Hello Curious People,

Here are this week’s headlines:

Enjoy the read.

Angelique

Let me tell you about the day Howard Schultz lost his mind.

He walks into a Starbucks in Singapore on a normal Tuesday morning. It had the usual hum of conversation, that familiar sound of beans being ground and milk being steamed that made a coffee chain feel like a ritual.

Except this time… it didn’t smell like Starbucks… it smelled like sushi. At Starbucks?! He called our team in a panic. “Why are we selling sushi?”

Of course the rational response is to explain the local relevance strategy, the consumer testing, the sales data, but he didn’t care about that.

"That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking why we forgot what we're actually selling."

He was right. The issue wasn't the sushi. It was that we'd drifted so far from our core, we couldn't smell it anymore.

When Ambition Becomes Drift

Brand drift never begins with arrogance. It begins with ambition. That beautiful and honest desire to evolve, diversify, and grow.

We were expanding fast, testing trends and adding multiple SKUs with “local relevance.” But relevance without resonance is just noise and that’s what Schultz knew, so he did something radical for a CEO: He hit pause.

We'd become so focused on what could sell that we'd stopped asking what should carry our name. That's how drift happens. Not in one dramatic pivot, but in a hundred reasonable compromises that each made sense on their own.

It Begins With Pleasure

All great brands have that deep, sensory, pleasure code that keeps people coming back. Lose it, and even your smartest innovations will feel hollow.
Honour it, and you can take people anywhere.

The Global Coffee Master Program that followed was a complete refocusing on craft and pleasure. We trained partners on tasting notes, brewing methods, and bean origins. We rebuilt the theatre of coffee-making.

And here's the thing, once we recommitted to our core, innovation became easier. Cold brew made sense because it was a purer expression of coffee. Nitro made sense because it elevated the ritual. Reserve Roasteries made sense because they were temples to craft.

None of it was drift. It was all amplification.

The thing about drift is you never see it coming. Every decision makes sense in the moment. But here's what I've learned keeps you honest, asking yourself four simple questions…

We failed that test with sushi. We passed it with Reserve Roasteries. The difference wasn't the ambition, it was whether we remembered what we were really selling.

Reply to this email if your brand has stopped smelling and feeling like it should.

I’d love to see if we can help you to redefine and amplify your pleasure DNA, like we’ve done for global brands across food, beverage, alcohol, and cannabis.

Perspective is everything, these creators invite us to see the world differently.

From death-defying designs to haunted highways, this week’s campaigns show how fear can fuel creativity.

Death-Proof Design

Columbia took a darkly funny approach to their brand slogan ‘Engineered for Whatever‘ by enlisting the Grim Reaper (The Notorious R.I.P.) as its newest content creator. Promoting jackets that come stitched with an actual legal “Last Will & Testament,” the campaign invites followers to comment on their near-death experiences for a chance to win one. It’s an irreverent way to dramatise just how tough Columbia gear is, turning mortality into marketing with chilling wit.

Ghost Rider

Mini just turned Halloween into a cheeky showdown with autonomy, dressing up as a Waymo-style “driverless” ride that will cruise through San Francisco on Halloween night. Accompanied by an OOH campaign, Mini is mocking the idea of self-driving supremacy, reminding us that driving is still an experience to live for.

FruitHead Returns

The U.S. fruit-snack brand, Gushers, resurrected its bizarre ’90s “FruitHead” ads as a full-blown Halloween horror short, turning nostalgic absurdity into cinematic spectacle. The film stars Bradley Whitford as a director haunted by his own creation, with eerie OOH pop-ups spilling onto New York’s streets. Far from a gimmick, the extended format allows the brand to build genuine tension and develop its story, rather than just selling a snack. By turning self-parody into storytelling, Gushers made nostalgia feel thrilling again.

Lately, I’ve noticed friends swapping their playlists from Spotify to platforms like Qobuz, searching for better sound, fairer pay for artists, or just a platform that feels less… conflicted.

There’s no official exodus yet, no headline numbers, no “Spotify-gate.” But twenty years of algorithmic intimacy might finally be fraying. Because when Daniel Ek starts investing hundreds of millions into defence tech and AI robotics, it gets harder to romanticise that green icon as the home of your most loved and cherished songs and albums.

People are realising that the platform (and its founder) have started to get in the way of the music itself. And when that begins to interfere with the pleasure of listening, maybe it’s time to turn down the noise and find a stage that lets the music breathe again.