In 2001, Casella Wines decided to enter the American market. They were a wine producer from Australia. And CEO John Casella decided that it was time to expand into a bigger market. But the US wine market was as competitive as it gets. Hundreds of wine brands from France, Spain, and California filled the shelves…
Category: How Brands Win
The Peak-End Effect: How To Make a Lasting Impression (Even After Failures)
The peak-end effect is when our minds use the peaks and ends of experiences to build a memory. Let’s see how it works with a story from Disneyland. And we’ll finish with other examples (a hotel chain and KFC) to understand how to use it in business. Joe was in Paris with his girlfriend. After…
Jobs-To-Be-Done: How to Discover The Real Insights That Increase Sales
About 10 years ago, McDonald’s marketing team received an objective from their management. Increase milkshake sales. How hard could it be? Especially for a sophisticated marketing team with an unlimited budget. So they created a focus group that fit the milkshake buyer persona, based on data of millions of customers. And made interviews with them…
The Priming Effect: How Expectations Become Reality
In 1999, a group of Asian-American women students stepped into a room for a math test. But before the test, they had to fill out a form. The first group had questions on gender-related issues. Like what’s their gender, opinions about co-ed dorms, etc. The second group’s questions were about ethnicity. Like what their ethnicity…
Bias For Action: Why Coca-Cola’s “New Coke” Failed (And How To Avoid It)
Bias for action is a mental error that causes us to act even when inaction is the best decision. First, let’s see how Coca-Cola executives made that mistake. And then how to avoid it to make better decisions. In the 80s, Pepsi started its famous ad campaign on TV. The Pepsi Challenge. Pepsi made consumers…
The Law Of Reciprocity: Vito Corleone’s Favorite Tool to Build Influence
In 1985, Ethiopia was in a humanitarian crisis. Civil war, poverty, famine… Ethiopians dealt with many calamities at the same time. The suffering was immense. As these disasters were ongoing, newspapers covered a story about a five thousand dollars aid between Mexico and Ethiopia. But one detail surprised everybody. The side that sent the aid…
Flywheel Effect: How Businesses Go From Good To Great
What is the flywheel effect? The Flywheel Effect is a framework that shows how businesses become great by building a virtuous cycle. Jim Collins defined it in his book Good to Great after he researched patterns of successful companies. In this article, you’ll see how Jeff Bezos’s meeting with Collins shaped Amazon’s fate. And how…
How To Think In Funnels (And Achieve The Best Possible Outcomes)
Thinking in funnels is a mental model that breaks down your goals into different stages. So you can improve the conversion at each stage to achieve the best possible outcomes. We’ll start with a marketing story from the 1890s to understand how it was born. And finish with how to think in funnels. Let’s go.…
The Law of Diminishing Returns: How To Do More With Less
What is the law of diminishing returns? The law of diminishing returns is a concept from economics that indicates after a certain point, increasing only one input starts producing fewer returns. Let’s see how Henry Ford used it to increase the productivity of Ford workers with fewer working hours. And how you can do the…
How To Think In Systems (And Why McDonald’s Has a University)
Ray Kroc was a milkshake mixer salesman. One day, he received an order of 8 mixers from an unknown restaurant. He didn’t believe it at first. 8 mixers could make 48 milkshakes at once. Why would a single restaurant need that many milkshakes? So he decided to visit the restaurant to see what was going on. And…
