Editorial: Algorithms Flatten Taste, And Leaders Need to Rebuild Point of View
A cozy, neutral sameness has quietly become the default aesthetic in interiors with bouclé, all-white rooms, sage cabinets, and soft palettes. When discovery is mediated by algorithmic feeds optimized for broad engagement, the middle wins and taste gets compressed into whatʼs most shareable, least offensive, and easiest to repeat at scale.
The mechanism is brutal in its simplicity.
Algorithms learn what performs
They surface more of it
Familiarity turns into preference
Preference hardens into taste.
One design researcher describes algorithms as converging toward a statistical middle, which gradually becomes what people think they want. Add years of global uncertainty, when the familiar feels safer, and the result is a market where personality looks risky, and originality looks like friction.
Brands donʼt exactly fight this, because sameness is operationally convenient. If everyone wants the same shapes, colors, and textures, then forecasting gets easier, inventory risk shrinks, and supply chains run cleaner. But thereʼs a growing fatigue where hotels, restaurants, and homes start to feel interchangeable, and customers sense the global scroll effect, where everything looks like everywhere else. Thatʼs the moment when taste becomes a differentiator again.
Lulu and Georgia CEO Sara Sugarman says sheʼs deliberately pushing back against algorithm-inspired design, with no outside trend-forecasting firms, less letting past-sales data dictate the next line, and more empowering designers with strong points of view. The company designs and manufactures a majority of what it sells (about 55% of revenue), tests bolder products in smaller runs, and uses made-to-order color to de-risk experiments. The payoff is concrete. Fast Company reports 30% year-over-year growth in recent years and a repeat customer rate above 50%, roughly double the industry standard.
If you lead a creative business in 2026,
Don’t let feeds become your product roadmap
Use data to inform, not decide
Test the weird, then scale the winners
The human edge is discernment, and it needs room to breathe.
Spacebar Studios are offering to complete the initial setup for free, and then hit the ground running officially in January.
This would include everything such as:
Developing & refining your ICP
Building your newsletter template & design
Creating sample drafts for approval
Kicking off subscriber growth initiatives along with the first issues
Feel free to book a time here with their team - https://calendly.com/spacebarventures/spacebar-studios
Case Study: A Tiny Team Used AI as a Middle Manager to Ship Senior-Level Work
Most founders assume leverage comes from hiring more layers. A manager to supervise juniors, a lead to turn instincts into strategy, a PM to translate ideas into specs. But Charles Swann chose the opposite. He kept Forage to two people and used AI as the missing middle layer that helps a junior teammate produce work that normally requires years of experience.
Swann founded Forage about 18 months ago and hired one full-time employee, a 24-year-old growth and brand specialist with less than two years of experience, specifically because sheʼs deeply tuned into modern culture and social media. The problem was turning that intuition into a crisp business strategy and artifacts that the company could execute against.
At first, his employee used ChatGPT to tighten rough ideas and turn them into clearer strategy notes. But Swann says things shifted with Gemini 3 as AI moved from refiner to co-creator, contributing more of the strategic scaffolding and written outputs.
The most tangible example is the product requirements document PRD, a blueprint that translates a business idea into buildable instructions. Swann says a skilled PM might take 8-10 hours to do this well, but with Gemini, his junior employee can produce one in about 4-5 hours. He describes the work split evolving from roughly 70% human and 30% AI to about 40% human and 60% Gemini because the model is so good at expanding and speeding up drafts.
Practical takeaways:
Use the model to turn raw intuition into a structured strategy, so the founder isnʼt stuck doing constant translation or micromanagement.
Create reusable starters with your positioning, product definitions, what good looks like, and constraints. This makes outputs more consistent and reduces drift.
Pick a high-leverage deliverable PRDs, briefs, customer narratives, competitive memos). Standardize the workflow so a junior can produce v1 quickly, then iterate with a lightweight review.
Track cycle-time reductions (hours saved per artifact), quality revisions needed, and how much founder review time drops as the junior + AI workflow matures.
Play of the Week: Engineer Planned Unpredictability Into Your Brand
Most loyalty programs try to win repeat customers with consistency. And while consistency still matters, predictability is becoming a liability because customers get bored and copycats can replicate good faster and cheaper than ever. The brands that stay sticky create comfort and surprise, on purpose.
Donʼt chase novelty for its own sake. Instead, build a few intentional pattern-breaks into the customer experience with surprises that arenʼt random, but repeatable enough that people start anticipating them, like placing a familiar brand in an unexpected setting, adding a planned surprise beat inside an otherwise structured experience, and using unexpected collaborations to refresh how customers perceive you.
Shift your brand context: Keep your core promise but show up in a new stage (new format, new channel, new setting) to make the familiar feel fresh again.
Plan moments of unpredictability: Build one rotating element into a consistent experience (a surprise drop, rotating bundle, mystery perk, wildcard feature) so repeat customers have a reason to return.
Ally with unexpected collaborators: Partner outside your obvious category to borrow energy and reach new audiences without diluting your core.
Remix your icons: Keep the recognizable signals, but change one hallmark element (timing, packaging, soundtrack, spokesperson, ritual).
End with a kicker: Add an extra at the moment customers think the experience is over, add an unexpected upgrade, follow-up note, bonus deliverable, or small surprise that makes the purchase memorable.
If youʼre planning 2026 retention, pick one predictable customer moment like checkout, onboarding, monthly email, renewals, and delivery, then apply one of the five levers above. Loyalty compounds when customers feel safe choosing you and are curious to see what youʼll do next.
Metric Benchmark
Source: LocaliQ
Closing Note
The common thread here is restraint paired with conviction. When systems push everything toward the average, leadership becomes the act of choosing deliberately rather than following momentum. Taste must be asserted, not inferred from data. AI must be shaped by standards, not allowed to shape them. Brands must earn attention by creating moments people feel rather than flows they scroll past. The builders who stand out will not be louder or faster. They will be clearer about what they believe, where they deviate, and why that difference is worth noticing.
See you next week.
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