Some of the biggest global brands are tech companies (Apple, Google, Samsung, Nvidia), and in this episode, Rei and Ana explore the branding strategy behind technology. From myth-making to a seamless omnichannel experience to translating narratives into user interface, we are looking at how branding of tech is different.
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so what's new with me, I'm teaching a graduate course, at Cornell.
Rei:I'm teaching branding to a bunch of MBAs and engineering students.
Rei:I just finished my class.
Rei:It was like a four hour lecture slash workshop.
Rei:I'm glad to be, off of that.
Rei:what's new with you?
Ana:there's like a lot of things happening at the same time.
Ana:I planned my Australia trip and stopping by Tokyo.
Ana:but also he have a book pro here in New York on, April 3rd.
Ana:again, hosted by list.
Ana:but I'm also gonna have another one at Shopify, most likely, like, so there is
Ana:a lot of, you know, parallel tracking and a lot of meetings and it's good.
Ana:those meetings are outside of fashion, which is, even better.
Ana:They're in entertainment.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:Yeah, yeah,
Ana:Other stuff and so on.
Ana:this year really felt like, you know, fast paced, Do you feel the same way or no?
Rei:it feels like, you know, we just, welcome 2025 and then bru.
Rei:It's already March.
Rei:Welcome to Hitmakers, how Brands Influence Culture, where every other
Rei:week we explore culture, influence and how brands can create it.
Ana:I am Ana Andjelic.
Ana:I'm a brand executive, an author, and I have PhD in sociology.
Ana:And we are joined, by our producer, Vanja Arsenov, who every two weeks make sure that we look and sound great.
Rei:And I'm Rei Inamoto.
Rei:I'm a creative entrepreneur and founding partner of global
Rei:innovation firm called I&CO, based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Ana:In this episode, we are gonna talk about whether tech companies can become brands.
Ana:I believe so, but let's unpack this topic.
Ana:Ray, you go first.
Rei:we floated this topic off and on in the past, several weeks
Rei:or so, and there are certain tech brands that are very much in the.
Rei:Sector.
Rei:Sector and then, you know, I mean there are, there are different types of tech companies that are B2C, B2B or both.
Rei:but you know, in the past 10, 15 years or so, the top companies, the top five to seven most influential
Rei:companies in the world are one way or another tech companies starting with the likes of Google, apple, Microsoft.
Rei:Meta and then more recently in the last few years, you know, companies like Nvidia, right?
Rei:And they essentially, I think they, they're called the Mag Magnificent seven.
Rei:They take up an enormous portion of the market, not just in the US but around the world.
Rei:So they obviously have influence one way or another, but.
Rei:At the same, I mean, there, there're companies like Apple that I've been a, a fanboy of for a long time.
Rei:I've been a a Mac user since, you know, I graduated even in college I think,
Rei:and I've sort of flirted with, you know, Android and, and, and now Mac products.
Rei:But I've always come back to it.
Rei:And Apple is sort of the symbolic tech brand that has managed to become a. But I, I question the same kind of whether I or
Rei:people have the same kind of connection or identity with a, a tech brand with let's say Google or with Amazon or so forth.
Rei:So the, the natural question was, what makes a tech company or tech brand, a tech, tech product, a brand?
Rei:I mean, every, everything, you know, every company is a brand one way or
Rei:another, but there's like a degree of, brand in each com, each of the companies.
Rei:And I would argue that companies like, like a co, our company like Apple as a stronger brand that lets people
Rei:identify with the Apple brand and an Apple products versus, Say a Google or Microsoft or even Amazon, and
Ana:Why do you think that is?
Ana:In your opinion, why do you think that is
Rei:say in the past, right?
Rei:Apple.
Rei:Was a very active marketer and they spent a lot of effort and money on marketing.
Rei:But, and then, you know, more recently, I think they do, but I think they've, Always being very focused
Rei:on the quality of the product and the quality of the overall experience.
Rei:Not just the, the physical aspect of it, but the software, the user experience, the ui, ux, the experiential aspect of it.
Rei:And then I think another thing that they've been, they've managed to do in terms of how they show up in the world is.
Rei:The success of, the Apple stores and how that's become part of the, the experience as well.
Rei:You know, apple Store people might not be going there every week,
Rei:but I mean, every Apple store is always failed with customers.
Rei:Some of them might be buying products and some of them might be just hanging out.
Rei:So I think they've been able to not only focus on the quality of the, the individual products.
Rei:Also being able to, and being disciplined in curating a seamless experience from one product to the next product.
Rei:you know, all the way to say the store.
Rei:So it, it feels very cohesive, the whole brand experience.
Rei:Whereas I think a lot of companies, That cohesion.
