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16: Systems In Flux: The hidden divergent forces shaping the next generation of brands, consumers, and capitalism

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date October 27, 2020
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Whether it’s brand, behavior, or culture, the more you dig into the systems that affect our lives the closer you’ll come to a conversation about capitalism. While capitalism as a model may seem unchanging at a glance, look a little closer and you’ll start to see patterns of change. In this house episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis dig into divergent systems, the unstable behavior of markets, and how the rules we’ve trusted for a century are now ushering in a new generation of brands, consumers, and capital. This is the first of a series of episodes exploring how divergent systems are shaping the business landscape.

Podcast Transcript

October 27, 2020

50 min read

Systems in flux: The hidden divergent forces shaping the next generation of brands, consumers, and capitalis‪m‬

00:11

Jasmine Bina:
Welcome to Unseen Unknown. I’m Jasmine Bina. Today we have a house episode for you. Jean-Louis and I are going to be talking about something called, diversion systems. And it comes from an interesting place. So we’ve been recording this podcast for a few months now, and after every episode, we’ll have a conversation after the fact with the person that’s on the show, or we’ll be talking to each other. And we kind of have this conversation after the conversation where we ask ourselves, “Why are we witnessing the things that we’re talking about on this show? Why are these certain behaviors happening? Why are these certain opportunities opening up, and other ones closing? Why is the landscape shifting in this way?”

00:51

And it always invariably comes back to the same answer; if you really, really look at it, everything comes back to capitalism. And capitalism is really just a set of systems. The systems are theoretically simple. There are goals and there are incentives. If the goal of a free market is to make money, then the incentives are to make better products, offer better prices, create better brands people love, so on and so forth, so that you are able to reach that goal of making more money.

01:20

Jasmine Bina:
And in this simple definition of capitalism, where goals are aligned with incentives, it makes sense, except in some categories, it’s starting to go a little haywire. And those are the categories that we want to start talking about today. And in a series of conversations after this one over the next few episodes, where we’re going to talk about how we’re seeing it happen in certain verticals. Because in some places, goals might look like they’re aligned with incentives, but actually they’re not. And that is when you get divergent systems. Systems that start on a clear path, but then they start to split. And the bigger question really here is, when systems diverge, what happens to brands? And before we can get into that, we need to talk about what divergent systems actually are, on a more granular level. So Jean-Louis, this is your wheelhouse. Describe divergent systems for us.

02:15

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. The way I think you can think about this is, we’ve been running this kind of our economy, capitalism on an operating system, which is well over 100 years old by now. We haven’t really changed it at all. And so the way I kind of think about it is, you’re flying a plane at a slight angle, and over time, that plane is going to turn, and given enough time, and you might actually end up going back the way you were coming from. So I think that’s kind of where we are with a lot of these systems is, we haven’t changed the rules at play, and so the plane is just gradually turning. And so given enough time, a system that was designed for one goal might end up doing something completely different, because it’s not moving according to what the goal of the system is, it’s moving according to what incentive is.

03:00

So a really, really simple example of this is infrastructure. So when you think about infrastructure, the goal is obviously to support a city, support the environment with the tools that it needs, but the incentive is usually political capital. So a lot of cities are in desperate need of more bus networks, but that doesn’t really win an election. So you end up with a lot of rail stations that aren’t actually used that much. And so, you’re getting the goals really diverged from the actual actions that are happening in the system. Without getting political, if you look at political parties, the goal is to represent the interests of the public, but the incentive is influence. And usually influenced comes through capital. And so it’s not really surprising that you end up with a really strong duopoly, and you end up with massive polarization because it’s really effective at garnering capital and influence.

03:50

News, for example here. For a long, long time, it’s been running on the ad model. And with the ad model, while the goal of news might be to represent or communicate the events of the world, the incentive is attention. And so it shouldn’t be surprising if you follow that track. If you just think about where that’s going to go, fake news should be sort of expected when you’ve got a model that tracks towards attention. Algorithms that condition us to be kind of more outraged, more kind of sensationalized by these different things, those things should be expected. And so now, in response to that, you’ve got a lot of news sites that are becoming subscription platforms, and you’ve got others that are coming really pay-for-play. They’re changing the business model in response to that.

04:30

So you can see all of these systems as just, almost forget what the goal isn’t just think about what is the incentive that is keeping the system alive, and just imagine where that is going. And often it’s a really good prediction of what we’re going to end up with. And the problem is that we’re not able to fix the plane while it’s flying right now. And so it keeps turning, and we keep getting these systems that are kind of falling apart. And you right, now at least, with the infrastructure within capitalism, it’s not really changing much. And so it’s creating a lot of new demands.

05:05

Jasmine Bina:
So where else are we seeing diversion systems at play? And I think more importantly, why now? Because everything you described is clear as day, and it’s all happening at once. So why is it happening now, and is it even bigger than this?

05:19

Jean-Louis:
Right, right. So I think there’s two things that… Why now, is, if you imagine kind of your destination is straight ahead, and you’re just a fraction of a degree off, it takes a lot of time before the difference in direction becomes really visible. And so I think with a lot of these things, it has just taken a really long time, I think a perfect encapsulation of this is the healthcare industry. I mean, it goes without saying that it’s clearly diverged. But I think when you think about it from the point of view of like, what is the incentive here? It’s profit. Profit for the hospitals, but also profit for the insurance companies. And you’ve got a flood of private equity coming into hospitals to really dial this up. And so, it should be somewhat expected that in a system that doesn’t have the checks and balances it needs, and your insurance tells you, “Your deductible is higher this year.” “Your discount is higher.” But then they’re raising the prices.

06:13

You’ve got a system where there are no visible costs. It’s really not a free market anymore, because no one’s able to know the prices of things before they buy. And I think that’s one of the key problems here, is that when we talk about capitalism, it’s really, I think important to remember that a free market in and of itself does not want to stay free. What will happen over time is that through regulations, or through monopolies, people will try and close the door behind them. Businesses will try and close the door behind them. And in healthcare you’ve seen that they’ve created so many regulations that really make it incredibly difficult to compete, and incredibly difficult to operate as a free market where consumers have any level of choice. They’re not even the buyer really, the insurance company is, and so there’s so many levels of abstraction.

07:00

Jean-Louis:
But then if you look at tech for example, they’ve done it in a different way. You’ve got these monopolies that literally block out the sun for competitors, and anyone who gets close. They just get acquired or just bought out. And so you’ve got so many ways in which the free market doesn’t want to stay free inherently. If you think about it as a system, it’s inherently unstable, and so you need those checks and balances. And I think in large part, we’ve kind of seen a failure to maintain the freedom of the market in so many different places.

07:30

Jasmine Bina:
Even if the market isn’t entirely free, in a world like this, where profit has to be the goal in order to survive, because the story is ultimately written by the victors. I mean, isn’t everything really divergent in some way or another?

07:45

Jean-Louis:
I mean, yes and no. I think a lot of systems do have divergent properties, but when a system diverges is when it’s really had enough time for that. I think what’s really interesting here is that we’re seeing the very, very, very beginning stages of new kind of infrastructure here. So, at the extreme end you’ve got cryptocurrency. And really, it’s less about the cryptocurrency itself, but more about organizational structures it enables. So people are starting to talk about DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations, where you’ve got, essentially the rules of the organization are written in code, and anyone can kind of come and go freely and participate in this economy. And so we’re starting to see the very beginnings of this. Really, we’re at the infrastructure layer. If this was the internet, we’d be in the early 1980s right now. So this company Foundation. And they’re a great example of this, where they’ve created a market where artists, or any kind of creator can create goods that are linked to tokens, and people can buy and sell those tokens. And so they become an asset.

8:45

And so you can invest in an artist that you believe in, and what they’re doing there is, they’re creating a market. They’re creating an economy that gives ownership to the customers, and gives new kind of vehicles of capital and new vehicles of ownership for the creatives themselves. And so we’re starting to see different ways of organizing people. We’re seeing a rise in cooperatives in terms of businesses, we’re seeing a rise in equity crowdfunding for example, is another great way of people starting to think about, “Okay, how are we organizing around these things? How are we creating the incentives, and how are they aligned?”

09:51

And so it was starting to explore these things, I think were at the very, very beginning of maybe a Cambrian explosion of new formats for this. But again, I think maybe in five years, people would be talking about that, but right now we’re just at the infrastructure layer. So I think it’s coming, in terms of finding new ways, and I think what’s really important to hear is, how do you fix the plane in flight? How do we create a model that isn’t just, set and forget? Where we can actually tweak the rules of engagement as it goes? And I think things around decentralization and crypto are actually often new vehicles to do that.

09:57

Jasmine Bina:
So, I’m going to do something that you do a lot of times. Let’s test this idea by pushing it to the extreme. If we push this out to like 100, here’s what bugs me about this idea a little bit. And when you look at co-ops, decentralized systems where people can come and go and participate as they want, I think these things, you can understand how they work on a small scale, but the thing about a capitalist society, let’s just say American society is that people are driven by the fact that… This idea of rags to riches. The fact that you can do much better than your neighbor tomorrow.

