My Daily Emails

Connecting comes from understanding who your customers actually are IRL, rather than who they dream of being for thirty seconds. If you’ve never shopped at Aldi, it’s one of Europe’s most

The strongest brand rivalries turn products into exciting cultural stories. A fascinating new marketing study proves something many of us see instinctively: consumers pay far more attention when brands publicly

A crafty marketing move is making people briefly say: “Wait… what???” Heinz and Heineken just launched one of the strangest li’l brand collaborations I’ve seen in … maybe ever. A six-pack of Heineken

What if the market changes faster than the customer you built your whole business around? As a Canadian, I remember feeling really proud of BlackBerry. Back when it was called Research In

Reddit may be the most powerful ad platform Shopify merchants ignore. That may be about to change. Last week Reddit rolled out its Shopify integration worldwide, making it much easier

Repetition, rhythm, and annoyingness can encode messages far deeper than we expect. Yesterday a commercial from 1979 popped into in my head. Not a tagline or fragment, but the full

Research shows social media outrage is more about posturing than purchasing. Every week, the internet declares a brand dead. The new Ferrari Luce? Ruined! The Jaguar rebrand … Catastrophic. The McDonald’s CEO taking a minuscule

Some products’ job is to make the entire business work better. I keep seeing posts claiming Costco loses $40-plus million dollars a year on its famous $4.99 rotisserie chickens. ($7.99 if you

The strongest marketing can make invisible problems feel emotionally real. Yesterday Apple launched a new privacy campaign called “Clingers,” and it’s a perfect example of how great brands simplify abstract

The day of the week you ask for reviews influences who responds and what kind of feedback you get. Ever heard of the Weekend Effect? It’s actually a thing. A

Studies show most people think they’re using AI responsibly while everyone else is outsourcing the real work. I read a research paper on the weekend about how people judge AI

The fastest way into a market is to redesign the habit around the product. (If you’ve got the wallet.) Coca-Cola just launched “Coke Sticks” in Southeast Asia: food-grade stainless steel chopsticks

New research shows that when online carts trigger guilt, customers never reach checkout. A new Journal of Consumer Research study looked at why people abandon online shopping carts, and the finding is

Packaging redesigns often reveal a deep question: what are customers REALLY attached to? I’ve been buying Bob’s Red Mill products for decades. And honestly, the old packaging had some issues. The bags

The best sponsorships manage to give us rituals we don’t want to miss out on. With the FIFA World Cup kicking off in just over a week, there’s a different

The smartest brand extensions can be the ones nobody saw coming. Could be a ”me” thing, but when I think of McDonald’s, I don’t immediately visualize elite athletic performance. That’s exactly

The strongest products create behaviors people fondly remember decades later. I have vivid memories of slapping the side of a glass Heinz ketchup bottle at the dinner table. Cool kids knew the

The biggest threat to an iconic brand is the deep fear of losing itself. Yesterday, after years of rumors, teases, leaks, and strategic drip-feeding, Ferrari finally unveiled the Luce, its first fully electric

The strongest product reinventions connect generations through a shared emotional memory. When Fender released its new Pac-Man Player II Telecaster last week, my first reaction was to chuckle. Then, “Of course this’ll sell.”

Touch doesn’t make a decision, but it sure can shape it. Researchers at Bocconi University ran a series of experiments that touches close to home. Participants were asked to hold familiar objects,

For decades, translucent plastic and glowing colors meant progress, optimism, and technological magic. Yesterday I wrote about Jell-O losing relevance as consumer tastes pushed away from artificiality. But the product accomplished something

Convenience products age horribly when the culture grows past them. When I was a kid, Jell-O had STATUS. Not luxury status. Futuristic status, man. At family gatherings, someone would inevitably arrive carrying

Sometimes the smartest strategy is recognizing the battlefield has already changed. In military planning there’s a term called O.B.E., which stands for “Overcome By Events.”* Imagine spending months planning and

Gollum reminds us that the strongest products change the way customers talk about them. Watching The Hobbit film series with my daughters, I thought about how much is packed into a

