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There is a type of business story that has become nearly cliché: A legacy brand is facing stagnating growth. Loyal customers are aging out, and new customers arent taking their place. So the brand reinvents itself to pull in a younger segment of the market, often by borrowing ideas from cooler competitors to seem more on-trend. But instead of younger and cooler, the rebrand comes off as insincere, stilted, or cringey. Worse, the brands older, core customers, who liked the brand as it was, are irritated by the changes. Instead of spurring new growth, the effort drives off some of the existing customers, leaving the brand worse off than when it started. This is the recent story of The Bachelor television franchise. After a two-year hiatus, ABCs dating show returned this summer, having made changes that were designed to appeal to a younger audience. The updated Bachelor in Paradise cribbed from Love Island, its primary rival in the competitive-dating-in-bathing-suits genre, and a show beloved by the younger audiences The Bachelor wanted to attract. The changes included an aggressive, quick-cut editing style and the introduction of a cash prize for the winners. Younger consumers werent drawn to the new format, but previously loyal fans panned the changes in online forums, suggesting the show should have included a seizure warning. Both the ratings and viewership numbers for this season hit historic lows. Cracker Barrels recent woes also fit this pattern. Its traditionalist segment of 65-plus diners was dwindling, leading the brand to try attracting new, younger customers by updating the interiors and changing the logo. It is not clear that the changes brought in those younger diners in significant numbers. But the changes did produce an exhaustively dissected backlash from its loyal customer base, for whom, it turned out, nostalgia was a significant part of the Cracker Barrel appeal. Meanwhile, JCPs major reinvention more than a decade ago was also driven, in part, by trying to attract younger customers with its elimination of deep discounts in favor of everyday low pricing. But the move was far more successful in driving away its older loyalists, who loved hunting for those deals. Lands’ End tried to lure in younger customers when it introduced a high-fashion line and edgier branding. Instead, they went from profits of $9M to losses of nearly $8M within a year. The desire to attract younger customers made sense for all these brands. But they each fell into the same trap: They assumed they could make changes to their offerings and branding to attract new customers without having to worry about how their current customers might react to those changes. The stewards of these brands forgot that different people want different things from the brands that serve them. While there are times when young and old consumers both want the same things from their brands, the fact is, younger customers and older customers also frequently want different things. Changing a brand to make it more appealing to younger customers may (or may not) draw in those younger customersbut it may also accidentally displease the older customers who like the brand just the way it is. In our book, The Growth Dilemma, Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025), we identify a few key strategies brands can use to manage the risk of conflict between customer segments as they grow. Here are three: 1. Create different spaces for different audiences One strategy involves carving out separate spaces within a brandeither conceptual or physicalfor different customer segments. For example, many brands use multiple social media handles to communicate to different segments. Timberland has different Instagram channels for its blue-collar worker segment and its fashion segment. Starbucks has different store formats catering to those who value Starbucks as a place to get a quick and convenient coffee on-the-go (kiosk and drive-through locations), and those who value Starbucks as a place to work and socialize (its third place lounge locations). Some brands diffuse potential conflict between customers by creating separate gated communities within the brand that cater to different customer segments. Historically, Nike was great at creating sport-specific communities that were each distinct within the Nike brand. Nike basketball customers had different products, apps, advertising, and experiences than Nike runners, tennis players, or sneakerheads. Some brands create a hierarchy among their customer base, allowing a status separation among customers. This is a common path for many fashion brands that serve segments with different price sensitivities and design demands. For example, Armani serves different segments under the Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, and Armani Exchange sub-brands. Credit card and financial services brands often create a hierarchy of customers based on net worth and spend to tailor products and services. Escalating levels of service and benefits allow a company like American Express to simultaneously serve mass markets and elite customers without causing tension between groups with very different expectations. 