The Best One Yet - 🍝 “A German Tony Soprano” — BMW got snitched. Glossier’s brow store. Marlboro’s cigarette theme park.

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

BMW and Volkswagen just fined $1B... because their German rival snitched on them. Glossier hit a $1.8B valuation because the future of makeup is Inspo. And Marlboro just sold its 18,000-square-foot cigarette ranch theme park. It’s the perfect case study in marketing.$BMWYY $VWAGY $MOGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Friday, the real Friday, July night. Snackers, stocks dipped from their record highs yesterday. Give it in. On some vague concerns about a slowdown and global economic growth. In the meantime, it's Friday.

We got to celebrate the wins. Jack, the concert. How was it? It was wonderful Old Crow medicine show. Play wagon wheel. Play wagon wheel. We actually don't want to hear anything else. Jack, I think the first concert I ever went to,

I borrowed your jeans because I thought you had to wear jeans. Avici, 2008. I want to say it was Bruce. I want to say it was Kit Cuddy. It was Avichy. Today Snackers happens to be the best one yet. Tb-O-Y, Jack, what's our first story? Two big car companies were just fined a billion dollars.

One big car company wasn't. We've got ourselves a Tony Soprano situation. Somebody snitched. For our second story, Glossier, I just hit a $1.8 billion valuation. Because its makeup is so delicious. So delicious. You want to put it on your face. First, they inspire.

Then they acquire. For our third and final story, here's the headline. Marlborough just sold. It's 18,000 acre cigarette theme park ranch. Here's the real story. Why did Marlboro have an 18,000 acre cigarette theme park ranch? Snackers, before we hit those three fantastic stories. I love the mix today, Jack.

This is the best. I'm a proactive self-starting strategic team player who thrives in ambiguous situations. Jack, I'm proficient in Word and Excel in strategy and Gmail. strategy. Snackers, this intro is about resumes. They're the worst. You hate the resume. Honestly, who likes writing resumes? You got 46 bullets and you shrink it down to eight size font so you can squeeze it on one page. Jack, I managed, I led, I created, I built, I assisted, I guided, I strategically, we're running out of action verbs over here. You spend an hour writing the resume. You spend six hours finding thesauruses for 46 strategic action verbs. What are my other

interest? I don't know, maybe hell-a-skine or is that going to look, I don't know, out of it? I always put wine salesman of the month three times running as my awards section. Jack, promote that to bullet number one. Snackers, we got to tell you a new thing in the job recruiting industry. TikTok is doing resumes. We repeat, TikTok is helping you get hired by doing your resume. Let's say you want to apply to a role, an open job at Chipotle Target or Allo Yoga, for example. Well, guess what?

Burn your one-pager. You can now upload a one-minute video to TikTok. Nothing gets you into that corporate training development. program like a dance video. I mean, Jack, here's a 30 second clip of my Excel spreadsheet hacks. What do you think of it? Here's a clip of me being strategic with Coca-Cola and Mentos. Can you tell me about a time you overcame adversity in the workplace kid?

Well, I did rip my pants in the twerk place. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are doing resumes over at TikTok? TikTok isn't just the new resume. TikTok just zucked LinkedIn. Let's hit our three stories. Boom. You tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something.

You're going on the way. The snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood family. It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security.

Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robahood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, the European Union just dropped a hammer on all three. big German car giants. Actually, it was just two out of the three. Interesting. Because collusion is like the sopranos. I mean, can you get me the gab of gold? Jack, get me the Gabba Gould over here. I'll tell you, Nick. Over in Germany, collusion is a nish-nished.

BMW. It's a nine. Mock Les Schnell, VW and BMW. Snackers, the European Union's anti-trust regulator just pounded BMW and Volkswagen with fines totaling a billion dollars. Yeah. That represents about 5% of their annual profits because the cruise. crime was collusion. Collusion. Illegal cooperation that harmed you and me and car buyers everywhere. Now, we should clarify, this is a story about Volkswagen, diesel engines, and a scandal. But this is not the infamous Volkswagen dieselgate scandal. No, this is a different dieselgate scandal. This is Dieselgate numerous vice. From 2009 to 2014, Volkswagen and BMW, they got together to discuss engines.