10:30

And that’s why I feel people are so willing to put up with so much crap today, because they feel like there’s always a possibility that they can outperform other people. But these decentralized systems, crypto, the co-op idea, I think it kind of caps any one person having some sort of major breakaway success or taking more than their fair share of the profit, or whatever winnings, whatever you want to call it. I hope I’m not getting too abstract here, but it kind of feels like it’s going against human nature a little bit. Does that make sense?

11:06

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I mean, what’s funny is that when you think about capitalism, there’s capitalism as a system, as the economics, but then there’s also capitalistic values. And I think that’s two very separate things that are almost always conflated for one another. And so I think certainly in this country, if you attack capitalism, it sounds as an attack on the values, and you kind of, you get lost in the weeds instantly. But I think there really are two different things. You raise a really good point. It was stress testing this. One of the challenges right now is that, if you take a cooperative for example, a lot of these business models can generate a ton of value for people, but maybe they only reach 10 or 100 million in terms of valuation for a company.

11:45

But you’re in an environment which you’re fighting against VC funding a lot of the time. And so you’ve got companies that, they strap $100 million to it, and say, “Hit the moon, or go bust. It doesn’t matter.” And so it’s kind of challenging because it’s stifling a lot of opportunity for these new businesses, because really the economics of VC is, either you’re a billion dollar company, or you don’t exist. And so it is a challenge though, but I think one of the really fascinating things is, the fundamental rules of capitalism might actually be changing kind of under our feet. And what I mean by that is that, for most of history, in my view at least, capitalism is really, in the way it existed, an enabled incremental advances. It really encouraged small improvements over competitors. You make a slightly better product, and you win the market, and someone else makes a slightly better product, and that’s generally how it worked.

12:38

When it came to massive advances in technology, that was usually left to governments. Because it wasn’t easy to get the capital to have something that takes 10 years, or maybe an unknown period of time of R&D to come across that breakthrough. But now with these trillion dollar companies that are emerging; Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, what’s starting to happen is, they have the means to make step-change advancements. It’s no longer incremental, as in for those few companies that are able to do that, they can invest in very, very, very long players, that may take an indefinite period of time, but when they come, they completely changed the market. We haven’t seen that yet, but you have to remember, all of this kind of a step-change advancements used to come from the public sector, with NASA developing all sorts of technology.

13:28

But now, with Google working on longevity science, with self-driving cars, with huge AI advancements, even like Neuralink for example, with Elon Musk creating a brain-machine interface. These changes, if taken commercial, would be potentially trillion dollar companies in their own right for each of them. But they’re completely owned by these trillion-dollar companies. And so I think we’re reaching a point where the rules of capitalism are changing. And I think that might impact our values. The story that you can go from rags to riches might not make sense in a world where the trillion-dollar company is literally sucking up all of the oxygen in the room.

14:07

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. These trillion-dollar companies have the potential to create these step-change advancements instead of incremental change. Would you say they’ve also kind of… Obviously they’ve created the capital opportunity to do that, but have they also created the cultural opportunity to do that as they’ve started to take on a more prominent role in our lives, as they’ve become the new governments, which we’ve talked about so many times? Have they created an environment where we’re willing to let them create such huge changes, or we might not have allowed them so few decades ago?

14:44

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a really interesting question. One of the things I’ve been thinking about, and I don’t know how true it is, but it definitely seems to resonate with me is that, we’ve really changed recently in the way that a lot of these businesses work, where you’ve gone from the customer to the product. This was that line out of the social dilemma that everyone’s talking about. But I think it’s really quite profound, in the sense that when you hold the product, you’re not really a stakeholder in the conversation anymore. And I think that’s starting to happen in a lot of different places, especially when you think about AI. You’re the data point, you’re the data set. And so your opinions are far less valid.

15:23

And with these companies, they have so much capital to influence public opinion, they’re completely bulletproof from a kind of scandal point of view. They have massive operations. I mean, we should probably do our own episode about how the trust machines are designed to perpetuate trust, you cannot not trust them. And that’s literally the one thing that they need to create. And then they’re exceptional at that, and that’s what makes them so successful. So I think, in that regard, they’ve escaped that oven. And I don’t know if we have the power we think we do over them anymore.

15:54

Jasmine Bina:
Hold on, though. You watched the Social Dilemma? I did not see that. And I was very surprised at how much social chatter there was about it, because… Well, you tell me. There’s nothing in there that we don’t already know about, the ills of technology, right?

16:09

Jean-Louis:
No, but I think there’s one point that soundly stuck out to me. And that’s, when you think about Facebook and these social networks, it’s not that you are the products, but that the product is incremental behavior change. It’s getting you to behave ever so slightly differently, and when you think about that, that’s a big deal. And it’s kind of begs a really interesting question which is that, if you’re able to change society at large in terms of their views and their opinions and these kinds of things, maybe society is now a slightly divergent system, because you’ve got a new incentive at play, who knows?

16:49

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but I feel like we had kind of already knew that, I knew that. I think most people knew that. I’m guessing it’s only being presented it in a way that is a bit more shocking, but I feel like we knew that and we agreed to it, when we all started kind of giving up our privacy. I think that was the first, well we’ve talked about this before, I think that was the first signal that tech was slowly changing our actual behaviors, and the way that we related to each other…

Jean-Louis:
Yeah.

17:15

Jasmine Bina:
And the things that we were willing to accept. So, okay. Going back to that discussion. It’s easy to step away from this discussion and hear what you’re saying, and to say like, “Isn’t this just disruption?” So I’m going to ask you, isn’t this just disruption?

17:29

Jean-Louis:
Yes and no. I mean, I think… Really the story of this isn’t so much like this is creating the environment for disruption. This has created the social norm, I think that we now look to disruption as a point of trust. The point is that the systems have been broken enough that our trust in them have been broken. These aren’t authorities that we look to, and so we’re now looking for new authorities, and that’s forcing us into the arms of disruption. It’s forcing us to look to new players. And so when someone is disruptive, they’re sending a signal that we are not the broken system. We’re a new system. And I think we’re really willing to embrace that, because of this climate. So I think the disruption economy, if you could call it that, is because of divergent systems.

18:13

Jasmine Bina:
You’ve brought up trust a couple of times now, which I think leads me to the next question, which is, what does this mean for brands? Let’s bring it back down to earth. How is this changing the rules of engagement for our brands? What should brands be doing in response? Obviously, where does trust fit into this?

18:30

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I mean, the way I sort of see this is that people are looking for power. They’re looking for control. A lot of the divergent systems, what’s happened is that they’ve gotten less control. In the medical industry, there’s no control. You cannot actually get a price before they do that. I mean, there was an example, it was on A16 podcasts. Could you imagine booking a plane, and they tell you, “We can only give you the price when you land. There’s just no way.”

18:59

Jasmine Bina:
And that’s a very soft example. I mean, there’s also just the power of being a woman, or a person of color. Trying to be heard in a medical system, it’s been documented so well, that depending on your race, or your class, or definitely your gender, doctors won’t take your descriptions of pain as seriously as they would somebody else, for example. Or they will be more likely to characterize your reactions or feelings as hysterical, over other things. It’s not just disempowerment and loss of control over technical things, like being able to track price transparency. It’s over like things that are also kind of dehumanizing.

19:41

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. No, I mean, it kind of sounds like, maybe it may be a small factor, but the numbers are insane. If you look at the numbers, these are very, very big deals. And I think just generally across the board, with these divergent systems, you the consumer, you the individual, generally lose power in all of these conversations when it comes to political bodies. You’ve lost power because it’s about the capital and the influence. And for most of these systems, you become the product. And so in terms of what brands can do, it’s giving people a sense of power back, and designing an incentive that really aligns with that. Creating the ability for some kind of value generation for your customers, to be part of your incentive as a business. So there are different ways that you can do that. The most tangible one is building your business around a cause.

20:29

So, I mean, you’ve got like sustainability brands as a baseline, or even a company like Patagonia. They are successful on the back of building a community around environmental advocacy. And so, if that is successful, or rather the success of their environmental advocacy has a large impact on the success of that. And so even though it was a private company, their incentive might be profit, that’s largely driven by their ability to provide a meaningful impact and create value. And so I think as a brand, when you’re thinking about operating in this environment, you have to think about, “How do I bring the incentives of my business, which are almost always going to be profit ultimately, how do I align those as best I can, with value creation for my customers? At a very fundamental level, what can we do?”

21:13

And so another example is creating your brand around a perspective, or sharing a voice, or creating a community. These kinds of vehicles are creating value for your customers, but also if done right, can generate a lot of profit for you as a business. And so it’s really about thinking about where are we creating value, and how can we align our incentives around that? I think fundamentally at a systems level approach, that’s the best thing you can do. Because really, again, we’re looking for disruption because we’re looking for power, we’re looking for control again. We want to feel like a stakeholder in all of this. And when you create value like that, you’re doing that for the customers.

