The Water Wars: Navigating Gen Z's Thirst for Authenticity Tobias Dahlberg November 11, 2025 – 10 min read Share this post Brand When The "Brandless Brand" Wins, And Why It Happens. In Brief Every few years a company with no heritage, no advertising history, and no place in anyone's brand tracker takes serious market share from businesses that have spent decades and fortunes building their names. The industry response is always the same: confusion, then rationalisation, then a think By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read Brand The Brand Strategy You Can't Actually Strategize In Brief: The cultural moment is rewarding brands that look like they've stopped trying. Which creates a problem. Because the moment you try to stop trying, everyone can tell. There is a memo going around marketing departments right now. It has different subject lines depending on the company, By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read Brand Bland or Brand: Why Most Value Propositions Fail the 10-Second Test Here’s a brutal question I like to ask leadership teams: Can a customer understand why they should choose you in under 10 seconds? Not after a demo. Not after a white paper. Not after a 42-slide pitch deck. Ten seconds. Cold. If the answer is no, you don’ By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read Marketing Marketing to the Average: The Customer You Designed For Does Not Exist In Brief: Nobody is average. And a brand built for the average customer is built for someone who does not exist — which is why it struggles to be the most relevant choice for anyone. The average person has one testicle. The line is crude but it makes the point faster By Tobias Dahlberg • 5 min read Attention grabbing. Different. Chosen? Strategy Most Brands Are Trying to Be Different. But Choice Takes Something Else. In Brief: In competitive markets, differentiation has become the default answer to a question it does not actually solve. The goal was never to be different. It was to be the most relevant choice — and that requires knowing, precisely, what your customers value and whether your proposition delivers it. Walk By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read Journal The Customer Is Allowed to Be Ignorant. You Are Not. "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Usually attributed to Churchill. Probably not his. Still quoted constantly, because it captures something people recognize. There's a version of it in business, and it isn't about customers. Customers aren& By Tobias Dahlberg • 1 min read Strategy The Relevance Gap™: Why Every Safe Decision Has a Price. In Brief: No company decides to become irrelevant. They arrive there through a long series of reasonable, defensible, individually harmless choices — each one costing a little bit of choice, none of them visible on their own. Yet, all visible without explanation, 12 months later in the P&L. Nobody By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read Brand When The "Brandless Brand" Wins, And Why It Happens. In Brief Every few years a company with no heritage, no advertising history, and no place in anyone's brand tracker takes serious market share from businesses that have spent decades and fortunes building their names. The industry response is always the same: confusion, then rationalisation, then a think By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read Intelligence Wellness Is Shifting from Optimisation to Regulation The next wellness winner may promise less ambition and more equilibrium. In Brief For much of the past decade, wellness has been sold as a project of continuous self-improvement: sleep better, train harder, eat cleaner, track more, optimise everything. You'll know this from all the fitness and By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read
Brand When The "Brandless Brand" Wins, And Why It Happens. In Brief Every few years a company with no heritage, no advertising history, and no place in anyone's brand tracker takes serious market share from businesses that have spent decades and fortunes building their names. The industry response is always the same: confusion, then rationalisation, then a think By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read
Brand The Brand Strategy You Can't Actually Strategize In Brief: The cultural moment is rewarding brands that look like they've stopped trying. Which creates a problem. Because the moment you try to stop trying, everyone can tell. There is a memo going around marketing departments right now. It has different subject lines depending on the company, By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read
Brand Bland or Brand: Why Most Value Propositions Fail the 10-Second Test Here’s a brutal question I like to ask leadership teams: Can a customer understand why they should choose you in under 10 seconds? Not after a demo. Not after a white paper. Not after a 42-slide pitch deck. Ten seconds. Cold. If the answer is no, you don’ By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read
Marketing Marketing to the Average: The Customer You Designed For Does Not Exist In Brief: Nobody is average. And a brand built for the average customer is built for someone who does not exist — which is why it struggles to be the most relevant choice for anyone. The average person has one testicle. The line is crude but it makes the point faster By Tobias Dahlberg • 5 min read
Attention grabbing. Different. Chosen? Strategy Most Brands Are Trying to Be Different. But Choice Takes Something Else. In Brief: In competitive markets, differentiation has become the default answer to a question it does not actually solve. The goal was never to be different. It was to be the most relevant choice — and that requires knowing, precisely, what your customers value and whether your proposition delivers it. Walk By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read
Journal The Customer Is Allowed to Be Ignorant. You Are Not. "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Usually attributed to Churchill. Probably not his. Still quoted constantly, because it captures something people recognize. There's a version of it in business, and it isn't about customers. Customers aren& By Tobias Dahlberg • 1 min read
Strategy The Relevance Gap™: Why Every Safe Decision Has a Price. In Brief: No company decides to become irrelevant. They arrive there through a long series of reasonable, defensible, individually harmless choices — each one costing a little bit of choice, none of them visible on their own. Yet, all visible without explanation, 12 months later in the P&L. Nobody By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read
Brand When The "Brandless Brand" Wins, And Why It Happens. In Brief Every few years a company with no heritage, no advertising history, and no place in anyone's brand tracker takes serious market share from businesses that have spent decades and fortunes building their names. The industry response is always the same: confusion, then rationalisation, then a think By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read
Intelligence Wellness Is Shifting from Optimisation to Regulation The next wellness winner may promise less ambition and more equilibrium. In Brief For much of the past decade, wellness has been sold as a project of continuous self-improvement: sleep better, train harder, eat cleaner, track more, optimise everything. You'll know this from all the fitness and By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read
