More or Less · Topics · Episode #165
Backstreet Boys at the Sphere: Selling People Themselves
Clip from the full recording, 1.0–2:36 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
The Morins report back from the Backstreet Boys' 56th show at the Sphere — Dave went in a skeptic and came out a fan — and Sam turns the crowd-in-white theme party into a thesis: the best way to sell people anything is to sell them themselves.
Cold open: Brit and Dave just saw the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere — show number 56, reportedly the best-selling residency there — and hung out with Nick and Howie afterward. Dave went in skeptical and came out a fan: “they are masters at the sphere,” a real Vegas spectacle where the dressed-up crowd is half the show. Brit’s first concert ever was Backstreet Boys at age twelve; now she’s forty and it was a white-dress-code Millennium theme party with the Jonas Brothers in attendance. Sam contributes a childhood story about the band’s manager being his neighbor with badly behaved Rottweilers.
Then Sam extracts the lesson. Dave says the crowd is what made it great; Sam says that’s the classic move in everything: “the way to sell people things is to sell them themselves.” Dave refines it — you’re selling people a well-expressed version of themselves, the same permission structure as Burning Man. It’s a throwaway opener that ends up being the thesis for the whole episode.
Key points
- Dave went in skeptical, came out a fan: the Backstreet Boys are "masters at the sphere" and reportedly its best-selling show.
- It was show #56 of the residency; the Morins hung out with Nick and Howie after.
- The white-outfit Millennium theme party made the crowd part of the spectacle — Jonas Brothers included.
- Sam's take: the crowd loving itself is the point. The best way to sell people anything is to sell them themselves.
- Dave's refinement: you sell people permission to be the most expressed version of themselves — the Burning Man playbook.
Where they landed
Quotes
“I went into it very skeptical and I came out a fan. They are masters at the sphere.”— Dave
“The way to sell people things is to sell them themselves. Right? Like the best con — sell them themselves back.”— Sam
“Backstreet Boys was my first concert at age twelve, and now here I am, age forty.”— Brit
Suggested tweets
“The way to sell people things is to sell them themselves.” — Sam Lessin, on why the Backstreet Boys' Sphere show works
Tweet this →Dave Morin went into the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere a skeptic and came out a fan: “they are masters at the sphere.”
Tweet this →Show #56 at the Sphere, a white-dress-code Millennium theme party, and the crowd as the real product.
Tweet this →All topics · Full episode #165 + transcript · Subscribe on YouTube · Spotify