They throw some brats on the stove, maybe get a couple pretzels, and, you know, you hang out in Hamburg. Well, Nick, it's actually okay to have a Hamburg-based conversation about engines between competitors as long as like you're talking about good stuff. I think the EU competition commissioners sum this up nicely, Jack. That's right. She said companies can cooperate with each other to improve the quality of their products. But here's the problem. No matter how good all that Bratworth was in Hamburg, the two German car giants cooperated to not improve their products. Yes, they specifically Both agreed to not make their diesel engines any cleaner than absolutely necessary. They could have invested in super clean diesel, but that would have been expensive. It would have

taken time. Yeah, they're like, I won't do it if you won't do it. Yeah, I won't. I mean, wink, wink, nudge, cough, cough. Fark twice if you hear what I'm saying. So these two companies agreed not to compete, not to make their product better. And that is illegal collusion. And the result, we consumers didn't get the benefits of innovation in diesel engines. No, he didn't. And the car companies got to make lazy profit. If so facto, collusion is a niche niche. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the car industry and Sopranos? Grab Sopranos Season 2 DVD. Please. Collusion is hard because there's an incentive to snitch. Now, Snackers, funny thing here, it was actually all three big German car companies who were guilty

of this collusion. But only two of them faced fine. Daimler, which owns Mercedes, didn't get fun. Because Daimler wasn't exactly wearing a wire, but they snitched. Daimler told the European investigators all about the collusion that was going down up in Hamburg. In exchange for cooperating with the government, Daimler got immunity. Otherwise, they would have had to pay like a billion dollars like the other two German car companies. To avoid the huge fine, Daimler confessed. They spilled the beans.

They gave all the juicy details about. the bad stuff that the three companies were up to. I mean, Jack, we're talking Sal, just like he did in season two of the Sopranos, Gammie the Gabby-Gabal. Yes. Sal did this in season two. And based on Sal's fate at the end of season two? Oh, yeah, I know what you're thinking.

By the way, I think you should like lock your doors at night. Yeah, this is actually an awkward situation. So Snackers, this story, it shows why illegal collusion is wrong, but also why it doesn't work. Because one of the colluders is incentivized to be the first to defect. Sal is going to snitch. for our second story, Glossier, just hit a $1.8 billion valuation as the moisturizer of Gen Z skin. The future of makeup is inspire and then acquire. Jack, this is a wonderful statistic.

Two out of five U.S. women 18 to 34 years old who listened to this year's Snacks Daily podcast have also heard of Glossier. That's quite an overlapping Venn diagram. That is the kind of thing you throw on a whiteboard. Glossier founded in 2014 in the Big Apple, not the last. large apple. No. New York, New York. You don't have to issue another correction. They raised $80 million this past month as a direct-to-consumer online makeup star. Glossier is still a private company, but in the meantime, they're turning cosmetics into like candy. I mean, Jack, I'm looking at it right now. Have you seen the milk jelly face cleanser? Are you looking at this?

Milk jelly face cleanser. Sounds like a clean ingredient to a morning smoothie. This is coming from the guy who puts collagen in the smoothie and then on his face. You got to be I'm sorry. Jack, is this a moisturizer from Glossiate or a gummy bear? Well, the hero product is called the boy brow. And in a year of wearing mask during the pandemic, eyebrows with the new lips. Eyebrows are getting all the attention these things. On Zoom, in stores, eyebrows. That's how you lead. So Glossier, thanks to the boy browbrow and other products, their sales shockingly rose during the pandemic when other makeup companies were struggling. Now, here's what Jack and I find fascinating about Glossier. Glossier's strategy is, do less, and we love that. Yes. Paul Rudd, forgetting Sarah Marshall, they're minimizing

in an industry cosmetics that loves to maximize. Here's the funny statistics. Jack and I whipped up when we jumped in snack style. First of all, Alta, they've got 1,200 stores. Sephora, they have 2,700 makeup stores, huge. That's a lot. Glacier is doing less. They have zero physical stores right now. They're just online. Okay, Jack, next number we got here, Alta, 25,000 products. Sephora is selling 45,000 cosmetics products. Glossier's only got 39,000. I mean, just 39 products.

Glossier has only 39 products. We fact-checked it with a long scroll on our phones. Now, here's the other funny thing. The branding is so simple at Glossier that you would post the product packaging on Instagram and feel good about it. Yeah, and that's the whole point. There's no product on their website with more than three colors. and that's just Instac candy.

