Launching a product has never been easier. Cheap ad reach, dropshipping, and now AI have pushed the barrier to entry close to zero—which is exactly why John Scheer thinks brand is the only thing left worth fighting for.
He and cofounder Chapin Herman started Herman Scheer right out of college, building it into a go-to creative agency for high-growth health and wellness brands, such as Olipop, Neuro, AG1, Native, and Bobbie. John’s thesis since 2017: When anyone can copy your product, the brand is the moat.
Here, John breaks down why AI has raised the stakes on that idea, how to write product messaging that actually shows up in ChatGPT, and what separates a campaign that lands from one that doesn’t.
On why brand became the ultimate moat once anyone could launch a product:
That was our thesis back in 2017, when we decided to go all in on brand building. With tools like Shopify, lower customer acquisition costs on Facebook—now Meta—and dropshipping, the barrier to entry to launch a product and grow a brand got so low that the brand became the ultimate differentiator. The moat.
If anyone can spin up a product, the thing that actually sets you apart is the brand you build around it.
On how AI turned brand into “the last line of defense”:
Now it’s even more true—it’s doubled down. Agentic tools and AI have made it so easy to spin up marketing campaigns and suss out ideas that the product itself is barely a barrier anymore. Competitive products and services can be stood up in days, at a fraction of the cost.
So brand is truly the last line of defense. It’s how you differentiate and set yourself apart when everything else can be copied.
On writing product messaging that shows up in ChatGPT and Claude:
People are going to ChatGPT or Claude and asking for recommendations on what to buy. So one of the things we’ve been working on with brands is how they show up inside these LLMs.
The way you articulate what your product is has to be very clear, very descriptive. Flowery language still has a place, but that’s not what the LLMs are reading. There, you need to describe what the product actually is and what the value proposition is as succinctly and clearly as possible.
On what separates a campaign that works from one that doesn’t:
The bar for me is simple: It has to be anchored to a human truth. A real insight, where we’re solving a problem or hitting on an emotional cue that the brand can authentically speak to—and I hate the word authentic, but it’s true.
If the work isn’t rooted in something real, it doesn’t matter how good it looks. You’re just trying to sell.
On how brand awareness quietly lifts everything—including your own team:
Brand awareness is harder to track than something like ROAS [return on ad spend], but it makes all of the performance better. The rising tide lifts all ships. It’s the foundation everything else in the business grows from—even internally.
We’ve worked with businesses whose brand had started to feel stale. The internal teams couldn’t articulate what they did or what they stood for, and the identity was something they weren’t proud of representing. After we did the work, employee engagement went way up. People were excited to come in and rep the brand.
When people are happier and more excited about the business, they work harder—and the business performs better. A lot of people don’t think about that.
On the brands that lose the plot:
I see a lot of brands get lost in the sauce. The pendulum has swung too far into the creative, evocative brand-building world, and they lose the plot of what the hell the product actually is.
It’s exciting to build these esoteric brand worlds. But when a consumer comes to your site and can’t turn around and tell a friend what the thing actually is, that’s a problem.
On whether you can still build a brand with real staying power today:
Yeah, I do think it’s possible. Why not?
It comes down to balance—which cultural waves you can hop on that are genuinely true to you, without repositioning yourself or chasing trends. You stay true to who you are while staying in tune with culture. That balance is what makes lasting brands.
Hear John’s full conversation on Shopify Masters, including how he repositioned Neuro from one SKU into a $100 million-plus business, the user-generated content workaround for supplement brands that legally can’t make claims, and why getting “retail ready” means moving the back of the pack to the front.
