CPG Survival Guide to the Trump Administration

Foreign. Welcome, everybody, to 2025 and this edition of CPG Insiders. I'm your host, Mark Young, with my co host, Justin Gerard. Happy 2025, buddy. And announcement that CPG Insiders is now the number two podcast. Is that in the world or in America for CPG companies?

I believe that was in America, but I'll have to take a look at it again. I believe it was in America, though. So it's still all right.

Still America.

I mean, people listen to us. I, I don't know what happened.

Number two, we've gotta. I wonder how far it will take us to unseat number one.

Oh, well, maybe that's a challenge to all of our listeners here. If you love us, help us get to number one, please.

That's a good point. Because, you know, why not go for number one? Why do we. We don't want to. We don't want to be P2. Let's be P1. Put it into race terms. Well, we're going to talk about 2025. It seems like an appropriate time to do this.

I'd say so.

So things have changed. We have a new administration coming in. It is, it is what, July 2nd or January 2nd?

January.

January 2nd. Yeah. I've already jumped ahead as we record this new administration comes in January 20th.

Yep.

There's going to be some changes. Let's start talking about some of the changes going to be in regulation.

Yes.

So the Trump administration, whether you like that administration or not, we're just going to talk about the realities. So this is not here to say, yay, Republicans won, Democrats lost. We're talking about what's going to happen. Here's what we can look at. We're going to see deregulation in many areas. The Trump administration is working diligently already to cut regulations, to cut red tape, to make things move faster. Okay, so what will this look like? Well, it may. Let me back up here. I've had some time to, to chat with Bobby Kennedy, to chat with some of the people, and there's some good stuff that Bobby's out to do. One, he wants to. He's a big fan of supplements, nutrition, vitamins. Bobby takes, you know, like 80 vitamins a day. His vitamin bag looks like mine. And he uses testosterone replacement. And, and by the way, have you ever seen him with a shirt off?

No, I have not.

There are, there's videos of him working out. The guy's 70 years old and he's ripped.

Nice.

I mean, he's a beast.

Yeah.

And think about that. He's he's done that after, you know, decades of, you know, in his early life using heroin.

Right. Yeah.

So, I mean, he's done a miraculous job of regaining his own health, but at any rate, his goal. And another friend of ours who's been on my other podcast, Cali Means, and Callie's kind of become the right hand guy there, is focused on making America healthy again. So you know what the MAGA movement is? This is actually called the Maha movement.

Okay, got it.

Make America healthy again. So Bobby is out to get rid of dyes. So as an example, we use food coloring in some of our food here that isn't legal anywhere in Europe. So the first thing I would say to our listeners is, if you're developing new products or reformulating your products, get ahead of it.

Mm.

Because you're going to see an FDA and an ftc, an FDA and a USDA that is going to start coming after useless ingredients.

Yep.

And we understand that some of these ingredients are used to enhance the appearance of the product, but that's not how it works. So expect to see your Fruity Pebbles probably not be as colorful in the near future.

Well, I can't handle that, Mark.

Well, it is a problem when the Fruit Loops aren't looking like the Fruit Loops, but.

So please tell Bobby to leave the Fruit Loops alone. You can go after everything else. Just. Yeah, Fruit Loops alone.

Get off my Fruit Loops. So anyways, don't make. Don't make ingredients with useless products with useless ingredients.

Right. Because all you're going to end up doing is when these things come into play, you're going to set yourself completely backwards. You're probably going to break products that you can't sell anymore at. Your cogs are going to be all out of whack already. So just. It's a great point.

And you have to understand that he's got the bully pulpit right now.

Yeah.

So we're going to hear more conversations about being healthy this year, which is great. Which means. Right. Which means this is where to lean in with your products. If your product is food based, if your product is nutritional, if your product is over the counter, these are the places to start leaning in with, how are you making America healthier with your product Right now, the second thing Bobby's going to go after is he's going to go after the high fructose corn syrup. Now, the reality is it is a cheap sweetener.

Yep.

But although we do want to reduce the use of sugar in America drastically, actually, cane sugar is better for you. Than high fructose corn syrup, because at least sugar is a natural element.

Right, Right.

And corn syrup isn't. So expect to see that start going away.

Interesting.

Expect the food pyramid to start getting flipped upside down on its head.

What do you mean by that?

Well, if you really look at the way the government food pyramid is, it's made from the 1950s and it's, it's a garbage model of how to eat. Yeah. So expect to see that get redesigned. Expect to see changes to bridge cards and food stamps.

