Brands can borrow traditions. At some point, though, the tradition becomes nothing more than packaging. I’m not a massive a traditionalist, and thin skin is a pretty reliable recipe for anguish these days. Still, I think we’re all allowed to draw a line somewhere. As a kid, I took Advent pretty seriously. The season has deep Christian meaning as preparation for Christmas, and early commercial Advent calendars in Germany helped children count down with Bible passages, poems and small gifts....
1 day ago • 1 min read
For some would-be 3D printing customers, the barrier was watching half the filament go into the trash. I’ve been coveting a multi-material 3D printer for a while. Then I watched videos of those machines producing piles of purge waste every time they changed colours or materials. Printer poop. Bins of it. That was enough to spook me off. The problem is inherent to single-nozzle multicolour systems. Whenever the printer switches filament, it has to push all the old material out, ’til the new...
2 days ago • 1 min read
A new study shows how a useful rule of thumb can become an expensive assumption when it starts deciding which customers deserve attention. I’ve often referred to the 80/20 rule (aka the Pareto Principle) in marketing and business because it feels right. A relatively small share of customers, decisions or effort DO often account for a disproportionate share of whatever outcome. I’ve usually meant that as a broad observation, with zero expectation that somebody counted everything precisely. Now...
3 days ago • 1 min read
Steve Jobs described a product-development problem nearly 20 years ago that I continue to see with clients all the time. In August 2007, CNET’s Molly Wood asked Steve Jobs whether Apple’s pricing and design meant it appealed mainly to an elite, and whether his goal was to overtake the PC market in share. Jobs answered with a different objective. Apple wanted to make the best computers it could, products its people would proudly recommend to family and friends, “at the lowest prices we can.”...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Starbucks joins a growing list of brands deliberately making creative effort front-and-centre. Seems I’ve stumbled into an accidental series. Apple Music vibrated mineral oil with sound to create its new identity. Levi’s and E.L.F. built painstaking stop-motion holiday campaigns. And then Prada went and hired veteran Disney animator John Pomeroy and a team of traditional artists to draw its new holiday world by hand. Now Starbucks is servin’ up its own version. For Perfect Harmony, artist...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Customers have been trained to see shipping as free. But someone still has to pay for the box, labour, truck and fuel, never mind the inevitable return trips. Amazon has done a plain remarkable job convincing us that products magically appear at our doors for FREE. To the point that we get irked if we ever have to pay to ship something we buy… or return. In Ryder’s 2026 ecommerce study, 62% of shoppers said free shipping influences purchase decisions, and 71% had abandoned carts because of...
6 days ago • 1 min read
An influencer can create appetite even while the path to your product is a mystery. An influencer tears into a magnificent sandwich, and suddenly your lunch plans change. You dab away the drool, open the caption to find the restaurant, scroll through the comments for an address… but no joy. By then, the leftovers in your fridge are looking pretty convenient. A new study in Digital Business surveys 449 social media users about food influencers. Platform user-friendliness had the largest direct...
7 days ago • 1 min read
AI is making polished imagery easier than ever. Levi’s and E.L.F. are betting folks will notice when humans do the hard part instead. As a kid, I was fascinated by stop-motion animation. Something like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer seemed insane once you grasped how it was made. The 1964 special used handmade four-inch puppets across 22 miniature sets, with 24 painstaking frames required for every second of animation. That’s like, 1,440 individual photos for every single minute. Now Levi’s...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Columbia’s canned puffers show how an unexpected setting can make a familiar product look considerably more necessary. Columbia has put puffer jackets in cans, which is one way to make a winter coat look like something you might need urgently. They’re stocked inside its “Don’t Panic Room,” a 40-foot converted shipping container the company is giving away. It comes with a kitchen, bathroom and bunk bed, plus a robotic dog called Rocky. (Presumably, Rocky won’t scarf down all your emergency...
9 days ago • 1 min read