Rei:I don't, I don't see with, let's say like with, say Microsoft or, Google to some extent in terms of
Rei:like, you know, using tools, but they don't necessarily have the physical
Rei:presence, the same level of physical presence, that presence that Apple has.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:So I, I think that the curation, curation of, of customer touchpoints, quality and the seamlessness.
Ana:I think that's great, but that's all execution.
Ana:You know what I mean?
Ana:That's like, I think what Apple has is a myth.
Ana:It's a myth.
Ana:It's a myth of the founder who is a pirate.
Ana:Don't join the army, be a pirate.
Rei:Do you think?
Rei:Do you think that they
Ana:Originally.
Ana:Thousand percent.
Ana:Thousand percent, because it's kind of like a guy who is dropping acid, who is kicked out of his
Ana:own company, who is quoted to this day, the meat of the founder.
Ana:This is like literally like the stores where I say it's tactics.
Ana:Yeah, this is all great, but that's table stakes.
Ana:That's, that's imitable, like Samsung imitated those stores and so on.
Ana:Originally, however, no one had that.
Ana:Insanity in terms of a founder who is like, do you wanna sell like sugar, water?
Ana:Do you wanna change the world?
Ana:You know?
Ana:And people identify with, with, with found, like with meat making figures.
Ana:So it's almost, it was almost reli like religion.
Ana:Now I'm not talking about, now I'm talking a generation ago.
Ana:Like,
Rei:no, that, yeah, that, that, yeah,
Ana:terms of execution, absolutely.
Ana:That's a great brand execution.
Ana:No, to like the packaging, the smell, the like the, everything that, that's all.
Ana:Other brands can imitate that and they do imitate that.
Ana:What made Apple different is like Bill Gates doesn't have that story.
Rei:On that myth, right, I, I agree in the pre, like my generation, our generation and maybe slightly younger,
Rei:but our generation grew up with that myth and seeing Steve Jobs, you know, come
Rei:back to Apple and rebuild, well, it was a dying company, dying brand, and you know.
Rei:2000 ish, all the way till when he passed away, for a decade and a half or so.
Rei:I think he was instrumental in not only driving the business, but creating the myth.
Rei:And he was the myth.
Rei:Right?
Rei:So I agree with you, like with my gener, like with our generation, but like say somebody who's, you know, 25 years old.
Rei:Who didn't grow?
Rei:Do you think they buy into Apple because of the.
Ana:It doesn't need to be conscious.
Ana:All brands are stories.
Ana:So in a sense, they, they are encountering Steve Jobs, they're encountering his quotes, they're encountering the design.
Ana:Of course, if TikTok generation, they know they're buying Apple computers,
Ana:they know it's your perception that one brand is cooler than the other.
Ana:Why?
Ana:You don't know?
Ana:So why are kids still buying, apple more than Samsung in the us?
Ana:No idea.
Ana:It can be the myth, but it's certainly not because the store
Ana:looks great and it's certainly not because of the 1984 advertising.
Rei:definitely not.
Rei:Definitely
Ana:So you know what I mean?
Ana:It's kind of like all of that sort of helps, but again, that's all execution.
Ana:And if Apple Tomorrow really changed that and look.
Ana:What I do think is that that meat needs to be perpetuated and so on.
Ana:Apple hasn't innovated in forever.
Ana:They make money on us losing your AirPods, you know, like that little case costs like a hundred bucks, you know,
Ana:and you, you know, like they, they, you know, so in, in a sense, they're not in, they're not the same company.
Ana:However, it takes like more than one generation for that meat to die down
Ana:because looking like car brands for example, is you still, when you hear.
Ana:Ford Motor Company or if you, if when you still hear Coca-Cola, even
Ana:though you don't drink Coca-Cola at all, it means something.
Ana:And that's the power of the brand.
Ana:And that's all I'm trying to say is the power of the brand is that story, that myth at at the beginning because
Ana:no one remembers Coca-Cola like heartwarming ads from 20 years ago.
Ana:But it's like one thing builds upon the other in culture.
Rei:Do you think, going back to the tech, tech, you know, tech company being a brand, Apple, other than the
Rei:myth of the founder, what do you think is making Apple such a strong brand?
Ana:But it's, it's not just the meat of the foundry, it's that positioning, which is going against the grain.
Ana:Being a pirate, that's an outcast brand and people root for outcast brands.
Ana:These are the those that disrupt the status quo.
Ana:So when you look at the brand archetypes you have those who are, again, pirates who are
Rei:Yeah.
Ana:fighting against the established rules and norms and state of affairs, and people rule by that.
Ana:That was Apple's the regional position.
Ana:For whatever reason, they're still coasting on it 20 years later.
Rei:Because I mean, you know, the think different ad that came out 25 years ago and millions of people may have
Rei:watched it back then, but, millions if not billions of people have no idea.
Rei:That was the, the positioning right.
Rei:But what?
Rei:What do you think?
Rei:What do you think is keeping that alive one way or another?