What kind of changes?

Well, one of the things that the Trump administration is focused on is why are we letting people use bridge cards to go buy cases of, of soda pop? And why, you know, why are we using them to buy chips and Twinkies? And I kind of get where they're going. If you have made a decision in your life, and let me back that up, some people have fallen on hard times and need real help.

Absolutely.

There are other people who make a decision to live off government help. That's a decision for some people.

Yep.

If you're going to live off of the taxpayer's money, it would make sense for the government to require you to use that money to buy healthier things, which will reduce the nation's health care costs. So if you're living off the government, let's not double the government's costs by feeding you bad food where you end up sick in the hospital on Medicaid.

Okay.

So this is going to be a part of this where we're going to see, we're going to see restrictions on what you can buy with those cards. So, so why would I say this is important? Well, go to, let's say you're in Walmart, where you go to Walmart shopping basket. You can see the method of payment to buy your product.

Yeah.

So if you're selling food, go look at the method of payment and see what percentage of your business is coming in through bridge cards.

Yeah.

Now to your ingredients. Is what you're selling on those bridge cards going to match up with where the administration's going? Or do you need to make some changes now with either different SKUs or reformulating your current SKU to make sure that you're not left on the cutting room floor when, you know, when things change, there's going to be some musical chairs and there's going to be some people with no chairs?

Well, yeah, I mean, the other, the other thought that comes to my mind now is because macro, you know, as far as the, the health of our nation of the people of our nation. I support all of these things. You know, we live this way. Like this is exactly how we live now. And I want to see more people live this way. I mean, we just went through a holiday season, you know, I just had a New Year's Eve party, had fun with my friends, but then we all did that, you know, and I look around and I'm seeing what the food's there and I'm going, oh my Lord. Oh my gosh, we're eating this. Right. And, and again, you do the special occasions, whatever the case may be. Right. But, but that has become habitual in a lot of people's lives. This is, this is normal food. Right. And that's not food.

So.

But where my mind now goes as far as it relates to our listeners is what are, what is going to be the impact of the marketplace and the competitive environment because of these things? Right. As you've already talked about, if dyes go away, corn syrup goes away, well, that means that there are a lot of products out there that are now their costs are going to increase to try to manufacture their products. Right. So does that mean one, all of the sudden the price elasticity in certain categories is going to dramatically shift and now consumers may be open to what I would call traditionally more premium products. Why? Because the pricing is not going to be as drastic anymore. So does that for a lot of, you know, especially the products that we work with every day that are considered more premium in nature, both on the, their product themselves and the price now does that shift? And from a high level category performance, how does that change things just at the store shelf to start? Right. Because this is, this is going to be a huge impact on consumers. I mean, this is, this is going to be huge if we can't control the cost now, especially when we were already talking about, you know, the economic environment and how difficult that has been for a lot of, a lot of customers and a lot of people in our country. So that's kind of where my mind's actually going is what's that impact going to look like?

Also keep in mind, not only is going to be this push for healthier food, but, but some of these changes are not just coming from the Republican side.

Sure.

So in Michigan, where we happen to be located, the governor just signed a bill a couple days ago requiring all eggs sold in Michigan to be cage free.

Oh, wow.

This means that even the poorest people in Michigan are going to have to buy the premium expensive eggs now.

Right.

So if you happen as an example, this is just an example. If you happen to be a manufacturer of low cost eggs, you just lost the state of Michigan completely.

Yeah.

From, from your market basket, you, you no longer can ship eggs to 9 million people.

It's wild.

But it's also going to increase struggling families, going to increase their cost of being able to have eggs.

Right.

Right. Which means they're either going to buy less or they're going to give up something else.

Right.

And this wasn't in this particular case where the, where Kennedy is focused on the health of the nation. In the Michigan case, this was about, they were focused on the health of chickens.

Okay.

Because they thought it was too mean for the chickens not to be out walking around. I mean, I'm not a chicken. I don't know. I don't, you know, I can imagine being cramped up as a chicken is probably not fun, not great.

Yeah, I can agree with that. So I, I guess, you know, thinking about this as far as what is, could potentially be coming and impact on consumers, I guess I want to flip it around and ask you this, Mark. Is that what I'm also seeing here now again is, is really the opportunity and for all those brands are already ahead of this.

Yep.

