The Death of Empathy: Why Good Intentions Are Killing Great Brands

Summary

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The Art of the Brand – Episode Summary

Episode: The Death of Empathy: Why Good Intentions Are Killing Great Brands

Hosts: Camille Moore & Philip Millar
Date: November 6, 2025

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Overview

This episode tackles the dangers of “suicidal empathy” in branding—when good intentions, such as performative inclusivity or virtue signaling, undermine what made a brand successful in the first place. Camille and Philip dissect recent industry examples, pop culture moments, and the pitfalls of trend-chasing for brands, emphasizing the need for authentic strategy over crowd-pleasing. They also explore the shifting roles of social media platforms like Snapchat and debate Vogue’s viral “boyfriends are no longer cool” idea, always through the lens of brand relevance and longevity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Empathy vs. Execution in Branding

• Suicidal Empathy Defined
  Empathy is good, but when taken to its extreme—suicidal empathy—it destroys brands, businesses, or even countries by putting the loudest subgroup ahead of core customers.
  • “You're seeing, like, people who are trying to show empathy for the loudest subgroup. Right. And they're doing it at the expense or contempt of their actual customer.” – Philip (00:37, 30:45)
  • Gad Saad’s work is referenced as a warning against self-destructive inclusivity.
• Meritocracy Over Performative Inclusion
  Awarding contracts or creative campaigns based on checking inclusion boxes instead of creativity leads to mediocre outcomes.
  • “It's no longer the best creative agency that's getting the win to do the commercial. It's the most inclusive. It's the agencies that check off the most boxes...” – Camille (03:53)
• Brand Mistakes & Analogies to Sports
  • Parallels between brand blunders and moments in sports where a team beats itself, not the competition.
  • “It's not that the Dodgers won. It's that the Toronto Blue Jays lost, and it was their game to lose.” – Camille (02:22)

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2. Social Media Platform Strategy: The Case of Snapchat

• Is Snapchat the Next Big Thing?
  The hosts debate the relevance of Snapchat for brands and discuss if its increased creator payouts merit investment.
  • “Can Snapchat make a creator led comeback?” – Camille (13:26)
  • Snapchat pays $1,000 per million views, second only to YouTube ($2,500), and above TikTok ($600). (17:34)
• Snapchat’s Real Use Cases
  Mostly used by Gen Z as an alternative camera roll and private messaging tool.
  • “Younger kids...are using Snapchat in lieu of the camera roll because they can save photos somewhere else instead of like in their phone camera roll.” – Camille (15:58)
  • Features like Snapchat streaks create artificial engagement.
• Should Every Business Chase Every Platform?
  • The danger of spreading brand resources too thin; strategy should focus on where your actual audience spends time.
  • “I think there's this race to we need to be everywhere when you're not doing any of them properly.” – Camille (24:25)
• Advice for Founders
  Try platforms early if your resources allow, but don’t rush into every “new thing” without a clear strategy.

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3. When Good Intentions Undermine Great Brands

• Brands Diluting Themselves for the Sake of ‘Wokeness’
  Examples: Lululemon, Victoria’s Secret, and more:
  • Lululemon’s NFL “swag deal” – no product innovation, just logo-slapping.
    • “There was no innovation in the product. They literally slapped their logo on the scuba hoodies and the aligned leggings.” – Philip & Camille (39:04)
  • Victoria’s Secret pivoted from aspirational to broad-based inclusivity, leading to brand confusion and decline.
• Performative vs. Authentic Empathy
  • “It's good to have values. You just don't want values that everybody else has... be empathetic...in accordance with your values.” – Philip (33:46)
• Consequences for Ignoring Brand Core
  • Brands that abandon their core identity in pursuit of loudest voices often lose both core customers and relevance over time.
  • “Their move to take the saying their running ambassador was the 300 pound woman when the brand was actually built on true athleticism doesn't connect...it's no surprise the company is down 50%.” – Camille (34:19)

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4. Ghost Brands: Losing Relevance

• Definition & Modern-Day Examples
  Ghost brands are recognizable by name but no longer relevant. Examples include Kodak, Playboy, Sears, and, as Bill Maher suggests, even the Democratic Party.
  • “It's becoming a ghost brand where there are names of things that you still remember as once being great, but they really don't have relevance to their audience anymore.” – Philip (42:47)
• How Do Brands Become Ghostly?
  • Loss of innovation, resting on past glory, drifting from core audience.
  • Pivoting messaging to be "against something" rather than for something substantive is a losing (brand) strategy: “You can't just be anti something. Right...as opposed to being for something that inspires you to get behind it.” – Philip (43:50)

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5. Media Critique: Vogue’s ‘Boyfriends are No Longer Cool’

• Misguided Messaging & Gender Dynamics
  • The Vogue narrative promotes the idea that having a boyfriend is uncool, equating relationships with outdated or political values.
  • “To say that having a boyfriend is not cool is to deliberately lead their audience down a path of unhappiness, I think while pretending to be happy.” – Philip (48:46)
• Polarization & Clickbait
  • Both genders’ digital echo chambers are driving them further apart, contributing to increased loneliness and “a sea of unhappiness.”
  • “When each gender is emnifying the other, the likelihood of you coming together gets lower and lower, which means we're not happy, which means we don't carry on the species.” – Philip (53:12)
• Posting Relationships Online
  • Debate on authenticity vs. validation—what’s the brand cost of oversharing, and is it ever “cool” to keep some things private?
  • “Social media to me is a very powerful tool and it's my business, but from a. I don't need the validation on my life front.” – Camille (62:58)
• Notable Reflection
  • Brands and individuals must be deliberate in what they showcase online, maintaining boundaries between personal and public selves.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You're seeing, like, people who are trying to show empathy for the loudest subgroup. Right. And they're doing it at the expense or contempt of their actual customer.” – Philip (00:37)
• “It's no longer the best creative agency that's getting the win to do the commercial. It's the most inclusive...none of it [is about] creativity.” – Camille (03:53)
• “Empathy is good in terms of helping people around you, but if you just opened your door to every refugee... Your home would be destroyed...that would be suicidal empathy.” – Philip (29:01)
• “If you're focusing on creating content...the price point on tech that makes you stand out and better is the difference.” – Camille (08:37)
• “Ghost brands...they really don't have relevance to their audience anymore.” – Philip (42:47)
• “You can't just be anti something. Right. You can't just be anti Trump.” – Philip (43:50)
• “To say that having a boyfriend is not cool is to deliberately lead their audience down a path of unhappiness, I think while pretending to be happy.” – Philip (48:46)
• “Social media is extremely powerful. It's very much a job. And it's a job that I also want to like clock out of at the end of the day.” – Camille (63:32)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Empathy vs. Strategy in Brand Decisions: 00:37, 30:45
• Sports & Brand Failure Analogy: 01:45–02:46
• TV Commercial Creativity & Meritocracy: 03:12–03:53
• Snapchat Breakdown & Creator Economics: 13:26–24:50
• Suicidal Empathy Defined & Brand Examples: 29:01–31:35
• Performative vs. Authentic Empathy (Land Acknowledgment): 33:05–33:46
• Lululemon Case Study & Collaborations: 34:19–41:29
• Ghost Brands, Politics, & Lessons: 42:39–48:03
• Vogue ‘Boyfriends’ Article & Gender Dynamics: 48:28–55:30
• Relationship Sharing Online & Brand Repercussions: 58:26–63:32

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Tone and Style

The episode is lively, blunt, and unafraid to tackle uncomfortable or controversial branding issues. Camille and Philip alternate between industry insider analysis and candid, culturally aware commentary, bringing both humor and depth to each segment. They offer actionable advice while calling out trends that distract from what makes brands—and people—genuinely successful, happy, and resilient.

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Transcript

[Camille Moore]

We have become traitors.

[Philip]

And we got the new iPhone unnecessary to keep upgrading. But then I think we got caught off guard by how good the new one is.

[Camille Moore]

Apparently it's the album that the Swifties hate the most. Because she's happy.

[Philip]

Yeah. It is funny that people, they don't like it when she's happy. They want the anxiety.

