The Pricing Guys

We have a special bonus episode to share and it comes with some exciting news from RML!
Gustavo Mendonça is joining as a Partner to lead a brand new function at Revenue Management Labs: building custom pricing tools. Michael and Avy sit down with Gustavo to break down what this means for RML, why he left one of the biggest food companies in the world to do it, and what the democratization of AI actually means for companies that could never afford a proper pricing transformation before.
In this episode they get into why Gustavo walked away from a decade at Kraft Heinz to join RML, how AI is making custom pricing tools accessible to companies under a billion dollars in revenue for the first time, why dumping your data into Claude or Gemini and asking for elasticity is a very bad idea, the bathroom tiling analogy that perfectly sums up the danger of DIY pricing tools, how pricing in Europe and North America is more similar than you think and where it is starting to diverge, and what RML opening a London office means for their European clients.
Drop your thoughts in the comments. Is your company ready for what AI is about to do to pricing?
Subscribe so you do not miss Season 4.
#PricingStrategy #AIAndPricing #RevenueManagement #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #PricingTools #CPGPricing #B2BPricing #DigitalTransformation #RevenueStrategy

The 2 Biggest Pricing Trends Right Now
The FIFA World Cup just landed in North America and the attorney general is already involved. Ticket prices surged 35% overnight, seat maps got redrawn, and fans are furious. Michael and Avy use this as the jumping off point for the Season 3 finale and a bigger conversation about the two pricing trends reshaping how companies compete right now.
In this episode:
Why FIFA's price surge might be harder to argue against than the headlines suggest
Why AI-powered dynamic pricing is the trend everyone wants but few are actually executing properly
How the demand for pricing transparency is changing the relationship between buyers and sellers across every industry
Why the most sophisticated pricing strategy falls apart the moment your sales team cannot explain it
See you in the fall for Season 4.

Ferrari just dropped an electric vehicle priced at $640K+ and watched their stock fall 8%. What went wrong?
Michael and Avy break down the pricing and brand strategy lessons behind Ferrari's Luce EV launch, and why even the most research-backed innovation can miss the mark when it alienates your core customer.
They cover why expanding your customer base is the hardest growth play in the book, what Post Malone's country pivot has to do with brand dilution, and the one consumer goods company that launched 70 SKUs over seven years and had exactly one turn a profit.
If you're thinking about a new product launch, a new segment, or just whether to mess with what's already working, this one's for you.

Disney doesn't sell rides. They sell an ecosystem designed to keep you spending as long as possible.
Michael sat down with CJ Gustafson of Mostly Metrics to unpack the surprisingly sophisticated pricing strategy behind the Disney experience. From loss leader ticket pricing and frictionless wristband payments to dynamic lightning lane offers and segmented Florida resident discounts. Sharp observations, real-world parallels to SaaS, and a lot of lessons hiding inside a family vacation.

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

Is your grocery app charging you more than your neighbor? Welcome to surveillance pricing.Avy Punwasee and Michael Stanisz break down the pricing practice that's got Ontario Premier Doug Ford talking and consumers quietly fuming. Surveillance pricing (aka AI-powered price discrimination) is already happening on grocery apps, and the debate over whether to ban it is heating up.But here's the thing: dynamic pricing has existed in airlines, hotels, and B2B for years. So why does seeing different banana prices on Instacart feel different?In this episode, Avy and Michael get into what surveillance pricing actually is and why it sounds scarier than it might be, Doug Ford's free market take on whether government should even get involved, why airlines have done this forever and nobody bats an eye, the grocery app paradox of whether you're paying more for the bananas or just the convenience, how AI shopping agents are about to flip the dynamic on sellers, B2B's dirty secret that discretionary discounts are just surveillance pricing with a friendlier name, and where Michael and Avy actually land on free market vs. regulation.
Learn more - revenueml.com

What does "price" even mean in a world run by AI?
In this episode, Michael and Avy skip the near-term AI hype and fast-forward 10 to 15 years to ask the big questions. Are promotions obsolete? Will brands live or die by their ability to communicate value to an algorithm? And is B2B pricing about to go completely underground?
From shopper bots that buy your toilet paper at the optimal moment, to the NVIDIA CEO's take on the true cost of an AI-powered engineer, this is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking look at the long game of pricing in an AI-saturated world. Come for the predictions, stay for the debate, and check back in Season 15 to see how right they were.
#PricingStrategy #AIAndPricing #FutureOfPricing #ThePricingGuys #PricingPodcast #ArtificialIntelligence #B2BPricing #PricingTrends

Are pricing teams their own worst enemy? 
In this episode of The Pricing Guys, Michael and Avy are calling out a growing trend in the pricing community: a victim mentality showing up all over LinkedIn, where pricing professionals feel undervalued, ignored, and like they're the only ones driving results in their organizations.
But here's the hot take: if no one's listening to you, that might be on you.
Michael and Avy break down why the best pricing professionals aren't just Excel wizards. They're change agents, relationship builders, and communicators who bring their stakeholders along for the journey from day one. They share real-world consulting experiences, the powerful "seven times rule," and lessons from a fireside chat at a major private equity conference on why trust-building is the real unlock for organizational change.
Whether you're a pricing veteran or just getting started, this episode will challenge your mindset and give you a fresh playbook for making real impact.
What's covered:
The LinkedIn "pricing victim" trend and the hot take you might not want to hear
Change management vs. spreadsheet perfection
Getting stakeholders involved early (and why it matters)
Relationship-first leadership lessons
How to shift from victim to change agent
Have a topic you want us to cover? Send it in!
#ThePricingGuys #Pricing #PricingStrategy #RevenueManagement #ChangeManagement #B2B #CommercialExcellence #RML