I don’t know about you, but I hate math. 😅 I struggled with it all my life. Even had a teacher in 10th grade tell me (after giving me a passing C grade just so she wouldn’t have to teach me again the next year) “Sarah, if you can’t figure out math, you won’t get very far in life.”

(Shoutout to you, Ms. Dean…I’m doing pretty well. 🤣)

I think about that moment all the time, because Ms. Dean wasn’t entirely wrong. Life is full of math. It just changes form. First it’s grades, then taxes, then ad budgets and conversion rates.

Somewhere along the way, I realized marketing is just another kind of math too… except the equations are made of people, not numbers.

Everywhere you look, someone’s trying to reduce human behavior to a spreadsheet. Clicks, conversions, ROAS, LTV — it’s all treated like arithmetic is the most important part… even though it’s not.

Value has nothing to do with the math.

Marketers talk about “value” as if it’s a simple 1:1 math problem, but true value is really a psychological one.

It’s all about the meaning you put on the math.
And meaning can be rewritten.

If you craft meaning well enough, you can sell almost anything…at almost any price.

So how do you take something ordinary and make it feel like it belongs in a higher price bracket…without lying, overpromising, or discounting yourself into oblivion? 😅

I actually looked at 30 different brands that tried to pull this off (from skincare to sneakers to supplements) and almost all of them failed for the same reason: they focused on math instead of meaning.

So, since we’ve already established that marketing math is mostly make-believe, let’s talk about the few that actually cracked it — the ones that reframed value so powerfully, they didn’t just win customers, they rewired entire markets.

Of all the examples I studied, one stood out so clearly it almost felt unfair. 😅 This brand pulled off the perfect psychological value framing so cleanly it still makes me laugh, because who would’ve guessed the best lesson in value psychology…would come from the freezer aisle?

Out of every brand I analyzed…DiGiorno takes the crown.

Because only DiGiorno could turn a grocery-store pizza into a masterclass in pricing psychology — and make the rest of us question everything we thought we knew about pizza.

Here’s how DiGiorno took majority market share in their industry, grew to over 16% of the U.S. frozen pizza market, helped Nestlé capture nearly one-third of the entire frozen pizza category, and fueled a surge that pushed the industry itself to $6.8 billion in annual U.S. sales by 2024.

Let’s get into it.

Step 1 — Pick a real villain, not the competitor next to you on the shelf

Every category has that one indulgence brand (the aspirational “Mr. Perfect” everyone measures themselves against.) You know the one… the brand customers secretly use as their mental benchmark for what “the good version” looks like.

For DiGiorno’s customers, a delivery pizza was the epitome of a good Friday night. The best thing you could hope to get after a long week of work was pizza on demand (without having to remove your comfy pants for it).

Most store bought pizzas could only dream of competing with this level of convenience, quality, and price…which is why none of them ever tried.

But DiGiorno was different.

Instead of trying to compete in the frozen aisle like their wary compatriots, DiGiorno rewrote the category altogether by declaring themselves equal to something no other frozen pizza brand had dared to compare themselves to before: delivery pizza.

DiGiorno, didn’t try and compete with Tombstone or Red Baron or even the store-bought brands who were busy haggling over who could offer pizza at the lowest price. Instead, they set their eyes on something way bigger: Pizza Hut.

With one perfect line — “It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno.” — they stopped being a frozen pizza and became a frozen flex.

They aimed up, not sideways. And customers followed.

TAKEAWAY: When you anchor your product to something more expensive and more emotionally loaded than what your competitors can provide, the brain latches onto that reference and never fully resets. Everything after that feels like a deal.

Step 2 — Turn a luxury into a smart swap

The brilliance of that iconic “It’s Not Delivery” line is how it compresses status, time, and logic into a single sentence.

It takes the indulgence of delivery pizza — the ease, the taste, the “I deserve this because I worked all week and I really just don’t wanna cook” moment — and mirrors it back as competence: “You can have the same delicious delivery experience…without the guilt.”

That shift, from affordability to intelligence, turned a grocery-store product with a cardboard stigma into a subtle flex.

You weren’t settling for frozen pizza; you were outsmarting the delivery boy. 🤯

TAKEAWAY: Whatever line you choose to describe yourself matters more than the product you’re selling. A single sentence can move you upmarket faster way than any feature list ever will.

Step 3 — Build the smart-not-cheap identity everywhere

When you create an anchor that high, every detail has to prove it’s true.

The crust must rise like it was hand-tossed.
The cheese has to stretch like it came from a real kitchen.
The box has to photograph like Gordon Ramsay approved the shoot.

Once you’ve told people you’re as good as the premium choice, they start looking for proof — and DiGiorno gave it to them. Texture, flavor, visuals, pacing — all upgraded to match the story.

TAKEAWAY: Your brand might be overdue for a glow-up — new packaging, sharper design, friendlier support — but the rule stays the same: if you want people to believe you’re as good as the premium option, you have to look, feel, and sound the part everywhere, every time.

Step 4 — Plant the comparison before they ever see your price

Anchoring bias is the brain’s lazy shortcut for “should i do this or nah?”

The first number or image your brain encounters becomes the yardstick for everything else, which is why Apple leads with the $1,200 iPhone before showing the $799 one.

(It’s also why Starbucks invented the Trenta. They didn’t actually want to sell a Trenta, they just wanted to make the Venti look sane. 😅)

DiGiorno did the same thing with delivery pizza.

They made you picture the $25 delivery pizza before showing you their beautifully convenient $9 offer.

By the time price entered the chat, your brain had already decided: Digiorno is a steal.