[Camille Moore]

Kylie Jenner did. She has this makeup line and she partnered with Snapchat and like relaunched the product. That's it. And it was in partnership with Snapchat and because it had so much eyeballs on the Internet, because Kris Jenner can get every publication to talk about it, even though nobody thinks it's relevant. This kind of whole question of, like, is Snapchat really this next social media platform?

[Philip]

So empathy is good in terms of helping people around you, but if you just opened your door to every refugee. Right. Your home would be destroyed. You're seeing, like, people who are trying to show empathy for the loudest subgroup. Right. And they're doing it at the expense or contempt of their actual customer.

[Camille Moore]

We've been criticizing this move to ESG into unconnected wokeness and brands, and it's uncomfortable because you're pointed as a bad person. Lululemon partnered with the NFL and it's effectively like a glorified swag deal.

[Philip]

In terms of the NFL deal, there was no innovation in the product.

[Camille Moore]

It was just like they literally slapped their logo on the scuba hoodies and the aligned leggings. I want to talk about the vogue that boyfriends are no longer cool.

[Philip]

To say that having a boyfriend is not cool is to deliberately lead their audience down a path of unhappiness. I think.

[Camille Moore]

What a brand.

[Philip]

What a brand.

[Camille Moore]

What a brand. What a mighty good brand. Say it again now. What a brand. What a. Welcome back to another week of the Art of the Brand podcast. We are mourning the absolute loss of the Toronto Blue Jays.

[Philip]

For those of you watch the World Series, it was amazing. Some of the best baseball ever. I think that game seven, that seven game series, what I'm mourning is a team that lost the game, that could have won it.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah.

[Philip]

And if you watch the game, the Jays could have easily won that game had they executed in a couple places perfectly. Everybody who watched the game will know what I'm talking about. And you know, it's relevant to brands as we talk about them in our business is that sometimes somebody beats you and sometimes you lose. And what we want to do is give information to people so that they don't. They don't lose the game themselves. We give them what they want. And if you lose, if you get defeated, that's okay. But it sucks when you lose the game because of mistakes.

[Camille Moore]

It's not that the Dodgers won. It's that the Toronto Blue Jays lost, and it was their game to lose. Like, like, really up until the end. Like, you didn't even really think that the Dodgers won the game when they got those. It was like, it just happened so fast and it. But you're so right. It's such an apt analogy for how brands are. Are so many are trying hard, but are losing to someone who has it, who has a better play.

[Philip]

Yeah. Or they can't execute, or they make a critical mistake because they're not employing sound decision making, which is what we're trying to do to help people here.

[Camille Moore]

Well, what's also really interesting is the commercials for the World Series and how few advertisers there were in on the Canadian landscape. I'd love to hear Americans that were watching on the American side. I just felt like it was the same seven advertisers the entire world, like, World Series Series.

[Philip]

I actually felt like the people who wrote the commercials in Canada, I felt they were like toddlers. Like, it was like Pablo for the mind. Like, it looked like first cuts of stuff, high school projects. There was no creativity. You know, there was a couple of interesting themes, but I noticed that they actually had less commercials, less variety of people advertising. And so you saw more of the same commercials. And at one point I remember saying to you, like, this commercial is really annoying me now.

[Camille Moore]

This is a well simple one. You hated it. And it got to the point where, like, we didn't want to watch the commercials because the commercials were so bad and so irritating.

[Philip]

Anyway, it was a great sport. I'm sure Trump's happy that a Canadian team didn't win America's sport, but the Jays had an amazing season.

[Camille Moore]

I think it also was an interesting conversation we were having about the competitive pool of who's making commercials. Commercials suck these days because the parameters in which the companies choose the agent, the creative agencies to do their product, is no longer based on meritocracy. It's no longer the best creative agency that's getting the win to do the commercial. It's the most inclusive. It's the agencies that check off the most boxes because RFPs have now moved to rewarding businesses that have the most range of inclusive people. It's like the RFPS these days in Canada. It's crazy. It's like, how many disabled people do you have at your company? How many people of color, how many people speak three different languages? It's like all of these boxes and none of it. So the people who get chosen and to move through the RFP process are the most diverse, not the most creative.

[Philip]

I think that's going to speak to a topic we get into later about suicidal empathy and how it can hurt businesses, countries and brands.

[Camille Moore]

Totally. Well, I can give a quick rundown of what we're going to chat about today. The role of Snapchat. There's a big Vogue article this week. We're going to break down ghost brands, empathy versus execution and this idea of suicidal empathy. The Lululemon swag deal. We did a super viral post this week on the NFL New Lemon collaboration and the Vogue article of boyfriends are no longer cool.

[Philip]

Stay tuned for that one because it's gonna get heated.

[Camille Moore]

Ladies, buckle up. But before we get into the podcast, I have two quick things I wanted to mention. One, we're actually off to Japan this week. So we're going to Japan. We've got some work stuff there. I'm also gonna be writing my book, which is exciting. Wish me luck.

[Philip]

Finishing your book.

[Camille Moore]

Finishing my book. Send me good energy because it's a very daunting task. The way back, we're actually stopping in Korea to do some scouting. We have some brand appointments with some clients of ours, but we're going to be doing scouting for that if we're going to do the Korean founders trip and people can come with us to see all the cool Korean brands. So if you are interested, send me a note. Social media is great and for everyone that reached out to support with the planner, thank you for reaching out. If you didn't send me your email, follow up with that message with sending an email so I can put you on the list. And just as a note, if you guys or when you guys reach out, I love seeing those messages. The only downside is you often send me messages during the workday and I have to go into a meeting and then I forget to respond. So if I don't respond, it's not personal. If you send me a follow up, I'd love to hear from you. But then we also have to address the real issue here. We have become traders and we got the new iPhone.

[Philip]

I don't know if we're traders. We always have an iPhone, but we were slagging the newest iPhone as well. Unnecessary to keep upgrading. But then I think we got caught off guard by how good the new one is.

[Camille Moore]

Well that was the big thing is that our, the reason why we decided to get it is that. Well one, I think they had a messaging issue like the way they positioned their product because I have not seen ad, creative and commercial about how incredible the new camera is.

[Philip]

You know what it looks like? It looks like the people in the creative department have just been so trained to focus on being culturally relevant in the way that they position it that they forgot about the feature. Like the feature change in the phone was dramatic and that got lost in the noise.

[Camille Moore]

Well, especially when you think about it from an anchoring standpoint. Like for us when we are content creators, having the best camera to shoot content when we're traveling, when we're on the go is worth the fourteen hundred dollar upgrade. Like it's a business expense. So it's, they're not focusing on being a creator economy and how important that is for business owners. Like I would have taken a completely different approach to advertise to people as to why you need it. Because that difference is the difference. If you wanted Edge online.

[Philip]

Well, I'm not sure it's worth 1400 bucks for everybody, but I think if they understand the ego economy that I like to call it is that everybody's, they have a phone mostly for the camera in many ways. And so if you give them a better way to capture themselves and their ability to share, they don't want to be second to somebody else. And so you get an irrational desire to buy something you don't really knew because you don't want to look deprived relative to somebody else.

[Camille Moore]

So if you're focusing on creating content, the ability for like what you saw, the kind of the new feature where you can film both sides, like that's awesome for someone that's wanting to talk about as a professional, seeing your face, seeing the other side, what you're seeing, how you're breaking it down, going through a conference, what to look for, like.

[Philip]

Whatever the intelligence of it, that if you're filming yourself and somebody walks in, it expands out to capture too. Like it's just, it's a much more intelligent camera.

[Camille Moore]

I just for me the argument is like when you're in the game, those justifications for a price point on the tech that makes you stand out and better is the difference. If you're going to lean into being a founder led and having a personal brand like you should have the best tech that moves with you, right? Like you have the best quality camera in your back pocket so that when something happens and you need to break the News, right. Something crazy in an industry happens and you're going to create a selfie video and film it. It should be the best quality selfie camera because that's the difference online, right? It's knowing your colors, it's having the best visual image, it's having the best sound. It's those differences that makes you stand out as the best.

[Philip]

It's interesting how branding works because having gone to Lake Trmezzo and love the orange there now, when I went to the Apple store, I saw the orange and it changed my perspective on orange. Like now I said, I think I said to you, I said, like, I actually would get that orange camera, which I never would before going to Lake Trmezzo.

