by Jeff Slater | Nov 9, 2025 | Branding Issues, Marketing Advice
I met Steve Mark in the early 1990s when I was the EVP of Marketing for GoodMark Foods, the parent company of Slim Jim. Steve worked at North Castle Partners, our Stamford, Connecticut-based agency of record. Steve was a part of a dynamic duo called “The Steves”, a...
by Jeff Slater | Nov 2, 2025 | Branding Issues, Marketing Advice
There’s a cognitive trap that ensnares even sophisticated marketers: the belief that consumers buy products for their features, or even their benefits. They don’t. Consumers buy outcomes. They buy the transformed version of themselves they envision on the...
by Jeff Slater | Oct 26, 2025 | Foodpreneurs, Marketing Advice
When most teenagers are figuring out what to wear to prom, Starr Edwards was in her Oregon kitchen blending almonds, nutritional yeast, and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos into what would become a food category pioneer. That teenage experiment, born from her quest for...
by Jeff Slater | Oct 19, 2025 | Foodpreneurs, Marketing Advice
I’m living proof that what I’m writing about is valid. For 13 years, my wife and I owned a bakery specializing in brownies. Rachel’s Brownies. One SKU – hyper-focused on one type of baked good but made exceptional through our focus. We built a successful brand,...
by Jeff Slater | Oct 12, 2025 | Branding Issues, Marketing Advice
For nearly two decades, “search” has meant one thing: Google. The entire ecosystem of SEO—keywords, backlinks, page optimization—was designed around convincing Google’s algorithms that your content deserved to rank higher than the competition. Marketers built careers...
