Peeps: back with a vengeance 🐥

Indestructible. Possibly edible.

View in Browser     Stock markets are closed tomorrow for Good Friday. So I say we all take a cue from Wall Street and get the weekend started early. (And a quick programming note: I'll be out next week but tune in for a special guest writer you already know and love...)  By Allison Morrow 🚫 WHEN BRANDS BOMB   Perhaps the most remarkable lesson from Volkswagen's thoroughly bungled April Fools gag is this: At some level, it is possible for a joke to be so unfunny that it's a literal crime.     LET'S REWIND Volkswagen's US subsidiary caused an uproar earlier this week when it accidentally published a press release saying it was changing its name to "Voltswagen." It was a misfire of a planned April Fools joke intended to underscore VW's commitment to electric vehicles. Hence, volt. (See? Not funny.)  Instead of immediately clearing up the matter, the company doubled down on the fake news and gave no indication the rebrand was a joke. No wink, no nudge. Analysts on Wall Street started to release updated guidance about the carmaker's strategic vision. Volkswagen shares in Frankfurt shot up more than 4%.    "This is not the sort of thing that a responsible global company should be doing," said Charles Whitehead, Myron C. Taylor Alumni Professor of Business Law at Cornell Law School.    (Especially, we might add, a global company that infamously lied to investors about its diesel emissions in a massive scandal just a few years ago. )    THE BIGGER PROBLEM By being so painfully unfunny, VW may have misled investors. And you don't need an MBA to know that the Securities and Exchange Commission really hates when companies do that. My colleague Clare Duffy spoke to experts about what a potential SEC inquiry could look like.   NUMBER OF THE DAY 4.7 million The FBI conducted a record 4.7 million background checks for firearm purchases in March — a 36% increase from February. Guns flew off store shelves after mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, which coincided with a pair of gun-control bills passed by the House of Representatives. Although background checks do not directly correlate to sales, they serve as an indication of Americans' volume of firearm purchases.  💰 RICH PEOPLE   Sales of Bentleys and Lamborghinis are booming because rich people are bored.    HERE'S THE DEAL   Sales of cars costing more than $80,000 were almost double in the fourth quarter than what they had been the year before.    For cars priced at more than $100,000, sales in the US were up 63%.   And what about regular-people car sales? In the US, they were down 10% last year compared with 2019.     WHAT'S HAPPENING? The short answer: A booming stock market and no vacations.    The longer answer: Thanks to a boatload of easy money from the Fed over the past year, stocks have been on a tear, creating even more wealth for people who were already wealthy.      And rather than booking a private jet to go party in Ibiza or Tulum or wherever, the 30-something tech executives are buying cars, according to Tyson Jominy, vice president for data analytics at J.D. Power. "[T]he rich Millennial tech employee in Austin is now the archetype," he said.    CNN Business' Peter Valdes-Dapena has all the details.   QUOTE OF THE DAY If a TikTok video encourages someone to start planning and investing for the future, that's a win. — Lisa Kramer, professor of finance at the University of Toronto   Talking about money can be taboo in some circles. But not on TikTok. Personal finance TikTok has become a wildly popular destination for Gen Z'ers and millennials looking for money advice, writes CNN Business' Jazmin Goodwin. 🐤 BACK WITH A VENGEANCE   Peeps, the allegedly indestructible, allegedly edible Easter candy staple, are making up for lost time after several months on hiatus.      There's Peeps Pepsi. A Peeps latte from 7-Eleven. A Peeps smoothie from QuickCheck. Peeps cereal.    Don't like the taste of Peeps (because you're not a child)? There are Peeps charms. A Peeps makeup palette. A Peeps plush bunny at Build-A-Bear.    WHY? Easter accounts for about 75% of Peeps sales each year, so the company that makes them, Just Born, is going big on partnerships to make this season count. The brand missed out on Halloween and Christmas because of Covid-related production shutdowns.    BUT LIKE, WHY?  There's just something about Peeps. Love 'em or hate 'em, it's hard not to be charmed by those bright, sugar-dusted bird blobs lined up uniformly in their little cellophane coop. No, you don't want to eat them, but you must have them.   "It's hard to be too upset by Peeps," a spokesperson for Just Born says.   CNN Business' Danielle Wiener-Bronner has more on what the company boasts is the "number one non-chocolate Easter candy." (That "non-chocolate" detail is doing a lot of work there, Peeps.)   WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?   📈 Fired up: The S&P 500 topped 4,000 for the first time ever as investors kicked off the second quarter with optimism about the coronavirus recovery.    🔧 'Decades overdue': The transportation industry is cheering Biden's infrastructure plan.   💼 Who's hiring: Jobs in these industries are already back to pre-pandemic levels. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to subscribe. All CNN Newsletters  |  Manage Profile Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company 1 Cnn Center NW Atlanta, GA 30303 unsubscribe

Share This :

Editor