Can Liquid Glass Save Apple's Dominance? & Power Ranking Brands' Marketing
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, we have a special Friday interview episode coming your way. We're talking with a branding and marketing expert about Apple's liquid glass redesign, SmartList launching a wireless company, and why AI marketing kind of stinks. It's Friday, June 20th. Let's ride. Radio.

Raise your hand if you've ever had some thoughts on a company's logo change or redesign. Yeah, a lot of you. Everyone has opinions on marketing and branding, but perhaps no one's thought more deeply about the subject than our guest today, Ashwin Krishnaswamy, on a special Summer Friday episode of...

Morning Brew Daily. Yesterday, Juneteenth, was a company holiday for Morning Brew, so today you get to hear us talk to Ashwin. He's a consumer brand builder extraordinaire, helping launch numerous consumer-facing companies through his own design agency. He's the guy you'd go to to bring your idea for a pickleball shoe company or a non-alcoholic champagne brand to life, advising you on stuff like

What should your logo be? Who's your ideal customer? Are you even good at pickleball? - We asked him about some recent branding debacles like HBO Max changing its name every other week and Jaguar doing whatever that was. Ashwin also told us the one thing every AI company is messing up when it comes to their marketing. - All in all, it was a super fun conversation where you'll hopefully learn a lot more about all that goes into a company's design language and brand, but also get some hot takes along the way.

But first, a word from our sponsor, Amazon Ads. Neil, you know that feeling when you show up to a podcast and realize you prepped for the wrong topic? What? No, I've never done that before. Honestly, you haven't, but I certainly have and basically just riffed over here. But I hated that feeling and want to avoid it in the future, which is why Amazon streaming TV ads are so helpful as someone who is trying to build a small business.

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every step of the way. That's how you market like you mean it. Gain the edge with Amazon ads by going to advertising.amazon.com slash start now. That's advertising.amazon.com slash start now. Now, without further ado, here's Ashwin.

So Apple just announced a major design shift, their first in a decade, to a new language called Liquid Glass. What do you think was the strategy behind Liquid Glass and what do you expect the reception among users to be when it comes to their phones this fall? So it's so interesting to see the difference in commentary on TikTok versus Twitter, which you've probably you may be seen on Twitter, especially like among like design community and like more older people.

Um, there is a ton of feedback that it looks horrible and you can't see anything. And then you go and look at the commentary on like Tik TOK and people are like, Oh, this is so fun. This is so exciting. It's like customization. I can change it however I want. And, uh,

I think it's just like it's going to polarize people in a couple of different ways. I mean, I've now had the iPhone since 2009, and I've been so accustomed to a very specific design system. Sure, they've gone like skeuomorphic to what it is now, but like the liquid glass stuff is a little bit different. And I think we don't like change.

Did they invent this out of thin air or were there existing examples that they sort of drew inspiration from? I think there's always existing examples that they draw inspiration from. I don't know what the specific inspiration for this is, but I think like Microsoft probably had some similar stuff like from older versions where they pull this idea of like frosted glass. It's funny because the screenshots that I see of users like complaining about it is they'll pull down like their main screen and it's like,

When you have glass and just frosted glass, you still, like, picks up the image from behind, so you lose a lot of detail in the icons. And people are like, are there any designers, like, left working at Apple who actually, like, care about design? I saw some Galaxy Ring takes of how they're pushing towards a, you know, a multi-modular system where, like, it's based off, like, the Vision OS software. Yeah. And so, like, where they're going to be layering things in, like, real space and time. So they're, like, seeding people into getting used to that. But.

in the meantime, while we're still having iPhones, it stinks. Like the readability stinks. So I'm glad that you're seeing some people loving it and some people not liking it. But it kind of brings me to my next question. Do you think Apple is okay right now? Like there's been a lot of reports of it's

demise and how it's just doing this facelift when they should be getting on the AI train. Where do you think Apple is right now in their evolution as a company? - Yeah, I think they're, so number one, I think they're just fine, right? And it's like, people always talk about the biggest companies in the world and it's like, they're dying, they're dying. There's this idea in technology called the Lindy Effect, which is like the longer a thing has been around, the longer it takes to die. So this was often brought up when people would be like, Snapchat is the Facebook killer. Well it's like, Facebook's been around for 20 years and if anything they're gonna

die equally slow death. It's going to be like 20 years, but they've just reinvented themselves a number of times. And so Apple's like very aware of the writing on the wall and that they're losing like some of the AI kind of like war to GPT. And I think they're just, they're going to be investing in it. And it's like, they're not a stupid company, right? They are

