What modern brands can learn from Häagen-Dazs

There are three implications for brand strategy: Create collections (rather than product ranges). A collection gives identity to everyday products. In the crowded industrial goods landscape, an identity is the key product differentiator: packaging, naming, color palette, signature design details, and product shapes, like the chick-shaped hand sanit

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Our tastes are ever more niche. We gravitate towards communities and brands, or both, that cater to our niche tastes. Tracksmith, Telfar, Crown Affair or FatherFoods are some of the examples. In this micro-taste communities’ landscape, mass fashion brands come across as too generic and superficial. The winning growth strategy instead is to go deep ... See more

A decade or so ago, brands shifted from increasing value of their products through utility, competitive comparison, and creative advertising to endowing products they made with aesthetic, sustainability credentials, a story of artisanship and provenance, and/or a community in order to give their products identity and singularity. (Virgil Abloh made

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As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in ... See more