My Daily Emails

Markets reward narrative shifts faster than customers ever could. Allbirds (the minimalist wool sneaker company) just announced it’s pivoting out of shoes and into AI infrastructure, with plans to rebrand as

External forces don’t help categories equally. Yesterday I wrote about rising fuel prices accelerating EV adoption. The exact same trigger is yielding a totally different outcome somewhere else. Luxury sales

Adoption curves can change faster from geopolitics than from product innovation. Tension around the Strait of Hormuz has pushed oil prices up at historic rates. That narrow passage carries a significant share

What feels obvious to you may be completely invisible to your customer. A while back, I wrote about Lay’s discovering something surprising. A large portion of people didn’t know Lay’s chips were

The first place your product is seen may no longer be a store, a search result, or an ad. I wrote recently about how Shopify products can now be discovered

It’s not a coincidence. Sadly, it’s the model. I wrote recently about ensh*ttification. Products start off great, pull you in, then gradually take value away while switching costs rise. YouTube is

Some distribution channels are designed to sell. Others, to SPREAD. I’m working with a client on a fun vending machine product. I won’t share details quite yet, but it has

Scaling revenue without fixing friction is how small flaws become massive liabilities. In Chapter 20 of I Need That, I make a point founders don’t like to hear. When you scale

When a core ingredient in an iconic product gets swapped out, it’s rarely a marketing experiment. Ya don’t put chicken in a Big Mac by accident. Lately, I’ve been seeing billboards for

If nothing bad has happened yet, people tend to assume it won’t. Here’s how to get around that. I’ve written about status quo biases before, but there’s a cousin that

Lower prices don’t often fix a product strategy problem. Tesla just reported first-quarter deliveries of about 358,000 vehicles. Way below expectations, again. Production continues to outpace sales by a wide margin.

Desire intensifies when the future suddenly feels reachable. In I Need That, I explain something I call the Coveted Condition™. We feel compelled to buy when we can clearly see a product

A few wrong words can reduce connection, as well as curiosity. A recent set of experiments by Yang and Tian tested something simple, with significant consequences: What happens when you TELL customers

The difference customers pay for is often the part competitors fail to replicate. In our business, several of us use the Apple Studio Display. I’ve tried not to. (Oh my

A strong brand turns an incident into global participation rather than embarrassing damage control. A massive shipment of KitKat bars goes missing ahead of Easter. Over 400,000 bars, 12 tonnes, tied to

What happens when a fake product reveals a real need? Every April 1, brands invent ridiculous products. If you got up wondering who would ever buy the Matcha Mayo Heinz

If you’re going to make a claim, please be sure it means something. A visit to the toothpaste aisle delivers a boatload of confident claims. “Strengthens enamel.”“24-hour cavity protection.”“Designed with

It’s not that LEGO “grew up.” Better: it learned how to package therapy, nostalgia, and display status, and sell it in a box. Trot through a toy aisle today and

The brand collaborations that explode online usually amplify something consumers already love. Walk through the snack aisle lately and you’ll see products that look like high-speed shopping cart crashes. Skippy peanut

The companies winning with AI aren’t bolting it on, but are already built for it. A recent set of predictions from Gartner points to something you probably don’t want to hear. AI

The new place where customers discover (and buy) products is a chat. Shopify had a HUGE week, but one update blows the others away. Your products can now be discovered

Most product language comes from inside the building, not from the folks buying it. And that hurts you. I see this constantly: A company walks me through their positioning. They

Some products win by subtracting features. The other day, my sister told me about a phone I had never heard of. Mudita. She discovered it through a YouTube video by

Most products fail because they tell instead of show. A client came to us a few years ago with a barbecue product and a polished, high-production video already produced. When

Longer daylight hours increase optimism, activity … and willingness to spend. The responses to my garage door email a couple days ago called out a big seasonal shift going on

The best product mashups multiply what people already love. A soda trend shows up online: People start mixing Sprite with iced tea. Not as a stunt, but because they love the combo.

Seasonal reactivation can begin triggering purchase intent way before a consumer shops. My garage door hasn’t opened much in several months. We park on the pad in winter. The patio

Whether a question improves performance depends less on creativity and more on the audience’s emotional state. A study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology by Henrik Hagtvedt tested a small but powerful shift: framing

Crocs found new success by flipping a mocked product into a signal of confident self-awareness. Most status products work really hard to impress you. They signal refinement, craftsmanship, or heritage.

In crowded categories, story is a bigger deal than substance. Mac and cheese hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. Pasta + cheese powder = comfort. Then Goodles shows up. Flavors

Overlooked niches often hide among collectors, enthusiasts, and underserved buyers. One of the most interesting parts of marketing physical products is discovering who actually buys. Often not who you predicted.

The latest spicy food trend is all about heightened experience + fire. Walk through the snack aisle or fast-food menu lately and you’ll notice something happening. Everything is getting hotter:

What if removing part of a product makes it more attractive? I bought a power shovel recently. The kind that runs on a removable battery system shared across several yard

Food waste is partly a behavioral issue and partly an informational one. Here’s a thought. Walk through most kitchens and you’ll find the same kinda thing. Half-used electrolyte powder; a

The fastest way to destroy a good product is to slowly make it worse to squeeze out more profit. A short video from the Norwegian Consumer Council has been circulating widely this

Misusing vision as an excuse to skip validation is how Steve Jobs wannabes burn cash. “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Followed by: “It’s

Speed is the new shelf advantage. But the nimblest are not only the ones using it. Smurfit Westrock (one of the world’s largest packaging and paper companies with deep visibility

Claiming perfection the wrong way can come off as spin. It feels safe and confident to say “100%.” 100% juice.100% satisfaction.100% natural. It sounds so strong. Totally certain. Absolute. Right?

Korean culture has moved from screens and stages into grocery aisles, turning snacks into cultural artifacts rather than just food. I’ve been noticing something new in grocery stores. An entire

While the ritual stays, the permission we give ourselves changes in different ways. Two recent Big Cola moves tell the same story. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola takes the most traditional format in

The math on using refills is finally getting the play it deserves. Refill formats have been around forever. Concentrates. Tabs. Subscription pouches. Inkjet tanks. Stainless-steel Keurig pods. They were almost

When the person promoting the product is putting on “the grimace,” the market has a field day. In case you’ve been napping, McDonald’s launched its new Big Arch burger in the United States

When quality perception has a hiccup, that’s a tasty opportunity for the competition. There’s a mini-revolt afoot in the candy aisle. Fans of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, including a grandson

The most serious product decision can be where your learning happens. Swiss watch exports are softening, and the headlines are full of depressing “downturn” stories. Yet Audemars Piguet, Rolex, Hermès, and others are

Gen Z’s return to old devices signals a desire for involvement and a sense of control. A Toronto Star story, echoing another by Sherwood News, reports something that would have

Truth, used properly, compounds. My 11-year-old heard a slogan on TV the other day and immediately objected. “What a terrible tagline.” She was talking about Buckley’s Mixture and its long-running line: “It

IKEA’s viral baby monkey moment is a gift. And playing it well was a delicate art. You’ve likely heard about this or seen the images: a baby macaque named Punch

The big shift here isn’t price or e-commerce capability. It’s buyer psychology. The average home in the U.S. now costs north of half a million bucks. On Amazon, I just added

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