On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, I was joined by Ana Andjelic,  a veteran brand executive and writer of the Sociology of Business newsletter. I wanted to try an episode with Ana because we focus on different ends of the media ecosystem. Among the issues we discuss:

• The internet’s impact on brands. “It forces you to compete on everything other than on brand. You compete on price, convenience, product recognizability, speed of your supply chain."​
• Product-led branding. “It’s starting with that iconic original product, using different wear stories, wear scenarios, different subcultures, to give it identity."
• Why DTC brands were really performance marketing companies. “A lot of brands, especially in the DTC era when money was free, thought they would build demand by buying Facebook ads, Instagram ads, search and so on."
• The limits of performance marketing. "Performance marketing is not going to build your demand. There needs to be something else that tells people to search for it or click on the ad.”

if you're trying to build a high end fashion brand, that's not where you're going to win.

I mean, Jeff Bezos was famously saying.

You know, your margin is my opportunity.

I can hardly see that as a very attractive, proposition if you're, if you're at the high end of the market.

And

brand building promise.

what is that?

exactly.

But then look at also like Shien and Timo again.

Like how Shien actually succeeded is like looking at those micro trends brewing.

It's a pure data play.

So again, your company means because it has superior data and you have a crazy nimble network of your suppliers.

So you can see what micro trends are bubbling up, and then you respond very quickly with your product to those micro trends, that's also like capturing demand, but it's also building a demand as at the same time.

So I think we do need to have to talk about demand building strategies today versus before where you had brand and performance.

Brands build demand, performance captures demand.

Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

I'm Brian Morrissey.

On this week's episode, I was joined by Ana Andjelic, a veteran brand executive and the writer of the Sociology of Business newsletter, which focuses on modern brand building.

Ana is someone I often turn to for insight into how brands are built now because, well, she's my wife.

but I figured we'd try an episode to share one of those conversations and Ana luckily was game to do it.

The impetus to this conversation is my own thinking about whether the crack up we're seeing in mass media will inevitably impact mass brands.

After all, these two things are opposite sides of the same coin.

And I think across all aspects of society, we're seeing decentralization.

From one size fits all centralized approaches to focusing on narrow niches, advertising long, a critical tool for brand building has mostly been subsumed by performance marketing and obsession with narrow audience segments rather than a single message for, um, Large groups.

And as media decentralizes into millions of these niches, it makes it harder than ever to build mass brands, my view, and maintain the growth of legacy mass brands.

I mean, publishing has seen the decline of its own legacy brands.

And I think the same pressures are going to exert themselves on these mass brands, particularly as they see their competitive advantages eroded in a world of Amazon, Instagram, and Taimou instant gratification.

Brands take time to build and the world is operating on 1.

5x speed and accelerating.

Among the issues Anna and I discuss are the internet's impact on brand building and why you have to compete on so many different levels beyond brand.

What product led branding looks like and why DTC brands were really performance marketing companies at their heart.

And finally, what the limits of performance marketing are if you're taking a longer term view.

Hope you enjoyed this conversation.

send me a note, with any feedback.

My email is bmorrissy@therebooting.

com.

And if you liked this episode, please leave it rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Okay, Ana, welcome to the podcast.

I want to, I want to talk today because I wrote recently about, about Nike and it's in a bit of a pickle, right now with how it's performing and a lot of it is being tracked back to some of the decisions it made, As far as brand advertising versus performance advertising and how it's organized and these things are all a mess, but I want to, I want to unpack that.

I want to get your insights.

because this is your field it's more so than mine.

Does that sound good?

That sounds great and thank you for having me and delighted to be talking about it because I find that above all, it goes beyond all of those issues.

It's not brand marketing versus performance marketing, reorganization, a CEO that didn't grow up in that industry and so on.

And I just think Look, Nike is a 40 year old company, if not longer.

And when you're that massive scale and when the retail environment changes so much, then interaction between your strategy and the market is just sometimes not going to be aligned.

Yeah.

I wrote about it, and thank you for, allowing me to do it as a guest post on your, And your newsletter.

I mean, look, Nike right now, year to date is down about 30 percent in the market.

Right.

And this is partly a product problem.

it is partly an organization issue.

They changed how they were organized.

and they went away from sort of breaking it down by sport.

They were always very narrow and deep.

And, whether they did this because of McKinsey or not, I'm, I'm unclear, but, a former Nike, Executive Massimo Gionco, did a fairly unsparing semi viral, if not completely viral LinkedIn posts, where, you know, he really took the current management.

to task for a lot of these missteps, including, you know, going too hard into direct to consumer at the expense of wholesale relationships.

and this was a trend, you know, this go direct thing was a trend.

And then when you do go into DTC, you're going to be very heavily into performance marketing.

and that is that is a reality.

I mean, he another Nike executive had predicted earlier in July that Nike would die a death of 1000 paper cuts.

so I'm not sure if that's the case.

Exactly.

But I want to sort of break it down from.

You know, your perspective of having been an executive in these organizations and having been sort of on the brand side.

what to you ends up being the sort of tension if there is any between.

You know, brand and performance when the world has moved into digital media, right?

And digital marketing to me, for the most part, has been about direct marketing.

Hasn't been about building brands.

Yes.

And I'll get to that.

I want to take a step back first and there's two things happening here.

First, every time that organization goes through certain transformation, they underestimate the amount of time and investment needed for the transformation.

So if you're going to say, hey, we are going to severe relationship with wholesalers, we're going to move from mostly wholesale to DTC first, that's not going to happen in a year, in two years, in three years.

That strategy is going to show results five years in.

Because that is a fundamental change of a business model and the organization around it.

So it's almost like for a ship to move, are you seeing a ship that's moving or are you seeing all ships part, all ship parts moving in the same direction at the same speed?

And when it's not, then things start falling apart.

And I do think that there are very few organizations, if any, who are capable.

making all parts move at the same pace in the same direction.

