Photo by Justin Morgan / Unsplash Why Email Marketing Just Got Its Groove Back Tobias Dahlberg October 08, 2025 – 2 min read Share this post Marketing The Most Expensive Blind Spot in Business: Misunderstanding Your ICP Most companies believe they know their customers. But if you push a little deeper, the illusion starts to crack. Ask a leadership team to describe their ideal customer and you’ll usually hear something like: “mid-sized companies,” “urban professionals,” or “health-conscious consumers.” That’s not insight. That’s By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read Marketing If You Don't Understand Your Customers Better Than Your Competition, You Don't Deserve To Win. Let’s say the quiet part out loud. Most companies have a shockingly weak understanding of their ideal customers. Not vague. Not “room for improvement.” Weak. And I don’t mean they lack data. They often have plenty of data. What they lack is understanding. I see this constantly—across By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read Marketing You're Not Competing Against Drinks, You're Competing With Routines. In Brief Functional beverage brands think they’re fighting for shelf space. That's not the root issue. They’re fighting for a slot in someone’s day. And most are losing — not because the product is bad, but because it doesn’t stick. What Is Happening (Signals) * Consumers By Tobias Dahlberg • 2 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 Journal You Don’t Need a Bigger Lake. You Need Better Bait. There is a question that comes up surprisingly often in strategy discussions. This came up today in a board meeting I attended. "How big is the market for this segment? Is it big enough". It’s a perfectly sensible question. Investors ask it. Boards ask it. Management teams By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read Intelligence Gen Z Discovers Everywhere and Trusts Almost Nothing Why the biggest challenge in modern marketing is no longer getting discovered—it’s getting believed. In Brief Gen Z has more ways to discover brands than any previous generation. They encounter products and brands through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, creators, AI assistants, online communities and social commerce. And what& By Tobias Dahlberg • 2 min read
Marketing The Most Expensive Blind Spot in Business: Misunderstanding Your ICP Most companies believe they know their customers. But if you push a little deeper, the illusion starts to crack. Ask a leadership team to describe their ideal customer and you’ll usually hear something like: “mid-sized companies,” “urban professionals,” or “health-conscious consumers.” That’s not insight. That’s By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read
Marketing If You Don't Understand Your Customers Better Than Your Competition, You Don't Deserve To Win. Let’s say the quiet part out loud. Most companies have a shockingly weak understanding of their ideal customers. Not vague. Not “room for improvement.” Weak. And I don’t mean they lack data. They often have plenty of data. What they lack is understanding. I see this constantly—across By Tobias Dahlberg • 4 min read
Marketing You're Not Competing Against Drinks, You're Competing With Routines. In Brief Functional beverage brands think they’re fighting for shelf space. That's not the root issue. They’re fighting for a slot in someone’s day. And most are losing — not because the product is bad, but because it doesn’t stick. What Is Happening (Signals) * Consumers By Tobias Dahlberg • 2 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
Journal You Don’t Need a Bigger Lake. You Need Better Bait. There is a question that comes up surprisingly often in strategy discussions. This came up today in a board meeting I attended. "How big is the market for this segment? Is it big enough". It’s a perfectly sensible question. Investors ask it. Boards ask it. Management teams By Tobias Dahlberg • 3 min read
Intelligence Gen Z Discovers Everywhere and Trusts Almost Nothing Why the biggest challenge in modern marketing is no longer getting discovered—it’s getting believed. In Brief Gen Z has more ways to discover brands than any previous generation. They encounter products and brands through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, creators, AI assistants, online communities and social commerce. And what& By Tobias Dahlberg • 2 min read
