Ep 455: Harnessing the “Awareness Advantage” and Building Culturally Relevant Brands with Eugene Healey (@eugbrandstrat)

Summary

DTC Podcast Episode 455 Summary

Title: Harnessing the “Awareness Advantage” and Building Culturally Relevant Brands
Host/Author: DTC Newsletter and Podcast
Guest: Eugene Healey (@eugbrandstrat)
Release Date: November 11, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 455 of the DTC Podcast, the hosts engage in a comprehensive discussion with Eugene Healey, a renowned brand strategy analyst. The conversation delves into the interplay between brand and performance marketing, the significance of creativity in the age of new media, and strategies for building culturally relevant and authentic brands. Eugene brings his expertise in analyzing culture through the lens of branding, offering actionable insights for direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce brands aiming to scale effectively.

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1. Debunking the Brand vs. Performance Marketing Dichotomy

Eugene challenges the longstanding debate framing brand and performance marketing as opposing forces. He argues that this binary perspective is outdated and counterproductive.

• Eugene (00:00): “Brand versus performance. It's usually asked as kind of like a provocative question. I think we're finally getting to a point now where we can tell panelists and whoever else asks us this question that is a moronic question to ask.”

• Key Insights:

  • Performance Marketing's Rise: Performance marketing introduced measurable bottom-of-funnel metrics focusing on conversions, leading to substantial investment over the past decade.
  • Interdependence: Recent studies, such as the “Awareness Advantage” by Tracksuit and TikTok for Business, reveal that brand awareness significantly enhances performance outcomes, but not vice versa.
  • Practical Implications: Brands should invest concurrently in both brand building and performance marketing, recognizing that strong brand awareness can amplify the effectiveness of performance campaigns.

• Notable Quote:

  • Eugene (05:10): “Brand drives performance, but performance does not drive brand.”

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2. Emphasizing Creativity Over Budget in New Media

The conversation underscores the paramount importance of creativity over budget allocation, especially on platforms like TikTok where authentic and entertaining content prevails.

• Eugene (12:09): “Creativity is now more important than budget on new media platforms. Your ability to ideas are cheap, but your ability to execute ideas quickly and at scale is not process is still difficult.”

• Key Insights:

  • Case Studies:
    • Duolingo Owl: Demonstrates that entertaining content can singularly define a brand without relying on traditional brand associations.
    • Nutter Butter: Utilizes ironic anti-branding by remixing legacy assets, effective primarily for well-established brands with high brand awareness.
  • Smaller Brands Advantage: Smaller brands can leverage high creativity with lower budgets to gain significant traction, often outperforming larger brands with higher production costs but less creative content.
  • Platform Dynamics: TikTok's intimate, one-to-one medium favors personal and authentic messaging over highly produced advertisements, which often get scrolled past instinctively.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Eugene (15:06): “Smaller brands have over bigger brands. If you have an idea for something that you think might be interesting and hasn't maybe been attempted before, as long as it's in line with your brand associations.”
  • Avery (17:33): “Weird is just yourself and a brand identity. It doesn't have to mean that the substance.”

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3. Cooperating with Culture vs. Co-opting Culture

Eugene introduces the concept of “cooperating with culture” rather than merely co-opting it, emphasizing a more integrated and respectful approach to cultural engagement.

• Avery (09:58): “Eugene was just saying that he was using your phrase about cooperation, not co opting culture as a really.”

• Eugene (10:17): “We are in a little bit of a new paradigm of how brands are built right now... How messages are created and disseminated in this type of culture.”

• Key Insights:

  • Authentic Participation: Brands should seek novel and ownable ways to engage with cultural trends, ensuring alignment with their core values and brand narrative.
  • Legacy vs. New Brands: Established brands like Duolingo and Nutter Butter successfully navigate cultural engagement due to their strong brand foundations, whereas smaller brands might struggle without a clear brand strategy.

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4. Building Culturally Relevant Brands

The discussion highlights strategies for brands to embed themselves within cultural trends authentically, ensuring relevance and resonance with target audiences.

• Eugene (19:01): “How can you find many ways of delivering that to many different subcultures in many different ways rather than this kind of like top down command and control?”

• Avery (20:14): “Erewhon is a really good example where there's a lot of conversation around...product you can commodify.”

• Key Insights:

  • Niche Focus: Brands should focus deeply on specific niches or subcultures, which allows for more effective and authentic engagement than attempting broad, unfocused campaigns.
  • Scalability: By anchoring in particular subcultures, brands can scale across multiple related niches, maintaining consistency while catering to diverse audience segments.
  • Examples:
    • Erewhon’s Smoothies: Tied to trends like “little treat culture,” reflecting a shift where affordable luxury food experiences replace traditional luxury goods.
    • Vessi and Victory Gear: Demonstrate how honing in on specific avatars (e.g., basketball players) can strengthen brand associations and enhance overall brand performance.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Eugene (26:53): “What is the thing that you think is actually a little bit more enduring and how can that tie into your core brand or product associations?”
  • Avery (24:26): “People want to be in their physical circle, the first to experience what's trending in their digital sphere.”

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5. Navigating the Current Cultural Landscape

Eugene shares his analysis of the evolving cultural landscape, focusing on the impacts of rapid information dissemination, AI, and the potential decline of traditional D2C models.

• Eugene (38:13): “TikTok has accelerated us to...terminal media velocity. The speed at which information is delivered to us and images are delivered to us, I think is about as fast as it can come through a screen and our eyes.”

• Key Insights:

  • Peak Internet Theory: Suggests that the volume and speed of information might be reaching a limit, potentially leading to a shift in how brands engage with audiences.
  • AI’s Impact: AI technologies like ChatGPT could undermine traditional D2C strategies by enabling mass production of brand messages, necessitating more personalized and authentic brand engagements.
  • Channel Agnostic Branding: The traditional channel-focused branding strategies are becoming obsolete. Brands need to develop strategies that are flexible and adaptive across various platforms and media.
  • Shift in Marketing Models: Moving away from broad, top-down advertising campaigns to a more fragmented, bottom-up approach involving influencers, creators, and grassroots movements.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Eugene (39:01): “What are the implications of being a brand that exists in this type of culture? How do we need to almost reframe the way that we look at brand building as a result of that?”
  • Eugene (45:30): “The brand is constructed as the aggregate of a thousand fragmented moments in which you experience that.”

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6. Methodologies for Crafting Effective Brand Strategies

Eugene outlines his approach to developing robust brand strategies, emphasizing the importance of internal alignment and authentic narratives.

• Eugene (30:13): “Brand strategy projects...the art of making small differences large. But what you need is to identify what that difference is and then really blow it out.”

