Brand Is Brand: What a Wizard, a Mop, and Dog Food Have in Common.

A wizard. A mop. Dog food. Infant videos. A grocery store. On paper, these five brands have nothing to teach each other. I've spent 25 years building brand and marketing strategy across all of them, and I've come to the opposite conclusion: underneath, they're running the same playbook.

Those are Harry Potter, Swiffer, CESAR, Baby Einstein, and Whole Foods. The categories were never supposed to teach each other anything. This newsletter is where I show that they do. Each issue takes one idea that travels across an unexpected border and breaks down how it works, using brands you already know.

Across all five brands, the same three principles kept showing up, regardless of category. At the core of these principles is not what the product does but what the brand means to the person.

Identity over product. Baby Einstein sold parents permission, not education. Parents were able to get a break from watching their babies — and they didn’t feel guilty doing so because the name suggested that it’s enriching. Swiffer wasn’t just a cleaning tool — it was an effective way for people to experience the feeling of a handled home. Both of these products sold a feeling more than an outcome.

Experience over logo. Harry Potter is a brand that people can walk into. When I was leading global strategy and insights for Harry Potter, we tripled the experiences footprint across theme parks, events, exhibitions, stage plays, and more. Fans wanted to experience the franchise with their five senses, and we provided that. At Whole Foods, the store was the brand — an expression of a lifestyle that says I take care of myself. What happened at the shelf and at checkout was the promise.

Emotion as the durable moat. CESAR dog food is a purely emotional purchase. People spend on a dog the way they spend on their families, and CESAR was the food you fed when you wanted to pamper your dog. It had a fiercely loyal fan base which allowed the brand to command a more premium price point.

This might sound like brand fluff to some, the emotional, the experiential. It's the opposite. Brand is the engine of performance, not the alternative to it. The identity it grants is what lets you win without competing on features. The experience it delivers is what converts and keeps people, so you spend less to acquire them and hold them longer. The emotional moat is what lets you raise price and keep the customer anyway. Brand is what makes every performance dollar cheaper and every customer worth more.

Brand marketing vs. performance marketing: a false choice

Brand marketing shapes what people think and feel about you: who you are, what you stand for, and why you’re worth choosing. Performance marketing captures demand that already exists, through channels like paid search and paid social where you can measure the return on every dollar. Most debates treat them as rivals for the same budget.

They aren’t. Performance marketing can only harvest the demand your brand has already built. When the brand is weak, every click costs more and every customer leaves faster. When it’s strong, the same media dollars go further. Brand and performance marketing work best as one system.

Brand is brand. The categories that look like walls (entertainment, grocery, CPG, pet, education) aren't walls at all, they're just costumes on the same job. The borders are in our minds, not in the work. Learn to see past them, and every brand you'll ever touch has something to teach the next one.