21:51

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, and when you say trust, that’s super interesting because, you can talk about having a cause, you can talk about creating communities where people feel like they belong, you can talk about corporate social responsibility, or providing value through really wondrous experiences. You can talk about so many different things and lenses that brand touches. But if you go and re-examine them again, and say, “Is this creating a source of trust for people?” Not, “Do they trust our brand?” But do they feel like they are in a system that is trustworthy? That gives them that control back? I feel like that changes the answers a lot. And a lot of brands would be very hard pressed to actually answer those questions in a way that makes sense in a non-divergent system. I mean, let’s be honest here. This sounds hard and probably not easy to scale, right?

22:44

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Ultimately it’s hard and it takes a lot of serious decisions to get there. But I think you sort of touched on it in the sense that, real authenticity nowadays… I think people are so fatigued by lip service, that you have to have authenticity at a systems level essentially. And that’s really… Almost what I’m talking about here in terms of value creation is that you need to design your business in a way that it authentically creates value for people. Like that is part of the incentive. It’s the model, it’s the expectation that’s been set. And so I think that’s kind of what we’re demanding of these businesses. You can’t say these things without backing them up with actions now. It’s becoming far more sensitive to these things, and far more aware of the actions businesses, take when leadership fails, even if it’s just the company culture. That’s a big deal now in a way it wasn’t before. So the climate has changed, our tolerance for these things has really changed around it.

23:41

Jasmine Bina:
So we’re kind of talking about this already, but I want to go deeper. So how is this changing consumers and culture? Or, I don’t know if it is the chicken or the egg. Did consumers and culture change, and now it’s changing business? I don’t even know if we need to ask that question, but how are these parts of the equation being changed?

24:02

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely kind of everyone’s been changed at the same time. I mean, this is kind of such a slow moving vehicle in terms of divergence. Again, a lot of these things have been in the works for 100 years or so. It takes a lot of time, but I think there’s a few trends that we know are happening. We know that people are trying to circumvent the broken system. Again, kind of going back to the medical industry, it’s so clear here that we are looking for new ways and new places that we can fulfill those needs. And so it shouldn’t be any surprise, in a world where you can’t guarantee your wellbeing through the health care industry anymore, the trust isn’t there. And so obviously you rely on it when you need to, but that’s probably one of the contributing factors to why wellness has become so strong.

24:44

We’ve become massively disenfranchised with healthcare, and so we are looking to new places, to new ways of fulfilling those needs. And so we buy wellness products, we follow wellness influences in a way it’s… I think you have to see this from a mental category point of view. We are seeing this in the same bucket of, “This is my health. And so I’m taking care of my health in new ways now.” And the divergent system has kind of forced us into these new behaviors. But I think the subtext here, which is interesting and maybe concerning is the fact that this usually trickles down from the top. You have very premium offerings come in, and they grab the capital, and they take that opportunity, and it’s mostly with more affluent customers.

25:28

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I think of Parsley Health, when you talk about this. And for the record, I love Parsley Health, I’m a Parsley Health member. I’m not even going to say patient, I’m a member, because it feels like a club, and you get great healthcare. But man, does it cost money! And they don’t accept insurance. You get great healthcare, but at the same time, you kind of… They put a lot of emphasis on design and creating very comfortable spaces, and a lot of, I think, empathetic healthcare is about solving a design problem too, design from the spaces to the actual patient flow, to how you interact with your doctor, all things which they’ve innovated on.

26:11

Jean-Louis:
Well there’s trust design. I mean, it goes back to it. The pastel’s really a code for trust. Code for, “We’re not the old way of doing it.”

26:20

Jasmine Bina:
That’s a really good point. Because it’s easy to look at that and be kind of skeptical and be like, “All right. Are these beautiful colors and rattan furniture in these third spaces that they’ve created, and the kombucha on tap, or whatever it is, is that really going to solve the world’s medical crisis?” But you’re right. It does solve a mental barrier that we have right now, around just how the experience starts when you walk in those places.

26:45

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I mean, it’s happening in all over the place. Again, going back to news, with these membership platforms, they get progressively more expensive. I mean, even if you look at a Sub stack in these kind of more boutique niche things, you can pay a lot of money to get incredibly high quality news and analysis of the world. And so you can see the world in a different lens if you have the capital. What’s happening here is social stratification. Is you’re getting society is broken up into different tiers, and eventually these things might trickle down, and you’ll get consumer access for the mass market.

27:17

But I think a great barometer of, is something divergent happening here? Is society getting stratified? Are different levels, different tiers of society able to have very different experiences, and their needs fulfilled in different ways?

27:30

And so without divulging too much, I think the conversation about capitalism versus socialism is really, where do we find it acceptable to have social stratification? Is it okay to stratify people’s healthcare? Or people’s education? Or people’s infrastructure? That’s, I think in my eyes at least, a big part of the conversation that people don’t realize they’re having is, where is it okay to have different levels of service for different people? Where is it a right to have everyone have a baseline? And I think that’s really what we’re talking about, because socialism really is just capitalism with a slightly larger welfare system.

28:07

Jasmine Bina:
Oh, be careful what you say here. It’s election season. I would not throw those words around lightly. But I mean, I get what you’re saying, taking the socialist piece out. How we choose where we’re willing to accept this kind of stratification, is a very, very direct signal of what a society values in different ways. Is that what you’re trying to say?

28:30

Jean-Louis:
Well, yeah. I mean, it goes back to this point about, it’s not really about capitalism, it’s the bad capitalistic values here, in terms of where we choose to draw the line. And you can see that, because other countries are also capitalistic in terms of that model, but the values are slightly different. And so they draw the lines in different places. And I think it’s so it’s so powerful when you delineate values from the actual economics, because they’re two very separate things. “What do we accept?” That’s really the question there.

28:58

Jasmine Bina:
Can you give us some examples of how it’s different in this country versus other countries? That will really, I think, illustrate what we mean by this.

29:05

Jean-Louis:
Well, I mean education is a great place to look. So there’s a big conversation right now about making university free, because university or college is no longer… I mean, really it’s a baseline now for the workforce. I mean, it’s been a long, long, long, long, long time since high school was the benchmark.

29:23

And so really, by making that free, you’re expressing your values and saying, “This is the benchmark for society, and this is what equal opportunity should start as a baseline.” And obviously if you’ve got more money, you go to private schools, whatever. And so, I think in Germany, university is free. Or at least at a certain level. And a lot of countries are looking at that and starting to say that, “Okay, higher education is free up to this level.” And that level is gradually rising in a lot of places. But I think it’s a very transparent way of seeing the values at play there.

29:55

Jasmine Bina:
So where do you predict the next set of diversion systems is going to emerge? We’ve mentioned the obvious ones, education, politics, healthcare. Where’s the next set going to come from?

30:09

Jean-Louis:
Well, I definitely think we’re going to see a subset of play in terms of mental health. I think that’s a whole space that there really isn’t even much of an industry around it right now, but it’s such a big thing. And especially with COVID, I think we’re going to see a lot of social stratification around that. That if you have money, or with this case shape recovery that we’re talking about, you’re going to have a very different experience. But if you have money, you can really take care of your mental health in different ways.

30:32

Jasmine Bina:
But isn’t that already true though? Are you saying there’s going to be even more ways to circumvent?

30:37

Jean-Louis:
Oh, far more ways to circumvent. But I think especially when it comes to childhood. And children’s experiences of COVID, in terms of like, it’s a huge, huge impact to have a lack of social interactions for such a long period of time. And that the ramifications of that, you’re going to have two very different classes of people from out of that.

30:54

Jasmine Bina:
Oh you’re already seeing it? Kids that have a pod, and kids that are doing remote learning. Or risking their health going to school, or whatever. I’m not dogging anybody’s personal decisions, whether they send their kids to school or not, but the fact is that some kids have a choice and other kids don’t.

31:10

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I think, I mean, in my eyes, what’s the most interesting is, we’re seeing very, very, very quiet signals right now, of an infrastructure change. As I was saying before about decentralized autonomous organizations, and these kinds of things. We’re starting to see a new layer of infrastructure that creates new types of incentives. New ways of organizing people around these incentives, and potentially the chance to fix the vehicle while it’s moving. Ways of updating these incentives and these models in play. Those things are incredibly exciting, and there’s now such a demand for it. Because these systems aren’t really working for us. Again, it goes back to that question of, are these systems going to be stifled by hyper-aggressive models like the VC model right now? We don’t know, but I think what’s really exciting to me is these infrastructure changes.