The, the, you know, the field has, it's been a, it's now a level playing field for you. Right. And the other thing that is going to happen, as you know, is if you're making all of these changes right now, you are forcing individuals to make better decisions. One, you're making it happen. But the other opportunity for brands is now you can stay at the forefront of the education piece of it. Because that's, I mean, let's be honest, Mark, who likes to be told what to do?

Right.

No one. Right.

Yeah. And this is not, the approach is not so much telling people what to do. It is removing.

Yeah.

Bad things from the nation's food supply.

You are, you are essentially, you are enforcing discipline in certain regard.

You know, he's, he's also going to be going after the use of hormones. He's going to be going after the use of glyphosate.

Yeah.

Which is being used on so many things today. Hang on now, here's, here's where we get an advantage is for companies that are making niche products right now, their niche products could become mainstream products.

Exactly.

Because you could find that, hey, I've got the, you know, all natural, no food dye, you know, blah, blah, blah, snack food. And all of a sudden I'm in. I could be the leader in the Category.

Right. And is this going to create, for lack of a better term, a short term period of what I'll call recalls. Therefore, consumers are going to shelves and, well, this is all that's left because all that's allowed to be here right now. We haven't made the transition. Right.

Yeah, I don't think it'll get recalls, but I think you could see some shortages in some areas.

Okay, so that could also.

That could happen.

Right. I mean, I always think about, like how Zarbies, you know, really was built.

Right. Great example, because they pulled off dextromethora fan, I think it was. And then for kids cough syrup. So the chemical and kids cough syrup all got banned and the only thing left on the shelf was Zarby's because it was made out of honey and lemon.

Right. So.

So you went to the store and you needed a cough syrup for your kid. There was only one thing sitting there, one thing left.

Right.

Yep.

So how many, you know, just, you know, wild card situations are going to happen for some of these companies?

The opportunities are out there. Now, here's another change. Bobby Kennedy is very focused on ending broadcast television advertising for pharmaceutical companies.

You've mentioned this.

This is a big deal.

Yeah.

And I tell you the reason. The, the reason behind. First off, there's only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise on tv, and that's here in France.

Okay.

Now, where are most of the drug companies located here? France. Headquartered here in France and Germany.

Yeah.

So. So here's the reason. The reason. And by the way, you didn't. Pharmaceutical companies didn't used to be able to advertise on tv as well as lawyers didn't used to be able to advertise on tv.

When did that change happen? Remember?

Oh, I'd have to really look it up, but probably 80s, 90s somewhere back then. But it didn't used to be a thing. And here's where the conversation is. There's a couple things. One, the drug company goes out and tells you about their new drug. The patient goes in to see the doctor says, I want to have the new Alphabet soup drug. The doctor's in a hurry. The doctor has a total of 6 minutes to see a patient. It's easier for the doctor to write you the script and say, all right, let's hear. Here it is. Let me see what happens. Than it is for the doctor to actually sit down and analyze why you think you need this drug and explain to you what the drug does and what the side effects could Be and to look at your other medications and decide if it's the right thing. So we're driving people into a lot of pharmaceuticals by the patient demanding it. Now, I'm all for patients being in charge of their own health care.

Yes.

The problem is, as someone who spends a lot of time in healthcare, you can't understand what a new drug does in 30 seconds.

No, no.

And most people don't have the willingness or even the capacity to go read about all the research and the studies on the drug and come to an informed conclusion.

Well, most people don't have a even semblance of knowledge of their own health and in their own biology to even layer on that.

No, I agree. Most people know the apps on their cell phone better than they know their own body.

Right. That's not to be insulting because it is complex. But there's no way. There's just no way.

Right. So the concern here is people are going to the doctors, they're asking for Alphabet drugs. They're getting them. A lot of these drugs. In fact, all of the drugs that are on TV are all patented drugs. Nobody advertises an off patent drug.

Well, no, because you can't make any.

Money, which means these are very expensive drugs. Yep. Which again, drives up the cost of health care. The other concern on these drugs, Justin, is have you, and I'm going to ask you a question. Have you paid attention to the drugs that are being advertised? Oh.

My TV consumption is pretty much limited to, you know, football these days. But what I would say is, I mean, the biggest things that I see are pretty much DLP ones of all shapes.

GOP1s are big, you know, but, but let me tell you what's happening with a lot of these drugs. A lot of the drugs that are being advertised are pharmaceuticals to help you deal with the side effects of your current pharmaceuticals.

