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Good morning.
The Daily Trend Report. Every weekday morning, giovanni gallucci and a rotating cohost (Chloe Dawn on clean label food and beverage, plus Rachel Donovan or Alexis Parker on social media) synthesize the day's cross-LLM trend reports into three operator stories: social media, clean label food and beverage, and content, social, and AI. Tight, specific, no filler. For owners, founders, marketing leads, and operators in clean-label CPG.
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giovanni gallucci: Good morning. This is giovanni gallucci, joined by Chloe Dawn and Rachel Donovan, and this is the Daily Trend Report.
chloe dawn: Morning, giovanni. Drove in the long way with the light coming over the Davis Mountains. Beats a freeway every time.
rachel donovan: Morning, both. Chloe took the pretty road, I took the fast one, and that yellow Datsun of hers still beat me into town.
giovanni gallucci: Three today. Rachel on TikTok quietly turning its comments into a second place to publish. Chloe on the gut soda party going flat right as the big colas crash it. And I will close on a ninety dollar handbag that explains how you make content people actually pass around.
rachel donovan: So the thing that made me put my coffee down this morning, Eddie had it right at the top, is that on September third TikTok opened up the comment section. Comments now take sixty second voice notes, photo carousels up to nine images, and polls.
giovanni gallucci: And everybody is going to file that under cute little engagement feature.
rachel donovan: That is exactly how it got written up. Fun new toy for the comments.
giovanni gallucci: It is not a toy. It is a distribution change, and that is a different animal.
chloe dawn: Walk us through the difference.
giovanni gallucci: Think about what a nine photo carousel actually is. It is a second post. A full piece of content, sitting underneath somebody else's video, riding the same engine that is already pushing that video to four hundred thousand people.
rachel donovan: You did not make the video, you did not buy the audience.
giovanni gallucci: You just showed up in the room where they already are. The pipe for that used to be one clever line of text. Now the comment field takes almost everything the post field takes.
chloe dawn: And who does that actually help.
giovanni gallucci: Not the national brand. A giant with a content studio already has more inventory than it has audience. It does not need another place to publish. The two person coffee roaster in Waco does.
rachel donovan: Because the roaster is never winning the main feed.
giovanni gallucci: Never. But they can answer one real question, how do you keep from scorching a light roast, with nine phone photos of an actual roast curve, sitting under a video that belongs to somebody a hundred times their size. That is borrowed distribution, and TikTok just widened the pipe.
chloe dawn: The voice note piece is the one I would be careful with.
giovanni gallucci: You should be. It is the strongest thing on the list and the easiest to botch. Sixty seconds of a real human voice, in a feed filling up with synthetic narration, that is a trust signal you cannot fake.
rachel donovan: Until it sounds produced.
giovanni gallucci: The second it sounds produced, it is worse than silence. Use the actual founder. Keep it under thirty seconds. Let it be a little rough. Rough is the point.
rachel donovan: What about the polls, everybody is sleeping on the polls.
giovanni gallucci: The polls are the quiet winner. Free audience research. Two SKUs, one question, a real answer by dinner from people who already care enough to be in your comments.
chloe dawn: Any catch.
giovanni gallucci: One. Moderation. Voice and pictures in your comments are a lot harder to police than text. Somebody can park nine images under your video and you will not catch it for an hour. Decide who is watching before you build on it.
rachel donovan: And the window does not stay open.
giovanni gallucci: It never does. Every free surface eventually gets sold back to you as an ad unit. The carousel comment is free right now. Use it while the only cost is effort.
chloe dawn: Give me the picture of a brand doing this right.
giovanni gallucci: Picture a small hot sauce maker. Somebody with a big food account posts a wings video, half a million views. Instead of dropping a link nobody taps, they answer in the comments with nine photos, the pepper mash fermenting, the pH strip, the exact heat build, and one line about why theirs does not just burn. That is a teaching carousel riding a half million view video, and it cost them a phone and ten minutes.
rachel donovan: And it reads as generous, not thirsty.
giovanni gallucci: That is the whole trick. You are not crashing the party to sell. You are the person at the party who actually knows the thing. People follow that home.
rachel donovan: Alright, three things you can actually do today.
giovanni gallucci: One. Build a list of ten adjacent creator accounts in your category, not competitors, turn on notifications, and answer real questions with teaching carousels under their videos.
chloe dawn: Two. Record founder voice notes for the replies that deserve a human. Under thirty seconds, unscripted, no polish.
rachel donovan: Three. Run a comment poll to settle one real decision, two flavors, one question, and let the people already in your corner pick.
chloe dawn: Mine is a party running out of fizz. Kendall pulled the numbers. The whole prebiotic soda boom is decelerating. Poppi posted volume and dollar declines in the US in the first half of the year after a distribution shakeup, and Olipop's growth slowed too.
giovanni gallucci: And right on cue.
chloe dawn: Right on cue, here come the giants. Pepsi with a prebiotic cola, Coca-Cola with its own one, both under their masterbrands.
giovanni gallucci: So the two companies that spent a decade selling everybody sugar water are now selling everybody gut health.
chloe dawn: Funny how that works. The independents built the whole category, proved there was a shopper there, and the minute it is a real aisle the big names walk in wearing the same outfit.
giovanni gallucci: And they bring one thing the little brands cannot buy, which is name recognition. A shopper who has never heard of your prebiotic soda has heard of the cola. That is a real head start.
chloe dawn: So what is left for the small brand.
giovanni gallucci: The thing the giants cannot copy, and it is the whole game. Poppi just paid eight point nine million dollars to settle a class action over its gut health claims. There is a separate suit against Olipop from late last year.
chloe dawn: So the category got built on a benefit claim, and now it is getting disciplined on that exact claim.
giovanni gallucci: Which is the opening. The vague version, the good for your gut, the wellness adjective, that used to be a shortcut. Now it is a liability.
rachel donovan: So you go the other way.
giovanni gallucci: You go all the way the other way. Stop hiding behind the soft language and put the hard number where everybody can see it. Olipop has nine grams of fiber in a can. That is a number. Say it out loud.
chloe dawn: Say it how, exactly.
giovanni gallucci: Make the receipts the content. Show your work on camera. Here is the fiber, here is how much, here is the third party test, here is what it does and, just as important, what it does not do.
rachel donovan: And that beats the giant how.
giovanni gallucci: A brand that over explains honestly, in a category where the leaders just got sued for hand waving, looks like the only adult in the room. The number does the arguing for you. You never have to mention a competitor. You just have to be the one who showed the panel.
chloe dawn: And when Pepsi and Coke are sitting right next to you on the shelf.
giovanni gallucci: Then you post the timeline. Not a shot at them, just the dates. Here is when we launched, here is the same can two years ago, here is the receipt.
chloe dawn: Early is a fact, not a brag.
giovanni gallucci: Early is a fact. Let the giants confirm your category. Their arrival is proof you were right. You just want to be standing there with the paperwork when the shopper looks it up.
rachel donovan: Is there a version of this that is not just for soda brands.
giovanni gallucci: Any category built on a claim. Protein, hydration, sleep, focus. The pattern is identical. Somebody makes a soft promise, it sells, the lawyers show up, and the whole category gets tarred with the vague version. The brand that already talks in real numbers walks right through that unbothered.
chloe dawn: Because the receipts were the marketing the whole time.
giovanni gallucci: The receipts were the marketing the whole time. And here is the West Texas version of it. Out here nobody trusts a man who will not tell you the price. Same instinct. Tell people the number before they have to ask, and they decide you are the honest one before they have tasted a thing.
chloe dawn: Three things to do with all of that.
giovanni gallucci: One. Say the actual number out loud on camera, the fiber gram, the dose, because a claim somebody can check is a claim that travels.
chloe dawn: Two. Film the mechanism as a receipts piece, the test, the amount, what it does and what it does not, and let the honesty be the whole differentiator.
rachel donovan: Three. When a giant lands in your category, post the dated timeline that shows you were there first. No shot fired, just the paperwork.
giovanni gallucci: Last one, and it is my favorite of the week. Eddie had it on the tactics desk. Betty Crocker, of all the brands on earth, put out the Betty Ate Collection. Three handbags shaped like slices of cake, matched to Yellow Cake, Triple Chocolate Fudge, and Strawberry. Timed to New York Fashion Week. Ninety dollars each.
