Applied Brand Science

Applied Brand Science We cut through brand bullsh*t with brand science. We show business leaders how to use brand science to build & grow thriving brands.

How do you ensure that shoppers feel that your premium product is worth the premium price?One great way is to give it pr...
09/03/2026

How do you ensure that shoppers feel that your premium product is worth the premium price?

One great way is to give it premium packaging: nice quality, thick stuff, hefty, box-in-a-box, etc.

Oddly, that's not always true for liquor.

A dataset of nearly 800 bottles showed almost zero correlation between price and bottle weight. A $250 single malt Scotch often weighs exactly the same as a $19 budget vodka. Same thin (or thick) glass.

Who gets it right? Johnny Walker.
+ Red ($30) is about 390g.
Feels light & affordable.
+ Blue ($265) is about 1200g.
Feels hefty & fancy.

We miss this because we obsess over rational messaging and forget that buyers use physical shortcuts to judge value.

Weight is a classic signal of quality. If you want to charge a premium, focus on your brand's "body language".

Big data is useless without big theory.Ok so that's an overstatement. Plenty of big data "fishing expeditions" reveal us...
09/02/2026

Big data is useless without big theory.

Ok so that's an overstatement. Plenty of big data "fishing expeditions" reveal useful things not visible to the naked eye.

But exabytes of 'big data' are clogging up corporate cloud accounts with nary an insight to be found.

This is where "big theory" comes in. If you have good, evidence-backed theories of how buyers choose, how brands compete, and how ads work, then you can actually USE that big data. (You can also decide which parts of it are useless and can be purged).

So get some Big Theory to go with that Big Data. (PS: I know a guy who can help....)

09/01/2026

Would you rather have a beautiful logo or a paying client?

Thomas Sloan and I got into this on the latest Cover Brand. Thomas is early in building his own marketing practice. And like most people starting from scratch, he'd been focused on dialing in his website.

I love marketing and branding. And I'm not a huge fan of doing sales. It's a slog. But getting your first couple of customers is probably more important than picking a brand color and a Wordpress template.

Your first clients probably aren't your bullseye clients. But they help you figure out your target by DOING, not by DAYDREAMING.

We discussed how to use sales as the research phase for your brand. You test it, in real time, with real people. Then you get to adjust and modify and test again.

Find the whole episode of Cover Brand wherever you pod.

09/01/2026

Got a business you're not sure needs its own brand? Its own URL?

Welcome to the world of "brand architecture", where you have to decide whether your businesses are their own brands or part of one big unhappy family. (Also known as the "Residence Inn by Marriott a Bonvoy Property" Pickle.)

I worked through this problem with my guest, Robert Jordan (). Should a spinoff site live under the main brand, or stand on its own?

Listen to the full episode of Cover Brand wherever you pod.

The big LLMs are trained on massive piles of public human data. But now that the internet is being flooded with AI-gener...
08/27/2026

The big LLMs are trained on massive piles of public human data. But now that the internet is being flooded with AI-generated content, these models are starting to train on their own output.

And a couple of new studies show the result: within just a few generations, the AI degrades into craptastic gobbledygook.

It eats its own tail until it reaches Craplandia.

And frankly, marketers are doing the same thing. We love a shortcut. So instead of doing the hard work of studying raw human behavior, we just train our marketing on other people's marketing. We copy templates, repeat "best practices," and mirror our competitors.

And just like the LLMs, the result is a slow drift into generic, forgettable gobbledygook about "Gen Z shops with its values."

If you want to see a brand's true values, look at how they treat their waiter.This, obvi, is a riff on a common phrase. ...
08/26/2026

If you want to see a brand's true values, look at how they treat their waiter.

This, obvi, is a riff on a common phrase. But it's just as true for brands.

So how does your brand treat business partners, suppliers, and vendors? How do you treat your staff? What do you do when you think nobody's looking?

Because THAT is what your brand IS, vs what you wish it was.

08/25/2026

Why do brands need "flagship stores" on Rodeo Drive or "duty-free boutiques" at Tokyo Haneda airport? Half the time, they're empty. Why have them at all?

Christian Helms (of the eponymous and brilliant Helms Workshop) and I got into this on the latest Cover Brand. Turns out it's evolutionary.

it's not actually about sales: it's about "signaling" to the world that you're legit. That you can hang with the big dogs. Imagine being a brand new luxury brand and NOT being on Rodeo Drive. You're a nobody.

These flagship stores are like peacock tails or elk antlers: they're symbols of health & vigor & status. Nature has been doing advertising since before humans walked on two legs.

Once you realize that a big chunk of marketing is SIGNALING, you see it everywhere: big audacious lobby fountains. Elaborate (or skimpy) packaging. Even the clothes you choose to wear to go in to work. It's functional, but it also signals a bunch of meaning you want to convey.

Find the whole episode of Cover Brand anywhere you pod.

There's a strong belief that nonprofits and charities operate in a different universe than consumer brands.We assume tha...
08/20/2026

There's a strong belief that nonprofits and charities operate in a different universe than consumer brands.

We assume that because the mission is noble and people give donations, that NAMI and other nonprofits are a totally different beast from Nike or Nordstrom.

But when researchers looked at five years of data for the English National Opera, they found that donors behave exactly like sneaker shoppers.

F"rinstance, they follow the exact same "banana curve"—a massive crowd of light, occasional supporters, and a tiny fraction of heavy, frequent donors.

And just like for Nordstrom, this means that if you want your organization to grow, you can't just chase the big donors, and you can't magically force all your light donors to become heavy ones.

You can't defy gravity. You just have to grow the whole banana.

If you run a restaurant, it doesn't matter how artfully the food is plated if the floors are sticky.Your guests sure won...
08/19/2026

If you run a restaurant, it doesn't matter how artfully the food is plated if the floors are sticky.

Your guests sure won't return for another meal. And more, they'll think the FOOD is bad, just because the FLOORS are sticky.

That's because our simple minds are LEAKY: the quality of the floor impacts how we taste the food. (Heck, this is why "vertical food"—nicely plated, fancy Michelin-star stuff—literally tastes better than if it was all mushed up on the plate.)

So what's the "sticky floor" in your business? Is there an unglamorous detail that might be quietly undoing your hard work?

Because every thing you do has the opportunity to either increase or decrease the perceived value of your brand.

08/18/2026

Would your mom actually be able to tell your last ad apart from your competitor's? Or your packaging? Or your latest Instagram post?

Usually not.

Most brands are saying the exact same thing, in the exact same tone, hoping the sameness helps them be relevant. And it often leads to becoming forgettable & interchangeable.

Laura Coblentz, an experienced strategist and marketer, is faced with this exact issue. Even though her brand is absolutely distinct.

She founded CARALINE SKINCARE with very clear and precise concepts: women over 50 should feel great in their own skin, not pining after younger versions of themselves. And healthy skin doesn’t need to be complicated.

But after incorporating best practices and category conventions because OBVIOUSLY they must be working, she worries her marketing looks just like everyone else's.

So we talked about an oft-overlooked thing: your marketing has two axes:
+ The x-axis of WHAT you say, and
+ They y-axis of HOW you say it.

Most brands skip the second one.

Find all the juicy insights wherever you pod.

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