Interesting. Yeah, I did. See, I can't remember the drug's name, but there was one that's, you know, if you're on an antidepressant, take this too, you know.

Correct.

Yeah.

Or you have asthma and you use an asthma inhaler. Well, add this to your asthma inhaler.

So.

So the problem is. Well, the problem is you're getting patients to take drugs to relieve these symptoms from their drugs.

Right.

Instead of working with the doctor to adjust the core medication better.

Right.

Because your problem, the reason you're having the side effect from your SSRI is maybe the dose on your SSRI is wrong or maybe you have acute depression, which means you should be weaned off the ssri.

Now be on it.

So keep in mind, many, many drugs that are on the market are not meant to be on for life.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They're meant to get you over a problem, but we're ending up with these lifetime prescriptions, and then we're taking more drugs to offset the drugs that we shouldn't probably be on in the first place. So that's the other reason. Now, how does this affect our clients? Well, I'll tell you where it affects our clients. Drug companies are buying anywhere from 10 to 30% of the television inventory, and they pay premium rates for it. So I suspect that this is going to change the television landscape, making television advertising more lucrative and more affordable for smaller brands.

Yeah. I mean, how could it not?

I mean, you take 20 or 30% of the market out of television, there's going to be a lot of unsold television inventory.

Absolutely. And when you look at the latest statistics for all of our listeners here, and we're going to do a show on this topic specifically. But just to start off, we also need to understand that the latest research that I've seen shows that the Average individual gets 69 hours per week of media. Okay. Total. Right. Okay. Over 32 hours of that is consumed on a television.

Right. It's a big screen. So don't believe all this nonsense when people tell you, oh, nobody watches television anymore. No, everybody's watching television.

Yes.

Where they get the signal is, is what's changed.

That is what's changed. And we'll, we'll get into that later, but it just tells you the impact of what you're talking about here potentially for, for all brands. Right?

Absolutely. Now, what else is going to change? Well, I'm going to tell you what else is going to change. And this isn't necessarily driven by. Well, first off, let's go back to that GOP one thing for a minute. A new poll came out and said that 38% of, I believe it was millennials and Gen Z's said they were going to use a GOP one for 20, 25. So we have, we have made healthy eating and exercise and diet passe and old school. Because now I'm just going to take an injection.

I mean, I guess if you measure that against the rate of obesity within that generation, maybe close, but that's still, it's, it's a jump start. Right, that's agreed.

But what else does it do? It, it reduces the amount of food people's eating.

Yeah. That's fair. That's a great point.

So if you're a food brand, right, and everybody's shooting up semaglutide, right. A lot of people going to be eating a lot less.

A lot less.

So how do you adjust for that? And also keep in mind that people on GOP1s tend to under consume protein, under consume fiber.

Yes, yes, we do.

Okay, so are there opportunities here, Are there opportunities to make GLP1 friendly meals, GLP1 friendly frozen dinners, GOP1 user supplements. Interesting, because these people will have unique needs.

Absolutely. Or at least educate towards that user base. Right. Understand that's a major user base, even if you can't make the claim.

And then another change that is happening, and this isn't government driven, but it is going to be something to face in 2025. And that is the brick and mortar retailers are getting Amazon. And what I mean by that is simply this. The majority of people think of Amazon as a giant retailer, a giant marketplace. It's actually a giant ad campaign. It's a giant ad platform. Selling stuff is just a secondary process to selling advertising.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, think about where Amazon's getting their revenue.

Correct?

Yeah.

So Amazon's revenue isn't coming from selling you something, it's coming from selling advertising.

Yes.

Well, all the brick and mortars have decided we need to do that too.

Yeah, that's true.

So now you're going to see all the brick and mortars that are going to shift their model away from the margin on the product being our income and you're going to shift that model to selling advertising to you, the CPG brand. So, and as many of you who have been on Amazon have realized by time, you pay your Amazon fee and you pay all your advertising fee. Amazon's making the majority of the money.

Yeah, yeah. There's not much left for you.

Well, this is the direction that the brick and mortars are looking. And I think it's a mistake.

Yeah, 100%. Well, we already started to see it last year. Right. How many brands do we know that we spoke with that if you were even going to think about talking to Walmart, they said, be on Walmart.com be selling this much, be spending this much, or there's no reason for us to have a discussion. It didn't matter what you were doing.