2. Focus on one audience Sometimes two segments are so divergent in their preferences or identities that they simply cannot be served well under the same brand. In these cases, brands may opt to fire a customer segmentas Burberry did in the early 2000s after it inadvertently became popular among soccer hooligans, by discontinuing products popular among chavs and reducing the prominence of its iconic check pattern. In other cases, they may develop a new brand to serve a new segment. Toyota is able to successfully serve a diverse set of customers under a single brand. But management wisely realized that there were limits to how far they could stretch the Toyota brand and so introduced Lexus to serve a set of customers with a fundamentally different set of preferences. Especially in the cases of ideological conflict between customer segments (e.g., Bud Lights attempts to be an apparent ally of the transgender community), the gulfs between customer groups may simply be too vast to span with a single brand. Some segments are best served by different brands. 3. Find common ground Perhaps the best strategy for brands looking to grow into younger segments is in looking for convergence in values and preferences across segments before the brand starts making changes. Instead of reorienting the brand to appeal to the new, hoped-for customers, brands should first look for the Venn diagram intersection among 1) preferences of existing customers, 2) preferences of the new customers, and 3) the brands image and history. Growth strategies that dont satisfy all three criteria tend to fail. Consider the remarkable recent resurgence of another legacy TV franchise. Despite being around for 20 years, Dancing with the Stars has been growing in recent easons, and attracting younger viewers in the process. DWTS didnt pull this off by fundamentally changing what its longtime fans love about the show, but instead by innovating in areas around its successful formula. These tangential improvements have increased the draw for new, younger fans without stepping on the toes of loyalists. For its stars, DWTS has been increasingly turning to celebrities relevant to younger audiences, including recent Olympians, TikTok influencers, and reality TV stars. It has also created additional, meme-worthy social media content, including footage of the dancers training or goofing around backstage. This content serves as a supplemental draw to younger segments, without messing with the on-stage magic that loyal watchers love. Just like the relationships in Bachelor in Paradise, the relationships among customer segments can be nuanced and difficult to manage. Unlike the relationships in Bachelor in Paradise, the goal is not maximum drama. Knowing the rules of customer relationship management can allow brands to attract customers across generations without experiencing the backlash.
Category:
E-Commerce
Look, we all know the drill by now: You type a question into the magic AI box, and the magic AI box spits out an answer that is usually pretty good, occasionally mind-blowing, and every once in a blue moon mind-blowingly bizarre. But if youre just treating Google Gemini like a glorified search bar, youre leaving a lot of utility on the table. Its sort of like buying a Swiss Army knife and only ever using the toothpick. If you want to move past the beginner phase and actually make Gemini work for you, here are four tricks that might not be immediately obvious but are surprisingly handy. Stop copy-pasting your own emails If youre trying to summarize a long email thread or find a specific document to pull data from, your first instinct is probably to open a new tab, find the email, copy the text, go back to Gemini, paste it in, and then ask your question. No need: Gemini has “Extensions” built right in. If you want to know when your flight is or summarize a Doc, just type @ in the prompt box. Youll see a menu pop up for Google Docs, Gmail, Drive, Maps, and other Google services. Select one, and say something like, “@Gmail find the email from Bob about the Q3 budget and summarize the main points.” It goes and finds the info, saving you from tab fatigue. If you need to turn on these extensions, heres how. The trust but verify button Use AI long enough and youll eventually come across “hallucinations,” which is a polite way of saying the AI just made something up because it sounded good. If youre using Gemini for important research, make sure to use the Double-check response feature, which can be found by clicking the three-dot icon at the bottom of a response. When