Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Amazon, LivingSocial Bring Back the Bubble! Or at Least the Awesome "Volume" SNL Ad

Let’s be clear: LivingSocial’s “$10 for a $20 Amazon credit” deal today will probably work out to be pretty smart.

For starters, it’s getting everyone–or at least everyone I pay attention to on Twitter*–to talk about LivingSocial. (Groupon who?) And given that Amazon has already handed over a big chunk of money to the daily deals start-up, this sort of seems like the two sides are just swapping dollars, anyway.

Still, this gives us an excellent opportunity to rerun the classic “Saturday Night Live” Bubble 1.0 ad, which didn’t even run during the first bubble. It dates way, way back to 1988. And technically, it’s not about a money-losing operation, but one that doesn’t make any money (at least on a per-transaction basis).

Still, the “the answer is simple: volume” catchphrase became one of the signature lines of the Kozmo.com, Pets.com, etc. era a decade later. And it seems like we may have to revive it again.

Bonus clip! Here’s the first one of the ads. Catchphrase-free, but still awesome.


*An admittedly small subset of the world. But still.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work