32:04

Jean-Louis:
If you’re a brand in the next three to five years, this conversation is very quiet now, but you’re going to see it get louder and louder and louder, just like the internet. Suddenly it was all there, if she wasn’t paying attention. And so I think that you have to start thinking about this at a systems level. You have to think about your business as, “Where am I creating value, and where are my incentives?” Because if you aren’t all careful, you’re going to wake up one day, and there’s going to be a new model that is completely outpacing the way you can operate.

32:31

And again, these things are getting more direct. With creators, now with these direct relationships with Patreon and Sub stack, and you no longer have to go through mediators. If you look at the media industry, right now it’s mostly rent seekers. If you look at Spotify and YouTube and all these kind of aggregation platforms, all they’re doing is kind of surfacing it. They’re rent seekers in the sense that they’re not really creating true value themselves, they’re extracting value from everyone else. And so all of these models are emerging, where it’s a direct relationship, it’s direct engagement. That’s creating a new norm for people. That’s creating a new behavior and a new expectation of saying, “I don’t need to go through these central circles.”

33:09

Jasmine Bina:
Well, also it creates that sense of trust and control that we know people are seeking too.

33:13

Jean-Louis:
Exactly. I mean, it all points to the same thing. There is a new set of behaviors and values coming out of this, as a response to the divergent systems. And if you can speak to those, if you can fulfill those, and you can behave in those kinds of ways and create direct relationships and access without mediation, I think there’s huge opportunities to get. I mean, really quite profound ones, because we’re talking about systems here. It’s not even industries, or categories, or anything like that. This is the fundamental gears of how we service our needs as consumers.

33:48

Jasmine Bina:
So if you’re a founder or a brand owner, other than the obvious question of like, “Are my goals aligned with my incentives?’ What can you ask yourself, to really understand where the divergence is within the systems that you operate?

34:03

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I think, I mean, the first thing you have to do is understand where your consumers are, in the context of what you’re offering them, and in the context really of the needs that they’re getting fulfilled. Because again, if you look at wellness, the needs of taking care of my health, that was what was at play in terms of pushing people out of the health care industry, and into the wellness industry.

34:23

Jasmine Bina:
And I think… This brings me to another point. A lot of times people don’t even know how their consumers define the products. What does health mean? Well, health stopped, for a huge faction of people, it stopped meaning, not being sick, and started meaning living to your most extreme physical potential. I mean, just the fact that their definitions change, meant that the system was starting to diverge, because now the goals and incentives are not the same for you as they are for your users, right?

34:57

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, yeah. For sure. I think we’re seeing a lot of those changes there, but the way you have to look at it is just at the very, very basic needs viewpoint. Because that really is universal to these things. And so it sets the context of engagement. And so understanding, where are people moving? Because there’s a lot of foot traffic right now. People are really… They’re moving away from industries and moving to new ones. We have this appetite for disruption, because we were looking for authentic, trusted relationships. We’re looking for these new standards of engagement now. And so you have to look at the needs to understand where the foot traffic is going. Where are people moving? How is this consumer base changing? Because again, I mean, right now it’s mostly early adopters. And it’s mostly this top tier of consumers, premium luxury consumers, that are very affluent. And so it doesn’t seem like… Maybe it’s not a huge market right now, but you’d be missing the signal.

35:51

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, it’s kind of funny. I don’t want to simplify anything that we’ve described here, because I think it’s pretty profound, what you’ve kind of summed up for us. But you could kind of boil it down to something that you and I have always talked about with our clients, which is, you might have a vision, and you might want to know what you want to create in the world, whether you’re a startup or the CEO of a public company, we work with both. But it kind of doesn’t matter. What matters is, what your consumer wants, where they believe they’re headed, and what they’re willing to let you do, in order to make that happen with them. To the point that when we do all that research, when we really start to understand those triggers, when we really start to create a very rich picture of the value systems that these people have for themselves and how they operate in the world, and the roles that they play, it’s kind of irrelevant what the founder actually wants.

36:47

The best founders, which fortunately we always get to work with, are the ones whose desires have actually deep down, tapped into an emerging wave of change in the culture, but they didn’t realize it. They didn’t mean to necessarily articulate it, but they tapped into the much deeper needs of their audience. So again, not to simplify what we’ve described here, but a really easy guardrail is to just make sure like, “Am I really, really paying attention to what people want?” Because a lot of times, what brings people to your brand, is not what keeps them there. They might come because they need to buy something, but they stay because you’re providing them with something different than just the product. I think the smartest brands understand that. And I think that’s kind of what we’re talking about.

37:34

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s all just systems of value. And a lot of the time you just get lucky, you just happen upon, without even knowing. A lot of the time, people don’t even realize the actual value they’re providing for people. But ultimately, you can kind of strip away everything else, and the success of business can be predicted by its ability to fulfill value for people.

37:57

Jasmine Bina:
Right. Well, I think that was a great discussion on diversion system. So after this, we’ll probably do another house episode at some point, just to wrap this all up. But we’ll be talking to other people in different verticals, about how diversion systems are creating new brand opportunities in their categories, so we can really get a rich understanding of what this divergence actually means.

38:18

And like anything else, I personally find that I learn a lot more when I understand it in somebody else’s industry, than when I understand it in my own. Because it forces you to really kind of let go of your biases, and see an idea mapped in onto a different space. And once you understand the actual truths, then you can start applying it to your own. So we’re hoping that as we talk to different people, we bring that same value to the people who are listening. So Jean-Louis, thank you so much. Another great house episode, and we’ll talk to all of you guys soon.

Podcast

15: The Profound Human Connection of Micro-Communities, Participatory Economies and Good Old Customer Servic‪e‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date August 13, 2020
No Comments on 15: The Profound Human Connection of Micro-Communities, Participatory Economies and Good Old Customer Servic‪e‬

From the gig economy to the passion economy, and now the emerging participatory economy - changing consumer values are inspiring new business models for creators. In this episode we speak with early stage VC and Level Ventures partner Sari Azout about how these nascent economies are centering the new frontier of disruption on customer happiness, and what that means for how value and profitability are connected. We also speak with Ty Givens, customer experience strategist and founder of the WorkforcePro about engineering the human connection that turns customers and users into fans.

Podcast Transcript

August 13, 2020

110 min read

The Profound Human Connection of Micro-Communities, Participatory Economies and Good Old Customer Servic‪e‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
This is Unseen Unknown. I’m Jasmine Bina. You already know that on this podcast, we’re obsessed with how the customer is changing. And every time the customer evolves, a new set of business models is born. The gig economies of Uber, TaskRabbit, and Instacart were born of lots of different economic and technology forces in America. But one of those forces was a changing consumer who was more willing to engage with strangers, especially as the sharing economy and peer reviews became more commonplace.

00:41

Then came the passion economy, with early ad-based models like YouTube, then sponsorship based models maturing on Instagram. And now platforms like Patreon and Subsec. But the common thread among all of these being a customer who is looking for a more direct relationship with the creator. And today, we’re seeing the emergence of something else, some that VC and Level Ventures partner Sari Azout calls the participatory economy, where fans actually participate in a creator’s success, with newcomers like Rally, Role, and Foundation. And this model, along with the others all boil down to one thing, customer happiness.

01:20

Customer happiness sounds trite, but it’s likely not what you think it is. It’s definitely not as simple as you think it is. And considering that the user, your user is changing, customer happiness is something that you can’t afford to overlook.

01:39

Sari Azout:
A business that is really, truly oriented around customer happiness is one where the business profits from things that are in the customer’s best interests. So, if you think about the KPIs and the guiding principles that define success, those have to be fundamentally aligned with the customer’s happiness. So, if you think of Facebook, for example, for Facebook it’s really important that the users spend a lot of time on their site. The more time I spend on Facebook, the more ads I’ll consume, the more money they’ll make. And so, for the user, spending a lot of time on Facebook, that’s not really making my life happier or more fulfilling. And so, I think of this as an example of misalignment.

02:19

Now, Facebook could start a customer happiness department tomorrow. They could improve their customer service department. They could add a ton of user research teams. But at the end of the day, if customer happiness is seen as a program or initiative, it’ll fail. I think that the companies that are truly oriented around customer happiness, there’s something in their kind of genetic code and the DNA of the business that’s driving the organization.

02:46

A long time, I think that I saw customer happiness as something that was defined by values. But I think if you only look at it through the perspective of values, you may have good values, but those don’t necessarily translate into your business model. For example, if you are a business that is selling anti-anxiety medication, but you profit. And even if your guiding principle as a founder is, I don’t want to sell medicine if you don’t need it. Ultimately, if your business model is designed to profit from selling medicine, there’s a fundamental misalignment there. So, I really think that this technical definition is one that acknowledges that businesses ultimately succeed when the self-interest of the business is aligned with the self interest of the customer.

03.33

Jasmine Bina:
What are some examples that really show how powerful this kind of alignment between the self-interest of the company and the self-interest of the user actually looks like and how it can create a business that’s very scalable, profitable, that can actually grow alongside other competitors that maybe have a different kind of business model?