So that's number one.

That's, that's a big picture.

Because I don't think this is unique to Nike.

Yes, it's very visible right now.

yes, it's very easy for a LinkedIn post to go viral and someone who worked there was, is very unhappy with it.

Things are going and maybe they left after 20 years and maybe they didn't want to leave and so on, you know, so I would take that with a grain of salt overall, and I would use this as actually an example of how to do really unpack organizationally, operationally, brand wise, product wise.

how transformation happens.

So it's a great case study.

It's not necessarily cautionary tale, it's a case study.

Nike is still billion, five billion plus dollar brand.

Yes, they made some wrong decisions, but I don't know if we can say these are wrong decisions at this time horizon that they were being given.

Okay, so that's, the big picture.

Right.

But that's also a point that's, you know, been made a lot is, you know, I think in Jordan Rogers, who had done a different, he actually did a YouTube video that I thought was pretty good.

yeah, he talked about shifting from, and this is just sort of reality of serving athletes to serving shareholders.

And there's always sort of short, short term pressures.

Right.

And if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company, you have fiduciary responsibility to, to raise to basically to shareholders, not to athletes or, or anyone.

Right.

Yeah, I'm really glad you brought it up because that's exactly the fundamental tension here.

You have brand whose founder is still alive and is sort of a legend.

not just in corporate America, but also in culture.

So there is that, and there is that idea of brand stewardship, which has become very popular, which is kind of, how do you protect the brand?

How do you leave it better than you found it?

How do you treat it as your own and so on?

And then you have publicly traded companies.

that operate on quarterly results.

So yeah, if we have that big picture happening, the fundamental tension between interests of brand customers and brand shareholders and executives, there are many competing interests.

It's a, it's a political minefield, so to speak.

So then you kind of go, get to the media side of it.

So that means how do you allocate media budgets?

How do you build demand?

That is the challenge that Nike has because at the end of the day, you can build demand through performance marketing very successfully.

That's one way of doing it,

which means spending a lot of

but wait, can I jump in here?

I'm not really clear if performance marketing does not in my mind.

Build demand.

It harvests this demand.

one of the things that I think about, like when it was very popular to do this shift to DTC, right?

There was an entire industry that was popping up.

That was, you know, they were going to be DTC brands.

They weren't really going to win for the most part on product.

They were going to win on being really good at performance marketing and Performance marketing is not about creating.

Demand really, it's about harvesting demand that exists on these platforms.

So I think one of the reasons that a lot of these DTC models did not work is because they could only work at a time when you could harvest an excess amount of demand that was existing on these platforms and that the costs.

Of acquisitions were low enough to make, to make it all work.

And when, when the costs went up because of a whole bunch of different issues with targeting and whatnot, then their models didn't work.

And I think it seems to me like Nike went into this direct, that sounds great.

I mean, people love to say, Oh, we're going to go direct.

We're gonna cut out middlemen.

Who wants to be, who wants to be a wholesale, et cetera.

But the problem ends up being that they were built off of storytelling and, and having a deep connection to the consumer, right?

I mean, they were, you know, when you talk about Phil Knight, I mean, he was, He was a runner, you know, my, my Parker was a runner, right?

And they were built off running.

And then, you know, they reorganized where it's just men, women, and the CEO is from service now and cloud company or something, and I understand why they would do that, but I think one of the things that I ended up wondering, that's why I was asking you about the tension, because.

To me, there, there is, there, there is a tension between performance and brand because performance does not build brands that, what is a brand that's been built off performance marketing?

That's it.

yes.

And so absolutely.

At the same time, it's kind of more complex than that, and I'll explain to you.

Because brand like Nike was built around the iconic product, their, their waffle shoe.

You know, that kind of started.

And popularity of that shoe, which was made really well first time around, is what allowed Nike to spin out from running to other categories.

And today, running is a small part of running.

Nike's entire portfolio, but really it was the superior product that allowed that brand to emerge.

And then the brand itself built, grew, sort of, through through culture, but I don't want to say monolithic culture.

It was actually the culture of basketball, for example, with their Jordans 40 years ago.

One of Nike's problems is it's 40 years ago.

The kids don't know about it.

Yeah.

And then you had, I don't know, soccer and they had women's and then they had like golf, swimming, like other sports is the quality of the product that was.

at the core.

That's why people originally bought Nikes.

And then identity and significance and, and, and just do it.

It became sort of product, cultural product in itself.

So now how do you build demand for that?

And you're 100 percent right.

It's a harvesting demand, not building demand.

Performance marketing is not going to build your demand.

There needs to be something else.

That, that, that says, that tells people, oh, I'm going to search for it, or I'm going to click on this ad or so on, but I do think that a lot of brands, especially in DTC era, when money was, was, was free, they're like, oh, no, we are going to actually build demand by, by buying Facebook ads, Instagram ads.

search and so on.

So it's possible to, to build demands through performance marketing.

It's just not durable.

And that's a key

Yeah.

I mean, I guess what I end up like thinking about it is the demand that exists on these platforms is not demand for specific brands.

It's, it's demand for something, if you're not there, then someone else is just going to fill your place.

Right.

and that's why.

These platforms love performance marketing, right?

They get, they get everyone hooked.

They're like fentanyl dealers, right?

They get everyone hooked on the idea of performance.

The, the idea that nobody brings out that wanna maker quote anymore because they're just dumping their money into performance marketing and they've been convinced that they don't really have to do marketing.

They just can feed money into a customer machine.

Customers spit out at the bottom and CFOs love this stuff.

Right.

who wouldn't love that?

They never trusted marketing in the first place.

I

CMOs also love that stuff because that allows them to get budgets again and again and again, you know, like that's, that's, that's the holy grail because you know, like how, how tricky CMO job is overall, and especially chief brand officer job is, it's kind of like, When stuff is not going well for a minute, you're the first to be blamed, you know.

So everyone loves performance marketing.

