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- [00:00]
Camille
Lululemon Stock is down 57% this year. Lululemon doesn't represent anything anymore. It's boring. There's no difference in market.
- [00:08]
Rory
Our clients should pay attention more to what Chip Wilson did than to what Lululemon is doing today in terms of lessons learned. Because our clients are building things. The big corporations are just managing things to try to extract more value before the brand dies.
- [00:22]
Camille
AI is desperate to please, makes things up on the fly, and tells everyone what they want to hear. And that seems a lot more like client services to me.
- [00:30]
Rory
AI is perfect for these corporations that don't want to take risk.
- [00:35]
Camille
It's going to get interesting. Dior changed its logo. A new creative director, Jonathan Anderson. Anderson brought back the original logo, but without the Christian first going back to Dior.
- [00:48]
Rory
You guys might not agree with Donald Trump, but one thing he knows is how to brand right and the best. And if you don't want to learn from somebody who is successful because you don't like them, you're limiting your growth potential, which in the end can be making, you know, maybe your employees can't pay their mortgage.
- [01:03]
Camille
We're not studying from the people who are killing it because we want to think we're better than them. We want to live in this theory. No, but not, not. We don't actually want to think we're better than them, but we want to live on our moral superiority of there's nothing that I can learn from an OnlyFans porn star. What a brand, what a brand, what a brand, what a mighty good brand. Say it again. What a brand, what a brand, what a brand, what a mighty good brand. Welcome back to another episode of Art of the Brand, the number one branding and marketing podcast in the world.
- [01:39]
Rory
If you like the podcast, please share it, follow it, like it. We want to get in front of more eyeballs and change the world of branding and business strategy.
- [01:46]
Camille
Even if you just send to someone that you like, someone that you like, just be like, hey, I like you. I like this.
- [01:52]
Rory
This will make you a better person listening to this podcast.
- [01:54]
Camille
Well, hopefully. I did a lot of prep for today's episode. I'm really pumped. So we're going to go over a lot of stuff today. There's a lot of it's interesting, but it's also the stuff that plants seeds, you know, like the stuff that, that you need to start really thinking about if you're obsessed with branding, marketing, and how to propel your brand forward. So we got a lot to cover today. We're going to talk about Lululemon. We're going to talk about AI. We're going to talk about Dior's change in a logo, what that means for kind of fashion at large. We're going to talk about Donald Trump and Bonnie Blue, one of the leading only fans.
- [02:26]
Rory
Stay tuned for some deep controversy on that one.
- [02:28]
Camille
Yeah, that's a lot of controversial topics today. We're going to talk about how my hairdresser doesn't get it. And we're going to talk about this match or rip off that I wanted to get your thoughts on. And then we're going to wrap it up with getting you guys to submit the best and worst sports logos because we've been dying to do a segment on this forever and we'd love for you guys to chime in. So let's get started with Lululemon. It's interesting because initially I was sent this post and the concept of the post is that Lululemon stock is down 57% this year. And this woman, Emily Hickey, she asks her teen daughter, who do you want to become when you wear Lululemon? And the. The basically the post goes on to say her daughter says that she would be nobody if she wears Lululemon because you just become another person in a crowd. Like Lululemon doesn't represent anything anymore. It's boring. There's no difference in market. And I wanted to have a great conversation on this. But then the ex founder of Lululemon, Chip Wilson, purchased a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal to basically take a hit and at his past company. And I think it just really allows us to have a larger conversation for where Lululemon is at at present and what brands can learn from.
- [03:48]
Rory
I love founders because you can't build anything unless you go against conventional wisdom. You're willing to piss people off. Like, we look at the world through a corporate lens and people think everybody has to be touchy feelies, but founders are the warriors who get into the dirt and make something amazing. And then the evolution of Lululemon, having it gone public and seeing what the bureaucrats or bean counters have done to it is a fascinating case study and it tells me that our clients should pay attention more to what Chip Wilson did than to what Lululemon is doing today in terms of lessons learned. Because our clients are building things. The big corporations are just managing things to try to extract more value before the brand dies.
- [04:30]
Camille
Yeah, well, it's an interesting time that he decided to take out that ad when this narrative online is like, we've Been tracking this for a minute. You know, like the. The sound bite on the Skinny Confidential was me ripping apart Lululemon for. For placing a very overweight woman as their running ambassador, and. Which made zero sense to the brand. And then I went on. I mean, obviously that was a controversial clip, which I stand behind, because if you're a business that's focused on health and wellness, there's no shortage of models that represent health and wellness that you can leverage. But then I went to go actually read his book, like the Little Black Stretchy Pants. And it was one of the best books I've ever read, period. And it's very difficult to cut through the noise because the media loves to rip Chip Wilson apart. But we. And you can't track the death of a megalith like Lululemon as fast as you can tear someone down for saying things that are. That aren't easy to hear.
- [05:27]
Rory
Yeah, I don't think many people read that book, but they're happy to criticize Chip Wilson because it's an easy Runway to condemn him for being not politically fair.
- [05:37]
Camille
To feel virtuous, to feel better about yourself, because it doesn't seem good to hurt people's feelings.
- [05:42]
Rory
And this is what's plaguing society, is that people have opinions that aren't informed. They have opinions that are self soothing. And you can take a barometer from your friends by asking them questions about controversial issues and see where they're getting their information from. Is there anything that seems informed about it or are they just regurgitating a self soothing, soothing narrative? We'll talk about that a little later with Trump.
- [06:04]
Camille
Yeah.
- [06:04]
Rory
But Chip Wilson, if you haven't read his book, but you have an opinion on Lululemon, it's an uninformed opinion.
- [06:10]
Camille
Totally.
- [06:10]
Rory
What Chip Wilson's ad in the Wall Street Journal is doing, I think is reflecting a movement in society that people are getting fed up with being told what to think.
- [06:19]
Camille
Yep.
- [06:19]
Rory
And you're just supposed to, like, look at things that make no sense. And then you look at the herd in the crowd and nobody's saying anything. And so you just say, okay, this is. This is okay, but it's not okay. And a few brave people are now stepping up and saying, look, we need to start identifying things that don't make sense. We need to start telling the emperor they have no clothes. We need to stop shying away from the controversy that allows growth.
- [06:42]
Camille
I really want to get into this. You bring up so many good points from a starting perspective. That is what makes this difficult Territory, because there is a world, a world of theory that we can live in where it's good to be kind, it's good to make people feel inclusive, it's not good to make people feel left out or not a part of. And it becomes really complicated to start separating what makes basic sense, business sense, psychological sense for what humans want and then what makes you feel good. And they're two very different things. And that's what makes this entire conversation around Lululemon so complicated, is Lululemon is a masterclass in when you try to please everyone, you please nobody, and you kill your brand over time. And the criticism that Chip Wilson put out there when it came to the leggings and I highly, again, you have to watch the full interview, not the clips that exist online, and read the book. And the problem was that women were buying leggings that were too small for them. And instead of shapewear, this was pre skims. So women were wanting to buy leggings that were two sizes smaller than them to, like, suck themselves in. And because they were buying leggings that were too small for them, not their size, the, the leggings weren't, weren't holding their integrity because they were like, chafing. They were being stressed out and you were getting pilling, and the quality of the material was falling apart because they were, they weren't being used for their intended use type. And the business was starting to suffer because they had this, this incredible return policy that their, their stuff would last forever and you could send stuff back in and they would replace it. And basically, because it had become a public company, Chip Wilson was, was on the chopping block to go and do this interview to talk about this apparent product failure.
- [08:38]
Rory
He dared to be honest.
- [08:39]
Camille
He dared to be honest.
- [08:40]
Rory
And, and in a business, you need honesty, you need radical honesty in your business in order to create a strategy that works. And so he's seeing profits go down. He's on the board, and he says this is why profits are going down. People are misusing our product. Right. It's not a corset where you put your, your foot on the back and tie it up like it's, it's a legging that's supposed to fit you. But how quickly did the vultures jump on him, you know what I mean? In the virtual well.
- [09:03]
Camille
And that was, and they, that was kind of the, the straw that broke the camel's back. He was already having issues with the board. There was already this big push for inclusivity. Again, this was like coming up 20 years ago when a lot of this stuff was really starting to happen again, especially in Canada, especially on the West Coast. And he got pushed out. And then the company took a and started to try to double down to bring back that woman that was really never their customer. Like, they were the first company ever to create activewear made for the female body. Like prior to, like an active female body. So prior to Lululemon, if you went to Fila or you went to Adidas, they were baggier, they were like kind of like, like a little dumpy. Like it wasn't a super hot silhouette that complemented the female body. And Chip Wilson looked to surfing and how surf shorts were different than other shorts. And they really complimented the sur for body type that was very specific to the muscles you develop when you stand up on a surfboard. And that's what made Lululemon have such a cult following, is it was the first. It spoke to someone that was really into health and wellness, to meditation. He foresaw a world in which it wasn't just athletes that worked out. It was, it was this woman who was 25 to 41, who was focused on their career, had discretionary income, cared about health and wellness and fitness, was looking at doing like a high impact in the morning, meditation or yoga in the evening. And that woman wasn't being satisfied. And he created this clothing line for that person.
