I'm always impressed by that video. Well, hello and welcome everyone to this Marketing and Communications Watch webcast brought to you by the Conference Board. My name is JP Kuvine, and in this second episode on our Cultural Branding Strategy miniseries, we will focus on how to make brands socially and culturally resonant. Why talk about this topic? Why is it relevant? You're going to say some of you at least classically trained well on people buying a product for a job to be done. Clayton Christensen famously talked about it this way. Yes, they are. And yes, sometimes they even pay a premium if you do that job particularly well, as long as you do it particularly well compared to other brands. But then you know there are those brands that fulfill desires that go well beyond functionality, utility, and for which we are truly willing to splurge. You've bought some of them and you found them across categories, whether it's water or watches, cars or concerts, handbags or hotels, restaurants or restorative dentistry or losing weight. They are brands used to signal how we would like to be, with whom we would like to be associated, that help us get into the tribes we want to be with. And those are the brands we're going to talk about today. And so on this slide, you see some of the key questions we want to tackle, not so much about whether brands can earn a premium or your loyalty for helping us being our deal sells, but more importantly, how. How do brands become socially and culturally relevant and resonant? What can marketers do actively to achieve this for their brands? And for which kind of brands are there limitations? Are there certain brands that lend themselves to it better than others? What does it take to sustain that cultural, social relevance and to avoid becoming a fad that kind of burns out? And how do we know whether these efforts are actually creating value, whether they pay out? That's often a question particularly asked by your CF OS. My name, I said it is JP Kuvan. You see me here before. I'm principal at Uber Brands Consulting. I teach marketing at Columbia University. And in this function here, I'm the marketing principal at the Conference Board. And with me here today are two people who know a thing or two about how to answer these tricky questions, Jasmine Bina and Patrick Hanlon. They tackle these questions daily in their minds and on paper because they're great thinkers. They've written books, they cried, articles, webcast and so on. But then also very practically as consultants, as agency leaders that deal in how to create cultural relevance for Brad. Jasmine Patrick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'll make a small formal attempt to introduce you very rudimentary. You're going to talk a lot more about yourselves and what you know for the rest of this hour. Jasmine, let me start with you. You are a brand strategist. I insist still, even you wanted to scratch it, that you're also a cultural futurist. And I think people will get a sense for what I mean by that. And you're the CEO of Concept Bureau, which is a cultural brand strategy agency. As I said in Los Angeles, I think you pride yourself and you say that in unearthing and leveraging deep cultural insides. The in obvious, in fact, you are quite popular podcast is called unseen Unknown. I would guess for that reason, you're also very active in this emerging community of branch strategies that are culturally and socially focused. You have this great group. I would wish I would be invited. I called exposure therapy. Maybe you'll tell us a little bit about it later. You know, from range rage rituals to, you know, conspicuous commitment. There is no subject you haven't tackled. And it's always exciting to read kind of how it can relate to brand. So welcome greetings to Lai, Think, is that right? That's right. And thank you. It was a very, very nice intro. I appreciate it. Do you have your era One shake to show us your social relevance and status? In the LA suburbs. No. OK, so maybe we're going to talk about era one and their shakes because I think that's like a totem of status in your region. Our second is, well, here he goes. You know, can't wait. Patrick Hanlon, he calls himself. He will deny it the Charles Darwin of branding. And he's the CEO of primalbranding.co. And while I'm smiling, it's true that Patrick is an absolute expert when it comes to, you know, transforming brands, making them socially relevant. He's talking about the root call code. Sorry for building authentic brands. And that comes from studying for a long time the core desire of humans to belong, to join a tribe, and the needs of tools, rituals, language and more. Things that he'll explain to us of doing that. And we have plans. A brand, Sorry, can play a very active role. He's written a book on it, Primal Branding. It's even required reading at YouTube if you needed to. An endorsement and his seminar sell out around the globe. So we're happy we have him here on a seminar for everyone. Patrick, welcome to you as well. Thank you. And you know, you bring up the fact that people want to we, we as human beings want to belong, right? Being alone or in isolation has been a form of punishment. And I was standing in Erawan. Right behind with Erawan is a high end, a grocery store. It's very small. It's about the size of a 711, but the price and the prices are very high. And I found myself standing behind Tom Hanks's son, whose name I can't think of immediately. But anyway, and I, we, we were in line for quite a while. And I just thought to myself, if I'm standing behind Tom Hanks's son buying something, I should probably be shopping somewhere else. Oh well, I should have mentioned also that Patrick is the master of name dropping. After all, he calls. Himself. The Charles Darwin which feeds probably any guest we've had so far in this show. That was a headline in a Joburg newspaper magazine, he pretends. He pretends to be from LA, but you really are our representative also for the Heartland because you spend a lot of time, I think, in the Midwest. Is that right? My heart is I was born in Los Angeles or Oceanside, but the yes, my heart is in New York City and my soul is in Los Angeles, but I live in Minneapolis. Yeah. I'll interrupt you there because last but not least, I want to introduce you. Dear listeners, please do participate. Don't be shy. Usually