16: Systems In Flux: The Hidden Divergent Forces Shaping The Next Generation of Brands, Consumers, and Capitalism

1: The New Rules of Brand Strategy: The coming wave of new consumerism, making users pay a premium for the story, and how to create brand strategy frameworks that consistently lead to defensible positioning. In this kickoff episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis explore the edge cases of strategy in today’s marketplace, and the ideas and trends that are changing the branding landscape. by Unseen Unknown

68 min listen

2: Where Identity Meets Behavior: We speak with luxury branding expert Ana Andjelic about the imagined communities that form around identity brands, the importance of hacking subculture over hacking growth, and the gendered stories that tap into our collective psyche. by Unseen Unknown

53 min listen

4: Look To The Future To Understand The Present: We’re used to looking at history in order to understand the present, but what happens when we look to the future? In this house episode we conduct ‘100 Year Thought Experiments’ - a simple mental device for brand strategists - to better understand the current cultural mechanics of health, careers, environmentalism, and food. by Unseen Unknown

43 min listen

5: The Emerging Languages and Symbols of Social Media: We speak with Sony Pictures Television executive Erin Weinger and clinical psychologist Dr. Therese Mascardo about the passing of the current age of social media and the beginning of another. Any time a new age is born, the rules get harder, the audience becomes more discerning, and all of us - people, brands, identities - are separated into those that move ahead and those that are left behind. The question now is, what is this new age that we’re walking into? by Unseen Unknown

73 min listen

12: Celebrity Culture, Platform Brands and Parasocial Relationships: The nature of celebrity culture has changed in recent years, most notably with the rise of the influencer brand. But why is this happening now, and how have our digital tribes changed because of it? We speak with Cameo co-founder Steven Galanis about how he built a platform that has taken celebrity-fan culture to new levels of access, and sociologist and author Chris Rojek about the parasocial relationships and ‘presumed intimacy’ that is outpacing other forms of relationship in our lives. by Unseen Unknown

51 min listen

9: What should brands be doing in the time of COVID-19?: The big question: how is a brand supposed to act during a pandemic? How can CEOs and brand owners serve their users in a meaningful way while still struggling to survive themselves? It’s not as simple as “We’re here for you” founder letters and reduced prices. To really serve your users, you have to read the room and know one thing - business may be slowing, but culture is accelerating. by Unseen Unknown

56 min listen

10: The Power of Perception, Permission and Choice in Society and Government: Rory Sutherland, author of ‘Alchemy’ and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy talks to us about psychological and branding techniques for managing behavior during and after transformative cultural moments like COVID-19 and beyond. We explore models of human behavior, social norms, belief systems and the nuance of what he calls America’s “gloriously optimistic consumer base”. by Unseen Unknown

56 min listen

6: Burnout Brands and the Burden of Potential: We speak with Pattern Brands co-founder Emmett Shine and psychotherapist Abby Krom about the undercurrent of burnout in American society and how it has opened the doors to a whole new breed of D2C branding. From analyses to antidotes, our obsession with burnout (and how to heal it) is changing the way we consider products and consider ourselves. by Unseen Unknown

64 min listen

8: How We Consume Fear in a Time of Crisis, and the Brands That Change the Story: Times of uncertainty have a way of revealing the mindset of a society, and today’s imminent threats - from COVID-19 to political instability and global warming - are revealing a mental shift that emotion-led brands are responding to. We speak with BBC and Vox journalist Colleen Hagerty, eschatologist and end-of-world expert Phil Torres, and founders Ryan Kuhlman and Lauren Tafuri of the popular disaster kit brand Preppi to ask one big question: How do you brand in a time of crisis? by Unseen Unknown

74 min listen

3: Women, Beauty, Money and Motherhood: Influencer-led beauty veteran Ria Muljadi gets deep with us about the current role of a women’s brand, what it means to have a realization about yourself through a brand experience, the personal impact of reconsidering your national identity, and how burnout is the new cause. by Unseen Unknown

