HeyJaredWhere Brands Get Their Edge
Cutting-edge marketing news and advice for (and from) brands, founders, and marketing executives.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 5
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- Sep 14, 2026
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- Jul 16, 2026
Latest episodes
Two Teenagers Face-Scanned Amanda at the Grocery Store (opens the original)
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Two high school kids walked up to Amanda and her husband at the grocery store and said, "I know you." They didn't. They had his name. His employer. A dad who supposedly kept a photo of him on his desk. None of it checked out — so Amanda did what most of us wouldn't: documented the aisle, the descriptions, every word they said, in case she had to pull the store's surveillance footage. Then she spent a full night piecing together the only theory that fit: they scanned his face. A week later she fo
Coke Made Coke Zero Look Too Much Like Coke (opens the original)
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Coke Zero used to be easy to spot: red can, black text. Coca-Cola's new one-brand packaging system takes that away, and the problem isn't aesthetic — it's navigational. Borzou is a brand-unity guy on the record. Cohesiveness, one system, one direction — he wants all of it. But packaging isn't a mood board. Its first job is helping someone in a grocery aisle grab the right can in under a second, and Coca-Cola spent a decade training everyone that black text means Zero. Now the only reliable diffe
Instagram's New Logo: Aesthetically Fine, Strategically Confused (opens the original)
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Instagram changed its wordmark, and the loudest complaint isn't that it's ugly — it's that it doesn't look like it says Instagram. Borzou and Amanda judge the new mark on aesthetic and strategy separately, and land in a place neither of them expected: it's a wash. Not bad. Not great. Which, for a logo, might be the most damning verdict of all. The more interesting problem is the one underneath it. Instagram stopped being a photo app years ago. When the old camera icon became the gradient in 2016
Why TV-Style Interventions Fail, and What Actually Helps w/ Doyen Consulting (opens the original)
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Everything you've seen about interventions on TV — the circle of chairs, the letters, the ultimatums — mostly doesn't work. Borzou and Amanda sit down with Chelsea Brigham and Jennifer Tarzia of Doyen Consulting , who work with families navigating addiction and mental health crises. Their take: addiction doesn't happen in a vacuum — it operates on the entire family system, and treating only the person with the problem misses the point. Topics Covered Why "they entered treatment" is the wrong def
Hilariously Early: How Hustle Fund Bets $150K Before Anyone Else (with Haley Bryant) (opens the original)
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The bar for building your personal brand? One founder got started by posting about eating a bagel. Haley Bryant , partner at Hustle Fund , joins Borzou and Amanda to break down how a pre-seed fund writes $150,000 checks into "hilariously early" startups — sometimes investing in the person before there's even a product — and why founders who build in public raise faster, hire better, and carry their audience with them wherever they go. They get into why lengthy diligence at pre-seed is a fool's e
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