- [10:30]
Rory
Yeah, like I think we know that story. What I find interesting to me from a parallel, and it's a bit of a military analogy, but for people who are old enough or who have studied the Vietnam War, the US military at that time became incredibly bureaucratic and bean counterish. And so what happens is when you get growth without dynamism, you get a bunch of people who are just being obedient and are feeding the system what it asks for. And the reason why the US got their ass kicked in Vietnam for 8 years from a tiny country is that all of the bureaucrats were just doing the KPIs and the, and the bean counting without understanding what's really going on on the ground. What the troops on the ground are seeing and experiencing and fighting. The bureaucratic machine was dominating. And so for eight years they waged this war and they were feeding numbers saying that we're winning when they were completely losing. And that's what's happening in Lululemon right now. They're feeding numbers and they're completely losing.
- [11:23]
Camille
No, it's such a great tie in because that was the point of that long winded story. Is that when they took that hard left and they complete, they tried to speak to a person that was never a part of their brand target. And that's what so many brands that we see come across our desk. It's what they, it's what they fall victim to is that they forget about what their unique selling proposition was. What was their differentiator, what made them unique, who is their base? When you try to speak to people that you were never initially speaking to in an aggressive way, where you're trying to change your brand identity, it doesn't work.
- [11:57]
Rory
But what I tell founders a lot is leadership is, is not just direction. So your, your organization will adopt the metrics you demand. And to go back to that U.S. army, they were fixated on counting, counting kill, kill ratio numbers. So people started fabricating numbers. People worked towards showing no casualties. Like the whole organization changed its culture to feed what the leadership want. And once you got this kind of woke board at Lululemon, all of the management levels below were reinforcing it. But the numbers are skewed and they're fake and it starts to take your, your company in the wrong direction. And I think Lululemon is the point where it's beyond, it's beyond repair. Like I think it's been led off the cliff and now the vultures are just trying to take out what they can. And this hurts Chip at a core because he actually really took a risk and built something. And to see it being destroyed by. By bureaucratic bean counters is very upsetting to him. And he's sending a message for founders to learn from totally.
- [12:55]
Camille
And I want to read actually the first section because I think it's worth it from a time perspective. So when I founded, this is his headline for the what he took out in the Wall Street Journal. When I founded Lululemon in 1998, it was built on a relentless focus on innovation, product culture, and customer experience. We invented a technical product business model, created a new apparel category, pioneered community marketing, and developed system processes so simple our refrigerator could manage them. By its 25th anniversary, Lululemon should have been a $100 billion market cap company. Instead, its trajectory has declined. Why? Lululemon directors have systematically dismantled the business model and lost employees who held the institutional knowledge that made the company great. Like a plane crash, decline rarely happens because of a single failure. It's a series of mistakes. And that speaks. We talk so often about the brand death by a thousand cuts. And that's exactly what he's touching on here. And then he goes on to talk about the founder leaving because founders are integral to the future success of a.
- [13:59]
Rory
Business or the brand.
- [14:01]
Camille
And then he talks about the gap of ization, of loss of creative to merchants. And basically where it's consistent quarterly projections for Wall street where like you can't do things with risk because everything has to be so calculated because they can take no risk when it goes public. And it's such a, like, this document really should become something that your business continues to come back to if you want to be successful for a long time.
- [14:27]
Rory
Yeah, I'd love to talk. Having studied airline safety, like his analysis of the plane crash, he didn't go into depth, but we called it the Swiss cheese model. So when you look at Swiss cheese, there's a bunch of holes on there, but you can't put your finger through the whole Swiss cheese. But if you were to rotate it so all the holes align, that's when you can have a catastrophic error. Like, so there's redundancy on every aircraft. So if one thing breaks, there's something else. But if like six things happen over the course of the flight all at the same time, that becomes the storm. And what he's saying with his company is once he let these, once these clowns took over and they were in this reinforcing self serving narrative, all of these things started to happen at the same time. And he's, I'd be surprised if he hasn't sold as many of his shares as he could. But you know, I would be going short on Lululemon right now based on what I'm seeing, because they don't represent anything that's dangerous or meaningful. They are now just, they're almost a generic no name.
- [15:25]
Camille
They're boring. Nothing about Lululemon is exciting. And there was such a perfect quote online about the Nike skims drop and how they didn't sell out in a lot of their, like core categories. And the underscoring point was that you can't. Like Lululemon's black leggings have become the ubiquitous staple in a female's closet. Right? Everybody has minimum three, you know, if not more. And you can't ride forever on just the staple because now it's been same with Nike. Like, Lululemon can't be out of black leggings. Like if they're out of black leggings, like, you don't go back, right? Like you have to be able to rely on there for like, for the base. But it's a boring company. There's nothing innovative coming out it's not interesting.
- [16:07]
Rory
The product innovation is, is a good point because I was introduced to Lululemon because some guy said, hey, they have great underwear for men. And that was before men paid attention to it. But if you look at their underwear today, it's almost identical as it was 15 years ago. There hasn't been any innovation. So I don't see innovation in their products. You bring up Nike. What I'd love, I'd love to show at some point some of the old Nike ads, because there's a reason why Nike once was amazing and today is boring as well. I saw an ad on the weekend of this attractive female getting ready for doing something in front of the mirror. And all of a sudden the guy Michael from Halloween is there. And so you're watching this ad, you think it's kind of a horror movie ad. And he's chasing her and then she gets out of the house and then he's chasing her and it just shows her running and then she just essentially like outruns him and he collapses, exhausted. And it's like, like that. They almost banned it because people complained about it. But that is advertising that's memorable, that says something risky and dangerous and sets your product apart because you're willing to do what other people won't do. If you're doing what everybody else does. You don't have a brand Chip even.
- [17:14]
Camille
In the book talks about how they would kind of do like riskier creatives. Like, they would make really bold statements. The. The pants that you end up loving for years were called anti bull crushing.
- [17:25]
Rory
Yes.
- [17:25]
Camille
You know, and it's like when you become this like public megalith, like one of the big criticisms they had is like this Lululemon Disney collaboration because it was just like Mickey Mouse all over. And they were like, who is that speaking to? Like, who are you bringing in? Like, what is the plan? And so often what business owners are so well intentioned, they're busy, but like, they're not thinking about like how mission critical it is to have a clear place in the market. Like no one is safe from it. And it's become way more saturated, way more competitive. And for that reason it's, it's. You can really stand out and be successful if you focus on brand, but if not for brand, nobody is safe because there's just so much of everything.
- [18:07]
Rory
No, in today's world, you need to be focused somewhat on disrupting. Like if you're going to come in and break into a market and dominate, you have to kind of disrupt the status quo. And you can't do that by being safe or boring. Yeah.
- [18:17]
Camille
So that was.
- [18:18]
Rory
Don't be boring.
- [18:19]
Camille
Don't be boring. It doesn't work. So next I want to talk about. We were having an interesting conversation this weekend about AI. So in this tweet, he goes, I don't understand why ad agencies are trying to get AI to replace their creative people. AI is desperate to please, makes things up on the fly, and tells everyone what they want to hear. That seems a lot more like client services to me.
- [18:40]
Rory
You know what it sounds like? Lululemon employee managers. Yeah.
- [18:46]
Camille
But it's such a brilliant point that there's so much. There's so much buzz around how AI is going to take everything. But AI is. Is very dangerous in that it is very focused on pleasing.
- [18:58]
Rory
AI is perfect for these corporations that don't want to take risk because it's just going to use what's been said before and then reorganize it into a new form of. Of salad, of word salad. But if you're a founder or a business that's trying to grow, you have to be dynamic, you have to disrupt. You have to be doing things that are new, and that comes from humans who have range and creative ability. AI is not going to give you that breakthrough moment. It's going to give you a smorgasbord of what's happened, and that can be safe if you're a big agency serving big corporations. But Rory's insights into creativity are always gold.
