Hey 👋. Did I ask you to share this already? Yeah? Bet you didn’t though, did you. No stress, I forgive you. Do it now. Button is above. Anyway, hope you’re all doing ok. Bobbling along. Doing your thing. Right, let’s do it.
“Don’t give them what they want. Give them what they never dreamed was possible”
Orson Wells
culture // community moats
Ecosystems are cool aren’t they. Biological communities of interacting organisms. We abused the word a little, but the idea (in the natural world at least) is still amazing. And yes, brands can support ecosystems too. A brand, as a platform, can have community of interacting people, interconnected around a passion. REI have that. An outdoor ecosystem, with everything from clothes, equipment, a one to one with an expert, an outdoor holiday or events like hiking, canoeing and rock climbing or local events and classes. As Trends.vc said last week “unlike content, community can't be copied. Content is a magnet. Community is a moat". Which definitely felt very right. Go to community vs just go to market is an approach a16z chatted about too. Poolside FM, who launched their Vacation suncream, are a good example of this community approach. Build a community, then monetise it with products. Apparently there’s also a trend of brands adopting community based stealth marketing, focussed on community engagement. And Nike too are investing in smaller neighbourhood stores, events, and value-added services to engage more localised audiences. Seems like brands want get closer to local communities and make authentic local connections.
brands // centaurs
The machines are coming 🤖🤖. You can hear the tin march. But, apart from the phones, the internet, the longer life and the general improvement of stuff, wtf has technology ever done for us. In 20 years, quite a lot it seems. Now, we're entering an era where humans and machines will make decisions and work, together. When it comes to the creative industries, that’s already begun. GPT-3 or Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (an autoregressive language model) uses deep learning to produce human-like text. It writes and generates text that mimics human-produced text perfectly (there are exceptions 😂). It can even generate ideas. The term centaur was originally adopted by the chess community to describe a human and a computer playing as a team. A hybrid beast endowed with the strengths of each. Probably need to start thinking about this more. Using more tools. For more things. We’ve always been good at that. Just look at the pygmies of Central America. Man and instrument, working together as one. It can be a beautiful thing.
technology // sauron’s eye
You really can’t go more than a couple of days without marvelling at Amazon. The shadow of their incessant, ravenous, gaze on the world, looms so ominously. Difficult not to feel periodically suffocated. They're building their own TVs now 📺. I mean, the biggest shop in the world, now sitting in your living room (collecting data?). They’re also rolling out their cashless walk out stores to Whole Foods 🛒. Seamlessly lurching forward. Soon, that tech will be everywhere, even in their new brick and mortar Amazon department stores 🛍 (plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose), and punters will pay on their new Amazon POS systems. One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
creativity // everything communicates
When it comes to communicating something, it’s often easier to use expected channels. Mostly big ones. That shout loud. They make sense. They’re easily sold and easily bought by others. But sometimes it’s the little things that matter. The small pieces, that make everything else work. Like this picture of John McClane with a lighter in the grill of a vent in the toilet of a Cineworld to show who much they love cinema 😍. Or this message at the bottom of a coffee cup ☕️ nudging people to get another. Or all the dress messaging at the Met Ball 👗. Or even this use of a power box from Eir here in Ireland (even though it looks like An Post) which is a lovely soft message, on a cold steel box. Or this message from smart watch maker Whoop left on their circuit boards ⌚️, which included the initials of the engineers who built it. Very cool. Yeah, sometimes we forget that everything communicates.
five (ish) random things:
Love this personalised promo for the Matrix 😎 🎥.
A great read on re-thinking presentations 📊📉.
This BBDO work for the Sandy Hook Promise was great 😢.
What’s the plural of a bunch of Henry’s (High Earners Not Rich Yet) 🤑?
watching // pokey lafarge
Hey, this short NPR tiny desk session from Pokey LaFarge was great. Feels like a trip back in time. The kind of music you’d hear at the turn of the century, at a hootenanny in the Deep South. If that’s your kind of thing, enjoy 🪕.
Did you share it earlier? Ah, come on…….Try again……