Unconventional Wisdom

  • Playbook: How to Keep the Weird Without Losing the Room

    Years ago, I walked into a restaurant that felt more like a dare than a dining experience. The music didn’t match the lighting. The menu read like someone had lost a bet. And the walls were coated in color choices that didn’t care what Pantone said. I should’ve hated it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.…

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  • The Gathering x Firehouse.

    This is going to be a fun partnership.

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  • Kin Euphorics Sets New Mood for Sober Curious Culture

    Jen Batchelor didn’t want to pay influencers for their testimonials for good reason. Everyone wanted to know. How did the founder of a startup with a vision to disrupt the non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages market land supermodel Bella Hadid as a partner? “Make a great fucking product,” said Kin Euphorics CEO Jen Batchelor.  I love…

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  • Hangover cure: How Athletic Brewing reinvented non-alcoholic beer.

    They repositioned alcohol-free products from category irrelevancy to aspirational choice. During Prohibition, it was called “near beer.” Brewers like Anheuser Busch and Pabst would make regular beer, then boil off the alcohol—and the flavor. Non-alcoholic (NA) beer has been around a long time in America but always had a rap of being a fake, tasteless…

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  • Want to keep your brand relevant? Try listening.

    There are many reasons once-stellar brands begin to fail, and in my decades in the advertising business, I have seen just about all of them: weak leadership, internal corporate politics or not having the right people in the room when solutions are being crafted. The heart of the problem is a refusal to face reality…

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  • Technology can’t fix everything.

    In most business circles, there’s a feeling that if a company is going to be successful, leaders have to be up to date in implementing the latest and greatest technologies—and the hot button today is AI. But businesses are made of people, and consumers are people, too. If leaders forget that, it’s easy for a…

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  • Happy people do better work. Period.

    Listening and acting with intention and transparency can drive a truly happy workplace. We recently won the Ad Age Best Places to Work award for the first time. After the shock, surprise and overzealous company celebrations, it got me thinking — how the heck did that happen? Well, looking back, it wasn’t by accident. This…

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  • Sharing the love: Dutch Bros creating new rules for scaling a coffee culture.

    The brand is showing others how to scale people and culture through its focus on human engagement. Commuting in Dallas is, by most standards, a nightmare. But the silver lining is that it gives me time to think. One recent morning when the traffic gods gifted me an inordinate amount of thinking time, I was…

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  • I love this quote from Einstein.

    “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

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  • How to make empathy your leadership super power.

    You can’t fake empathy — and the leaders who demonstrate it boost both morale and retention. Imagine you are in a tense meeting, and despite everyone’s best efforts, the conversation is going in circles. Frustrations are mounting, and it feels like people are talking past one another. This scenario was pretty common when we met…

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