- [19:34]
Camille
I want to have a hot take, like, AI isn't the best. What makes AI incredible is that it allows you as a business owner, to potentially get access to the best people because they have now more bandwidth to take on more clients. But I even took a call this weekend with one of the top podcast editing teams. And because I'm always looking to level up, I'm always taking, you know, calls from these people that reach out. And candidly, on the call, he's like, you know, I. I don't. We don't use AI. He goes, like, AI is not the best at picking the hook. It's not the best at creating the caption. And they're right. And that's where I'm constantly faced with, is like, our team will try this new, you know, whatever the Opus Clips Editor. And, like, it's a great tool for, you know, for someone who might be starting out, but when we're in the business of really trying to go viral and to be growing this because we're the number one Branding and marketing podcast in the world that's me make money. It's. You have to use the human mind that has like, gone through all those pieces and like, understands the core target and that, that just that nuance of what that human mind understands.
- [20:37]
Rory
It's interesting you say nuance because when I did my master's in culture and conflict, there's high context and low context communications and high context and low context cultures. So North America is generally low context. We say what we mean. Whereas if you go to some, some areas of the world, they have high context where it's not to the point, it's not direct. There's a lot of social maneuvers behind communications. But when it comes to good advertising and branding, high context is interesting. Low context is easy. And so you know you're getting low context from ChatGPT or AI for the most part. You can ask it, you can give it good directions to say, don't kiss my butt. Don't, you know, I mean, do something dangerous. Like, it's a good trigger for thinking. But you need the highly creative human to, to use AI to generate those creative juices.
- [21:28]
Camille
AI is an incredible tool and we've never had something so exciting and so scary at the same time enter into human existence. But truthfully, when I see like, I'm reading the back of packages for, like, for client packaging and like, I can tell it's chatgpt when I'm like on a client's socials or when people have reached out and they want me to audit their page, like, it's, it's very obvious and it's not good enough. It's not bad. But because it's a tool that has everyone has access, like, you need that difference driver and like, that's like, that's a lot of what we're talking about every week. Like to criticize the difference between one brand doing a collab over another brand doing a collab like Lululemon and the Disney collab, you have to understand that that collab doesn't make sense for where you want your brand to go. And that conversation, that nuance, like, if you ask ChatGPT, hey, we're looking to grow our business by this percent. We have a deal with Disney on the table based on this, this and this. Do you think that this is a good idea? ChatGPT is not going to say no because also a lot of marketing people are also not going to say no. And like, that's the difference is that you need to be like, it's, it's Exhausting. But it's the Olympic difference of making it to the top.
- [22:36]
Rory
Yeah. We used to say in the military, if you have a yes man working for you, one of you is redundant. So you want to make sure you don't have a yes person working for you. But people want to delegate creativity.
- [22:46]
Camille
Yeah.
- [22:47]
Rory
And not everybody is creative when you own your own business. But if you're going to delegate creativity, you can't delegate it to sub par intellectuals. And what I would say to all of our listeners and clients is creativity is probably the most important area of your business where you have to get the top talent you can afford. Because the top 1% creatives change the world. You look at Karl Lagerfeld, you look at anybody who is like has that angle, they make the biggest difference. And so you don't want to cut corners on your creative talent that works with you. And too often people are just phoning in the creative.
- [23:22]
Camille
It's literally the difference. Well, it's interesting because we talk about when you talk about a brand, that's why I talk about the three different levels of a brand. Right. A brand, a good brand, a great brand. The bare minimum is having an obsession on consistency and experience. That's why to go back to the Chip Wilson article, he said it was so basic. We had developed system processes so simple, Refrigerator could manage them. Once you have a consistent process product, once your product is like is good. It's good. Every time you're like, you understand those fundamentals to having a business that can be branded differently, which most people listening to this like, you understand that already because you're, you're a shared value. Like we're aligned as people. You care about what you do. You have a great approach. The next thing that you have to be obsessed with is how you show up and how you communicate.
- [24:11]
Rory
No. And what SOPs do in your business when they're done well is it frees up space for creativity, for strategic thinking, for dynamics. Right. If you're spending every day dealing with a mess of daily operations, your brain is unable to be creative. So getting those sops is what he did and then allowed him to be creative and focus on products.
- [24:33]
Camille
It's actually a great segue into the. My hairdresser doesn't get it.
- [24:37]
Rory
All right, let's do that. That's a good hook.
- [24:41]
Camille
So the other day, this woman that I used to do my hair for an event, we had had a really great conversation when she was doing my hair.
- [24:49]
Rory
It's not pink Leblonde. Pink Leblond. Gets it.
- [24:51]
Camille
It's not Pink Leblonde. In fact, she's a great person to learn from.
- [24:54]
Rory
She gets it.
- [24:54]
Camille
She kills it. It's. She's very good. But this woman who had done my hair, like, had styled my hair for an event, and I'd met her twice, and she was, while we were sitting in the chair, obviously super eager to learn more about me. She wanted to get the masterclass.
- [25:09]
Rory
She.
- [25:09]
Camille
She's like, really ready to, like, level it up. I had, like, a candid conversation with her because I didn't pick her off of social media. Someone referred me to her and I wouldn't have picked her based on her socials. I went and I never do this based on recommendation because of where the event was. So it wasn't like a convenient location, like a major city ride, a ton of options. Fast forward. I see her post on her stories and I can tell she's, like, very eager based on the conversation and, like, wanting to post more on socials. But the post she did on the story, it's her shopping at Aritzia and it's her asking with a sticker tag, do you want to see what I tried on this weekend at Aritzia? And it's like her trying as an influencer. And it was like, yes, absolutely, and no, not interested. And when I looked at that, I knew that I needed to talk about it on the episode on our podcast this week. Because she's prepared to do the easy work, like, that's not the hard work to, like, set up a tripod and like, try on a ton of different mouses at Aritzia and, like, share it with your followers. That's not where she's struggling. Where she's struggling is doing the hard work, talking about her story, her approach to how she does hair, befores and afters of the events, like the stuff that actually answers the who, what, where, why and how of her business and allows her to not lose business based on the opportunity cost of the experience I had when I went to her page the first time.
- [26:39]
Rory
I'm sympathetic and judgmental of this fact scenario. And to put it in context, when I look at social media, I think it's somewhat destructive in that it hurts thinking because it's very hard for a lot of people to disassociate social media from popularity. Yeah, but the human psyche wants to be popular desperately. And so they look at social media, they see other popularity. And so when we're talking to them about making content for social media, we're not talking about being popular. We're talking about being functional so that you can use it to advance your business interests. But when you see somebody and it's not that hard to get, but you can see the human psychological drive that her default was. Do you want to see what I went shopping for? When she's a hairstylist, her default isn't to say you just to make comments on, hey, why did the woman in Miss Sloan have her hair like that doesn't compliment her face or. Or somebody who is doing.
- [27:34]
Camille
Or like, have it like putting up a tripod to record when she's doing the next bridal hair or whatever standard.
- [27:39]
Rory
Right. That should be the first. But the fact that the human brain thinks, oh, do you want to see what I'm like? That type of popularity comes after five years of investing in becoming spectacular.
- [27:49]
Camille
That's when you get to pink LeBlanc standard.
- [27:50]
Rory
Like, what exactly people might be interested in. But you got to do five years of becoming spectacular at something and then sharing your art, not. You know what I mean, like my fishing trip, nobody cares.
- [28:01]
Camille
Like, that's the core thing is we were listening actually yesterday to the Diary of the CEO episode of Morgan Housel and there was a great point in it where Morgan goes, you know, when you're 10, you think that the world revolves around you. When you're 20, you think that you're at the center of the world. When you're at 30, you realize that you're a part of the world. And then when you're 40, the world doesn't care about you.
- [28:22]
Rory
Nobody really cares about what you're doing when you're 40.
- [28:25]
Camille
And it was such a great salient point to what most people miss on socials is there's so much narrative of, like, build your personal brand and, like, show up and post online. But the very important point, the asterisks, the bolded, the underscore is it has to be through the lens of what your potential person cares about and at the level of where she's at. When she really hasn't done social, she's doing the bare, bare, bare, bare, bare minimum. It's to show why she's special, why she's different, and why she's the best person for the job in the context of where she can get business at the current moment. Like, she's a far stretch from a Aritzia Get Ready With Me video going viral and her getting booked all over the world to do celebrity hair. Like, you need to put in a lot of reps on the basics before you're going insane viral between fashion to being booked for hair, when you own a local business that can only generate business within a 50 kilometer radius.
- [29:19]
Rory
It's a great point, but it's, it's sad. Like it just, it kind of, it's depressing in that it has such a stranglehold on the ego that, that people think that. Because I'm sure if that person or anybody just sat down and said, okay, what would be the best post for my business? It wouldn't be that. But that default to thinking like that is making people waste a lot of money. And that's why your course, the social media masterclass and some of the upcoming products is actually so valuable. I'm not saying to promote it. I'm saying it actually forces people to go through the difficult steps of understanding. It disassociated from the popularity metric. It's actually understand how the machine works so then you can leverage it for your business. But you have this egoic filter on top of it, which is screwing up how most people do social media.