You’ve also talked about something else, which is that the rise of the creative class of the knowledge economy kind of coincided with all of this and was another driver in this decoupling. Can you talk about that a little bit?

03:54

Sari Azout:
I think one caveat really is that the world is messy, right? So, it’s hard to kind of say, any business that is ad-based is fundamentally misaligned because the world is not black or white. Things tend to be pretty gray. But if we look at, for instance, education. If you look at the world of education, the business model around education has historically been you pay for information. The school is not really designed to profit when you get a job. But as the customer, if you’re going to enroll in a coding bootcamp, for instance, you’re not really paying for information, you’re paying for an outcome. You are paying to get a programming job.

04:35

Sari Azout:
So, that’s where that’s examples like Lambda School, for instance, come in. What they’ve done is, they only charge students once they get a job. And so, by charging them a percentage of what they earn, the idea is that the school’s interest is aligned more directly with students. And the school has kind of a real incentive and financial pressure to help students get a job. So, I think that’s an interesting example around education. We’re seeing a lot of movement there.

05:03

That’s not to say that if you launch a school with this model, you’ll succeed because education ultimately is about the quality of the curriculum and the teachers and the experience and the community. But I do think that businesses where there’s misalignment, they just present a lot of opportunity for innovation. Actually, a pretty interesting example is a company called [Aneva 00:05:30]. It’s in beta right now, but it’s Google competitor search engine that was started by an executive at Google who ran their ads business for 20 years.

05:40

So, the idea is that with Google, you as the user are not the customer, you are the product. They profit from you data. And so, their business model really necessitates them doing some things that are not in your best interest. If you are searching for something at Google, what you’re going to see is really the renting space to the highest bidder. And they’re not necessarily incentivized to show you the best results for you. And the idea with a subscription product is that the incentives are more aligned.

06:16

Of my favorite examples actually, is in the gig economy. So, if you think about the gig economy and platforms like Instacart and Uber, the challenge with a lot of these businesses is that it’s hard to keep all stakeholders happy, the drivers happy, the shoppers happy. Everyone almost feels like they’re getting ripped off. And so, I think that with Instacart, for example, there is a new company called Dumpling, and they’ve kind of turned the business model on its head because they’re giving personal shoppers a personal website. They’re empowering them, instead of a model where they’re somewhat commoditized or dehumanized. In the case of Dumpling, the shoppers are paying to build their own kind of grocery shopping business, almost like the Shopify model.

07:04

So, to me, what’s really exciting about these businesses is that they’re combining the scale of these marketplaces, but with the idea of empowerment and accruing kind of equity and value for everybody, not just for these kind of centralized organizations that a lot of participants have come to resent.

07:25

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. When you were talking about subscriptions models just a second ago, it makes me think of the passion economy, or what you’ve described as the participatory economy, which is maybe an extension or something separate from that. I’ll let you describe it. But you had another really great example in some of your writing about the difference between Medium and Substack. And I think you had described how with medium, it’s really about really good content. With Substack, it’s really about really good creators. And there’s a difference between those two experiences. Can you describe that a little bit more? Like, how one maybe is a certain kind of brand in a certain kind of economy, whereas the other is maybe working on an older model?

08:09

Sari Azout:
Yeah. It’s super interesting. I think Substack is another example of this idea of incentive alignment. If you think about essentially the model for MailChimp, because we can think about incentive alignment for something like a MailChimp for Substack, and also Medium or a traditional media company and Substack. But starting, for example, with something like a MailChimp, with MailChip, you are paying to send a newsletter. With Substack, you are getting paid to send a newsletter, right?

08:37

Just this idea that Substack grows alongside your audience is a really interesting flip on kind of just publishing in general. I also think that Substack is an example of the passion economy in the sense that it’s really building on the identities of creators and the personal brands of creators. And so, with Substack, you’re not subscribing to topics. You are not subscribing to a publication, you’re subscribing to people. And I think that what’s interesting is that, in many ways, Substack is a response to media that has incentivized clicks and views, as opposed to kind of depth of interaction.

09:24

Substack, by charging subscriptions is able to go kind of narrow and deep, instead of having to appeal to a wide audience and monetize on ads. I think the challenge is, I think if you ask, does this idea of incentives apply to every industry? I think the challenge is, I don’t think media has found its model yet. I don’t think you can call subscription media a panacea yet. I think there’s a lot to be said about information wants to be free. And so, what happens if we live in a world where the lies are free and you have to pay for the truth?

10:02

And so, I think there’s a lot of, I think, discourse and conversation around that. And it’ll be interesting to see how Substack evolves. I think in the passion economy, a lot of what we’re seeing it fans are not necessarily paying for content, they’re paying for alignment and an affinity with a creator. So, there’s a universe where Substack can enable creators to build these close relationships without necessarily paywalling the content. So, I think there’s a lot of room and space to explore and kind of what it means, what the new business models for information might be. And it’s certainly an exciting time with a lot of kind of emerging business models that different people are exploring.

10:47

Jasmine Bina:
I really am so happy that you brought this up because it kind of brings up this gray area that I wanted to discuss with you. You said something similar to what you just did nos in one of your newsletters. You said, “Do we want to live in a world where people pay for content?” And I just want to put that question to you. I know you kind of touched on it a little bit. But in your personal opinion, and you just described, when the lies are free and the truth or whatever, the subjective truth is paywalled, naturally, you’re going to create echo chambers and a sense of tribalism. But is there another side to this? Like, if you had to answer this question, how would you answer it?

11:25

Sari Azout:
It’s such a fascinating question because I think that if you look at other professions, if you look at anything outside of journalism, sports stars, celebrities, the best ones get paid so much money. And so, with journalism, it’s not the case, right? Journalists are some of the lowest paid across all of these professions. And the reality is is that it costs a lot of time and money to create good information. And so, we could get into a conversation about, to what extent is it a public good? I think what’s interesting to me is that, if you look at what a lot of the successful publications at Substack have done is, they have said the free tier gets one post a week. The paid tier gets two posts a week. I don’t think that’s the right model.

12:18

1 think that you are making a lot of effort in creating something that costs you $0 to distribute. What I think that people are paying for, if it’s true that people are paying for the affinity, the closeness, the idea that I am supporting such and such writer, then I think that there is a universe where information can be free and users, customers will still pay for that affinity. I think that there’s still a lot of room to explore what that means. And I don’t think that we have the tools necessarily for that.

12:53

But I do think that it’s certainly not the best outcome for society for everything to be come subscription based in response to advertising. And I also think that we kind of went from advertising is evil, subscription is pure. And we’re not realizing that there’s a real gray area here, in the sense that, perhaps when your advertising is completely programmatic and algorithmic, there’s some tension there. But what about seeing advertisers as perhaps sponsors or facilitators of democratized information? I think that brands have so much marketing spend potential that could be put to use in humane and effective and ethical ways. And I think that we’re just kind of seeing the outcomes in such binary ways that we’re not really exploring the in between where I think there’s still a lot of room to build and explore.

13:52

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. If we can, I want to look outside of just content because so much of the passion economy and the participatory economy, as you describe it, move outside of content where they do align incentives and they’re focused on customer happiness. What other brands are you seeing in the landscape that are aligning their incentives and goals along with their users in a unique way that’s kind of putting pressure on the old way of doing things?

14:19

Sari Azout:
Yeah, super interesting. So, I think the way that I see this evolution is historically customers were passive, they didn’t really have a voice. And it’s only recently that customers have really had a voice and a say. And if you think about the last 50 or so years in the first wave, it’s not really customers who started projecting their voices, but brands, right? Brands started developing personalities. Now instead of selling to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s, I have my own brand, I have my own voice. And so, I am broadcasting that voice in a unidirectional way on Instagram, for instance. Or I’m hiring an influencer with millions of followers to promote my brand. And so, I think of that as kind of unidirectional, right? The brand is still in many ways, the relationship in many ways is still top down.

15:12

I think what’s interesting about the participatory economy is that the consumer is also the creator. It’s this kind of bidirectional relationship. A good example of that is probably Arfa. Arfa is a company that was founded by the COO of Glossier, who I believe was also the co-founder at Glossier. And I think what’s interesting is, a lot of companies say they work closely with their customers and they’re customer-centric. But Arfa is kind of going a step further, they are devoting a percentage of their profits to a subset of their customers who are cocreating their products with them.

15:48

So, I think that what’s interesting about the participatory economy is, it’s not just paying lip service to this idea of, we build with our customers. But it’s actually creating models that align with your most valuable contributors, because if you think about, what is Facebook without its users creating content? What is Reddit without its community moderators? What is Uber without its drivers? What is Instacart without its shoppers? And I think that in the participatory economy, you are able to kind of frame these questions and create economic alignment from day one. And to me, there’s nothing more exciting than thinking about how you can grow and build these platforms in ways that don’t cause your contributors or your most valuable stakeholders to resent you, which is what I think has happened across marketplaces and mostly gig economy marketplaces, which have really grown at the expense of their most valuable stakeholders.