people are too shy. This is a social event about social and cultural marketing. So jump in, use the question box, and I'll try to weave the questions and elegantly those of you who have joined also to get continued education credits or CP ES, please click those buttons or whatever it is once you are requested by the widget to do so. And of course, I'll put you on the spot and ask you a person, a question personally to make sure you really earn those credits. I think there's a slide for that. Let me see, here it is. OK, those are the instructions. It's easy. And with that, Patrick already had his airtime. Jasmine, let's hear from you. Could you start unpacking for us where you come from, particularly as it relates to brands and their cultural significance? What, how come you're so fascinated, you know, by these rituals that humans have? And how do you relate it to brands? Tell us a bit about that. OK, so I, I started in public relations actually, and I worked with off tech brands in the beginning. That was when like the app economy was booming and a lot of apps would get really big and not even know why. And so we ended up having to do a lot of storytelling for a lot of these brands in order to get them to press and get a story around them that mattered because they came from they would just be overnight successes, right? And so that kind of led into an interest in understanding like why people like gather around things so quickly, why people become fanatics around things. And we eventually pivoted into brand strategy. And I started Concept Bureau and our work just naturally evolved there. And the honest answer is I just started writing about it. And then that became more and more of our work and it kind of led us to work with different kinds of brands over time. The the thing about cultural brand strategy is a lot of times, especially when it comes to like tech products or innovative products, there's no context for like how to use it or for what it should mean in somebody's life. There's no like behavior or norm around it. And if you look at culture, that the simplest way to define a culture is that it is a shared group of norms or beliefs. So some brands really need to play in culture. They really need to change those shared norms or beliefs and we work with those brands. I say we work with brands that need to move the needle of culture in some dimension. That's not every brand necessarily. You certainly don't need to do that to be successful, but the ones usually that are trying to change the way people behave or change their beliefs or change yourself perceptions and that's a vital to the success of the product. Those are brands that really need a cultural brand strategy and that's that's what we do. A lot of our work is very research based, a lot of forecasting and then just a lot of pondering like human behavior, how culture is changing and helping brands show up when and where and how they need to to kind of meet people in that future. I love that as an intro because you're already pre empting. A question we often get, I often get from my students and my clients alike, which is cultural relevance. I get it for Louis Vuitton and luxury and lifestyle brands. But you know, I'm in tech, I'm in B2B, I'm in engineering, I'm I do these gizmos. So I invent this, you know, I'm an AI right now. Of course, everyone. And you start with that's actually where you discovered the need for cultural relevance because as you say, maybe not every technology, even though I would argue, I would say I can't think of any brand that wouldn't benefit from it. But anyway, most of these brands do need to kind of find at least orientation in culture to for us to be able to understand them with throwing around this word culture. And you started the definition. Do you have kind of a formal definition that you work by as to what is culture? People are often at a loss. It's, it's just what I said. I mean, it's, it's a pretty loose culture. I think it's the a loose definition, but it's the most basic and useful one, I think is that it is a shared group of beliefs and norms, oftentimes behaviors. Sometimes, you know, if you get into semiotics like symbols and images, but that people understand to be part of a certain group. If you understand the these codes, like these codes of behavior and identity, you're and you're participating in them and expressing them, then you're part of that culture. So it's, it's almost like a, a set of rules. I guess you could see it as that as that. Patrick, I'm impressed you didn't jump in. What happened? And I wanted to, I wanted to several times, but you're slapping down every time. So I'm I've become shy and. Reticent. I will. I will control you, Patrick. Don't worry, I would say that culture is is not I'm in, I'm in agreeing with you, Jasmine. The culture is not an either our proposition that you have to have culture in order to have an organization that succeeds. And what I mean by that is that cultures are belief systems. As Jasmine said, there's a very structured way to create a culture, build a belief system and, and people. And this obviates whether you're in tech or, or packaged goods, Consumer Packaged Goods, or, you know, B to B and all that stuff, where it's coming back to the place where we're not top down things. We are people, all human beings. And it doesn't matter where we are. We, we have the top down pyramid. And that obviously has flipped, which is a cliche, But the the result of that is that we are all people now. And it's getting to the point where marketing is just a part of life and what culture you want to belong to. We, we all belong to many cultures when you think about it, right? We are sons, daughters, parents, soccer fans, music fans, TV fans, movie fans, etcetera, etcetera. And so the trying to steer out of the political arena, but but we're we belong to a lot of different cultures and each one of them has its own rule set of where it's from, what it's all about. How do we know that it's that it's soccer and not baseball or tennis or swimming gymnastics, right? They have all have their own special groups of words, you know, whether it's math or physics or law or marketing and or family. And they they all have things that they don't want to be. We're this, not that. And then you know, some form of leadership where whether it's parents or your boss or yourself leading