- [30:05]
Camille
It's what screws up almost everybody on social media is that people can't, they can't look at it objectively. Like their ego is so tied to it emotionally. Because you're so vulnerable to show up online and talk about yourself and put yourself online. So you default to I, I need to make them care about me versus I need to ultimately care about you.
- [30:30]
Rory
Yes, it's right. So well said. It's. That example is like somebody who's got a mechanic shop and wants to get into social media and he's like, hey, do you want to see my bicep routine? I think it's easier to laugh at a guy in that. But you know what I mean? Like it's the same type of thing thinking. You're thinking, no, what are your potential customers interested in? How you can solve their problems. So start investing in that.
- [30:47]
Camille
Well, also too, I mean it's, it's really not motivating. When you look at people in your industry and they have a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand and they've got all of these followers and you're like starting out and you don't know where to start. And then you hear us and we're like, put it online, post about it, do content. But what you're not realizing is that they've been posting for 10 years. One, the landscape was different, you know, like it was in a different spot where you could get more followers at the time. But also they've been doing it for 10 years. Right. Like there's a 10 year lead up period. So there's a point in which even if you look at our content, like when we started it was more like we were focused on small businesses. And then we branched out where it wasn't like we were never really like a brick and mortar stand where we needed to have like rent paid for, you know, on Main street at the corner. So it was, we were able to build up and to grow. And it takes years of doing this, of practicing so that you can accept expand your. And that's a part of the game.
- [31:39]
Rory
Success in many ways in today's world is actually fighting against our natural evolved instincts. Humans have a tendency to overestimate what they can do in the short term. So they think I'm just going to crush workouts or I'm just going to invest in this or hire somebody short term. And they underestimate what they can do in the long term by a bunch of small wins.
- [31:57]
Camille
Yeah.
- [31:57]
Rory
And so rather than look at people who have a lot of followers, most of them are bought. You know the relative deprivation that comes from judging yourself against others. It will distract you away from the fact that you need to have a micro or a small win every day. And if you can get a micro or small win every day for 365 days, you'll be amazed at where you're at. But if you're just like, oh, I hate this agency, I'll hire this agency or I'm just going to do like people they over focus on a short term type of effort as opposed to investing in a long term effort. Just like in, just like any financial investing.
- [32:30]
Camille
You make a great point. There's a plethora of issues that we see.
- [32:34]
Rory
It's a big word like marmalade.
- [32:36]
Camille
It's a big word, but it felt right. There's so many issues that plague people. And you're right, like the agency jumping is obviously one, but ultimately it comes down to the lack of understanding it yourself. And it's no different than anything else that you do. Right. Like think about whether if it's easy for you to think about, like being a mom, you know, like when you're, when you're, when you're a mom and you're experiencing and you're going through it, it's so much easier for you to delegate or tell someone what to do because you really get it. Or maybe it's in your job. Maybe you are a hairdresser, maybe you are a lawyer, like because you're Doing the craft because you're invested, you're in the game. It's easier for you to delegate, to train people, to bring people in, to expand your, your and your brand is no different when it comes down to like what you're going to get out of it. The longer you stay ignorant and you think it's other people's problem and not your problem, the longer you're going to have an issue. And the people who understood that they needed to start 10 years ago, I don't even wanna call them purchased or bought. I want you to realize like you are 10 years late, you are 10 years behind, but there's no reason to not starting up. And for you to also like leave your ego out the door. Like if your first video does a hundred views, that's a hundred hundred more people than you would have talked to by not doing it. And you know, and think of it.
- [33:52]
Rory
Like, how many humans do you talk to in a day? 10 on a busy day, like in a real one. But if your message gets heard by a hundred people every day for a year, right. That's 3,000 people have heard your message. Like, you can change your life.
- [34:06]
Camille
Comparison is the thief of happiness. Like you can always find someone that's bigger, that has more likes, that has more views, that has more whatever. That doesn't matter. If you're starting out and you're a goal to in the next six months or, or one year is to grow your in person business by 10 or 15%. That's a massive goal for the, by 5%. That's a massive goal.
- [34:28]
Rory
One thing I say to, to small business, to businesses small and medium who want to see some growth is set an impossible goal. And it sounds ridiculous, but set a goal that says in the next six months I need to triple my revenue.
- [34:41]
Camille
Yeah.
- [34:42]
Rory
And then as an exercise, then write down what you would need to do to triple your revenue. And going through that exercise, you realize how much you can cut to actually get these goals. Like if your goal is to triple your revenue in a year or six months, well then you have to do one piece of content a day. Like it gives you a perspective on what you need to do because most people are spending time on the 80% of stuff that doesn't produce the results because it's comfortable and, and they're not focusing or doubling down on that 20% that produces the results because that 20%'s a lot harder.
- [35:11]
Camille
Virality doesn't matter, right? Like virality has a place, it has a role, but it's it's when you're more established. Like when our content goes viral now, it's because we have five years of awareness, of followers, of buildup and also of all the other pieces where the social speaks to that credibility. Like when I think about that hairdresser, she sees a lot of content online that goes viral. For Aritzia Try ons, Arizona is also having a record breaking year. Like, they're doing fantastic, they're super viral. I understand her brains, her brain's ability of like, I want to see that social media works. I want to get a piece of content that gets high view count, but it doesn't make simple sense because it's. If you just are going to be another Get Ready with Me video that goes viral, it's going to go viral in a category that's not going to result in business. And it actually messes up your brain more because then you're seeing all of these numbers and the business isn't translating and it's. That's why I call it. Like, there's a it. It takes six to eight months. And like, don't look at the success metrics. If you follow the plan, if you come up with your content pillars, you have a goal in place. You do, you do your framework that you teach clients the 90, 91, the first 90 minutes for 90 days, do the one thing that's focused on the goal that you're trying to get to. If you do that for 90 days.
- [36:27]
Rory
You'Re going to change your life.
- [36:28]
Camille
You're going to change your life and then you will get to viral content. There's a place for viral content.
- [36:32]
Rory
Like, people don't even need to hire me. People don't even need to hire me if they just did that. But it's amazing how you need accountability for it. But if you can do the 90, 91, it'll change your life.
- [36:41]
Camille
Yeah, take that one thing from today's episode, please, please. All right, so next I wanted to do a little segue. Really interesting. So it's going to get interesting. Dior changed its logo. This is the age of Jonathan Anderson. Dior is having its moment. It's been on the decline. It's had a lot of negative scandals with, you know, 45 bags that they're selling for $3,000 plus, but everyone's forgot about that. So Dior has gone back, they've changed its logo, but it's not a new logo, it's actually an old logo. And I've read the Dior story, fascinating story, but basically Christian Dior the namesake of the brand, he chose the Koshan front Cochin font as a signal to French tradition in 1947. And it was originally Christian Dior, like the in atelier with his namesake. In 1967, they made their famous pattern, which by 1970s was, like, quite ubiquitous. It kind of has that, like, LV monogram kind of feel. And then going into the 2000, the Christian element of Christian Dior was dropped, and it went to Dior in caps from 2004 to 2025. And now with a new creative director, Jonathan Anderson, Anderson brought back the original logo, but without the Christian first going back to Dior. And what's interesting is this comes at a time where there's a lot of reports where we're moving actually away from logos. In luxury branding, it's like logos are out, discreet branding is back in. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that, because, like, almost we saw in all of the runways this year, like, Prada has dropped its logo on signature pieces. Hermes is going to the Hermes buckle. Gucci's going to its Gucci bit. You're seeing more and more brands, even, even Chanel on the Runway, move away from its overly branded look.
- [38:38]
Rory
When I looked at that visual you sent me of the logos of the logos, though, what struck me is that how on the right side, they all look very similar.
- [38:48]
Camille
They're all capped.
- [38:49]
Rory
They're all capped. But it almost shows the kind of conglomeration in that they're getting group think, in a way, whereas in the old ways, there was more differentiation. So I don't know as much about fashion as you do, but, like, obviously there's trends in terms of where you go. And I think. I think they're sensing that there's brand fatigue or logo fatigue in terms of everybody showing it. So they're probably trying to position themselves as more scarce by going away from the logo.