Ana:But I don't know if anyone, if, if anything is keeping the myth alive.
Ana:I don't think so.
Ana:I think what myth lives through that regional execution.
Ana:That's what I'm saying is like Johnny and I have left that revolutionary design, the revolutionary interface,
Ana:the ux, everything you talked about, that's from generation ago.
Ana:That's from 25 years ago.
Ana:Now they're making money, now they're hosting on that.
Ana:There has not been a significant innovation in Apple since, I don't know, you tell me.
Rei:Apple Watch.
Rei:Apple Watch probably was the
Rei:the last,
Ana:even remember.
Ana:That is at least, it's more than 10 years.
Ana:It's probably 15 years.
Ana:So
Ana:it's not enough.
Ana:It's a short time.
Ana:It's, you know, so they'll be able to coast for a really long time.
Ana:And it's not like that innovation happened anywhere else.
Ana:That groundbreaking innovation.
Ana:It was like Microsoft and Apple had personal computers.
Ana:Then Steve Job Revolution, uh, is the.
Ana:mobile devices in a sense.
Ana:Not so much with iPad, more with an iPhone, and that was the
Ana:groundbreaking innovation that is completely reorganized, how people use.
Ana:So that's number one.
Ana:Nothing happened since then.
Ana:No matter where from Huawei, Samsung, forget it.
Ana:They have better cameras.
Ana:Okay, great.
Ana:You know what I mean?
Ana:So now it's incremental innovation.
Ana:That innovation is also what the brand is that comes from that pilot positioning.
Rei:I see what you're saying and I agree with what you are saying to an extent, especially for people
Rei:who have seen the aspect of Apple, that was the, the pirate, you know, the, you know, the think different.
Rei:Challenger positioning that they had 20, 20, almost 25 years ago.
Rei:What I, what I would question is, and, and, and I guess what I was saying
Rei:earlier about the execution of the brand what's kept the brand at that level of.
Rei:Brand equity is that like they've been able to execute at a pretty high level, you know, they, they, their quality.
Rei:I mean, to be honest, yeah.
Rei:The, the quality of the products have slipped a little bit and you know, like you, like you said, the,
Rei:the, the innovation, we haven't seen groundbreaking innovation in the past 10, 15 years, if not more.
Rei:But, The, the, the execution of the, and the, the curation of the product expense, has been at a high level, at a
Rei:high, at, at high quality that I think the execution has kind of carried the, the brand over the past 10 years because
Rei:I don't think, I don't think there's been any new, new myth that, that's
Rei:created it, that that's,
Ana:I'm saying.
Ana:They're coasting and however they wanna coast that they haven't changed Apple stores, they haven't changed anything.
Ana:So I think we are agreeing.
Ana:I don't understand your point,
Rei:No, because I say, you said, oh, just execution.
Rei:But I, what I'm saying is that,
Ana:there is no ingenuity in that execution.
Ana:It used to be when it was groundbreaking and new, but now it's just incremental innovation.
Ana:iPhone with a camera Stores look the same.
Ana:They looked 15 years ago.
Ana:There is no, there is no innovation there.
Ana:So I don't under like, I don't understand why you like it's,
Rei:yeah, but what, what I'm saying, I think what I'm saying, is that the, the, the level of execution is quite high.
Rei:Is very high even though it's sequential and, incremental.
Rei:Like there, there, there hasn't been new groundbreaking innovation, but they're coasting at a.
Rei:High to differentiate.
Rei:So I don't, I don't think, I don't, what, I guess what I'm disagreeing is that I don't think
Rei:other brands are able to execute at that level, and that's what keeps,
Ana:I don't agree.
Ana:Look at Google.
Ana:Look at Amazon.
Ana:Look at Samsung.
Rei:you think, okay.
Rei:Okay.
Rei:Okay, so, so on that point, on that point though, like, do you
Rei:think Amazon or Google has the same cache as a brand, as Apple
Ana:no, but I don't have a meet.
Ana:That's what I'm telling you.
Ana:But Amazon is delivering everything today or tomorrow.
Ana:The customer convenience is their core brand promise.
Ana:They're doing it impeccably.
Rei:yeah, yeah.
Rei:So, so I guess, again, again, trying to unpack this topic, right?
Rei:Like, how can a how can a tech company become a brand?
Rei:So you are saying that Apple is a strong brand because of the myth and the, the previous innovation,
Ana:I say differentiated brand, it's a, it's a differentiated brand because of the myth.
Ana:Strength of its brand is a number of factors.
Ana:It's sales, its products, it is experience, it's so on above.
Ana:It's a trillion dollar brand,
Rei:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rei:I mean, it's the most value brand.
Ana:What I'm saying, I don't know if people are buying Apple
Ana:as they did before, because it was different than Microsoft.
Ana:If you bought, if you bought a Mac product, you signal that you are more creative than suits buy Microsoft.