They're very smart and they know how to design and build good products. Speaking of smart, that's actually a very good lead into this next question. The hosts of the SmartList podcast just announced that they're starting a mobile wireless company. This is kind of a wild departure from the kinds of brands celebrities typically launch. Does this make any sense to you?

Well, Ryan Reynolds has his telecom company, right? Mint Mobile that sold for like a billion dollars or something. So maybe they were looking at that and they're like, okay, we're not going to do Jason Bateman and who else? A few other guys. Yeah. Yeah. So like, all right, we're not going to do a beauty brand. We're not going to do like a creator led alcohol brand. Let's do telecom.

I'm not sure what the positioning is on this one, but it's interesting. Do you think this speaks to any bigger shift in celebrity entrepreneurship away from, you know, those comforting brands like alcohol and beauty to a more maybe Ryan Reynolds approach where he's like, I'm going to get my hands dirty in like an actual business?

I have a buddy who does talent partnerships at WME, a big talent agency, and they do a lot of celebrity brand partnerships. And I always tell him, I'm like, dude, B2B is the next wave. We got to bring in celebrity software brands. And I always said it joking, but then recently I saw, I want to say it's Edward Norton. He launched a pitch deck company.

company, like better software. It's called Boardroom or something, like better pitch making software. And I think that's the first play. And especially as the barriers to entry of creating software decrease, I think we're going to see this play of just different celebrities saying like, hey, yeah, beauty and alcohol and some of these traditional categories, they're a little bit saturated. They're really, really hard to win in. And you have to be operationally excellent on so many fronts.

But hey, if we have this distribution, we have a slightly different audience. Maybe they're a little bit older. There could be some interesting software to make. And that's different than Matthew McConaughey being in a Super Bowl ad for Salesforce. You're talking about someone getting down and dirty with the product. Totally. I mean, I don't know that it's so far-fetched to think of a celebrity who is super fit and loves to run going and creating like a Strava competitor with the right team.

What do you think is like the future of influencer marketing kind of on this topic? Is it evolving in a way that you think is a departure from kind of slap your name on this brand and just let it do the rest? Is it becoming more in the weeds? Yeah, I think...

I think we are at a point where the audience is so fatigued by celebrity brands that they can very easily see when it's a cash grab. Like last year, I think Kendall Jenner launched maybe five or six brands.

and posted about it in a two-month period. And by the fifth one, people are like, what is going on here? Like, you're talking beauty, you're talking like a alcohol product, you're talking a jeans product, like in such a short time period. And people know when there's that cash grab and they're like, you're already rich. It's hard to build kind of resonance, especially if there isn't product market fit already. So,

That doesn't mean there aren't tremendous opportunities for like creator and celebrity led brands but this era of like let's take this category find this like super narrow white space put a face on it and then we're off to the races and it's gonna be successful.

Let's shift gears a little bit to AI. Since ChatGPD came out, there's been numerous instances of tech companies stumbling when it comes to their AI marketing. I'm thinking here of Google's ad during the Olympics where they had a dad using Gemini to help his daughter write a letter to her hero. Also, the massive backlash that Duolingo got when the CEO came out and said, hey, we're an AI-first company now. What are

companies getting wrong when it comes to talking about AI to their customers? Everyone makes AI the hero and no one cares about AI. They care about their problems being solved faster for them. So make AI the secondary thing and talk about how you speed up workflows or experiences or like get people to a desired outcome and

And this was so apparent to me. I was driving on a highway in San Francisco. Every single billboard was like, AI, the power of now. I'm like, what does this even mean? Yeah, it's become like you're not even showcasing the benefits anywhere. You're just saying the words and just hoping people say, ah, AI does it all. But also, we just saw Sam Altman, OpenAI, shell out a lot of money, $6.5 billion to bring in Johnny Ive, the former Apple developer, to make AI.

an AI first hardware product. We've already seen some stumbles with Humane's AI pin that didn't work out. What do you think this could be? Like what could be the hardware iteration of AI?