And I do, I'm not defending it.

I think there is a time and place for it and a role in the funnel.

Thousand percent.

And what I, where I was going with those DTC that used mostly performance marketing, those were not real brands.

And those were not real product.

Because you're not going to convince me that the way luggage is better than Muji luggage.

You know?

It's, it's, it's a knockoff.

You're not going to convince me that some, that Casper mattresses are bad.

You know what I mean?

So in that sense, it was really like shortening that funnel.

overall from a brand that, that, that started creating amazing products, that, that kind of built identity around everyone who wore those products, that, that started telling their stories around that, the stories of running endurance and like Nike was really, really good while it was capturing those human stories around people who wear those products, they have stories, and identity of the brand, Nike brand, was built around those wear stories.

And that takes time to build.

So the question really here is, it's how much time do you have?

And what kind of brand are you building?

well, you can't, I, you can't just keep kicking down the can down the road.

You can't just be like, there's more time.

We need more time.

We need more time.

That's just not reality.

I don't think in, in this, in this world.

And, that's why I don't know if the internet, I think the internet's been a disaster for brands, Like, do you think that's a fair, like, cause it

it really has because then,

it literally forces you to compete on everything else than on brand.

You, you compete on price, you compete on convenience, you compete on your product recognizability, you compete on speed of your supply chain.

I mean, look at Timur I mean, bye bye fashion, you know?

right.

I mean, that's why like Amazon fashion never made sense to me.

Right.

The entire point of Amazon is cheaper, faster, et cetera.

That is the opposite.

If you're trying to build particularly a high end, maybe if you're, you're, you're not high end, but if you're trying to build a high end fashion brand, that's not where you're going to win.

I mean, Jeff Bezos was famously saying.

You know, your margin is my opportunity.

I can hardly see that as a very attractive, proposition if you're, if you're at the high end of the market.

And

brand building promise.

what is that?

exactly.

But then look at also like Shien and Timo again.

Like how Shien actually succeeded is like looking at those micro trends brewing.

It's a pure data play.

So again, your company means because it has superior data and you have a crazy nimble network of your suppliers.

So you can see what micro trends are bubbling up, and then you respond very quickly with your product to those micro trends, that's also like capturing demand, but it's also building a demand as at the same time.

So I think we do need to have to talk about demand building strategies today versus before where you had brand and performance.

Brands build demand, performance captures demand.

No.

Yeah.

so you wrote your, your, your PhD dissertation, like on building brands, basically digital media.

I think we called it the internet back then.

But, I don't know, if you were to write it, what, first of all, what, what, remind me again, what was the thesis of it?

The thesis was, from brands to behaviors, which actually unpacked means how design of decision making of the environments where we make purchasing decisions actually builds brands.

So I'll give you an example.

It's like how a website design How modern brands are actually based on those experiences.

It's like Ikea store design is Ikea's brand, but you're very carefully shepherded throughout that entire experience.

Back then where brand websites were a big deal.

By the way, I think brand websites are dead, like don't you bother, like marketplaces won't deal with it.

And How website design communicates the brand.

So the entire premise was like, don't tell me in this beautiful advertising 30 second spot what your brand is about, deliver it.

Yeah,

And then how it's delivered, then that's what's the

yeah, so if you were to rewrite it today, I guess you would do it as a book, right?

what, what would, what would the thesis be?

Because I mean, this is, this is a little bit down the road now.

And I think a lot of, because again, I keep going back to, I know mostly from the publishing and the media angle, right?

And the internet has been for the most part, an unmitigated disaster for brand publishers, right?

because the internet is a tremendous commoditizer.

When anyone, Can publish you're competing with it's impossible, right?

So the only people who realize the value out of it for the most part with those who are able to aggregate All of the fractured audiences And we're able to shift to basically audience based targeting, which is just the heart of performance marketing, which is actually direct marketing.

I'm sorry.

One to one targeting is the same thing that direct marketers have been doing for generations.

they just did it through different channels.

This is just an update on direct mail at the end of the day.

I just wonder, like, how would you update that?

Because I don't know if you're going to build an incredibly strong brand.

I think that the internet is working against you just about all the time there, isn't it?

But again, I think this question is the old model that you, that you touched upon, that you said, oh, no, no, no, it's not demand creation, it's demand harvesting.

I'm telling, I believe it has collapsed.

And I'll give you an example.

Even

Brunello Cucinelli is one of the top luxury brands.

Their, their t shirts cost 2, 000.

They're made like wonderfully

in Solomeo, you No.

And I'll tell you why.

because first of all, you don't need a thousand dollar t shirt.

It's like a hundred dollar one.

It's, it's going to like, just, you know, in life.

But then the second thing is when you put that in Google, you get Brunello.

Then you have Brunello on sale at some marketplace.

Then you get Haynes t shirt, then you have a Lacoste t shirt that you have, and you have all of that.

So what builds demand?

Is it like price?

Is it the brand?

No one is going to know that you, you're going to know that you're going to have a Brunello t shirt and that's the psychological effect of luxury.

But at the end of the day, you're going to be like, Oh, you know, like it's a t shirt.

you know, as, as, as, as a consumer.

And I'm not talking about 1 percent of the most discerning ones.

I'm talking about the 99 percent of people who just want to, really, really, really high quality white t shirt.

So even the best brands, even the top brands, when you say Jacquemus, who has amazing content on Instagram, you go, you put in hot pink short, like biker shorts, and you get something from Lorna Jane.

I have no idea what or who Lorna Jane.

Is but they're like 10 times cheaper and look exactly the same.

And when you have that in a retail in combination with that retail environment, when it's so accelerated, the trends change all the time.

Are you going to spend 1, 000 for something that you're going to wear three times?

And it's not going to become obsolete.

No.

Enter Shein.

Enter Temu.

That is the, fundamental collapse between demand creation and demand harvesting.

