My Daily Emails

When stories reboot, products resonate again too. My kids are huge Harry Potter fans. We have watched every film together. They have read every book. My youngest finished the entire million-plus-word series

What brand name to use depends what you’re asking the name to carry. Reader Josie from San Diego wrote after my note on misspellings and asked a fair question. “With

Robot vacuums have climbed to a new level. Literally. What happens when a category clears a major hurdle? I wrote a while back that robot vacuums don’t work in my

Big, proprietary AI tools is not what makes this so good. The part YOU can snag is. Heineken has been finding cool, smart ways to use generative AI layers in

Counterintuitive research shows early registration prompts can increase sales, even when fewer people browse. This one might surprise you. Every brand owner wants to hook the customer.Every digital marketer warns

Being trendily weird can send signals that weaken trust. I have come up with plenty of unconventional spellings in naming work, for a number of real reasons. Sometimes you need

What we imagined robots would be doing by now, and why they aren’t. If you grew up watching sci-fi like I did, you probably expected humanoid robots to be everywhere

Artwork orientation shapes our expectation before words ever get processed. In a series of four experiments, plus an analysis of 256 Amazon product listings, researchers found that diagonal text orientation

Efficiency doesn’t tend to slow consumption. It usually accelerates it. Jevons Paradox is a 19th-century idea with very modern consequences. It was first described in the 1860s by Scottish economist William

The near future will reward products that can act, not simply analyze. I read a recent Kellanova piece predicting that digital transformation is shifting from modernization to reinvention. That framing matters even

Product launches feel monumental from the inside, yet are almost invisible from the outside. Launching a product is one of the most exciting things you can do. Building toward the

Success is dependent on whether the buyer feels recognized, reduced … or even abused. Researchers call it the Starbucks Effect. Across five experiments, people showed dramatically stronger preference for bakeries,

The right pairing expands the room, sometimes in a really big way. I wrote a while back about how Dr Pepper has, in many places, grown into one of the most popular

Effort and scarcity do not reduce value, they create it. Nearly every Valentine’s Day, I buy my wife chocolates from the same place. There are excellent, locally made options two

The fastest way to LOSE a yes is to ask one more question. A 2025 Journal of Consumer Research paper looked at something many teams assume is harmless: the “confirm or change”

Demand doesn’t have to ask permission from category boundaries. I avoid Doritos for one simple (but important) reason: I love ‘em TOO much. They are chemically engineered pleasure, and I know exactly

New research shows bold color in food and drink is shaping how people connect, share, and find comfort. A new report from GNT Group, covered by Quality Assurance Mag, highlights a subtle

In 2026, beauty buyers want proof at the cellular level and permission to be visibly expressive again. Big hair and all. An interesting, clear pattern is emerging in beauty right

Stated intent is emotional. Commitment is situational. Multiple consumer studies in 2025 showed the same weird gap: People would talk about cutting back, spending less, being practical. Then they bought

Contrast can be a powerful device. Valentine’s Day always triggers plenty of brand choreography. Applebee’s brings back its Date Night Pass.Sam’s Club sells a perfectly engineered steak-in-a-box. All competent. And totally expected.

New research says the fastest way to earn trust after a mistake is to ask for less, not more. Returns are usually treated as damage control. Something went wrong. So

My best thinking doesn’t happen at my desk. Every morning I go for a 20-minute walk with one rule: no devices. Just walking and thinking. It is reliably when ideas

Tariffs have turned where you make things into a central part of the buying decision. Last year, tariff escalations dramatically changed how buyers read price. Shoppers went looking for explanations

Vision scales demos, touch scales reality. For years, robots have been learning to see. Cameras got better vision. Processing models got faster. Datasets got bigger. And still, real-world manipulation stayed

If you’re not sure what “agentic commerce” even means, you’re not behind, and that gap is exactly why adoption is slow. Let me start by explaining the term, because many

Speed feels good … until something goes off the rails real fast. You may have noticed something changing in big U.S. retailers without much fanfare.  Target and Walmart have been pulling back on

Too many returns can mean buyers aren’t getting the information they need. I worry about returns because they cost my clients real money. In shipping and restocking, plus waste, write-offs,

When a category disappears, it leaves behind memories. And new opportunity. I have piles of memories tied to frozen cylinders of juice. My first lemonade stand. Stirring and stirring in

A reader asked a smart question about whether seasonality still matters for products built around gifts or specific times of year. Shara from Austin wrote after my post Selling No Longer

Some physical products (and their customers) benefit from never feeling fully “sold.” I’ve worked with a company that sells a wellness hardware product with a subscription model … and the

Buyers aren’t idiots, and they know it. An appliance retailer near me ran ads reminding consumers that the expected life of a dishwasher is five years. A salesperson in a

Demand is now reacting in hours … not months. New retail data out of 2025 shows something uncomfortable for planners. Buying behavior has become a lot less seasonal and way

Going public has warped how we talk about growth. And that’s a problem. When brands like Peloton hit a ceiling, shareholders get pissed. The assumption is that growth should ALWAYS

Most new offerings don’t fail because they’re bad, but because they’re nowhere near good enough. In I Need That, I talk about the 10X Revelation: the jarring truth that an innovative product

Some part shortages fly under the radar. This one doesn’t. Over the last year or so, computer memory stopped behaving like a boring tech commodity. Prices spiked and lead times

Yesterday Amazon confirmed what buyers have been showing us for years: screens didn’t replace stores, but exposed what stores still do best. For a decade, “digital-first” was treated like destiny.

This is the flip side of the volatility I wrote about the other day. In that note, I talked about how retail demand no longer moves in seasons. It moves

This year’s show wasn’t focused on better screens or smarter apps. It was more about machines doing real work in human spaces. CES 2026 made something unmistakable: AI is stepping

If you’re scratching your head about why “Canada just made an EV deal with China,” you’re not alone. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a landmark trade agreement with China that

Vision needs oxygen, but it also needs gravity. Reader Terry from New York wrote me after my recent post Every Inventor Needs a Trusted Skeptic, and his question is a good one. “I

Uncertainty talks. Behavior decides. Lately, I keep hearing the same refrain, especially from Millennials. Cutting back. Tightening budgets. Buying less. Then I looked at the numbers. Planned holiday spending among

Could the most powerful signal a brand sends be the one it never planned? Reader Alex from Cleveland wrote me after my Knorr post and asked something intriguing: “You wrote about cooking

Buyers dislike higher prices, but they do expect them. This month, Dollar Tree stores in the U.S. began adding items in the $10 range. That would have been unthinkable not very long ago.

Pre-orders are becoming one of the safest ways to launch physical products. I have seen this pattern increase across categories. When given the option, many customers legitimately like to pre-order. Not begrudgingly

Belief builds products, and objectivity gets them bought. I recently worked with an inventor developing really cool new product. Let’s call it a compact water filtration system, to protect the

Mid-January is often when supply reality catches up with roadmaps. This time, things are tougher than ever. Late last year, a major constraint tightened across consumer hardware. Global memory shortages,

Even in 2026, necessity and value beat novelty way more often than we want to think. I see a contrarian signal hiding in plain sight right now. Despite all the

Proximity is becoming a feature, not an afterthought, and buyers appreciate the difference immediately. In my home city, a new carbon fiber manufacturing facility is about to start production. It

Loyalty can stall because the product works too well. My wife and I were talking yesterday about Peloton. We’ve had our bikes for six years now. They work great. No complaints.

Digital payments change buyer psychology long before logic shows up at the party. I’ve been a fan of wireless payments via Apple Watch for nearly a decade. I still love