- I think it probably starts, so when you look at the existing model that people are familiar with, it's like Alexa in their home and we talk to this thing. And so I think that's a decent place to start because you have to look at where people's behaviors are. 'Cause you can't shift behavior that drastically that quickly. So if they use that as the starting point and say,

"Hey, here's this device that's in your home now "that you can interface with, "and maybe now instead of you having to say, "Hey, Alexa, answer this for me," maybe it's always ambiently kind of like listening and processing, and then gives you this kind of active feedback.

And I think they're probably gonna take a lot of insight from how people are talking to ChatGPT. I talk to ChatGPT all the time, like after meetings and I just download notes into it. So I think they're gonna use that and then look at some common hardware behaviors that we're already used to and then try to like

blend those two. I think our audience is probably very interested in how you're using ChatJPT or AI in your workflow. So you say you talk to it all the time. Like, what are you having it do? I talk to it all the time, but I'll give you like a kind of tactical example of something that I did super recently. So I have a brand and we just did a ton of customer interviews. We probably did 50 customer interviews. And then we did a survey with another hundred customers. And so this includes both structured and unstructured data. When I'd say unstructured data,

just off the cuff them talking about the product. We wanted to take all this information and then use it to inform our ads, the audience that we go after, as well as how we talk about our product from like a copy and messaging standpoint.

Before kind of AI, I would have to parse through all of this, pull out the insights. It'd be an exercise that takes me a couple of weeks to do. With AI, I feed it all of the data and then have it analyze it and think like a really smart copywriter or market strategist and say, hey, what are the ads or angles we should test? What should our landing page copy look like? Where is our Amazon storefront coming up short?

Are you using it for any actual creative outputs? Like are you asking it to generate images for ads? Are you asking it to generate actual copy that makes it into marketing materials? So I use it because I have some background in design.

I use it to generate background assets or supplemental images. I do not use it to generate the entire ad creative that many people do. It's like we saw Twitter was ablaze when 4.0 came out. People were like, oh, this is, I'm just going to generate hundreds of like sloppy images and run it. It's like, no, you still need to be like a decent marketer and like think about the angles. And I think it can, it

You know what would otherwise have taken me hey? I got to get this really specific shot of this mug on this table And that's just gonna be this blurred background image well now I can just generate that image and then create the rest of my creative yeah, all right We'll be back with more Ashwin right after this

You wouldn't put your cash register in one store and your products in another, would you, Toby? What a diabolical question. No, Neil. Those two always belong in the same place. That's how Square thinks about business payments and checking. They're better together. With Square's free business debit MasterCard, your sales go straight into your account and are instantly ready to spend. This makes it easier than ever to manage your money all in one place.

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We need to talk about some marketing flops because that is extremely fun. What can we learn from the HBO Max, HBO Max branding debacle?

I don't, what I am curious about is what has the leadership or management change looked like at HBO over the past four years? And how often are people cycling in and out? Because oftentimes when you see brands do these big rebrands, thinking that's going to solve their problems, that's just a sign that like a new, you know, CMO or head of brand has come in and they want to put their thumbprint on things. And that's the easiest response.

kind of place to start, right? Is overhaul the visual identity. So I think it's almost comical, right? It's a meme, but it's almost getting them this like earned awareness where people are thinking about and talking about HBO and Max more than they ever have been. Do you think they're playing 4D chess? Do you think they're doing that? Or no, it's just bad leadership? Having talked to

a few of these large streaming services from a content and social standpoint and kind of like modern marketing standpoint.

there's no way they're playing 4D chess. They just don't understand the internet at that level. - Yeah, people rarely, although the last HBO Max rebrand did come with a lot of memes, a lot of leaning into the jokes, so I do feel like someone in their social department at least figured out, hey guys, this is what people are saying about us, let's just get out ahead of it. So there was a little bit of chess going on, I don't know if it was 4D at that point. - Yeah, maybe they're just responsive to what's happening. - Right, right, exactly. - On that note, how much does a company's or brand's name matter?

