I first started going with my son. It’s a perfect little outing. Seven minute walk. Stroller parking right in front. A reading room and plenty of books to bring home and be repurposed as weaponry by my wonderful, feral child.

But these library trips quickly became an indispensable tool in my strategic work, especially in the early discovery phase of any project.

I rarely go with a specific list of books to check out. Instead, I keep an eye out for books articles and other media in four genres:

Genre 1: Media directly related to whatever category the brand I’m working on is in. If I’m working on a granola brand, for example, I look for stuff specifically about breakfast and cereal. This might include anything from a book on the history of American breakfast foods to a literal granola recipe book. The goal is to quickly get trusted information about a category from a diversity of perspectives.

Genre 2: Media adjacent to that brand’s category. This could be books on sourcing, materials, complementary categories, downstream categories, relevant trends, etc. I want to better understand the broader ecosystem of the category. What are the inputs, where are the vulnerabilities, the critical points in the supply chain? To go back to the granola example, this means I might pick up a book on organic or regenerative agricultural practices.

Genre 3: Books and magazines the brand’s target audience might have on their bookshelves at home. This can feel a bit abstract, but the goal is just to better understand the everyday experiences and perspectives of the people we’re designing for, beyond the confines of the traditional consumer research I often have at my disposal. For granola, I’m probably browsing popular health and wellness magazines, cookbooks, self-help books, and maybe even parenting books.

Genre 4: Browser’s choice. I’ll go find interesting-looking books in a section completely unrelated to the category I’m working in. Maybe I’ll grab a book about fables, or architecture, or mushroom foraging. The goal is to find non-obvious connections. This is a fantastic way to tap into different writing styles, descriptive language, and, if I’m lucky, unexpected analogs I can use to frame my work. That random book of folklore I grabbed from the shelf might have beautiful ways of talking about connection to place—something that makes a lot of sense for a granola brand that’s deeply tied to its community.

Strategists are professional borrowers. We love lifting ideas from one domain and adapting it for another. I can’t tell you how many times I found a brilliant anecdote or case study in a fashion magazine or scientific journal that inspired a new way of thinking about a consumer brand.

That said, having such a broad variety of inputs can be overwhelming, and I’m working on a piece that will outline the methods I use to synthesize a variety of inputs like these. For now, I’m focusing on the collection.

Most often I’m skimming with a notebook next to me. I’m writing down interesting quotes, facts, words and sentences I enjoy. An old mentor used to call this process “brailling,” or reading by feel. Literally, anything that makes you stop and say, “Whoa, that’s interesting.” Did you know that Judean palm date seeds, once completely extinct, can lie dormant for thousands of years buried under long forgotten cityscapes and spring to life when placed in potting soil? Well, now you do. What was I going to do with that information? Who knows! That’s the magic of this work.

Be curious. Go to the library.

Disclaimer: All writing conceived, edited and published by humans. AI is great, just not for writing.

There’s no right or wrong way to do a store walk, but there is a common way. Working on an ice cream brand? Head over to the freezer aisle, pull out your phone, and start snapping pictures of pints. Want to know what’s happening in fiber? Walk the store and identify how fiber claims are showing up across categories.

This is valuable, but it’s barely scratching the surface.

The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. That may seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget when we’re walking down those aisles.

The objective when doing a store walk is to see differently. Or, really, to see in as many different ways as possible. In doing so, we get closer to how actual people experience the products around them.

Here are some of the ways I try to see differently on my own store walks. Test them out for yourself and see if they help you notice things you’d otherwise miss. Think of these as little challenges you can do each time you go into the store. (And be sure to bring a notepad to document what you see!)

Seek patterns across categories:

1. Find all the objects you can that feature a specific color.

2. Look for every permutation of a particular shape.

3. Go find everything with a cow on it.

4. Document the (seemingly) identical. As you move from store to store, take pictures of the “same” thing: the entrances, signage, shopping carts, shelf tags, even the paper bags. The more abstract you get the more fun you’ll have. Focusing your attention on one thing will help you notice the differences between them.

5. Take your focus off of what’s on the shelf and instead turn your attention to who’s shopping a particular aisle or category.

Change your perspective:

• See like a child would. What does the store look like from three feet high?

• Put on blue light blocking glasses and notice what brands/claims start to stand out.

• Take a store walk hungover. What products appeal to you? What makes you nauseated?

• Construct a short story through images, characters, or products that catch your eye. Establish a beginning, middle and end. Is it a love story? A high stakes heist? Imagining what happens next in your short story will require you to quickly find and draw out key details around you.

Use ALL your senses:

• Instead of relying on just your eyes, take an auditory snapshot of each store. You’ll learn different things about an environment by asking what it sounds like. What conversations do you overhear? Is there music playing? Are phones ringing?

• Find similar textures in different parts of the store. Are there specific finishes being used in certain categories? What does premium feel like in each category? What does value feel like?

Some of these activities may seem silly, but trust me–they work. We often have to trick our minds in order to see familiar things anew.

This is how a strategist moves beyond just documenting what’s showing up in a particular category to finding the uncommon connections that can inspire new approaches to brand work.

Disclaimer: All writing conceived, edited and published by humans. AI is great, just not for writing.

I took a trip to the Oregon coast last week with the family, and we stopped at the Tillamook Creamery. My son loved the cheese samples, I geeked out on the branding genius (and also loved the cheese samples). Seriously, this place is a masterclass in brand storytelling.

You immediately feel like you’re walking into a kind of historic institution and that, just by being there, you’re part of its mission.

Tillamook is a farmer-owned co-op that started in 1909 with ten dairies putting in ten dollars each. One of the first things you see at the creamery is a visual chronology of that history. There are pictures of farmers and their families, Tilly the cow mascot, “Cheese Girls” at the state fair, quality inspectors in crisp uniforms. The message you get is: We’re proud of our deep, hard-earned history, so you should be too.

Upstairs there’s an interactive education center with a life-sized plastic cow and illustration of the feeding process. There were smiles on every kid’s face in that room as they moved through each part of the farmer’s journey and even got to practice with a real milking machine.

We then walked through a hall filled with giant windows looking down on the factory floor, where real cheese makers were hard at work. It wasn’t a show; they were literally making the product that goes on grocery store shelves. Window after window we watched the entire process, all the way to shrink wrapping the final packaging.

Next we stopped by the sample station, where our son chomped away on a little hunk of cheddar and we stuffed ourselves with cubes of truffle-infused cheese. By this point, we were fully bought in. Naturally, we headed straight for the gift shop, where my wife immediately picked up a block of that same truffle cheese and a t-shirt for our little boy. I scoured the special reserve cheeses proudly displaying the Morning Star, the ship Tillamook’s original families built and used for dairy transport more than 150 years ago. In lieu of a bag, we put all our souvenirs in a repurposed mint chocolate chip ice cream tub and headed on our way.

Years ago in grad school, I remember a definition I was once given for branding was “manufactured meaning.” That definition never sat well with me. Is that our job? To manufacture meaning? Out of what?

At Tillamook, the word I kept returning to was “real.” The history, the people, and, most importantly, the food. It all felt real because it was real. There was no meaning to manufacture, because meaning was already there.

The factory told the story of a community that cares about what they make as much as you care about what’s on your kid’s plate. It told a story of hard work, community values, and a commitment to quality, and that’s a story any visitor would want to be a part of. That’s the magic of a brand that lives by what it stands for.

It doesn’t take a 100 years or a co-op to earn that kind of brand love. What it does take is commitment to a set of values, and the willingness to invest in the few things that matter most to you.