16:48

Jasmine Bina:
Can you describe Arfa a little bit? What is that brand?

16:51

Sari Azout:
Yeah. So, Arfa sells beauty products. I think their first brand, it’s a holding company. Their first brand is a brand called Hiki and they sell direct to consumer deodorants. And so, what’s interesting is that I think that borrowing from the success of Glossier, which is seen as a brand that has really innovated as far as how to think of their customers and engage with their customers. But I think what Arfa does is they take that relationship a step further and they truly engage their customers in helping create their products and give them a financial incentive to do so. It’s actually the first consumer brand that I’ve seen doing that.

17:31

Jasmine Bina:
So, this reminds me of something else that I’ve seen you talk about. And it’s that in these new economies, collaborators are greater than competitors, abundance is greater that scarcity, interdependence is greater than independence. And it’s really a profound new way of looking at business. But it also feels so antithetical to everything that we know about business, everything that you’re taught, everything that you see in the marketplace. Do you feel like this is going to have an out sized impact on business culture as a whole? Because now we’re talking about culture a little bit here, we’re changing our value system in the business landscape. Do you see this as having a halo effect?

18:16

Sari Azout:
Absolutely. I think that at the end of the day, what’s interesting about the participatory models that we were talking about is that it’s not just about saying we believe in a fair world, we believe that everyone should have a stake in the things that they contribute to. I think what’s interesting is that we increasingly have the tools to be able to align platforms with their contributors. Now, I don’t think this is some sort of socialist, let’s just kind of redistribute wealth. I think what’s interesting about this is that it’s actually in everyone’s best interest, because if you think about, if you were to start a community today. And that community relied on contributors to create content to spark discussion, if you give away a percentage of your fee stream or of the equity of that business to contributors, what’s going to happen there is that network effects are going to just kick in because more people are incentivized to help that community grow, as opposed to a lot of businesses that are just being drained by this misalignment. And Amazon warehouse workers, again Instacart shoppers.

19:28

So, I think that the promise and the kind of optimist in me thinks that we’re going there, because when we built the first wave of companies, I don’t think anybody anticipated how quickly they would grow, how big they would become, how much they would concentrate wealth. And I think that this new wave is about reclaiming the beauty of the internet. The beauty of the internet is that we can redistribute and democratize access. And the reality is that, I think in unintended ways, what we saw in Web 1.0 and 2.0 is the kind of unintended consequences of centralized platforms and platforms that don’t really facilitate the distribution of outcomes.

20:13

And so, I’m really just excited about what it means to create participatory models, not only from a governance perspective, you know? If you think about how many businesses have gone under because Facebook changed an algorithm or Twitter changed an algorithm. And so many companies are kind of one algorithm change away from failure. And so, what happens if you have more democratic platforms where governance is more distributed, I think that we run less of a risk. And I think that culturally, we are so much more aware right now of the challenges of centralizing and wielding power to kind of these massive social platforms.

20:53

Jasmine Bina:
I think you really hit it right there. I think a lot of people don’t understand or appreciate at least when they’re first starting a business or founding a startup that when they sign up for these models, they’re giving away so much more than just having to follow somebody else’s rule. They’re really giving up their potential livelihoods if something in the algorithm changes. That’s a really good point. Did this kind of relationship not exist before now because we just didn’t have the technologies to execute it? Or because as a culture, we just didn’t even think … Like, we weren’t ready to accept this kind of relationship?

21:35

Sari Azout:
Yeah, I think a big part of it is that the companies that we build online grow so much faster. I mean, if you think about how long it took Uber to become a multi billion dollar company, these companies are becoming big at unprecedented rates. If you think about the S&P 500 companies of 30 years ago, it took them 10, 15, 20 years to build meaningful businesses. But today, the network effects are so strong and so profound that it’s scary how quickly companies can become billion and now trillion dollar companies. And so, I think that there’s just this massive disconnect between the unprecedented rate at which wealth is being created, but also the inequality. And so, I think that that’s a new thing.

22:23

In many ways in the past, we looked at wealth creation as something that was meritocratic because it took 10, 15, 20 years of you working so hard to build businesses that were a lot more traditional. You were operating in the physical world, you had manufacturing plants. But nowadays, if you build a network that takes off, the growth is just exponential. And so, I think that in a world where things can grow so quickly, that means we’re wielding power to people. And how does that impact a society when you have a company that has more power than a country? And so, I think that’s where that cultural shift towards decentralization and really allowing more people to participate in the creation of these platforms is occurring. So, I really think it’s a result of how fast these platforms grow relative to the businesses of the pre-internet age.

23:16

Jasmine Bina:
I’m going to shift gears here a little bit. The word fans keeps coming up. And I think we shouldn’t overlook that. I feel like we’ve gone from customers to users and now fans. And fans is reflective of this new relationship that these economies are affording us, where you’re not just buying a product or relating to the brand, you’re buying a relationship with the founder of that brand or the person behind it. And I think it’s really easy to see this in personality cults behind beauty brands that were started by YouTube founders, let’s say. But you also see it with obvious ones like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or even Scott Galloway. A lot of people love the personal brand that packages what he’s selling. And I mean this in the best possible way. And he himself has described how a lot of times this likeability factor really insulates a company from criticism later on or from hiccups in development and things like that.

24:10

I want to ask you, I’m certain when you’re talking to new founders who are pitching you and they’re talking to you about revenue, TAM, you must be looking for something else instead, right? I mean, what are you watching for? If you’re in the room with a founder who has a platform in this new economy, what kind of a leader does it take to create these new kinds of relationships?

24:31

Sari Azout:
Yeah, I love this question. I think part of what I observe and links with the passion economy a bit is that we are transitioning from trusting institutions to trusting people. And so, in the same way that brands became people on the internet and the internet kind of led them to kind of humanize their voices, I think in that same way, people are now becoming brands. And so, historically, I think companies built products first and then audiences later, right? The audience would come as a result of the product.

25:03

What I think we’re seeing now is, people are building audiences. And those audiences are authentic. People are attracted to these creators and these leaders because they’re prolific, they stand for something, they have values. And so, that kind of affinity is what allows them to introduce a product later on. So, I love this idea of going from building a product and then an audience to building an audience and then a product. And I think that, when we look at digitally native vertical brands, for instance, I think that was an area that for a while we were tracking and heavily investing in.

25:36

And we noticed that there were almost like two kinds of founders. There was the founder that saw Warby Parker and said, “Oh, we went down every single industry to see what Warby Parker for X could look like. And we found that there’s nothing in refrigerators. So, let’s build a Warby Parker for fridges.” And that’s very different from somebody that has been talking about home improvement or some other category, beauty, and then launches a beauty product that is so authentic to them, that there’s a built in audience and that product makes sense.

26:10

So, I think increasingly, we’re going to see more companies that are born from just the affinity that they have with creators. And I think that that’s also a reflection of just the attention economy we’re in. It’s so hard to get a customer’s attention, CAC as they say is the new rent. Facebook is no longer a cheap acquisition engine. And so, what’s left is really kind of values and an audience that really kind of believes and buys into those values. And what I love the most about this, you mentioned Scott Galloway. I think it was Chris Dickson that once said, “The next big thing will start looking like a toy.”

26:51

And I think that a lot of that’s happening with maybe people broadcasting their ideas on newsletters and that might become the next online school. If you think about what David Perell is doing with Write of Passage, a writing school. He just started writing on the internet, has a weekly newsletter. But if you look at his vision for Write of Passage, it’s so ambitious that it’s hard to kind of comprehend that something that started off as a newsletter and just a creator being authentic and creating his own brand can really branch out and create products.

27:26

So, I think that the internet or people that are prolific about their views and their values have such an advantage into these worlds when it comes to building products. And when I’m looking at founders, I definitely love founders that have been building an audience and stand for something, because really, the last kind of battle for differentiation is really values.

27:50

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, that echoes something else I saw. It was like a Walkers study, I think, that said the next frontier of disruption is going to be in customer experience and not product or price points. And they said that this was the year that that was going to happen. And COVID probably accelerated all that. But I want to dig in a little bit more. If you’re looking at a founder and they’re pitching you, what are some of the soft skills or the cues under the surface that will tell you that somebody can actually build this kind of personal brand that would help grow an entire business? Because this is a whole new skillset. You don’t learn this in business school. So, what does it really take? Because after all, whoever that person is, they’re going to create the internal company culture as well, right? It comes from the top down. So, how do you even quantify that? What do you look for?

28:35

Sari Azout:
Yeah. It’s such a good question. I think one of the things that I learned, and I think for me thinking about businesses from a kind of customer first way comes very natural. But what I’ve learned in the last couple of years is, that’s not necessarily the case for a lot of founders. So, I’ve spoken to a lot of founders that come to pitch us and say, “We are building AI for law.” Or, “We are building a social network built on top of crypto.” And then you ask them, “Okay, but what problem is this solving?” There’s no clarity around that. So, I think that what I’ve seen is that a lot of founders are in love with an idea or a product or a technology, and not really in love with a customer problem.

