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OCTOBER 26, 2023|FOOD AND DRINK


The World’s Hottest Pepper Will Never Succeed for This Reason


Pepper X 900x600

A list of the world’s hottest peppers before 2023 includes some scary names. The Carolina Reaper. The Ghost Pepper. The Trinidad Scorpion. The Infinity Chili. Those are respectable, intimidating names for peppers that can melt your face starting with your taste buds. Apparently this year for the first time since 2017, there is a new pepper that must be declared the world’s hottest at more than 2.69 million SHU.

So what has the pepper world decided to call this dangerous new winner? Pepper X. I can’t even find words for how much this bothers me. Or why I even care. But wasting a branding opportunity this badly is a tragedy. The hottest pepper in the world is now called Pepper X? Nope. I say all self-respecting pepper fans should reject this simply on principle. This doesn’t belong in the same league as the Carolina Reaper. Now that’s a name that deserves to be number one.

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This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.

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