to align with demand (CNBC)
🗓️ Leading Events:
Tuesday, October 6: Earnings expected from Constellation Brands and Lamb Weston
Wednesday, October 7: FOMC minutes from September meeting. NY Fed Survey of Consumer Expectations. Earnings expected from Applied Digital
Thursday, October 8: Earnings expected from PepsiCo and Levi Strauss
Friday, October 9: Earnings expected from Delta Air Lines. University of Michigan consumer sentiment (preliminary)
🤝 Like what you read? Share Leading Indicators with a friend.
