FORWARD THINKING
When Everything is High-Protein, Nothing Is
Part two of my Expo West thoughts. When every brand adds protein, protein stops being a point of difference. This piece looks at the protein arms race, why it leads...
When Did a Waffle Stop Being Enough?
At Expo West 2026 I overheard a conversation that perfectly captured the state of the food industry. A man looked at a waffle and asked, “But what does it do?”...
Natural Is Just a Claim. Regenerative Is an Advantage.
Natural used to mean something. Now it's everywhere — and when everyone claims purity, the signal collapses. The brands winning the next phase of food growth aren't being less bad....
The “Milk” War Is Over. Now the Brand War Begins.
If your brand relies on the word "milk" to explain what it is, you don't have a brand — you have a category description with a logo on it. The...
Backseat Branding
Most brand decisions aren't decisions at all. They're motions dressed up as choices—optimised for safety, backed by dashboards, defended by data. In the age of AI and short-term optimisation, the...
When Natural Is No Longer Enough
When the government mandates natural and PepsiCo removes synthetic dyes, what separates challenger brands? Not ingredients. Story. Regenerative agriculture offers food brands what provenance offers luxury: a credential competitors can't...
Social Proof (Taylor’s Version): How a 3-Second Moment Sold Out a Wine
A bottle appears on screen for seconds. No close-up. No #ad. Just a glass of Sancerre in a Taylor Swift documentary. And then it sells out. The product didn't win...
Jesse Cole’s $100m Brand Decision
I'd never heard of the Savannah Bananas. But twenty minutes into listening to Jesse Cole speak, I realised I was hearing one of the clearest modern examples of brand-first leadership...
Why Distinctiveness (Not Novelty) Wins in an AI World
We're entering an era where novelty is cheap. Ideas are faster, execution is easier, content is endless. AI can generate concepts, visuals, and campaigns in seconds. And yet brands are...