For a when it when you look at physical products, right the physical like when I when I say physical products anything sold in like a Whole Foods 7-eleven, you know any like object that you're that you're purchasing brand names and brand identities matter a lot for recognition discoverability like word-of-mouth and

When you get into services businesses and then you get into streaming businesses, especially, right, when we're talking about HBO versus Max versus HBO Max, I think it matters a little bit less because it's like, well, you have the app. You generally recognize it. You maybe use three or four different streaming services. So it's not like,

Like, oh man, I can't remember that one thing. It's like, I just want to watch Game of Thrones. Like, where is it? I'm going to figure it out anyway. So in some categories, it matters quite a bit. In other categories, I think you're okay kind of making these like mistakes, right?

We have seen a couple of major rebrands recently. One minor rebrand was actually Walmart just slightly tweaking its logo. Another big rebrand was Jaguar changing its entire visual identity. Both of them elicited pretty strong reactions from customers. What is it about a rebrand that brings out those strong feelings?

Yeah. So the Walmart one is interesting because Walmart changed their logo ever so slightly, right? Imperceptibly. And then the public or like the meme is, oh, this was a rebrand and someone got paid tens, hundreds of millions of dollars to do this thing. And what they see is like the meme that gets shared is like before and after. And people are like, I could do that. I could type out the word Walmart. But then you actually go into the entire design system that was built for Walmart. What I mean by design system is

As a brand grows and you have an international brand with so many different touchpoints, right, physical touchpoints, digital touchpoints, apps, services, all on the side of trucks, boxes, et cetera, you need a consistent visual system, right? Everything from illustrations to iconography to word marks to type to colors.

that can expand on the system. And what often happens as companies grow very quickly is that all of these different departments will make ever so subtle tweaks because they're hiring external agencies. And then you're like, oh, now we have this like Frankenstein design system where we have 73 shades of blue and we should have just had three to maintain this consistency. So a rebrand that like Walmart did is actually just a

a slight evolution, but it's really a lot of this behind the scenes, like foundational design system work that matters that like a lot of people who aren't designers or have ever operated in those fields, they don't understand the value of that, especially at the scale of Walmart. Like

Creating consistency there is going to save them a lot of time and money, but it's fascinating to see how emotionally invested Regular people are in a company's design decisions for some reason It elicits like the most strong reactions of any sort of corporate decision that had a company can make well Here's the thing It's the easiest thing to have a decision on right and the easier thing is to have a decision on the more input you're gonna get we've all

Designed something right even if the last thing we designed was in like high school like you design a book cover for some report So we have we feel like we can have opinions on like color and look and feel of things Whereas it's like hey should we change our shipping route from like, you know this country to this country? No one can talk about that. No one has has the right to have any opinion on it so that's where I think we see like a lot of the public getting very invested in that type of stuff and

All right. So we talked about some flops. What are some of the smartest product launches and associated marketing campaigns you've seen this year? You know, one that's that stands out to me is Jake Paul, like creator led brand. Well, not he's not a creator led brand, but he launched W, which is a, you know, men's body care line. He launched a deodorant and all these other products.

And what I found fascinating about his launch is he didn't say, hey, one day I'm just like going to launch this thing. And it's this one and done thing where I kind of contrast this to Beyonce launched a hair care brand called Sacred. She, I think, maybe posted about it one day. But if you go to her account, like there's no association between her and this brand at all.

which can be a strategic and intentional decision on its own merit. But Jake Paul is like, I'm the master of commanding attention. So I am, and this was around the time of the Tyson fight too. So leading up to it for a week, he was creating all of this content. Him and this brother did this like phenomenal, like lie detector test video that actually turned out to be an ad halfway through for W. They rolled out in Walmarts nationwide. And then for probably like three weeks afterwards, W played some role.

in every one of his videos, his Reels, his YouTube videos. He changed all of his social avatars to W and driving traffic there. And that's where I think...

