35 Winning Recommendations for Bridging Creativity and Commerce
How the founders of MSCHF, Palm Angels, Our Legacy, and dozens more are smartly turning heads into profits.
This article is part 10/12 of The Next Big Bang: The Brand Universe Solution to Growth, the inaugural research thesis by edition+partners, distributed here on SOTA. In the ever-evolving landscape of brand development, the concept of a Brand Universe emerges as both a tangible entity and a strategic methodology, offering a dynamic approach to brand survival and growth.
Last week, in ‘Part 3: The Creative-Commerce Link’ we discussed how the landscape of brand marketing is undergoing a significant shift, with a growing recognition that simply advertising products is no longer sufficient to captivate consumers. Instead, brands are increasingly acknowledging the need to evolve into media entities and entertainers in their own right.
Data collected from our research in which we interviewed hundreds of consumers, reveals that a staggering 65% of them find content from their favourite fashion brands more inspiring than traditional media publications. In response, leading Brand Universes are undergoing a metamorphosis into new media entities, prioritising narrative-driven commerce and the creation of original content formats.
By seamlessly blending inspiration with sales, these successful brands are redefining the purchase journey. Moreover, brands that demonstrate agility and responsiveness to cultural conversations are gaining traction with consumers, who increasingly favour brands that stay ahead of the curve over perceived laggards.
But don’t just take it from us. Instead, listen to the 35 brand founders that we spoke to who are at the bleeding edge of authentically turning creativity, community, and content into commerce.
Ian Rogers (Chief Experience Officer, Ledger)
“Great brands don’t worry about sales, they worry about brand. That leads to sales.
There’s attention generation, and then there's value capture. We spend a lot of time looking to connect the two and I think you don’t have to connect them. This is the secret. Louis Vuitton, Drake, Beeple, MSCHF, they’re in the business of both.
If you look at the organisation of a luxury company, they have their brand division and their retail division. This to me are the two sides of the coin Bernard Arnaud would always talk about. Like Steve Jobs he says LVMH doesn’t do customer research, they make beautiful things and people desire them. A
t the same time he would say the customer is the boss. Two opposing things. What he meant is that the brand and the product teams create desirability, then the retail team opens the door, knows you, knows it's your wedding in two weeks. Those are the two sides. If I’m a CEO and I have teams who are amazing at attention generation and value capture, they don’t even need to talk to each other.”
Gabriel Whaley (Founder, MSCHF)
“It’s actually pretty rare for anything to get a lot of buzz and have that converted into dollars. We’ve been successful because we’ve been consistent, not because we’ve had so much buzz. In a way, we’re more like a band rather than a brand. We’re releasing new work regularly and people are into our ‘sound’.
Over the next 12 months, brands are going to be forced to reckon with a pretty hard truth which is if you don’t do something unique, original, and take a little bit of risk, you’re going to just end up looking like everyone else. The biggest opportunity is simply to take that risk. It could be going into new categories, finding new ways of selling, it depends on the brand.”
Charaf Tajer (Founder & Creative Director, Casablanca)
“[Brand partnerships] can be a trap as well. You can become a sticker that [others] can put on an ugly item. It’s cool but your brand should be the main event, not the collaborations. Those are like exclamation marks.”
Nicki Bidder (CEO, Aries)
“For us it’s about giving back as well as growing a sustainable business. Hosting and staging a cultural output that they can be part of. The store gives you a massive opportunity. When you see friends you know or artists you respect at Aries that’s what we still love about, it's the connection and access a streetwear brand offers that goes beyond trends.
It’s about being part of a tribe and perhaps the realistic opportunity to work and connect with it from the outside. It’s not just a shared aesthetic taste in style but where your head is at in terms of your ideas. [Furthermore] collaborations have become a revenue stream for many businesses. You realise you’re actually delivering an agency and community deliverable.
[Big brands] are now looking at brands as vehicles for ideas and audience connection instead of or as well as media. Things that repeat are really good, not one off collaborations. It’s not just about revenue, it’s about funding your marketing also.”
Rachel Muscat (CEO & Co-Founder, Humanrace)
“We have a couple of different reasons that customers trust us to make the purchase which is where we see the conversion. First, people have trust in Pharrell’s curation. Then working with our Chief Dermatologist Dr. Elena Jones MD is what brought us credibility. Then we had to think about the sensibility of people and what they trust about their own values.
I think you have to start with a product that people will want to buy a second time. The first purchase is intrigue, the second purchase is loyalty. And how you make that second purchase might be as important as the first purchase. There are old ways of thinking around the bigger brands who are driven by the bottom line which we all think about. But there’s also a true path where the conversion in a skate store is much lower than a department store and you have to be okay with that. Supreme is a perfect example of what happens when [both] are done well.”
Fully (Founder & Creative Director, House of Errors)
“These [kids] want connection. It almost feels like you’re investing in someone. They’ve seen me going from nothing to something. It's hard to get a connection to brands that move corporately, you can never build a deep connection to just a product. For us, there’s not much correlation between what goes viral and what sells. You have to compartmentalise what’s for marketing and what sells. Sometimes you hit a sweet spot.
Something that has the wow factor to go viral but also has the scalability to sell. But it always needs a good price point. High fashion has priced out most young people. A grand doesn’t buy you anything at a department store. That’s what’s cool about going DTC. We can bypass the wholesale markups and give truly luxury and high fashion for a better price than people are being subjected to.
I’m so used to keeping 100 percent of the profits. Now the stores want to buy but want to make a 300% markup, I can’t even make money off it. So why would I want to do it? Everyone is broke, not even broke, in debt. That’s a horrible game. These brands in department stores don't make money. Independence to me is deeper than who has ownership of the company. I’m in control of my own future.”