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 move. Tilt the bottle. Tap near the “57.” And wait for the saucy slow-mo avalanche. Losers slapped the bottom and had it splurt out, overshooting their plate half the time. (I still wish I’d learned “the move” earlier in life.) Towards the end of a bottle, my mom had her own trick. She’d pour in a...
2 days ago • 1 min read
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 production vehicle. And predictably, the internet lost its sh*t. Some purists are raging that Ferrari would build an EV at all. Others are obsessed with the radical design created in collaboration with LoveFrom, the design firm led by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and legendary...
3 days ago • 2 min read
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.” On paper, maybe it sounds a bit silly. One of the most seriously iconic guitars in music history wrapped in retro 1980s arcade graphics, complete with Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde, and Pac-Dots running across the body and fretboard. But emotionally, the product makes tons...
4 days ago • 1 min read
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, sometimes even blindfolded, under the pretence of performing a simple task. Later on, they were faster to recognize those brands, more likely to recall them, and more likely to choose them, than objects they had seen but not touched. Nothing else changed. Just that innocuous touch. The explanation...
5 days ago • 1 min read
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 pretty extraordinary during its 125-year life, as an accidental side-effect of its popularity. It became embedded in what the future would look like. Think about the visual language of “the future” throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The...
6 days ago • 2 min read
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 a wobbling molded tower with fruit pieces trapped inside like prehistoric insects in amber. That thing would shimmer under the dining room lights while adults discussed it like an artistic creation. You can almost hear the old commercials in your head. This week Kraft Heinz announced...
7 days ago • 1 min read
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 preparing to defend an airfield, only to discover the enemy has already advanced far beyond it before your forces even arrive. Your strategy may have been magnificent, detailed, and perfectly original. It’s also now irrelevant. The real world changed faster than the plan allowed for....
8 days ago • 2 min read
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 single term of endearment from Gollum. “My Precious.” The way Gollum speaks to The Ring captures ownership, identity, and dependence in two words, expressed instinctively. That’s what great products do when they land properly (minus the creature’s disturbing croaky voice). They reshape language so customers move...
9 days ago • 1 min read
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 it’s not really the right word. This isn’t permission from your Dad (which you might adhere to selectively). Consumers aren’t waiting on literal approval from authority figures like teachers or lawmakers, except when it comes to regulated products. What they’re looking for in this context is social...
10 days ago • 1 min read
