Todd Lyden

Image via CrunchBase Image via CrunchBase I love picking on Seth Godin . Not that anyone cares, I'm just a wannabe and he is the king of the mountain. One of his latest tidbits was on taste. It really struck me AFTER my post the other day about McCormick's attempting to drive LITERAL flavor combinations.  McCormick's was trying to drive actual taste combinations by giving it authority, using its brand reliability, and repeating to the point of habit. Godin's point was that brand name creators such as Martha Stewart stay ahead of their tribe by knowing what the tribe might like a "half-step" before they do.  He says: The difficult work is doing a new thing in a way that people who have never seen it before will 'get it'.  It seems to me this is more just herd mentality . See Adsavvy for a great piece describing a study of how willing we are to join the herd: Researchers at Leeds University, led by Prof Jens Krause, performed a series of experiments wh...

Image via Wikipedia I have no clue how I have missed 10 years of a spice maker trying to drive taste trends, but I (and I suppose 95% of the public) missed the tenth annual  McCormick ®  Flavor Forecast this year. I could not make this up if I wanted.  McCormick ®  , the world's largest spice company, has been unleashing this prognosticating tool since 2000. Their latest version can be found here . They've even opened up MORE with a grilling edition and a holiday edition.  I titled the blog post today on the 5th combination in their standard edition this year: almonds and ale. Seriously.  The flavor pairings only started in 2007, but the very notion that you can be predictive of what chefs, cooks, and laypeople at home will cook with is... brilliant? The company has chef Kevan Vettar look at the crystal ball with a team of folks from around the country to come up with such combinations. The seering works : The [McCormick's] share price has more than d...