Ana:So that meant something.
Ana:That was the strength of the brand.
Ana:Now you buy those products out of habit, convenience.
Ana:Everyone else has it, so on.
Ana:I'm not buying these products because I just don't wanna deal with like, comparing I like phones or, or whatever.
Ana:I don't wanna deal, I don't know if some other computer is better.
Ana:They're probably the same at this point.
Rei:So convenience, not because.
Ana:I, not exactly like I cannot, like if some, I don't think it's cool.
Ana:It's just there.
Ana:It's utility.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:But, but again, like you are buying it purely out of convenience, not
Rei:because Apple product is, or Apple laptop is better than a, a Microsoft.
Ana:I'm buying it because I'm used to buy, I'm, I'm being a loyal customer.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:And then like the, but like, again, like the execution of, of, of the, of the, the
Rei:user expense hasn't been so bad that it hasn't made you switch to something else.
Ana:It hasn't been bad, but it hasn't been great.
Ana:I mean, it's been like, I don't care about it.
Ana:You know?
Ana:That's not my, like, it, it's not going to decide.
Ana:Oh, that's definitely.
Ana:I'm gonna buy it because I'm gonna get it the same afternoon.
Ana:That's not my decision making factor.
Rei:yeah, yeah,
Ana:making factories, all my stuff is on iCloud.
Ana:I'm locked in.
Ana:It's switching costs are too high at this point, like when I buy new stuff, it's all automatic.
Ana:Like all my data is there.
Ana:Why would I deal with anything else?
Ana:That's how they're making money today.
Ana:And I do think that it's nice that they have the genius, but I don't disagree that the execution is important.
Ana:But I'm trying to distinguish what is easy to imitate, what?
Ana:It's not easy to imitate.
Rei:I, I think where our disagreement might be that I don't think execution is actually that.
Ana:You don't think that Genius bar can be replicated?
Rei:I, what I'm, what I, I think it can be like in points, but like the, the, the holistic, you know,
Rei:integration of every, like, they do everything at a fairly high level
Ana:Have you been in Europe, in Samsung stores is the same.
Rei:but again, I'm not talking about just the store, I'm talking about the store, that ui, the service and everything.
Ana:The interface is great.
Ana:The phones are great.
Ana:Samsung is more popular in Europe than iPhone.
Ana:So that's what I'm saying.
Ana:It's also like you do have that seamlessness on that level as well.
Ana:People who love Android that they, they just have the same lock in and same switching cause dilemmas we do here.
Rei:so I mean, I've actually switched to a Samsung form, this is, you know, five or six years ago.
Rei:Just as a way to experiment, you know, is this a better, product or better experience?
Rei:And I found, and again, this was, you know, five or six years ago,
Rei:so it's been, been a little while, but I found the expense to be so.
Rei:Disjointed and so frustrating and, you know, maybe 'cause I was so
Rei:used to that, the Apple universe that I, that, that I came back.
Rei:And on top of that, I would say, and this might sound shallow, but
Rei:you know, little things like green bubble versus the blue bubble,
Ana:you're a designer, Ray.
Ana:You are a
Ana:designer.
Rei:I know, but, so I.
Rei:I mean, at least from what I'm gathering in, in terms of what you're saying,
Rei:that the executions are easy to limitate but cannot, is what you're saying,
Ana:The origin story, you can't, every, every brand has an origin story or doesn't.
Ana:And some of them hit culture.
Ana:Some of them really resonate emotionally with people and with
Ana:those archetypes that we love in terms of narratives and storytelling.
Ana:And then I don't think, like, look.
Ana:Obviously Apple creates a fantastic ecosystem.
Ana:I'm not gonna argue with that.
Ana:I'm just saying that if they had, if, if, if they had that without Steve Jobs, without the origin
Ana:story, without be a pirate, without insane innovation, no one has seen interactive interface before iPhone.
Ana:I mean, I'm exaggerating.
Ana:Of course there were.
Ana:But in terms of like that completely, they killed.
Ana:Feature phones completely, and that has not have, that's what builds the brand.
Ana:And then wonderful execution obviously is important.
Ana:If this was, if, if, if, like even com Apple computers, they last two years now tops because battery dies
Ana:because that's designed obsolescence, they wanted to keep buying.
Ana:Even that is not enough to piss me off.
Ana:What I'm saying, it's not ideal.
Ana:You change, like, look, my phone is all like, you know, like you, you change your phones every year.
Ana:You change.
Ana:That's not, they want you to buy more.
Ana:So like in, in, in a, in a sense, this is not the perfect product.
Ana:This is not the
Rei:yeah.
Rei:But, but so on that, on that point though, like, are you using, apple products purely, purely out of.
Rei:Of switching to a different ecosystem or is there, another, reason, you know,
Rei:perception, reason that you think you are influence to, to hang onto iPhone?
