🍫 $376 Million Dollar Mood Tax: How Snickers Turned Grumpiness Into Growth

If I had one hill I had to die on, it would be this: you can’t out-Snickers Snickers. 😅

Nobody will ever convince me there’s a better brand out there.

They’ve been playing a completely different game for over a decade. While most brands keep chasing flavors, tweaking their ads, and drafting seasonal gimmicks, Snickers quietly carved out their own emotional monopoly without anyone noticing…to the tune of $380 million in global sales.

They didn’t just go after the usual paid, organic, influencer stack…they built what can only be called a true moat.

And the moat wasn’t chocolate, caramel, or nougat.
The moat…was freaking crankiness. 🤣

The Mood Discount Nobody Saw Coming

Picture this: you shuffle up to a vending machine after a long, soul-sucking day at work.

You’re in a bad mood. 😡

The machine scans your face and notices those drawn-out frown lines, that eye twitch, the faint aura of “don’t talk to me.”

Suddenly the $2 Snickers bar you were about to buy to make yourself feel better…just went down in price.

Yes, this actually happened.

Snickers recently ran a campaign in Australia where vending machines used facial recognition to detect your mood and adjust price based on how you were feeling!!

Calm and happy? Cool, you get the regular price. 💵
Cranky and stressed? Awesome, you deserve a discount. 💸

The campaign featured a custom algorithm that was developed by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne that would analyze thousands of social media posts daily so it could track online sentiment. The algorithm would then translate the majority mood into candy bar prices that would dynamically change with each individual customer. Users could track prices and “lock in” a price by using an app to scan custom barcodes at their local grocery stores.

(This idea is freaking INSANE. 🤯)

It was a bold, slightly dystopian, and…if we’re honest, kind of hilarious campaign. It literally turned crankiness into currency, and made you feel like Snickers was on your side when you were at your worst.

But here’s the real kicker: Snickers didn’t invent dynamic pricing. Airlines, Uber, and Ticketmaster have been doing that for years. Snickers just stole a page out of their playbook, and turned it into something far more valuable...

They turned emotion into IP.

How Snickers Escaped the Candy Bar Hunger Games

Most candy brands fight in the same tiny arena. The only way to scale in this space (outside of partnerships) is really just to double down on product. Go sweeter. Healthier. Fancier packaging. Seasonal flavors nobody asked for (looking at you, pumpkin-spice KitKat).

It’s all just red ocean bloodsport….endless feature wars with basically no YOY survivors.

Snickers looked at that mess and said: hard pass, thanks.

Instead of competing on flavor or price, they attached themselves to something much more powerful…an emotion. And they staked their claim on (what I think) is honestly the most hilarious emotion ever: crankiness. 😅

That one line (launched with a slew of celebrities in 2010) took them out of the candy aisle and into the human psyche. Snickers didn’t have to fight Hershey’s or Twix anymore, they chose a much BIGGER enemy to fight…one that the larger TAM had serious beef with.

Guess who’s winning that battle?

The Blue Ocean of Crankiness

Here’s the unfair truth, for those of us who can’t wait to sink our teeth into this kind of creative marketing juice: when you own an emotion, you stop competing with products.

You compete solely on identity…which is almost impossible to take away from a brand once it’s owned.

Snickers’ blue ocean move wasn’t better nougat, it was anchoring themselves to the universal human experience of being a grouchy mess when you’re hungry.

And once they owned that, basically anything that aligned with the concept of “down with the grumpies 👎🏽 ” became fair game:

• Dynamic pricing machines → obvious extension, because crankiness = lower cost.

• NFL ads with hot-headed athletes → perfect fit, because “not yourself” moments happen under pressure.

• Global campaigns in dozens of languages → irrationality is universal, and only candy is the cure.

Owning the emotion gave them permission to expand into any creative ecosystem they wanted.

Why the Psychology Was the Moat

Let’s break down why this works, from a psychological level:

• Emotional Anchoring
  Once people link you to a specific feeling, they really don’t need much reminding to buy from you.
  
  The brain does the heavy lifting because (as B.J. Fogg would say), behavior is built on just three things: motivation, ability, and a prompt.
  
  If, over time, you’ve seen/enjoyed enough advertising from Snickers and started to associate candy with killing off your crankiness (the prompt), it’s not hard for the brain to get really motivated to find a snickers the next time it gets cranky.
  
  If it has the ability to source one (say, if you’re in a Target when you get cranky), before you even know what’s happening, you’re grabbing a snickers at the counter “because you deserve it”.
  
  This is behavioral priming at it’s finest. Psychology is crazy.
  

• Perceptual Monopoly
  Snickers doesn’t own “best candy bar” because it’s incredibly difficult to prove that…especially with millions of potential customers who all have their own preconceived ideas as to what “best” means.
  
  Instead, they spend millions of dollars a year to get into the “crankiness cure” space. It’s a shortcut nobody else can borrow, and nobody else has even tried to match.
  
  (That’s some serious branding, right there.)
  

• Reward Framing
  By making the price drop when you’re in a bad mood, they flip psychology on its head. With Snickers, you’re not being punished for your crankiness, you being rewarded for it 😅. This makes the product feel like a friend, not a transaction, which adds yet another layer of emotional connection.

This is what most marketers miss: the campaign wasn’t the genius part. The genius was the decade-long decision to sit the brand squarely on crankiness until nobody else could.

Other Emotional Monopolies

Snickers isn’t the only one who pulled this off. The biggest brands in the world don’t compete on features…they monopolize emotions:

• Nike = Motivation. Not shoes. Permission to see yourself as an athlete.

• De Beers = Love. Not diamonds. The cultural law that “real” love requires one.

