Z-Files

Credit: Goldin Auctions Would you pay $88,000 for a Cheeto?Through the mysteries of food production, a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto came out in the shape of the character Charizard from Pokémon.…

This comes via Melissa Jacobs, a friend of the Olson Zaltman family.Even packaging and product form can reshape a consumer experience. Do you like parmesan cheese?  Sure, but do you…

Thanks to OZ’s Tim Bradley for sharing the backstory of the Michelin Guide and its star ratings for restaurants.  Michelin put some insightful marketing thinking behind this innovation 100+ years ago.Around 1900,…

Our friends at the semiotics firm Axis Mundi have published a thought-provoking commentary, “Exiting the Friend Zone,” about brands’ failed quests for consumer intimacy.They begin with a look at some historically successful…

An often overlooked cue in package design is typography. A recent study in the Journal of Marketing suggests that for certain brands, old-timey typefaces can be quite powerful.The authors focus…

Credit: William White / Unsplash This column (“How Radical Ideas Go Mainstream”) about how feminism became broadly accepted by the US in the 1970s and ‘80s has implications not just…

Erik Mclean / Unsplash Thanks to OZ’s Kacie Burton for sharing an instructive piece of strategic insight about Nintendo.  (This comes from Alex M H Smith’s Basic Arts newsletter, which…

Credit: Unsplash / Bucography The alcohol industry is facing some significant challenges, which WARC discusses in its latest industry snapshot.  People just aren’t drinking like they used to, at least in…

Popular culture, by definition, is always changing. But when it comes to the holidays, everything is frozen in time. The songs and artists are the same, year after year.  People watch…

Just when we thought it was dead, the mall is making a comeback.Thank you, Gen Z. An IPSOS study earlier this year revealed that Gen Z is much more likely than other…

Starface is a perfect example of the say-do gap in marketing. Had you asked consumers, “Do you want to wear brightly colored stars on your face to highlight your pimples,”…