Toniq

Liberty Mutual’s puppet mascot sparked memes, a John Oliver bit, and a protest. A small-town sign prank explains why buzz alone doesn’t build a brand.

Brands chase strangers with their best offers while loyal customers get ignored, right up until they call to cancel.

What a classic Frasier scene teaches about brand differentiation, and how to build a category of one instead of claiming you’re “better” than the other guy.

Great brands, like great performances, come from knowing yourself well enough to choose. Letting AI polish every choice quietly gives that freedom away.

A Memphis barbecue tour, a smiling mascot, and the difference between being noticed and being chosen

An actor on the masks we wear, the audiences that applaud them, and why being liked isn’t the same as being known.

Playing it safe feels risk-free, but conventional branding has its own side effects: sameness, customer indifference, and fading relevance. Here’s why calculated creative risk is how a brand becomes a category-of-one.

What 37 garden gnomes taught me about the difference between being recognized and being understood.

Why being slightly better leaves you waiting in line, and how to create the role only you can play.

Try this. Remove your logo from the company website. Don’t change anything else. Leave the copy, photography, colors, navigation, and calls to action, all of it, exactly where it is. Just take away the logo. Now ask yourself a slightly uncomfortable question: Would anyone know it was yours?

Influencer marketing still works, but it can’t make your brand worth keeping. That part has to be there when the box opens.

A post-campaign review should separate what worked from why it worked, so you keep the lesson without repeating the tactic.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of how companies present themselves to the world. It writes copy, answers questions, and talks to customers. We can argue about whether that’s good, bad, or inevitable, but from a branding perspective, the more immediate question is: what happens when it gets something wrong?

The owners told me they use their great-great-grandmother’s original recipe. Simple: pork fat, pan drippings, flour, milk, salt, and pepper. Over the years, someone in the family added small chunks of pork sausage. There was apparently a great debate about this addition because great-great-grandma, well, she couldn’t afford the pork, just the fat.

ThoughtLab founder Mike Harker finished a full 140.6-mile Ironman. Ten years of working beside him explains why that’s no surprise. A huge accomplishment, but not a surprising one.