your own life. Excellent. I think that's explains why you called your book Primal Branding. There's a lot about tribes and there's a lot about how it is really fundamental. I think it relates to other people stumbling over the same thing from various disciplines. Like, I'm thinking about evolutionary psychologists like God Saad, for example, who says basically marketing is all about, you know, helping us survive, be with our family and friends, attract a mate and procreate. Does the primal go in that direction for you? Yes, that mean the, I mean it's all an attempt to differentiate, right. And so I mean, just talking about the consumer world since that's everyone's focus or the consumer or B to B or whatever you want to do it selling products and services. We, you know, there are 100 kinds of jeans out there. There are over 200 kinds of automobiles or all so many apps out there being created all the time, et cetera, et cetera. And so how do you differentiate yourself within a playing field where I think you mentioned earlier that products can be, you know, developed copy that people can copy your products or service in a matter of months. But to imitate a culture takes a lot longer than that. And so that's where creating a culture becomes become really becomes your own. And we had a there was someone 1000 years ago who listened to me talk and he, he was in beat him. He had a tech company and he, he once he heard, I mean, it's all very interesting, blah, blah, blah. But the when he heard, well, you can do this same. This is not restricted to your product. You can do create a culture around your product, yes, but you can also create a culture around your in your company, within your company. He ran off and and that day he went back to the office and started writing down. Here's our creation story. This is what we're all about our creed. Here are our icons, our rituals, the the way we talk, our lexicon here, here's what we're not, don't want to become and so forth. And at the time he had a 2 to $3,000,000 tech company. He over the next year or two, he it or length of time it became a $12 million company which he sold but kept some stock. And then this people, he sold it to flip the company and they sold it for $150 million. And the reason that they were able to sell it for $150.00 is exactly what I said. They said we, we can't build the culture that you've created here. And so that's what they were buying. And that's the, that is the value that we're all trying to build. And that and that's built through culture, not through product, but through culture. And I often get the question from clients to bring some data and one impressive case study that's very public and, and and has been, has been studied by many is Snapple, right, which was a cultural phenomenon. It got sold, I think to get a rate and for over a billion for its cultural significance, even though the acquirer didn't understand that. Then they managed it like a regular packaged good, had to sell it very cheap, lost like 800 million in the process. Then somebody picked it up who had this cultural sensitivity again, building up again and sold. So you can literally in those rare cases, and I'm already jumping forward because we're going to talk about how do you measure, You can actually measure it when somebody happens to acquire a brand at different stages of its cultural significance now. Another interesting observation I saw was that this is particularly striking and maybe uncomfortable or a discovery depending in the Anglo-Saxon world, particularly the US world of marketing, because it's so very rational. There is a paper by an academic couple, the Covas, who he at least know, I know teaches in Marseille, and he's been talking about this for a long time. But he says there's also a Latin approach to marketing. And the Latin approach focuses much more on the culture, the social, the tribe, and would understand why people buy a Vespa, for example, not because it gets them from A to B, but because it's Dolce Vita, etcetera, etcetera. Jasmine, question to you, because you're really deep into this, even if in theory we now agree, OK, cultural relevance is important and can create value. It's a different way of looking at it. But at the end, maybe the most fundamental way, how do you actually go about it? Is it about trend watching, you know, faith popcorn and picking out an inside? Do you have some real specific examples of how this is being done successfully? You mean becoming culturally resonant? Yes. Yeah. Well, so here's what I would say and I do have some specific examples. Ultimately, what you're looking for, I think a lot of people like confuse trends for culture and trends matter, but usually trends are pointing towards something much bigger. So an example I like to talk about is like, right now you see a lot of trends that a lot of like beauty brands are responding to. So Brat summer before that, we had like girl summer, then Barbie summer before that. And they're all kind of seems to be like along the same line. But then you also have things like book talk taking off, the romanticy genre blowing up. And there are brands that just like respond to each one of these trends like as it happens, right? And that's one way of marketing and it's valuable. You stay top of mind. It's important, but you can also ask yourself, what are all these trends laddering up to? And that's kind of like the Holy Grail of cultural branding. Usually there is a much deeper human need that's evolving. And these brands are kind of just on the surface. And you could argue that all these things, if you look at them in the macro, are kind of pointing towards this idea of like, maybe we're exploring a very new kind of raw, unfiltered womanhood, like the beauty of this, like raw, unfiltered womanhood. And you could be responding to Brad Summer or you could be a brand like rare beauty, which I, I really love. That is really kind of owning this idea of what this kind of womanhood can look like for a young woman. This raw she took, she comes at it from like a mental health perspective, but it's a much more thoughtful, grounded, identity driven brand that's telling a bigger story. And I don't want to make it sound like it, You know, either one is right or wrong. If you go, if you're like a trench focus like very more like marketing on the ground focused brands, that's