• Key Insights:

  • Corporate Therapy: A process involving intimate and deep exploration of the brand’s vision, personal histories of founders, and unique perspectives to build a compelling brand narrative.
  • Scrapbooking Exercise: Encourages brands to compile various inspirations (brands, music, imagery, poems) to formulate their own unique narrative framework.
  • Strategic Framework: Ensures that every business decision, from product development to marketing channels, aligns with the brand’s core values and desired associations.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Eugene (33:34): “Brand is an entire operation thing. It influences your four P's, your channels, your product, your pricing structure.”
  • Eugene (34:20): “Having a framework to think about these decisions from a brand point of view is the same as actually having it from a strategic point of view.”

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7. The Role of AI in Brand Building

Avery and Eugene discuss the contentious role of AI in brand creation and management, highlighting its limitations in capturing authentic human narratives.

• Avery (46:59): “AI art is a fallacy because art is the human experience captured on your.”

• Key Insights:

  • Limitations of AI: While AI can aid in collating and analyzing data, it falls short in generating genuinely authentic brand narratives that resonate on a human level.
  • Authenticity Over Automation: Brands should prioritize authentic storytelling and human creativity over reliance on AI-generated content, which can lack depth and emotional connection.
  • Strategic Use of AI: AI can be valuable for workflow optimization and data analysis but should not replace the human element in brand storytelling.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Eugene (47:40): “The chat function is hidden. So it's not even that. And every platform has followed suit...”

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8. Embracing a Mosaic Brand Strategy

Eugene introduces the concept of a "mosaic" brand strategy, where a brand is perceived through a multitude of fragmented yet coherent moments rather than a single overarching narrative.

• Eugene (49:32): “The brand is constructed as the aggregate of a thousand fragmented moments in which you experience that.”

• Key Insights:

  • Fragmented Moments: In the current media landscape, brands must create numerous independent pieces of content that collectively build a consistent brand image.
  • Decentralized Brand Exposure: Consumers interact with brands across various touchpoints, necessitating that each piece of content independently reflects the brand’s core values and associations.
  • Consistency through Diversity: While content is varied and tailored to different subcultures and platforms, it must consistently align with the brand’s overarching strategy and narrative.

• Notable Quotes:

  • Eugene (51:05): “Your brand is constructed as the aggregate of a thousand fragmented moments in which you experience that.”

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Conclusion

Episode 455 of the DTC Podcast offers a profound exploration of modern brand building strategies, emphasizing the inseparability of brand and performance marketing, the critical role of creativity, and the necessity of authentic cultural engagement. Eugene Healey provides actionable insights and thought-provoking theories that challenge traditional branding paradigms, equipping DTC brands with the knowledge to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital and cultural landscape.

Follow Eugene Healey:

• Instagram: @eugbrandstrat
• Other Platforms: Eugene is active on various platforms; for the latest updates, refer to his Instagram profile.

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Transcript

[Eugene]

If any of you are familiar with my content, it's really culture analyzed through the lens of brand. Brand versus performance. It's usually asked as kind of like a provocative question. I think we're finally getting to a point now where we can tell panelists and whoever else asks us this question. That is a moronic question to ask. The duolingo owl was the first instance of a brand demonstrating that you don't actually need to have specific associations tied to the types of content that you're building. It just needs to be entertaining. There's actually only room for one duolingo owl. If everyone does that type of chaot and unhinged marketing, it's not going to be pleasant. Take a step back from the lesson that you see right in front of you and look at the big picture lesson, which is creativity is now more important than budget on new media platforms.

[Eric]

We have something really different for everyone today. I think it's a perfect topic to be talking about right now. Basically, I saw Eugene on TikTok or reels a few months ago and just really enjoyed his analysis of late stage capitalism and brand marketing. All sorts of neat things. And then internally, I had two women at the company message me and be like, you've got to get Eugene on the podcast. Abes is going to join us in progress. She was one of the people reached out on Instagram and here we are. We're one of our first big cultural analysts on the podcast. Eugene, welcome.

[Eugene]

Nice to be here. My first podcast.

[Eric]

Oh, nice. Here you're used to the editing. You're used to having final edit of all your, of all your videos.

[Eugene]

I'm also like, I'm also not a big podcast listener, which I know is a bit of a strange thing to open with, but it's because I ride my bike everywhere, so I don't have a commute. So that makes it. Yeah, makes it difficult to be the, to be like, it's the consumption occasion of podcasts.

[Eric]

Makes sense. Well, walk us through your sort of hero's journey in this brand marketing world.

[Eugene]

Yeah, so, I mean, I did a bachelor of Commerce thinking I was going to be an investment banker. I actually, when I was 8 years old and parents asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I told them that I wanted to be an investment banker, which I can only assume was like a really, like, sociopathic thing to hear.

[Eric]

The parents were like, oh, what's. What happened? Who hurt you?

[Eugene]

Yeah, exactly. There was a lot of, how the hell did you even get that idea? And it was from, it was from our neighbors who was, who told me about what investment bankers did. I was like, yeah, that's what I want to be. But I ended up actually spending quite a long time at uni. I did a finance degree, I did finance and economics and then in my Masters I did management and marketing. And it was in my masters that I realized that that was actually the direction that I was more likely to head towards my journey. I taught for quite a long time as well. So I was a tutor and I am now actually also a lecturer. So one semester a year I generally lecture at the University, University of Melbourne in branding, funnily enough. And in terms of how I found myself in this career, it's actually probably quite an uncommon career path in that my first job was as a brand strategy intern. It's quite an uncommon way to find yourself in brand strategy because to do it well and to do it well at a brand strategy consultancy rather than just like a full service ad agency, you need to have an understanding of business. So you really need to understand what makes a business tick and how a business makes money. And you need to be able to speak the language of business, not speak the language of brand. So you don't ask in a brand consulting project, oh, what's the, you know, what's your personality like? Like, how do people perceive your brand? Do you ask, you know, you ask about the 4Ps you ask like, what, how does this organization make money? You ask about market orientation and things like that. So I can basically say that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing for the first three years of my career and it was a very, very steep learning curve to get to where I was. And I've been consulting in agencies for about eight years now, in and out. I did a brief stint at a startup as well and now I've stepped out on my own to do a little bit more. It's still brand strategy consulting, but probably looked at more through the lens of culture. So yeah, my, if any of you are familiar with my content, it's really culture analyzed through the lens of brand and helping brands to understand how to play into that culture. And I don't like to use the word authentically, but I use, I like to use the term to find novel ways to get into that culture and to find ownable ways of participating in that culture to.

[Eric]

And this is Abe's abs is going to join us. But her term was to cooperate with culture rather than co opt culture.

