Ethan Decker

Founder, Applied Brand Science. Teaching you the "secret" science of brand growth.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@rshotton That’s a good one! “Choice architecture” FTW

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@gmiller @wydblaise The Reproductive Value Curve strikes again.....

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@tomfgoodwin And it's also not a coincidence.

Power attracts the power-hungry.

And having power unmoors people from basic values, social ties, and checks & balances.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@michaelmiraflor Ha! They're Behaviorally Reinforced Algorithmic Idiocy Neurostimulant / Dopamine Extraction Doomloops (BRAINDEDs)

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@bruceclarkprof @tomfgoodwin @DKThomp Meanwhile, Bruce's desk.....

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@ANNELAMOTT Like his father when he was in his dotage, they should make a fake White House for him to go to, where he can sign some fake Executive Orders. And feel important in his fake world.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@rshotton That's a terrible design. I'm sure they thought it was 'cute'.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

How do you know when it’s time to refresh your brand — and how much should you change?

In this episode of Cover Brand, I chat with Arissa Kirkland of cybersecurity firm Bishop Fox, as she wrestles with the perennial question of when (and how) to update a company’s branding.

We explore Arissa’s real-world experience leading the evolution of her company's previous brand update, and more recently, steering a brand refresh that tries to put a human face on heartless high-tech services. We break down the ping-pong between “Big B” brand (reputation) and “little b” brand (design elements), and cover tips on using both internal vision and external feedback to guide your next steps.

Listen to Cover Brand on Spotify, Apple, IHeartRadio, YouTube, Belchcast, and anywhere you pod.

#marketingpodcast #brandscience #brandrefresh

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

Make the old new — over & over & over.

You’ll get tired of your brand (or campaign) loooong before it even gains traction in people’s minds.

So keep those old brand elements & campaigns, and invest in them.

I mean, that’s the only way to build equity in them.

Obvi.

(Spotted in duty-free in Frankfurt.)

(PS: you should be so lucky to have a 44-yr-old campaign to work with.)

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

WHY IS IT USEFUL TO THINK ABOUT A "SPHERICAL SHOPPER"?

Ok, so you might know about this mathematical, academic model of shoppers & brands & categories called the NBD-Dirchlet. You might’ve read about it in "How Brands Grow" by Byron Sharp. And if you’ve read the original paper from 1984, you _might_ know it makes all these crazy, wild assumptions about shoppers & brands & whatnot.

F’rinstance, it assumes people’s brand preferences don’t change. And that what brand you buy last time doesn’t influence what brand you buy this time. And that there are no subcategories. And — get this — that brands’ market shares don’t change. LIke, at all.

These sound insane. We know preferences change, that Tito’s booms, and Red Lobster boils. Is this theory just naïve & useless?

One way I like to think about the NBD-Dirichlet is like the SPHERICAL COW.

Let me explain. See, when trying to come up with big-T “Theories” in science, it’s useful to simplify. A LOT.

F’rinstance, when Newton figured out his famous laws of motion, he assumed things are in a vacuum with no air. And there’s zero friction between things. And the mass of any object is all at a point in its middle. Etc etc. This seriously helped with working out the laws.

"Simplifying assumptions" like these have become the basis of a joke. It goes like this:

A farmer is having trouble with her dairy cow: it isn’t producing milk like it used to. So she tells her neighbor, who happens to be a physicist. He offers to help. After doing some measurements & some math, he shares his findings.

“Ok,” he says, “Consider a spherical cow in a vacuum, secreting milk uniformly in all directions….”

Ha ha. But here’s the kicker: even with all these crazy assumptions, Newton’s laws work amaaazingly well, for everything from planets to peanuts. And when they don’t work, it means something else is going on — that some assumptions are being violated.

So when you drop a feather and a fish, you don’t say Newton’s laws are wrong because the feather floats and the fish flattens (his laws say they both fall at the same rate). No: you realize that something else, namely air resistance, is at play.