- [39:18]
Camille
But I don't really know where I'm thinking with this is to go back to that old logo. It actually positions it more as a name, right? Like, it's now Dior as a person, then this, like, this faceless company, this conglomerate of fashion. And it's interesting. I'm reading Deluxe by Dana Meyers. I want to say it's one of the best books on fashion I've ever read. Highly recommend it. And she talks about. She interviewed Machia Prada, who ran Prada for a long time, and there was a huge boom of, like, the larger the logo, the more valuable the brand was, because when fashion, high fashion had a massive comeback when women went into business because there was such a men would make, would wear custom suits. Men wear suits to work. Women needed to have workwear and they had money and they started turning to these designer brands and it became a status signaler for kind of the larger the logo, the cool. And that's when you got these crazy DF Dion Van Fittenberg prints on her dresses. And it really became like you had status the more brand aware you were because that's how women would signal hierarchy in the workplace. And it's clear that now that that's been 40 years or 30 years, we're now kind of moving back to like now it's become ubiquitous. How do we signal that we have true class and status in society?
- [40:41]
Rory
Just made me think that at some point in the future, probably because we're talking about it like men's suits are going to have, you know what I mean, like little Louis Vuitton patterns on it. Like I'm sure.
- [40:50]
Camille
Well that's why she made the Chanel show this year pretty like crazy is that Chanel has always been predominantly female. They brought in like a whole menswear line with a 200 year old shirt manufacturer. And it was like actually bringing. Because men's fashion and accessories are blowing up right now.
- [41:08]
Rory
It was always tailoring and fabric but like in terms of suits, like, but I think a lot of men's clothing at work too, they've gone away from suits. It's more like business casual which allows you to, to dive into, into more brands.
- [41:21]
Camille
It's really interesting when in the book Deluxe she talks about how like Burberry hats, like the, the bucket hat and Burberry stuff became like the uniform for chavs. Like the kind of like these like white disturbers in London is exactly what she kind of described. And she's like, they basically like had to fight against that look so, so like so much in London because it was like became like their uniform. And then they basically like stopped making the bucket hat and like the ball cap. And then it just started getting like knocked off like crazy because like Burberry just basically stopped wanting to supply that customer. And like how complicated. And that's kind of where Gucci is too, right? Like Gucci and like Versace. Their stuff just became like kind of gauche for like the tracksuits and like T shirts that they, they really needed to move it up so stream. So after the tiger, one of the biggest controversial takes from it is that they're ready to wear not their like haute Couture. Was like $4,000. And they're like, who, where is this customer? But they're trying to invite that customer back because nobody trusts the brand anymore.
- [42:31]
Rory
Interesting.
- [42:32]
Camille
Oh, the Charvet shirts. So basically it was interesting. So today's substack article, very quickly on it is basically that like the Chanel show was very controversial. Some people loved it, some people hated it. And what's really interesting is that the CEO of Kering came out and the owner of the Chanel group and said runways only, only represents 20% of our business so effectively. And what I, what I learned from that statement is the whole point is for people to either love it or hate it. It should never be middle of the road because it's a, it's, it's a calculated risk either way. Like with, with them having this like super controversial take. They're getting four weeks of earned media value calculated at over $50 million. So Chanel doesn't make the majority of its money on the Runway. 20% of its business. They make the money on like the Chanel 25 because like that's what everybody buys and like, or their beauty counter, right? They make so much money on beauty. So the whole point of these fashion shows is to be ridiculous, is to create controversy and headlines because we're, it's allowing us to talk about the brand.
- [43:35]
Rory
Well, they get it. And. But a lot of the, the medium small business owners are scared of making a mistake. But when I worked with a. One of the most famous travelers years ago, he said no press, like any press is good press. Even if you lose, it doesn't matter. People hear about you. They think you're more reliable if they're hearing about you. So don't be scared of controversy for the most part. And they, they get it.
- [43:59]
Camille
But no, they get it all the way. And that was why I brought that up is the charvet shirts are $4,300 and people are like losing it because like people really loved the shirts. If you wanted my take, the show really wasn't for me. I just. Oh, really wasn't for me. But I'm just such a sucker for the Karl Lagerfeld approach to Chanel. But I do think that a new, a new era is needed in Chanel. It's just the lack of silhouette was not for me. Anyways, the Charvet shirts, they're like a 200 year old atelier that has made these men's shirts. And seeing that on the Runway was one like very androgynous because it goes back to Coco Chanel's roots of, you know, her wearing men's clothes. And it like being for both. But it also is controversial because that's a lot of money for a dress.
- [44:45]
Rory
Shirt that doesn't really look that unique.
- [44:47]
Camille
No, totally. And the point that you just brought up about, that's what my article is about this week on Chanel is understanding calculated risk and understanding where to take risk, because that is how you stand out in the current landscape. And we're going to take a bit of a different approach with this next segment because this past week I was interviewed actually on CNN to talk about Trump's branding. And it was a really good interview. Probably wasn't the interview that they were looking for, but it was a really good interview. And I wanted to break it down with you on the podcast because it's actually what I think is missing in the current dialogue online for business owners.
- [45:26]
Rory
It's necessary because when you're actually serving a client who relies on their business to pay their employees mortgages, to put their kids through school, they actually need people who will be straight with them. Yeah, right. And too many of the service providers are just, are just being, they're just saying what they think the client wants to hear. And you going on CNN and saying, hey, look, you guys might not agree with Donald Trump, but one thing he knows is how to brand. Right?
- [45:52]
Camille
And the best.
- [45:53]
Rory
And if you don't want to learn from somebody who is successful because you don't like them, you're limiting your growth potential, which in the end can be making, you know, maybe your employees can't pay their mortgage like you owe it to yourself and your employees to learn from the best. But there has been this trend over the last 10 years to put your, to put your, your politics on your sleeve and only listen to people who share your politics. And what we need to do is get back to the fact that you need to win. And in order to win, you have to study who do people who do things the best and put the politics aside. And you crushed it on that interview.
- [46:25]
Camille
Well, there's so much that anyone can learn from Donald Trump and his approach to branding. And because he's such a divisive political figure, people just want to like, scoff at him and laugh it off and just, and I don't know what they want to attribute his success, too, but he's a messaging and a positioning machine. And that was the whole point of the interview, is that the longer that the Democrats resist what they can learn from him further away, they're going to get from losing that middle because they're not talking to a large enough base. That's going to change, that's going to transform the elections moving forward.
- [47:05]
Rory
Honestly, if you want to kind of take a barometric measure of the intellect of yourself or the people around you, like, ask the question, what can you learn from Donald Trump? Right? And if somebody doesn't, like, if somebody doesn't agree with his politics, but you ask them that, the intellectual, thoughtful friends who don't like him can still say what they can learn from him, right? Like, because they're, they're open to learning from people they disagree with. But so many businesses are missing key points of growth because they're just, they're in one camp only. They're in a, they're in a bubble getting fed the same stuff, and they're not, they're not growing.
- [47:38]
Camille
Well, there was a lot of questions that she asked me in regards to, like, basically the different angles that this interview took. And the, the core premise of what she wanted to talk to me on was the ramp up of marketing and branding initiatives in a second term. Like, compared to the first term. The way that they're, like, they're branding things has, has absolutely increased. And I didn't realize that it was more of a kind of a guarded conversation of, it can't be him. He has to have a team. Now, the guy does have a team, but the team is the best team. And the guy was also forged in traditional media. Like, he existed during a time where viewership and tuning in, like, the amount of eyeballs that you could get on a TV screen was the difference between generating ad revenue, generating re signs, generating awareness, especially for, like, how he could propel the Trump brand forward. And when you have someone that's been forged in that for 40 years, he intuitively understands the shift to eyeballs on social media. Like, he understands, he understands attention spans, he understands view count, he understands where to go in order to generate relevance.
- [48:54]
Rory
He understands what the fashion industry does, based on what you said, that wins and losses get you attention. Totally. The name of the game is be in the press, be in the game, be in people's name.
- [49:05]
Camille
Beyond podcasts, people are watching and listening to.
- [49:07]
Rory
And he, he, he ignores the outrage police who want to be outraged by everything. And all he is is, he's just in the game every day. His name is being said.
- [49:16]
Camille
He's tweeting on social media. Like, he's super. Like. But the other thing too, that I talked about about is she asked me a lot about, like, Things like, you know, the golden dome and like, how he's like, renamed things. And I'm like, what the, what Trump is doing brilliantly is he's approaching his second term. Like, he is the CEO of Apple or the CEO of Nike. Like, he's actually using branding that we see in direct to consumer brands than how you typically see political figures discuss things. And the reason why that's brilliant is the companies that understand persuasion or the people who understand persuasion at the highest level are those who need to convince people to buy their product. So the people with the most data, the most at stake are these huge companies that are generating trillions of dollars, like Apple is to maintain people continuing to buy the iPhone, even though when you slightly upgrade the camera and make the design look different, they get it the best. So by him basing his approach off of what the top companies do, like him naming things where they're, like, really easy to understand, he's showing up with simplified messaging and positioning. He's creating things like he's riffing off products based off of other concepts he's putting together, like it's a masterclass in how to brand.