Right. And here's the problem with it. The majority of these retailers, and we're going to do another show on this, the majority of the retailers are trying to get in the business of selling you Digital advertising. The reason is because they're copying Amazon. Amazon is selling you digital ads, which makes perfect sense because Amazon is a digital retailer.

Right.

So for me to sell you an ad while you're on your phone on Amazon makes all the sense in the world because you're on Amazon, you're in the store. Yeah. So your intention is to click a button and have something delivered. Now the retailers are trying to sell digital advertising. The problem is they're trying to use the digital advertising to drive people into a brick and mortar store. And it doesn't work.

Nope. No. And all it does now is create the barrier a lot higher from a cost perspective for a lot of brands, people to get into their stores. Because the cost of doing business with a brick and mortar retailer is higher, because more upfront costs in general, more inventory costs, all those things than is with Amazon, because all you can do is ship to their DCs and whenever they reorder, you order. Right. So all they're going to be doing now is trying to, you know, squeeze a lot of these brands, which if you go back to the conversation we just had about some of the regulations that are coming up, the regulations, even just in the health space that you talked about, what they actually do is they create more opportunity for these smaller and challenger brands that are creating innovation. But if the retailers then keep pushing this and push out these products, they're. They're going to be destroying their bottom line.

Yeah. And it can create a death spiral for the retail because we've already seen it.

Yeah.

One of the major drug chains keeps increasing the prices at retail as they lose more volume to Amazon. They keep increasing the retail prices at retail, trying to make up the loss of profit by increasing the margins on the people that are left, which keeps driving more and more people to go buy it on Amazon.

Yep.

So what do you need to do as a CPG brand? What you need to do is you need to have an off platform ad campaign that is so robust and is working so well that you will be one of the brands that can say no to the massive spending in the brick and mortars digital world. So if you're. So let me give you an example. If you're number one, two, three or four in the category, nobody's cutting you because you're not going to buy the digital ads.

Right.

Because you're the one that's moving. You're the volume.

Exactly.

So nobody is squeezing Coca Cola or Pepsi or lay's potato chips to load up, do they buy some? Yeah. They buy some, they have some in.

Their budget, of course.

But where's the majority of their budget? The majority of their budget is not in a bunch of digital advertising inside the store.

100%. And again, it also comes back to the other factors which we'll get into. But, but since we're on this topic is you have to make sure, and this is what we tell every brand. You must have that sales story so refined that when you walk into that retail you can show them exactly how you're going to make them more money than whatever's happening right now. Understanding your customer, that's having a good history of sales, that's having a great marketing plan and support plan, that shows us how I'm going to drive it. The same is understanding the competitive landscape of that category of that retailer, understanding their initiatives, understanding what their constraints are and being able to walk in there and say, look, you need me and this is why you need me.

And keep in mind, Justin, that a lot of the CPG brands have helped create this problem.

Oh, well, yeah.

And the reason they've helped create the problem is because the buyers have gotten used to a lot of brands, especially small to mid sized brands coming in. Oh, we're going to do this ad campaign and that ad campaign and we're going to do this and spend that. And they don't do it.

Yeah, they're lying.

So this is a way for the retailers to know you're spending because you're spending it with me. So now I know you're spending. You need to go in and prove your spending. If they know you're spending. If you walk in with an ad campaign, here's our media plan, here's our buy. Buy. Here's proof of what we bought last year. Yeah, here's our sales. If you walk in and you can validate that you're, you know, you can walk in and say, and here's the other thing. The buyers are consumers also.

Yeah.

If the, if the buyer watches Fox News and sees you on Fox News every night, sees your product, he knows you're spending.

Of course.

And buyers have the same FOMO issue as everybody else. The fear of missing out. And I know you're on Fox News every day and I want to have you on my shelf because I know Fox News buyers come to my store and buy stuff or whatever the network, whatever it is. But you need to be able to go in there and prove you're doing something, what happens. And you've seen this with so many clients, what happens is the Client gets wrapped up in these in store marketing price rollbacks, bogos, digital ad campaigns, retail sponsorships, and understand it is designed to make the retailer money first and maybe sell some product second.

Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean it's. And, and, and as we talk about before. Right. With, with many of our clients and other shows, the key to long term success is, is not about being able to get that consumer to buy your product when it's $3 off you. It's about creating that trust, that trust in the brand and the performance and creating those long term anchors that say, this is worth my money no matter what the price is. And you can't do that by constantly saying, hey, I'm cheap now. Oh, okay, great. Because that's just an impulse buy.