A creator-led brand has a higher likelihood of getting traction and success when there is a creator who knows how to garner attention and then is repeatedly talking about it over a long period of time. Seems like you're talking about commitment. Yes. Yes. Is, I mean, Jake Paul and Logan Paul, obviously they command a lot of attention, not

all of it good attention all the time. Do you delineate between all attention is good attention or does it have to be like the right kind of attention? Because there's people who can make headlines, but not all of them the most positive. Do you think that brands need to be supported by someone with more positive headlines than negative or does it just not matter? I think it's a question of like what, how negative is negative, right? If they, um,

You kind of look at Elon Musk and the impact that it's had on Tesla and SpaceX and how polarizing he has been with certain views. And it can be seen as super negative by a large population of people. I don't see a similar thing. Jake Paul and his brother, they act stupid a number of times. The most negative headline was probably like,

15 years ago from them. And so I think in that stage, as long as there isn't this like tremendous, like reputational risk when they come out and say something, it's kind of just like additional like eyeballs and attention on them. If you did want to launch a brand in the year 2025, how would you do it? And would it be much different than it was maybe five years ago, 10 years ago? Five or 10 years ago, the play was really, we can find an opportunity. And if there's enough

You don't even need that much gross margin on your product. We can just play this arbitrage game on Facebook, right? We can acquire a customer for $5. We have $20 of gross margin. And then we can scale that really quickly. Those days are completely over. So one of the conversations I was having, someone was saying, hey, where's the arbitrage right now? And I'm like, you know, for the past 12 months, it's probably been TikTok shop. It'll probably be TikTok shop for the next 12 months. So I'd lean, I'd probably start and lean pretty heavily, like reverse engineer the product

and brand to work very well on social, right? So what this means is for TikTok shop, it's high repeat purchase. It is maybe in the beauty or skincare space. There's a clear kind of demonstration or use case of the product, and it probably sits at under a $40 price point. Again, that's if you want to build a product that can kind of like take advantage of some arbitrage that exists from a customer acquisition standpoint.

But in terms of like foundational brand building, all of that stuff is really the same. And it's like you have to build a community. You have to build loyalty. You can't just rely on one channel. You have to build a kind of like omni-channel business. And those tenants mattered 10 years ago. They mattered 30 years ago. They still matter today. It's just the tooling has changed a little bit. You recently went to a Sephora. What did you learn there?

It's my first time. It was my first time actively in a Sephora looking around. There's so much beauty product and there's so many unique names for them. And I'm like, oh, they rebranded lip gloss into like a collagen lip plumber. Turns out when you do that verbal gymnastics, you can 4X the price of the product. So I think it was an interesting exercise in seeing how the variety of products, all

all of the ways that they talk about these products. And then you have some brands that lean heavily beauty and then some brands that lean so heavily into the science and clinical studies that you don't even know what they're saying. And K18 was one brand that stood out to me. They're like biomimetic hair science. And I'm like,

I might believe this. So it sounds like we have to launch a biomechanic lip plumper with collagen on TikTok shop and generate some headlines if we want to launch a brand in the year 2025. That seems like

That's all the Venn diagrams right there, right? I'm in for a million. All right, there we go. That's what I'm talking about. All right, we're going to finish off with a kind of fun segment. I just want you to power rank these brands or companies when it comes to their marketing right now. And we're going to start you off in the running space. I know you're a big runner. Power rank on Hoka and Nike. So Hoka won on Nike.

Onto Nike 3. - Why is Hoka one? - Probably, number one, I really like my Hoka C8. Number two, I think, on I was really liking until they did this partnership with Zendaya, which I think it just like,

Fell flat for a number of reasons for me I think the partnership didn't like it make a whole lot of sense especially as in diaz come out and been like I don't really like run or exercise and it's like okay. Well, why is she like she plays tennis the ambassador? On screen I know yeah kind of so I was like, okay What is that but obviously on is absolutely crushing it and so it's like okay did that one campaign the one campaign didn't hurt them But it's like me as I'm staring at him like does that make sense?

