Waymo, Texas Culture, Airline Lounges, OpenAI & Uber Eats - Rory Sutherland - #973 -

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Welcome back, good to see you.

**Rory Sutherland** (0:01)
It's a pleasure. What a joy. And here in Austin too.

**Chris Williamson** (0:04)
Here in Austin. Buccees, you went to Buccees, tell me.

**Rory Sutherland** (0:07)
Absolutely, I actually brought you a present. Oh. I thought, you know, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't bring you some local specialties. And of course, some beef jerky as well, jalapeno honey. Thank you. But the Buccees thing is particularly good because they have a brand partnership with TXDOT, the Texas Department of Transportation.

**Chris Williamson** (0:28)
Okay.

**Rory Sutherland** (0:28)
So they licensed the Don't Mess with Texas advertising slogan. Okay. Now, this may surprise you. Don't Mess with Texas. The rights to it actually belong to the Texas Department of Transportation because it was an anti-littering campaign.

**Chris Williamson** (0:43)
You're kidding. No, no, no. How old is this?

**Rory Sutherland** (0:46)
It dates back crikey to, I think, the 70s or at least the very early 80s. I think the 1970s. And it's a kind of famous advertising case study because how do you tell Texans not to litter? Okay. Now, in other parts of the world, simple kind of blandishments or appeals to their sort of, their higher order concerns might work. But this is a uniquely Texan message.

**Chris Williamson** (1:13)
Low-key aggression, unspoken threat of kinetic interaction.

**Rory Sutherland** (1:17)
Exactly. And actually, funnily enough, when they presented it, one of the people said, I find this a bit abrupt. Could we not make it? Please don't mess with us. But of course, that doesn't work, does it?

**Chris Williamson** (1:29)
No, unfortunately not.

**Rory Sutherland** (1:30)
Rather beautifully, Buccee's, which for the benefit of non-Texan audiences is, it's one of those things which I think is proof that one of the great things Americans do is it proves that you can take something that at a small scale is atrocious, and if you make it big enough, it's a work of art. And Buccee's has done this with the gas station. By making it so enormous, you take it from something, you know, comparatively ghastly. Marching bands would be another case. You know, if you go and watch the Texas A&M marching bands, marching bands are appalling at a small scale. I think they're...

**Chris Williamson** (2:04)
Until there's a hundred people or more.

**Rory Sutherland** (2:05)
But if there are 500 people doing it, it suddenly becomes magnificent.

**Chris Williamson** (2:09)
Yeah. Well, I think the interesting thing about Buccee's, for the people that haven't been, again, it's a hundred pumps, maybe 200 pumps, something like that. And then the biggest Costco sized building behind it sells everything from life rafts, to barbecues, to jerky.

**Rory Sutherland** (2:27)
Deer corn, particularly, I think, they seem to go very big on deer corn, which is not something else. I think, I don't know whether it's a hunting thing. I mean, whether it's just that you want to attract deer, I suspect that's unlikely. I suspect it's a hunting thing.

**Chris Williamson** (2:41)
Right, like a trap or whatever.

**Rory Sutherland** (2:42)
It's a kind of way in which you sort of create a trail of deer corn and then they wander into your sights or something.

**Chris Williamson** (2:48)
Buccee is one of the, in fact, the only fuel station, gas station that I've ever been to that has so many pumps that even if you're not filling up for gas, you just pull up outside of one of the pumps.

**Rory Sutherland** (3:01)
I had an ethical dilemma as a Brit because my wife said, look, all these other cars next to the pumps are actually empty. The people have just left their car by the pump and they've gone into shock.

**Chris Williamson** (3:10)
That's because it's under the shade.

**Rory Sutherland** (3:11)
Now, you wouldn't do that in M&S Simply Foods back home. You fill up, then you pull into one of the parking spaces and get out of the way. But you're right, there's so many pumps, though the pump doubles as a parking space.

**Chris Williamson** (3:21)
Yeah. It's also the only way because that's covered over. You're in the shade and so it means that you don't get to be too hot.

**Rory Sutherland** (3:28)
They also have about 50 electric car chargers as well. They've gone big.

**Chris Williamson** (3:31)
Speaking of which, have you been in a Waymo yet?

**Rory Sutherland** (3:35)
No, because I tried to register. Now, it's an Uber partnership in Austin.

**Chris Williamson** (3:39)
It is. If you get an Uber, they'll send you Waymo.

**Rory Sutherland** (3:42)
When I asked for it, they said, you're on a trial or something, that I'm on some sort of beta test.