And yeah. The reality is when you keep doing bogos and rollbacks, you train the customer to wait for the bogo and the rollback.

Exactly, Exactly.

Oh, this ketchup's not. All right. This ketchup's not on rollback. I'll wait till next week and see if there's a two for one next week.

And in most categories, I mean, we talk about a lot. This, this is, this is really prevalent in food. Right. But if you're looking at other categories where the replenishment cycle isn't as frequent, you're killing your business. You're killing it. There's no way.

Well, you and I have seen this. You, we get a client and the client does a bogo or the client does a tpr temporary price rollback. Sales go up, the POS numbers go up, and then as soon as it ends, the following month goes down correspondingly. Because you just pulled business forward.

Right, Exactly.

All you did is you got people to, to stock up. Now, stocking up, is it 100% bad?

No.

Because sometimes stocking up can increase usage. Mm. Sometimes stocking up stops them from switching brands next month.

It's a good point.

But you, but for the most part, you're buying next. You're pulling next month's business into this month.

Absolutely. And we've talked about this too, right? When you talk about, just on a more macro view of being successful in a retailer the next year, when you go into that buyer meeting and let's say that you surpassed your sales goals, they're not going to look at you and celebrate how great you are. They're going to say, great. So now you need to be selling X more this year than last year.

And now you need to buy more.

Marketing from all of a sudden you're now you got to do more BOGOs and more TPRs. It's not sustainable. It's not.

And it doesn't brand build nothing.

Nope. It doesn't. It can't.

If you're normally 699 and in this week you're 399, it doesn't build my relationship with your brand. It just puts you in a position to drive trial. And maybe I'll buy your brand and like it.

Right.

But it doesn't help me build any relationship with your brand or know why your brand's better or know why I should be loyal to your brand or know what your brand stands for. Because I just bought you because you're half off.

Right. You price conditioned me to say that this price point is worth it, even if I have a great experience. Oh, great. That was a good use of $4 for the boss to sell sauce instead of, you know, six or seven, whatever the case may be. But when it goes six to seven, I'll just wait till it's four bucks again. That's what happens.

So overall, this could be. This. This could be an interesting year. It could be a really good year. It could have some bumps along the way. The new administration coming in has lifted the spirits of the nation. Overall, America's feeling more positive about 2025 than they felt about 2024.

It's good.

Because people, even people who are not Trump supporters, have. There's a lot of people that still have confidence that he knows how to deal with an economy better.

Right.

And certainly people got pretty burned out on the rampant inflation that we've dealt with for the past four years. All that being said, I don't believe this administration is just going to walk in and turn a switch, and all of a sudden food prices are going to come down and gas prices are going to go down to $2. It's a little more complex than that.

Yeah. It's going to take time.

And we also have to keep in mind that we have the new Doge Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy and with Elon Musk. Now, I think these are two incredibly smart guys who I think can do a lot of. Do a lot of good because there's no question that government is grossly over bloated and spending way too much money. The good side of this operation, if their goal is to cut $2 trillion out of the budget, that $2 trillion is the way to bring down inflation because you reduce government spending. However, you pull $2 trillion out of the economy, spending and you've also now just created the potential for some job losses and for some short term pain. So think about it. We're talking about, you know, we have president who wants to eliminate the Department of Education.

Right.

But it's, I don't know that you're going to move them all to another government department.

No.

You're going to get rid of some people.

Yeah.

Even when we look at the job numbers for 2024, the Biden administration does a great job of promoting. We've made more jobs than anybody. First of most of those jobs were people returning to work from COVID But if you take the numbers and extract the monthly numbers and extract the numbers that are government jobs, most months the numbers are negative.

Oh, interesting.

So the majority of job growth has been government employment.

Interesting. Well, I know he's had a massive push with IRS and all these other different things.

So now when you have a new administration coming in who's probably in many, in many ways probably going to do somewhat of a hiring freeze, that job growth is going to take a big hit.

Yeah, yeah. Which means there'll be less job initial money going back into the economy. That's what happens when you go.

Right. And then finally, what else we're going to see in 2025? Well, it doesn't look like we're going to see any major interest cuts.

Okay.

So maybe we get another 25 basis points, maybe 50 basis points. But we're probably, but we're probably not going to see 2% mortgages and 3% mortgages.

I don't know if we'll ever see that.

So this affects housing, this affects house cost of living. This also affects the cost of money for carrying your receivables as a CPG brand.

