🍿 The 6× Growth Story That Started With “Invisible Dirt”

Friends, I’m confused. 😅

Every few weeks someone hits me with the exact same question (usually on a random Friday, in a DM that starts with “can I pick your brain?” and ends with a 12-minute voice note…)

The fact that this keeps coming up tells me something…troubling.

A lot of people still don’t understand how advertising actually works, or how brands actually grow.

Which…is concerning. To say the least.

The question is always the same:

People love to point to the visible levers: better creative, better distribution, better account structure, better performance. It’s comforting to believe success comes from logical things we can neatly write down in a strategy doc…

But the truth is far stranger, and honestly far more interesting. 👀

Some of the most iconic brands in history didn’t win because they had the best media buying skills (hell, back in the 1900’s, media buying didn’t even exist.) They won because they changed what people believed the product was supposed to do. They won because they altered the psychological landscape beneath an entire category.

They changed perception…not ad performance.

And one of the best examples of this comes from today’s case study about a dusty white mineral powder, a stubborn market that didn’t even want it, and a company willing to redraw the definition of “clean” when no one else was paying attention.

Today, we’re going to walk through the story of Borax (yes, Borax), and break down the science behind what the Pacific Coast Borax Company had to do to drag their product (kicking and screaming) into the American consciousness.

What they accomplished wasn’t marketing as we think of it today.

It was early-stage behavioral engineering, long before people had words like “cost cap”, “Andromeda best practices”…or “Meta”.

Let’s dive into it…

Early 1901: Soap Was Untouchable

Waaaaaay before detergents, antibacterial sprays, and/or Covid existed (and before every household had a favorite influencer teaching them how to deep-clean a shower track) there was just one ruler of the cleaning universe: soap.

Soap wasn’t a product people evaluated while shopping. It wasn’t a decision they labored over, or really even thought about before heading to the grocery store. It was simply the thing you used to get clean.

Soap had become so synonymous with “clean” that:

• Every household bought it.

• Every store stocked it.

• Every brand that tried to compete with it eventually learned to aim their ambitions lower.

And while soap was enjoying its decades-long reign, the Pacific Coast Borax Company found itself sitting on literal mountains of a random, unromantic mineral powder with zero industrial uses (and absolutely no place in the American cleaning routine) called “borax”.

Nobody wanted it. 😅 Because (in spite of it’s wildly effective cleaning powers) no one believed they needed anything beyond soap, because soap didn’t just dominate the category…it was the category. It was the baseline, the default, the unquestioned standard baked into daily life for as long as anyone could remember.

This is the moment in every category where challenger brands usually give up:
when the market is so comfortable, so deeply habituated, that the dominant product doesn’t simply win… it becomes automatic. People stop evaluating it. They stop comparing. They stop imagining alternatives.

But this is also the exact moment where the smartest brands start scanning for structural cracks. In every category, there exists one, overlooked tension hiding beneath the surface that everyone else waves away because the category seems too stable to disrupt.

And if you looked at soap during this era, the consensus was almost unanimous: it was the epitome of a complete solution. It was convenient. It was pleasant to use. It was affordable, widely available, and socially reinforced. It carried the cultural weight of “clean” itself.

Soap wasn’t just doing its job, it was the job.

Which is precisely why no one noticed the tiny crack forming underneath it…the one assumption that, if reframed, could topple an entire definition of cleanliness.

The Birth of an Enemy No One Could See

In the early 1900s, the Pacific Coast Borax Company got a lucky break.

Researchers were starting to study cleanliness at a microscopic level (not just at the surface level) and those tiny mineral deposits, residue spots, and contaminants you couldn’t see with the naked eye were just what the doctor ordered (no pun intended).

To the average person, this was background noise. Interesting, maybe, but not really relevant. But to the Pacific Coast Borax Company, this wasn’t noise at all. It was the break they needed.

They realized something the rest of the industry completely missed:

• People weren’t scared of dirt anymore.

• They had conquered visible mess.