Mass adoption happens when enough people feel safe following the signal. I realized something when discussing my recent missive about wired earbuds coming back. I say “permission” a lot, but

When the economics flip, adoption becomes the default. China’s logistics sector is moving quickly toward electric heavy trucks, and the signal ain’t environmental positioning. It’s COST. Startups like Windrose Technology are building

Attention used to be delivered. Now you have to earn it, moment by moment. I wrote recently about how QVC built a powerhouse by creating and perfecting a format that still dominates

New research shows buying decisions change when people recognize a gap in their understanding. A fresh new study explores what happens when people look into one ethical aspect of a

The internet loves a “THIS will destroy Apple” story. Most misunderstand the product strategy involved. I’ve seen a wave of posts claiming that Apple is in deep, dark trouble because the European

When value happens can matter more than the value itself. A study on temporal framing looked at a familiar problem. Most folks say they care about the environment. Yet we

Reputation seldom moves markets the way you’d expect. The Ford Pinto is one of those products you name and it instantly triggers a reaction in people of a certain age. Rear-end collision.

Shake it off: not even Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner own their Instagram followers. A few days ago, Instagram carried out what some are calling the “Great Purge of 2026.”

Patents can protect an invention, but they rarely protect a category once it proves valuable. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he made a point of saying they had “patented the heck

The most effective product signals lately are the ones nobody paid to create. “The Devil Wears Prada” gave luxury fashion a cultural shortcut. You didn’t need to explain what Prada

The most powerful product moments happen when a brand shows up in something we really care about. During a lunar flyby for Artemis II, a jar of Nutella floated by, through the cabin

When timing matters, the best solution lets you experience it. Barilla partnered with Spotify to create playlists that match the cooking time of different pasta shapes. You boil the water, plip-plop-plunk in the

I love it when a gimmicky invention gets legs that just won’t quit. The BIC 4 Colours pen arrived in 1970, created by Marcel Bich at BIC, and on the surface it looked like a

Adoption often follows visibility more than product upgrades. Wired headphones were in decline for years, steadily replaced by wireless options that deliver convenience, status, and a cleaner aesthetic. Then something

When identity becomes the product, pricing can get out of hand. There’s a wild blip happening in who buys beauty now. Gen Z boys and ten-year-old girls are showing up

A legit Nigerian prince is helping bust counterfeiters. Vaseline has launched a campaign in Nigeria that takes one of the internet’s oldest tropes and turns it into something useful. The “Nigerian

We always overestimate tech in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. Big mistake. Amara’s Law shows up in pretty much every wave of innovation. We expect

People are still buying, but the emotional weight of spending keeps amping up. A fresh reading from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers shows sentiment dropping to 49.8 in April, the

The Boston clog shows how a product can expand usage without changing its core logic. The Birkenstock Boston clog keeps outperforming the sandal category, including in colder markets where open

If a product becomes part of the story, placement feels more like a character. My wife and daughters have been counting down to today’s release of The Devil Wears Prada

Great product strategy begins with the outcome you want to create. At Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 1997, Steve Jobs was confronted by a belligerent developer in a super-awkward moment that could have

AI is changing how people learn stuff, but not necessarily how they buy. I came across an intriguing new study by researchers at Harvard Business School and Stanford examining exactly

Obsolete products don’t disappear if they solve a different kind of need. Luxury watch sales have been climbing again. Rolex, along with brands like Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet, continues to post strong

Performance improves when visuals attract and text resolves. Look at the Apple AirPods Pro 3 page and the balance is immediate. A clean product visual (that morphs into an animation loop on

The thing that matters is what gets meaningfully better for the customer. Last month, JD.com launched Joybuy across markets including the U.K. and Germany, stepping directly into competition with Amazon, Temu, and AliExpress. At first glance, it

Under cost pressure, spending gets reallocated toward faster emotional returns. On Wednesday L’Oréal reported 6.7% like-for-like sales growth, beating expectations as demand held strong across the U.S., Europe, and emerging