- [50:35]
Rory
He doesn't give a crap about offending the people who aren't part of where he wants to go. And so their outrage actually amplifies his brand. And that's what, that's what kind of Lululemon missed. By focusing on fitness and being healthy, if people get angry at you, it amplifies the message that your product is for the fit. Trump names things in a way that he knows gets people upset. They then go and have their little hissy fit, and it just reinforces to the audience that's moving towards him that he's the, he's the right fit or the solution. Like, it's, it's brilliant. People are missing it everywhere.
- [51:12]
Camille
It's just, it's like, it's. So I'm not asking for anyone to change their politics. I'm actually not asking for you to even see this conversation as a political conversation. I'm seeing that. I want you to see this as a way of what can you learn to get your brand to win? And that was the best part of this interview with Betsy Klein, CNN reporter. She, she ends up, she ends up really trusting me. We have a really good rapport and we have a really good conversation because. And this was the turning point. I said, you know, the number one thing that Trump understands is attention spans and microscripts. And when he started calling his opponents Sleepy Joe Biden, crooked Hillary, Little Marco, there's just so many. But there was this one specific, this one specific example that Betsy gave me and it was something like busy Tim or like anyways, Lyon, lying Ted. Lying Ted. And as a Democrat, she was speaking to a like lifetime Democrat in like Iowa or Indiana, a state that starts with I. And she said she was talking to this woman and basically at the end of the conversation she started asking her being like, you know, Ted kind of is a liar. I don't know if I really can buy into him. And she was using the language back to her as a really, like a really bought in Democrat to Betsy. And that's when Betsy really realized herself that the power of the microscript is really working. And the reason why the microscript really works is he understands that you have a three second attention economy. Right. So when you turn on the TV and you see the headline and when you turn it off, you're taking away. Because again, it goes back to the point about the hairdresser. People care about themselves. How do you make them seem smarter? How do you give them language that they can process, that they can take on with their lives so that when they're online, lunch break, and they're talking with their, their colleagues, they can contribute to the conversation in a way that's not policy speak, it's not speaking at a university level. It's colloquial, it's easy to understand and to digest. And those names were so powerful because it, it was truly a microscript. It packed in so much power and meaning into one word in front of their name.
- [53:23]
Rory
Yeah, like you almost want to make winning great again. Not to overuse a phrase, but our society has almost got a little soft where it thinks, hey, look, we don't really have to. Winning is not as important as long as you're being a good person. And that's fine. But a corporation that has a monopoly on the market can afford to be like that. But when you're, when you're a founder, like, you have to focus on winning. And what Trump and some other people who know how to brand well do, Chip included, is they know who their client isn't and they're not scared to offend their non clients. And actually by offending their non clients, and offending is a loaded word, you actually get more loyalty from your clients. And a lot of businesses have to take a risk at kind of staking a claim of what they stand for, who they are, at the risk of pissing people off.
- [54:13]
Camille
You're so right. And you actually gave the Best point too early because I also wanted to tie this into Bonnie Blue, the the only fans model. Is that what we call her? Probably not, but I'm gonna leave it there for a PG audience. But basically this is a completely separate take and I'm not comparing the two, but I do want to touch on where, where you're kind of getting at. And Bonnie Blue was on this podcast called Modern Wisdom. This was sent to us by our good friend Katie, who listens to the show. Katie, you're awesome. And in basically this, this podcast they touch on a lot of topics, you know, sex culture, only fans, how she approaches what she does. But there's a really interesting point in the interview where she talks about how she's branded herself and she intentionally takes barash approaches controversial headlines, micro scripts that stand out because in a three second economy, she understands that she needs to be top of mind for her customer. And one of the approaches that she takes extremely successfully is starts a lot of the videos of telling women, this is not for them, this is not for you. She's like really speaking to the woman to piss them off so that the woman goes back all hot and crossed and like complains about this onlyflans model to their boyfriend or husband and in the hopes of the boyfriend and husband then go and secretly subscribes because her name is now top of mind in an awareness play because of the marketing rule of seven. And if it happens enough times, people are bitching about her enough, she knows that she'll get some subscribers that tune in because they're talking about her.
- [55:58]
Rory
But it's just also good positioning because if you say, hey, like this is not for women out there, this is not for you. You should not look at it, it's not for you. It actually makes men want to look at it more because if it's not for women, then it must have something juicy in it, right?
- [56:12]
Camille
It's like, why isn't this for me? I want to watch it.
- [56:15]
Rory
The women who are helping promote her indirectly, subconsciously want to talk about how upset they are, but are indirectly just promoting it so that their partner secretly goes there. But this is why human psychology is important in branding. It's not about virtue, it's about what does the human brain respond to. If I say to you, don't think of a pink elephant right now, whatever you do, everybody's going to quickly picture a pink elephant in their head. So there's a reverse psychology to how you get your message across, but none of it is related to being boring.
- [56:45]
Camille
100%. Well, and that, I think that's like, that's the through line for this episode is don't be boring. Because like, it's. And it's interesting because, you know, I'm not saying her brand is for me. I'm not saying that you need to go and do that. And it's, you know, it's no different.
- [57:01]
Rory
Because if you told me not to go look at it, then, you know, you better not.
- [57:05]
Camille
But the, the point of it is we're not studying from the people who are killing it because we want to think we're better than them. We want to live in this theory. No, but not, not. We don't actually want to think we're better than them, but we want to live on our moral superiority of. There's nothing that I can learn from an only fans porn star. There's nothing I can learn from her. You know, there's nothing I can learn from. From Donald Trump. He's an idiot. You know, like. And we live in these, these echo chambers of narratives. And you end up copying a Lululemon where. Which on the outside you don't know is failing. You don't know their stock is down 56%. You don't know that over 30% of their inventory is on sale right now, which is a clear sign in retail that you are in hot water. And you end up copying the wrong person and you end up following in their footsteps, opposed to studying these, these controversial fringe people that you can learn from. And again, think of all of this as on the spectrum. Right? Like, what can you take from what she's doing that's on brand to your brand. That's the way to win. Steal like an artist.
- [58:08]
Rory
Actually, I think it's a bit of a sickness that's. That's, you know, infected Western society is that there's actually a managerial class that would much prefer to be seen as morally right than successful. Yeah, Right. And it's, it's infected businesses and Twitter channels and whatever, they just. They're not hungry for the knowledge to win. They want to consume knowledge that makes them feel right. And I tell people all the time, you're so focused on being right that you'll destroy your business or your marriage. Right. Rather than, rather than try to be right every time. Right. Why not just do what moves you forward to where you want to go? That's the path to happiness. It's not just circling yourself with people who tell you how right you are and ignoring indicators of success that could help you.
- [58:54]
Camille
The people with the most power on social media aren't people with the most power in the real world, employees and academics, like, they can live in theory land. Like they can live in this land where your brand will stand out if you don't say anything and you speak to everyone and you don't have a budget and you're not huge and you'll be big. And you can get all of these things by pleasing everyone and doing everything, everything right. But they don't have anything on the line. Like they don't have a business. They don't, they don't understand what it takes. And that's what's so complicated, is there isn't one way to do it. But I can tell you, sure, as the way to break through is not to be boring. And it's, it's so hard to put yourself in the position of, of doing something, saying something, putting yourself in these opposite, these situations of risk or controversy or, or being really different and standing out. But, like, that's the difference to actually win. And if you're not prepared to do that, you're not actually prepared to win because it's, it's super saturated. And that's the whole point of also what, what Chip Wilson is saying is it now doesn't cost anything to come out with copper leggings. There's thousands of companies coming up with, with leggings that you can, even Lululemon's like, technical fabrics, like, they paved the way for having the most dynamic new technology and fabrics that we had ever seen. Now that's commonplace and they're not continuing to push themselves forward and they're not winning anymore. And it's different to, like, be an employee and like, keep the train moving, to be like, driving the bus.
- [60:23]
Rory
To me, it comes down, comes down to agency. Like, a lot of the time your politics will be affected by your agency. If you're an employee in a corporation or a government, you don't have a lot of agency control over your life.
- [60:34]
Camille
Yeah.
- [60:34]
Rory
So you exert control through your social posts. Like, you're, you're, you're pronouncing judgments on people, and that's what's giving you agency. If you're running your own business, you have agency in that you got a bank payroll, you got to pay the mortgage payment. You have tons of agency. So then what you want from your politics is something that allows your business to survive so that you can employ other people. And a lot of the people who are, who are living in worlds of pure certainty should ask themselves, why are they so drawn to being certain about things as opposed to being successful.
