Four rebrands that grew revenue, from symptom to outcome, explained. Issue #169 Reader Rebranding Gets a Lot Easier When You Stop Thinking in Logos During a recent session with Mark Schaefer’s community, Matt Wilkinson, author of The Buyer in the Loop, asked a great question: "What's your favorite brand intervention you've done recently?" I couldn't answer immediately. Not because I don't love the work. Because there isn't one favorite. A handful have floored me well after the discovery...
11 days ago • 6 min read
Today's edition is completely different. Issue #168 Reader Ten questions. Ten minutes. One point each, no partial credit. Score yourself honestly, because nobody else is watching, and the market already knows your number. 1 THE AI TEST (20 seconds, do it before you read item 2). Want to see your brand exactly the way a buyer sees it? Open ChatGPT. Type: “What makes [your company] different from its competitors?” Read what comes back. Generic, wrong, or could describe three of your rivals?...
18 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #167 Reader Most executives use "retention" and "loyalty" like synonyms. On the contrary, they're opposites. And the strategies that produce one actively undermine the other. Here's the distinction in one line: Retention removes reasons to leave. Loyalty creates reasons to come back. Retention is built on predictability. Fewer errors, faster support, less friction. All good, all necessary, and none of it memorable. Nobody tells a story at dinner about a vendor who did exactly what the...
25 days ago • 1 min read
Issue #166 Reader The richest man on earth uses it to build rockets. A Nobel physicist used it to see what rooms full of experts kept missing. When NASA buried the Challenger explosion under jargon, he dropped a piece of the shuttle's rubber seal into a glass of ice water on live television. It went stiff. That was the entire explanation, and it fit in a glass of water. I've used this principle to generate $9.8 billion for clients. Same method. Three very different rooms. Here it is: if you...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Issue #165 Reader Every founder I talk to this year asks me the same thing. They want to know how their business survives AI. Then I tell them this: "You're staring at the wrong villain." AI is loud and easy to blame. But the thing actually draining your company is quiet, and it has one unmistakable symptom: customers choosing you on price. The moment you have to discount to close a deal, your value is already dead. It is not a product problem. You spent years sweating the details and...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Issue #164 Reader Since the launch of first iPhone in June 2007, Apple has sold over 3 billion devices worldwide. They spent two decades refining and making one of the most valuable products in human history, the slab of glass that made more money than most countries. 3 billion. And two days ago, they unveiled the iPhone Duo, and their CEO called it "the most transformational change to iPhone since the original." But it wasn't the phone that got me. It was what they did to the phone already...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Issue #163 Reader Most companies treat a rebrand like a fresh coat of paint or a new shade of lipstick. Then six months later, they wonder why nothing has changed. Sales are still sluggish. Customers still treat them like a commodity. And leadership wonders why their "six-figure makeover" did not move the needle. Here is the unvarnished truth: A logo change is not a rebrand. It is an expense unles you know this: Real rebranding is strategic surgery. It is the deliberate decision to change...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Issue #162 Reader Everyone is trying to keep up. With the changing ways to get discovered. With staying relevant. With winning the game of attention, which rewrites its rules every quarter while we're all still playing the last version. It's exhausting. And honestly, it's a trap. Because the brands actually winning right now aren't the ones chasing every new platform or algorithm shift. They're playing a simpler game. One that doesn't require keeping up with anything except what actually...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Issue #161 Reader Most companies aren't short on ideas. They're one fry short of making them turn heads, open eyes, and matter. So how does a $25 billion condiment company take a 150-year-old product and show virtually every industry what staying relevant actually looks like? By realizing something most companies miss: You don't always need to reinvent the product. You need to reinvent how people experience it. Heinz turned a French Fry box into a dipping tray. Turned a fictional Mad Men...
2 months ago • 1 min read