Pepperoni supremacy
30 minutes or it's free
Good morning, my spicy hot banana peppers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for Tuesday, July 18th, 2023. Thank you, as always, for hanging out with me. Let’s dig in:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: DOUGH ON THE RISE 🍕
Domino’s stock popped last week on news of a deal with the delivery apps that’ll let you order up a Hawaiian extra-large via Uber Eats. The surging stock price reminded me of when Domino’s pulled off the greatest pizza-related turnaround of all time.
Rewind to 2009. We were showing off our emo haircuts in selfies on Facebook, while Black Eyed Peas played on repeat. Back then, Domino’s was known for a pizza that would arrive at your front door fast… but taste like cardboard and ketchup.
When Domino’s management surveyed customers and heard their product was “the worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had”, they knew they had to fix it. Their strategy? An overhaul to their recipe that had them spending millions of dollars testing combinations and permutations of sauces, doughs, and cheeses. I’m gaining weight just thinking about this.
The extreme pizza makeover was followed by a brutally honest ad campaign to win back the folks who’d stopped ordering Domino’s the last time they hit the bong in their dorm room.
It worked: the message of a scrappy underdog trying to make things right, resonated with consumers. They pulled out of the corporate death spiral and boosted the company’s enterprise value by billions.
Something to think about the next time you dive into a slice of Philly Cheese Steak pizza (with gluten-free crust, of course). The American Eater wins again.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Hollywood actors and writers are on strike simultaneously. Until this gets resolved, our only available entertainment will be watching YouTube videos of apiarists relocating beehives. Scintillating.
Fintech deal volume is down by half this year, with analysts calling out the Silicon Valley Bank failure as “dampening risk appetite”. Understandable that VCs were traumatized by the heart-attack-inducing fear that millions of dollars in deposits evaporated to zilch overnight.
Buy vapid products from vapid people: TikTok is experimenting with adding shopping to its mind-numbing and possibly-soon-to-be-banned app.
Americans who make over six figures are spending more money at Dollar Tree and other discount stores. Name another one-stop shop where you can pick up glue sticks, pregnancy tests, and light bulbs, and be out less than ten bucks.
The Indian Space Research Organization is putting a rover on the moon, in a mission costing $75 million. Seems like a lot for a rock-collecting expedition.
That’s it for today my friends—see you tomorrow. Yours in capitalism, The Axe