• Starbucks = Ritual. Not lattes. The identity of being the kind of person who starts their day “right.”

• Apple = Belonging. Not phones. The relief of knowing your texts will stay blue.

• Glossier = Relatability. Not makeup. The sense of being in on the “cool-girl, no-makeup-makeup” secret.

• Liquid Death = Rebellion. Not water. The thrill of flipping off corporate benchmarks and boring hydration.

When you attach your product to an emotion, the category itself becomes irrelevant. You can expand into anything, and it still feels on-brand.

That’s the power of baking psychology into the foundation instead of sprinkling it on top like powdered sugar.

Imagine if other brands decided to get creative and develop campaigns like Snickers’ vending stunt:

• Uber: Discounts if your playlist screams “breakup mode.”

• Netflix: Extra $3 off if you’ve rewatched The Office for the 7th time this month. (Therapy still might be cheaper.)

• Sephora: 20% off if you walk in looking like you skipped moisturizer for a week.

This sounds absolutely absurd, but that’s the point. When you own the emotion, you can tease it, tax it, even joke about it…and it still feels on brand.

The Test You Can Run This Week

I know what you’re thinking: “Cool case study, but I don’t have a vending machine or a $50M ad budget.”

True. But you do have the ability to make emotion the lever in your marketing and that’s something you can test this week.

Here are three simple starting points:

1. Run an A/B Ad Test Framed Around Emotion, Not Product
   Instead of split-testing features (“New flavor! 10g protein!”), run two creatives that both sell the same SKU, but each attaches to a different emotional state.
   
   Example:

   • Version A: “For when you’re overwhelmed at work.”

   • Version B: “For when you’re celebrating a win.”
     Then track which state your audience most identifies with. That’s your moat-in-progress.
     

2. Rewrite a CRO Element to Anchor Emotion
   Swap a boring checkout headline (“Complete your order”) with something identity-driven.
   
   If you were Glossier, it could be: “You’re one step closer to your effortless look.” 
   If you’re HexClad, maybe: “This is how competence looks on your stovetop.” 
   
   Small swaps = big signals.
   

3. Build a Mini ‘Reward Framing’ Offer
   Snickers made the price drop when you were cranky. You could test:

   • A discount for people who engage with your “I’m stressed / I’m tired” survey question.

   • A bonus product if they buy within 24 hours of clicking your “overwhelmed” ad.
     You’re rewarding their current state, not punishing it. That creates instant emotional alignment.

👉 Your Challenge: Don’t test flavors. Don’t test price points. Test emotions. Pick one emotion your brand can credibly own and run one micro-experiment this week that frames your product as the cure.

Because once the psychology is baked in… the creativity becomes unlimited.

💡 Want more examples, playbooks, and real-time breakdowns of this strategy?

That’s exactly what we’re doing inside Tether Lab on Skool.

It’s where founders, marketers, and media buyers are swapping tests, sharing insights, and building creative systems that actually scale. If this newsletter gave you one “aha” moment, the community is basically 100x that, but on tap every week.

Come join us → Tether Lab on Skool

Until next week,

🦕 Sarah

🚨 Dex’s Trend Alert: 2,000% Spike…Fall Isn’t Here Yet. But Their Bitmoji Is Already Fall Shopping.

This week’s fastest-growing aesthetic isn’t happening in closets. It’s happening in avatars. “Fall Bitmoji outfits” just spiked ↑ 400% this week ↑ 2,000% year-over-year.

📈 The Signal:

The demographic breakdown (69% ages 18–24, 95% female) makes it clear: before they swap sneakers for boots IRL, they’re stress-testing identities in pixel form.

Bitmoji is the low-stakes sandbox for high-stakes social signaling.

→ Try on an aesthetic without buying it.
→ Get peer validation without risk.
→ Build confidence before the first PSL Instagram post hits the feed.

🧠 The Diagnosis:
This isn’t fashion “just for fun.” It’s identity prototyping at scale.

• Digital first, physical second
  For Gen Z, the outfit arc begins online. If it works on the avatar, it feels safer IRL.

• Fall ≠ weather. Fall = vibe.
  They’re not waiting for leaves to change. They’re aligning with seasonal identity markers (“cozy, warm, earthy”) as soon as the social script says go.

• The meta closet is emotional insurance.
  When uncertainty about “will I pull this off?” creeps in, a Bitmoji trial run provides a shortcut to confidence.

📌 How to capitalize (without giving “mall mannequin energy”):

🛍️ For DTC Brands
Don’t just sell sweaters. Sell the seasonal persona.
→ “Here’s the outfit arc your fall Bitmoji would approve of.”
→ Run ads that treat Bitmoji as the lookbook: “If your avatar would wear it, so should you.”

🎥 For Creators & Media Buyers
Lean into the simulation layer.
→ TikTok POV: “Designing my fall Bitmoji vs. actually buying the outfit.”
→ Ad angle: “If your avatar already nailed fall, don’t let your closet lag behind.”

🧠 For Strategists
The consumer journey isn’t linear anymore. It’s recursive.
Step 1: Visualize the identity (Bitmoji).
Step 2: Test the fit (social validation).
Step 3: Purchase the IRL version (retail).

If you’re only measuring purchase intent from cart data, you’re missing the real trigger: the confidence rehearsal that happens upstream.

💡 Pro Move:

Run a “Which Fall Aesthetic Are You?” generator that mirrors avatar logic. Tie outputs (Cottagecore Cozy, Urban Chic, Pumpkin Patch Core) to product bundles.

Until next time—
Stay curious and remember:
If they’re dressing the avatar for fall…
They’re just waiting for a brand to give them permission to buy it in real life.

– Dex 🍂🕵️‍♂️