rachel donovan: A cake slice purse. From the box mix people.
giovanni gallucci: From the box mix people. And it sold out in under a day. They announced a restock for the tenth.
chloe dawn: Okay, but that is a gimmick.
giovanni gallucci: It is a gimmick. Sure. But look at the mechanic underneath it, because the mechanic is the lesson. The object is the ad.
rachel donovan: Meaning the purse does the work a post cannot.
giovanni gallucci: A ninety dollar handbag that photographs well turns a shelf stable pantry brand into something people post from their own accounts. No recipe video ever did that. You can shoot a hundred gorgeous bundt cakes and not one of them gets a stranger to post you. A weird, wonderful, want it object does.
chloe dawn: So the return is not the sale of the bag.
giovanni gallucci: The return is everybody else's camera. The bag is the excuse. And the sell out plus the restock, that is a real demand read, not a vanity number. That is the tell that it worked.
rachel donovan: Kendall had something with the same shape, did she not.
giovanni gallucci: From a totally different corner. Pabst turned a twelve pack carton into a wearable Jason Voorhees mask you cut out yourself. Same idea. The package does a second job.
chloe dawn: So the question is whether your carton can do more than hold the product.
giovanni gallucci: Ask whether your carton can be cut, folded, worn, or hung before you go pay for a Halloween content series. Most brands never ask.
rachel donovan: There is a cheaper version of this, right, for people who cannot tool up a handbag.
giovanni gallucci: There is, and Eddie caught it too. Adweek runs a weekly thing, eight marketer moves to know, and it is just a roundup that names real people, executives who changed jobs.
chloe dawn: And every one of them reshares it.
giovanni gallucci: Every single one has a reason to. The audience becomes the distribution. Any brand can steal that. A weekly post naming ten of your actual customers beats a monthly thought leadership essay that names nobody. You do not need a factory. You need a list of names and a reason for people to want to be on it.
chloe dawn: And the flip side. What did not work.
giovanni gallucci: The flip side is the warning. Lululemon spent the quarter running gorgeous identity content while comparable sales fell nine percent and legging sales fell twenty.
rachel donovan: Ouch.
giovanni gallucci: Here is the hard lesson. Content cannot carry a product gap. When the thing on the shelf stops giving people a reason to come back, all your brand content does is raise the frequency of a disappointing visit.
chloe dawn: And there was a quieter flop too.
giovanni gallucci: Petco pushed its loyalty program so hard the redemptions blew past their own model and cost them millions. Content that works too well against a badly built offer is more expensive than content that flops. So the object has to be great, but the thing behind it has to be real. A cake purse only lands if the cake was already good.
rachel donovan: What makes the difference between a cake purse and a landfill full of branded junk.
giovanni gallucci: Desire. The object has to be something a person would actually want without your logo on it. A tote nobody asked for is a coaster. A cake slice handbag is a status object that happens to be an ad. If you would be a little embarrassed to carry it, it will not travel.
chloe dawn: So you design for the stranger who does not care about you yet.
giovanni gallucci: Every time. The customer who already loves you will post anything. The whole point of the object is the stranger who sees it on somebody else and asks where it came from. That question is the sale, and you did not have to run it.
giovanni gallucci: Three things from this one.
giovanni gallucci: One. Build one physical object worth photographing, a thing people actually want, so your customers become the ones posting you.
chloe dawn: Two. Give the object a second job in real life, something to wear, carry, or hang, because a thing people use is a thing they keep posting.
rachel donovan: Three. Steal the Adweek move on a budget. Run a weekly roundup that names real customers, and let the people you named do your distribution.
giovanni gallucci: That is the report. One thing before we go. If you run a food or beverage brand and you are posting into a feed that just sits there, no plan behind it, posting on hope and hoping something lands, that is the part I fix. More than fifteen years doing organic social in food and beverage, building the strategy that makes a channel actually move instead of just filling it up. If that is you, come find me. It is gallucci dot net, or DM at gallucciNET on Instagram or LinkedIn. Chloe, Rachel, thank you. We will see everybody tomorrow.