How is AI like Betty Crocker?
Rex Woodbury has an answer, which he first laid out in 2024 in his "Digital Native" Substack. While many people wonder how much stuff can truly be automated by AI, Woodbury reckons this is the wrong question—especially when it comes to consumer behavior. To explain why, he looks at the history of cake mixes. First introduced to the public in the 1930s, cake mixes didn’t really grow in popularity until the 1950s, when General Mills and Betty Crocker offered a simple but significant tweak—encouraging consumers to add a fresh egg. AI may very well be the same way: Just because an AI agent can do everything on its own, that doesn’t mean that’s what consumers want.
