The Weekly Roundup (week of 10.9)
Forget everything you know, vibes are shifting
1. If Every Brand Is Funny Online, Is Anything Funny?
This NYT piece describing the over-saturation of try-hard brands giving it their all on corny tweets (or threads) and trend-chasing TikToks has given me a lot to think about as I consider where the industry could be headed next. It’s something I’ve been taking note of and is sharply pronounced on Threads, an app almost exclusively used by social media managers trying to out-cringe each other. As Gen-Z begins to age out of relevance as the most talked about and marketed to generation, we marketers all have our targets fixed on those mysterious Gen Alpha kids. They’re iPad-addicted, dopamine-poisoned, overmedicated, and overstimulated. They learned how to use a tablet before learning the alphabet and before being potty trained. They’re practically aliens from another planet. To Gen-Z marketers, being funny on the internet and going buck wild on Twitter is passé. Everyone and their mom associate this trend with Wendy’s and for good reason. They innovated in a time when being weird and quirky was an odd thing to do as a brand. But how on god’s green Earth can you expect a mega-corporation to break out of the cycle of marketing monotony when almost every company waits for someone else to do something before trying it out? And that is where the true advantage lies. You can rely on brands to be stuck in this boring cycle, and there is time to determine a unique positioning as the next branding trends take off. The first basic rule of marketing is to be differentiated, and in my opinion, if you’re not truly funny (which is rare), you better figure out how to push your brand in a different direction than the one everyone is already goin’ in. When they zig, you zag! Read here.
2. Consumers Are Less Interested in Brands Taking Stances on Sociopolitical Issues, Survey Finds
Wow, surprise surprise. People don’t give a shit about what a multi-national conglomerate has to say about complicated social issues ?????? WHY HASN’T DOLLAR SHAVE CLUB PUT OUT A STATEMENT ABOUT ISRAEL-PALESTINE YET????!!!!!111!!! This was always something I felt pretty strongly about, in my opinion, companies should have never waded into politics in the first place. People are more cynical than ever, and honestly, they deserve an escape from all of the crap going on in the world. Just make cool ads, and don’t get distracted by (bullshit) insights about Gen-Z wanting every company to make themselves an activist™ in pursuit of maximizing shareholder value. People in marketing are more out of touch than ever and are pretty much entirely made up of upper-middle-class bourgeois college-educated urbanites. You are not like your consumer, so take a minute to understand that people likely don’t want to be told how or what to think by paternalistic conglomerates that make soap.
3. Meet the zombie brands: Why Blue Apron, Allbirds, and others are still alive, only different
Now that the free money has dried out, the chickens have come home to roost for brands that haven’t developed sustainable business models.
Following the trajectories of many of the highest-profile DTC companies over the past decade has been whiplash-inducing. Everyone loved brands like Away and Outdoor Voices, along with their Instagram-friendly female founders—until they didn’t. The companies saw their sales tank in 2020 during the throes of the pandemic, and have yet to recover. As of July, sales at Outdoor Voices were down 20% year-to-date, according to Earnest Analytics, which compiles credit card data.
The playbook that powered these startups to early success is no longer viable. In the DTC era’s early years, startups raised millions of dollars of venture capital and then burned their cash at the Facebookaltar, buying their way to scale through Instagram clicks. Some companies went so far as to assume that their customers would behave like software-as-a-service subscribers, coming back to restock their razors or tampons again and again. Under such logic, brands could justify spending $100 to acquire a customer who was making a $20 initial purchase. But customers were more fickle than DTC pitch decks initially. In many cases, they disappeared into the internet ether.
4. How Many Times Will New York Fashion Week Be Declared Dead?
“A lot of people who say that NYFW is dead sound the same as old dudes claiming that rock is dead. Rock isn’t dead, fashion isn’t dead, it just looks different,” says fashion content creator and actor, Kelley Heyer. The industry has changed drastically within the last 10 years, especially with branding, the direct-to-consumer model, and the necessity of a social media presence. There’s also financial and environmental concerns to consider, especially with the accelerated trend cycle. “I don’t think people realize just how expensive it is for designers, especially newer ones, to put out a full collection two times a year,” says Heyer.
In other ways, NYFW has expanded, particularly in its pursuit of emerging designers. This year, Black in Fashion Council and Folklore held annual showrooms highlighting black designers specifically, and showcased 10 brands including Tia Adeola, Tejahn Burnett, and Khoi to name a few.