The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything

Often, the most powerful brands don't just ride culture—they subvert it. In both bold and nuanced ways, they challenge the unconscious assumptions shaping aspiration, value, and taste, offering new scripts for the future.

This article explores the Hidden Formula behind that kind of resonance: an invisible set of forces and a strategic framework for ... See more

Loving, whenever in Tokyo, the sensation of so many highly crafted experiences - from eight seat restaurants and tiny bars to owl cafes and artisanal cotton candy shops. Why aren’t there 1000x more of these experiences in all societies? And especially in the USA, what prompted “scale” (more seats, more franchises, more reach at lower cost) as the... See more

Journalist Derek Thompson sums up this approach succinctly: “To sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.”