[Eugene]

I have used that term so many times in conversations since we spoke a couple of weeks ago. I just think it's a really. Yeah, it's a really great way of don't swim upstream, swim downstream.

[Eric]

I want to dive into that, but.

[Eugene]

I want to, I want to.

[Eric]

I don't want to bury the lead here because your most recent video, you're saying, is one of your most successful videos that you've had, where you excavate the old canard of brand versus performance and call it out for the kind of shill of a debate it actually is with some real data. Can you talk to us about that?

[Eugene]

Yeah. So this is a conversation that has raged, I would say, throughout industry for the last 10 to 15 years, ever since performance marketing became a thing. And I think what performance marketing really did successfully was that it added metrics into the conversation around marketing in a way that it didn't have before. So these were bottom of funnel metrics as well because they measured conversions and there was a lot of conversion optimization that happened as part of the process. Now that led to a systemic over investment in performance marketing over the past 10 years. But also it led to an over and over indexing of what we believed performance marketing could achieve. But somehow I'm not quite sure how it happened. We got brand versus performance framed up as if they were in somehow opposition to one another. And this is something that I think, you know, I've spoken to other people who are other brand people who have been on panels. They're constantly asked brand versus performance. And it's usually asked at the end as kind of like a provocative question. I think we're finally getting to a point now where we can tell panelists and whoever else asks us this question that is a moronic question to ask, like, why are these things being framed as a binary? I think on this, on my videos, someone made a comment they were like water or food, should we sleep or breathe? Like what? You know, what is it about these two that makes them seem that they are in opposition? Because it's actually the opposite. So we're talking about, are we talking about top of funnel or are we talking about bottom of funnel? You need both. And the data that has come out most recently, which is from a brand tracking platform called tracksuit and TikTok for business, they did a study together is now called the awareness advantage, which shows basically brand drives performance, but performance does not drive brand. So the stats were basically, if your brand is known by 40% of customers on TikTok. So if you have a rough brand awareness of 40%, your performance marketing outcomes are 43% more efficient than if your brand's known by 30% of customers on TikTok, high awareness brands get nearly 3% the conversion rate of low awareness brands. And then the third piece was as well that there's no correlation between click through rates and brand awareness. So basically saying the number of likes and comments and shares on their own on your stuff are vanity metrics. Like I'm not saying that they won't drive performance marketing outcomes but they don't drive brand outcomes so they won't increase your level of brand awareness. So it was basically framing that up as saying these things aren't a binary, one drives the other. You need to find ways to invest in both at the same time. Don't expect one is able to perform the other. I mean there is a small correlation. A brand ad can also function as a performance ad, but a performance ad absolutely cannot perform as a brand ad. Like I think we were having the conversation a couple of, a couple of days ago or I was seeing it on LinkedIn where people were talking about the Mac does that the new bottom of funnel ads that Mac are running on digital. We were just talking about how absolutely woeful they are. Like this, this is like this is Apple, this brand using these very clumsy bottom of funnel executional things were like not only does this not build brand, I think this actually damages brand. So it's just basically being able to understand how these things work together and why it's important to invest in long term brand building.

[Eric]

I 100% agree and I would say from the performance marketer standpoint the reason that the conversation happens is because the nature, the creative hungry nature of these platforms seems to require or from the performance marketers mindset requires like endless variations to sort of feed the machine and test. And so therefore there are instances and I think you kind of nailed at the end there the question is is there the opportunity for performance to detract from brand in a way? And because you know sometimes on creat the race to the bottom works so like a sticky note that says 30% off or whatever like a photo of that. And so the, so the question, I don't think there's, there's really not a question of whether brand and obviously this data shows it that you know whether, whether brand impacts the performance down the line. Of course it does. The question is how much, how hard can you push on performance before you get negative returns on brand?

[Eugene]

Yeah, I mean it's how hard you get. Well it's a, I Think it is a, you know, if we don't call these things binary, but it's a balance of like. Yeah, it's a, it becomes a drag on brand when you underinvest chronically on brand as a result.

[Eric]

Nice. We just put aves. We got Avery joining the call. Did you, did you just close the deal, Avery?

[Avery]

Maybe, maybe. Okay, very close.

[Eric]

Eugene was just saying that he was using your phrase about cooperation, not co opting culture as a really. And maybe. And maybe we could dive into that, that a little bit. Like maybe, maybe by way of talking about how you work with brands. Now, Eugene, talk a little bit about how that message is carrying out with the people you talk to.

[Eugene]

I think, I mean, it's funny because, like, I'm starting to get more speaking opportunities and people are reaching out. I think particularly people are starting to call me the youth culture or think of me as the youth culture guy. I don't necessarily think that that's the case. I think I'm a culture analyst that happens to understand where young people, a particular place where young people gather, which is the Internet. And as a result of that, you know, I'm just, I'm trying to find ways to help people understand. For me, it is about if we talk about the Internet, not understanding the Internet as a platform. So, oh, it's social and it's digital and this. I'm like, no, no, no. The Internet is a mediating force that shapes the way that we interact with one another and shapes the way that we understand ourselves and the culture. The Internet culture, which is a global, fully connected culture, moves in a very particular way. You know, and I don't think a lot of organizations, probably when I talk about that, I'm thinking about larger organizations that are more shaped by legacy brand building techniques. That's, that's how they understand things. And so what I'm almost trying to get them to understand when I talk about cooperate, don't co opt or entertain, don't annoy, et cetera, is basically, we are in a little bit of a new paradigm of how brands are built right now. And that is in part due to the fragmentation of the media landscape, but also just the idea of how messages are created and disseminated in this type of culture.

[Eric]

And there are brands, you know, there are brands that are, you know, everyone will point to duolingo, right? Or what's the really unhinged one right now? There's, there's one brand that's like nut or butter that's just doing absolutely unhinged things like. Do you see those exact. Like those are shining unique examples. But I feel like anyone who tries to like copy them without coming up with their own unique thing is gonna, is gonna fail.

