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PepsiCo to Cut Prices for Doritos and Other Snacks; Disney Picks D’Amaro as Its Next CEO; Super Bowl Site Watches the Parties 40 Miles Away
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Good morning. Today, consumer trends catch up with higher snack prices; a succession victory emphasizes the rise of Disney’s experiences business; and Santa Clara, Calif., tries to ignore all those Super Bowl parties in San Francisco.
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New bags will tout the reduced prices on PepsiCo snacks. PepsiCo.
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PepsiCo is moving to reduce prices by as much as 15% on snacks including Lay’s, Doritos and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Laura Cooper and Jesse Newman report in an exclusive this morning for The Wall Street Journal.
The decision follows complaints from shoppers (and an activist investor) about price hikes, particularly in the snack aisles where food makers thought brand loyalty would give them leverage.
But consumer trends weakened PepsiCo’s hand with the pricing gun.
Winds were blowing against highly processed, salty snacks with weak macro profiles even before MAHA went to Washington.
PepsiCo in response ran a Super Bowl ad last year about Lay’s “real potatoes grown on family farms” and later added a “Made with real potatoes” banner to the chips’ bags.
This Sunday PepsiCo will bring those repackaged Lay’s to the Super Bowl in a commercial that a teaser suggests will continue the wholesome theme.
Viewers will perhaps also get a glimpse of snack bags’ new promise following the price cut: “Same size, new low price.”
There’s no sign yet that sibling brand Doritos, with its much longer ingredient list, will also get to repeat its appearance in last year’s game.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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With AI, Advertising Advances Toward Greater Precision and Personalization
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Leaders from Walmart Connect, Intuit Credit Karma, and Meta share insights on how advanced measurement tactics and agentic AI assistants are reshaping the advertising landscape. Read More
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Three Things I’m Watching Today
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Josh D’Amaro will succeed Bob Iger to become the ninth leader of Disney in its 102-year history, taking over a sprawling empire and a high-profile public role. Ricardo Moreira/Disney/Getty Images
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What follows Disney’s pick: Disney this morning chose its theme-parks and cruise-ships boss Josh D’Amaro to succeed Bob Iger as CEO instead of entertainment co-Chairman Dana Walden, who some considered a better choice because of her decades working closely with creative talent.
D’Amaro’s rise mirrors the ascent of the experiences business at the company, but now it’ll be up to him to spell out a new growth plan for the whole enterprise. Some Disney rivals will meanwhile try to convince Walden to jump ship.
Social pressure: Spain’s prime minister said the country would ban social-media access for children under 16, adding momentum to an idea taking hold in pockets around the world. Australia decided last year that some platforms had to ban anyone under the age of 16 from holding an account, Malaysia has plans to adopt the same restrictions and New Zealand has floated similar measures.
While many marketers say they don’t target children on social media, there could be ripple effects from this kind of age-gating—starting with the increased use of VPNs to disguise consumer data.
More Super Bowl ad drops: It’s prime time for marketers to release any full Super Bowl commercials they want to be seen before the game.
This week has already seen ad reveals from Oakley Meta, Grubhub, Ring, Kinder Bueno and Xfinity on Monday, plus Svedka’s mostly-AI ad and the Super Bowl debut from software firm Rippling just this morning.
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Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara has the game, but most of the sanctioned events leading up to it are in San Francisco. Kirby Lee/Imagn Images/Reuters
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The Super Bowl takes place this Sunday at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., but city residents and businesses weren’t surprised when they were awarded one sanctioned event and San Francisco got the Pro Bowl Games, a Super Bowl innovation summit, an NFL awards show and concerts by performers including Sting, Post Malone, The Killers, Benson Boone and Green Day.
It’s happened before, Jim Carlton writes for The Journal: When the Super Bowl took place at Levi’s in 2016, 57% of the estimated $240 million in related spending flowed to San Francisco, 12% went to San Jose and 7% wound up in Santa Clara, a study later found.
San Francisco has a much bigger convention center and many more hotel rooms, so Santa Clara isn’t taking the snubs too personally.
Mayor Matt Mahan instead helped raise $5 million from businesses to field a competing roster of events, including a three-day block party called Super Fest, watch parties, drone shows and sold-out outdoor performances by the R&B singer Kehlani and DJ Dom Dolla.
“We can complain all we want, but I think we have approached this year differently,” Mahan said.
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“I want my customers to know that there’s a brand that’s got their backs—that’s screaming from the tree tops that what they’re doing is worthy and deserves the attention that athletes, doctors or lawyers get.”
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— Eric Girouard, founder and CEO at Brunt Workwear. Workwear is among the faster growing markets in apparel and footwear, as more Gen Z and millennial Americans are pursuing jobs in construction, on factory floors and repairing cars and trucks.
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The community where marketing leaders drop the corporate speak and share what’s actually happening. The WSJ CMO Council unites leaders from the world’s most influential brands including Adobe, Audi, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Taco Bell, P&G and Verizon.
Tap into the connections and WSJ intelligence that move careers forward and separate the prepared from the scrambling.
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A French probe into Elon Musk’s X has grown from investigating the platform’s effect on politics to examining its responsibility for sexualized deepfake images. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
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French authorities raided the Paris office of Elon Musk’s X and summoned the billionaire for a “voluntary interview,” a major escalation of European regulators’ battles with the social-media platform. [WSJ]
A major YouTuber’s self-made, self-financed sci-fi horror film blew past “Melania” at the box office this past weekend and rivaled a new Disney release for No. 1. [WSJ]
The skincare brand Supergoop hired former Peloton CMO Lauren Weinberg as chief marketing officer. [Adweek]
Cotton industry trade group Cotton Inc. named Bev Sylvester to the newly created post of CMO. [Sourcing Journal]
The parent of Saks Fifth Avenue plans to wind down its partnership with Amazon to focus on shoring up its own businesses after filing for bankruptcy protection last month. [WSJ]
McDonald’s is giving away an undisclosed number of caviar-and-chicken nugget kits in a Valentine’s Day promotion inspired by social media. [Food & Wine]
The Interactive Advertising Bureau will seek a sponsor for legislation to protect online publishers from AI scraping. [Axios]
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