- [61:05]
Camille
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that there's a topic for another week is really discussing. You know, should, you know, should your strategy be like, I don't want to say tearing other people down, but sometimes, like, if you need to compare the difference between different, you know, products or like, what difference between your business versus another one. And the answer is sometimes, like, sometimes that should be the strategy. But I think what's difficult for a lot of business owners is like, you don't know and you're looking for that absolute answer before you put yourself out there because it's like, it's hard to be vulnerable. But what's so beautiful about social media is you can actually, like, sit down and say, I'm really struggling because these are my core three differences, you know, for my brand. This makes us really special in me unique. Do you feel like you know this about us? Do you feel like this is worth me? Like, you can do your own kind of like, focus group and field research and get that back and decide if that makes sense for your brand? Because that's the thing that is a bit complicated is does it make sense for your brand based on who your customer is, what your. What is your true point of difference, and how to. How to position yourself properly.
- [62:12]
Rory
Great segment. Glad we survived talking about only fans and Trump without getting canceled.
- [62:18]
Camille
The next thing I want to talk about actually is this. One of my favorite brands in the world is called Super Matcha, and it is a Korean Matcha brand, and it's one of those brands. To me, the reason why it's my favorite is because it's very bold. It's very different, but it's very simple. And I love when brands do things to actually stand out, opposed to just like hiring celebrities to, like, make their product seem unique and different. And what I love about Super Matcha is they just. They used such a rich green that, like, doesn't really. Isn't really a matcha green, but it's so obvious when you're walking in a store and you. Or like, you walk down the street and you see it like you know it right away. And it's one of the. One of the few brands in my life that has actually made me, like, stop in my tracks and like, really make me look at them and, like, want to buy them for how it looks. And it's. It's a product that we use almost every day with making smoothies, and I'm really proud of it on my Shelf. And I always wanted to do a piece on this for what businesses can learn from Super Matches because I. Because they're so different and there's such an obsession with, like, what are other people doing in the industry that I need to. I need to conform in order for it to make sense, opposed to. For it to. To be different.
- [63:35]
Rory
I guess it goes with the name and, like, if you call yourself Super Matcha, like, you can't be boring.
- [63:39]
Camille
Could be the most Matcha ever, right?
- [63:40]
Rory
So it has to be like, your Matcha has to go to 11. We'll see who. Who gets that movie reference. But, like, that's what they did. And it did stand out. Like, we. We saw that in Korea was. I just went into that store thinking these guys are the best Matcha, you know, because of everything in the store.
- [63:56]
Camille
I agree with you. And that's actually why the brand in the end, like, why I've loved it. But then look at this. So this company came out, has launched in Toronto, and we were so, so pumped because we thought for sure that. We thought for sure that Super Macha was opening in Toronto. And it's like a brand that I reference literally all the time. But look at this. It's a ripoff. And I wanted to get your thoughts on this. One, as like a lawyer, two, as a branding expert. Take a look at this. It's called Matcha Matcha. And they're completely ripping it off. I was heartbroken because I was so excited that Super Macho was coming to Canada. And there's probably very few people in Canada that have that data that I do. But I know that someone knows about Super Matcha and ripped it off.
- [64:46]
Rory
Can you put the colors right beside each other? Because it seems a tiny bit different.
- [64:50]
Camille
Well, it's a tiny bit different, but.
- [64:51]
Rory
It'S like their font is the same. But, you know, there's not much you can do with Matcha. Like, you're going to be green.
- [64:56]
Camille
I disagree.
- [64:57]
Rory
But it would be nice.
- [64:58]
Camille
I disagree. Look at. They did the exact, like, block.
- [65:02]
Rory
Yeah.
- [65:03]
Camille
Of it being block font. I think there's so much you can do with Matcha.
- [65:07]
Rory
They got white writing. These guys got black.
- [65:10]
Camille
No.
- [65:10]
Rory
I admire your. Your love and obsession with Super Matcha. I think it's good. But, you know, this stuff happens all the time. Remember, we tell people to steal like an artist, and if they're not, this.
- [65:20]
Camille
Isn'T stealing like an artist. Is this stealing? Like, you deserve to be in copyright jail. Look at. They even ripped off Gentle Monster.
- [65:30]
Rory
That's hilarious. But, you know, I don't see a copyright issue there. Like, it's close, but, you know, so annoyed. I just. I just don't think when you'd steal like that, you capture the essence of the original brand.
- [65:44]
Camille
You don't.
- [65:45]
Rory
So I don't think it's lacking its own creativity. And if you're just doing that, it's gonna. It's gonna be visible in other elements of your business completely. Right. So they're not going to have their own personality, but they're taking what obviously worked well on a different continent and just bringing it over here.
- [66:01]
Camille
I'm not happy about it. And I really wanted you to have different perspective.
- [66:04]
Rory
You know, part of me just doesn't mind that North Americans are kind of ripping off an Asian brand as opposed to reverse.
- [66:10]
Camille
Hilarious. Oh, my gosh.
- [66:13]
Rory
So the copyright issues are usually going the other direction. So this one doesn't really alarm me.
- [66:17]
Camille
But I was just, like, so upset by it because seldom am I do I really feel like an emotional connection to a brand because they're just doing such a great job. I feel like we live in a world, especially in North America, where it's like the brands that we celebrate are the ones that just have the most money to throw it, doing just the most. The most celebrity collabs, the most. Even skims. We got a chat about this. I had 6 people DM it to me today. I gotta show you this.
- [66:46]
Rory
They launched, but imitation is the highest form of compliments. Not that one.
- [66:51]
Camille
That was a ripoff. Let's look at this. So skims today launches this, like, vintage video and creative looks match the drapes.
- [67:00]
Rory
Well, this is not boring.
- [67:02]
Camille
You knew right away what it was going to be.
- [67:04]
Rory
What it says, does the carpet match the drapes in the back? Like, that's. That's an old phrase.
- [67:09]
Camille
So you get it?
- [67:10]
Rory
Yeah, it's. It's risky.
- [67:13]
Camille
Well, wait till you see it. So they have like, all these, like.
- [67:15]
Rory
Looks like the dating game from the 70s.
- [67:18]
Camille
It's 100 that. Fantastic. Creative. And basically they came looking people.
- [67:23]
Rory
Yeah.
- [67:24]
Camille
With all of these thongs that have fake hair on them.
- [67:30]
Rory
No.
- [67:31]
Camille
Yes.
- [67:32]
Rory
Oh, my God. That's hilarious.
- [67:33]
Camille
I'm gonna. I'm saving this. Climbing to sun. This is super match. I'd be like, check this out. I'm not okay with it.
- [67:39]
Rory
But they don't actually show the product.
- [67:41]
Camille
No, they don't show the product. But I had Tori text it to me. Shout out to Tori Webster. She also has a great podcast. This is it.
- [67:49]
Rory
Wow. Wow.
- [67:52]
Camille
But it's like, it. I. I'm, like, annoyed that I'm giving it air time. I've had six people send it to me, so. Six. You know, a lot of people obviously want our reaction to it, but it's like, what they understand is just if you do disgusting things, you will get reaction.
- [68:08]
Rory
But it's costume. But it's also talking about human things. Like, what goes on in the human brain is much more complicated and risky than what people communicate to others publicly. And so it's not about what people are telling you is okay. It's actually how the brains are reacting. And this may appeal to people.
- [68:26]
Camille
I'm not aware, but the question that I want to have is like, Jesus.
- [68:31]
Rory
Those things are funny.
- [68:33]
Camille
They're gross. But it. It's not. At what point do you do things that are on brand versus do you just do things to viral hack?
- [68:43]
Rory
Yeah, there's some. There's some dynamic creative behind that. I don't see how that supports the skims brand. Like, it seems more costumey.
- [68:51]
Camille
It's totally costumey. But I. But that's exactly my point is, is how do you analyze. It's like, because we talk a lot about earned media value, right? Earned media value is the idea of if we're all talking about the Chanel Runway, we're all talking about Chanel, you.
- [69:07]
Rory
Know, but there is, I think, like, in the underwear, if you need to get business, like, if you're not just making the best underwear, you need to do stuff that that creates more interest. And so they've definitely created a new category of underwear.
- [69:19]
Camille
That's the thing that I struggle with. Like, on one hand, I'm like, everyone is talking about skims, but I feel like I have not been compelled to buy anything from skims in the last six to eight months. So is the. Is us all talking about these nipple piercing bras and the neck? God.
- [69:35]
Rory
Somebody kind of. It seems like somebody kind of deviant has got into skins, like, at that creative level because you get the nipple piercing bras, and now you got pubic hair and underwear. Like, it's a good one. That's.