[Eugene]

Yeah. So I, you know, I actually, I made a video on this funnily enough of basically brands learning the wrong lessons from something. And yes, the duo link, the Duolingo owl was the first instance of a brand demonstrating that you don't actually need to have specific associations tied to the typ of content that you're building. It just needs to be entertaining. Nut about it was an example of the fact that this particular type of ironic anti branding, using these legacy assets but remixing them almost in a horror genre, that can be really effective, but it's effective for a legacy brand that has high brand awareness and brand salience in the category and it allows them to flex their brand assets in a particular way. And also they were the first to do it or at least they're the first to do it in this particular era or you know, um, so those. What the lessons are there is if you're a first mover and you come up with something creative, yes, you can execute on it, but there's actually only room for one Duolingo owl. There's actually only room for a couple of nut about us. If everyone does that type of chaotic and unhinged marketing, it's not going to be pleasant. In fact, it's going to be incredibly unpleasant and only Nutter Butter is really going to benefit from it. So I try to tell brands take a step back from the lesson that you see right in front of you and look at the big picture lesson which is, and this is one that's relevant for smaller brands, creativity is now more important than budget on new media platforms. So your ability to ideas are cheap, but your ability to execute ideas quickly and at scale is not process is still difficult. And it's certainly something that smaller brands have over bigger brands. If you have an idea for something that you think might be interesting and hasn't maybe been attempted before, as long as it's in line with your brand associations. And I would say like having a brand strategy is a really big part of this, then your ability to just bring that to life with an iPhone camera is as effective, if not more effective than a highly produced ad that has nothing at the core of it. So something that has no creativity but a high budget is, is no longer nearly as effective as something that is high creativity, low budget. And in fact, in fact I think on TikTok a lot of people will see a piece of communic that is too highly produced and immediately think to themselves, this is an ad. I'm just going to scroll up. There's almost an instinctive rejection of that. Like you have to, you know, this would be Marshall McLuhan stuff of your medium has to conform to the message. Basically. The medium itself is very intimate. On TikTok, even TikTok Reels, whatever, it's very intimate. It's one to one. People are expecting quite personal messaging. And your ability to deliver that is actually more often than not comes from delivering something at a lower budget rather than a higher budget. That's the lesson to take, don't take. Let's do chaotic and unhinged because there's, there's like, there's no room for that unless you have a particular spin on it that you're thinking you're going to be able to execute in a novel way.

[Avery]

I think something that I think about too with those legacy brands that get away with like that basic chaotic and unhinged is like what makes people excited about that content is there's like so much friction between that owl and what we think about. When we think about Duolingo like that owl and the app and like your dad learning a language on it, they're so different that what's exciting to people and why they engage with it is like these two things are almost at odds with each other. And so when the legacy brands are going like wacko Bonko on Twitter, if you think about your own brand, if you're a smaller brand owner, you're just some faceless brand on the Internet. So that friction and that tension doesn't actually translate. It's just weird off putting and people don't understand what you're doing. So I feel like that's a big takeaway for those smaller brands too. It's like why that's working is because nobody expects Wendy's to pop off in the comment section of a TikTok. And so when they do, it's like, that is so funny. Whoa, Wendy's going wild. But when you do it and nobody knows what you actually sell, they don't know your brand. And you might not even have a brand strategy. That's when it just unfurls a bit and the pieces just don't fit right. And it feels really awkward and uncomfortable to experience that content because I don't already know the brand. And either that friction or that harmony doesn't exist for me. So it's just like why are you screaming at me about your protein powders? Like, I don't know what this is. I don't know why this would be interesting coming from you, because I actually don't know who you are. So that's why the, like, the leading with that type of stuff I always try to dissuade people from.

[Eric]

Whereas your main message in when we have you on aves to talk about creative is keeping it weird and following a lark or, you know, following these ideas, being creative, whether you're working on your brand's organic content or whether you're. You're creating ads for ad platforms.

[Avery]

Yeah, I think this is a good podcast to define weird, because weird does not mean what Nutter Butter is doing. Weird means, like, do not sort of, as Eugene was saying, those highly produced ads that don't have any substance to them. For me, as someone who's authentic, weird is just yourself and a brand identity. It doesn't have to be like, I don't know, I can't think of, like, the most unhinged piece of content that I've seen lately. But it doesn't have to mean that the substance.

[Eric]

I watched that last night. I'm still traumatized by the way.

[Avery]

Speaking of substance, I would love to watch the substance. But yeah, it's kind of like weird is going to be different. And weird should just boil down to, like, freedom of creativity.

[Eugene]

Yeah, I think that's a. I think that's a really great way of putting it. But then it's almost. When you say weird, you need your audience to have a certain level of sophistication. And when I say audience, I mean like the marketing team or the client to have a certain level of sophistication to understand what weird is. And weird isn't, you know, if you are a, Like a. If you're a finance guy or an ops person by trade, your understanding of weird might be a little bit more of, oh, that feels weird. That feels unnatural. Which I think. Whereas I think what you're talking about is this idea of creativity and novelty and being able to express a message in a way that feels. In a way that feels different to other ways or other brands in your category and how they would apply their lens to that message. I think, you know, that the combination of being able to be in an era or being able to operationalize your business to be in constant creativity mode while also having a strategy that ladders back to. I just say, like, it's as basic as getting everyone on the same page around what actually it is that we want to talk about what are the specific measurable favorable brand associations that we want to build that tiny little piece of mental real estate. And then how crazy can we go in how we are going to build those actual associations?

[Eric]

It reminds me of this talk that Tony Yu from Vessi gave at our first event in 2022 and it actually influenced Drew Archiolo from Victory Gear to really reshape how he thought about his marketing essentially. But it was this idea of like sat with your brand, like really focus on who your core audience is, who your core avatars are and then work on ways that you can like saturate their world with your brand. Like so that you can be everywhere. It's like Vessi is this waterproof shoe company that like 1 in 12 people in Vancouver own, for instance. And it's just got this huge association with the rain and they drill down on all these different segments of their audience and, and found ways through ads, through events, through. Just found a way to be everywhere. Exactly. For their people. It just has just established them as this absolute world class brand. And then Victory Gear did the same thing with athletes and they instead of going from all sports, they went to their basketball players. And then by honing in on the white hot avatar of basketball players for this athletic insole, it's actually improved their performance with all other sports as well because that association became so strong with that, that group of athletes, which I think is interesting. So go deep, not broad always.

[Eugene]

Yeah, it would have really helped. Or big or as you're saying, they're going deep allows you to go broad. So I mean we can get nerdy about this. Talking about the Byron Sharp model of brand built, brand building when he says you should be targeting everyone in your category. But I just don't think that's realistic unless you have the budget to target everyone in your category. When it's talking, when we're talking about how brands grow from small to large, yeah, you've got a limited budget. How are you going. That's a really good way of talking about it. How are you going to actually make sure that you are spread in enough saturation with your media? Because that costs a lot of money basically to like spread that across the. Over the whole market, you're spreading yourself incredibly thin. And so by going deep into one niche and really honing in on a specific benefit, which then would have translated to a specific association around performance.

[Eric]

I would say it was dunk, learn to dunk. I follow my journey as a, you know, a Former athlete who learned how to dunk. That was basically what did it.

