My Daily Emails

IKEA’s World Cup campaign turns national flags into shoppable product collections, showing how smart merchandising can transform cultural pride into participation. I have a love-hate relationship with IKEA. I curse the

Dior transformed one of the world’s most beloved children’s books into luxury fashion, proving nostalgia becomes remarkably powerful when paired with elite positioning. My wife and I read Eric Carle’s

Few campaigns have changed a brand’s image as completely as Old Spice Man. When I was a kid, Old Spice was literally Grandpa cologne. I can still picture the red bottle on

The feeling of ownership often begins way before ownership itself. The new Ferrari Luce has gotta be the most criticized car in the world right now. That’s impressive considering nobody has driven

The smartest brand collaborations remind us fondly of somebody we used to be. There are certain products that stay with us for life. For many people, LEGO is one of them. Crayola

The best sports marketing puts the product in the middle of the ritual. You might know what beer goggles are. Usually they kick in after a few drinks and make

One of the greatest ads in history succeeded by calling out the status quo. In 1959, Volkswagen ran what would become one of the most celebrated advertisements ever created. You’ve probably seen

KFC goes all-in on the brand asset customers fondly remember carrying home. When I was a kid, my family and I devoured bucket after bucket of KFC. We didn’t eat much

Window packaging does something more than show the product. It adds a sense of ownership before purchase. A new marketing study found that consumers consistently preferred products in transparent packaging

Often a product fails because the market isn’t into it. And sometimes because the timing is wrong. Few product failures have achieved the legendary status of Google Glass. It belongs in

Your brain decides where a product ranks before you even look at it. Over the past year, the trade war turned grocery shopping into something a little … different. A

Customers don’t build loyalty around free stuff nearly as much as brands THINK they do. Most loyalty programs still operate like corporate junk drawers. Collect enough points and eventually you

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