A fascinating experiment in a UK wine shop found that background tunes subconsciously dictated whether shoppers bought French or German wine, proving that you should never take survey data at face value because buyers usually have absolutely no clue what actually drives their decisions.

Ethan Decker talks with community builder Jamie Rich about why starting narrow — in this case, a wisdom-sharing platform for gay men over 55 — is actually the most powerful way to build a brand that eventually resonates with everyone.

First-mover advantage isn't an ironclad law of brand science—it actually belongs in the massive 'it depends' category, because pioneers often just end up with arrows in their backs while later entrants swoop in to win the market.”

Ethan Decker talks with life coach Dror Yaron about why literal, descriptive brand names usually fail, and why real-world buyers will always ruin the perfect "target persona" you built in a conference room.

Bain & Co analyzed actual purchase data across multiple categories and found that brand 'loyalty' is a sloppy myth, because 100% monogamy is the rare exception and normal buyers naturally rotate through a repertoire of brands—so stop freaking out when your customers buy your competitors' stuff.

Ethan Decker and Nic Hinwood dig into the everyday realities of agency work—why many clients start by asking for a logo, and how real brand value often lives somewhere much bigger than the logo itself.

Designalytics analyzed 52 pack redesigns and found that asking if people “like” your new packaging is a surprisingly terrible predictor of sales, because in-market success actually comes down to whether your design beats what they currently buy and makes the category benefits incredibly obvious. ]

Ethan Decker talks with startup founder Jay Friedman about the explosion of marketing tech tools—and why brands increasingly need help separating real capability from slick websites.

Ad agencies love to pretend their shockingly young workforces are all about staying relevant with youth culture, but the stark reality is it almost entirely comes down to cheap labor and a willingness to work weekends.

Ethan Decker talks with filmmaker Karen Moore about raising awareness for her work addressing colorism—and why the smartest way to build a national movement might be to start with one city.

Despite what the surveys say about Gen-Z demanding "brand purpose," their actual favorite brands prove they just want big, obvious, easy-to-remember products that simply nail the basics.

Ethan Decker talks with founder Chelsea Burns about the messy early days of building a brand—why focus matters, why most companies don’t start with “why,” and why the real answers come from customers, not your own head.

People forget your brand because memory naturally decays, so unless you fight exponential forgetting with relentless, distinctive repetition, you’re basically asking a brain that can’t remember its keys to remember your logo.

Ethan Decker talks with Australian agency owner Nic Hinwood about the “small-town perception problem”—and how turning your location from liability into signal might be the smartest branding move you can make.

Customer satisfaction matters — but only when you understand what it actually drives, what it costs, and whether it moves penetration or just makes a few people slightly less “meh.”

Ethan Decker and Victoria Carrington Chávez unpack why standing out in marketing isn’t about convincing the old guard—it’s about owning who you are, building for the people who want you, and letting brand science do the heavy lifting.

Nielsen analyzed nearly 500 global campaigns and found that click-through rate is effectively worthless as a success metric because it has zero correlation with ad recall, brand awareness, purchase intent, or ROI—and is mostly driven by bots anyway.

Ethan Decker sits down with Megan Bortner of Labyrinth Digital to unpack one of the hardest problems in marketing: how a small agency grows when most buyers see agencies as interchangeable.

ROI measures how efficiently you spent money yesterday, but it’s a crap choice for measuring effectiveness because it completely misses the long-term value of the 99% of buyers who are just building consideration sets today.

Ethan Decker sits down with Tatyana Huseynova to explore what it takes to build a brand around an overlooked problem—and how to test whether a niche need is big enough to matter.