And then Nike lost its fastball a little bit? You know, I think Nike pulled back so much from their retail distribution and leaned in so heavily into performance marketing. And that's been like the big story and kind of conversation of Nike. And now they're realizing, okay, that was a mistake. And we need to like go back into retail and like take care of marketing in a less performance oriented way. Let's do beverages next. Celsius Monster Red Bull. Celsius Monster.

Well, I think Red Bull's number one. Red Bull's like still GOAT, right? If we're ranking marketing, consistently their videos and stunts still pop off and garner so much attention. And they've been so good at doing that in a variety of countries, a variety of ways, tapping into so many different sports cultures in a way that...

Monster, I'm not terribly familiar with what they're doing still on a day-to-day basis. I'm sure it's doing quite well. And then Celsius, Celsius I see their distribution. You can think of distribution as marketing and they're kind of everywhere and they have these phenomenal displays and they have a good product that is positioned to more like a corporate audience.

But I don't see what they're really doing from like brass tacks marketing. Yeah, it's a great point Like I don't see any marketing for them, but you see them everywhere They're just right when you walk into any convenience store the right staring you in the face at the at the front so Which in and of itself to write here is that is a really great form of marketing and that can work and you know They had a huge investment by Pepsi that like opened up all of this distribution for them. I

but early on, I think their positioning was really smart and I still think their positioning is really smart. All right, let's go back to AI and we're just talking marketing here. Open AI, Anthropic, Google's Gemini or Meta AI. Meta AI. I haven't seen anything. So, so we'll actually go worse. We'll go Anthropic at the bottom. Okay. That's number four. I saw an out of home campaign from, uh, from Claude, uh,

And none of it made sense to me, right? The messaging or the positioning. And I think this is kind of a function of you're very close to the product and you know what it is, but the passerby, even people who'd be interested in AI, it's like, well, what does that mean? It was like, one of the billboards was like, your thoughts up and to the right. And I was like, that's so like SF coded.

And so there was one campaign that stood out to me, so I didn't like that, but I'm sure they've turned around and they're doing just fine. It's interesting because Anthropic to me was the only one with like a visual identity at this point. They have kind of that tan color. They have kind of a fancy font, and I'm not sure any of the other ones quite have that same design language. That being said, I don't know what the words are saying on their out-of-home stuff. They have, you know, a brand, but that's interesting that you ranked it so low because they may have jumped the shark a little bit when it comes to like...

how artsy you can get with AI advertising. - You know what, now that I think about it, did Meta AI do a ad for the Super Bowl?

Yeah, they did. Well, it was their AI glasses. It was the AI glasses. Okay, yeah. That kind of fell a little bit flat to me. So we'll rank that as number three. GPT is number two because I just can't even think of anything that they've really done. They've just been in this dominant number one position that I don't know that they've gone too crazy with their marketing outside of that. And then Google Gemini, you referenced the Super Bowl ad. I thought that was a great ad because it...

humanized a way in which you could use AI to some benefit. And I think when the bar is so low that all of these AI companies, it's just like they're talking to other AI leaders at their companies. This is the first one that's like, hey, let's take just like a human first approach and like

Try to create this narrative that we're like solving their problems somehow a little bit easier. The bar is so low and people are limping over it at this point. Let's talk about people. These are just the PR images of certain celebrities. And I want you to rank Sidney Sweeney, Timothee Chalamet and Glenn Powell. Who's kind of on top of the heap right now?

- Timothy Chalamet, I think, is winning. Timothy Chalamet is winning after, what was it, his Oscar speech? - Yeah, did he win an Oscar? I don't know if he did. He had some speech at some awards show. - He had some speech that was super humble and he just kind of reinforced this idea of just hard work and humility. And I was like, okay, that's really great. He didn't come in this super braggadocio way. I think he just got great swag that a lot of people just kind of vibe with and...