Ana:so I don't think, it'll like if I live here, if I lived in Europe, I would probably do Samsung or some
Ana:like, it's, it's kind of like the cameras are really amazing on Samsung.
Ana:Well, you know, and because they're everywhere and they advertise to you.
Ana:Some exposed to like market being marketed too.
Ana:Here I simply don't pay attention because it, it, the other thing, it's not important to me once having an iPhone
Ana:was a status symbol versus, you know, in the first generation sec and then having a new iPhone was, was a status symbol.
Ana:And then having a unique drop in a specific color metallic or gold or whatnot was a status symbol.
Ana:But now we are past all of that.
Ana:Now it's utility.
Ana:I don't buy it as a status symbol.
Ana:I buy it as utility.
Ana:No one is gonna ask me, oh, you have a new iPhone?
Ana:No one, not me.
Ana:I don't think that, no, anyone is asking anyone, oh, you have a new iPhone
Rei:Well, because I mean, you know, we had like up, up to iPhone 16, there's 16 different versions and then, you know, 16.
Rei:16. So like, there's probably like different versions of the iPhone.
Rei:So a new iPhone, I mean, every has a new iPhone one way or another.
Ana:Right.
Ana:But that's, that's what I'm saying.
Ana:That's what you asked me.
Ana:Like, does that influence my thinking?
Ana:No, honestly, it's just pure convenience because I know when I buy a new one, like I'll just switch
Ana:it off, I'll connect it and it's gonna every, it is gonna be the same.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:Do you, do you think then projecting out, let's say 10 years from now
Rei:that like if he was, if Apple became a pure utility player.
Rei:Doesn't that make them more, vulnerable in terms of a Samsung or somebody else
Rei:taking, not completely taking over, but at least, taking away their business?
Ana:I think that already happened
Rei:You think so?
Rei:I guess, yeah.
Rei:Some, yeah, to some extent.
Ana:I mean, with Samsung, with Huawei, like there were, there was a moment, probably not 10 years, but at
Ana:least five years or something, when they cleaned the house completely.
Ana:And then they were like, oh, Samsung made it, the Huawei made it.
Ana:And you know, in different markets, apple is not number one.
Ana:Like iPhone is not number one, or Apple products are not number one.
Ana:So that already, that already
Rei:What, what company, what, what tech company do you think outside
Rei:of, say, apple or Samsung, what tech company do you think has a strong brand?
Ana:Well, I do think there are like a lot of smaller ones.
Ana:And then we can talk about, because I recently wrote about mascots and toys.
Ana:So you see, like remember back in the day there was Ask Js search
Ana:engine, like remember that?
Ana:And it was like it was almost GT before judge GBT was like invented.
Ana:I
Ana:mean, reason people didn't use it because it was a horrible search engine because you tried to combine like
Ana:human curation, you know, and then Google was like, get outta the way, our algorithm is better than yours, you know?
Ana:So, but that was kind of a try like way to, to kind of humanize the brand.
Ana:So I do think like that MailChimp.
Ana:Again, they, they're like those brands that are trying to, like Duolingo.
Ana:You have MailChimp.
Ana:You can, you have like Slack to an extent in a, you have Hootsuite,
Ana:you know, like they have like those little mascots that assume the
Ana:lives of their own, you know, and they use those mascots to live in the world.
Ana:But then in a sense that that brand.
Ana:Character brand image is separate from the utility, however, by the sheer emotional association is, this is very
Ana:different than what you said about how, apple build a brand to experience.
Ana:They're building a brand, they are trying to tell a story through character, the product has almost nothing to do with that
Rei:Right, right, right,
Ana:You know, which is very different you're saying, but the products are amazing.
Ana:I like little green button.
Ana:I like the store experience.
Ana:I like integration here.
Ana:It doesn't matter.
Ana:Here is all about, oh, the character is funny.
Rei:yeah.
Rei:Almost the, the humor that the, the, fantasy of the,
Rei:the
Ana:are telling the story through a character and the world that's
Ana:built around that character and tone of voice and personality.
Ana:It's completely different way of brand building.
Rei:Do, do you an interest?
Rei:I mean, we talked about this, you know, I think couple episodes ago, because it's one of the few tech, I mean, it is a
Rei:tech brand, but in the past couple years or so, they've been able to create, I haven't say dent, but People pay attention
Rei:to them, you know, beyond the tactical, practical learning aspect of a language.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:And then the, the, the character is a useful device to sort of, you know, pers have fun with it, I guess.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:So you mentioned, lingo, you mentioned the MailChimp, ask Jeeps from like 25 years ago.
Ana:MailChimp, but they're still going strong.
Ana:They're still, you know, into that.
Ana:There is also Slack, but Slack has more or less, they do have like UX and little design kind of details and tone of voice.
Ana:But again, this is all.