Yeah.

So you need to make sure that that's factored into your operating costs. Right. Because you're going to, you're going to have to, you know, pay prime plus two, prime plus four.

Yeah.

For your money to carry those receivables.

Yeah.

So cash flow is going to be something you're going to want to pay attention to.

Yeah.

Well, I think we'll wrap it up here. Any last thoughts you had, Justin?

No, I mean, what I guess as far as last thoughts, just wrapping things up, I mean, it seems like again, 2025, there's going to be a lot of change. There are. And just like any time of change, look for the opportunities. Right. Stay ahead of these things. Stay educated, stay up to date. But remember that there's always opportunity during this time with the Shift in health. How can that relate to your brand? How does that relate to your consumer? Right. How are, how are their lives going to be impacted? And there's, and there's going to be a lot of things that are going to be happening that you can take advantage of. And what I would say is right now just understand that as you've kind of talked about, right. You may looking at your business and seeing costs increasing. Well, everyone's going through that, right? Every brand is going through the same thing. So. And during those times, and just like we've always talked about, make sure that you focus on who is my brand, what's the value that I'm creating for what consumer? Right. This is the most important thing. Know who you're talking to, understand them and understand how you create the most value possible. So that during those moments of sacrifice, you're never one of them because you've created such a relationship and such a connection that they're saying, I can't cut this. There's no way. This is, this stays in here. Right. So how do you do that? Got to do the work and understand who you are and who your customer is. It's going to be critical. Critical.

Now, as we said earlier, we're the number two podcast in the category. So help us get the number one by subscribing to the podcast, giving us a five star review wherever you get your podcast or on YouTube. And why do we do this podcast? Well, we do love the CPG industry, we want to help people, but let's be practical. This podcast is sponsored and paid for by Jekyll and Hyde Labs.

Yep.

And Jekyll, Hyde Labs, we are the premier advertising agency for challenger consumer products.

Yes.

If you, if you want your brand to excel in 2025, we are the engine to do this. According to Harvard, there are 45,000 new products introduced every year and less than 15% of them are on the market 24 months later.

That's wild.

Of the 15% on any given year, 80 to 90% of those are SKU expansions. Meaning I just came up with my new giant size or I just came up with my new strawberry flavored.

Right.

They're not new products. So when you look at your chance of launching a new product in America, your odds of success is really like 0.0003%.

Yeah, it's pretty wild.

Our odds of success on any given year is 90 to 100% part of this because we know how to do it. And two, I'm going to be very honest with you, we usually pass on the products that we know will not make it. You probably saw an email from me last night for a product, for a company that contacted us with a product and I could just answer back, this product's never going to make it. And I'm assuming you agree with me that product's never going to be in retail.

Agreed. Wholeheartedly.

So stop spending money on it.

Yep. And that's, that's what you're gonna. I mean, Mark, we always talk about this. Anytime, anytime an entrepreneur, brand owner comes to us and, and, and wants to learn how they can be successful, we're going to be transparent. We're going to be honest about everything that we're seeing. If we feel you are ready to go now, we cannot wait to be that accelerant for growth. If you're not, we're going to tell you exactly what to do. And even if that means you probably need to just get out of this, this is the right thing to do. This is. See as you talk about those numbers, right. The CPG industry is the most exciting and most dangerous industry to be in. It is.

It's where fortunes are built.

They are.

I mean, it's where, it's where we see somebody come up with a ten dollar tube of something and six years later they get $300 million as a buyout.

Right, right. But it's not an easy road. And the ones that succeed, as you know, as we talked about, are truly passionate about what they're doing and they have the fortitude and the discipline to really go through the journey. And that's not.

But that road to riches is littered with corpses of dead brains.

Yes, yes, it is, it is.

It absolutely is.

So working with, you know, with people like us, we. The greatest value that we bring in times is we mitigating all those risks. Right. Knowing where the landmines are and telling you. Yep, don't step there.

That's right. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's just what you shouldn't do. Anyways, folks, that's it for today. We want to wish you a happy new year and we'll be with you for all of 2025. Working our way to the number one spot. We'll see you on the next episode of CPG Insiders. Thanks everybody. If you're looking to greatly increase sales on your CPG product, don't hesitate to contact us at Jekyll and Hyde Advertising and Marketing. By the way, the only advertising agency with a guaranteed result, just go to jekyllheidagency.com, or feel free to give us a call at 800542. Sam.