TAKEAWAY: You don’t have to shout “cheap.” You just have to choreograph the comparison. If you sequence your messaging just right (show the premium alternative first, your offer second) the customer’s brain does the persuasion for you.

Step 5 — Price for pride, not panic

“Cheapness” kills status faster than bad taste every single time. If you notice, DiGiorno never raced to the bottom like so many of their competitors were doing (they were, after all, sold in stores that were notorious for competing on price).

Instead, they priced themselves just high enough to feel smart, and just low enough to cut any unnecessary guilt…then boldly told people they were going to single handedly take down delivery pizzas, because they could.

That’s the narrow strip of psychological territory where logic and ego kind of shake hands (the “competence zone.”) When you can get the brain to realize, “I saved money” and let the heart feel like, “I still got good stuff”, that’s when you win. 🏆

If your brand lives there, you hold margin, scale trust, and make loyalty feel like a no-brainer.

TAKEAWAY: If you set your price too low, people question your quality. Too high, and they question themselves. But when you land in that sweet middle (where buying feels both smart and satisfying) you can make customers feel like insiders instead of bargain hunters, and that turns every purchase into a tiny pat on the back that says, “Nice move.”

TL;DR (aka the five-step DiGiorno Play):

• Aim up, not sideways. Anchor yourself to something aspirational and let every comparison feel like a deal.

• Turn indulgence into intelligence. Make your offer feel like a smart swap, not a sacrifice.

• Back the story with proof. Every detail — packaging, copy, service — has to live up to the claim.

• Frame the math before they see it. Show the premium alternative first so your price feels like a win.

• Price for pride, not panic. Stay in that sweet spot where logic and ego shake hands and loyalty follows.

Master those five, and you can sell frozen pizza at delivery prices — or anything else that deserves a little psychological reframe.

If you want help actually building this kind of clarity into your creative system—not as theory, but as a working engine—you should be inside the Skool.

That’s where we break these ideas down in real time, pull live insights from Reddit, rebuild messages with behavioral science, and show you how to diagnose ads the way operators do…not the way “content creators” pretend to.

If you’re tired of guessing, tired of spinning, tired of treating your audience like NPCs with one personality setting, come hang out with us!

Your creative work gets a lot easier when you stop fighting human nature and start designing for it.

👉 Sign Up For the Tether Lab Here 👈

Now I’m off to the grocery store…

Until next week!

🦕 Sarah

🚨 Dex’s Trend Alert: The Starbucks Red Cup & The Return of Seasonal Identity Signaling

Searches for “Starbucks red cup” just spiked 300% in 14 hours — blowing past every other holiday-season beverage term on Pinterest and Google.

At first glance, it looks like a basic seasonal trend.
But look closely at the imagery — the internet isn’t just thirsty.
It’s nesting inside a cultural ritual that runs deeper than coffee.

📈 The Signal: The Internet’s First Holiday Switch Flip

Whenever the red cup drops, the internet splits neatly into two camps:

→ The Seasonal Loyalists — cozy photos, manicured nails holding the cup at chest height, mossy sweaters, fall-winter color palettes, and soft focus bokeh.
→ The Seasonal Critics — memes about chaos, overspending, caffeine addiction, or “It’s too early for Christmas.”

Same cup.
Different emotional job.

One says: “This is the moment I get to become my festive self.”
The other says: “This feels like everyone suddenly agreed to pretend.”

🧠 The Diagnosis: Identity > Coffee

The red cup isn’t a beverage — it’s a seasonal identity badge.

Every year, Starbucks basically hands people a culturally accepted permission slip to transition into holiday mode.

→ Visual language: snowflakes, warmth, familiar green Siren.
→ Emotional payload: anticipation, coziness, belonging.
→ Psychological function: a personal onboarding ritual into “Holiday Me.”

Meanwhile, the critics aren’t rejecting the cup.
They’re rejecting the speed of the transition. Their memes are just the internet’s way of negotiating the cultural shift.

This isn’t about caffeine.
It’s about calendar-based identity regulation.

🧩 The Cultural Split

One group is entering a ritual.
The other is keeping their emotional distance.
Both are participating (whether they like it, or not.)

💬 Why It Works

Ritual objects — like the red cup — are psychological shortcuts.
They stabilize uncertainty by creating predictable emotional beats.

Repetition → safety.
Symbol → identity.
Shared timing → belonging.

Starbucks didn’t design a cup.
They designed an annual identity reset button.

🛍️ How to Capitalize

For DTC Brands

→ Create your own “season flip” moment — a prop, phrase, or drop that signals identity change.
→ Lean into visual consistency; rituals require recognizable assets.
→ Make it photographable. Rituals spread through proof shots.

For Creators & Media Buyers

→ Anchor content around symbolic seasonal triggers (first frost, last warm day, daylight savings).
→ Encourage UGC rituals: “Show us your version of ___.”
→ Optimize campaigns around anticipatory emotions, not just holiday sales.

For Strategists

→ Track symbolic objects that hold identity weight in your category.
→ Build campaigns that treat products as transitions, not transactions.
→ Remember: A season isn’t a date — it’s a feeling people choose to step into.

💡 Pro Move: Build a “Season Switch Ritual”

Anchor Object: Your version of the red cup — small, symbolic, repeatable.

Visual Signature: A single, recognizable aesthetic cue customers recreate.

Emotional Cue: A phrase or mood that signals the shift.

Timing Cadence: Yearly, quarterly, or product-cycle-based.

When you give people a ritual, they’ll turn your product into their prop.

TL;DR

The Starbucks Red Cup isn’t a drink.
It’s a ritual object that lets people step into holiday identity without asking permission.

Until next week…

🦖 Dex