Hi all,

This week on the pod, I take Kirsten through everything I saw and heard hosting the Involve stage at Brands & Culture London.

It was a super fun 2 days!

Rather than recapping the talks, this is all about my takeaways. Unsurprisingly, they are about how these lessons connect with broader trends. Shame, taboos, build brand loyalty, the power of humanity, the Age of Authorship, and more.

It’s a fun one.

Enjoy!

Hit the links to skip to the bits you fancy

01:29 — BRANDS & CULTURE LONDON // I MC’d the Involve stage in London. Charlotte, Joe, and Michelle are killing it. Piotr is

04:32 — MAKE MISTAKES // Ruth Hooper, Women’s Super League. Women’s sports is perhaps the biggest cultural shift of our time, next to AI. It went from ignored to hot overnight. And that speed is tough. Ruth spoke about building at speed and being willing to make mistakes. Loved it.

11:55 — CULTURE IS A MIRROR // Patrick Boyce-Apps, Ladbrokes, had one of my fave lines of the day: “Culture is a mirror that you can give back to somebody and show them a side of themselves that they feel really good about.” His audience was completely unacknowledged. He changed it. And that changed everything.

16:24 — LOYALTY LEVERS // Zoë Phenix McCandless, United Repair Centre, was a sleeper hit. “By the time you get this repair back, you care more about that garment than when you sent it.” Repair was the topic but actually the lessons were all about how brands build loyalty today. It was really good.

21:35 — THE QUALITY CURRENCY // Clyde McKendrick, Nuevo. The attention economy is gone. The quality of the experience is the currency now. True in retail. But also beyond.

23:02 — THE FONT IS THE FEELING // Phil Garnham, ECD at Monotype gave a great talk on the power of typography. “Typography makes you feel something.” He also talked about the future. “There will be a brand typography for you and one for me and they might not look the same.” An interesting question for brand folx.

27:36 — DO THE DILIGENCE // Laura Ranzato, Clean Creatives. If your agency is working for Shell and you’re Nestlé, whose cocoa supply is being wrecked by fossil fuel deforestation, that’s not just a values issue. That’s a business issue. “Who do you want to be?”

31:44 — LUXURY FORGOT HOW TO HOLD THE MIRROR UP // Andre Bogues, Diageo Luxury, talked about why luxury needs more emotional, human-centered storytelling. We talked about some brands that are starting to do it well.

37:17 — HUMAN-CENTERED STORYTELLING // Cheryl Miller Houser, five-time main stage speaker at SXSW, had so many bangers in her talk it was hard to count. “Belonging isn’t about fitting in. It’s about accepting and seeing ourselves.” We discuss the brands she shared who are getting this right and why it matters.

41:28 — EVERY BRAND IS A CHALLENGER NOW // Will Poskett, basically the father of LinkedIn, and fellow lover of challenger brand mentality did a workshop on identifying the challenger in your brand. We love this topic.

43:04 — INVOLVE THE TEAM // Georgie and Keeley Goff, LOOKFANTASTIC, talked about building campaigns that shape your brand but also about involving the company in them. An underutilized lever that we also talk about in our Paradigms recap when Eugene Healey spoke about it.

44:35 — MAKE THE DEMO A GAME // Sportradar’s workshop was one of my faves. Talking about ad-tech is tough to make interesting. This workshop was actually successful at making it fun. Oh, and my team won.

That’s all, folx. – Chris

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