[Camille Moore]

Well, which is funny because I find this too have to be in this constant space of giving our initial perspective and opinion on things as the news breaks. But we were also really critical of that orange when it first came out. And it's interesting that you really gravitate towards it now with it being out kind of a few weeks later. And it's fascinating how whether it's right, whether it's wrong. I mean, the only downside is if we waited to have these conversations, would it be as relevant as helping you shape your opinion? And that's another big piece for when you think about creating content and like the anxieties around it. I mean, let's talk about Olivia Colman quickly because you got so many comments this week on that video.

[Philip]

Olivia, if you're listening, I'm sorry that I didn't know you're an Academy Award winning actress. When I was complimenting you as being a beautiful, charming, impressive woman who I didn't know at the time, when I watched the Burberry, like I was really just trying to comment to compliment you. And I got a lot of haters saying, how dare you not know this? You know, who is this person? And it's funny how I was trying to say something, something actually kind and complimentary of somebody who I didn't really.

[Camille Moore]

Know, but it's not good enough. Yeah.

[Philip]

And then, you know, there's just all these people who specialize in picking fly shit out of pepper who then come and just think about that phrase because it's a great visual, come and just start hammering you for making one detail, one like making a mistake or not knowing something.

[Camille Moore]

But it's what's so fascinating and worthy of talking about that is how irrelevant it is to our day to day lives. Like when Philip and I say that see that we're not like, oh my.

[Philip]

God, you know, like, no, I'm like, I love it.

[Camille Moore]

We love it.

[Philip]

Viewership is going up because I got the haters piling on with dumb stuff.

[Camille Moore]

But I want you to learn from this. Everyone that is listening is that though it. The Internet allows people whose opinions do not matter to you to show up in a 3D way that can really ruin your day if you allow it. Like the power is with you. But ultimately you want to be creating content that creates a dialogue and discourse that allows people who you would never communicate with that don't share your shared values to comment. Because that means that your video is going. It's actually having an impact. Like it's reaching people that it wouldn't otherwise reach. And the average person that watches the video doesn't feel the need to correct based on that point. Also, not for nothing, if you had listened to the long form, we had gone down and broke down her full discography because I said she's a quite well known and famous actress. I even read that from the comments and then I read her discography. And you haven't watched the Crown. You haven't watched the things that she's in that she's known for. And that doesn't make you a bad person. That's the whole point of when a brand is tapping into relevance. It's who knows it. And you're not their target customer, but you can respect what they're doing.

[Philip]

But it shows. Like, the right selection of the person still brings people in because she was so talented. She was chosen based on meritocracy. Like she was an amazing, you know, and. And me not knowing her history was drawn to it. So it shows that merit based selection works totally.

[Camille Moore]

Last. Last thing I need to just retract on is Taylor Swift's new song is a banger. I'm obsessed. So I just, I. A lot has changed in the last six months. We got the new iPhone. We love Taylor Swift again. And Philip and I have both learned the dance which we should put on socials. You can see it on the land, the sea Pledge allegiance to your hands.

[Philip]

That has to be. If I'm gonna show that dance, it has to be a paid subscriber podcast.

[Camille Moore]

Because when you hit 100,000, you're doing the Taylor Swift dance video.

[Philip]

That was a good dance. I pulled it off.

[Camille Moore]

You're a great dancer. Guys, I got the best video of Philip learning how to dance. It was the best part of the whole thing. But I just, I love that song and it's so Funny, because the Swifties, I'm like so pumped. I'm like, she's back. I'm like, OG Taylor Swift, let's go. This doesn't sound the same as everything else. And then apparently it's the album that the Swifties hate the most. Because she's happy.

[Philip]

Yeah, it is funny that people, they don't like it when she's happy. They want the anxiety.

[Camille Moore]

I know. They want the unhappy person, which, I mean, good for her. She's living her best life. So, okay, so let's get into it. Let's start with the role of Snapchat. So this Vogue article came out this week, basically talking about can Snapchat make a creator led comeback? So I really avoided this topic. Our creative lead, Katya has been was like putting on the Kylie concept for like four times the week that she did. And I'm like, I'm so over the Kardashians, I don't want to talk about them. So basically Kylie Jenner did. She has this makeup line and the makeup line is not relevant anymore. But because Kris Jenner knows everyone, she can make anything seem like a huge moment on the Internet, which is also really annoying for us because there's actually really nothing to unpack. So she brought back from when her makeup was at its height. She partnered with Snapchat and like relaunched the product. That's it. And it was in partnership with Snapchat and because it had so much eyeballs on the Internet, because Kris Jenner can get every publication to talk about it, even though nobody thinks it's relevant. It poses kind of whole question of like, like, is Snapchat really this next social media platform? And we've talked a lot about, about it offline. I wanted to bring it to the podcast to help business owners navigate. Is Snapchat worth it?

[Philip]

We're always looking for arbitrage in attention. Arbitrage is for people who don't know. Like, if I could buy stock today at a dollar that I could sell immediately at 2 a second later, that's arbit. That's an arbitrage opportunity for me. And in the digital world, there's arbitrage where it costs less to get attention and there's some platforms where it costs the most. Maybe YouTube, you know, but so Snapchat seems to be a platform that's very interested in bringing creators onto it, is competing for the attention. So there seems to be an arbitrage for people who want to get attention in Snapchat.

[Camille Moore]

But it's a complicated conversation because Snapchat is kind of trying the hardest right now because it lacks the most universal relevance. Right. So there's a lot of ingrained consumer behavior when it comes to like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube. Like there's a specific customer that's heading to those at multiple times per day for specific reasons.

[Philip]

Yeah, because my son, who also helps with the production, but you know, I'm always like wanting to slap him in the head because he takes a picture of every meal and he sends it on Slapchat. But like, why has Snap. Why doesn't Snapchat double down on kind of restaurant or the food industry? Because to me it seems like that's, that's the time I see people using Snapchat the most is taking pictures of what they're eating and sending it to people. But I don't see them kind of getting into that.

[Camille Moore]

But that's why. That's why exactly. What I'm saying is Snapchat has the least relevance because younger kids, Gen Z's downwards, are using Snapchat in lieu of the camera roll because they can save photos somewhere else instead of like in their phone camera roll. So you go to Snapchat, you take a photo, you save it and then you have an entire second album of images that you can like. And then Snapchat does these like yearly highlights and you can like scan and search and you can, and you can like hide certain images. Because tons of people send nudes on Snapchat cause they disappear right away. So there's a whole other like photo saving element to Snapchat. Which is really the only reason why a lot of people use it is because especially like in the Middle east and a lot of kids, they don't even give out their cell phone numbers. Everything is on Snapchat because it's a messaging platform. So it's a messaging platform with added other things. And that's where Snapchat is trying to work so hard and is, and is paying all of this money, is that they want to keep people in Snapchat longer because they're kind of going into it for like fleeting. So a lot of kids want to keep this streak. So the Snapchat streaks this huge thing where is still a huge thing, Huge, you can pay for it. So the streak is fake. So all these like couples that have been dating for like a year and two, they want to keep their streak. So if they lose it over a few days because they were fighting, you can see spend 299 and like your streak will come back I want to.

[Philip]

Pause for a moment to do a shout out to cognitive dissonance that exists in our society where people don't really understand what concepts are like. When you think you can pay 289 to keep your streak, you don't really understand what a streak is and your whole value system is corrupted.

[Camille Moore]

So stupid. But the thing that's complicated on the Snapchat front is Snapchat is paying the second most amount of money. So basically from they, all platforms pay on a CPM model. So for Basically, you need 50,000 followers to monetize your story views. And for every million views you get on TikTok, you get paid $600 per million views on Snapchat, you get paid $1,000 per million views.

[Philip]

YouTube's 2,500, isn't it?

[Camille Moore]

YouTube is 2500 per million views. So YouTube still pays the highest, Snapchat is the second highest and TikTok is the third highest. Now, what you're talking about from an arbitrage standpoint is really that Gary Vee message is like, you should always be where a platform is building up because by the time it becomes a thing, it's too hard to compete.