[Eugene]

Yeah. And then, and then from there now they've built. Well, they've also given themselves more resources, but they've built that a performance association, I think for like for brands, when, for brands and how brands grow these days. The concept that I like to use is how can you do niche at scale. So how can you find, you know, whatever, a subculture or something, whatever to anchor in, to deliver to one very particular need. But then how can you find many ways of delivering that to many different subcultures in many different ways rather than this kind of like top down command and control, just like carpet bombing from up high. Like it is really. It is. We're really starting to have to embrace this more bottom up style of brand building these days.

[Avery]

Yeah, really interesting. I was building a strategy around brick and mortar, which I feel like anyone who works in brand and especially if you like lean on the performance side, the idea of like, you know, you can't attribute something to someone going into a store. But it gets really interesting when like you see a bigger brand move into brick and mortar or even we're just talking about in this particular case like upscale grocery stores. And so we're talking about like right from. This is kind of a niche reference that only Eric will get. But Root Cellar, which is a small grocery chain in like on Vancouver island, they have this green sauce that is so synonymous with root cellar. Like if I say I'm going to Root Cellar later, people will say, you got to get this green sauce. And how that translates up to something like Erewhon, where they've got like Hailey Bieber's making a smoothie and then Olivia Rodrigo is making a smoothie. And so those smoothies are so synonymous with Erewhon that you can then commodify that single product or that single experience and use that for ads. Because if you just think about like these groceries are better, that's a very difficult thing to, you know, start thinking about paid media and brand and advertising for chains like that. How do you actually get people into a store is a very interesting conversation. Especially when you think about like how people absorb content on the Internet and what the Internet is, that very broad messaging. Even if you are Erewhon is not going to work. It has to be tied to like this person in my. I always say that people want to be in their physical circle, the first to experience what's trending in their digital sphere. So it's like I see that Air One Smoothie I love Hailey Bieber. I am in my twenties. I'm going to go get that smoothie. It's going to.

[Eric]

I've already heard a joke about how it's a $30 smoothie, so when it only costs 25, it's. It's a bargain.

[Avery]

Exactly. Yeah. And it's like tying these things to an experience that is shareable for, like, big brands. We're having this conversation is so interesting. Just like the dunk, like, learn to dunk is such an easy, quick thing to say because then I'm tying something to the brand rather than like this shoe. Maybe it was an insole, Like I could get this insole, but there are a lot of other insoles. And so that niching down, I mean, you can do it. Like, obviously green sauce smoothies, dunking are very different experiences, but when you tie it to something, it's so much more human than just. The insoles are good and Olympic level athletes use them. That's such a difficult, like, terrain to journey. As a customer, it's like, there's no.

[Eric]

You're supposed to learn to dunk with me.

[Avery]

Yeah. So obviously I would love that. Get in my LeBron era. I'm there.

[Eugene]

Yeah. And I think, I mean, you touched on a couple of really interesting things here. Like, I've. I have lots to say about Erewhon, which I think is really interesting because I obviously live quite far away. But because we are all on the Internet, we all know exactly the culture that we're referencing. But I think there's a really nice piece in there, in that, in that whole era. One moment. Part of it is the, like, learning how to use product as marketing. But also it's something that, you know, something that we talked about before the show was this idea of, okay, how do we authentically participate in trends and what, what is a trend? Blah, blah. And I think this, this is something that a trend forecaster called Julia Michalova, I saw on LinkedIn, she talked about, she's explicitly a trend forecaster. And she said in our industry we've experienced semantic inflation where what we consider a trend is not what it used to be. So she was basically saying, like, we actually need a new word for demure and mindful. That's not a trend. A trend is something that actually reconciles some underlying tension. So she's like, under consumption core, that is a trend because there's something in the or de influencing that is a trend. And I think if we look at Erewhon, what they are leveraging is Something to a trend that's to do with little trait culture and how little trait. Little trait culture as the new lipstick effect, basically. So if your readers unfamiliar, it's basically in times of economic strife, lipstick sales go up because they. Because historically people want to buy themselves something that is much smaller that they're. That they're then able to communicate some. Some sort of value. And little treat culture is kind of an extension of that of things have gotten so expensive now that food has become the new luxury. So ironically, we're now looking for. It's now we can't afford l. Luxury retail experiences. We certainly can't afford a house, but what we can afford is a luxury food experience. So a $30 smoothie becomes what was a $200 top five years ago. And everyone's been able to capitalize on that cultural trend quite successfully. So that's like my advice for brands looking to authentically participate in cultures or whatever is what. What is the thing that you think is actually a little bit more enduring and how can that tie into your core brand or product associations? So, so like Erewhon obviously is a food store, so they were able to tap into this trend without it being like, I'm reaching across the aisle into a complete different category to have this conversation. It was in line with the types of brand associations that they were trying to build and how they're trying to position themselves and market.

[Avery]

What I think about too, like, especially with the, like, brands that we typically work with at Pallet House, is also what is a, like, easy first step for someone to take. Because Erewhon also is a really good example where there's a lot of conversation around CMOs. That's like $50 or something. But that is not an easy first baby step for someone to take. But everyone likes smoothies. It's an easy thing. And so I also like to, when we're doing that work that Eugene was spelling out of distilling, how do you have that conversation organically? What is that product you can commodify. It's also ties back to. I feel like. Eric, I just sent you a message. I've talked about the lipstick effect so much on this podcast because it's so important for the brands that we service. But what is that price point that is really easy to digest as a first brand experience? And even if the smoothie is $25, that's not the weird niche product that you find in Erewhon, like a cmos. It's something that everyone likes. It's something that's you know, sub $30. So it's an easy first step to take because a lot of the like, brands that typically listen here, like, you are going to be focused on like, new customer acquisition. You are focused on cold traffic, introducing the brand. And so I think something that also really matters is introducing the brand through a medium that like, is achievable to purchase. It's not something weird, it's not something wacky, it's not something that's going to break the bank. It's a really nice first introduction. So I feel like there's the lipstick kind of theory straddles those two things where like people, as Eugene said, can't always like, it's way difficult to buy a house in the climate that we're in today. Things are just way tougher financially. So there's this like, little treat, sweet treat, I deserve it. But then also it's like that's just doable for people and it doesn't feel really scary to approach a new brand. It's like you get a feeling of the quality, the experience and the risk is really low for them.

[Eric]

It's just inflation is marketing and consumerism in this time of like mass inflation is just interesting. I said, I went to the substance last night and I, my girlfriend bought the tickets and I bought the popcorn and I was like, we got, I went and we got two, you know, we got one popcorn, one candy and two things. It was like 34 bucks. And my first thought was like, wow, that's actually pretty cheap. Like the fact that the movies now, like, you know, you can go out for some snacks at a movies and have that be not the most inflated price that you'll face that day. And so it's interesting that like when a smoothie at Erewhon, for instance, Maybe does cost $25, but our expectation of what we're willing to pay in order to have that experience is higher now. We're just like, you know, you can't leave the house for less than 100 bucks.