And I do think that what the problem with Nike was, it again goes back to the product.

The brand is not the problem.

The product is the problem.

They stop being innovative.

They stop being one step ahead.

Like, look, now they accelerated Pegasus release for a year.

And everyone is raving about Pegasus, but you don't need one Pegasus.

So you need hundreds of those to stay that competitive.

Yeah, I mean,

let Hawke or, you know, go

yeah, I mean, there's, there's obviously product issues that are always at the, the heart of, of these and, you know, we can sort of hang a lot on, on marketing when, oftentimes it just comes back to, you know, the product hasn't kept up, hasn't been innovative and, you know, anytime you're going to try to be all things to all people.

You're there's trade offs to that, right?

I mean, you know, Nike is, is trying to be a fashion brand.

It's being a performance brand.

It wants to, it decided it was always for, you know, the athlete.

And all of a sudden the athlete became any human being, literally any

human

being.

And then their Olympics campaign is that winning isn't for everyone, which I'm like, okay, wait a second.

You just told me that athletes are everyone.

So literally you're, you're for everyone.

And then, but then what some people are athletes, but they're, they're not winners, I guess.

I thought everyone was a winner.

But that is the thing, because they veered away from their stories.

Do you know that what Wyden and Kennedy geniusly did, what they as a team really well did?

They really captured the human experience.

Of all that's all those sports, like just do it is actually capturing.

How do you call the internal pig dog off?

Oh, I want to run, but like I'm lazy, but I'm going to feel so much better.

And so on.

So that, that struggle that, that, that's that human struggle, those their stories of their product, where would build the Nike brand and culture.

And this campaign, I don't even like.

I don't know.

It's, it's literally slapping the brand in the face.

so what do you, you've written

But I think that's a small thing.

so you've written about like product led branding, explain what that is.

And is that like a way out of this, this trap in some ways?

Because I really do believe that performance marketing can become.

A trap, because it, it looks great on a spreadsheet and it's very short term.

And, like you said, this, the purchase funnel has, is, is collapsed on the internet.

Right.

And then I think that I look at it with internet advertising in that it's, it's all becoming commerce.

Like it's, it's, they're, they're collapsing.

The platforms have collapsed the entire funnel.

And they're going to use AI as the front to shove through yet again, these systems that they want.

They've wanted this for a generation.

they want companies to feed all their assets into their system, to give them a pot of money and let them come back with customers.

No questions asked, no, no reporting, nothing.

It's it's saying, we're going to, we'll do the work for you.

Oh, by the way, most of the ads ended up like on our properties, but leave that aside.

explain to me like what product led branding is and if that is, is an alternative to this, because right now, you know, I just think, I think performance has eaten all of media.

It's eaten all of retail as well.

So it's, it's literally what, when I say product led branding, is literally what I explained with, with Nike, which is like starting for that iconic original product, using different wear stories, wear scenarios, different subcultures, different people who over years used it.

to tell, to build a brand, to give it identity.

Because in fashion, in retail, there is inherent tension between functionality and identity.

The example of a white t shirt.

Brunello is all identity.

And then Hanes is all functionality, no, no identity, if you, if you will.

So those product led brands actually managed to combine both.

So through functionality and wear and use, identity was born.

And that's the story of Nike, of Levi's, of Birkenstocks, or Crocs, if you will, of all those iconic product brands.

So what happens, which you touched upon before, is when you're all things to all people, everyone is athlete, we're gonna do Everything for you, just, not just shoes, but, you know, sweatpants and, and tracksuits and, that, that's all great.

However, what I do think that these days, more than ever, is needed to have the product pyramid that says these are, it's like, imagine it is a Marvel Cinematic Universe.

You have, you know, product universe.

So you have superheroes.

And how are those superheroes connected?

How do they win individually and together?

And then those superheroes are centers of galaxies around them.

So who are your money makers?

Who are your volume drivers?

Who are your margin drivers?

Really, really, really, really be clear about that.

And then not all channels are created equal.

Then you look, Which of those superheroes perform really well in which ones?

Who is your audience for those?

And then you target your, or not target, but then you build for those people.

Like those guys who have like original dunks or something like that, who are the collectors, who are, who know exactly like when one shoe was released, but because it was a prototype and you can have it.

So I think in Yes, you may want to be for everyone, but you don't talk in the same way to everyone.

That, that, that, that segmentation of not just products, but also communication around it.

So that is number one, be very clear.

Don't put all your products or don't for on your website or don't do don't use your website just for members just kind of understand what do you have on different marketplaces on resale on your on your website like use it strategically do you have a Do you have something you can get only there and nowhere else?

It's like, I'm sure they're thinking about it, but it kind of got lost along the way.

Like really, what do you really want to stand for product wise?

Who are your superheroes in your product universe?

And then build around them, build your marketing around them.

That's number one.

Second important part of who that, or what that product universe is, is that cultural products are part, equal part as a physical products of the brand, and which is archival issue, merge, collaborations, reboots, and sequels of products, experiences, retail experiences, events, and all of that now is interconnected.

Okay.

So in in that world, I'm trying to unpack this from a media perspective, right?

so in that world, what, what, how does that change the role of, you know, advertising?

Because I think one of the things that.

I noticed from, I notice all the time in, in the media industry is that, you know, the money has shifted dramatically to, to platforms that, that are able to give the appearance of, of delivering customers.

I mean, a lot of the game, of, You know, the internet, media, landscape has been, how do you, how do you get as close to the transaction as possible to claim credit for it, right?

All the action is that way.

That's why, that's why Google makes so much money.

That's why Meta makes so much money.

That's why Amazon has a massive ad business.

That's why retail media is the fastest growing channel, because they've got data, but they also have quote unquote closed loop attribution.

Because all this talk about the third party cookie is not about targeting.

It is about measurement.

It is about, is about giving the appearance that you're, that what you are delivering is working.

