The power of unrelated products

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Partnership with Portless

📦 Still Waiting 60-90 Days for Inventory? You're Losing Sales

Every brand knows that waiting months for inventory kills growth.

While your competitors wait 60-90 days for containers, you could be restocking in under a week. That's the difference between empty shelves and record sales.

Here's what Portless unlocks instead:

✈️ Ship directly from your factory to customers in just 6 days
📦 Restock best-sellers in 3-5 days (not 3 months)
🚀 Test new products in days, not quarters
📊 Never show "out of stock" to customers again

With Portless, brands cut lead times by 90% with direct fulfillment logistics. Your products ship days after manufacturing, no containers, no warehouses, no waiting.

Turn on Shopify's "keep selling when out of stock" toggle with confidence. While others wait for containers, you're already shipping, selling, and scaling.

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💡 How Unrelated Products Make Brands Cooler
Insights from sciencesays

In highly competitive spaces like DTC skincare, traditional product launches are often not enough. Research shows that launching a product completely unrelated to your core business can make your brand feel cooler, more creative, and more memorable.

1️⃣ The Strategy: To stand out, introduce a product in a category far removed from your core. Tie it back to your brand by using one recognizable feature, like shape, scent, or theme. For example, a skincare brand might launch a candle shaped like its bestselling serum bottle.

2️⃣ What the Research Found: Across four experiments with 1,454 participants and 5,000 social media comments, researchers observed:

• Unrelated extensions from popular brands triggered surprise, joy, and boosted perceived coolness
• A hot pot brand’s spicy toothpaste made them 20% cooler in ratings
• A snack brand’s furniture shaped like cookies increased coolness by 11.5%
• Co-branded products, like McDonald’s sneakers with Adidas, boosted coolness by nearly 10%
• Near-category extensions, like noodles for a hot pot brand, were less effective

3️⃣ Why It Works: Unexpected products break consumer expectations, creating surprise and humor. Humor signals creativity and autonomy, which people associate with coolness. The effect is strongest for well-known or co-branded launches.

4️⃣ Real-Life Example: Cybersecurity firm Wiz launched a fake toy store for CISOs on April Fool’s Day. The initiative went viral, generating over 3,500 purchase attempts. It worked because the category was unexpected, the humor was clever, and it still tied back to the brand’s expertise.

5️⃣ How to Replicate It: Use the framework: The world’s first [format] for [audience]. Examples:

• The world’s first Halloween costumes for UX designers
• The world’s first comic book for B2B SDRs
• The world’s first dating app for SaaS founders

The Takeaway

Launching unrelated products can build buzz, spark joy, and position your brand as creative and cool. The key is to stay surprising while keeping one recognizable element that ties the extension back to your brand.

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1️⃣ Get Started on Canva AI: Sign up on Canva AI, open the dashboard, and select Design for me → Presentation.

2️⃣ Write Your Prompt: Describe what you need in natural language. For example: “Create a marketing campaign plan template for a new product launch. Include placeholders for company name, target audience, budget, and messaging. Add a quarterly social media calendar with posting themes and channels.”

3️⃣ Pick Your Style: Choose from three preset styles to match your audience: Playful & Colorful, Formal & Polished, or Clean Hybrid.

4️⃣ Refine in the Editor: Click Use Canva Editor to adjust layouts, fonts, and visuals. Add brand colors, replace placeholders, or tweak the flow for maximum impact.

5️⃣ Export and Share: When finished, export your presentation as a PowerPoint, PDF, or shareable link.

The Takeaway

With Canva AI, presentations move from idea to finished design in minutes. By combining natural language prompts with flexible templates, you can deliver engaging decks that are polished, persuasive, and ready for any audience.

As we prepare more "Growthful" content, we'd love to hear your thoughts on today's edition! Feel free to share this with someone who would appreciate it. 🥰