[Philip]

The issue that's too hard, it's just more expensive to compete.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, it's just more difficult. The piece that I struggle with on the Snapchat front is the kind of content you're going to consume is very, like, frivolous and like celebrity influencer. Like, it's where you go to get, like, Paris Hilton's 300 snapchats of the day of her DJing in Vegas. It's not like where you're going to get great information. And the downside to Snapchat, which I want your perspective on, is so much of the news on Snapchat is just fake news. Like, everything is like those fake Daily Mail or like people's covers where, like, Rihanna's having her sixth baby and can you believe this woman has three toes? It's just like all this fake news stuff that when you want to see, because I've been a victim of it, I'm like, oh, I'm interested in this. It takes you so many things to click through to even see that story, and then the story's not even real. So it's all about clickbaiting attention, which is really hard to bring serious people to the platform.

[Philip]

Camille Moore, you are guilty of digital snobbery. I pronounce the verdict is that you must. You must lean into where you struggle. So you say that Snapchat you struggle with. Right. But everybody ignored the digital platforms as they grew because it didn't fit what they wanted them to be. But when we're talking to our founders, I agree with you. It would seem uncomfortable to get into Snapchat, but if there's. What you described to me in the podcast is people like to go there because they can hide their sex photos, people are doing food. There's tons of fake. What that tells me is a lot of people's eyeballs are going there because it's a fun place to be and if we think we're too serious for it, you know, we might get there too late. So when you. I think sometimes when we feel that resistance, that we actually just go where the attention is and change it, because in the digital world, the evolution happens so fast that if you don't get in early, you're going to be coming in late. So it might be a good indication to try and get into Snapchat while the attention is growing and it's kind of below the standards because it doesn't hurt to be there.

[Camille Moore]

I agree from the standard of how you approach things and like I was later to adopting TikTok and we had.

[Philip]

This discussion many times.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, you're correct when it comes to that piece. But then I also struggle with, do you have to be everywhere at all times for the sake of it? And what is the cost of the trade off to also, you know what I mean? If you're trying to be on all these different platforms, what is the cost?

[Philip]

Most people don't understand what strategy is. And strategy is how you allocate limited resources to achieve desired aims. So if you're on every established platform, you might be diluting your resources, but I might say from a strategic perspective, there's a platform you're doing very well on. And the next place to put it is the platform that has the highest risk reward ratio. And that might be Snapchat rather than kind of humble bragging on LinkedIn.

[Camille Moore]

Okay, so Snapchat, in order to monetize, you need 50,000 followers. So there's still a shot.

[Philip]

I'm not talking about people wanting to monetize, but you can't.

[Camille Moore]

That's not. You don't understand how it works. So the only way that you're saying seen is if people follow you. So, like the people that when you log into Snapchat, you have, like, you can see people that you subscribe to. There's people that they will suggest, but the people who they're suggesting are the People that are like Jake Paul's like, they're the people that are the most active on that platform. They're not going to show you the rogue lawyer when he's got five followers. Right. So the way that the platform is set up is you have to kind of be more of a personality.

[Philip]

No, you have to start making content and get following. Just like every content strategy. We say you don't only go to media social to Snapchat when you're already have a million followers, you have to get a million followers somehow, which means you got to get on there early and start making content.

[Camille Moore]

I don't think you understand the platform like it's. I don't think everybody needs to become a twitch streamer.

[Philip]

Like, I don't think nobody say, well, that's.

[Camille Moore]

But that's like the next big platform. So if you're talking about like the arbitrage of where there's underpriced attention, then you should be a streamer because like that is like that is growing at a faster rate and is easier to adopt than just like the role of Snapchat. And the way that the platform is set up is not for discoverability, it's not to be easily discoverable. It's for people who have that are very focused on influencing, like being lifestyle influencers. So there's a lot of people where it would be complicated to get on Snapchat. But you're also not wrong in that there's a strategy to develop. There was a huge plastic surgeon in Toronto that ended up getting like lost his license because he was posting before and afters on Snapchat of plastic surgery without the patient's permission. So they were like putting all of these things on Snapchat and he ended up being one of the biggest plastic surgeons and lost his license. So you're not wrong that there's a way to adopt and trying to do it.

[Philip]

So what you just said was a plastic surgeon, a medical doctor, went on Snapchat and became one of the biggest ones.

[Camille Moore]

Well, he was already big on the other platforms, so he had a big audience. Yes, yes.

[Philip]

You're a digital snob.

[Camille Moore]

I'm a digital snob.

[Philip]

It's okay. That's what I'm here for, to push us into the uncomfortable places. But you kill it wherever you go. So let's keep going.

[Camille Moore]

I think that Snapchat is really is paying a lot of money to attempt to be relevant and that you're not wrong in that there's a strategy in order to leverage it and to use it. But I think there's a lot of parameters that you should go in as a business or brand to determine if it makes sense to be on it. I think medical spas should be on it because especially if you track in Dubai, which we saw in the Middle east, like, you can actually serve like, promotions and do an entire, like, show everything that's going on in the clinic to close someone through Snapchat, like, there is an angle to using that. But the problem is you're also gonna be putting a lot of energy, time and effort into a platform that people aren't using it in North America yet. So Snapchat is like investing in the future. So the question is, like, how soon do you start putting in that work and who do you need to be in order to put in that energy to effort ratio?

[Philip]

It seems like a good place to spend advertising dollars, depending on your target market. You know what I mean? So rather than maybe focusing on content, but if you have advertising dollars, it might be better than Google SEO, depending on where you're at.

[Camille Moore]

The way that I'm trying to wrap this up is all platforms have strategy. I think there's this race to we need to be everywhere when you're not doing any of them properly. And I think that's what I struggle with more is that rushing to get onto Snapchat when you're not building up the brand, the reach, the platform, the audience on another platform doesn't make the most strategic sense, that you're just diversifying yourself across all platforms and not doing any of them well.

[Philip]

That's why it's good to have a coach when it comes to this type of stuff, because it's very hard to figure out where to go. And if you know where you want to go, it's nice to have somebody who can help you get there.

[Camille Moore]

Well, exactly. And that's like a big thing. Of the criticism that I hear about Gary Vee, who's awesome and I love his message, is that Gary Vee says all this stuff, but his personal team that posts and put out the content is an entire business. It's like 10 people that runs all of his socials. So it becomes very complicated when you're not seeing the behind the curtain of what it takes to be on all of these platforms. And you're a solo business or you're a small business that has a small team. Imagine you're someone that hears this. You fundamentally agree because you're saying, go where there lacks attention and start building and growing and you spend three years trying to build up a following on Snapchat. And over those three years, then Snapchat really doesn't take off. But you could have been building that on a platform that's proven.

[Philip]

Now that's not what we would do as a strategic coach. We'd be like, okay, look, you have to start making content. Some of your content can go into different platforms. Some of your content you can pay to boost. Right. But I might suggest to somebody that it'd be a good idea to start putting some of your content into Snapchat. Just, just to start building up a following as it's going so that when it actually hits and it's well set up, you're not starting from zero on a platform that has now captured market share of attention.

[Camille Moore]

No, and I don't disagree with that. But I think it's these deep conversations that people aren't having about these platforms that they need to hear from all sides and angles. You have to be really invested in being in the game to start diversifying cross platform. So there needs to be a serious investment in like, what's the strategy, what's the plan? Not just seeing a headline of like, is Snapchat back? And then just like starting to just post on Snapchat. Like, these are like, these are deeper conversations that need to be had and you need to take the time to understand what is the kind of content that's on that platform. What is a competitor analysis? Like, start studying the platform. I struggle with it because when I go on there, when I look at the content that's on there, it doesn't attract the kind of customer that I'm looking to attract because it's all fake news that's gossipy headlines and it's like, and it's just, it seems like it's skewed for people who are, who are under 22. And that's not my customer. So like, I struggle with like prioritizing the time.

[Philip]

Just say where that was. TikTok when it started.

[Camille Moore]

No, it's Tik when TikTok started and I said, I've had Snapchat.

[Philip]

You said TikTok the ninth grade.

[Camille Moore]

And it's been a long ass time since I was in the ninth grade. TikTok came out of nowhere and within the first year and a half had over a billion users on the platform. Its growth trajectory is relevant in comparing the two different platforms.