47 min listen

7: Cultural Constructs Are The Real Brand Opportunity: Brands like Ring and Billie leverage the uncertainty of our changing value systems to create new interest in old paradigms. In other words, they play with cultural constructs: arbitrary systems determined by our culture or our community, rather than a truth that stems from an immovable aspect of human nature. They prove that when constructs start to change, real brand opportunities start to emerge. by Unseen Unknown

51 min listen

14: The Radical History of Self-Care & the New World of Wellness Branding: Wellness and self-care have taken over nearly every industry with a whole crop of new brands. But there is a much deeper story about the connected history of politics, race, gender and identity that underpins the self-care space today, and how it’s many interpretations reflect our American culture. We speak with New York Times journalist and editor Aisha Harris, as well as Jerome Nichols, founder of cult favorite self-care brand The Butters, to understand the very radical roots of this now-mainstream movement. by Unseen Unknown

62 min listen

11: Who We Become When We’re Lonely & The Rituals That Will Save Us: Brands are facing the fact that loneliness has become a part of our identities, crisis or not. But you can’t talk about loneliness without talking about the meaning of rituals. We speak with Sasha Sagan, author of the social history book “For Small Creatures Such As We”, Harvard social scientist Kasley Killam, and Danielle Baskin, founder of the social connection app Dialup, about models of ritual, connection, and how loneliness can actually pivot our lives in surprising directions. by Unseen Unknown

94 min listen

13: Race, Identity & Power In Our Online/ Offline Spaces: Author and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom joins us for an intimate discussion on how the mechanics of the internet, social media, digital marketing and real-life institutions amass power along racial and gender lines. We discuss how certain cultural narratives create our understanding of ourselves and others, how consumption is becoming increasingly political, and the role that brands play in the larger discussion. by Unseen Unknown

65 min listen

19: Systems In Flux: Birth of the New Spiritual Consumer: For the fourth and final episode in our series on Systems In Flux, we’re talking about seemingly new emerging forms of spirituality, and how new spiritual brands are positioning themselves to take advantage of our collective movement towards wanting to be both categorized but at the same time free from conventional binary definitions. Allegra Hobbs is a journalist who’s explored the phenomenon of the Enneagram. She found that the Enneagram and other categorizing devices like it have also seemingly crossed over into the mainstream because we find ourselves in a perpetual state of isolation and alienation—something Rachel Lo discovered as she developed the dating app Struck, which helps match people based on their astrological signs. by Unseen Unknown

45 min listen

16: Systems In Flux: The Hidden Divergent Forces Shaping The Next Generation of Brands, Consumers, and Capitalism: Whether it’s brand, behavior, or culture, the more you dig into the systems that affect our lives the closer you’ll come to a conversation about capitalism. While capitalism as a model may seem unchanging at a glance, look a little closer and you’ll start to see patterns of change. In this house episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis dig into divergent systems, the unstable behavior of markets, and how the rules we’ve trusted for a century are now ushering in a new generation of brands, consumers, and capital. This is the first of a series of episodes exploring how divergent systems are shaping the business landscape. by Unseen Unknown

39 min listen

15: The Profound Human Connection of Micro-Communities, Participatory Economies and Good Old Customer Service: From the gig economy to the passion economy, and now the emerging participatory economy - changing consumer values are inspiring new business models for creators. In this episode we speak with early stage VC and Level Ventures partner Sari Azout about how these nascent economies are centering the new frontier of disruption on customer happiness, and what that means for how value and profitability are connected. We also speak with Ty Givens, customer experience strategist and founder of the WorkforcePro about engineering the human connection that turns customers and users into fans. by Unseen Unknown

84 min listen

22: Strong Ties vs. Weak Ties in the Next Era of Brand Innovation: The world is starting to reconfigure itself around a very different kind of relationship. Weak ties, the underpinning of social innovation for the last two decades, are declining while strong social ties are starting to emerge as the dominant threads of our social fabric. In this house episode, we’re talking to Concept Bureau’s Chief Strategist Jean-Louis Rawlence, about the huge implications for tech innovation, community building and business. When strong ties become the future of community, community becomes the new brand. by Unseen Unknown