Ana:Kind of you penetrate cultural, like for example, what Du Lingo did with their ads, with the super wallet,
Ana:with the TikTok videos through that humor of the character, you know, and that's, that's how you compete.
Ana:But like for, I'll give you another example.
Ana:Open ai, had this super,
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:Yeah.
Ana:so, and that's a mistake because.
Ana:Users of AI are all, the promise of AI is also super vague right now in,
Ana:in particular, user scenarios.
Ana:You know, people are not sure, you know, like where is it gonna take them?
Ana:How to use it there, you know, there is, there's specific use scenarios, but the promise is much bigger than that.
Ana:And when you have a vague product, vague experience and a vague ad doesn't help
Rei:Yeah, it was very vague.
Rei:Yeah, Yeah.
Rei:it was quite, quite lofty.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:It wasn't specific and it wasn't, I mean, I know the people who worked on it, so I, I wanna be respectful.
Rei:But yeah, it was, it was,
Rei:no, no, no.
Rei:Again, I, I wanna be respectful to the people that,
Ana:Well, I'm just saying like, forget about the actual product.
Ana:I'm just saying like, you have to have a very specific promise because again, if you go to the execution of what you, you
Ana:know, the consistent experience you think of you, you have a certain expectation.
Ana:You know, so if, if that expectation, if you're setting vague expectations, then deliveries, you know, the same.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:Do you, do you think, tools and platforms like, meta, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, are those brands
Rei:or are we just using them just because of convenience and sheer scale?
Ana:Well, math is definitely like a. A sort of a villain right now, you know, and it's been for a long time, but it's
Ana:been in a long time due to execution of hate speech, of lack of moderation, in comments of like an algorithm of
Ana:basically popping up, like creating bubbles, polarization, and so on.
Ana:So that's again, the user experience, the execution of the promise connect all
Ana:the people in the world, whatever his promise was, was horrible, is horrible.
Ana:It's not good for, for human society, for human brain, for interaction, psychology and so on.
Ana:So in that sense you have like evil brands, you know,
Ana:but again, it's, it's, it's, it's based on, on the actual experience of the brand and then on the founder being like.
Ana:Who he is, you know,
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:I guess his myth is, you know, is a lot of mu energy.
Ana:a lot of masculine energy these days, you know,
Ana:but he never had, like what his founding story as told in social
Ana:network was that he stole from, like that's your founding story.
Ana:What tells where do you go from there?
Rei:Yeah, it's not, it's not a very good, I mean, it's a.
Ana:Well, it's, you know, and, but there is not also, you are not like this, this memorable character.
Ana:It's, it's not a myth.
Ana:You're not a myth figure.
Ana:People are gonna forget about you, like, you know,
Rei:Yeah, yeah.
Rei:Speak.
Rei:Speaking of a character, a tech brand character, the one that I
Rei:wouldn't have expected this company to have this much, clout is Nvidia.
Rei:Because Nvidia, like, I mean, they've been around for 20 years or something and they were just making
Rei:chips, these computer graphic chips and people don't care about chips.
Rei:But in the recent few years, really the last four years, three, four years.
Rei:They being able to consume so much of the attention of the business tech world.
Rei:And part of it is the founder being quite visible.
Rei:You know, he's gotta look.
Rei:You know, he wears a leather jacket and you know, he's probably not as charismatic or as, known as Elon Musk or even Joe
Rei:Bizos, but he's one of the more visible CEOs, who by the way seems to be decent.
Rei:You know, I don't know about him much about him, but I think that his
Rei:presence is definitely more visible than a lot of other tech CEOs.
Rei:And for something as mundane and as boring.
Rei:A computer chip or Nvidia and even the name of the company is kind of hard to pronounce and you know, you don't
Rei:really know how to, how to read it when you see it, but it's, it's interesting
Rei:how they've been able to, gain so much attention in the past couple years.
Ana:I don't think that's because of chips.
Ana:I think it's because of the artificial intelligence.
Ana:And again, myth making around this is the cr, the crux for artificial
Rei:no, no.
Rei:That, that, that's what I'm saying.
Rei:Like, it's not, it's, it's very little to do with like the, the functionality or like the feature of the chips that
Rei:they're making, but it's, you know, they've been able to ride the AI.
Rei:conversation, you know, they used to be a computer graphics chipmaker, and then when AI came, they've been able
Rei:to position that they were, that they became the AI chipmaker, what, what used to be a, a computer graphics chipmaker.
Rei:and on top of that, I think having a CEO, that's who seems to be
Rei:more vi
Ana:like, no, I just think they're at the right time, at the right place without competition.
Ana:That's it.
Ana:Because the narrative around artificial intelligence is such a no one else.
Ana:I mean, their stories, again, a story of an underdog who becomes a top dog because Intel the biggest chip maker in the
Ana:world was.
Ana:Upset by a pirate again, or by a outlaw, by an underdog.
Ana:And that is again, the narrative that resonates really well.
Ana:Who is this Nvidia company?
Ana:You know what I mean?
Ana:And then it helps.
Ana:We have a good founder,
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:And I, I think in their case, I think they were probably lucky.
Rei:I don't think they were strategic about, about it.
Ana:that's what I'm saying, right place, right time, right Narrative, you know, like but good for them.
Ana:They're like what?
Ana:Whatever their stock
Rei:And it just so happens that, that the other chip maker, you
Rei:know, they were the king and they just didn't get into the field.
Rei:And then, Nvidia just, ate that piece of the pie and then that pie became so much bigger than, than the rest of the pie.
Ana:Well, right, but there were, again, there were that underdog that recognized the opportunity and intel.
Ana:This like always David versus Goliath story.
Ana:And that's why the recent Chinese one was, was also people love the underdog stories.
Ana:People root for underdogs.
Ana:So whenever you have one count on people supporting them.
Ana:It is just the way it's, so
Rei:just to summarize it, the, the story of an underdog.
Rei:Is a powerful device, whether it's, you know, a computer brand or a chip brand, or fashion brand or whatever,
Rei:or you know, like this Chinese brand, the company that nobody had heard of, but it was one company, one small
Rei:air company that, that came out of nowhere and, they had good enough product, at least for the short term.
Rei:That it was good enough to capture enough audience to, I mean, they were,
Rei:for several weeks, they were the number one, downloading app in the app store.
Rei:So become an under, be an underdog and see the moment.
Rei:That would be my, my, my, my summary.
Ana:Cool.
Ana:All right.
Ana:What's your, what are your hits?
Rei:My, so completely unrelated to the, the, the conversation that we just had, two.
Rei:This is very sort of industry insider speak.
Rei:So, you know, half of the people who might listen to this podcast might not know what I'm talking about.
Rei:and it's very within the context of the creative advertising industry.
Rei:So BBDO, you know, one of the longstanding, traditional agencies
Rei:just recently repositioned themselves, or at least.
Rei:The way they present themselves.
Rei:they are still an advertising agency, but they came up with this positioning that says, do big things.
Rei:And they sort of, you know, had a, a visual campaign to go along with it.
Rei:they changed their website.
Rei:they created these, you know, assets for social media.
Rei:And I, I didn't think much of it at.
Rei:What I'm sort of intrigued by is, I, I've never seen an ad agency employee a, a group of ad agency employees
Rei:being enthusiastic about the rebrand of their company to the extent that, the BBDO people might be right now.
Rei:And like, I'm, I, I saw around me and I, you know, because I'm in that sector, I see quite a bit of it.
Rei:It's the first time in a long time that there's, quite a bit of hype around it now.
Rei:You know, it may be a hype, it may be just, it may be gone soon, but it was unusual that an agency,
Rei:repositioning effort, I heard as much as I did about this one in the recent
Ana:I I didn't hear a damn thing about, I didn't think about
Rei:no, again, like I think it's a very sort of like.
Rei:Secluded thing, you know, in my bubble.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:And you know, like now we all live in different bubbles, right?
Rei:And, you know, you have your bubble, I have my bubble, and those bubbles might not, intersect, with each other.
Rei:But yeah, I, I guess, I guess sort of the larger
Ana:Is it interesting?
Ana:Why is it interesting that an agency position itself at a time where agencies are dying and they need to do something
Ana:to survive, they're getting scaled down, so I think this is just like, they're like hyping themselves up.
Ana:I don't, why is that interesting to you?
Ana:I, I don't understand.
Rei:No.
Rei:So it was interesting.
Rei:Exactly for that reason.
Rei:That I didn't, I didn't think of, I didn't think much of it when I saw it, but I, I saw people talking about it unexpectedly
Ana:People who work at bbb, DU, or others.
Rei:around others.
Rei:Others as well, at least in my bubble.
Rei:And is, is that because.
Rei:Because some, you know, people are resonating with it, or is it because it's kind of like a little blip in, to
Rei:your point, you know, in an industry that's struggling and, you know, trying to, you know, is it an underdog story?
Ana:Well, I'm really happy for them because there is so little fun things
Ana:happening in advertising industry that if this is not exciting, then
Rei:was, it was unusual.
Rei:Like, like at this time I found it
Ana:cool.
Ana:Right.
Ana:my hit would be that I've seen like a lot more, maybe I'm biased, but like
Ana:on Monday there was a Burberry, an iconic brand that brought back it's.
Ana:Symbol of overnight,
Ana:and they literally used it in their campaign.
Ana:They used it on their fashion show.
Ana:So what I'm thinking is, thanks to ai, that the modern cultural expression is going towards more real and imaginary.
Ana:Combining and that is exactly the result of sort of bubbles and of the fact that like, I don't think that
Ana:anymore, the time, you know how in the time there is future, there is
Ana:present, there is past, and we are always, there is always progress.
Ana:And I just think that this gigantic flattening there is chronological flattening.
Ana:With archivy issues with like bringing back, movie sequels, movie reboots movie, sort of franchises and then
Ana:also redoing a lot of things from the past, really upset that chronology.
Ana:So all of a sudden you have, I don't know, Ghostbusters from like two years ago is the Ghostbusters from 40 years ago.
Ana:They're in the same sort of level.
Rei:I see, I see.
Rei:Yeah.
Rei:Yeah.
Ana:Or what you have in terms of, gimme an example.
Ana:What would be an example of a movie that's gonna be this summer that is a reboot or of, of something that happened before?
Ana:Sequel prequel, no matter.
Rei:Gosh, I can't think of any specific one, but I'm sure
Ana:See you.
Ana:You sure there are many.
Ana:There are either equals or sequels or there are.
Ana:So in that sense, that's kind of that insanity that I think that we are all operating, not because
Ana:of nostalgia or anything else, that's just the marketing ploy at
Ana:this point,
Ana:but I think it's the, the creative expression just uses the much wider range.
Ana:Of tools in a sense that you can have, like you take stuff from imagination.
Ana:Like, you know, like the night, the night is, is very connected, what we talked about, like Duolingo mascot,
Ana:you have a Burberry knight, jostling knight from females 50 years ago, that's all of a sudden came to life
Ana:and then you hear people taking photo with it, photos with it at the fashion show, you have it in the ad.
Ana:So I think it's a lot of that kind of like.
Ana:Lego Lego sets for adults.
Ana:I think it's a lot of that imagination, that game, that play that is now getting more into into our storytelling.
Rei:I, I know, I know the Knight mascot or the Knight symbol, the recent sort of in incarnation or
Rei:the revival of the, the Knight or animating, you know, making it move.
Rei:you know, that, that didn't intersect into my world or into my bubble.
Rei:I haven't seen it.
Rei:so I'll definitely look it up.
Ana:Look at that, but you've seen Elmo at and on.
Ana:You've seen that with Rogers.
Ana:But that's the same thing.
Ana:All of a sudden you have a character that is imagined character from
Ana:sesame, like coming in and telling a story and like, oh, soft touch.
Ana:Be soft on yourself.
Ana:Or Roger Federer.
Ana:You don't know who, that's the same thing.
Ana:Forget about your like,
Rei:But are you, are you talking about, are you talking about your, you, are you talking about like,
Rei:something that exists in different times, coexisting in the same time?
Rei:Or are you talking about, something that's imaginary versus something that's real coexisting?
Rei:You're talking about
Ana:I think the operating system is imaginary.
Ana:So now Feder is sitting with a like Elmo, and Elmo goes on a podcast
Ana:and Elmo goes and tells runners, why don't you go easy on yourselves?
Ana:It's cartoon character.
Ana:From childhood that like, and I, I just think it's kind of like showing a trend towards mascots and
Ana:imaginary things being influencers because they can't be canceled.
Ana:They don't get old
Rei:yeah, yeah,
Ana:and that is the reason of that cultural expression is widening up.
Ana:They're taking things from our childhoods because of that time compression.
Rei:I
Ana:just thought it was not clear.
Ana:See more of that.
Ana:That's what I find.
Rei:I, yeah.
Rei:I wonder if that trend will expand, beyond, beyond what we see now.
Rei:Okay.
Rei:I'll, I'll, I'll pay attention to that.
Ana:Just pay attention.
Ana:It doesn't need to be, forget about fashion, but like, I think
Ana:on, especially with their Super Bowl ad, and they really do,
Ana:like double down on Elmo because Elmo won, went on a podcast like
Ana:they had a follow
Ana:up and I don't think they're gonna let that.
Ana:One really go and I think we are gonna see more because you see, like we had the Barbie movie, we are gonna, we are
Ana:having, I don't know, I think 13 new movies are in development from Mattel.
Ana:So I think toys are among us because
Ana:with ai, you
Ana:know what's real, what's not real, anything is real.
Ana:So pay attention, you'll see more of that.
Rei:yeah.
Rei:Characters and mascots or toys and mascots in real world.
Rei:your friends.
Ana:imaginary friends like Duolingo, you know, like
Ana:they're probably gonna bring it in the real world with like ai, or not ai.
Ana:I don't
Rei:probably.
Rei:Cool.
Ana:Thanks everyone for listening.
Ana:and thanks Ray for being such an amazing, sparring partner.
Rei:Even though we have disagreements,
Ana:We have to, it'll be so boring without you.
Ana:I mean, I don't know anyone.
Ana:I would rather have disagreements with.
Rei:That means a lot.
Ana:Okay.
Ana:Have a good weekend everyone.