In this special episode of The Pricing Guys, Avy and Michael welcome Kevin Mitchell, President of the Professional Pricing Society (PPS), for a candid conversation about the past, present, and future of pricing.

Kevin traces the roots of PPS back to his father Eric Mitchell, who did pricing work for Ford, Xerox, and Intel before launching the society out of a newsletter Kevin used to print and mail as a kid. Nearly 20 years after rejoining the family business, Kevin now leads the world's largest community of pricing professionals and has a front-row seat to how the discipline is evolving.

The conversation covers the classic 1% pricing rule and why most executives still underestimate it, how BOGO promotions in consumer goods erode long-term price integrity, and where AI fits into the pricing toolkit today. Kevin shares memorable examples of algorithmic pricing spiraling out of control and makes a strong case for keeping humans in the loop on decisions that matter.

He also draws an unexpected parallel between the music industry and pricing strategy, and closes with a straightforward challenge to anyone looking to grow as a pricing leader: get out of the silo, learn the language of every department, and be a generalist with specialist knowledge.

A thoughtful and energizing episode for anyone in pricing, revenue management, or commercial strategy.

What can a New York City dollar slice teach you about pricing strategy? Quite a bit, it turns out.

In this episode, Michael and Avy use pizza as a lens to explore real-world pricing dynamics: the volume game behind the dollar slice, how atmosphere and customer segments justify price gaps, and why brands have to commit to a single pricing identity. They also make the case that Dave Portnoy's One Bite Reviews are missing a critical data point.

If you think about price, value, and what customers are really paying for, this episode will give you a few new ways to think about it. Plus, a future episode rating pizza on a price-adjusted scale may be coming.

What does ketchup have to do with brand value? More than you'd think.

Michael and Avy dig into one of the most underrated questions in pricing: when you strip away the logo, the mascot, and the packaging redesign, what is your brand actually worth? The Heinz story out of Turkey is the jumping off point, but this episode goes much deeper into why so many companies are spending millions to justify their existence instead of their value.

In this episode, Michael and Avy get into how Heinz drove a 23% sales increase without a price hike or a new product, why brands confuse logo refreshes and flavor adds with actual value creation, the slotting fee trap that CPG companies keep falling into and why the payback math almost never works, what base velocity actually tells you about whether your marketing spend did anything, why the brand is the product and not the color of your label, and how Coca-Cola quietly gets this right while everyone else chases shiny objects.

Also, keep your eyes open for the new RML website dropping in early May. Drop your thoughts in the comments.

What brands do you think have done the best job justifying their premium? Subscribe for Season 3, new episodes dropping regularly. #PricingStrategy #BrandValue #CPGPricing #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #MarketingROI #FMCG #BrandEquity #RevenueStrategy #PricingTrends ‪@heinz‬