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 something, you scale everything attached to it. Increase ad spend and you amplify any messaging gaps.Increase distribution and you multiply fulfillment strain.Increase sales volume and you magnify every defect, delay, and unclear instruction. If one in twenty units arrives broken or has a flaw, that feels acceptable at...
2 days ago • 1 min read
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 the Chicken Big Mac. On the surface, it looks like a creative limited-time promotion. Something new. Something fun, right? But check out the big picture and it starts to look like something else. Beef prices have hit record highs in recent weeks, driven by shrinking cattle herds, drought conditions, and rising...
3 days ago • 1 min read
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 may be even more dangerous for product makers: Normalcy bias. It’s the instinct to believe that because things are fine today, they will stay fine tomorrow. Hmmm, no flood last year. No break-ins on OUR street. No ransomware on our network. So why invest? Until something happens. After a cyberattack, companies care deeply about...
4 days ago • 1 min read
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. And growth, routinely projected at 50% annually, has slowed to low single digits. What’s going on here? It’s probably not a pricing issue. Tesla’s already introduced cheaper versions of the Model 3 and Model Y. And guess what? It didn’t move the needle. Which points to other...
5 days ago • 1 min read
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 as the key to a future state we really, really want. Not the actual thing we pay for and hold in our hands. It’s the version of ourselves that comes out the other side when we use that product. The answer to “Who will this help me become?” Probably happier. Fitter? More capable? Less stressed? Admired?...
6 days ago • 1 min read
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 a product was “AI-designed”? Across categories like perfumes and snacks, purchase intent collapsed. By as much as 28–29%. That’s enough to mean product failure. Your margins probably aren’t that big. Participants also perceived way less human involvement in those products. Which is where the...
7 days ago • 1 min read
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 gawd, how I’ve tried…) On paper, it IS hard to justify. There are plenty of cheaper monitors that claim UHD resolution, wide color, and pro performance. So I’ve bought them. And every time, they fell wa-aaay short. The difference isn’t any single spec. It’s the accumulation of details, on a product I spend hours daily staring...
8 days ago • 2 min read
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 a Formula 1 promotion in Europe. That could have been an awkward logistics problem. Instead, it became one of the biggest social media events of the year. The brand posted an official statement on Instagram. Within minutes, the comments filled with variations of the same joke. “Drivers needed a...
9 days ago • 1 min read
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 revealed a few hours ago, there you go. Most, like Matcha Mayo, will disappear by the next day. (Hopefully.) But sometimes, on rare occasions, the reaction is different. People say something surprising to the brand: “Hold on … I’d actually BUY that.” A few years ago, Nvidia joked about an AI assistant that would help gamers...
10 days ago • 1 min read