you click it, Google runs a search to see if theres content on the web to substantiate what the AI just told you. A green highlight means Google found a search result that supports the statement, while an orange highlight means Google either found content that might contradict it, or it couldn’t find a match. Its not foolproof, but its a helpful extra step to take in order to make sure Googles info isnt too far off base. Tables and spreadsheets Were used to chatbots just . . . chatting. But if youre trying to make a decision, like comparing three different project management tools or deciding among five hotels for that Nashville trip, paragraphs of text are actually pretty annoying to parse. You can force Gemini to make information more digestible by telling it, for example: “Output this as a table comparing [Option A] and [Option B] based on price, reviews, and features.” Itll organize the messy data into a clean grid. And if youre feeling especially ambitious, youll notice an “Export to Sheets” icon underneath the table. One click creates a brand-new Google Sheet with all that data populated, formatted, and saved to your Google Drive. It turns cumbersome manual data entry into a single button press. Audio uploads Most people know Gemini can read text and look at pictures. But it also has ears. If you have a recording of a chaotic 45-minute meeting, a rambling lecture, or an interview you recorded on your phone, dont waste your time listening to it at 2x speed. You can upload audio files directly into the prompt bar. Just click the plus (+) icon, select Upload files, and drop in your audio clip. Then ask for what you need: “Summarize this meeting and extract the three action items assigned to me” or “Find the timestamp where they discuss the Q3 budget, for example. It doesnt just transcribe; Gemini “listens” to the context and turns an hour of audio into a 30-second read.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its been called the AI Super Bowl, thanks to Anthropic and OpenAI launching what (hopefully) might become AIs very own Cola Wars. Its been called the MAHA Bowl, thanks to brands like Novo Nordisk promoting Wegovy pills, while Ro and hims & hers are pitching telehealth services, Novartis got NFL tight ends to relax for prostate cancer checks, and pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim hypes kidney health. But we know it was the Super Bowl because mixed in amongst the trends were Sabrina Carpenters FrankenPringles man, both T-Mobile and Coinbase hit play on the Backstreet Boys, Oakley Meta made connected glasses look pretty good, and Manscaped somehow turned shaved body hair into emotionally-resonant characters. Another distinct sign this was as Super Bowl-y an ad game as any other Super Bowl? Celebrity directors. Taika Waititi took on Pepsi, Spike Jonze went full Italian variety show with Ben Stiller for Instacart, and Joseph Kosinski took all the innovation from his experiences at the helm of last years blockbuster F1 to get Kurt Russell to teach a guy how to ski. Oh, and somehow the award-winning director with the least commercial films had two spots in the gameYorgos Lathimos directed both Squarespace and Grubhub. Apple continued its complete reinvention of the halftime show, turning Bad Bunnys electric performance into a global event. We also saw a respectable number of hit songs get classically commercial reinterpretations. The aforementioned Backstreet Boys were joined by Andy Samberg becoming Meal Diamond for Hellmanns, Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key butchering Bon Jovi for State Farm, and both the NFL and Rocket crafting emotional gut punch moments by reinterpreting two songs from the Mr. Rogers catalog. Advertising! It was a feast for the sensesa cornucopia of commercial extravaganza. All with enough choices that everyone watching the game has their own favorites Including me! Here are my picks for the best ads from the 2026 Super Bowl. But first, the worst! Svedka Vodka Shake Your Bots Off Its apparently the first Super Bowl ad known to be produced primarily with AI. I never wouldve guessed This ad so bad Im not sure its fair to make fun of it, even if its somehow purposely awful. This is the kind of bad that should be taught in schools. It looks like it was made by Advertising 101 students in a rush. The AI angle is a gimmick for gimmicks sake, obviously, and doesn’t add anything to the ad at all except the robots’ nightmare fuel faces. What is so disappointing is that vodka has historically been a pretty great place for advertising. For anyone curious about the kind of creativity is possible in the vodka category, just watch Belvedere Vodkas 2022 spot Daniel Craig, directed by Waititi. Or Absoluts Vodka Movie from 2008, made by Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Zach Galifianakis. Glorious. Svedka, conversely, serves up the advertising