The same is true with the NBD-Dirichlet. It basically assumes a “spherical shopper” in a social vacuum, extruding money uniformly to all brands in its repertoire (so to speak ha ha). AND YET, it still does an amazing job of predicting all kinds of things about shoppers, brands, and markets.

And then when you see a Tito’s, it doesn’t mean the model’s broken: it means something else is going on. Maybe changing preferences. Or product differences. Or retailer dynamics. All kinds of stuff.

Some lessons:

🔸. Understand a theory’s assumptions.

🔸. Look at what it’s good at describing, explaining, & predicting.

🔸. When the data doesn’t fit the model, see if any assumptions are being broken. Look for something else at play.

🔸. Don’t live in a vacuum.

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[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

How do you keep your brand from being too boring — or too chaotic?

In this episode of Cover Brand, I chat with badass brand strategist Josie Ellerbee about the tightrope walk between staying true to a brand’s core & keeping things fresh in the AI era.

We talk about the pitfalls of overly templated branding, the risks of chasing novelty for shock value, and how brands like KFC and Cards Against Humanity deftly balance the predictable with the surprising. (And of course we gotta mention Raymond Loewy.)

Tune in whether you’re leading a CPG giant or building a B2B business.

Stream everywhere you listen to podcasts: Apple, Spotify, IHeartMedia, YouTube, Burpio, and more.

#marketingpodcast #AIMarketing #brandscience

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

IF YOU BRAND A PLACEBO, DOES IT WORK BETTER?

Like, isn't a brand kind of a placebo anyway?

This is an oldie but goodie. In a study of 835 women with headaches, Branthwaite & Cooper set out to see if a) placebos work at all, and b) if branding them made any difference. The results are fascinating.

a) Placebos did nearly as well as actual meds. Srsly. A whopping 55% taking unbranded placebos felt waaay better vs. 70% taking unbranded meds! And while 74% taking branded meds felt way better, another whopping 64% felt better taking branded placebos.

b) Branding the pills did indeed give a bump to relief — 9% for placebo, and 4% for meds. Not huge, but still significant. Which is pretty cool.

This research has been replicated a lot, since randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard in medical science. Over & over, these two findings hold up: placebos often work, though not as well as real treatment. And branding something makes it work better than the same thing unbranded.

Some lessons:

🔸 A huge chunk of what we do is psychology. Objective truth is very often impacted by how we think & feel about a product or service. Or in reverse: placebo is not zero; it’s a real effect.

🔸 A brand can be seen as having a placebo effect — it changes the impact of the thing. So be sure to build a brand that *increases* the perceived value of your stuff.

🔸 Learn brand science! It helps your team make smarter decisions that lead to growth.

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[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

This is so fun! I enhanced some old family pics!
Also, buhbye objective reality!

[Google Gemini @GeminiApp]

Gemini's new state-of-the-art image generation and editing is here! And it’s free for everyone.

Try a new hairstyle. Restore an old photo. Combine two photos into one. Go nano bananas.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

MAKE MARKETING GREAT AGAIN!

THANK YOU TO ALL THE TRUE MARKETING PATRIOTS WHO ARE HELPING BRING BACK THE "VERY STABLE CAMPAIGNS" AND ALSO FOR THE NEW "SCIENCE" OF BRANDS. NOT LIKE THOSE LOSERS WHO TALK ABOUT LOYALTY (SO MUDDY), OR THE RADICAL FRAMEWORK FRINGE WHO KEEP ADDING P'S TO THE FOUR P'S. FOUR IS ENOUGH! ISAAC NEWTON HIMSELF INVENTED IT (VERY SMART!). AND MAYBE WE SHOULD LOCK UP ALL THE "FAKE ADS" FRAUDSTERS IN PERFORMANCE MARKETING. IT "PERFORMS"
IS BY SKIMMING 60 CENTS OFF EVERY MEDIA DOLLAR! TOTAL RIP-OFF! (POOP FUNNEL!) I'LL BE DEPLOYING BRAND SCIENCE TO MAINTAIN SANITY & EFFECTIVENESS IN CUCKOO COMPANIES. I WILL LEAD THE CHARGE! MAYBE FOR ANOTHER FOUR YEARS, MAYBE EIGHT (WHO KNOWS). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! - EHD (PHD).