[Philip]

Okay, but you said TikTok was for kids originally when we were going to go into TikTok.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, but the whole point of this article is that Kylie Jenner, the platform that she was using when she launched kylie cosmetics in 2017 or 2018, has not changed to 2025. And all that has changed is they're trying to pay creators more money to attract more people to come on the platform. Like, there's been no evolution in the platform.

[Philip]

Well, no, the evolution is they're paying people more to get people on the platform. And when you see that happening, you want to respond to market conditions that people follow where the money is. So there's a, there's a high likelihood that Snapchat may gain much more attention because they've changed their model and they're. And they're identifying it. So anyhow, it's a hedge that people should consider, not just dismiss, because most of the time people are like, two years later, I wish I was in there earlier.

[Camille Moore]

Snapchat's been along for a long time and it's not changing. Like, her obsession with looking Korean went too far. Nara Smith exposed for using a surrogate for her baby. Courtney's daughter debuts new style Take like, it's just, all of. It's just like North's adulting is peak. Concerning.

[Philip]

Look, if you're trying to win an argument, like, it's, it's not a good use of time, like, you've opened up the platform. You're reading me stuff like, that's not a strategic analysis of whether or not it suits people without actually having attempted to get in there.

[Camille Moore]

All right, so moving on to the next topic, let's talk about empathy versus execution. So you've been tracking this new topic for a hot minute called suicidal empathy. Do you want to explain that? And then we can kind of explain how it's. How you're seeing it. Relate to brands.

[Philip]

I happen to love a couple of philosophers on this topic, and Gad Saad is one of them, who's actually a Canadian academic who's quite well respected and hated. But he talks about, I think why it's useful to founders is we have to talk about what reality is and not what we. Not what we want reality to be, because the universe is a crazy place. When he's talking about suicidal empathy in terms of societies, he says that if a society takes something too far, it can actually lead to its destruction. So empathy is good in terms of helping people around you, but if, if you just opened your door to every refugee, right, Your home would be destroyed.

[Camille Moore]

Right.

[Philip]

That would be suicidal empathy. And it can happen in countries. If countries don't protect certain elements to be able to keep the company. But it also, I wrote an article this week about how it's kind of the suicidal empathy from well intentioned people, a lot of them on the left has infected MBA curriculums. And so now the kind of executives that are coming out and they're especially getting into these marketing chief marketing positions are espousing suicidal empathy in terms of how they're communicating to their customers and non customers customers. They're responding to every issue and it's diluting their brand and it's actually undermining their brand core and their brand value.

[Camille Moore]

I think the concept that has been needing to come out because it's why we have a problem in the west is that there's never a point where we can be inclusive enough. There's no end point where anyone can win without the destruction of it being a meritocracy, which, which you need in society in order to propel forward. Like if you just take down hard work and who's the best, like what's the point of doing anything?

[Philip]

Yeah, like, and we've talked about it before for the founders that we try to help, they look upwards to public companies that are kind of on a very. They're signaling a lot of virtue. Yeah, right. And they can afford to do it. A lot of them, because they have established kind of a monopoly. They have a lot of resources and then they, they try to mimic it, but it's actually not good with it. Because what I find is you're seeing like people who are trying to show empathy for the loudest subgroup. Right. And they're doing it at the expense or contempt of their actual customer. Yeah, right. Like they actually have a customer that needs to hear the message that they need to focus on. And they're busy responding to the loudest activists. And what activist interests have done in, in western society is they've learned to capture corporate strategy by making noise and it takes the corporation off of their, their purpose and their mission.

[Camille Moore]

Well, and there's just so many examples of it. Like you look at Victoria's Secret, right? Like Victoria's Secret had people that came in that wanted that, that leverage. The suicidal empathy of like, we need to be so inclusive, we need to cover every single thing. Then the, the only thing that built our business which was celebrating women being sexy. So therefore let's show the sexiest women. Because that is when you want to celebrate beauty, you want to see it at the highest level. You don't want to go to a sports game and see people that wouldn't have Made it. You want to see the people that are at the best. When you're sitting down to watch something, you want to be captivated by the best. That's what humans want. But what's interesting is that it becomes suicidal empathy when you're coming into a company whose ethos is not built on the message that you're trying to perpetuate. Lululemon's another example example of this. Like Lululemon was built by somebody who wanted to create active and fitness wear for females that hadn't been done before. And he designed leggings that accentuated the female body. So everything about Lululemon was about celebrating women who had money, who were working, who kept themselves fit, who were. It was a very like. It was built through the lens of elitism. And then Lululemon has been starting to like idea of suicidal empathy where they're just trying to bring people into the brand that the brand was never for. And then you get this dissonance where the brand doesn't make sense anymore.

[Philip]

Yeah, I see it as. It's performative empathy. God uses suicidal. But I think there's also a lot of performative empathy and like versus authenticity and. And indulge me in that. I've raised this when people have done land acknowledgments, which to me is performative empathy.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah.

[Philip]

Because I've asked the owner of the business or the theater or whatever organization is doing it, are you donating or are you giving 30 of your profits to the people who, who you're speaking about? And the answer is always no. So if you're just doing performative empathy, it's not really authenticity.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah. There's no action like, are you giving back the land?

[Philip]

Are you giving rent?

[Camille Moore]

Are you paying rent?

[Philip]

Like, give it up.

[Camille Moore]

Are you just. Just taking 10 minutes out of everyone's time to just show like it just.

[Philip]

What'S point when you're saying that illegal refugees should be able to come in? Do you have 10 in your house? Like that would be authentic. Right. As opposed to performative. And when it comes to your company, it's good to have values. You just don't want values that everybody else has. You want to kind of figure out, like when you talk about Lululemon, like, what are their values? Like figure out your values and then be empathetic kind of in. In accordance with your values. Like, if you're going to do something for the good of society, like, do it authentically. But this whole performance signaling everywhere, all the time just undermines your brand as A founder.

[Camille Moore]

Well, that's what we've criticized Lululemon in the past is like their move to take the saying their running ambassador was the 300 pound woman when the brand was actually built on true athleticism doesn't connect. And it's exactly to your point. Like it's. There is such a way to bring people in that are not making healthy choices to make Lululemon the site of like true healthiness. Like when you're looking to make healthy decisions, you turn to Lululemon. But there's more of a standard than just like anyone here that says that they're. They run will accept as our running ambassador. Like that has dissonance to the way that the brand was created and it's no surprise that the company is down 50%. And that's what's. What I think is the most fascinating on this concept of suicidal empathy is that we've been criticizing this move to ESG into unconnected wokeness and brands. And it's uncomfortable because you're pointed as a bad person until years later when the Stock is down 50% because it takes time for people to start moving away from the brand. And there isn't masses of people that are like, we're not going to buy from here anymore because the running ambassador is £300. Go ahead.

[Philip]

Yeah, that's what I wanted to talk about is when you went on Skinny Confidential and talked about this, this was like very controversial, but it was well received because thousands of people said, oh my God, I've been thinking this and I couldn't say it. Lululemon should have been a place that encourages people to start their fitness journey.

[Camille Moore]

Yes, right.

[Philip]

And so you could have, you could celebrate somebody who's overweight and wants to get into it.

[Camille Moore]

But what they do, and we should, we should be wanting people to get healthy.

[Philip]

But what they did with their, with their running ambassador is they said she runs ultra marathons and there's just pure dissonance there because it wasn't really possible. And they were pretending. It's like what society has seen is we're pretending that people who can't do something can do something.

[Camille Moore]

Yes.

[Philip]

Like somehow that validates the world. And what happens is to your, your last point is you don't see as an owner or, or as a brand, the people who look at that see the dissonance. And it just says, because I remember when I saw that, I'm like, this really isn't my fitness place anymore. Like it's not true to me. But you know, you don't leave a comment, you don't write a note. You know what I mean? Like the CEO doesn't get that message when you're, when you're brand dissonant and then eventually it takes a few years and all of a sudden you've lost all your money.

[Camille Moore]

No. And that's what people miss is that it takes, it takes time to lose it. But even to your point, the reason why humans like exceptionalism is because we, we can anchor. So when you, when you see a story like a David Goggins or someone that's truly an ultra marathon runner, you want the extremity. Because when you set out to do something hard, you push yourself farther because you're benchmarking it to someone who can do it all the way. So when you are benchmarking it to people that truly aren't ultra marathon runners or just can't. Exactly to your point, like would just never be on a Runway if not for the suicidal empathy. It doesn't create a reason for me to stop what I'm doing because it doesn't create aspiration. I can't anchor myself to them.