equivalent to the most vapid, superficial people youve ever seen in a club. A robot apocalypse as imagined by the Butabi brothers. OK, now lets get to the good stuff. Here are my Top 5 ads from this year… Budweiser “American Icons” As I said in my pregame brand power rankings, Bud was here for the crown. Created by BBDO New York, this takes Budweisers penchant for animal buddies to a new, non-partisan patriotic level. What could possibly be cuter than a horse and a yellow lab becoming best friends? Well, when its Buds 150th anniversary and Americas 250th, the answer, of course, is EAGLET. These are divisive times, with many states feeling less and less united with every news cycle. But here, just for a moment, Bud has served up something that we can all agree on. When that bald eagle spread its big grown wings for the first time from behind that leaping horse, red states, blue states, MAGA, Democratic Socialists, coastal elites, flyover rednecks, and everyone in between were able to say, Oh HELLS yeah. And in 2026, thats something to raise a glass to. Jeep Billy Bass Goes to the River What initially appears to be a pretty run-of-the-mill car ad takes a decidedly epic turn that transforms ths spot into a classic. If you listen to the Super Bowl episode of Fast Companys Brand New World podcast (do it!), youll know I spoke to the folks who made it, Mark Gross and Chad Broude, who are co-founders and co-chief creative officers of Chicago-based independent ad agency Highdive. They have hundreds of Super Bowl ads between them, and this latest piece of work shows the benefit of that experience. Highdive has become synonymous with great Super Bowl work since the 2020 Super Bowl and their fantastic Jeep commercial starring Bill Murray, reliving the classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. The level of difficulty here is highno nostalgic soundtrack, no celebrity, no gimmick. Just a straight shot of good ol fashioned copywriting, perfect casting and comedic timing straight into the veins. Rocket x Redfin America Needs Neighbors Like You With the amount of money required just for Super Bowl air timea reported $8 million, plus a required additional matching ad buy across other NBC sports brands need to ensure they get your attention. This year, Rocket and Redfin did that by combining three things that would create a large Venn diagram of interest: Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogerss Wont You Be My Neighbor?; a heartwarming commercial airing during the game; and, most crucially, giving viewers the chance to win a million-dollar house. But everything revolves around the spot, which was a well-crafted, heartwarming vibe shift from all the comedy and celebrities. I spoke to CMO Jonathan Mildenhall about this triple threat approach. “The only way to win at the Super Bowl is to win a disproportionate share of conversation pregame, as well as during game, and, increasingly, the progressive brands are talking about postgame conversation, Mildenhall says. For us the pregame was Lady Gaga behind the scenes, then during the game there is the spot, and were announcing the Great American home search for people to participate in over the days after the game. Hellmanns Meal Diamond The Boston Red Sox, and every karaoke bar on the planet, utilize Neil Diamonds Sweet Caroline effectively to bring a crowd together, put an arm around one another and scream SO GOOD! SO GOOD! SO GOOD! in unison. Here we get that 1969 hit remixed for mayo thanks to Andy Samberg as Meal Diamond. Of course this looks and sounds ridiculous. But it actually continues a strategy Hellmanns started in 2024. Mayo Cat starred Kate McKinnon and was able to put one word into the mouth of every cat: Mayyo. Its ambition to embed itself in our brains in such an insidious way that we hear it every time a cat meows was commendable. Clearly, that ambition remains. Now when youre making lunch, you may find yourself humming a familiar tune and whisper-crooning to yourself, Haaaam, touching ham.. until it hits a crescendo, Sweet Sandwich Time! Bah-bah-baaaaah. Bud Light Keg Bud Light was in a dark place not that long ago. It was unfairly punished for its one-off partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, which turned into an unlikely lightning rod for anti-trans weirdos and fans of Kid Rock. Thankfully, with Shane Gillis, the brand has been building back its beer advertising pedigree by making commercials that are funny as hell. His impressive run includes Confessions, Wrong Commercial, and last years big game ad BMOC. Now Gillis, Post Malone, and Peyton Manning return, this time at a wedding. When the keg gets knocked over and rolls down a hill, the entire wedding party does its best Princess Bride As you wish impression. Dumb, fun, and exactly what you want from a Bud Light ad.
Category:
E-Commerce
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