Brandy

The Nvidia scandals involving Jensen Huang is a great warning for founders. In this episode, brand strategist Reilly Newman breaks down what we can learn from Jensen Huang and the Nvidia scandal. He briefly dives into the history of Nvidia, as well as Jensen's involvement and the DNA he embedded in the Nvidia brand. Reilly discusses how being a founder-led brand can be your greatest strength o...

Why did a $148 SKIMS advent calendar leave customers disappointed? The backlash raises a bigger question for founders and marketers: how much can a brand charge before the experience no longer feels worth the price? In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman explores the SKIMS advent calendar controversy through the lens of brand strategy, customer expectations and perceived value. What can business...

What happens to brand loyalty when an AI agent helps your customer decide what to buy? In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman explores how AI shopping agents may change product discovery, customer trust and the buying process. From comparing products to finding a professional service, he examines what brands need to communicate when AI helps narrow the choices. Learn how customer preferences inf...

A customer’s experience can build trust or leave them feeling tricked. In this short Halloween episode, Reilly Newman explores how customer expectations, surprise fees and everyday interactions shape brand perception and loyalty. You’ll also discover two gaps that can hurt a business: failing to deliver on its promise, and growing beyond the reputation customers still associate with it. A quick li...

AI can create a logo, write website copy or design a poster in seconds. But if your marketing looks and sounds like everyone else’s, is it helping your brand stand out? In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman explores what he calls the new age of “blanding” and why AI-generated marketing can make businesses feel interchangeable. From a pumpkin patch with AI-generated signs to the thoughtful detai...

You invested in a new logo, website or packaging. So why aren’t sales increasing? In this episode of Brandy, brand strategist Reilly Newman explores why rebrands can fall short of business expectations, what a brand diagnostic should uncover before design begins, and how stronger positioning can support pricing power and long-term customer relationships. For founders, business owners and marketers...

NeeDoh turned a squishy stress toy into something people collect, hunt for and line up to buy. What makes this brand so desirable? In this episode of Brandy, brand strategist Reilly Newman examines the NeeDoh phenomenon through 3 Ps: presentation, positioning and pricing. From playful packaging and memorable product names to accessible prices and different tactile experiences, he explores how the...

What makes a rebrand turn customers away? And how do you evolve your business without losing what people already love about it? In this episode of Brandy, brand strategist Reilly Newman explores the psychology behind rebranding, customer expectations and brand loyalty. Drawing on Cracker Barrel, Jaguar and Gap, he examines how changing familiar associations can put customer trust at risk, and what...

Your business has changed. Why do customers still think of you the way you used to be? Reilly Newman explores what happens when brand perception falls behind business growth: referrals for services you no longer offer, resistance to higher prices, and trust that stays with the founder instead of transferring to the next generation. From the younger sibling everyone still sees as a kid to Apple’s p...

More options don’t always give customers more reason to choose you. Reports that Starbucks explored buying Chipotle sparked a bigger question: when does expanding your business strengthen your brand, and when does it dilute what customers know you for? In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman explores how acquisitions, new services and menu additions can change a brand’s meaning. From Starbucks’ c...

AI shopping agents are changing how customers discover, compare, and choose brands. If an AI assistant is researching options for your next customer, will your business make the shortlist? For years, advertising has focused on capturing attention. But as people delegate more purchase decisions to AI, the advantage could shift toward brands that clearly fit what those buyers actually want. In this...

With meat sticks at every store now, what happened to Slim Jim? In the 1990s, Slim Jim was everywhere. MTV. ESPN. WWF. Disney Channel. Randy "Macho Man" Savage shouting "Snap into a Slim Jim!" The brand was loud, it was everywhere, and it owned the category. Now the shelves are full of Chomps, Archer, and even Kirkland's clean-label alternative leaving Slim Jim as a memory...

A Twilight Zone episode from 1959 predicted the AI debate we're having right now.... A man imprisoned on a distant moon is given a robot companion; one that looks human, talks human, learns him, plays games with him. He rejects her completely at first. She's not real. She can't feel anything. She doesn't know what it means to be lonely. Then, slowly, he falls in love with her anywa...

There's a reason you haven't fully committed to a specific market. And it's not because you don't know who your customer is....It's because your brain is wired to feel the loss of everyone you're saying no to more intensely than the gain of the customer you're saying yes to. Psychologists Kahneman and Tversky called it loss aversion; the documented human tendency to fee...

Apple just announced the iPhone Duo... a $2,000 foldable phone. The tech world has opinions, but the conversation nobody in the brand world is having yet is the more important one. In 2020, Microsoft released a foldable device called the Surface Duo . Apple just named their flagship product the same thing. For a company built on the idea that every detail is intentional, this is a pattern worth ex...

AI agents aren't coming... they're here. And very soon, they won't just be working for businesses, they'll be working for consumers, making purchasing decisions, filtering out brands, and interacting with companies on behalf of the people you're trying to reach. Most conversations about AI focus on tools and productivity. This one is different. Brand strategist Reilly Newman br...

You're doing more. You're delivering more. You care more. And somehow your competitor (the one you know isn't working as hard or bringing as much to the table) is getting the business. That's not a work problem.... It's a brand problem. In this episode, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders break down one of the most common and frustrating situations founders find themselves in: cre...

Frustrated why the market still doesn't see your business the way you want to be seen? The problem isn't the execution. It's the method. In this solo episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman breaks down the real difference between brand strategy and positioning (two terms that get used interchangeably and mean completely different things.) After 15 years of working inside brands and building c...

Starbucks didn't enter the energy drink market. They were already in it. Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders break down the caffeine arms race (Starbucks, McDonald's, Panera, Celsius, Red Bull, Dutch Bros, and more ) as they make the case that brand equity determines which brands belong in a new category and which ones are just chasing a trend. They trace caffeine's strange history from a WWII substa...

BMW is putting movie ads on the dashboards of $80,000 cars. Founders are buying keyboards that sound like typewriters. Target is selling Y2K fashion drops. And somehow these things are all the same story.... In this episode, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders unpack why the Y2K trend has taken over fashion retail and why it has almost nothing to do with clothes. What's actually happening is a cu...

"Great food. Great drinks. Great times." Sound familiar? It should... because every restaurant, bar, and winery in your area is saying the exact same thing. And when everyone says the same thing, no one is actually saying anything. In this episode, rebranding experts, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders, break down one of the most common brand mistakes founders make: signaling the obvious....

Most businesses put all the pressure on sales. The pitch has to be perfect. The follow-up has to be relentless. The close has to land. But what if the sale was already won (or already lost) long before the salesperson showed up? In this episode, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders make the case that most businesses are asking sales to do a job that brand should have already done. Using fishing and fa...

What if the closest thing to the philosopher's stone (the mythical substance that transforms ordinary materials into gold) already exists in business? In this episode of Brandy, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders make the case that rebranding is alchemy. Not the cosmetic kind. The diagnostic kind. Where you strip a company down to its most fundamental elements, identify what actually matters to...

Advertising tells people you're great. A sample proves it. Free samples are one of the oldest conversion tools in business and consistently one of the most underestimated. While brands pour budget into ads that interrupt, sampling creates an experience that persuades. The ROI difference isn't close. In this episode, Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders break down why sampling works, why it out...

Hello Q3! Every new quarter, founders feel the itch to rebrand, but boredom isn't a strategy. Rebranding experts Reilly Newman and Scott Saunders of Motif Brands break down the real difference between brand adaptation (constant, healthy) and a true rebrand (rare, evidence-driven) with the inclusion of the four signals from Motif's Brand Deficit™ model that actually justify a real rebrand....