Because, you know, everyone, nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that, you know, John Wanamaker quote.

so like, how does that, I'm, I'm always, I'm always wondering then what exactly will be the role of, Advertising in that because most times, you know, Joe Marchese made this point, like on this podcast, on another podcast that I do, a couple of weeks ago, we were saying, you know, the decision to buy a Porsche is not made when you, when, when you're like 40 and going through a midlife crisis, it started when you were 13 as a kid before you became a sad middle aged person, got the divorce.

but that's for that status signaling aspirational luxury goods.

And Nike's business is not that business.

It's part of their business.

Nike makes money as a mass apparel, sports apparel brand, right?

So that is, you don't start building a demand for just like regular sneakers when someone is 14.

Like no one cares.

That's again, demand building, demand harvesting collapse.

But I will, I understand what you're asking.

And.

Unfortunately, this means that media need to become way, way, way more strategic.

And the room for what you're saying absolutely exists for probably 90 percent of any brands that Nike scale products, unremarkable products, commodities.

Yes, you're going to sell them if you put them on sale.

If you bombard people with.

super, super, super targeted ads.

And if you do that repeatedly and consistently, yes.

At the same time, the real results, something that allows you to sell your product at the full price is happening through the cultural products, through the hero products, through brand marketing, if you will, but I'm looking, what is the product led branding ecosystem that you are creating, but at the end of the day, If someone is going to buy a 1, 000 pair of Nike shoes, they're doing that as a Porsche, as that's tattoo signaling, and that has a halo effect.

And that's where Nike really faltered.

Yeah.

I, I wonder like how Cause to me, like for like publishers, like to try to compete on performance marketing tends to not make sense.

And because they don't have as much data, they don't have as much reach.

And in direct marketing, you know, that's what it is about.

And, and.

They're going to lose like nine times out of 10, and it's sort of worrying because of this collapsed funnel, because that sort of relegates them to an uncertain role with advertising, right?

I mean, what, what is their role in?

In brand building, really.

I mean, that's why I think a lot, you see a lot of, a lot of publishing brands moving into like events because I don't know, like the retailers aren't going to do that.

the Google has no interest in putting on you know, parties and cultural influence events.

so I don't know.

I wonder like what, I mean, you've been part of these, these organizations like and how they determine where.

The media budgets go like what what do you think is going to be the role of sort of publications to Try to hold on to Some of those advertising budgets that have shifted so much towards performance

Content.

I, I, I, and I know this is just a massive, like I didn't say anything really, but is that sponsored content?

When you kind of like as a brand, you want to capture part of a lifestyle, part of that human experience, part of those things.

their stories from, from people and, and, and publishers are really good, especially their social properties in that intersection to create high quality content that interweaves the brands through a specific aspect of culture.

Not necessarily through you know, like you have like how to spend it.

You have you sometimes buy ads, they're just to show off.

If you are doing a rebrand, or if you're like doing a repositioning, you want to say, hey, this is really intangible form, the, what, what our brand vision is.

So in that sense, that's useful, but how often does that come around?

Not very often.

So I think a lot of the entire content strategy done in conjunction with the publisher is something I would always spend money on as a CMO.

yeah, right.

And a lot of it is offline.

it's interesting to me, like, when I go through the spending reports, you know, traditional media, it's all like down, down, down.

Like, I mean, they're just like looking, even the digital extensions of for instance, like GroupM had, You know, digital magazines, which is a strange thing, but you know, they're basically just the digital, operations of magazine brands.

And, you know, they're forecasting that to grow under inflation.

You know, that's shrinking, right?

And, that.

That tells me, you know, that it's really difficult to translate what works in offline to what we used to call online, right?

And, and so I just end up like wondering what that means for these businesses when You know, they can't compete on performance and the internet has proven inhospitable to the kind of brand activities.

I mean, you talk about sponsor content, that's one thing, but you know, there's, there's not a lot of culture that seems to be being created or, or at least in, in the, with, with these publications, with their digital assets.

But then I look at like where spending is growing and a lot of tech companies do it.

It's in things like out of home, right?

I mean, billboards I can't square this because I'm like these same companies who are bleeding on that, you know, that their customers should only spend on the most measurable media with one to one targeting are themselves spending on billboards along like.

95 Miami, I mean, it's just crazy to me.

a disconnect there.

There is, but I I think the price dropped.

And then you do have some sort of idea what the food trafficking locations are.

And again, you don't do billboards to say, Hey, I did the billboard.

This is what my sales came out of it.

You do it purely to show off.

You know, and that is, you do, that's why I say strategic.

So you say, hey, we're going to do billboard on Lafayette Street, and at the same time, we're going to spend arm and leg on driving traffic to our site.

So people who may notice it, all of a sudden, are going to also end up being, being like, hyper targeted too.

to go and buy a pair of pants or something like that.

I mean, at the end of the day, look how, Calvin Klein's Jeremy Allen, White campaign went viral.

It was a gigantic, you know, Calvin Klein has a billboard on Halston Street in New York, a standing billboard for like decades, and there was, you know, it was a giant, billboard of Jeremy Allen White on that, on that rooftop.

And people started, taking photos with it and tagging themselves on TikTok and Instagram.

And that was coinci that coincided with the award season, where the Bear won like a lot of awards, where Jeremy Allen White won a lot of awards.

And then Calvin Klein, in between those two things, released a social post.

It was a, it was an Instagram video.

But it's conjunction of all those different signals that are happening at the same time, that at the end of a day, allowed interest and engagement of, of, on Instagram to go up in terms of sales.

No, they were down 18 percent at the same time.

I don't, okay.

So let's take an example, but I don't know, I mean, if a CFO would look at that, they'd be like, yeah, let's just put the money into Google and Facebook and call it a day.

this is not working.

this is, I just I don't know if.

If that, if that changes, right, because, you know, look, you, you remember the internet from like the earliest days has always been trying to figure out the brand side, right?

It has always been trying to figure out.

I mean, I always say the, the click was like the original sin of the internet because it doomed it to be a direct response channel.

It just doomed it.

and just the way that banner ads were made.

They just, they were, they were supposed to be like magazine ads.

They're not the same as magazine ads.

Give me a break.

Like you're talking about like how to spend it.

You know, you'd leaf through Eight full full page spreads before you even get to the table of contents there.

you don't have the equivalent on, on the internet at all.

People thought it was going to be those, remember the micro site era, you know, it was like, Oh, we're going to immerse people and engage them in these things.

And of course they were total waste of money, right?

Not Elf Yourself.

Elf Yourself was very effective.

But, there's an exception to every,

was that ad for?

You see, like, but the problem of Elf Yourself is that it became a meme and it's, I don't remember what brand it was advertising.

Elf Yourself?

Well, I mean, it was a long time ago, so I don't, I don't remember.

I think it was at

See, you don't even remember.

Elf Yourself, I, I don't know.

I don't remember what else herself because you know see that that is

subservient chicken,

all those things that were being, that were being done.

And that was sort of the antidote to the fact that internet advertising had failed to come up with anything that could resemble what the analog media world did to build brands.

And the problem was nobody engaged in these things.

And they were, for the most part, there was, of course, exceptions like subservient chicken and stuff that became, you know, case studies, but for the most part, you know, I remember, writing about, Pepperidge Farm starting like a cookie social network, I mean, like, who, who in their right mind would join like a cookie social network?

it's just, on the face of it, this is an absurd, an absurd

Coca Cola tried to to do a social network so yeah not a thousand percent and that's why it was my dissertation was exactly about is like you really can't win.

through advertising on the internet.

It makes no sense.

Where you can win is to start designing those environments where, where people actually are going to make decisions.

However, that was back whatever, 14 years ago, that, that website's very important.

So basically how functional it is and how, creative it was actually matter.

Now it doesn't matter at all.

Like just look, go to StockX.

Go to Depop, go to eBay.

These are the most, Amazon's most popular sites ever.

That's how people buy.

They buy based on price, they buy based on reviews, and they buy based on sponsored results on advertising.

That is, that is it.

So that's what led me to product led branding in the end of the day, where your product actually is for you.

Forced to be the brand, to tell that story, to be so differentiated that you're gonna say, oh no, no, I want Levi's 5 0 1.

I don't want target genes.

I don't want Brule genes.

I don't want Balenciaga jeans, I want Levi's 5 0 1.

But you see like it again, I'm going back and back and back and back.

People think on internet, everything is immediate.

So for whatever, like for that reason, time horizons became un unbelievably compressed.

Yeah.

And in the absence of having those rare stories that are layered, 501, I wore it in the 90s or cowboys wore it in like in 1800s or 1900s and so on.

These are the layers of where those products have meaning.

99 percent of products have no meaning whatsoever.

So go compete on price, go compete on search results, go compete offline.

On internet you're not going to win with the

Yeah.

So is that, is that why like luxury brands like just, have always kind of found the internet a difficult place?

because it just seems like it's not really made for them.

I mean, I can just see, you know, if, if you're not like mass and you can't compete on, on price.

I don't know.

I mean, does it really make that much?

Or advertising budgets.

Luxury brands don't have any budget.

yeah, well, I guess that's, that's part of it.

I don't know.

I, I just, I guess what I end up thinking is.

Is how this relates to how, the media ecosystem will evolve.

And I think there's already like pretty profound bifurcation where pretty much all of it has moved towards, you know, mass and, and very performance driven.

and, you know, there really, there really haven't been many digital brands That have achieved like luxury status, right?

Like I always wonder that.

Why is there not like a luxury version like in the in the offline world in the real world?

there's luxury versions of almost everything, right?

I mean, we have a society that has a lot of people with a lot of money, right?

And, you know, That makes sense, but on, on online that there's not, there aren't like luxury digital services, are there, or digital products?

it's just, it's really interesting to me is I just think that the internet hates brands.

I agree with that.

I think that the internet loves products, but hates brands.

Internet also likes supply chains, distribution, sales, convenience, anything that's that can provide you competitive advantage but not brand.

Yeah.

So, I mean, is the idea that you will include, I mean, I guess to me, it's like you end up like building a brand a lot of times, like in the real world.

And you, you harvest a lot of that demand on the internet.

I don't know if the internet is truly a great place to be, to be generating.

That, that brand demand, you know, like, I just don't know if it is,

I'll tell you it is and I think that that that's really important because like I always talk, oh, Society of Spectacle, Pharrell Williams debut collection for Louis Vuitton, Men's, Pondeneuve in Paris, Rihanna, Jay Z, all his friends.

That was the spectacle of par with the Olympics.

That spectacle created, oof, I'm gonna misspeak, like maybe two billion impressions on YouTube, like some crazy number, broke the internet.

So see, you need to create a spectacle in real life in order to For a scale of people, no, no, actually, it was seen by 2 billion people, which is, I don't know, one third of how many billion people are on the earth.

It's unbelievable exposure.

That was a mass event in a true sense of the world, when mass events don't exist anymore.

But it became mass.

Thanks to the internet.

And that YouTube videos, Instagram photos, TikToks, everything built the demand for Louis Vuitton for everyone who was not there.

So it is possible to build demand, but you need event.

You need a spectacle.

You need the real world content.

I wonder how that fits with your product led branding thesis, because I think what I've seen is, is,

the opposite of it.

It's

the,

the, because the, the, the pendulum always swings too far, so in internet advertising, basically it's swung completely to audience targeting versus context.

Right.

And it's going to come back because it's like everyone on just goes overboard with everything.

Right.

And.

I think overall when it comes to brands and products like, and the digital, in digital media, the, the pendulum swung too far to distribution, right?

And it's just if you have distribution, you put distribution first and then product second.