35 min listen

20: Ownership Anxiety, Brand Storytelling, and the Human Condition: Today and throughout history, a mere six competing stories of ownership have dictated how everything in the world is distributed. As resources have become scarcer, everyone from American homesteaders and ranchers, to tech leaders and consumer brands, have created ways to impose their own preferred ownership story in a world where what it means to “own” something is constantly evolving. We speak with Michael Heller and James Salzman, two of the world’s leading scholars and authorities on ownership, and co-authors of the book Mine!: How The Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives. They explain to us how the rules of ownership change in every generation, and how those changes reveal the true brand landscape, the role of business, and most importantly, a society’s shifting values. by Unseen Unknown

49 min listen

17: Systems In Flux: Class, Taste and the Modern Aspiration Economy: For the second episode in our series on Systems In Flux, we’re talking with brand strategist and sociologist Ana Andjelic about systems of class and taste. In the past 10 years, new brands have emerged, specifically in luxury and premium categories, that point to a divergence in our social systems around what class and taste are, and how they are achieved. Ana talks about the rise of the Modern Aspiration Economy and how the brands of this new economy have done something remarkable: they’ve successfully decoupled class from money, and taste from wealth. by Unseen Unknown

49 min listen

18: Systems In Flux: A Unified Theory of Culture, Branding, and Human Behavior: Every single culture and subculture - from states and governments to user segments and brand tribes - falls along the tight-loose continuum. A culture’s tightness or looseness affects people’s perceptions of threat, how they relate to each other, how they consume, and of course the narratives that shape the businesses and brands that form within that culture. In this third episode in our series on Systems In Flux, we speak with Michele Gelfand, cultural psychologist and author of ‘Rule Makers, Rule Breakers’ about the invisible systems that make a culture relaxed or rigid, and the surprising tradeoffs involved. by Unseen Unknown

47 min listen

21: The Secret Language of Cult Brands: Cults make effective brands, and today, they’re all around us. Perhaps the most insidious way cults have influenced our reality is in everyday language that’s meant to control behaviors and change perspectives. It’s language we use with friends and colleagues, language in our media and content, and language we hear coming from today’s most powerful CEOs, on branded websites and in keynote addresses. In this episode we’re talking with Amanda Montell, a language scholar and author of the critically acclaimed book, ‘Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism’ to understand why cults have had a resurgence in branding and in real life. Cults and businesses have always been intertwined, and understanding how they use the power of language to move people is the first step to decoding how they work. by Unseen Unknown

44 min listen

24: How to Unlock Your Strategic Mind: What does it mean to be good at thinking? Or more importantly, thinking strategically? It’s the culmination of mental processes that enable us to analyze, reason, solve problems, make decisions, and generate creative ideas in an efficient manner. In other words, it’s a buildable skill. In this house episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis take a deep dive into how to cultivate that skill effectively. by Unseen Unknown

44 min listen

23: Pain, Sacrifice, and Our New Status Symbols: Culture is moving from the self-indulgence of conspicuous consumption to the self-denial of “conspicuous commitment”: a new status code that will affect every premium and luxury brand. In this episode we speak with Concept Bureau Senior Strategist Zach Lamb about how and why conspicuous commitment is taking over, as well as an interview with author W. David Marx who sees status as still operating by the old rules of wealth, perhaps now more than ever. by Unseen Unknown

36 min listen

25: Bizarre, Strange and Highly Relatable: Weirdness reveals something profound about human nature, and lately more and more brands have been tapping into the delight of the unconventional. When done right, weirdness is highly relatable and offers brands a unique opportunity to create deep connections, foster loyalty, and shape the future in exciting ways. by Unseen Unknown

27 min listen

26: How Consumers “Know” Things In Today’s World: From the way we create our identities and manage our health, to the way we employ therapy-speak at work and vote in elections, it’s apparent that people are increasingly being guided by feelings and intuition in places where they may have once relied on reasoning or ideology. This new form of intuitive, noetic knowing is changing how people move through the world, and how brands can speak to them. by Unseen Unknown

27 min listen

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16: Systems In Flux: The Hidden Divergent Forces Shaping The Next Generation of Brands, Consumers, and Capitalism

16: Systems In Flux: The Hidden Divergent Forces Shaping The Next Generation of Brands, Consumers, and Capitalism

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