- [69:46]
Camille
Someone in that boardroom is like, we've now had two crazy viral launches. Where do we keep going? Like, what's the next one? Hairy butt, full bun underwear, hairy back tank tops. Like, where does it. Like, that's what they're thinking is, like, how do we keep riding on this theme of, like, it's. It's getting the people going. It's polarizing. They're also gearing up to Go public. My only question though is, is like, I think that there is space to do things that are crazy and ridiculous. I do think that they're getting into the territory of. It's not making me think of be of buying anything from skims.
- [70:18]
Rory
So if you're doing that before you go public, it, to me it's a, it's a bit of a warning sign because you're actually stretching for attention. Like you're really trying to get that attention. But generally when you overstretch, you don't have the foundation for long term survivability. So you know, their creatives are being, they're not being boring. They're not being boring, but they're also has to, it also has to be strategic.
- [70:39]
Camille
Even though Nike was kind of boring, like the Nike wall launch was boring, this is definitely not boring. And you're right, like Halloween is coming. I just, I just, I want to, I want to use stuff that people can learn from. I think there's a lot that skims can be doing. Like when skims like a skims doing like a love shack, fancy collab or like skims like there's just, that's just one example. But I think that there's a lot that skims could be doing to expand its current category and space than needing to do these things to generate attention. Like when I think about the skims brand, like there's so much like I would love like skims tennis, I'd love skims golf. I would love like skims.
- [71:21]
Rory
New skims golf would be interesting.
- [71:23]
Camille
Work dresses, you know, where they put a collar on their material. Like to me there's so much that skims could do that I would actually want to buy from. Then be doing these collabs that obviously generate awareness. That's not a collab, sorry, A drop, A drop. They were doing a drop that like I, I'm talking about it, but I'm.
- [71:40]
Rory
Not buying from them what they're tying into there. And I don't think they're nailing it. But when people are looking at content, the 70s and the 80s, they told stories and they were very interesting. Like if you look at the old clips, the commercials, you can learn a lot from them. And going back to. And they were always on the border. Like the seventies is very risky. Yeah, right. And so I think people, I think people are hungry for that. It was so much digital media from corporations, that's bland. You can get extreme stuff from the people on the outsides. But from a business perspective, they're just they're kind of hungry for something that says something interesting.
- [72:14]
Camille
I think you are. You are totally correct. I think this is lazy. Like, this is lazy. Risky.
- [72:19]
Rory
Yeah. I agree with you. Like, there's not a lot of creative there. Like, does the carpet match the drapes is obvious. And then they just kind of make a game show. But you're right, it's lazy in that it's very linear. There's not nuance. There's definitely not high context.
- [72:32]
Camille
No. But even, like, from a lot. Again, I feel like I've said this, but the brand, to me has so much space to do things that are interesting, that push the boundary than doing things that only push the boundary but don't develop the brand. And when we go back to, like, when we had talked about how do you do things that are on brand, you know, like, you almost need to, like, get out a whiteboard and, like, you need to start asking questions as if you were being hired for your brand. Like, what is our goal? What are we trying to do? Who are we trying to attract? What are their problems? Where is our current gaps in the market? Like, this is moving skims to being like a Spencer shop, like, at the mall.
- [73:13]
Rory
That point you make when it comes to brand. Most people don't really know what their brand is. Like, there may be some airy fairy words, but one of the things you can. Like when you think of cars, when you think of Volvo and you think of Porsche, right, There's immediate sense of what it is, a total brand feeling, right? One is safety, one is. One is performance. When it comes to your own business or your own personal brand, you want people, when they say your name, to think something very quickly that's easy to digest and understand totally.
- [73:41]
Camille
Let's even go back to that idea of, like, if you close your eyes and you think about the two different hotels, right? Like, the Volvo Hotel is priced very differently than the Porsche hotel. Like, the design is very different. You're bringing your kids to the Volvo Hotel. You're probably not bringing your kids to the Porsche Hotel like your mistress Philip, but it's, you know, they're very different brands. And when. When you. If you close your eyes and you can't clearly think about a hotel, or if you asked all of the people that work at your company, what is that hotel? And that hotel isn't clear, or they're stretching or they're really trying to grab at something, you do have a brand problem. And it. When I think about skims, like, what is that thong doing to that Brand hotel. Like, when I think about skims, it's base layers. It's, it's, it's shapewear, it's sleepwear, it's thongs and underwear. But, like, it's not thongs and underwear that's in the joking category. It's like all nudes. It's the basics, it's the stuff. When we talk about that evolution of, like, when women got into luxury fashion, Kim created skims because there was a gap in shapewear and under layers for females that were not black, that weren't super uncomfortable. Like, this whole nude theme is. We even talked about a super high profile podcast host that owns products about this. Like, stop launching pink products. Your customer isn't into pink. We like nudes. Like, when women get into their. Like, they. They don't want to have 20 hot pink tank tops. They want like different nude variants so they can reuse them.
- [75:08]
Rory
You know what popped into my mind before we wrap up is with your hotel example, I'm kind of surprised why Vegas hasn't had casinos that are more brand focused.
- [75:19]
Camille
So smart, eh?
- [75:20]
Rory
Right.
- [75:21]
Camille
Because imagine they're like the, like the Rolling Stones hotel. And like the.
- [75:25]
Rory
I was even just thinking, because I was thinking, like, what if there was a Starbucks casino versus a Dunkin Donuts casino? They'd be different. You know what I mean?
- [75:31]
Camille
But like, for machines. Totally.
- [75:33]
Rory
Yeah. Like, I would. I would almost think about having like a Tesla type casino. You know what I mean?
- [75:37]
Camille
That'd be your casino for sure.
- [75:39]
Rory
No, but I'm too.
- [75:39]
Camille
We wouldn't have slot machines.
- [75:41]
Rory
But I'm telling you that the branding and the feel would be interesting. Right? Like, but you know, to be Caesars or Luxor, like, it's. They're kind of outdated old type brands that had a feel, but I think people want something more.
- [75:53]
Camille
You know, what's really interesting is that there's more people that go to Vegas every year than Disney World. Like, Vegas is the highest grossing destination in the world for tourists because it obviously tracks like a larger age range than, like, you know, people.
- [76:07]
Rory
But when I think of casinos now, I just think, oh, one's expensive, one's not. But, like, the brand of the casino is kind of filtered away, like from MGM to Caesars to.
- [76:17]
Camille
Except when you say win, and instantly everyone is like, the win's the best.
- [76:21]
Rory
Yeah, because it looks the most like Trump, even though Trump's hotel is garbage. But, you know, because it's all gold. Like, you just. They just went all in.
- [76:27]
Camille
Well, it actually to me is less that it's actually the curation of the stores inside, like the having the Earth Cafe there. It's actually so funny that like that premium customer would rather like get smoothies and like an organic sandwich when you're in Vegas, you know, like, that's so fascinating to me. And it was always in the response too. Whenever we talk about the win, it's always like we got to go to SoulCycle. So like on Sunday morning, you know, after two days in Vegas, like, we would go to SoulCycle. But that so spoke to this, like, customer that we're talking about where it's like more like it's. It's work hard, play hard versus and.
- [77:01]
Rory
You have the golf course and you.
- [77:02]
Camille
Love the golf course. True.
- [77:03]
Rory
At the window, you know, we're happy to rebrand a casino if they need some help.
- [77:08]
Camille
Yeah. If anybody knows, you know, Tesla or Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, you know, we're down to casino it up. But we do want to do a segment maybe next week on best logos and worst logos in sports.
- [77:20]
Rory
Let's pick a sport. You want to do hockey or football?
- [77:23]
Camille
I feel like football is going to get, you know, having people care about hockey logos.
- [77:27]
Rory
All right, so in football, send us your what you think are the top three football logos and the worst three logos and we will put our two cents in. We'll do a poll and we're. We'll announce what we think is the best and worst.
- [77:40]
Camille
Sounds good, guys. Thanks for listening to the end here. I hope you have a great week.
- [77:44]
Rory
Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, share, send us money and stay. Stay tuned for the upcoming brand and social media masterclass that Camille is launching. I tell you, I've worked on a lot of products. The planner.
- [77:57]
Camille
Yeah, sorry, physical planner.
- [77:58]
Rory
It's. It's actually one of the most impressive and dense pieces of product I've ever seen in terms of how it can transform your business. It's coming soon. Pay attention. To get on the waiting list, we.
- [78:08]
Camille
Actually need some people to give some, like, some feedback. Be like a little test group so people that listen every week. We'd love it for gbu. So just send me a DM on Instagram and see you next week.
- [78:18]
Rory
Chill out.
- [78:19]
Camille
Goodbye, Hua.