And again, I go back to the DTC brands, not very few, if any of them, in my view, we're trying to win on product.

They were trying to win on distribution.

Yeah.

Okay.

They were, they were basically saying they were at their heart, performance marketing companies masquerading as product companies.

A thousand percent agreed.

They were VC money companies because you know, like there was so much money that anyone with any idea, like before market would tell you if your idea was good or not.

Now VCs told you if it's good or not good.

And by VCs I mean a guy in whatever, fleece West, you know,

I

that's the fundamental problem.

No one had a really good pro.

all the time.

There you go.

And no one has had DC, no.

IT product didn't matter.

Really?

I don't know what matters.

Nothing matters.

That's why they all collapsed.

But I'm talking about product led branding is probably the last bastion of existing brands to succeed on the internet because their product has such a strong identity that people are going to want to buy it even if something else is cheaper, even if something else is more convenient.

They're going to sell it.

out.

if you go on eBay, there are literally 20, 000 Levi's jackets from the 60s or something.

That is sort of that product led branding exclusivity the product gives you.

Everyone else Is f

Yeah.

I kind of like the idea of bringing back scarcity in a lot of different ways.

I think too, I think people, products, I'm just coming up with this on the fly, so fair warning.

But like, I think everyone needs to be less available.

That's what I think.

It's because everything is ubiquitously available.

And, and everyone is too.

Seemingly trying to win on, on convenience and in the moment.

And I think there's probably going to be a counter reaction to that.

Cause I just, I get the sense that like the world is moving too fast for a lot of people.

Maybe it's me getting older, but like, I think it's moving too fast for a lot of people.

And I think overall there will be, and it might be a smaller part, but there will be a lane for.

For people who take a longer term approach and who take a slower approach and who, are a little bit less always available.

And, and particularly because I look at like publishing, right?

It's moving from this.

You know, mass, try to accumulate tons of traffic from platforms, try to be everything to everyone to really valuing niches and expertise.

and, and authentic quote unquote connections to individuals versus just.

Faceless institutions, and I don't know, I, that seems to me like almost like a societal thing that would, that would cross over to the sort of marketing side.

I don't know, what do

Absolutely.

And I think the universe is made of a lot of micro galaxies, and that is exactly that product led approach, that product pyramid, that you know, who are superheroes in that galaxy and that is it, it's niches that is no such thing as being everything to everyone.

Yeah, you can do that, but it has to be like.

a portfolio of niches.

You're not going to do that with the same products going to 55 different customer groups.

It's just not going to happen.

You're going to have a tailored products to different customer groups.

And that's why I think that probably it was not the best of ideas to collapse Nike into men's, women's, and, and, and children because they did have the belief of the niches, the wear of the niches, the performance of them.

of the niches.

So they almost, I know they brought it back, so it's almost kind of like you already had it right the first time.

Just dial it up on that.

And then overall, absolutely, you can have a mass brand still, but those mass, mass brands are created, are universe

made of micro galaxies.

And media needs to respond

to that,

Media buying and planning then goes.

right.

It's the same in media because, you know, building like an all in one media brand, is, is just yesterday's game.

And instead it's at the most, if you're going to build one, it's going to be a collection of niches.

Think about puck, right?

Like puck has Lauren Sherman doing fashion.

She is super deep in fashion.

Right?

You have Dylan Byers, who

is the best thing happening in fashion right now.

And I'm not, I'm just saying that because maybe that is the right approach.

okay.

To have one tone of voice, to have one vertical, and really, really, really, really

Well, I think what Puck is trying to do is square that by having a bunch of different verticals rather than, I mean, John says the days of the John Kelly, who, is one of the founders.

He says the days of trying to own the waterfront are over.

And, I think in some case, in some ways, look, Nike owns the waterfront to bring it back there, right?

Like it's running is just one.

One category of many categories, and they might have

One micro galaxy in the universe of Nike.

Absolutely.

and it's just hard, I think, in this, in this environment to be all things to all people.

And, I, I suspect that we'll see a lot of, a lot of brands sort of struggle with that because everyone, I feel like everyone pretends that, that, The way things are, the way things will always be, but that clearly is not the case, right?

I mean, it's not, and that's what I always think with, with publishing, you know, yeah.

there's a lot of like traditional brands who have kind of peaked and now they're in decline.

and there's those brands, I mean, you know, them like in, in fashion and retail that, you know, their heyday was.

Added in a different time in a different era, and now they've moved on to a different phase of their existence.

And, I don't know, you can be dignified about it.

And there's always a way to make money.

But let's be real, I mean, the, the way of the world is, is creative destruction and, and it's, it's new brands coming to replace old ones, right?

Maybe not in like luxury, but

I mean, even in luxury, remember when Christian Lacroix, he had like licensing model of it like carpets and whatever coffee makers.

I don't know.

So yeah, there are definitely stages in lives of the brands.

Not every brand is meant to go on.

There is a time and place because at the end of the day brand is Part of culture and reflects, if it's a successful brand, it reflects perfectly, captures the zeitgeist at that time perfectly.

And by definition, a brand who captures perfect zeitgeist at one time is not necessarily that zeitgeist changes.

So if the brand doesn't evolve with it and constantly change, it's just going to get stuck and become, you know, like a licensing brand or,

yeah,

Yeah, so that is the big difference between brands and commodities.

You can be all things to all people if you're gonna turn commodities, no problem.

yeah.

I think I'm just to bring it back to Nike and then we'll wrap up is, I like to run a lot, you know, I've been a little injured, but I do like to run a lot.

and, I think about Nike with running and I've thought about this for many years, right?

Because I always thought that they kind of got away from their running roots and, they sort of brought it back a little bit, but I think of a brand like Tracksmith, very niche, right?

they're not the biggest, brand, they have great, they have great quality products, great quality products, and they marry the great quality of, of products with a really acute understanding of what, what it is to be a runner.

And when you compare the way they sort of approach that category to how a mass brand is like Nike approaches that category, it is night and day.