great. It'll give you a lot of short term wins and it's less risky. But if you go for more of these like culturally resonant, like big idea brands or big idea branding, you're going to be speaking to something that will last longer. It's riskier and it takes a lot more investment and money upfront, but that is that's how you become culturally resonant. You really look for the deeper need that's unmet. Usually it's an expression of identity that's evolving or some sort something along lines of like human behavior that's evolving and those things move slower. They're not like trend. They don't happen like, you know, quickly, like every day it changes. Another brand that I think is very culturally relevant. I have, I have a few I was going to talk about here, but I'm going to talk about one because it's, it's the first day of school for my kids and they go to Montessori school and the Montessori brand has really blown up. And Montessori, if you pay attention to the way the schools market themselves, at least you know, those schools in, in my neighborhood, yes, they talk about the philosophy of education, but they realize what they're really speaking to is the deeper need of the parents to feel like their children are being respected and have autonomy and being prepared for a world that's a lot more dynamic and unreliable than the world they grew up in. And their parents are looking to fulfill the needs that they maybe didn't feel more fulfilled for them as children when they were students. And Montessori, like they know that's what they're selling to. They're selling to that unmet need. And the parents themselves, they charge a huge premium for it. And it's not just a premium in cost, by the way. It's a premium in like behavior because you have to learn how to raise your child the Montessori way also. That's time. It takes time to learn that. And that's a much deeper need. You know, they could go by test scores, they could go by, you know, attendance, whatever school grades online, but they they speak to something that's much more, I would say primal, to borrow Patrick's, Patrick's territory here, But and it serves them quite well. And that's culturally resonant. They know what a culture needs. A comment on the question in reaction to that, the comment is. I find it interesting that you say the schools really cater to the parents and their desires also, or maybe even primarily when you send a little kid to school. Because one question that is often discussed in this context is, well, what you know, is it really all social? Isn't a lot of our consumption hedonistic? It's for ourselves or, you know, it's for others. It's selfless. Like when we send our kids to a certain school, we pay a fortune for it. No, most of the time, I would argue if you really, really think about it, it's about how we feel others will perceive us based on these actions that supposedly are hedonistic. IEI go in a spa retreat, I log off. We are thinking about how others will judge that and we're doing it for that. If not, you know, partially it is the main driver and the same for the kids. So that's the common. The question actually pops up here among our audience. Eric asks, how do you how, how do you become culturally relevant without abandoning inclusiveness? And I guess the question comes from a lot of these brands are very specific about, I don't know, the transgender community or about sneaker heads or about political opinions, you know, which seems exclusive. Don't we all want to be inclusive? I have my own strong opinion on that. And the the answer would be broadly probably no for most brands. You do not want to be inclusive. Not that you would declare that, but I want to hear your point of view. And then maybe Patrick has his point of view on that as well. That's a great question. And in fact, it came up in our exposure therapy community recently because we studied the idea of community. And it's a, it's a good point because you look at a lot of like the brands and even just communities that are popping up now. They are becoming more and more exclusive, even though you would think the job of community is to bring people together. When I meet a brand that asks a question like that, yes, you know, as a brand strategist, your initial response is like, well, that's usually like a quick way to failure. You can't be everything to everybody and you know, if you want to do cultural granting, there needs to be kind of like an in Group and you have to create norms around that. But if this is very important to you and it maybe it's like, you know, critical to like the the mission of the business as well. You just have to dig paper because usually there will be some need or resonant like identity or something that people are searching for that brings people together. So I would say if you find that your brand strategy is still leaving out a group of people that you really want to include, you probably just haven't dug deep enough. And I've had a couple of clients like that where we really did have to dig and dig and dig into our psychographics, into observing how people live their lives and what they're searching for, how they're building their value systems, the stories they tell themselves, the lies they tell themselves, all that stuff. And trust that you can almost always find something that will be inclusive enough for the groups that you're looking to reach. But it's, it's just, it's, it's a bigger lift to find what it is underneath all of that. That's the common denominator. Let let me let me serve this up to our tribal expert Patrick here. I mean, tribes define themselves as US versus the other as differentiating. Otherwise there's no sense in the tribe. There's no pride in a road biker, you know, team in a soccer fan team if there's not another side. In fact, I just by coincidence read some Joseph Campbell and he talks about, you know, tribes in the forest literally being so bored out of their mind of not having an enemy and something to fight for that they pick a fight because of boredom, not for each other. Isn't that the same in the consumer world or in the marketing world more broadly? I would say this, I would say that we are told stories from the moment we're born, right? We're told that we're a child. We have, we have a mother and a father. We're a son, daughter, grandchild, cousin. We this is your bed, this is your room. This is our house. This is the block that we live on. These are the neighbors, the city that we live in, our town in this country, on this continent, on this planet, etcetera, etcetera. Some of those stories are true, some of them are false. And I guess we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out which right. But the and we do the same thing for products and services. We tell a story about here's who it who we are, here's where we're from, here's what we're about. Here's how you know it's us. Here's how we differentiate ourselves. Here's the language that we use to describe ourselves. Here's the way that we're positioned. Here's our product packaging if you will. And here's what we're not, you know, Coke versus Pepsi, the Burger wars, the cola wars, the imports versus export wars, etcetera, etcetera. And here's the team that's leading it. And I think The thing is, is that we are in a really mixed up era of mark so-called marketing these days because we are still emerging from the top down era and to being flipped. So it's all word of mouth and so forth. And if you remember, some of us can that we used to say that word of mouth advertising is the best form of advertising, which was a snarky thing to say at the time. Because 30 years ago, 20 years ago, there was no other way that we could hear those over the cliched fence post as the housewives talked about our product, we couldn't hear the water cooler conversations, etcetera. And because advertising was king and all you had to do is go on three networks and do a couple print ads, a couple TV spots, do some direct marketing or something, do some outdoor boards, go on radio and you're done for the year. Let's go play golf, see you at the convention, etcetera, etcetera. Well, now we're in a world where people need to see us. We're on social, traditional and digital media all the time. And it's a 24 hour a day, seven day a week, 366 day cycle and you do as much as you can as often as you can as as often as your budget will allow pretty much. And there's, so our means of differentiating ourselves are really spun out of control in some ways. And, and on top of that, we have online marketing and hustlers and gig the gig economy and all that kind of stuff. And so we have to really decide between, not decide between, but we have these two things going on transactions. On the one hand, we have to make the numbers and that's where performance marketing comes in, the clicks and all that kind of stuff, However you want to mention it or or measure it, excuse me, however you want to measure, measure that. And then you have you want to build long term relationships and that's where community comes in. That's where brand comes in. That's where feeling that you believe in this product over another one. So much so that and and also because you believe, you feel that you belong. And these are my people, right? And so that when you get walk into an Apple store, you have this feeling of community. These are my people. We're all here for the same reason. We all like the same things. There was an interesting thing at the Mall of America, which was here in Minneapolis. The is is here in Minneapolis, there was a Microsoft Store right across the aisle from the Apple Store. I don't know if anyone listening in it was there has seen this or not, but it was very interesting because the Apple Store typically would be packed and there would be 5 people over at Microsoft. And it was a great example of people who are silly to community. Community, a brand, a cult, a tribe. Apple versus Microsoft, which is really into transactions and making the end. Microsoft by the way, creates, let's remind ourselves, you know, created iOS and all that. So two similar products made by the same company and there you go. One's a cult, the other one is not. And so I think the thing that we need to do is to remember that the what we are building is communities and whether those communities are for status or self realization. There's a difference there. And the way that we go about it and the things that we want to the media that we want to be on, the way that we express ourselves is different. Why are we here? OK, that's a dialogue Apple comparison, I think illustrates nicely, you know, the difference between kind of a community culturally based brand and and one that focuses on utility. My my, my techie kid keeps telling me that, you know, that Android is really much better for a phone than iOS is. But then he has to admit that people still want, you know, the right color on their direct messages on their phone, etcetera, because it's a point of pride and belonging a question. And and Sanjeev, by the way, I'll get to your question. It doesn't quite fit yet, but I'll get to your question. But a question before that about OK, so you are a tribe. You have clear, you know, you have your values. You might even have used them to value signal, which was a big thing at one point that I think Jasmine, you also talked about a lot. And then maybe you, you know, we're able to have conspicuous production. I'm just mentioning some of those trends where you could fit those values and maybe you even fit in the evolved conspicuous commitment. Now, what do you do though as a brand when maybe your core seems to be running up against the general grain of where culture is moving? I'm thinking of Abercrombie and Fitch, Victoria's Secret, Harley-Davidson, huge ones that were celebrated as deeply cultural and tribal, that people would tattoo literally on their foreheads. And we're maybe now time has moved on. What should these brands do? Abercrombie to have jettisoned completely what it was all about and seems to be successful, at least for now. Harley-Davidson, for example, seems to be still struggling. What is your recommendation on how to keep it, how to evolve it? Jasmine, you have to. Stay. You have to stay relevant. And you, I mean people in the United States need to see you at least five to five to seven different places and in order to be aware that you exist. And it takes 100 hours to make a friend, all right, according to sociologists and so forth. And so the, the thing that you need to, when people, I mean, all the brands, those things that you mentioned, and you can throw Starbucks in there, you can probably throw Apple in there too. But they're, they've achieved their excess, their success through brilliant entrepreneurs, I would say. And the and then they put it in the hands of managers and that's a whole different mindset, if you will. And and they coasted and they try to keep the thing going to try to manage the success, maybe even get increase the success. But depending which company they're talking about, they lost their way over, they lose their way over you lose your way over time and you become less relevant. You became go from being something that point people point to with pride to being a commodity. So Jasmine, let us know how. Do you, how do you not do the, how do you not become the commodity? No one wants to become the commodity, right, because there's no real value there. And So what you have to do is retain relevance and that will vary from sector to sector. It'll vary according to the product category and so forth as we all know so. Yeah, Jasmine, I really, I really want to. Execution right So. I, I really want to get Jasmine's take on something like an Abercrombie and Fitch because when you look at the successful times in the 90s, which by the way was already a reinvention of this total reinvention because it used to be this very traditional sports shooter, etcetera, Theodore Roosevelt kind of brand. It was so incredibly significant for those cool kids in the schoolyard that everyone imitated. Then Jasmine, they've completely stripped it, stripped this cultural relevance. I don't know what they are now. How do you look at this? I mean, is this the way to go? Would you, if they came to you, would you have done it differently? Where do you see them going from here? I think they've done a great job. I think what you're describing about them versus a brand like Harley-Davidson is all of these brands should have been incrementally evolving as their users evolved. I think what happened with both of those brands, Harley and Abercrombie is there. Well, it's a little different for Abercrombie because they, they just fell out of being part of the zeitgeist. For Harley. They're, they're still really relevant, I think to their original demographic, but I think they've kind of aged out. That's the problem for them. The original demographic, they're all in walkers now, yeah. Right. So they're not necessarily going after that demographic anymore. And this is not uncommon, right? So what's what works for a brand has to change over time because people change over time and it's hard, you know, if if any of those brands had evolved a little too early, they would have been criticized greatly. So the timing really matters as well. But I mean, you do really have to go back to the drawing board. I want to, I want to mention Harley, what I think is interesting about them. So they had very clear brand values, like the value like Abercrombie was more like a lifestyle and an aesthetic, but Harley had like very like clear brand values that worked really, really well for them. But it doesn't work for a new generation of consumers, doesn't work for millennials. I don't know if they're trying for Gen. Z, but it doesn't work for them either. I can't remember what they were. Remember like fire was at the center of their value system. It was a bit more like egotistical, which, and I don't mean egotistical like let's just say like a self-serving and which may have worked better for like boomers or an older generation. But there is Martin Craft is an incredible strategist that came and spoke to us at our company and he talked about Harley. And if you look at there's AI, wish I remembered the name, but there is an Indian motorcycle company that has taken the exact opposite approach to Harley-Davidson. And they've made the idea of getting on the open Rd. on your bike all about going out and finding peace, going out into the wilderness, going out into the jungle, finding peace, finding a sense of self. And it's about they're very quiet commercials and ads, very green imagery. It's very like almost Wellness adjacent. And it's worked very well for them. That's like a 180 from Harley. But Harley could have done that. They still create incredible bikes. They could have evolved past where they were, but they weren't maybe listening to the new audiences that they were trying to reach. And that's what same culture. What's that? No, we've got a Megan here is jumping in on Harley and she says, I think I read this right, like apparently there's ADI campaign against Harley. I wouldn't be surprised. How should they think about? I mean, should those be the things that influence where they evolve as you describe it? OK. So this is a tricky question. I don't know about the DEI case that's that's been. Lost against. Them so I don't, I don't know and I won't speak to that. I would I would suggest they buy the Indian bike. That would make sense. By the way, the new fire. Did you mean Indian as in the country that's next to China, or Indian as in Native American? No, the country that's next to China. Yeah, OK, 'cause there is also OK. Yeah, great. So when it comes to social issues like that and the question that the the audience member is asking. So you do have to be careful, but you have to make sure you your ultimate responsibility is to your user. That doesn't mean you have to do that at the expense of another group, But if you are speaking to your user and it's not in any way something that somehow sidelines or insults or leaves out a group unnecessarily, then that that's that's a good path towards making sure that you're on brand and that you're still doing what you need to do. Again, I feel a little uncomfortable because I don't know what that case was about. But I mean, obviously you have to pay attention to those things. But if you're staying true to like what you're about and it's a, you know, a virtuous idea around like helping people realize their identities, something that speaks their psyche or how they're evolving, you would generally steer clear from stuff like that. I, I, I, I would second that. I'm reminded of a discussion I had with a client around Patagonia. Patagonia being, you know, one of the superstars of, you know, value guided values, I should say, guided marketing. And they were saying, yeah, but they don't take a point of view on gun ownership, you know, and immigration. I said they do. They, they say, you know, we can only focus on so many things and we've decided it's about saving Earth. We think we