I Heard This Newsletter is Very Dill Forward

Garrett King

Jul 19, 2024 — 5 min read

Image Source: Yarn

📰1/ Headline Roundup:

A brief review of a few interesting headlines you might have missed this week.

Google's Privacy Sandbox Isn't Ready for Prime Time

You may not think about web browsing cookies much, but if you're a marketer or an advertiser, they're front and center. Google is in a long-running, oft-delayed process to completely eliminate cookies from their browser Chrome, and it'll have some big implications on digital advertising. Early reads are that it'll be bumpy.

Inside Prime Video's Consumer Products Licensing Strategy

Did Amazon Prime's Fallout make you want to buy an Arizona Iced Tea? The folks at Prime Video certainly intended it would. The brand licensing market is a big one, accounting for $275B in revenue in 2022. Big streaming TV player, big retailer, big advertiser all under one roof - makes sense they'd get really good at product placement. Wonder if it'll come for Bond films next - "Moneypenny, hand me that Shark Lift-Away Upright Vacuum!"

How Trader Joe's Mini Cooler Bags Became a Viral Hit

Yet another hit from the folks at TJ's. A $3.99 small insulated cooler bag has gone white hot, inspiring eBay resale prices up to $50. Trader Joe's has a track record of having hit bags, and their canvas totes have international appeal, often showing up in Japan where there aren't any Trader Joe's. Also, I didn't think I'd read the phrase "“Heard that it’s very dill forward” today, but here we are.

💵 2/ Cheap Strategy

Each week, I'll write up a short business strategy recommendation for a firm, brand, or startup I've got no connection to and very little experience with. I'll make two promises each time - it'll cost them nothing and may be worth the same.

Today, we're looking at the plant-based meat alternative market. This business had several years of rapid growth up until 2020, and has since fallen on tough times, as demand has declined due to less American households buying.

The case study: If you were in charge of one of these plant-based meat alternatives, how would you go about trying to push the business forward and kickstart growth?

Continue investing in R&D: You know a category that's plant-based and hasn't fallen on hard times? Milk alternatives. The plant-based creamer market is a $700MM category that continues to grow 10%+ per year and the plant-based milk business isn't doing bad either, growing +8% in 2022 and +1% in 2023. Oat milk tastes good. Almond milk, coconut milk, they do the trick. There's a million options that get you not quite, but close to, the real thing. So this plant-based meat business needs to continue to invest in making the product taste better, and to their credit they are: Beyond Meat recently introduced their "Fourth Generation" Beyond Burger as part of the "Beyond IV Platform". It has a meatier flavor and is made with avocado oil. If you ever wanted your burger patties to have an iPhone-style release cycle, consider your dream realized.

These two line graphs show that while plant-based creamer dollar and unit sales in u. S. Retail continued to increase from 2022 to 2023, the percentage increase was not as high as from 2021 to 2022. — Source: Good Food Institute

Keep moving forward: Plant-based meats caught a wave leading up to/into Covid, they couldn't have been hotter - you could get a plant-based Whopper at Burger King. Just because sales performance has dropped in recent years doesn't necessarily mean there's a fundamental flaw here, other than the market size - only 15% of Americans purchased plant-based meat and seafood in 2023, whereas 44% purchased plant-based milk. So the market is smaller, but 15% of America is nothing to snuff at.
Overinvest in cultural cache: The advertising strategy should be laser focused on earning media and having fun doing it.
1. Frequent collaborations: The Panda Express Beyond Orange Chicken collaboration was genius. Can they do Beyond Corndogs at various state fairs this fall? What about Beyond Italian Beef at Portillo's in Chicago? Get good at remixing regional favorites, even if demand is small - it'll get attention. Could also partner with Goldbelly to ship plant-based versions of those favorites.
2. Get weird: Beyond Meat has done a nice job with their TikTok, you've got people dancing outside restaurants and making Beyond Pizza Rolls at home. Double down on finding interesting stories to tell, making funny things happen, and for Gods' sakes, please somebody get Beard Meets Food in the mix more often. He's mesmerizing.

🍫 3/ An Andes Mint Before You Go

At Tex-Mex restaurants in Dallas, it's very common to be presented with one Andes Mint per person when paying your tab at the end of a meal. I think it's a lovely touch after I've housed five bowls of tortilla chips, and this is my attempt each week to round this thing out the same way.

A quote of a quote for you that I heard last week from Anthony Scaramucci, and loved: