My Daily Emails

Starbucks offers a useful warning about the difference between understanding how businesses work and knowing how to make one work. During Laxman Narasimhan’s 17 months running Starbucks, the company lost

It takes a ton of work to make a brand extension like this seem like it belongs. But it does for a reason. Maybe I live under a rock, but

One of IKEA’s weirdest brand quirks has become a game, and a pretty good lesson in how to turn confusion into engagement. I’ve joked before about IKEA’s remarkable ability to

The Sienna’s built-in FridgeBox is a cool feature. Toyota’s new ice cream collaboration makes you immediately know why you need one. A freezer in a minivan is pretty cool. Literally,

One bite-sized decision made Apple’s logo unmistakable. And decades of brand building packed it with meaning. During a branding discussion a few days ago, I recalled a story about the

Nearly a century after turning the sound of Rice Krispies into a brand asset, Kellogg’s commissioned a cereal bowl designed to amp it up. This is so gloriously unnecessary. Kellogg’s

New research shows that uncertainty makes a reward more desirable. Imagine two people each receive a $20 gift card. One is simply handed the card. The other spins a prize wheel

The World Cup gave Coca-Cola a sales surge, plus something that could keep paying off for years. I’m not a huge Coke drinker. Or even a massive soccer fan. Sorry.

New research suggests near-expiry discounts can accidentally make buyers worry about how other people will judge them. I’ve occasionally bought meat or some other perishable product with one of those

IKEA’s new Swedish billboard campaign exposes the messy reality behind a neat room, and turns storage into the hero. My family owns dozens and dozens of IKEA storage bins. That’s

Giving customers a way OUT can make them more willing to get IN. Tesla‘s new Cybercab has a physical Stop button mounted between the dome lights. Press it and the

The $499 CameraJet toothbrush is absurdly over-engineered. Dyson’s intense new ad makes that the whole point. When I first saw Dyson’s new CameraJet, I thought it looked sorta like a

The next smart-home breakthrough may be making the WHOLE house intelligent (and private) instead of adding another device to it. My house is reasonably smart. It also has no frigging

New research shows creating a physical version of a digital product can undermine the qualities that made the original desirable. Imagine Nike releases a virtual sneaker. It’s scarce. It changes

The $3,995 Lamborghini stroller shows what happens when a luxury brand transfers its status, design language and scarcity into a totally different product. Your kid could sport a Lamborghini roughly

A 30-year-old mapping brand made one choice at exactly the right moment, and suddenly it’s the #1 downloaded app. Remember MapQuest? I used it constantly in the strange little window

Amazon makes shopping absurdly easy. A new FTC lawsuit asks whether it made competing for visibility unnecessarily expensive. My household is a power-user of Amazon. We love local businesses and

New research suggests AI influencers become MORE persuasive when they stop pretending to be real people. AI influencers are popping up everywhere, from Instagram to TikTok, and brands are investing

Stress balls are ancient by toy-industry standards. NeeDoh shows what happens when an old need collides with social media, collectibility and a particularly stressed-out culture. Somewhere along the way, the

Beni suggests surveillance tech becomes easier to accept when its purpose, personality and boundaries are obvious. I’ve been writing a lot lately about cameras moving onto our bodies. Meta puts

Our increasingly connected lives are creating a new category of products designed to help us disconnect. I grew up when a phone was attached to the wall. That was the

Tech companies have discovered that cameras on your face become easier to normalize when they look less like surveillance equipment and more like fashion. For years, the biggest problem with

The Laughing Cow turned its most recognizable product into a vehicle, proving the package is the advertising. I saw this thing and immediately thought of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Exceptin’

Sometimes a tiny flaw makes a product more desirable than perfection. If you’re a coin collector, you already know this: The coins worth the most are often the ones that

Apple may be late to foldable phones, but watch its arrival reset what consumers expect to pay for one. Samsung launched its first Galaxy Fold in 2019. Apple sat back

Casio’s new F-B100W shows how innovation can mean adding exactly enough technology, then stopping. The Casio F-91W is one of those rare products that seems almost immune to progress. It

More (and longer) reviews don’t mean better customer insight. The opposite could be true. One of the biggest claims of AI is that it helps people express themselves more clearly.

With fun ideas like the Love Lid, Heinz turns a condiment into something people can talk about, personalize and play with. I seem to write about Heinz a lot, which is weird

The highest compliment for a brand is hearing customers repeat its positioning back to you. For 14 years, My wife and I drove a Volvo. One thing kept surprising us.

New research found that more immersive tech doesn’t always mean more buyers. Every few months, another company announces a bold new virtual reality shopping experience. The assumption is easy enough

The most revealing response to a rebrand isn’t outrage. It’s indifference. There was a time when Instagram changing its logo was front-page marketing news. People went on about it for

One wee packaging change might sell more peanut butter than a new logo ever could. Jif has unveiled its first major packaging redesign in more than 30 years. Some people

Lots of companies try to use anchoring. Very few execute it to perfection. In 1974, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published one of the most famous studies ever in behavioral economics. Participants watched

The marketing strategy that built one company could sink another. One of the most-read chapters in I Need That is called You’re Not Apple. The point wasn’t that startups shouldn’t admire Apple. Many

New Shopify data shows shoppers arriving through AI are growing fast, and converting WAY more than human ones. If you still think agentic shopping is something marketers can worry about

The best partnerships reinforce why your customers buy in the first place. My family and I love Disneyland. Like millions of others, we discovered that its famous tagline, “The Happiest Place

The right words can make customers start thinking, “That’s mine.” Most product descriptions follow a familiar formula. They explain WHAT a product does. Then list the key benefits. Maybe toss

The hardest way to revive a brand is by trying NOT to offend anyone. Under Armour needs younger customers. Like, desperately. Its North American sales have fallen again. Market share

The best brands find ways to insert themselves into the moments folks are ALREADY savouring. The world’s largest hot dog sculpture recently returned to New York’s Times Square. It stretches

Every year, about 30,000 new consumer products are introduced to the market, and various studies have estimated that as many as 95% ultimately fail.  Whenever I read that kind of statistic, I don’t

If AI is gonna represent your brand, it’d better do it believably. Artificial intelligence is becoming the new front line of customer interaction. Brands are giving AI assistants names, personalities

Removing tech anxiety could be the feature people want most. For years, consumer technology has competed by adding features. More cameras, sensors, AI and connectivity. Then DuckDuckGo released a pair of sunglasses

The hardest engineering challenge is earning the trust of everyone NOT wearing them. A few weeks ago, I wrote that the biggest barrier facing smart glasses isn’t battery life, display

What if the future of product ownership begins AFTER the purchase? Henry Ford worked to democratize the automobile. His goal was to make cars affordable enough that ordinary people could

IKEA found a cool way to remind us that products aren’t bought for what they are, but what they make possible. Price wars usually make numbers smaller. IKEA went and

Often the fastest path to growth is removing things. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was in deep, deep trouble. Apple’s product lineup had become a maze of

The era of “the campaign” is giving way to one of continuous experimentation, where AI creates endless variations and performance picks the winner. There are parts of marketing I really

One question can make a product start feeling like it already belongs to someone. One of the oldest (and most effective) techniques in the sales book is ridiculously simple. Instead

The strongest brands eventually stop introducing themselves. They simply remind you they’re there. Here’s a weird little family secret for ya: My daughters are in their early to mid-teen years.

New research suggests AI has a growing trust problem in marketing, with surprising revelations. Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela promised to be the future of brand influence. Perfect styling and visuals.