can contribute to that, that it matters, that it's important. It's important to our employees and our customers. You know, while we have opinions on obviously many other things, you know, we need to choose our battles. And so they, they do not participate in these other discussions where maybe a Ben and Jerry's would jump in, you know, with fire. I think that's a great point. And I, I, I think that is important here with brands as well. The other thing that is important I think for people to realize is that all of these social issues, whether it's DI, Black Lives Matter, MAGA, whatever it is that are really hot right now. We will be looking back in 10 to 15. Maybe it's going to be 20 years. I doubt it from now and everyone will laugh about how this was a socially constructed part of reality that all of a sudden we thought that particular part is just so fundamental. Like we look at other things today and we smile. How, you know, in the 50s, sixties, 70s or whatever. Humanity seemed to have believed one thing, etcetera. Now realize well that was just a moral majority or whatever majority, etcetera. So the realization that there's always going to be groups that will think differently and that maybe there is actually the opportunity in a world of mature businesses and mature markets where businesses can actually differentiate and say, well, while the orthodoxy goes this way, let me go the other way. You know, I think a famous case study by Douglas Holt, who's very much into cultural brand strategy is, you know, when everyone was celebrating Wall Street and greed is good and Reaganism, etcetera, all of a sudden there was the Mountain Dew brand that was all about the rednecks and celebrating that simple life and you know, just the bodiness around that, etcetera, etcetera. It's called Zig, one other Zag. Exactly. Now let me get to Sanjeev because he asked this question a long time ago and I can kind of twist it to fit in here, which is you are a tribe, you're hugely relevant. Now you want to expand globally. Can local brand ambassadors out of your region in that new market? You want to go in, create affinity, create that bridge and open that tribe up for that new market. You know, you are purely, let's make it up, American brand, you know, you're going to Pakistan. You know, what do you do about that? Anyone have an opinion on leveraging ambassadors, maybe influencers? Ouch. I'm getting into that now. When you want to be an authentic tribal primal brand. Yeah, I think that a one way that people have done that is to do pop up stores, which is not a way not really a regional brand ambassador, but they introduced themselves by going into Soho, you know or someplace like that and in Manhattan and doing a pop up store and seeing how regionally relevant they were and introducing them to that geography. I think that the thing and Jasmine, I'll love to hear what you think about this also. But I think that brand ambassadors or influencers are really a form of performance marketing and are really a so let's see, I don't look with on them with favor necessarily in terms of building a brand because you want you do want to have some authenticity. And I think that they are derivative of, of using celebrities, celeb throwing a celebrity onto ATV spot because they, you know, had a certain value set or at a certain audience themselves, which was the kind of the your last ditch effort in terms of creating a brand in the old traditional world. And not something you wanted to do necessarily sort of the last ditch thing because it, it was the worst form of marketing kind of. And so the, because it was not authentic, it was not even smart a lot of times. And and so the to base your brand on that. And I think the influencers are an extension of that, even a lower grade extension of that. Sorry for those who might not agree with that, but the, and so it's derived from that. And I think that it's that's not the way for anyone to go if you want to develop long term value. Jasmine, well, what's your take on leveraging influencers, macro and micro? Because I think it's very different. And I fit in a follow up question by Sanjeev here, which which kind of says, you know, don't you think that brands need to shed some of their identity as they want to define it when they need to start to work with these people? Don't they become, you know, like very multifaceted through that because they're all their own characters and have their own take on the brand as well? Yes, depends on the. Media they're using, Yeah, Go ahead, Jasmine, Sorry. I I would agree with that. I think if we're talking about tribes, our modern tribes are probably led by influencers in a lot of ways. I have worked with brands that had remarkable results with influencer marketing and it only tightened the brand. Now you have to be careful because working with influencers is tricky. It's not always clean. The kinds of influencers you're working with matters. You know, the, the conventional wisdom that I've heard is that usually it's the smaller to mid size influencers that are a lot more fruitful than the larger ones because they do have tighter like brands and tribes around them. As far as going international, I think it's actually, it could be a very smart approach because you don't have any credibility. You don't even know if your brand is going to speak in that market and if your resources are limited, working with influencers to get you to the right people very quickly. And if you have a good like two way relationship with that influencer, they can help inform your brand. It's kind of like a way of testing the brands or testing the product with a smaller group that you know would be your target or ideal audience. And if you're getting good information back, which again won't happen with every influencer, it can help you tailor the brands to the local market. We worked with a a supplement brand, a huge one, and they basically grew entirely through their first stage through influencer marketing. And this is where like it kind of matters what the brand is about because they were in like a so supplements are a very emotional space. People really, you know, the reason why they start taking certain kinds of supplements is emotional. This specific supplement was for ailments that come with a lot of like emotional anguish as well. And so when you work through influencers, you kind of like get to tap into those conversations that are already happening that would contextually make your brand relevant. So while I agree that it can, it definitely can have its downsides. If it's done correctly, it can work really well. And I haven't worked with a brand that did it internationally, but theoretically it sounds like it could work really well if you know what you're getting into and the kinds of influencers you need exist in that market. Yeah, we have done it internationally and the I think the thing that's important about it is that, so I'm hedging a little bit on what I just said. But the I think that's what you're we're ultimately going for is trying to find the consumers voice in the whole thing. And so to get that word of mouth and to figure out how you may be different in a particular market, whether it's Africa or India, China, wherever it may be. And that from the speaking from the US and finding out how consumers are discussing the issue or how they how your micro service involves them, how they engage with it and their feelings about that are all, Patrick, critically important. Yeah. OK, Patrick, we need to be super efficient. We have 8 minutes left and a bunch of questions. So I'll ask both of you, let's make it very fast answers here. I want to get through this and I have one question I really, really want to ask you at the end. So 6 minutes left. Let's bring in two people who actually didn't submit a question, but I know they would if they were on there. I'm talking like Steve Jobs now. You know, if Gandhi was still alive, he would use Apple. And that is people like Byron Sharp or Mark Ritson. I'm sure you both read about them and their stuff. And they would say, you guys are totally, you know, deluding yourself here. A most people don't give XXX about the brand. They just want a battery that works. They just want an airline that brings them there on time. They just want a toilet paper, A roll that lasts. Isn't it totally inefficient? How do I know this truly works? And on top of that, a Byron Sharp would say, and you're paying 1000 micro influencers and you're, you know, throwing yourself into the stream of having to manage them. And by the way, at the end of the day, it costs you more than advertising in the Super Bowl. God damn it. Just be top of mind, top of shelf. What do? You say we only have 4 minutes. Left Patrick 30 seconds. How you defend and define and show the value of your approach? I think that they're they're mistaking brand. It's Hun how you they're not defining brand and proper way. The brand is the community of people that surrounds your product or service. And insofar as a we need to find out what their beliefs and values are and we will attract those, the people who share our beliefs and values. You build that you as product. You build a belief system that attracts others who share your beliefs. That becomes your community. They are your brand. The world has inverted people. OK, Jasmine, that that still sounds very soft and human. It's not soft. It's very hard and you build growth and value based upon that. It's not soft at. All what? What? What would be your proposed measure to a brand to say well if you want to measure the value of what this is adding, look for this what would be your measure? Sales I do Oh, is that for? Jasmine, sorry, Yes, your your brand should directly affect revenue. It should help you grow. I think the minute you know that brand is working is when you're not handcuffed to price and features anymore, when you can start charging a premium outside of like having to prove that the product does its job. The examples you gave earlier, yeah, just give a brand. That doesn't mean you can have a poor product, but having a good product is not enough. So many great. Here we go all right, we've got 3 minutes left. OK, I like the sound of that premium and whether you continue to grow certainly is a great measure particular primer. Do you are you able to stain sustain a price above the kind of commodity price in the market? There's a question by Sigoland exclude student of mine shout out for that. She says, you know, beyond influences TV or pop up stores, is there a magic particularly relevant tool to create and gain cultural relevance? One tool, Jasmine, one tool. Patrick, you have 10 seconds. I don't think there's a magic tool. I think it's hard work no matter what, and you have to. It depends on the brand. Most brands find their magic channel maybe, but a magic tool? No, it's hard work. You go to where your consumers are, you find out where you're who you're, what they're watching, or if they're on Instagram, you go on Instagram. If they're on YouTube, you go there. If they're on traditional television, God help them. You go there. All right. OK. I guess I won't be able to ask my question. Maybe we'll have to do a Part 2 because we're running out of time. But thanks both for this very passionate discussion. I think we could all feel it. It was very culturally involved. Thanks all the participants for their questions. Sorry, I know I skipped at least one question. I could call it. I couldn't call it up anymore. And with that, I want to move on to just call out two events that we have. Let me try and get those slides up. That is US wonderful people. I have to say there is the AI event and that one is in person coming up N78 Brooklyn, Be there, Be Score, Be Square. All of Patrick's favorite big names are there, so I'm sure he'll join too to be able to continue the name dropping trend. And then we have the CMO and CCO meter. This is one of those metrics. How do people feel? Isn't it interesting that I think even the Nobel Prize winner of economics, Mr. Schuler, is that his name? I think, yes. Talks about narrative economics and in the end admits, coming back to Patrick and Jasmine here, that storytelling is probably what drives our economy the most. And that money is a myth. Just let that you know, sink in. These CMOCCO meters talk a lot about the latest insights in the sentiments of the marketing into the sentiments of the marketing community. So you might want to take a look at that. And with that and 30 seconds remaining, I say thank you again, Jasmine, Patrick. It was a lot of fun. And I say goodbye and good luck to all of us. Thanks to everyone for watching. Bye. _1732192314907

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