• They knew how to scrub, soak, lather, rinse, repeat…

…but people were starting to become aware of the invisible monsters they didn’t even know existed, and were terrified by what they saw.

Borax saw it first.

They understood that invisible threats have a unique psychological power: they can’t be confirmed, but they also can’t be dismissed. They live in that hazy space where uncertainty becomes anxiety, and anxiety becomes action.

And so Borax did something no cleaning brand had tried before:

They named the fear.

They made “invisible germs” tangible, and gave their product a villain to fight:

✅ “Invisible Dirt.”
✅ Microscopic residue.
✅ Mineral deposits lurking beyond the reach of ordinary soap.

Borax began its marketing campaign against the invisible enemy by starting with a simple message: that your routine, the thing you trusted, your soap might not be protecting you the way you believed it was.

Soap wasn’t wrong in their equation, it was simply incomplete.

And once that idea took root, the entire definition of “clean” cracked open, revealing a gap big enough for a challenger to walk right through.

Rewriting the Rules of “Clean”

Once Borax named the villain, they didn’t sit back and hope the idea would spread on its own. They went on offense — quietly, methodically, and with a level of psychological precision that feels shockingly modern for a company selling a white mineral powder in 1907.

They didn’t try to out-perform soap on its own terms, that would’ve been pointless. You can’t beat a king by acting like a knight.

Instead, Borax reframed the thought that “soap = everything clean”.

If soap handled what you could see, then Borax would handle everything you couldn’t.

And to make that idea feel inevitable, they launched one of the earliest national home catalog/direct mail campaigns America had ever seen.

Full-page magazine spreads showed magnified particles clinging to fabrics after washing (the kind of imagery that bypasses logic and goes straight for the amygdala. 😅)

Household manuals taught “modern laundering techniques” that positioned Borax as the necessary upgrade for any responsible homemaker.

Free recipe booklets arrived in mailboxes with diagrams of unseen residue — tiny, unsettling illustrations that made every article of clothing feel suspicious.

Then came the 20 Mule Team general-store displays: dramatic, towering stacks of Borax boxes accompanied by signs promising a “scientific clean.” These weren’t product promotions. They were cultural signals. They told shoppers, very subtly, that there was a “new standard” and that anyone still relying on just soap was operating with outdated information.

This is the part most people underestimate: Borax wasn’t selling their cleaning powder…they were selling a system their cleaning powder fit into.

Borax positioned itself as the essential step in a system that was somehow better than just using soap. They became the thing you used if you really cared about eliminating the invisible threats ordinary soap couldn’t touch. Once you give people a system (especially one tied to competence and identity) the product becomes the natural next step in your “cleaning routine”.

When the Definition Changes, the Market Follows

Once Borax reframed the standard, the rest unfolded almost automatically.

• Sales of packaged borax jumped several-fold.

• Pacific Coast Borax quickly crossed the $1M mark, unheard of in that era.

• And a product that once sat forgotten in the industrial supply chain became a national household staple.

And once consumers absorbed the idea and believed that real cleanliness required handling the things they couldn’t see, the entire category shifted. Borax didn’t just steal share; it expanded the market by creating a new subcategory: the laundry booster.

They don’t win by shouting louder…they win by making people realize what they were using before wasn’t enough.

The lesson is painfully simple:

If you can change what “good enough” means to your customers, you’ll outpace every competitor in the market.

How to Do This For Your Brand

Start by asking yourself and your team three uncomfortable questions:

1. “What invisible problem does our customer already feel, but can’t articulate?”
   It might be a doubt, a fear, a gap, a frustration, or a sense that something “isn’t quite working.” Invisible problems are gold because once you name them, people can’t unsee them.
   

2. “How is the current category standard accidentally failing them?”
   Every dominant product leaves blind spots, and every category has outdated assumptions everyone quietly tolerates. Find the crack that no one is talking about yet.
   