[Philip]

And it's like when you, when you break like rational norms, when you say something is beautiful that's just not beautiful or you say somebody is fit, that's just not fit. Right. Like we're living in a world like a constructed world of non reality and it's hard to build a brand behind that.

[Camille Moore]

Well, it's just, it's not a brand has to be something that's has to have a unique point of difference. Like being the unique point of difference that is interesting to stop the scroll metaphorically or physically on social media is like an extremely, extremely relevant point.

[Philip]

Just to finish that off, if you're a founder, like it's good to care. It's better to care about your customers, figure out what they want and stay true to your customers and don't betray them for, you know, virtual performative arts or don't.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, just don't do things that don't connect to your brand. Yeah, like exactly the Lululemon point. Like there's so many things that they could have done to celebrate people coming in to start their fitness journey. But when you make fitness, not about fitness, it, it turns people that are wanting to pay a hundred and twenty dollars for leggings to somewhere else. Like it just, it moves you away. But I still want to get off of Lululemon. I just want to talk about the Lululemon NFL deal because like that post that we did this week went. Went super viral, and it resulted in a lot of conversation and dialogue. So in case you missed it, Lululemon partnered with the NFL, and it's effectively like a glorified swag deal. And it was really interesting because you saw a bunch of brands this past year. Nadam did one, the cashmere company Abercrombie did one, and a lot of these were really well received, whereas Lululemon's was. It really shows you that the brand is becoming a ghost brand. It's becoming the highest caliber of swag that you can buy. It's not a brand that's any more aspirational.

[Philip]

No, it's definitely good swag. Like, for years, it was good swag, but in terms of the NFL deal, there was no innovation in the product.

[Camille Moore]

It was just like, they literally slapped their logo on the Scuba hoodies and the aligned leggings.

[Philip]

Whereas if they would have studied football players and said, okay, they operate under extreme heat, extreme threats, friction. You know what I mean? Like this, this and that. And we've taken our product and we've designed something that services these elite athletes that's spectacular. That would be a way to move them forward in terms of being a performance sports brand.

[Camille Moore]

What you're saying is super intelligent and is an order of magnitude higher than what I'm thinking. Like, just, you know, create three new styles for the partnership. Like, just for. Like, for gen pop. Like, create a really great stadium jacket that's, like, awesome. That's, like, branded with a big logo on the back. Like, just, like, just try. Like, don't. It was literally a glorified swag deal, and it shows you when a brand is on decline because all they're trying to do is push inventory. Right? Like, that's. That's all they're trying to do. It's not. It's no longer about. And they think that by tapping into the 140 million NFL fans, they're going to sell more product.

[Philip]

But how are they making Lululemon cool? Like, because Lululemon was here and now it's the NFL. But they didn't do anything to make it cool to NFL fans because they didn't do anything different. The NFL has seen a dramatic increase in female viewership.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, Huge.

[Philip]

So it does seem like an interesting move to kind of try to associate yourself with it. But I didn't get a messaging from it as to who they were appealing to.

[Camille Moore]

It's for women who are. Because, like, football is Sunday nights, right? So you're, you know, you're wearing kind of that athleisure at home and you can have the logo on it. But to go a few weeks back where Chip Wilson, you know, bought the whole ad in the Wall Street Journal and is like taking a shot at the brand and he's not wrong that the brand is not, is not building on the trajectory. And the Deloitte team reached out that was at the Lululemon HQ and effectively said like the post ruffled a lot of feathers and he kind of was coming in for the defense of like is, you know, are you asking too much of Lululemon? And has it become like a Nike or an Adidas where it's just this megalith that we're asking for it to be a nimble brand, like a road when it's just become this huge ass monster.

[Philip]

They're acting like Nike. Whereas if they were going back to the brand, I think the producer's point would have been interesting. Like if you put your leggings on the cheerleaders and they looked super amazing, you could kind of bring back that we have the best looking leggings. And you know, I mean that could be a theme to, to it. But if you're just putting your logo on hoodies, you're not really speaking to anybody.

[Camille Moore]

Well, they're not innovating. And I don't think that benchmarking Lululemon to Nike is also the right move when Nike is a 60 year old company. Company like Lululemon has like it's, it's not a new company, it's 20 years old. But it's also though a company that for the first 12 years of it was only really big in Canada. So it's only kind of had its tipping point for the rest of the world in the last 10 years. Yes, Lululemon was not huge in Europe and America. Like it's because it was. It didn't even get into Toronto until eight years after it was big and big.

[Philip]

Yeah, because that's the way brands build. They have the hockey stick they spend a lot of. Nike wasn't huge for a long. A large port of it. It was only when they got into Jordan. Right. They were a running shoe brand for a long time that wasn't that successful.

[Camille Moore]

True. But that was also during the. Yeah like the 70s, the 80s. But it was by the 90s, the early 90s is when it started really taking off. But to compare the 90s to 2025 is a long time to compare it to Lululemon. Like I don't think that that is the right comparison. I think Lululemon should still be continuing to grow and they're not innovating.

[Philip]

Yeah.

[Camille Moore]

Do you want to talk about ghost brands? Let's lean into ghost brands.

[Philip]

You leaned into it like you mentioned it in the Lululemon segment. So yeah, might as well talk about it.

[Camille Moore]

Let's break down ghost brands. What was the article that you were reading or listening to?

[Philip]

Well, I was listening actually to Real Time with Bill Maher and he was talking about the Democrat Party in the US and he was making an analogy that it's becoming a ghost brand where there are names of things that you still remember as once being great, but they really don't have relevance to their audience anymore. And he was, he was speaking about like Kodak or Playboy magazine. They used to be something and then they kind of lost their way or didn't innovate and became irrelevant, but still recognizable. And his, his point was that the Democrat Party is at its lowest ratings ever because they've kind of lost their way. And they're not innovating. They're not speaking to the working class person. They're speaking to the kind of educated suburban person. And so they're losing their relevance. They had no power, their lowest opinion because they've lost. It's almost like they have a brand problem.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, it's really interesting, but I completely agree with it. Like, I don't know anymore what the Democratic Party stands for because there's so many different opinions and perspectives. Right. Like it is, it is a brand with a messaging problem.

[Philip]

Well, you can't just be anti something. Right. You can't just be anti Trump. Right. As opposed to being for something that inspires you to get behind it.

[Camille Moore]

That was my biggest criticism with this last election. Right. Like my aunt who we were having really interesting dialogue and just every conversation was just like how bad Trump is. It wasn't a stand on policy, it wasn't a stand on what they wanted to do or see in the world. It was just, he is such a dangerous bad man. We need to do everything in our power to not get him in. And like, and that's where you lose people. Because if you're not talking about immigration, if you're not talking about taxation, like, you're not talking about the things that people care about to go out and vote. Like, that's when you lose. Because it can't only be tied to you disliking somebody.

[Philip]

Well, they lost their base. It's, it's almost kind of similar to what we Talk about when brands make a mistake. Their base was the working class person, the police officer, the union member, you know, the construction person. And they lost it. And Charles Schumer in one interview said, oh, I don't care. For every working class person we lose, we'll get two suburban Republicans moving over to us. And it didn't happen. And that's a brand strategy issue where they lost their base and they lost their messaging. And so now their brand doesn't really stand for anything anymore.

[Camille Moore]

Well, it was interesting when we were talking about ghost brands this past weekend, you were bringing up Sears and Playboy and what were some of the other brands that you were talking about?

[Philip]

Kodak.

[Camille Moore]

Kodak, where they have strong, really strong brand recall. Like we all know about these brands, but they don't, they don't mean anything anymore. But it was interesting is because you were kind of talking about how Playboy really has lost its weight and it's gone quite woke, which was interesting.