Snackers, if you find a Glossier like bottle with more than three colors on it, please send us the picture at Jack Kramer, at Nick of New York. We don't believe it exists. The last time we covered Glossier was all about their free Instagram marketing because the packaging is just begging to be posted. So so far, this sounds a lot like the Kardashians cosmetics brands. Yeah, or Kylie Jenner or even Addison Ray's item beauty. They're all like crushing it on Instagram.

But a couple years ago, Glossier started doing some different things. that other direct consumer beauty brands would. Glacier took over a fried chicken restaurant in San Francisco as a pop-up restaurant for a month to sell lipstick alongside fried chicken sandwiches. Because nothing goes with gloss like a very nice cornbread. This is evidence of Glossier's bold retail roadmap differentiated. Which we were shocked to see them just announced. Get this.

The online-only company is launching dozens of stores over the next few years. Starting in Los Angeles, London, New York City, and Seattle. That pivot got Jack and I curious. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Glossier? Glacier's retail strategy is inspire and then acquire. Inspire and then acquire. Snackers, beauty discovery is happening right now on TikTok, on Instagram, in these 12-minute online video tutorials.

That's getting you inspired. But two out of three makeup customers still prefer buying it in store physically, according to market research firm, Quantilope. Because you can't fully trust the moisturizer cream until it's been applied on your forehead and you've waited six minutes to see how it feels. For years now, Glacier has dominated online for makeup discovery and that inspires you. Now it's jumping offline because that's where you test things. That's where it acquires you. Cosmetics and skincare is a journey. Inspire then acquire.

Glossier dominated inspiration online. Now they can't acquire you offline. For our third and final story, this one is, this isn't just wild. This is insane. Cigarette Giant Altria just sold its 18,000-acre Montana Ranch. It's the Disney World of Cigarettes. We almost didn't cover this, but it's the perfect case study in marketing. To really cover this, it really covers it. So Jack and I got a time travel back to 1955. Marlboro Cigarettes introduced the first cowboy ad, the famous Marlboro man.

And get this, sales for Marlboro surged a whopping 3,000% in the first year of those cowboy ads. I don't even think that's subliminal messaging. That's aggressive messaging. right there. But that was 1955. Then things changed in 1970. Congress passed the public health cigarette smoking act, which required that all those Marlboro Man cigarette ads disappear. And then you had a bunch of more changes if we fast forward to the 1980s. Well, in the 80s, it became more and more clear that cigarettes killed you. So cigarettes couldn't be marketed at sporting events, concerts, other promotional events or like Nickelodeon even. Yeah, Muppets, no cigarettes.

But then in 1999, Altria, the owner of Marlborough, they decided to do something a little different. Altria's shape-shifting marketing department decided to buy a 18,000 acre ranch in Montana. Yeah, they did. A little thing they call relationship marketing. The 18,000 acre ranch was 30 miles from anything. Nothing. In rural Montana. And then the Altru team didn't stop there. They built a fake 20 building, Wild West Town, Disney style.

on this ranch. I don't think we can call it fake because there was a saloon, a two-story hotel, even a little, a single-cell jail with stone walls. You're like getting your picture taken here. This is the Westworld for tobacco. Now, officially, for the 21 years, it was an operation. This was called Crazy Mountain Ranch. But the locals called it Marlboro Ranch. Yeah, this is the Epcot of addiction. Now, for four months of the year, they sold it out as like a destination for corporate retreats. But the other eight months of the year, it was used by cigarette giant Altria for relationship marketing specific to the Marlboro brand. Get this Snackers. Marlboro was keeping track of smoker names at events and they had a website

database of a bunch of smoker names for their Rock the Ranch sweepstakes. Two lucky smokers are going to get drawn at random for a four-day all expenses paid trip to the Marlborough Ranch. No joke. Jack and I dove in Snack style. Here's what you're going to get at home before the trip. Round trip plane tickets, spending money, and a bunch of cool duffel bags for the voyage. And then you show up and are greeted with more. Yeah. A Stetson hat, cowboy boots, wool socks, two separate jackets.

Not too shabby. And five packs of your preferred altruous cigarettes. This is a smoker's mecca. The employees were all dressed as cowboys. Dinner is char, grilled beef, anything. If you said the word plant-based, they'd punch you in the face. You get kicked out. The only way to get kicked out, soy.