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

How do you make your business memorable when your brand sounds like everyone else’s?

In this episode of Cover Brand, I chat with Drew Bonder, founder of Focused Energy, who shares his struggle to explain what his fractional CFO firm *really* does vs other firms. We dig into stuff like:

🔸 Why precise messaging often stinks
🔸 How to shift from features to benefits
🔸 And some tricks for distilling your difference into a sticky, simple message.

Give a listen if you’ve ever wondered how to move past generic business jargon and make your brand resonate.

Find Cover Brand anywhere you pod.

#marketingpodcast #branding #marketingscience

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

IF THEY'RE "LOYAL" BUYERS, WHY DO THEY CHURN SO MUCH?

A few years ago, Pointer Media looked at the actual purchases of 32MM people across 658 leading brands in the US. Then they checked out whether “highly loyal” customers in one year (let’s call them HLCs) were still highly loyal in the next year.

They found what looked like a paradox: most brands, including the leading brands in each category, had TONS of churn in their HLCs. And yet market share changed very little.

On average, 48% of HLCs in year one were still HLCs the next year. 19% reduced their buying of the brand. And 33% — one third! — didn’t buy the brand at all. Cola brands retained 76% of HLCs, but cereal? Only 35%. Yowza!

But if market share is barely changing, what the heck’s going on?

Well, a few things, actually:

1. HLCs were defined as people who spent 70% of their category dollars on a single brand. But that could be someone who bought 4 items total that year (3 from one brand) or 40.

2. The time window was one year. This *seems* like enough time to get a read on someone’s behavior. But actually, even for these staples, it might be way too short. See, people regularly buy 2 or 3 brands in a category & switch them up kinda at random. So they’re “defecting” to another brand in their repertoire.

3. Aaaaand they measured loyalty to a *product*, not to a total brand. So an HLC could’ve “defected” from Crest to…. Crest.

Some key lessons for us all:

🔸 Lots of these “crises” are really due to measuring the wrong things, or measuring them in the wrong way. So step 1 is, always know what the heck you’re actually measuring.

🔸 “Loyalty” is a craptastically sloppy word. Use “share of wallet”, or “buy rate”, or “heavy buyers”.

🔸 Know the brand science! Then you’ll understand all these dynamics and not get spooked by the wrong things. (And you’ll learn how to grow.)

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[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

Churning and churning in the measuring year
The buyer cannot hear the marketeer;
Share stays the same; the units are still sold;
Mere anxiety is loosed upon the pearled.

(With apologies to Willy Yeats.)

But still; 'tis true: shoppers will churn. Heavy buyers will become light, or defect. And yet share won't change (much if at all).

If you don't know the science of brand growth — the physics of brands — you'll be anxious about it.

But if you DO know brand science, it re-tunes your intuition about what matters, what doesn't, and what to do about it.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

How does an introvert who hates self-promotion promote themselves without feeling nauseous?

On this episode of Cover Brand, I sit down with multi-talented novelist, poet, and technical writer Melanie Jennings to talk about building a platform as an emerging author.

I share some practical tips on growing a following, experimenting with new channels, and embracing the awkwardness of putting yourself out there.

If you’re a small 'brand' trying to build your audience, tune in.

Find Cover Brand anywhere you pod.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@GuySie Yep. I understand the naming conventions.
It's just funny that you can peek behind the curtain.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

this Häagen-Dazs ad has TONS of taste appeal (it's food, natch), but it was clearly never meant to be watched on its own: look at the video title lolz.

[Ethan Decker @ehdecker]

@bruceclarkprof @ramirezreyes Yeah, the damage will continue — the Repubitage Foundation has a deep playbook, is well-funded, and has a deep bench.
But the cult leader will be gone, and those are really hard to replace.