Ben Guttmann

Bluesky has the juice

After spilling a few thousand words on this topic, I don’t have much more to say about Twitter. But what is new and interesting is that, quite recently, we finally seem to see a coalescing around a replacement platform. It took two years, but Bluesky has the juice.

November 18, 2024

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Check out Tony's Chocoloney’s brand guide

They’re doing great work fighting exploitation in the cocoa industry and pledge to make all their products “100% slave free.” And their product is bomb – check out the dark almond sea salt one if you spot it. But beyond all that, the cool thing about Tony’s Chocolonely for marketing and design nerds is their logo.

October 25, 2024

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How would Ben & Jerry’s do it?

One of my first teenage jobs was working as a scooper at the local Ben & Jerry’s outpost. A few years later, in college, I had a marketing professor who used the brand as a model: If you’re ever stuck creatively, imagine what Ben & Jerry’s would do in that situation.

September 30, 2024

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The delight of chaos packaging

If you’re going to the store, grab me a box of water. And a tub of tampons. Maybe a metal jug of gin or a pump bottle of electrolyte mix. These oddball formats are being dubbed chaos packaging – selling products in containers that are normally foreign to the category. The result is surprising, delightful, and, most importantly, noticeable.

September 23, 2024

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An early career cheat sheet for personal branding

This year, I’m giving my students the task to work on the most important client, themselves. They’ll have to get their image in order, begin building a network, and put themselves out there as creators instead of just consumers. By the end of the semester, they’ll be better set up for whatever path they want to take next. Here's the assignment.

September 3, 2024

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