And, you know, this is something that guy Jordan Rogers mentioned that I thought was like super smart.

because, with, with Tracksmith, they get, they're basically trying to bring people along to become quote unquote real runners, right?

They're using like, not everyone is a real runner, just because like you put on like running shoes to like go to the supermarket doesn't make you a runner.

Right.

Right.

now Nike, because they've got to, they've got a massive business and they, they've got angry shareholders.

They have to, they have to make everyone a runner.

Right.

And I think you're just going to inevitably dilute yourself.

And I think DTC overall was a massive disappointment, but I hope that there was more brands that end up evolving that I think are, are, are very modern that are.

that are very niche like Tracksmith you know, that don't try to be these massive diffuse brands.

it's fine.

I don't know why it's a very American thing that we have to make everything like scaled and massive.

I think it's very capitalism thing, and then without going to

Marxist theory, there So there are a couple of things that I want to comment on what you just said.

I think that it's, what Nike moved on was not, running.

It moved from runner obsession, from product obsession.

Phil Knight was a runner.

He created a perfect product for a runner.

When I say perfect, the best

Yeah.

for runners, but it could have been other sports.

So if you extrapolate really, because again, running is a small, very, very, very small part of what Nike entire portfolio is.

They moved from that athletes, the real athletes, the real passion.

people obsession.

And instead, they should have used that passion to market to everyone else as aspirational product.

So that is what they moved away from, from product obsession, from innovation obsession, from that person who is going to get up at 4 a.

m.

and go running.

So that is, or swimming, or biking, or whatnot.

Play basketball, one of a kind, and so on.

So that is very astute, what they moved away.

from, but you can actually have a gigantic dilution under that if you have a very strong halo of those amazing, innovative, best in class products that go into the soul, in the human soul.

Which they had before, which made them successful again, going back to product.

And then the second thing is absolutely on track Me.

They have a very, very, very defined product aesthetic rooted in the seventies.

Long distance runners when long distance runners were weirdos and they lost their toenails and they ran for 37 hours and you know what I mean?

They had no family and so on.

So that's a very clear, that's a very clear.

niche.

That's a very clear sentiment, a very clear emotion that Traxmix actually captures in their product.

The way they communicate is through their running clubs and their, you know, their, their, their running schedule.

And if you go to their site online on Tuesday in New York, there is this, and Wednesday is this, and so on.

But they're tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.

And God bless, they should continue doing what they're doing because they're doing an amazing

job.

But in order to scale.

Absolutely nothing.

I just said, God bless, continue doing what you're doing.

If you're a galaxy like Nike, strategy is to create a lot of little tiny tracksuit galaxies.

that are gonna give a halo effect to someone who's gonna go to Foot Locker and buy a pair of Nike sneakers to go to

Okay, just, I'm actually gonna go longer than this because I think when you look at Hoka and On, You know, to me, it's like inevitable.

If you're going to stretch yourself super thin, you're going to leave yourself open to really focused competitors.

And that's how, that is how the marketplace works.

Like you're inevitably going to be overstretched and you're going to inevitably be diluted.

And that is just the way of the world.

And then you're, and then a bunch of competitors are going to find those weak points and they're going to ruthlessly attack them.

so that's what I think is going on right now.

I think that's, that's a great way to sort of, yes, but you have to choose what you're gonna dilute yourself on.

And also talk to me about On and Hoka in 10 years.

Come on, like, yeah, it's so good to be a hot brand for a minute.

No disrespect, but it's like being hot day after day, week after week, month after month for 40 years.

And I don't know if anyone can do that anymore for the reasons, fragmentation reasons that we, that we, that we talked about, and I don't know anyone, if, if that's even a strategy, the right strategy to go about it.

And it's, it's really, again, build a gazillion tracksmith stars in your galaxy will be fine.

Yeah.

Okay, I just don't know if it's possible to build a bunch of, you know, that's why I always say it in publishing.

People say, Oh, well, we're just going to create you know, 150 niches and be like amazing at 150 niches.

And I'm like, you're never going to be able to do that.

It reminds me of the agencies that would say that they were great at every single discipline versus like a specialist agency.

I'm like some.

Clients will want to go with just a mask because they don't want to deal with that, but you're gonna you're gonna lose Specialization, so I don't know it'll be interesting to see how

I mean, it is interesting to see because Nike did have, it was a performance brand, it did have specialization in all of these categories.

Number one in all of this golf, swimming, blah, blah, you know what I mean?

They did have that and they moved away from that in order to achieve scale by how, you know what I mean?

it's kind of like, no, no, no, actually it is probably a collection of niches that you're best in and yes, maybe an agency that was large enough would be able to be best in everything or maybe not.

Or maybe it's not a good analogy.

were never We're never the best at all the things they claim.

They're

I know, but maybe it's not a good analogy.

Maybe it's in with physical good.

It is when you're so big, you can actually have an R and D in all of these areas.

That is like the best,

Yeah, you got a

but then after it,

there, there was actually a

good point in that, in that guy's LinkedIn post about how, you know, Nike used to have a competitive advantage with that, you know, with their, their Asia supply chain.

And that then it became like everything, everything becomes commoditized and then that become commoditized.

It became what he called it democratized.

basically anyone can like hook into you know, the supply chains there.

And so, yeah,

but that's again, a question of strategy, where are you going to find the side of brand where you can.

be the best when you can actually capture competitive advantage and be and build that that mode.

And maybe you can't anymore.

So then you have like, okay, so how am I going to compete?

How am I going to meet my numbers?

And that's a different strategy.

So that's probably what they concluded.

They were like, hey, let's, let's try doing this because we lost all these competitive advantages in supply and distribution and everything else.

got it.

This is a, this has been a fun, special crossover episode.

Thank you for

Yes.

Thanks Thanks for having me.

Great conversation.

Thanks, Brian.

Bye.