[Eugene]

Yeah, but at the. But, but also specifically with Errone, that's a luxury good. So there's a veblen effect there of the like, the price determines that. Like it's, it's in many ways it's passed beyond the rational price barrier and it's become an emotional purchase.

[Eric]

Yeah, 100%. Well, take us back a little bit to, you know, so think of the brands listening to this podcast. They're really all over the spectrum in terms of seven to eight to nine figure brands. But Talk a little bit about your method when it comes to helping brands really hone in on what their brand strategy is.

[Eugene]

Yeah, so I mean, I think we've spoken about this. I work with brands. There's really two ways that I work with brands. Generally if you are a smaller brand, that is a founder led brand, like there are actually brand strategies, projects that we run together of, okay, let's define this thing that you want to do that, that, that you want to express through brand. Whereas if they're bigger brands, generally it's actually more working with the teams on and drawing more of my lecturing practice on education. So here is the modern way of brand building. This is how you need to operationalize your team to set it up. When it comes to brand strategy projects, what I really like to do, I mean brand is basically the brand strategy is the art of making small differences large. But what you need is to identify what that difference is and then really blow it out. And I think founding narratives are a really important part of that. So we need to help basically to get you. This is why I call it corporate therapy, because it's really getting you to be able to articulate yourself. What is your vision of the world as a person, what should that be? And then how is that executed through this particular product or brand. So in my process it's really, I get them to answer questions not just about the brand, but themselves, their background, their education, their professional history, their personal history. Why did you quit your job? I really want to understand people's like unique perspective on the world and then how it translates and then we work to how it translates through that specific building business that's being built. And I get them to basically do a like scrapbooking exercise, like show me brands, music, imagery, poems, like literally whatever that you find compelling as an individual. And then let's use that as the basis and then, you know, wheel together work to how that translates to a brand narrative. And I think that's important because basically there's kind of two things to that. One is that you're talking about the stuff day in, day out. How are you going to be able to actually talk about this every single day? Like, do you really want to just use someone else's words? Like, I really believe that it has to come from within you. And what I find really gratifying is after you've done a project, these people have found a new way to, to talk more authentically about the thing that they have spoken about for so many years, but have always just kind of Said in a little bit of a generic way, like it really helps them to express the why of their own business. It's also useful because, and I say this, if you're a small business owner or if you're like a brand owner, you're a content creator. Like, that's kind of part of the new era of brand building. So either get used to being in front of camera or get used to paying someone else to be in front of that camera. That acts as, as the front face of your business. But make sure that that person is an accurate reflection of your ideology as a founder. And then the final thing that I say to people is like, the reason that I consider brand important, like what I, what I would say is, you know, through my work, what I try to do is make businesses brand led rather than, I don't, you know, I don't actually write brand strategies anymore. I support exec teams to write their own strategies because that's what I believe. That's how I believe a strategy should be created. It should be originated from within the team, but it's basically helping them to understand that brand is an entire operation thing. It's not a marketing or worse, a comms thing. So it influences your four P's, it influences the types of consumers or subcultures you want to anchor in. It influences the decisions that you make about the channels that you want to pursue, the type of product you create. Brand led, like new product development as well. It influences your pricing structure and the.

[Eric]

Pack size you write your emails.

[Eugene]

Exactly, yeah. So having a framework to think about these decisions from a brand point of view is the same as actually having it from a strategic point of view. Because now you're starting to think about, okay, each of these decisions, how do they ladder back to a consistent, desirable set of associations that we have in the team all agreed that this is what we're working towards, this is what we're trying to build. So it just gives them a framework basically to actually start to think through their problems in a more systematic way.

[Eric]

Aves, from your side on the, you know, creative advertising front, what kind of challenges are you running into with, I guess, the brands we work with and their perception of their brand? Like, I guess, is it music to your ears when a brand comes in and they've already thought about all this? Are you helping brands work through this from the ads? Like, what do you see?

[Avery]

Yeah, it's interesting. I think I got to come in with a privileged, unique viewpoint on those things because my previous work was really centered around Like, I always joke, it was just like loosening out people who run for office. Because when a politician usually gets in front of a group of regular human beings, there's a really odd air to them and they feel too rehearsed and they just feel unhuman. I remember at one point working with sort of collective and reading this stat about especially women running for office, that wearing a turtleneck is a really bad idea because when you can't see your neck, you're already not reading as human to sort of people you're trying to convince to vote for you. So being a floating head on a TV is really off putting for people because they're already not. Your first impression is not human. And so when you add that layer of you can't see a neck or more skin, it's like freaky for people. So I got to come in with that background of understanding that a lot of the times what I would find is some of those people were just really weird. But a lot of the times it was this, like, protectiveness, which I really connect with, like the idea of corporate therapy because they have a perspective. And this is the same with brand owners. They have a perspective, they have a reason and they have a story. But as human beings, we kind of put a shell around that sometimes because we think this is so unique to me. This was my vision, my point of view. I started this company because X, Y or Z. And nobody else is going to understand this. Like, fundamentally, I am alone on this island. Nobody else will be able to connect with it the same way that I can. But like, as Eugene said, is the exact opposite. It's that, like, genuineness and that story that comes through and sort of accelerates growth for people. So I think I just tend to, if someone comes in and they don't see that value, kind of do the same thing where, like, I think I mentioned this before, I would often like get people to physically move before heading out to a stage because it just sort of releases something in you. And so you do that the same with like, sort of talking through an idea. And like, the scrapbooking thing is great, where it's like you just have to shift out of that shell and sort of break it in a way. Because it's not the truth. There's not a need to have a protective. Like, this is just my little thing. No one else is going to know. I have to make this consumable for a mass audience. The thing that's consumable for a mass audience is the weird, authentic. I made this, like, random business, because it spoke to me. So it's really interesting. Yeah. Working with clients or when we're running audits, like, being able to point that out to people and sometimes they're quite shocked to be like, I don't think, like, a picture of me in the basement making these things by hand ten years ago is going to work. But it's like, that's what gets people excited. Especially if we're like, framing this through paid media online. Like, that's what people care about. It's this story of, like, you're just a weird little guy in your basement making this, like, prototype. Like, that is so interesting inherently. What's not interesting is the elevator pitch that you give. Trying to, like investors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They often, like, fall into that where it's like their founder story becomes their investor's pitch and the things kind of become one and the same. I haven't seen the substance. I'm too scared, but I feel like it's kind of like the substance where there's no control getting flashbacks all day from it.