[Philip]

Yeah, like in their brand decline, you know what I mean? Like, they try to fix things and you know, with the digital world, it was hard to compete. And magazines all suffered across the board. Some survived who maintained strict relevance, like maybe GQ or Harpers or Foreign Affairs. But when Playboy started putting trans models on its cover and remove nudity, like, I really think they kind of lost the male audience. That was their core. And maybe they, maybe somebody at Playboy headquarters said something like Charles Chuck Schumer, you know what I mean? For every man we lose, we're going to get two, you know, metrosexual, whatever, you know, it didn't really happen. They stopped catering to their customer.

[Camille Moore]

It's complicated because, like, is it signal or is it noise? Right? Like, I think Playboy was on the decline. It's like same thing with Victoria's Secret. Like they were on the decline for other market faster factors. And because they didn't innovate and change based on where the market was going, they failed to stay relevant. And then they tried to do like the bait and switch because the soup du jour was, let's talk trans, let's talk inclusive. Let's move away from these like hyper masculine ideals. And when they, they tried to do that on top of them already declining, it was just the nail in the coffin. Like, it just, it completely kills the brand. And the same thing with Sears. Like Sears has become notoriously famous as a case study of a brand that just got too big and too heavy because they, they entered into too many verticals. And then because they brick and mortar took such A huge hit. They were too overextended in these. All these different line extensions of their name that they just. It was the Titanic that was ship sinking.

[Philip]

It's interesting with Sears because you get addicted to making money and then. And everybody talks about accretive growth and acquisitions and doing more things, but they kind of diluted themselves out so far rather than at one point, they were 1% of the U.S. economy. Sears, like in total what they did. But they were essentially a merchandising company at its essence, and they didn't innovate, which allows Amazon to come in and actually innovate on the merchandising straight to consumer sales, and they just became completely irrelevant.

[Camille Moore]

Well, all of these ghost brands are examples of companies that don't try to innovate fast enough. Like, they see these signals of the landscape changing and they want to stay comfortable as these big behemoth brands. And they're not innovating in a way that maintains their brand in a changing landscape.

[Philip]

Yeah, they lose sight of what they need to do. Sears had the power and resources to dominate the digital merchandise world like nobody had. You know, Bezos did not have the resources to compete when he came up, but they were so distracted by all these other things and quarterly reports that they didn't suck back and say, look, we got to get ahead of this now if we're going to stay around.

[Camille Moore]

So let's move on to. I want to talk about the Vogue, that boyfriends are no longer cool.

[Philip]

Did the staff ask you to put this in here? Just to get me round up 100%.

[Camille Moore]

The person that helps with our creative direction. Katya was dying to get this article in front of me. She literally probably sent it to me four times and then was like, it's going so viral. Look at all these videos. And I'm like, well, how do we tie it to brand?

[Philip]

On one hand, I understand why it's being said on Vogue, but on the other hand, I'm really disappointed in terms of the message it's sending out there. And it's disingenuous and it reflects. What's bad about society is that I'm calling it the ego economy, where they want to make it look like to say that having a boyfriend is not cool is to deliberately lead their audience down a path of unhappiness, I think while pretending to be happy. And it's hard for me to get into, but because I work so much with female entrepreneurs and females who are struggling in different cases, I want to empower people to be Stronger. And I think these people are getting clicks telling people things that are actually very detrimental to their happiness and health. And they're not talking about kind of an epidemic of antidepressant drugs that exist in some of these demographics. And that in some studies, women have never been less happy, you know, in the current circumstance. And they're just. It seems like they're doubling down on a theme because it suits them politically rather than be in the best interests of their audience.

[Camille Moore]

Well, that's why initially I wanted to avoid it. It's like, I don't. I don't like this perpetuation of let's vilify the other gender. And that was the way that it kind of came out. A lot of these viral videos were showing spikes in females becoming like, lawyers and not getting married and watching shows like Olivia Pope under the idea of it being like, women are so empowered that they don't need boyfriends. So is posting like the. The inference is like. Is posting, but it uncool, because, like, we don't. It's not cool to be with someone anymore. And that. That isn't a narrative that I'm even interested in moving forward because I think it's just purely stupid.

[Philip]

I think if you said you don't need to be validated by the attention of somebody else, you're your own individual person. But to say having a companion is uncool, that's a different message. And it's a deliberate wedge between the genders. And what we're seeing is a wider and wider gap between genders in terms of their political affiliation, between how they're talking to each other. Because similarly, you can find tons of sites where there's idiotic men telling, you know, encouraging young men to vilify women or criticize them for their online presence and doing that or not settle down.

[Camille Moore]

Because you don't need to.

[Philip]

And you're seeing something on the other side. And I'm like, hello, people. Like, we have a species here that needs more people, right?

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, we need to be coupling. We need to have more kids, or.

[Philip]

Else the human race is done. You can't just say, we're above babies now. Other people will do it. And obviously, you don't need, if you're a female or a male, to try to validate yourself through because you have somebody. You can be happy and powerful without having somebody. But to position it like, it's not cool to be in love or to have somebody who supports you or to rely on another human. That's where I think the Message got conflated because it was a headline. Clickbait. But I think it could send the wrong message to a lot of young people.

[Camille Moore]

Well, what's interesting is that the article took different shapes. So where this came from is a podcast that that's gonna be relevant to very few people that listen to this. There's kind of these two, like, influencers in New York that are kind of like, they're young, you're young women, but they're. They just. They kind of don't talk about anything relevant. Like, they just kind of gossip on the Internet. And the whole concept came from, like, you know, is having a boyfriend lame, uncool? And because having a boyfriend underscores, like, Republican values was like, the idea. So that's where Philip is coming from with his take going hard, fast. Is that like, to say that to be in a relationship represents a political ideology is stupid.

[Philip]

Well, but it's an extension of their emnifying having a family. You know what I mean? Like, it's kind of positioning it like you don't have to have a family. And the reason why I'm somewhat passionate about it is somebody tries to bring people from both sides to the middle to discuss. Is that article I was telling you about about political positioning by gender right now. Can I chat about that?

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Philip]

So the most moderate people in our society are people who are married, where there's a husband and a wife or two partners who share different perspectives and they kind of modify and affect each other's things. But the most radical people in our society, the most radical, Most radical on the right are young men and divorced men. And the most radical on the left are young women who don't have any children and divorced women. And so what we're seeing is this.

[Camille Moore]

Not young women, 25 to 35, the age that you should be having children at, and you're not having children.

[Philip]

So this gender, like, polarization is happening. And so when each gender is emnifying the other, the likelihood of you coming together gets lower and lower, which means we're not happy, which means we don't carry on the species. And it means that we don't actually find solutions to problems. We're just blaming the other side as evil. And so you see more and more people saying, I can't date somebody who doesn't have my politics. That was never the case in human history.

[Camille Moore]

But you missed the core point of what's happening to women on the left.

[Philip]

You mean in terms of like, that demographic of 20 to 30 year olds?

[Camille Moore]

Yeah. Like why they're moving towards that. Like your whole comment of the. You being derogatory on the idea of in quotations, you're saying lesser people having kids, which is. You were being derogatorily funny. Explain why that's happening.

[Philip]

But I was being derogatory to the authors, not to people who have kids. I think people who have kids are actually much happier.

[Camille Moore]

No, but I'm saying. Okay, I will say it. What was interesting in the thing that you were listening to was saying that because women are not having children or they're prolonging not having children, that 25 to 35 year old age demographic, because they have natural maternal instincts, they're putting those maternal instincts onto disenfranchised portions of the population. So that's why they're adopting the idea of like open borders and focusing on minorities and inclusivity. Because they feel that because they don't, they don't know this, but because they don't have children to care for, they need to protect who needs help in society. And it's the same thing with divorced women is that because they are now divorced with children that are exiting out of the home or they have this maternal need that's not. Not being balanced. They're. They're flocking towards politics that, that show that there's a lack of protection in society and they need to be the difference for protection.

[Philip]

No, it's interesting and it's happening on the male side too, where they're not like, how many young men, I've told this to my son. Like, you guys aren't doing anything. You're just watching things and forming opinions. And so. But you have this testosterone that makes you feel like you're engaged in fights or struggle, but you're not actually struggling. You're just on the computer or your phone all day long looking at other people doing things and then being aggressive. In your opinion. So it's happening on both genders, it's driving them away. And articles like that out of vogue do a great disservice to their listeners in terms of emnifying deep relationships.

