Sayre Blake, joins Ethan to work through the brand category paradox — how do you look trustworthy enough for the suits buying the software while staying genuinely weird enough for the workforce actually using it?

McKinsey analyzed major purchases and found out that your primary marketing job may not be proving you’re the best. Maybe it’s just getting remembered before shoppers stop thinking entirely.

John Tayer, CEO of the Boulder Chamber, joins Ethan to work through what happens when your brand has been around since the medieval period and everyone keeps calling it your father's Oldsmobile.

A study of 1,200 TV viewers proves that subtlety is a terrible strategy for memory. Stop treating your brand name like a rude interruption to your own ad.

Wellness expert and latex pillow inventor Siri Schubert Nicolella joins Ethan to untangle why a genuinely great product still struggles to sell — and why the answer isn't better marketing, it's a better offering.

A massive study of grocery shoppers found that loyalty programs might not magically create heavy buyers. So what happens when you really correct for the self-selection bias?

Laura Dodds, demand generation leader and perennial Cover Brand provocateur, returns to debate the value of marketing subgenres.

An analysis of over 800 Instagram campaigns reveals that influencer engagement actually forms an inverted U-curve, which means the true sweet spot for cost-effective engagement is probably different than you think.

 John Pabon, sustainability strategist and three-time author, joins Ethan to dig into the say-do gap, the greenwashing trap, and why the brands that lead with what's wrong with them are the ones worth trusting.

We love to think campaigns 'go viral' by spreading person-to-person like a grade-school cold, but what if that’s far from the truth?

What happens when the expert is in the way of the institution she's building? Carmell Clark, executive coach and founder of the Center for Transformational Influence, joins Ethan to work through one of the trickiest brand problems out there — live, in real time, and with a Monty Python reference or two.

Logo, mascot, or something else? A massive global study of 5,000 brand assets looked at what the most distinctive brand asset is.

Chelsea Burns, The Marketing Psychologist, joins Ethan for another round of Shop Talk to explore why ethical branding, belonging, and the leaky lazy brain are the real forces driving consumer decisions — and what that means for how you build your brand.

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. ]