In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I explore the neon logic of today's supermarket aisle, where food has become a continuous commentary on societal unease.

Nestlé's Vital Pursuit, aimed at those who use GLP-1 drugs, seems to be another neat health launch: fewer portions, extra this, more of that buzzword, and happy-sounding reassurance on the container. This episode investigates how a food corporation tries to make up a new kind of eater and how a clinical change in appetite motivated a commercial category with its own scripts, signals, and assumptions.

Nestlé unveiled Vital Pursuit in May 2024 as a range of food designed to help GLP-1 users, and Reuters reported in June 2024 that the corporation was carefully marketing the items, stressing protein, fiber, and minerals while avoiding direct medicine names on packaging. NBC's TODAY also mentioned the launch date of May 22, 2024.

Sensemaking and sensegiving form the basis of the analytical framework here. I use Maitlis and Christianson's description of sensemaking as an organizational process for interpreting ambiguous events, as well as Gioia and Chittipeddi's classic definition of sensegiving as an endeavor to alter how others see strategic change.

Nestlé is contributing to a narrative of what people ostensibly need and what "appropriate" eating entails under circumstances of appetite suppression.

In other words, this is also a narrative about interpretation, the heuristics of packaging, and frozen food telling customers how to comprehend themselves when they don't want to count calories anymore but need distinctive nutrients nonetheless.

Show Notes & Sources

Danneels, E. (2003). Tight–loose coupling with customers: The enactment of customer orientation. Strategic Management Journal, 24(6), 559–576. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.319

DiNapoli, J. (2024, June 20). Food companies wade carefully into weight-loss waters. Reuters.

Durban, D.A. (2026, January 14). Food companies are targeting users of weight-loss drugs with ‘GLP-1 Friendly’ labels. Associated Press

Gioia, D. A., & Chittipeddi, K. (1991). Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation. Strategic Management Journal, 12(6), 433–448. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250120604

Maitlis, S., & Christianson, M. K. (2014). Sensemaking in organizations: Taking stock and moving forward. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 57–125. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2014.873177

TODAY. (2024, May 22). Nestle to launch meals designed for weight loss medication users [Video]. YouTube.

Fair use note

This episode includes archival audio of broadcasts and brand materials for purposes of criticism, comment, and analysis.

In the United States, fair use is evaluated case by case under Section 107 and depends on the specific circumstances and the four statutory factors.

In this interview episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, Dr. William Hoffman speaks with founder and CEO of Mightylicious Carolyn Haeler about the decisions that emerge when necessity, taste, and enjoying food are immediate and abrupt. What began with a celiac diagnosis became Mightylicious, a quest to make the best gluten-free cookie consumers ever tasted. 

Carolyn Haeler reflects on her path from finance to food, a peculiar challenge of formulating a cookie that tastes better without wheat flour, and a realization that gluten-free baking had been framed as a managed compromise rather than an indulgence. What a cookie ought to be!

We talk about the effort and strategy behind finding clean ingredients that won't reduce gluten-free treats to flatbread. Today, you can find her very own cookies and specialized flour at a wide range of retail grocery sellers (links below).

This is a story about a cookie that delivers on taste and texture without gluten.🍪

From diagnosis to formulation to shelf placement, Carolyn Haeler’s story offers a case study in how meaningful reinvention often begins with a serious inquiry: why shouldn't this be the best cookie I ever tasted?

Tasty Purchase Options!

Mightylicious.com Homepage

Amazon Store - Mightylicious 

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we trace Slice from its 1984 debut inside Pepsi’s lemon-lime strategy to its slow disappearance from the American soda aisle. We begin in the fluorescent chill of the cola wars, where Pepsi decides that Teem no longer has enough force in the market and launches Slice with a sharper promise. It would have fruit and offer a contemporary vocab for soda.

From there, we follow the brand through its early success, its increasingly unstable identity in the 1990s, and it faded out by the mid-to-late 2000s with Pepsi waving bye and introducing new products like Sierra Mist. 

Goodbye Slice? Not exactly. What changed between the 2000s and the 2020s?

A great deal! U.S. Americans drank more bottled water than soda by 2016, sparkling water had a long moment, the ingredients changed, and carbonation adapted during the period!

By 2018, the Slice trademark had been revived as a sparkling water brand built around organic fruit juice. In May 2024 Suja Life had acquired the name and prepared it for another reinvention inside a functional soda market, another new cooler!

