Paparazzi aesthetics, "Wrapped" indeed, Moncler's sauce, eyebleach and our elders
tech will not save us!
Greetings! It’s tuesday morning, and by the time this sends i will hopefully be on a brisk walk throughout 3 degree celsius manhattan. i thoroughly recommend winter walks to wake ur brain up.
Here’s some stuff I noticed the past few days!
ASAP Rocky’s Bottega campaign is chic.
Source. Smart creative with built-in ‘teaser’ launch and distro. i have a percolating thought about paparazzi aesthetics being adopted as a status indicator/demonstrator (drawing the line between people who self document and those who warrant strangers actually chasing them down to document them more officially). Like a lot of twitch streamers have eyes on them but how many do you know have paparazzi following them? its one way to formally broaden the gap between normies/micro influencers, creators and actual Stars in marketing. Anyway its a theory!
Spotify don’t seem very nice tbh
They laid off a bunch of people like 1 business day after Wrapped launched. real gross. I feel its time we criminalize layoffs in December. Tech jobs are cursed.
Would you pay for your friends to NOT use social media?
I thought this was an incredibly revealing/damning study. Sourced via Jonathan Haidt’s twitter: “New study shows that TikTok and Insta trap young people, who feel they MUST use the platforms because… everyone else does. But if offered the chance to PAY to have everyone in their college delete the apps, most on TikTok, and half on Insta, would pay.” [Study here: “When product markets become collective traps”.] This says a lot…
Users would be willing to pay $28 and $10 to have others, including themselves, deactivate TikTok and Instagram, respectively. Participants who do not have accounts would be willing to pay $67 and $39 (❗‼️ ) to have others deactivate their TikTok and Instagram accounts, respectively.
Taken together, these results imply the existence of a “social media trap” for a large share of consumers, whose utility from the platforms is negative but would have been even more negative if they didn’t use social media.
I did a bunch of qual research on Teens this year at various points, and almost all of them talked about their feelings about TikTok in particular; they felt it flattened everything, it made things cool/wack too fast, all of a sudden everyone would be using the same words or wearing the same thing at a pace that felt unnatural.
ICYMI: Brendas list
You probably didnt if you’re extremely online, but heres a great list from Brenda hashtag about different things happening in luxury/fashion.
the final point on the list makes me lol (a few of them do tbh), also scroll down for related thoughts on our gerontocracy.
Sacai x Moncler is proof you can replicate Nike’s brand strategy
There’s a new collection from Moncler and Sacai (link), (following collabs with 9 designers in their ‘art of the genius’ launch earlier this year.) i think the more interesting story behind the story that i’ve been observing is how cleanly the brand has replicated Nike’s sauce (using their fav collaborators, and a similar marketing approach) since the former VP of Brand Creative at Nike moved over there 2.5 years ago. it works - the brand beat expectations earlier this year, with sales up 25% in the first half.
I think this is worth noting bc a lot of clients are like ‘we aren’t them’ about other brands (apple, nike, etc) and its like - well, not with that attitude. but you can be!
Brands Love Nepo Babies
Madonna’s daughter (who actually seems very cool! I like that she is seemingly doing music and life in her own way) is featured in the Ganni x Doc Martens roll out. This comes shortly after her appearance in an ad for an AI-generated (?) Coca Cola concept beverage:
It made me think about how millennial/gen x marketers love casting Nepo babies, because it allows them to contextualize talent through their own (old) lens on culture. I dont have much more to add, but I would love to see my fellow brand people take a chance on a new generation of talent as well as ones where they know who their parents are.
Really Cute Campaign
some eyebleach for u!
(source). Love this Coperni holiday campaign. Animals are very underutilized brand assets!
This was tagged “reasons to love new york”. hmmm
Some tiktokers in a restaurant. I was scrolling the feature waiting for the story but it was really just a picture. another incredible actualization of Brad Troemel’s cloutbombing thesis, shared in August via his Patreon (an inconsistent but good sub).
a cool brand: Isamaya Beauty
so i’m not just a hater on these newsies im going to try and highlight people i think are doing it ‘right’ here and there.
to me this brand is a sleeping giant in the rhode, rare beauty etc conversations.
why i think it works:
u know the threadbois you see on linkedin talking about how Liquid Death worked because its interesting, and has a personality? great alternate example of that here.
they don’t react to trends so they’re never behind or lagging. products are made (seemingly) just in accordance with what isamaya is feeling. she’s a true creative, so it works.
credibility and distinction. like the other great beauty brands on market (pat mcgrath, charlotte tilbury etc) isamaya has the cred of being a highly visible make up artist and collaborator.
extreme attitude - she literally has a lipstick case shaped like a d*ck and b*lls. I hope this doesnt get my email filtered to spam.
world-building- she is really effortlessly imaginative. bc the brand comes from her and who she authentically is, every campaign or new product feels like a logical extension of the isamaya universe
constant halo effect of her own activity in the public eye, e.g these spikes on rita ora’s back last night.
👟👠👞🥾 Footwear / “Streetwear” Nerd Section👟👠👞🥾
Stussy x Nike- (air flight 89) not a fan of the shoe per se but at this point just give them creative direction over the whole brand (j/k?)
Oakley x Brain Dead is cool. this must have slipped my feed when it first dropped but i like it for them. it feels rooted in Oakley’s former/legacy weirdness, which i love
Beatrice Domond feature in GOAT’s editorial offshoot, GREATEST. Honestly, between this and the ASAP Nast guide to collecting CDG, I will be purchasing issue #08. I hope GOAT don’t shutter their editorial arm - its such a nice brand extension and makes a lot of sense, offering people context around the product which we love when we’re forking over hundreds for a pair of sneakers
hypey Gift reco: Seletti on SSENSE. just fun lil bits n bobs!
Now this is how u do basel as a semi-goofy brand - Madhappy x Joes Stone Crab collab.
Lets talk about gerontocracy. and Gen X
There’s a good Teen Vogue piece for everything, and this concept is no exception. my former co-worker/client to agency creative partner/now friend Sara wrote me a really thoughtful note which i wanted to share with you all. This is the crux of it:
"I've been thinking about how our culture, politics and society is impacted by the literal old guard — Joe Biden (81) Anna Wintour (74)... hanging onto power and not passing the torch. There's already a huge gap in values and mindset between myself (millennial) and many of "them", but the gap is even greater for Gen-Z and now Gen Alpha which is coming up (oldest is now 13). .. at this moment in time are we hindering our evolution with aging leadership?”
What do you all think? I feel like there are some places where this is felt way more acutely than others - when i look at leaders in some countries, they are much younger - e.g President Macron in France is 45, and that is a country that values age and tradition. It’s so weird to see USA specifically, with all that it ‘represents’ (loaded!), go down this path.
(New Zealands’ former prime minister Jacinda Arden, currently age 43. She resigned from her position earlier this year due to burn out. Wishing the same from our 80+ year old overlords.)
Personally, i’ve long had beef with the older-skewing part of Gen X, who are our bridge to the elders. My feeling is that they let so much shit slide in the late 90s/early 00’s, and really were behind a lot of the nastiness that led to the GFC in 2008. The main benefactors of that moment are now in their early 50s. Given what they were raised on culturally, im just very like… make it make sense? Kurt Cobain didn’t want us living this way my brothers and sisters. They also now hold MANY very influential positions in corporate america and seem comfortable cowering to The System™. Idk. just my 2 cents! Hope to be proven wrong! 🌶️ Either way let young people in the decision making circle u old fucks.
Okay thats all for now. bye!!!