29:19

And so, the first thing that I look for is, is there a unique insight and an emotional connection to this problem that makes you the best founder to build this? And it can’t be, “Oh, we’ve seen eCommerce is growing. And Warby Parker succeeded. And so, there’s no Warby Parker for X,” because that’s not authentic. And building companies is way too hard for any founder to really withstand the pains if they’re only doing it as mercenaries. So, what I look for is missionaries. And I think that, back to this idea of incentive alignment, I think if you’re obsessed with a problem, I think that the strategy is determined by what you believe.

30:07

So, people always say culture eats strategy for breakfast. I think culture determines strategy. So, if you are a founder that believes that the social networks of the day optimize for vanity metrics and likes and followers and you have a point of view around why that shouldn’t exist, then the product and everything else is almost dictated by those beliefs. So, I really think that finding founders that are authentically mission oriented and that have a unique insight, because it’s not enough to say, “I believe this. Why is this unique?” But at the end of the day, yeah. I think at the end of the day it’s about missionaries over mercenaries. And it’s about making sure that the founder is driven by an obsession with a problem instead of an obsession with an idea or a technology or a solution.

31:05

Jasmine Bina:
Is this truly scalable internally and externally?

31:30

Sari Azout:
I think that as you scale, it’s a lot harder to do this. And that’s why it’s so easy for five person teams using a small wedge to build massive businesses. I think there a lot of examples of public companies that are able to do this. I mean, if you think of Amazon and their day one mentality, I think that’s an example of a company that is still rooted in customer obsession. But ultimately, as businesses grow larger, the individual, the people are almost like abstracted. And the empathy gap between the business and the customer grows larger.

31:48

Whereas, I think for small businesses, they really have no choice but to prioritize customers. And the lack of scale, I think is kind of a forcing function to listen and to iterate. So, I think that surely you can do this at scale, but it’s a lot harder. And I think that that’s how you see a company like Zoom in a couple of years eat Google Hangouts for breakfast, you know? So, it’s the reason why I think small teams and a lot of the innovation in industries like education and healthcare is going to come from the outside in.

32:25

Jasmine Bina:
But something else that keeps coming up too is the idea of community. So, you mentioned brands that start with a community first or looking at the customer first and then building a product instead of the other way around. And there’s so many niche communities popping up. You described a niche community that could turn into a huge vision for an education platform. The obvious one that I’m sure many people listening right now are thinking of is Glossier, which started as a really, really tight knit and active community and turned into a successful beauty brand. Where are you seeing some interesting developments and micro communities online, both in the actual communities themselves, as well as the platforms that are enabling these communities to happen?

33:09

Sari Azout:
Yeah. I love this question. I think we’re really seeing a renaissance in communities that I think is a result of people craving authenticity and just more depth. I think Facebook may say that their mission is to connect people. But at the end of the day, back to their business model, their business model is to connect businesses with people, not necessarily people with people. And so, I think that we’re seeing … I almost bucket it into products where the community is the product. And some examples there might be, for example, a network like Chief that connects women in executive positions, or a platform like Hey Mama for working mothers. A Slack group for brand builders that I’m part of called The Jacuzzi Club.

33:57

And there’s just across any set of interests, there’s products that are just built for the purpose of connecting people. What we’re also seeing is brand communities or product let communities. And I think that brands are realizing that the last kind of battleground for consumers is going to happen in terms of values and a deeper alignment. And a lot of brands, I think community has become a buzzword. And so, a lot of these brands are kind of vying to carve our spaces. And what’s interesting is that a lot of these communities are forming outside of big socials.

34:35

So, there’s Slack, there is increasingly a lot of telegram chats. There’s Discord. There’s a lot of platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks. Personally, I think that communities have such bespoke needs that I think the most interesting ones are not the ones that are going to live in platforms like these, but are ones that are going to develop very kind of idiosyncratic tools and features to meet their needs. So, I’m personally kind of bearish on this idea that there’s going to be a Slack for communities that’s going to serve the needs of all of these platforms. I think that this isn’t just about connecting people as a network, but giving them the right tooling to achieve specific outcomes, right?

35:26

If you think about communities around investing, they need specific tools. I don’t think that group chat or channels is necessarily the right tool or the right mechanism to connect. So, I’m increasingly excited about the more kind of custom communities that are building bespoke tooling around that, because Reddit, ultimately, it homogenizes communities across interests. And so, this idea of unbundling Reddit and unbundling Facebook I think is really interesting.

35:58

Brands always go where attention is. And attention, if you think about where you’re going, I’m no longer starting my days looking at my Facebook feed, I’m not scanning through my Slack chats and Telegram chats. And so, I think brands want a piece of that. I think it remains to be seen whether they can authentically do that. And I’m not super bullish on really large brands being able to do this in effective ways.

36:25

Jasmine Bina:
That’s what I was going to ask you. Can a community, the strongest of communities for a brand ever make up for a company that maybe doesn’t put customer happiness or the alignment of their self-interest with the self-interest of their customers at the center of the business?

36:44

Sari Azout:
Yeah, I just think that consumers are too smart and consumers can see through everything these days. And so, especially brand communities, if the brand is launching a community and the metrics to measure that community are user growth and revenue, I just think that those incentives are going to lead to outcomes that the consumer can see through. So, I’m less interested in those communities. I think somebody that invests and looks for venture scale outcomes, I think that this is an area where the reality is that the larger the group, the worse the conversation. And I think that as humans, we really haven’t solved this problem.

37:24

The best Telegram chats that I’m part of are 15, 20 people. I think when the groups start to become 200, 500, 1,000, I think that the quality of the interactions just decreases substantially. And so, yeah, I think there’s a lot to test here. I think companies like Chief have done a good job of creating smaller groups and kind of innovating on format. But you know, I’m not bullish on a brand reading that community as the next mode. And so, creating a Telegram or a Slack chat and just inviting 2,000 of their best customers inside and hoping for good results.

38:02

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, I think I would agree too. As much as we want it to be true, I don’t know that it is. So much of what you’re describing here is about your mission, which is to bring more humanity and creativity to technology and business, bringing in this … I don’t think humanity is … There’s a better word than that. It’s not just empathy, it’s not just a closer relationship. It’s really all of the subtext that comes with the idea of humanity, just making it more ethical even, among other things. I feel like a lot of VCs say this. But I feel like with you, you’re really, really committed. And I just want to ask you, how did you get here? And why is this personal to you? And what is your unique take on how this is going to all unfold? I feel like I really see your unique take in your writing. But I would love to explore it here a little bit.

39:00

Sari Azout:
I think, I grew up in Colombia in Bogota, and my family was always in retail. And I remember, we were in the grocery business. I would go and I would work the cash register on the weekends. And there were always coasters in Spanish that said [foreign language 00:39:20], which means we work so the customer comes back tomorrow. And there was just this kind of immense obsession with the customer that I almost took for granted. And then I went to college, I graduated college, and I worked in investment banking and then on the trading floor. And I felt in the case of the trading floor, I felt this immense disconnect between my job and the customers I was serving. I didn’t really know who they were, what they needed.

39:51

And then, throughout my work with startups, I also realized that it’s almost like a paradoxical truth that a lot of businesses have a lack of focus on the people that they’re serving, and a lack of reverence and honor for those end customers that I almost assumed to be the number one rule in business. And so, I think that, for me, as I had children and I kind of … The stakes around my work became higher because one second at the office became time away from my kids, it really came down to using my voice to kind of further this idea that without reverence for customers, what is the point of business? And beyond that, I think that a business is really a way to project a worldview and to project your values to the world. And so, why would we build businesses in ways that are so transactional without leveraging the capabilities and the ability to just project your ideas in unique ways?

40:58

And so, I think part of it is that. I think a lot of products just don’t have a heart. And I think that’s sad. And so, I think anything that we can do to bring more delight, because the world doesn’t need more consumer brands. The world should see more products that delight and inspire. The other piece of it is that one thing I think I really believe is that all problems are people problems. And if you believe that, then the number one reason companies fail is founders run out of energy. I mean, you can say that the company failed because they ran out of capital or they got into a fight with a cofounder, they lost a key supplier. But at the end of the day, I’ve seen so many companies come and go. And I think that the one thing we don’t talk about enough is just the emotional side of entrepreneurship and the people, not just the people we’re serving, but the people that are building.

41:50

And so, I just think that bringing more humanity, just even to the way that we approach the work also just enables people to be more creative, more vulnerable, more real. A lot of what I try and do is not just to build businesses that are delightful, but for that process in itself to feel more human.