[Eric]

But we'll leave that for now. I'm just looking at your other videos here, and there's so many ones that would be interesting to dive into. I love your commentary on millennials as a generation, about just where we're at in late stage capitalism. I think that's. I think that's always an interesting topic. What do you have to say about the economy? Not the economy necessarily, but just what's going on in the culture. Eugene, what's happening?

[Eugene]

Jesus Christ. That's a incredibly expansive question. Look, there are a couple. I have lots of thoughts of this because a lot of what I've been doing has been reporting on what is. And I'm starting to field a lot of questions on where are we going, where I think we are. I. This is a. This is pure conjecture. I'm wondering if we're reaching peak Internet. So it's a. It's a theory that I have a pet theory. But I think what TikTok has done is it's accelerated us to. I'm calling it terminal media velocity. So the speed at which information is delivered to us and images are delivered to us, I think is about as fast as it can come through a.

[Eric]

Screen and our eyes.

[Eugene]

Yeah, through a screen and our eyes, like we are. We are constantly under assault. And it's. It's beyond our. I think it's beyond our ability for at least the conscious mind to be able to process it. And it's. And it Is this. It's this constant stream. Like it's the everywhere, everything everywhere, all at once model of media, of images, art, entertainment, news, events like environmental catastrophes, ads, somewhere in the middle of that, all delivered all at once. And I basically tell one of the workshops that I run is like, what are the implications of being a brand that exists in this type of culture? How do we need to almost reframe the way that we look at brand building as a result of that? What I am wondering is, are we heading to a moment where we're heading to a mass unplug event? I have a couple of little streams in the air that I'm seeing. I think the first and most important one is that offline is becoming a luxury good or a luxury product. Like, I can't remember who it was. It was like Loewe or someone's like organizing book clubs these days. And you know, like dating apps are in systematic decline. Like people are meeting up at run clubs and speed dating and things again.

[Eric]

Like there's that Netflix documentary, join us or die or something. And it's a. It's just about all these studies about humans as we've unplugged from all of our communities and social, you know, calendars and into our devices. Like it's literally killing us that we're not like that. You have to engage the world in these other ways. Yeah.

[Eugene]

Because I think it's interesting, the way that social media was originally sold to us was that it was social media, you know, and so it was, yes, this is a media platform, but fundamentally it's about a new way of connecting. Fundamentally, they've all abandoned that premise now they're just media. They're just now media platforms. Right. And so I'd say TikTok is TV with a chat function. TikTok is, you know, TikTok is Twitch, basically. But actually the chat function is hidden. So it's not even that. And every, and you know, every platform is sort of, in a way has followed suit. So it's not that I think these platforms are going anywhere. I think that they are going to continue to cannibalize legacy media platforms like YouTube. If you look at what YouTube's doing, YouTube is now allowing creators to upload thumbnails and start. That actually allowed them to create episodic shows that they can watch on YouTube. But it's going to become more and more like entertainment and the social elements fallen out. So where are we going to get that social element from now? Is it actually going to be something that causes us to disconnect. I have two other pet theories as part of this. One of them is basically what's the implication of AI? So AI. So we AI. You know, obviously I would say from the perspective of even if you look at ChatGPT is pretty extraordinary in what it can do. And we know that this is going to continue to accelerate once it gets to the point where not only can it do most of people's jobs, but everyone knows that it's going to, that it's able to do most people's jobs. Because right now, let's say it's going to take three to five years, maybe more, for corporations to actually be able to catch up to this. But once we know that it's possible that your job can be done by AI, we're going to want to meet people in person. We're going to want to be damn sure that you aren't on a screen that's got a chat prompt running that is creating responses for you on the side. So you're actually just, you know, I'm not actually interviewing you, I'm interviewing a large language model that's based on you. Theoretically, we're actually going to I think have a preference for in person meetings and engagements as a sort of social proof that you actually know what you're talking about. So there are just like lots, lots of little pieces here and there. I don't know if this is a 2025 thing. What I can say is for 2025, I think the D2C model of brand building is certainly under threat. Like I would say if you're a brand builder, you should be thinking like I think the old model of D2C, let's call it like the Everlane away. Harry's whatever that model of brand building is, is dead and buried. Nobody wants to hear the cut out the middleman story. But the esthetic, esthetic aesthetic, make, make whatever consumer category slightly more aesthetic. Like that's boring as well. And the idea of bland is not brand exactly. You can't build the channel is no longer your brand. That, that story is dead. You need to build a brand that is channel agnostic. That that's a huge part of it and there's, and there's a whole content thing around it as well. Like the way that you, you know, even the way that we do digital marketing, like the data that's available now, it all sits in walled gardens controlled by Meta and Google and other. Like it's difficult to access that stuff anymore. Like I think the head of the ipa, which is the, like the, basically the leading source on marketing effectiveness was saying that we're moving to a model where hand to hand marketing is replacing fire and forget marketing. I think like that's a really powerful way of looking at it, of we cannot use this. And this is why I think ad agencies are under threat as well. The model of ad agency, 30 second TV advert driven creative campaign, top down, fragmented, like basically a carpet bomb that's then cut down into snippets. That model is dying slowly, but not that, not slowly enough for these brands to actually react to it. The new model of brand building is bottom up brand building, which is brands built boots on ground by armies of influencers, creators, curators, et cetera. Like the challenge, there is a different challenge is basically how do you get that all of these different people that are creating all of these different moments of your brand to ladder back to consistent associations while still being able to put their own personality, style and form over the top. That's the new, I would say that's the new tension of we can't, we need them to say the same thing, but they have to say the same thing in very different ways because they know their audience is better than I do. So it's like strategy. I think strategy ironically becomes even more important because I think a lot of marketing functions were able to in the past give a shitty brief to an ad agency. The ad agency was able to interpret that into a creative campaign, depending on the quality of the client determines the quality of the campaign more often than not. But now you've got 50 people you need to brief. Your briefing skills need to get way better. Your strategy needs to be much more clear. So you need to have solved problems that you didn't need to solve in the past.

