Before I write anything, I just want to echo that everything Wiliam Goldman said about the movies also applies to advertising and marketing—nobody knows anything. 

I don’t care how many dumb awards your agency won (I can say this because we haven’t announced the 2026 competition…yet) or how you have the most strategy-iest strategics of strategies when it comes to branding. I don’t know why some things get more attention than others or why specific designs or brands receieve high praise across social. Maybe it had a good story, or there were pretty pictures. Perhaps you hired a good PR team to get you on one of the 20 Substacks everyone is currently reading. I just don’t know. And you should be wary of any LinkedIn huckster who says otherwise.

Case in point: David’s protein bars. People are still talking about it. Every one of us can give it the ol’ college try and armchair-splain this one. Great branding from Day Job? Yes. Riding the wave of sandblasting 20 grams of protein into everything? You bet your milk protein isolate they are! From the guy who made Rxbar? A VC bro in a corduroy Olipop hat is gooning himself into a stupor. It all makes perfect sense, but I could just as easily tell you that I don’t get it and that some things are just stickier than others.

That said, I don’t get David’s latest offering, which was announced this morning. 

Apparently, David is getting into the fish business and is selling frozen, boiled (but Wild-Caught!) cod. Announcing the brand’s latest offering, founder Peter Rahal took to LinkedIn and wrote, “We have heard everyone’s complaints and admire the ones fighting against processed foods. Our latest one-ingredient innovation is the best solution.”

“Cod, by David,” is, according to Rahal, “the most effective, portable protein out there,” though I don’t think this is true because I have worked in offices with monsters who have microwaved fish. With the post came the usual packaging shots. But this wasn’t the usual packaging porn we’ve all come to expect; instead, you’ve got a disarmingly white box, a lifeless piece of cod, and the required numbers around protein. You could even say it looks more like an Apple product than anything else, which is likely the point, but it doesn’t make it appetizing in the least bit. Which is a tough ask, mind you. It’s genuinely hard to make a lone piece of fish look tasty.

There’s one golden rule food brands and designers should keep in mind, and it’s a pretty simple ethos to hitch your wagon to: Food should actually look good when you’re trying to sell it. We can have a nice little chat about snarky start-up aesthetics and brand as performance art metrics, but the market never lies. Food should look like you want to put it in your mouth.

Of course, it also depends on who you’re marketing this to and where you’re selling this food. Because at a price point offifty-five fucking dollars, and, yes, in this economy, for just four 6oz filets is criminal, unless, of course, you’re the dum-dum buying it at Erewhon because shame on you. I don’t think you can buy this Erewhon (you can only purchase it Monday through Wednesday at David so they can “ensure peak freshness”), but Jesus Christ, they should because that is a consumer who is entirely out of touch with anything happening in this country. 

There is an interesting idea here because if you are positioning the brand as if it were a tech product, and you’re screaming to the heavens about how it’s just one ingredient, there’s a nice enough angle connecting something readily available in nature to technology. This, after all, is “rigorously perfected protein,” and that’s highly intentional. I’m sure David would likely call themselves a protein brand (not a protein bar brand) as their mission is to “design tools to increase muscle and decrease fat.” So, yes, it’s their MO to tell you how much protein the fish has on the box. 

But also, holy codfish balls, that’s how much protein is in your average 6oz piece of cod. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but fishies have protein in them.

I will say this much—the advertisement announcing the new offering on David’s Instagram is funny and weird and revolting. A woman in an all-white gym gear opens her locker, and voila, next to her David protein bar is a piece of boiled cod on a plate. Without even the slightest iota of emotion on her face, she cuts a piece off with her fork and gives us some stomach-churning ASMR-heavy chewing. No notes there, especially if the goal is to make something repulsive and unsettling. It’s probably “weird for the sake of weird,” but whatever, get your jollies where you can, I say.

Anywho, this is just a long-winded way of saying I don’t know who this is for. And I’m not sure the branding is doing it any favors. 

But also, who knows anything?