So we'll rank him as number one. Sydney Sweeney's just been on a tear. So I think she's number two. She did a partnership recently where she bottled up her bathwater with Dr. Squatch. And so she plays her cards to the audience. What did you think about that partnership?

Gets attention. Yeah. It gets attention. I'm sure they sold those bars. We tried. No one bought it. We tried to body up our bathwater. No one was really buying the... Yeah, complete fail. Complete fail on our part. Well, you know, I think we have a better idea in the bio-mechanical lip plumber. Yeah, exactly. We got that going. Emily's telling me the Timothee Chalamet speech was at the SAG Awards, if you want to go watch. Oh, okay, yeah. It was about him wanting to become great. Yeah. Yes. I mean, hey. Yes. If...

He should have passed on some of the greatness to the Knicks because it didn't work out so well for them. Neil, you want to do our final category? Sure. Final category, we got wellness trends, creatine protein THC drinks. God, it's protein and everything. Yeah. Khloe Kardashian just launched a protein popcorn. Hilarious because it has like five grams of protein in it. Does that really count as protein? That's hardly anything right there. So here's the thing.

It seems that people want protein. Okay, fine. We can put it in more form factors. I think the question is how digestible and bioavailable does that protein come? And I don't know the research or science behind that. And I don't know that a lot of people starting these brands also know that research and science. They're just trying to load it up in there. And it's like, well, hey, you're only going to absorb two grams of the 30 grams here because you actually need it with all these other ingredients that make this an unsustainable product to create.

So I'm kind of out on that. I think there will probably be some conversation that like cools the jets a little bit on protein infused everything. Creatine has had this like interesting turnaround because when I was in high school, it was like creatine was this kind of demonized thing. Creatine was almost like taking steroids, right? And it's like, oh, don't do that. It's going to like jack up your muscles.

Now there's all this research coming out that it's like a performance enhancing like, you know It decreases your chance of like dementia and Alzheimer's and if you're tired you can take it and it like Has all these great benefits So seeing some of that at least like headline research come out I think is turning the tides on creatine and so there's a ton of demand there and so like if that's true Are we gonna see it in like creatine popcorn? Maybe

And then, so now let me rank it. THC drinks number one, creatine number two, protein number three. Why are you so bullish on THC? We have people drinking less. And I think if you have people drinking less and want to live a healthier lifestyle, it has to be, something has to take its place. Because why were we drinking in the first place? It's a social lubricant. So it's like, okay, there's some drug, there's some like,

mind-altering substance that's gonna take its place, and now that looks like THC, and they're putting it in a beverage. So similar form factor, you can drink it in the same situations. So I think that's hot category. - I don't know how much THC is a social lubricant for me. - They're gonna lubricate just sitting and staring at one-- - Just immediately down. - And probably eating the creatine popcorn, 'cause you got a little bit of the munchies.

Ashwin, thanks so much for dropping by. We love talking marketing and branding with you. We could go on all day. If you want to hear more from Ashwin, you can follow him at Schwinnabago Brand. Great social handle on all social platforms. He posts videos breaking down the biggest marketing stories and brands of the day. So definitely give him a follow. Ashwin, thanks for jumping by. Thank you for having me.

There's something percolating at Morning Brew that we are very excited to share with you all. Cappuccino machine! What? No, the launch of Revenue Brew on June 17th. We talked about this. We also talked about the cappuccino machine, but no one ever listens to me. And continuing with that proud tradition, we're excited to partner with Outreach for the launch of this new vertical.

Outreach is a single platform supercharging the entire revenue team. Their integrated AI agents help sales leaders increase productivity, make more precise decisions, and guide sellers towards activities that generate more pipe. And with their help, Revenue Brew will serve up sales strategy, operations, tech, and everything in between. From the CRO's corner office to the SDR trenches, Revenue Brew serves up cross-industry insights, including everything from CPG secrets to cutting-edge SaaS strategies.

And while I'm still waiting for that cappuccino machine. So not happening. A man can dream, Neil, but no dreaming necessary here. Go ahead and subscribe at the very real revenuebrew.com for a biweekly dose of revenue review. That's revenuebrew.com.