Using a framework of retro branding with updated utility, this episode asks why some dormant brands become culturally relevant again while others remain shelf ghosts. Slice turns out to be an especially revealing case because Pepsi did not bring it back. Later owners purchased a name that still carried brightness, fruit, and recognition, then translated that memory into new beverage forms for new consumer anxieties. This is a story about strategic timing, category change, and the strange durability of emotionally legible brands.

Fair use note

This episode includes archival audio of advertising and brand materials for purposes of criticism, comment, and analysis.

In the United States, fair use is evaluated case by case under Section 107 and depends on the specific circumstances and the four statutory factors.

References for show notes

Cattaneo, E., & Guerini, C. (2012). Assessing the revival potential of brands from the past: How relevant is nostalgia in retro branding strategies? Journal of Brand Management, 19(8), 680–687. https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2012.16.

Vengattil, M. Americans drank more bottled water than soda in 2016. Reuters.

These episodes take a great deal of effort to produce. If you'd like to see more, please consider subscribing!

What makes a smooth, thoughtful, and worthwhile experience? In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I speak with Vance Morris, who has expertise in customer experience consulting, Disney tourist attractions, and entrepreneurship. Together, we examine the choices that determine what visitors truly recall: the greeting, the wait, the script, the recuperation, and the sense of being respected. We examine how experience is developed through training, timing, and detail-oriented judgment, from Disney's strategy for line management and service recovery to the real-world challenges of small company start-ups.

We also discuss pricing power, customer path mapping, loyalty, and the reasons a company should regard service as operational design rather than cosmetic gloss. This is an insightful conversation on how businesses transform backstage decisions into frontstage trust.

🔗⭐️ https://deliverservicenow.com/

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I zoom into Zoom and go from the train station platform to the teleconferencing platform that became ubiquitous during the early 2020s. This episode opens in Logan, UT, at Utah State University, and I cover early interest and delivery of distance education by train.

From there, I cover Zoom during the COVID-19 crisis, a series of fulcrum points in which a handful of interface decisions took on the weight of temporal policy.

Zoom was preferred because it allowed for a quicker join route: Schedule -> Link -> Join.

In 2020, leaders and stakeholders at Zoom made several decisions worth highlighting. Some include lifted time limits, single sign-on (Clever), security defaults, and novel ideas about remote meetings becoming policy.

Along the way, I also consider Zoom's promise of being the frictionless option. This meant a seamlessness that burgeoned, but that scale carried its own consequences in zoom fatigue, oversight, and safety.

⭐️ https://www.usu.edu/tlt/zoom/timeline

This week's Decisions at the Fulcrum is a little different: an actual talk based on my health communication seminars. I begin with a familiar scene: a well-meaning billboard scolding you for "doing the healthy thing" and then waiting for acquiescence. And then I carefully undermine the underlying assumption that if individuals are aware that their conduct is negligent, they would just abandon it. Human behavior does not follow any particular magic formula. It is motivated by constraints such as routines, interpersonal interactions, culture, convenience, comfort, social reward, and the complex realities of daily existence. I proceed to audience-centered design: restrict the audience, understand it, and create messages with it. That's not simply nicer. It's more reliable and legitimate. Campaigns that neglect unequal access (to time, trust, safety, resources, media, and healthcare) frequently "perform" optimally for those already in a position to benefit, discreetly exacerbating the disparities that they purport to address. Following that, campaign planning becomes a research challenge. I discuss the benefits of interviews, surveys, and focus groups, as well as how design decisions relate to important behavioral theories. Along the way, I provide several applied examples, such as why some interventions are effective and others miss the point. I finish by offering a hypothetical "water first" campaign as an effective design that reduces obstacles and affords people protocols that minimize perceived social costs of change. If you've ever wondered why so many public health efforts feel militant, crumbly, or curiously ineffective, this episode is your field guide.

What does a grocery retail chain look like when supply chain management is the infrastructure? In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we go to Valencia, Spain!🇪🇸 When we look closely at Mercadona, we'll see restraint with reliability as a mature way to coordinate. Mercadona rebuilt grocery retail in Spain around routine, comprehension, and learning by considering supply chain design as infrastructure. I talk about how the company's use of Calidad Total (Total Quality Management) from 1993 to today changed the way they operated with suppliers, warehouses, associates, and consumers. I look at TQM as a frame for decisions like SKU reduction and routine pricing signals that are in fact intelligent and enduring. This episode looks at legibility by Scott (the capacity of an  organization to read itself) and temporal depth (advancing by staying deeply grounded) using ideas from political anthropology and infrastructure studies.  One important question this case poses though:
What if the best way to be responsible isn't to respond quickly, but to create a space where fewer responses are needed in the first place?

🎵Track by Sonican from Pixabay. Commercial Use Allowed Licensing.