[Avery]

Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting kind of digesting all of that. I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast, so don't get mad at me, but I also don't maintain any social media accounts and I haven't since 2017. I haven't been on Facebook, I'm not on LinkedIn, which people complain about a lot, like I'm not on anything. I don't expose myself to it unless it's through the lens of how do I use this tool to do my job? Which has created a very interesting atmosphere just within my own head to understand what is happening. Because I also think to your first point, Eugene, I've lived like this since my last couple of years of High school and I've only managed to get one friend offline in that whole period of time. And I think that it's given me so many benefits and so many gifts being so detached from online culture. It's allowed me to just carve out a lot of space in my life for reading, going to the beach, other things. So it's interesting that it's like. It's been really interesting for me specifically to watch people start to realize that it is a luxury and that being offline is something that's really special. And I think too following up on all your points, the AI stuff, I'm also a huge AI hater in the brand lane. And the work that we do, there's a couple of reasons why number one, information that it's pulling like fundamentally if we think about it, we're just cutting through. A lot of information out there is made with a very similar perspective, which is a lot of people who look like Eric and who have had his experiences and that's not captured all the time in AI. So you can try to use it to build a brand, but the fact of the matter is most of the information that it's pulling in is created. It's been created without the like ideals and the thoughts of people that you might be trying to speak to. So when people start trying to use AI to make creative and to make a brand, I think that's a huge red flag because you're not invoking the actual human spirit. I read the other day that like AI art is a fallacy because art is the human experience captured on his. On yours.

[Eric]

On his oxymoron that was literally ours. What I would say it is good for. I just did a podcast with Manly Bands founder and he. It's good to collate real information or it can be where he has. He uses Zapier and he has it go to all his review. They get a digest every day of every review that's done about their brand.

[Avery]

Yeah. Use it flag for what's good, flag.

[Eric]

For what's bad or whatever. And I feel with that kind of work like getting there's so much information out there and figuring out how to use it to get the right information in front of you at the right time I think is a really great role for it.

[Avery]

Yeah, I think like workflow is fine but. But from an actual creating something net new point of view. I said this at our last in person event but there is a certain stank that a human being. We're just talking about how your brand Story is so important. If you put your brand story into ChatGPT, it's going to give you a shitty version of it as opposed to if you do that work of shaking it out of yourself. So I think it's interesting in that capacity and that a lot of people think I'll just use it as a shortcut, but it just excludes a lot of narratives and it also is impossible to recreate that human stank. But yeah, I think it's very interesting to just think about all of these tools that are at our disposal. And again, Eugenia, you had an interesting point around ad agencies and I've been saying this for a long time and feeling a bit like Cassandra, where it's like the model of just pumping out ad creative or ad ideas from this third party point of view is not really sustainable in the market. And it is like we do a lot of this work now, but it is that strategy behind like who are core Personas and then how do we make that like metric fuck ton of content that is developed for these Personas but through these different lenses? Obviously nobody really has that figured out yet, but it's very like exciting and interesting.

[Eugene]

Yeah, yeah. I think like I've spoken about some of that stuff too with I call it like the brand is mosaic strategy of Basically we've moved from. I think we're moving from a metaphor which is the brand as story, which is, that's the. The ad agency created the brand a story because everything laddered back to a 30 second story to a model which is, as I said, it's a little bit more on the ground. But it's about. Your brand is constructed as the aggregate of a thousand fragmented moments in which you experience that. And part of that is you need to create quite significant volume of content. But all of those pieces of content have to be independently functioning because there's no point of origin anymore. There's no guarantee this is where this person is first going to experience your brand. They're going to see it in all of these different places. So they need to function as all these different independent pieces of entertainment. And that's actually, there's kind of, there's an ontological part there of like the way that you look at brand needs to change. And then there's a process component of how is it that we're going to actually produce this volume of content and create all these different little fragmented moments? What is the way for us to look at brand? What is almost the method through which we look at fragmentation is that we look at fragmentation through the lens of, okay, how are we going to fragment this to different subcultures? Is it that we're going to take like Wimbledon? Like, are we going to take our event and we're going to fragment it across before, during, after? How many athletes are we following? What are the different moments that we're following within them? Like it's. Yeah, it's. It's very much a different way of thinking about brand.

[Eric]

Let's save that a deeper excavation for our podcast that we're going to do quarterly with Eugene now. He's our in house cultural and brand strategy analyst. Welcome. This is a lot of fun, Eugene. If you want to follow Eugene, you can do it. All sorts of places you go to. Huge brand. Like huge. It's going to be huge. Huge brand. Strat. On Instagram. Is that your, Is that your most prominent platform?

[Eugene]

Yeah. Do Instagram. Because TikTok's algorithm is incredibly capricious. Do Instagram. If you actually want to see me.

[Avery]

Have you. I feel like this is a good last kind of anecdotal question. Have you found. Because I know in the pre recording we were talking about a couple of pieces of your content that had gone viral. How have you found this experience from a creator point of view? Because you're now, interestingly enough, on both sides of the coin. So how has it been dealing with that? I imagine the ebbs and flows of some of your content you probably feel like is better than others that pop off. Like, it must be such a weird place to be in experiencing it for yourself.

[Eugene]

Yeah, I mean I'm very slowly learning what goes viral. But then I still, what I still actually don't have a proper finger on the pulse. I know that. What I know is that when something goes viral, it can be looked at in retrospect of. This is something that a lot of people feel. I would say this, this is something that explains how a lot of people feel about a particular topic or phenomenon. And so I think like the, yeah, the videos that have performed the best, like they speak to some sort of unmet desire that that is now able to be voiced. But that's. Yeah, I mean it is challenging. I look, I be. I find being a creator quite emotionally taxing. And now I understand why influencers say it's a hard job, let's put it that way.

[Eric]

But I bet it's. You're doing the same thing that D2C has done for Pilothouse, for instance. You're becoming your own media company. Company in a lot of ways. And I bet it's already opened a ton of doors for you.

[Eugene]

Yes, yes. So it's. It enabled. It enabled me to go out on my own to build a product that was not somebody else's product, but is actually a reflection of what I think good brand building looks like. And it's an. It's put me in front of a globe. Like I'm live. I live down the bottom of the world. I live in Melbourne, Australia. But 80% of my clients are global clients. Like, half of them are from the US at least. And that's really exciting to just be able to work across clients and to work at clients at quite significant sizes as well. To just be able to plug in and say, here, hey, this is my perspective. And that's what a lot of brands actually do. They just say, we'd like your perspective on something. Can you come on board for a little bit and just analyze and critique our brand work?

[Eric]

Sounds like a great gig.

[Eugene]

If you're listening, I'm getting paid to yap, basically.

[Eric]

Yeah, that's what I do. That's living the dream. But I bet you'll get some outreach from this, so make sure you check your Instagram inbox there, because I bet you'll get some really interesting outreach from the brands in the audience because I know everyone's super interested in this topic. So thanks for coming on today, Eugene. This was really fun.

[Eugene]

It was super nice to see all of you again.

[Eric]

You as well. Thanks, Abes. Thanks for joining us. Hope that deals.

[Avery]

Yeah, sorry I was late, but this was super fun.

[Eric]

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at Direct to consumer all one word co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the D2C podcast. We'll see you next time.