[Camille Moore]

Well, it's interesting because it's such an elitism of to have a boyfriend is uncool. But like one of the two hosts on that podcast, like recently got married. So it's like, it's this idea of dating in the current landscape is impossible. But the guy that I found is the exception. He's good enough, but we're just still gonna shit on the entire experience because men are the problem. So it's It's a really interesting conundrum, but a lot of these women that are the loudest and the most opinionated, they have relationships. It's just they happen to be this kind of this, this selected chosen one, but they don't feel the need to showcase it. Or they do feel the need to showcase it because they're trying to exercise this independence.

[Philip]

It's actually creating a sea of unhappiness. Because when you refuse to speak to somebody who has different values or beliefs than you, you're not getting into the pool. So as the genders polarize more, you're not exposed to them as much. Right. Like, if you're. If you're a dude who's just on sports betting channels and pornhub, like, you're probably not getting exposed to a lot of quality women who are intelligent. And if you're a woman in some of these circles, you're not getting exposed to men who are wonderful men who are contractors or build businesses or do things like. So the digital world is almost perpetuating unhappiness by pushing the genders away from each other.

[Camille Moore]

Well, especially when you talk about this a lot, that the bar that achieved woman sets for the man that she wants is such a statistical anomaly that her happiness is dependent on something that's, like, not achievable. So, like, the whole idea of, like, if you were to interview the average educated woman, their ideal man is over 6ft, makes over 150,000.

[Philip]

Quarter million.

[Camille Moore]

Quarter million. Comes from a good. Comes from a good family, is emotionally in tune, is like.

[Philip]

And it wears an Obama T shirt under his dress shirt.

[Camille Moore]

No, but it's just statistically it's. And if that's the only way that you're going to be happy or settle down and you're not. You talk about this a lot, especially to, like, to friends of mine that were struggling dating, you were like, you're not opening your mind to the best guy that could be awesome for you because you're setting all of these limitations. And there's very few of those guys that exist, especially when you're not putting yourself out there.

[Philip]

And the same thing's happening to men. It's hilarious where we're speaking from each side because they're on their digital channels seeing different versions of what females are. And so it's corrupting what a female should look like and be like to them because the digital world is feeding them junk food for their brain with pornography and all of that. So both of the genders have, you know, corrupted versions of what they're supposed to be looking for, and then they tie their happiness to it. And it's just we have to be careful in the digital world that we're not perpetuating unhappiness because it suits our clickability.

[Camille Moore]

What's interesting though, I want to take a different turn though, with this conversation in that I also, though, don't disagree with the premise of not needing to post about your relationship online. Like, I had this experience myself. There was a woman I was following. I really respect her podcast and what she does. And she talks about all about business and scaling. And it went from being a great platform to consume information on business to this, like, in your face, over the top, like, quasi relationship channel where like in every single photo is them like humping each other pretty much. Like they're just all over each other. All they're talking about is like, it just, it's. It's an extreme to another side where that wasn't the brand that I started following. And it's not that they can't get into a relationship, but it's about that brand balance of when it starts overpowering the core message of when you're there. What does that mean to the. To that brand and that followership that you've built?

[Philip]

It's pretty deep conversation because you have a brand online and you probably started online for one purpose, it grew into another purpose. But people can evolve, you know, to me, it just shows you how, how euphoric love is if that's genuine. Because for some people, like, they've been struggling to work so long, and then when they. They've met that person that does it for them, they actually are willing to sacrifice the brand they had built to show something else. And that can be their choice. They may not be able to go back to being where they were before, but they may have gone down that thing. But it depends what you're using your digital media for, right? In terms of how much you're going to open the doors to allow people see your personal space. Like, do you want people to. To see your kids if you're an online influencer or.

[Camille Moore]

That's what I struggle with, right? Like, actually, that's the wrong term. I don't struggle with it. I'm actually confident in deliberate. In my. Deliberate in the way that I do that. And that was. It's been an interesting journey because for how this has built up and like becoming a content creator, being known for giving business and marketing advice to businesses, i1 it's just such a Demand on my time. Because every morning, noon and night we're talking about branding that like, I really don't care to post about my personal life on top of it on social media. But also because the times that I'm having in my personal life that are like, where I'm enjoying like the, the intimacy of their relationship and what's happening. The last thing I want to be doing is posting and putting shit online. Like, I just, to me it's like it's, it's the actual one. I'm like living my life versus when I'm doing it for work.

[Philip]

Doesn't what they're saying also work in reverse? In that, yeah, there are some people who post about their relationship to try to get validated. But doesn't it work that like, if you post about your relationship, haters will make judgments also?

[Camille Moore]

Well, that's. Yeah, we have a huge age difference. You know what I mean? Like, for me, like I, there's we, you know, we're ripping people on the Internet. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't want that vulnerability of just like that I'm passing judgment. I'm not really interested in people's opinion. Like, I'm very happy. We have a, we have a, we do everything together and it's, it's awesome. And if you want to know more about my life, well, you gotta buy me coffee. You know, like, you have to know more. You have to know me on a personal level because to me I think it's cheap. That's just my perspective. Like, I think it's cheap if like you have nothing that you hold for the people that truly know you. And I don't, I don't.

[Philip]

Like, you had an interesting idea the other, like if you're creating a business brand online, founder led personal brand, that's good. But you can create another account for your real friends, your family, where you can share those type of things. Right. But that, so you're actually having, you, you're understanding the purpose of the channel that you're on.

[Camille Moore]

Yeah, well, especially because of when, like when I got social media and how addicted we were in high school, like how young it was. It honestly was a highlight reel. Like social media was so fake, you know, like what you put on and how you portrayed it wasn't an accurate reflection of your life. And it's interesting when I feel like I've grown up and I'm the most confident, the most sure of myself, the most happy, the most fulfilled and I feel the least compelled to post about it. Like, it's interesting. From another angle of, to me, it actually, it's, it's cool to be confident in your real life and not feel like you have to make it a billboard because like, what are you. When you post about what you get for Christmas or when you post about, you know, like these, these. It's kind of a brag. Like, it's kind of like, look what I got, look what I have that you don't. And it's like, and it's on display for judgment and for what people have to say. And like, I'm really not interested in that. Like, I. Social media to me is a very powerful tool and it's my business, but from a. I don't need the validation on my life front.

[Philip]

Yeah, like I've said it before, but I think at some point you need to lean more into being a positive role model like, like as part of your business, especially for young females. Because you really, you do, you really can show them how to focus on business and not, and not fall victim to all the negative stuff. Especially like what you're hearing from that Vogue thing. Like, I think we need to come together and discuss what's the healthiest and best way to use digital media.

[Camille Moore]

Totally.

[Philip]

Right. Rather than be on this performative, you know, exercise of trying to be somebody we're not and it's just not a path to happiness.

[Camille Moore]

No, I agree. And I, it's, I actually find where when you're trying to live online, you actually really lose the happiness in the present moment. And it's a really, the core thing for me that I've really learned is social media is extremely powerful. It's very much a job. And it's a job that I also want to like clock out of at the end of the day. And it's. To me, I can't imagine what it's like to have to document and post like your entire life online. Like, it was, it was a really nice part of actually me leaving and getting out of the city because it was really weird when It'd be like 6am and I'm walking to Pilates and someone I haven't seen in like two years, like stopped me on the street and is like talking to me about like the last trip that I was on. And like when you kind of see how much your life is a fishbowl, it's kind of. And I know a lot of people struggle with it when they're gonna launch like a founder led brand. And like, I don't blame them. And that's why, like I said, I'm like, it's zero to Kim Kardashian. You know, like, you don't. If you're gonna start putting stuff online, like, you don't have to give away everything. And in fact, like, like, I think it's cool to keep some stuff for yourself.

[Philip]

Be true to your values. Be true to your brand. Get a coach who can help you navigate these difficult waters. Camille Moore, you're a wonderful inspiration to many people.

[Camille Moore]

Just so you know, guys, we had to do this last part of the second cut because we lost audio. So we're in a better place now at the end of the episode. But we are so pumped to be going off to Japan. Our goal is going to be to record, like, we're going to be recording a bunch of stuff, but hopefully to get an episode in. I hope everyone has a fantastic week and see you next time on the out of the Brand podcast.