It’s on the tube, it’s at the Lot Radio in Williamsburg, it’s an SSENSE meme, it’s on absolutely anything lime green, and it’s even on the popular restaurant reviewer, TopJaw’s, TikTok channel. If you haven’t seen or heard of Charli XCX’s new ‘BRAT’ album launch then you’ve been living under a rock.
At edition+partners, we’ve never understood why the creative industries don’t speak, and worse, don’t learn from one another. This realisation stems from the idea that the journey a product goes on to find and convert a fan or customer is fundamentally the same, whether you’re an artist releasing a record, an author publishing a book, or a fashion brand launching a T-shirt.
The truth is that the channels and mediums through which a product travels from creator to customer are not specific nor confined to any one industry.
So, when we discovered that almost every brand we spoke to in our inaugural research report, The Next Big Bang, were in some way struggling with growth, we embarked on a simple mission: to configure a product marketing toolkit that combines the best tactics and techniques from ALL creative industries.
In other words, how do you make a ‘greatest hit’?
It’s a BRAT world
Enter Charli XCX’s landmark new album BRAT and the 4 month IRL and URL build up that has culminated in a cultural mega storm of a product release. Now, this is a topic that has already galvanised critics across the internet and has been brilliantly broken down by friend of SOTA, Grace Gordon over on Ana Andelic’s substack, the Sociology of Business.
Grace rightfully presents BRAT as a sensation in ‘brand energy marketing’ citing the role of authenticators, cultural adoption, tools for creative expression, the power of community enablement and high touch engagements as ingredients of a successful product launch.
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Our article intends to break down the BRAT roll out in relation to the building blocks of a meaningful Brand Universe that we have spoken about since our launch in January.
So, what you’re about to read is a summary of some key ideas that have made Charli XCX’s BRAT project a global phenomenon and how this specifically relates to how you, as a young creative or experienced marketer, can learn from the finest the music industry has to offer. And the best part is, it was all Charli’s idea. Kudos.
1. Create For Yourself
No one has done anything entirely authentic by trying to create something for someone else. Rick Rubin, in his book, The Creative Act, describes this perfectly:
"The audience comes last. I'm not making it for them, I'm making it for me. It turns out that when you truly make something for yourself, you're doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience." - Rick Rubin.
We’ve heard on good authority that the vast majority of the BRAT roll out is coming from Charli, not a marketing exec, but Charli. By creating for herself, Charli is her own first customer. This approach has established a distinctive, original and uncopyable point of difference. The result is a campaign that has cut through the noise and achieved complete domination of our Instagram ‘For You’ pages.
For young designers, the advice here is to close the books and look inwards. What is it that you want to wear? What is it that would excite you? And for marketers, it's to be an outsider; don’t get so heavily ingrained in the brand you work for that you aren’t able to see what the customer is actually engaging with, or what they truly want.
2. Build it (the best) And They Will Come
The BRAT album itself is a pop music masterpiece. Pitchfork heralds it as “imperious and cool, nuanced and vulnerable, and one of the best pop albums of the year.” So before all of the marketing, flashy stunts, and shoots with Charli’s ‘Angels’ began, Charli focussed on making the best possible album she could. A product that serves as a creative platform and justifies all the heat radiating from it.
As generations come and go so do the primary drivers of desire and resonance. Professor Scott Galloway says that “for decades the primary algorithm for generating shareholder value was to create an average, low cost product and wrap it in aspirational brand codes to sell at a high margin.”
This has resulted in us being convinced that a small can of energy drink will give us wings, a pair of boxer briefs will make us excruciatingly sexy or sipping on a Nespresso will elevate our charm levels to that of George Clooney. But times are changing.
The creative industries have long been obsessed with ‘brand worlds’ and perceived lifestyle propositions to the point where audiences are now inundated with an un-navigable amount of narratives and storylines. We now believe that we’re at a tipping point and for those wanting to cut through a new approach is needed.
For marketers, the only way to thrive is to get your hands on the best possible product and tell that product-story in a creative way.
3. Cultural Velocity
Another remarkable feature of the BRAT roll out was the speed at which it has traveled through culture. Cultural velocity is a term coined by Jonah Berger and Stefan Burford in their book Cultural Velocity: Making Ideas Move.
They define the idea as “the speed at which a brand gets diffused and moves through culture. How fast it travels around the internet, gets talked about on community blogs and comment streams, or buzzes around the water cooler.”
As you read this, BRAT, the word, is now synonymous with Charli XCX and has received the ultimate cultural accolade which is to be memed by the internet community and to enter the general vernacular: “Matty Healy getting married to Gabbriette Bechtel is so BRAT,” posts one Instagram fan with many others sharing posts with the label “That’s so BRAT”.
Charli even had her part to play in this by launching a BRAT meme generator tool allowing anyone to create an XCX-approved graphic in seconds.
What triggered this tidal wave was the decision to deploy a striking, albeit marmite, lime green colour and ABCROM font by ABCDINAMO with SpecialOffer.Inc across a vast array of Charli’s content. Charli explains:
“I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong,” she explained. “I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture — why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I’m interested in the narratives behind that and I want to provoke people. I’m not doing things to be nice.” - Vogue Singapore
For marketers, this is a stark reminder that to generate cultural velocity it requires a shift in how marketing is developed, from a one way, top down approach to creating an idea or message so powerful, yet so simple, that it can move through culture quickly and in turn create deeper connections across a broader ecosystem of touch points.
4. Relinquishing Control
We now know that your community is part shareholder in the success of your brand. The job of an artist or brand owner is to seed provocative stories, messages and products into the world and freely accept and promote how the community chooses to run with it.
The brand expert and music curator, Robbie Russell says “Do create a world for your product or your brand, but shatter the brand into all these attention-grabbing, iterative splinters that spread way beyond the traditional channels that brands control.” If marketing is a series of calculated bets, then this splintered approach gives you the best chance at being seen, and even better, being endorsed.
Charli has a rich, diverse and multi-layered fan base. Understanding these different segments, what channels they spend their time on, and where they are has allowed the artist to create multiple conversations around the world.
Charli’s ‘seeding’ process is something to be admired. A relentless programme of surprise performances and signings in key cities, launching a DJ career on Boiler Room and of course a commitment to endless styles of content for the internet to feed off of.
And here, for the last tips for marketers: prioritise the creation of moments that create energy regardless of whether they perfectly align with the tone of voice guidelines in your brand book. Do things that are unexpected, that stop people in their tracks and get them to think “this is different.”
Most of all, take risks.