Hey Snackers,
Kraft is doing the marketing equivalent of changing your legal name from âNicholasâ to âNick.â Kraftâs Macaroni and Cheese is now officially âMac & Cheese.â As if weâd ever say âroni.
Tech stocks rallied yesterday even as rate-driven recession fears intensified. Meanwhile, the Department of Education agreed to cancel $6B in student loans for 200K people who said their schools defrauded them.
Non-fungible fanny pack⊠Apes swung into the concrete jungle this week, and their bananas weren't just on the blockchain. The second annual ApeFest, an IRL music festival tied to the popular Bored Ape NFT collection, wrapped up yesterday in NYC (think: Coachella for crypto diehards). Token holders took over Times Square, suggesting that NFTs could survive crypto winter's chill by hitting the pavement.
Canât funge this⊠The âright-click, saveâ crowd may be prevailing over NFT promoters. Despite contradicting reports over whether the NFT market collapsed earlier this year, the bear market hasn't done NFT collectors any favors. Trading volume has plummeted to its lowest point since June of last year. But that hasn't killed corporate token interest:
Real-world uses â users⊠While NFT event tickets show digital assets arenât limited to blockchain transactions, they havenât created mainstream appeal. Thousands of token fans rocked out at ApeFest, but as of January most NFTs were owned by just a few hundred thousand people. Perhaps efforts like Shopify's to make tokens part of daily life could change that.
Bad aftertaste⊠Warning: this news may cause indigestion. Youâve probably heard of Daily Harvest, the plant-based meal-delivery service that seems to sponsor every other YouTuber and podcaster. Now some influencers are losing their appetites: Daily Harvest is embroiled in a scandal after several customers said theyâd gotten sick after eating its lentils.
Hungry for influence⊠Before this brand-crushing debacle, DH was thriving. It had sold $250M of meal subscriptions in 2020 and hit a $1.1B valuation thanks to its army of influencers and celeb investors (like: Serena Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Bobby Flay). Itâs not the only one relying on influencers:
Viral marketing can be a double-edged sword⊠Social media can help startups blow up quickly and cause them to blow up (in a bad way) just as fast. Some Daily Harvest influencers who said they got sick from free meal kits are bashing the biz on social (see: this Tok with 100K+ likes). Daily Harvestâs crisis is a reminder that the influencer strategy can backfire.
Authors of this Snacks own: shares of Google, Netflix, Comcast, and Shopify
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