Yesterday, I was walking around the mall when I saw this famous cookie brand’s kiosk.
I stopped, stayed in one corner, then observed the store like a deranged PI with nothing better to do.
They really nailed the location of their stall. Foot traffic was strong. And they were right beside the waiting area for a big family restaurant.
Translation? Their customers were either a family of (at least) four… or a squad of titas and mamitas killing time before dinner or maybe buying desserts and pasalubongs.
They never ran out of buyers in the 15–20 minutes I lurked there.
Good for them.
Now, once I got busted — I mean bored — I continued my walk.
That’s when I saw a less popular cookie brand just a few hundred steps further.
Again, I stood on the corner, spying.
Their location also has good traffic. Perhaps, a busier one.
But the crowd? Smaller. Understandably so, since they’re fairly new and smaller brand.
And unlike the first one, their customers here are mostly lone ladies, probably mid-20s to mid-30s. Backpacks, earbuds in, holding a couple of Watson’s shopping bags.
You know the type.
See, even with that shallow spying I did, you can already see the importance of positioning.
They sell the same products…
… But to very different demographics.
This is why, when figuring out our positioning at Cookies et al, we also asked: Whose problem are you gonna solve?
Or, more accurately: Whose cookie cravings are we gonna satisfy?
See, running a biz is already a minefield. There are a hundred things you’ll never control.
There’s the macro environment, like the economy and the bureaucracy— and then there’s the market perception, the competition, fads, and a bazillion other headaches.
So the few things you can control?
You should obsess the heck out of them like a psychopath.
And one of those is the people you’ll serve.
When you control that, everything else falls into place.
Building relationships gets easier… Gaining trust gets easier…. Leading them into your world gets easier…
Selling just feels less like arm-twisting and more like an invitation.
In “saturated” markets, this matters even more.
For example, those two cookie brands I observed…
One serves an older demographic — the mommies, the lolas, and the titas. So they added a couple of seats and placed their kiosk beside a family restaurant.
The other one? They’re for the young-er people. They use cool, lively colors, and their cookies are freakin’ sweet. Plus, they’re located in a faster-paced spot where people are normally on the go.
Now, let me pull this back to our cookie biz, Cookies et al.
Obviously, we can’t use those physical store strategies to control who goes in.
So we made a deliberate choice: we’re gonna be an email-heavy brand.
That’s our weapon, our filter.
And the layers go deeper: how we talk in our emails. How often we show up. The stories we tell. The way we describe a damn cookie.
Every detail is designed to pull in the right crowd.
Because those are the things we can control.
Think of it like that one friend who’s a ridiculously good gift-giver.
You became friends because you liked their personality. You just loved talking to them or hearing from them. But you never told them what gift you wanted.
And somehow, when you open their Christmas gift… surprise, surprise. It’s something you never knew you needed. They just have that gut-feel, you know?
Now, every year, it’s their gift that you’re itching to open.
And that’s exactly how we see controlling our audience.
We don’t wanna waste energy fighting battles where the rules are always changing
So we want to double down on the things we can control — like who we choose to serve
Because when you control that, everything else follows.
The message sharpens, amplifies. The marketing resonates.
You stop being a brand that begs for people’s scrap, fleeting attention…
And become one that attracts the right people, almost naturally.
In our book, that’s good marketing.
For more email tips and philosophies like this, go here: