great point is back!

quick letter for yall!

Hello,

if you’re new here, this send will be a little different than my usual format, so allow the lil lengthy preamble! but welcome to the new subs who signed up over the last lil while.

In the past 3 months (!!!!) that i’ve been quiet on substack, the space has somehow exploded. I thought it had already reached peak newsy bubble but it’s somehow expanded and every marketer i’ve ever met now has their own personal substack. I actually have been cooking a longer-form piece for a little while (actually, a couple of months LOL - the to-do list is getting nuts) about the new imperative of marketers (especially brand strategy folks) to have “visibility”, so I need to get that out there and see how others are feeling. It’s a lot!

It has made me a little reticent to log back on here, because things feel so noisy, and the noisier everyone else gets the more i’m inclined to sit this moment out entirely. But i don’t want to let the scammers win!

what’s been keeping me busy: a really incredible global research/positioning project for a new initiative/vertical at one of the fastest-growing sneaker brands. being back w/ my friends at UGG working on some cultural programming + collaborations as an interim stint. some talent and seeding strategy stuff for a fun tequila brand and another sneaker brand. to that end - i will be back in NYC mid-june, and i’m trying to see everyone i didn’t get to see before i bailed late last year and/or Feb. So pls holler at me if you want to hang/talk shop/work/yap. I will be somewhere between harlem, bowery, and greenpoint at various stages over the summer.

the era of anti-influencer brand + marketing / the rise of normies

i’m not talking about de-influencing. in the past year+ we’ve seen such a sharp rejection of influencers and ‘influential’ groups or even zip codes that the goal posts of who is actually inspiring shifts in behavior, choices or habits is in a constant state of (blurred) motion.

as influence has been so ‘gamed’ online - bought followers and formulaic, copy + paste content - to me the crux of the issue for the audience is that it’s harder and harder to determine what is real and what is fake. Obviously this is only going to get imminently worse with the advent of AGI. But you really can’t fake real life and you cannot fake community.

Check out this post that went viral a while back of a USPS guy with great kicks:

We’re starting to see similar ideas in Yachty’s recent concrete boys editorial:

outlandermagazine

A post shared by @outlandermagazine

Dare i say, normal people are just more interesting at the moment? Especially for people actually participating in culture and not just consuming it parasocially.

I remember pitching an editorial concept at some point in my time at swoosh which was all about the unsung everyday “athletes” who spend their days on their feet in service positions. The idea was to give them early access to super limited, high-heat drops (this was PEAK hype resell era) and shoot lifestyle portraiture of them in the gear. Its always nice to see this type of content circulating and I do feel people are craving it more than ever.

Something i’ve been thinking a lot about is how the internet is going to change once AGI is more widely-used. Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit) tweeted recently that he believes we are approaching an end-state where 90% of the content you see will be made by AI or actual AI bots. I think we need to start exploring ways to create real social proof, not just as marketers but as human beings :)

bag charms meet labubu meet blind boxes as the ultimate recession indicator.

taylorlorenz3.0

A post shared by @taylorlorenz3.0

Screenshotted from one of my fav IG follows,

Amanda Murray

:

dare i say the sonnys angels trend (surfaced here by yours truly one year ago) was a precursor to this moment. I think the small souvenir/object/ “merch” for fashion-minded people trend is not going anywhere, at least not until tariff madness slows down and luxury prices come back down to earth. its the mid-market buyer’s ‘way in’ to luxury and/or a heftier expression of ‘little treat’ culture for HENRYs. I myself am guilty of participating w this batch of NY-inspired bag charms i got from Coach last year. They have been rotating between my big perforated Speedy and my chloe kerala bag. this is probably breaking all kinds of unspoken fashion laws but allow it.

good IG reel primer here from local abc news on why gen z LOVE blind boxes- which speaks to many of the same impulses/motivations. Idk why but substack isn’t letting me embed it.

things i have found thought-provoking recently about our current economic system and other such realities. Sorry but if our jobs are to sell people things it’s good to know this stuff! If you’re not a marketer, feel free to look away from this doom-and-gloom /reality check zone.

• the average age of a home-buyer is now 56 - up from 31 in 1981.

• staggering, comprehensive study on black displaced communities in Atlanta - which uncovered that over the past 40 years, 155 formerly majority-black zip codes flipped to majority white. Atlanta is no longer a majority black city. Gentrification continues to do a number on the most important cultural hubs in USA.

• Student Loan Delinquency is back - an economist also made a video here about this if you are curious on the ripple effects of student loan repayments being more harshly enforced.

• NYT Opinion Piece: In the future, China will be dominant. The US will be irrelevant. Sobering examination of US’s tunnel vision on tariffs alongside China’s development in vital industries. Side note, working in a global capacity while based in Australia is a weird kind of cheat code to understand what is bubbling in both the east and the west. I can expand on this more privately if you are curious, but I do find it so much more illuminating being here in surfacing not just western trends but what is popping in asia also. Beaverton could never 🌲 (respectfully).

• two sides of the same AI coin: a piece from

  Gennaro Cuofano
  about Navigating the present moment with AI workforce shifts / understanding the AI Supercycle // a news article about how Klarna is now reversing their moves to replace customer service agents with AI.

• semi-related; i’ve heard a bunch of people talking about ‘career grief’ recently and saw this post by Rachael Stamps going semi-viral in my news feed. “I've come to terms with the radically shifting nature of the industry I've worked in for the last 15 years and have decided to tap out. I'm not a doom and gloomist, but I accept that what worked for me in the past is not what will carry me forward.” Does this resonate for yall? Curious how others are taking the present moment in their stride (or not.)

culture commentary worth your time

• Basic as the new Punk / the rise of ‘normanticization’ by the ever-astute Laura Pitcher. I think this aversion to the ‘main character’ moment that has dominated behavior/vibes the past few years is just the beginning.

• Really interesting essay (in print, but screenshotted into a thread here) by Steven Phillips-Horst on the new clout that Food and Dining has attracted as a cultural pursuit. (From Spike Magazine, issue 83)

It’s so interesting because I feel like i’ve experienced this trend at two ends of the spectrum. When I was still based in Sydney prior my move to NYC (or even Melbourne prior to that) in the very early 2010’s/maybe even late 00’s, Sydney went through a weird fad era of cool-guy chefs in air max who were opening restaurants that served ‘contemporary’ versions of classic foods from a variety of regions and played tupac. In combination with Sydney’s aggressive lock-out laws hitting in 2014, completely gutting the music and nightlife scenes in the most young/popular inner city neighborhoods, this perfect storm happened which turned the local chef guy into a larger-than-life personality who, in my estimation, was somehow more important to be able to name-check than a DJ or a musician, or something you’d more typically connect with the habits of 18-25 year olds than…. fine dining. Restaurant people became a “thing” in a cultural vacuum where young people couldn’t as easily access other stuff. the lockout laws remained in Sydney until 2020, when Covid had its own impact on nightlife.

In NYC during Covid, I watched a new kind of restaurant-goer emerged with the tiktok wave; just folks hitting viral places for a viral, visually-arresting dishes. Along with a weird batch of membership/resy-securing apps like Dorsia or bizarre NFT projects that tried to monetize the age-old nyc role of just … ‘being a regular’ at ur fav spot. Towards the end of my time living in the East Village (i left in Dec last year) i completely gave up on dining out locally because getting a reservation at even the most average place had turned into a competitive sport. Being seen dining, or capturing ur dining moment had become a strange proof-of-life activity on the ‘gram or wherever else that had just started to feel weirdly pathetic and strange. I’m not judging here, just speaking for myself, as someone who loves a food post as much as the next person. The article above speaks to the emergence of Foodie-ism as a result of not being able to access other ‘higher’ forms of culture amid economic turbulence or just industry-related shifts, and as a way to have an easier path to ‘expert’ status than other forms of culture.

Anyway - when i return to Sydney now, I feel so disconnected from the city that I grew up in where i raved at club 77, worked the cloakroom at arthouse or lady lux (i am aging myself here so hopefully someone in my subscribers will appreciate the references) and saw temper trap at the Hopetoun with friends on a random tuesday. I always get a lot of new restaurant recs from friends though. There’s just something so dry about the whole culture of a city hinging on food and food alone. I can’t imagine NYC would ever go down the same path, but its….. idk.

General stuff i’m loving/paying attention to:

• this installation in Boston:

  relowdsupply

  

  A post shared by @relowdsupply

• Fenty Beauty sponsoring WNBA and doing it right. For all the talk of brands coming into the WNBA space, it feels surprisingly light on ~real~ integrations and smart placements up to this point. Like what was the point of this sephora tunnel @ Unrivaled if Sephora weren’t gonna do an edit showing what products each player was wearing? Anyway — i, for one, cannot wait to see the glam this season.

• Brand watch: Timberland now have both Geraldo Rodriguez leading energy (across all VF corp brands) and the ex-CD of Doc Martens taking on Product Design and Creative Direction.
  

  

  Timberland has an interesting challenge very parallel to doc martens which is diversifying and expanding its offering from beyond its key icon (the classic boot). the 3-eye lug boat shoe (pictured, as part of the jacquemus collab) had a moment for ladies last summer, but it would be cool to see more innovation from Timbs. Im also very interested to see the CD title here apply in addition to Product Design - a creative who can lead not only across the product story but across brand/comms would be a weapon.

Thats all for now. Hit me back if there’s anything you think i should weigh in on in my next send! Missed you all.

GG x