New Realities of the Retail and Advertising Apocalypse
DTC goes mainstream, Chobani yoghurt is hot and why you should unleash your inner Gary V.
I started off this week in surgery, hooked up to a morphine drip. I had some pretty solid psychedelic dreams — or whatever the state is called as you drift in and out of consciousness. But a few things became clear to me towards the end of the week. I probably would have tweeted something like this….
Retail (and brands) are not dead. It’s just that the ones you used to love or the ones that paid your bills — if you worked in marketing — are. The shifts have happened.
Example 1. Everlane.
Betaworks is an investor in Everlane. Fun fact, the first pop-up store was in our office six and half years ago. So it was nice to visit the new NYC store and get a run through today with Michael the CEO. The store looks great, it’s supposed to look the web site — ie. perfect. What was funny was that Michael couldn’t stop refolding the merch as we talked. He couldn’t handle that it wasn’t perfect.
Anyway, they have this line: radical transparency. I’ve always loved that line. It has a bit of what is called the Marshmallow Effect or for the boffins — cognitive dissonance. In other words, two opposing ideas.
When Everlane opened it was radical to be as transparent as they were. The idea of saying that a shirt cost $40 to make but you would be charged $60 (instead of $80 or $120) was somewhat shocking. Wait — you’re giving the game away — you’re going to ruin it for everyone!
Well, tough.
That’s how it is now. You can no longer make a shirt for $40 and sell it for $120. Unless you are Gucci or Supreme. That kind of transparency is no longer radical. It’s fucking table stakes. So get used to it.
Example 2. Chobani.
Chobani did a brand re-launch this week which has been universally liked. I went to the launch party. What stood out the most was the pride that the team had that they had done all the creative in house. Chobani has been amassing some of the best advertising and marketing people over the last 18 months and these were the results. As I said — everything has been universally lauded.
I’ve read a few things abut Hamdi the CEO of Chobani. And friends that work with him say he’s the real deal. He gave a small but impassioned speech about the new work and how proud he was. It would be easy to say that this was a ‘fuck you’ to all the agencies that Chobani have worked with (some of the best) but it wasn’t at all. It was just a very heartfelt show of gratitude to a team that proved beyond any doubt that an in-house team can do just as well as the best agencies, if not better.
In fact, the reason that Hamdi thinks the work is so good is that the team is connected to the people that actually make the products. They hear the stories, they feel the love. However close an agency can be with a client, it’s different. They’re not family.
I’ve come to the defense of in-house teams before. This is another wake up call. It’s the same trick that Everlane has exposed. Smart brands, like smart consumers, know they can get the same quality for a better price, by cutting out the middle man. But I’ll go further — it is now easier to make great work in house than through a normal AOR relationship.
Example 3. Gary Vaynerchuck.
Because I was tripping this week and in bed recovering I had a little sneak at my Facebook feed. I did not look at twitter though — weirdly — that behavior seems to have stuck. One thing caught my eye. A post from an agency CCO having a swipe at Gary V. Now, I don’t mean to single out CBH at all, as he is a good dude — and we would all be lying if we hadn’t called out Gary V at some point for his douchery.
But….but….here’s the thing.
Think of all the time you have spent working in advertising, all those hours, all that thinking. All those pitches, briefs, presentations — school if you were unlucky enough to start that early — everything you have ever done. Gary V has probably spent about a tenth of that time thinking about advertising and he’s more successful than you. I know, it hurts. It’s a little like Trump winning the Republican Primary. It makes a mockery of everything and makes you question life itself.
Having spent some time getting our product Poncho onto the Planet of the Apps TV show and seeing Gary outshine bona fide stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba and Will.I.am on the show this is just the new reality. The guys is a machine and he knows how to the work the marketing machine. He’ll have his own TV show soon, no question.
We should not be thinking about how to make Gary V more like us (the educated pillars of advertising society and history) but how we can be more like him.
So, no more charging huge prices for average products, no more cushy AOR relationships and be more like Gary V. That’s the reality of this apocalypse.
I don’t have any morphine left. But I do have some Percocet if you need it.
This is part of series called What I Would Have Tweeted This Week. If you want to know more about why I quit twitter read this.