That's it. Now, this trip had a retail estimated value of $5,000, but it was given away as a promotional gimmick to Marlboro cigarette smokers. It's a $5,000 free trip from Marlboro. Which leads us to yesterday's news, Altrea sold the Marlboro Ranch finally to a P.E. firm that's also behind the Yellowstone Club, which is also in Montana. So Altria said their new focus is weaning people off of real cigarettes to e-cigarettes like jewel.

And the Marlboro Ranch doesn't fit in with the Jewel lifestyle. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our? our buddies over at this insane Marlboro Ranch. This cigarette ranch was terrible for society, but it's perfect as a case study and marketing. Snackers, this is the ideal experiment in a brand because there was no brand allowed at the Marlboro Ranch. The ranch had to follow the laws of Montana and the United States. And those laws ban cigarette marketing pretty much like everywhere. So this is wild.

But like if any ranch item had a Marlboro logo on it, then you'd also have to throw on a Surgeon General's warning to that product underneath. Right. So Marlboro Ranch wasn't officially called that. No, it wasn't. Because if it was on the welcome to Marlboro Ranch side, they'd need a bunch of legalese. You couldn't have a bathrobe with a Marlboro man on it because then you'd need a long disclosure on the bathrobe from the Surgeon General. A bathrobe doesn't look nice with the skull and crossbones saying cigarettes may kill you. So despite Marlborough having no logos anywhere, the fascinating thing here is that post-trip surveys showed a surge in customer loyalty.

After getting home from Marlboro Ranch, cigarette smokers would refer their buddies to Marlboro brand because of the incredible experience they had in Montana. So here's what Jack and I are thinking. This cigarette ranch is bad for public health. But it was perfect for us today as a case study in marketing. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? BMW and Volkswagen got fined a billion dollars for agreeing not to innovate. Donald didn't get fine because they snatched. for our secondary glossier is up to a $1.8 billion evaluation.

Their next frontier, physical stores. It's already inspired you online. Now it's acquiring you with physical stores. After 22 years, Ultria has sold their cigarette theme park. Bad for society. Perfect for a case study for Jack and me in marketing. Now, time for our snack fact of the day, but instead we're actually doing an update on that competition we held earlier this week.

It was T-Boy Tuesday. We asked you what we should call a product you cannot afford, but a stock for that product that you can afford. For example, you can own a private jet stock, but you can't afford a private jet flight. The winner? Here we go, baby. A mobo stock. Mobo stocks, as in missing out, but own.

If you can't buy the product, you can buy the stock because it's a mobo stock. And the winner is legendary snacker, Phil Sabrezi. If you mobo, you mobo. Snackers, it's Friday, the real Friday. Time to celebrate the wins. What do you got, Jack? Wilder went to his first concert. Lovely.

The music was great. He didn't even have to wear earmuffs. I still have a name the podfather, but it's only weird if you make it weird, Jack. Nick, he also got him free because he was under 12. I signed up for surf lesson number six, Jack, because surfing apparently takes a lot of time. Remember Paul Rudd? Please. Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

90% of surfing is showing up? No, do less. Do less. Snackers, hit us up, celebrate. your win at T-Boy Jack, at Nick of New York, and at Robin Hood Snacks. We want to see it. See you Monday. And before we go, congratulations to Barbara and Fabrizio, three-year anniversary in Caracas,

Venezuela as well. Happy anniversary to Tate and Brecken Birch in Idaho. Lizzie Schmole and Oscar Adjip, two-year work anniversary in Philadelphia together. Congrats to Dora Allelu for getting a new job in Tel Aviv. And Elon, not Musk, the original Elon. New job in the Bronx. Happy birthday to Spencer Salaba in Nashville, Tennessee. And Eliza Little Chilli Gann in Shenzhen, China.

And Tyler Trio in Denver, Colorado. And Luis Vast Fest celebrating today in Vegas, not too shabby. And Bailey Davidson in Costa Mesa, California. And happy birthday, Jordan M in Jacksonville, Florida. And Selman on the Upper East Side. And happy birthday, Sean Yamanique in Marlboro, New Jersey. This is Jack. Nick owned stock of Chipotle.

I own stock of Volkswagen. The Robin Hood Snacks Podcasts. heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets Inc or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision.

Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. That we go.