3. “What new standard (or system) can we introduce that instantly reframes our product as the upgrade?”
   You’re not replacing the old solution — you’re completing it. You’re the step that’s been missing all along, the smarter option, the thing people choose once they finally understand the full job-to-be-done.

If you’re ready to stop guessing and actually build the version of your brand that becomes the upgrade (like Borax did) the Tether Lab community is where you do it in real time!

👉 Start your free 7-day trial of the Tether Lab where you can learn:

1. How to reshape buyer perception by translating raw emotion into message maps your team can drop straight into the next brief.

2. How to spot the micro-messaging shifts that change how people interpret your ad…and make those shifts work for you this week.

3. How to identify the emotional “cracks” that distort perception, spike CPCs, and bury CTR so you can neutralize them before they bury you.

4. How to build creative that engineers the right perception at the right moment across cold and warm audiences.

You get 7 days inside for free — full access to the trainings, the emotional mapping frameworks, the creative breakdowns, and the live brand teardowns that reshape how people think about messaging.

If you want your category to feel different, your creative to land deeper, and your growth to finally make sense…

👉 Start your free 7-day trial of the Tether Lab
(and see exactly how top brands find emotional cracks their competitors miss)

Until next week,

🦕 Sarah

🚨 Dex’s Trend Alert: Sea Moss & The Rise of “Effortless Wellness” Identity

Searches for sea moss gummies are up +92%, “True Sea Moss” is up +1700%, and the entire constellation around it — sea moss drops, sea moss serum, caffeine gummies, PMS gummies — is spiking across Pinterest and Google like someone just turned self-care into a stock ticker.

At first glance, it looks like people are just chasing supplements.

But this spike isn’t about supplements.

It’s about people outsourcing their identity to tiny, chewable shortcuts.

Gummies are the closest thing we have to wellness cosplay.

📈 The Signal: We’re Rebuilding the Illusion of Control
Every time this category explodes, something deeper is humming underneath:

Millions of people — overstimulated, overworked, and algorithmically fragmented — are searching for a way to feel healthy without interrupting their life.

That used to require rituals.
Now it requires…gelatin.

The internet didn’t kill wellness.
It just replaced routines with micro-rituals that promise the same identity with none of the friction.

Two types of wellness behavior emerge:

→ The Ritual-Simplifiers — people who want the vibe of discipline without the burden. They want to “be a wellness person,” but with one daily chew instead of 45 minutes of prep.

→ The Identity-Optimizers — people who collect supplements the way others collect filters. It’s not health, it’s character creation.

Different expressions, same need:
Let me feel like I’m changing…without actually having to change.

🧠 The Diagnosis: Wellness Is Now a Format, Not a Lifestyle
People aren’t gathering around nutrition facts or long-term health.

They’re gathering around what they believe to be true about health: it should be fast, simple, and convenient.

💬 Why It Works (Scientifically Speaking)
Humans crave:

• low-effort behaviors

• fast feedback loops

• symbolic progress

• identity coherence

A daily gummy fires the reward circuit without requiring willpower.
It reduces choice overload.
It collapses complexity into a single action.

That’s why a wellness drink feels like a chore…
and a wellness gummy feels like a personality.

🛍️ How to Use This as a Cheat Code

For DTC Brands
→ Position products as identity accelerators, not health aids.
→ Build “ritual packs,” “reset bundles,” or “micro-moment kits.”
→ Sell the feeling of discipline, not the ingredients.

For Creators & Media Buyers
→ Create “daily chew” content arcs tied to emotional outcomes.
→ Use low-friction demos, not science lectures.
→ Map content to moments of self-improvement impulse (Mondays, month-starts, major cultural events).

For Strategists
→ Treat convenience as your emotional wedge.
→ Build campaigns around the story: “You don’t need to overhaul your life to change it.”
→ Follow rising formats (gummies → shots → patches) to stay ahead of the psychology curve.

TL;DR Convenient formats convert fragmented, overwhelmed audiences into people who suddenly feel in control again — just long enough to believe they’re becoming someone new.

Until next week…

🦖🦃 Dex