The first law of brand science: people forget everything—including your brand—because forgetting is literally how the brain works.

Need a logo? Copy your competitors. Need a font? Go with Arial—the universal signal for ‘we are forgettable.’

Ipsos and JKR found your most powerful brand asset isn’t your logo—it’s your product itself, like Oreos, Ray-Bans, and Legos.

Should you let the public design your brand? Probably not—just ask Ulster, NY, where 93% voted for a weird spiderface sticker.

We think college is a loyalty purchase—pick a school, love it forever—but the data tell a much messier story.

Everyone’s flattening their logos to look modern and minimal—and ending up looking exactly like everyone else.

You’d think rich people buy premium and everyone else buys cheap—but Europanel’s data shows shampoo doesn’t care about your income.

Interbrand, BrandZ, and Brand Finance mostly agree on which brands are strongest—but not on what those brands are actually worth.

Streaming data proves it again: big brands like Netflix win twice—more buyers and higher retention—while small brands suffer Double Jeopardy.

If you zoom out on a Google image search and can’t spot your brand fast, congrats—you look just like everyone else.

NPD found that nearly three-quarters of buyers are light buyers—the universal Banana Curve strikes again.

Columbia researchers found a ‘tale of two cities’ between marketing academia and practice—the gap is wide, and getting wider.

Grace Kite and Tom Roach found the classic ‘long and short’ pattern holds up—but with a twist I call the ‘ramp and bump.’

BBH Labs found Gen-Xers have less in common than Guardian readers or crossword fans—so maybe generations aren’t such a thing after all.

Warren Buffett says reputations die fast—but VW’s Dieselgate shows brands bounce back way easier than people do.

Everyone wants ‘ownable’ brand assets—but Ehrenberg-Bass’s global study of 1,200 elements shows few are truly unique.

Kantar found that how often—or where—you show your brand in an ad doesn’t actually boost recall. Yowza.

Charm pricing works like an optical illusion—once you see the trick, you still can’t unsee it.

Brands love to call their heaviest buyers ‘loyal’—but heavy doesn’t mean loyal, and regular doesn’t either.

Heavy buyers aren’t your most loyal—because the more people buy, the more brands they buy.