42:13

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. And that humanity too, when you describe the way that you’ve described it, it only makes sense that as founders and businesses get closer to their fans, let’s say, or users, they crave that sense of humanity. Like, that kind of connection. And something I wanted to ask you earlier was, so much of this, yes, you can build it in the brand, you can build it in the product, you can build it in community platforms, wherever. But one of the most low hanging fruits is just in the customer experience, or even if we’re getting down to brass tacks, customer service, right? Where people are literally reaching out to you in the moment when they’re vulnerable, either they’re angry or confused or need something, that’s when the humanity could perhaps impact them the most. I want to ask you, how can customer happiness manifest itself in the actual customer service or experience of a brand?

43:06

Sari Azout:
One of the things that’s most surprising to me is that customer service is seen as a cost center instead of marketing or customer experience. I think that this idea that you have to invest to win over new customers, but the keeping existing ones happy is a totally different department with a totally different mindset is just so crazy to me in this day and age. And I think that you just need a better mindset, I think, to treat your customers better. I think that if you have a mindset that is oriented around customer happiness from day one, then customer service isn’t just about answering questions about shipping and returns, it becomes a way to build relationships with your customer, a way to organize customer insights. And so, those teams should be, in theory, very important. They should be tied to the product development teams.

44:05

And I think that companies. Glossier’s an excellent example of a company that has done this effectively. If I recall correctly, their customer service teams are part of their marketing teams. And I believe that they rotate as far as answering customer service emails and being a part of other functions. And so, I think that companies that don’t silo service as a kind of low level drain on costs are going to succeed. But ultimately, the way that I see it is it really flows from the top. If you are guided by important principles that are oriented around customer happiness, the rest will flow. And I almost am reminded of just examples of companies that are just so delightful in everything from their microcopy. One example that we invested in is a company called Ghia. It’s a non-alcoholic aperitif. And every touchpoint and interaction, you can tell that it wasn’t somebody that woke up one day and said, “Oh, the non-alcoholic market is growing. Let’s just launch this.” It was a product that had a soul.

45:16

And I used, like they send you coasters with your order. And they say really fun things like, ‘glass half full’ or ‘over the influence’. And everything’s just so authentic and has such a clear and distinct voice that I think that if you have a mindset that is oriented around customer happiness, the details, the delight, all the way down to the microcopy and the interactions, they all flow in a way that doesn’t happen.

44:45

Jasmine Bina:
Yes. I was just going to say, it’s the difference between struggling to write a brand versus a brand that just writes itself. We see this in our work all the time. And I’d imagine with this brand it’s exactly what you’re describing.

45:58

Sari Azout:
Yeah, I think that when you have that mindset and that obsession with a customer, then every customer interaction just becomes a magic moment and compounds into just something that the customers are willing to pay for. And I think it’s such an exciting time to be in business for that reason. This is really new, I don’t think that brands had this kind of power and direct relationship and two-way relationship. And so, I just think it’s a really interesting time to think about how you can delight customers in ways that weren’t possible when you had gatekeepers.

46:34

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, and it also reminds me, I think Warby Parker actually, in the beginning, required everybody to come up through customer service. Everybody had to work in customer service at some point to really appreciate and understand the customer and have an empathy for them before they could go onto leadership somewhere else within the company. So, even before we had names for these things, it was already starting to happen and actually create new categories and new winners. You as a customer for a company that you haven’t invested in, when did you feel this human connection? Can you remember a time where a brand actually touched you because they put customer happiness at the center of the brand?

47:15

Sari Azout:
Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I think one of the best examples, and it’s an interesting example to use now, I think, considering where the company is today. But I think that when Outdoor Voices came to the market, it was perfect for somebody like me who’s never been the athletic type, where the message of just doing things really resonated with me. It wasn’t just about, let me run faster, compete, or be the best runner. But just like, wear these leggings and just go out there and be active. And that message, to me, was so profound. And it’s not that their product was necessarily any better than Lululemon or Nike or anything like that. But just that idea that you as a customer could have an affinity for a brand just because their values resonate. I think that illustrates this idea that what’s most important is the mindset and the values, ultimately. And that everything else flows from that.

48:18

Jasmine Bina:
So, this human connection, this customer happiness that is the new frontier of disruption, how do you actually make it central to a company? How do you build a real brand on top of its principles? Ty Givens is a customer experience strategist and the founder of The Workforce Pro. She and her SWAT team descend into the heart of companies and transform them from the inside out with a focus on the human connection that turns customers and users into fans. I asked Ty how leaders can truly make customer experience core to their brands. And what kind of second order effects that change can have on the company, its employees, and the overall landscape.

48:59

Ty Givens:
In order to make customer experience central to a company, it sounds cliché when you hear it starts with the top down, but it’s true. One time I worked with a company where it was uniquely brilliant. The person who answered the questions related to shipping problems was the person who did the shipping. The person who answered questions related to marketing problems was the person who did the marketing. And I thought that was so remarkable because most times, customer experience is actually in the center of everything. We take responsibility for decisions that are made in every single department, and we own it as if it’s our own. So, when I saw a company that actually trained their shipping person to reply to issues related to long shipping times or an item or product coming that was damaged, I thought, “That’s genius. Why isn’t everybody doing this?”

50:03

Jasmine Bina:
That’s super smart, because also when people, when they’re stakeholders in the actual customer experience, it makes that shipping person better at their job. It makes that marketing person better at their job in other ways. And also, now they have something valuable to bring back to the table to the rest of the company that only they would be uniquely able to understand.

50:23

Ty Givens:
What I also saw during my time there, it wasn’t that long. They’re great, we’ve worked with them a few different times over the last year. But what I also saw was fewer defects. So, when you’re the person who has to own the outcome of the decisions that you make, you make better decisions. So, it was great. Like, they ended up changing couriers as a result of the shipping person hearing how long the delays were, which is normally something that sits in customer service. And then you have these competing priorities where the business says, “Why aren’t you telling us what customers are saying?” And then it’s like, “But when we tell you what the customers are saying, you’re saying that’s not important enough.” So, there are competing priorities that happen all the time.

51:01

And I just found that when you have that ownership, it’s great. However, I haven’t been able, even sharing how successful that was, I haven’t been able to really get any company to take on that same thought process. A lot of times, customer experience is sometimes thought of as the last thing that you need to be worried about. And so, because of that, you end up in a place where you hire a bunch of people to come in and answer questions about things. And for us, we live in the space day in and day out of fixing other people’s problems, so you start to get a little bit numb. You don’t hear the issues and the problems the same way, it’s just what you do every day, day in and day out.

51:41

Jasmine Bina:
That’s super interesting. So, I just want to get to the heart of the matter here. You do customer experience strategies for companies. Like, you go super deep. You reorganize org charts if you need to, you completely uplevel entire teams. You change the internal culture of a company. What are some of the secrets, the really non-obvious things that you’ve learned in your years of doing this that people don’t really understand that affects customer experience and customer happiness really profoundly, but it’s just not commonly understood?

52:14

Ty Givens:
The reality is that you have to put the employees first. A lot of companies really focus on putting the customer first. But it’s the employee that you have to take care of, because if the employee is happy and feels passionately about working with or for your company, that’s going to show up in their engagements with the customer.

52:32

So, a couple of ways that you can do that. When a CX person provides you with insights on what the customer is actually experiencing, even if you can’t take action right away, you have to have a way for them to feel valued and heard and know that the information that they’re sharing with you is important, it’s valid, and you’re going to do something about it when you can. And when you do that, what happens is, the employee, they feel empowered. And that empowerment shows up on the call because they actually … Let’s say call, email, chat, whatever. I’m showing my age. But it shows up in their confidence when communicating to the customer.

53:16

So, if someone writes in and says, “You know what? I received this product. It was broken. It was damaged in shipping.” And that CX person feels empowered to make that right and know that they can get that information to a person or a team or a group of people who are going to work on prevention, that confidence is going to show up in that communication. And a lot of times, the company is really, really focused on, let’s make the customers really happy. And it’s like, well, let’s make the employees really feel happy and valuable, because they’re the ones who talk to the customers, and that’s going to show up there.

53:51

Jasmine Bina:
So, what you’re talking about here is managing emotions on both sides of the equation, not just the customer emotions, but the employee emotions. And it feels like what you’re saying is that creates the conditions for a really good interaction that is almost irrespective of whether you can help them right away with the problem or not. Is that right?

54:13

Ty Givens:
That’s right. I’ll give you an example: I used to run customer experience for ShoeDazzle. I started there in November 2013, ironically, the week of Black Friday, as the head of CX, okay? Right, okay? You know, listen. I walked right into it, smack.

54:32

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, that’s a crazy indoctrination, that’s insane.

54:36

Ty Givens:
Yeah, you know? Just jump in the deep end. And so, here I am, first day of work the question is posed to me, “Should we open on Black Friday?” “Well, what did you do last year?” “We were open.” “Okay.” “We had a skeleton crew.” “Great, let’s do a skeleton crew this year.” That wasn’t a good call, because you know what? It was a totally different business than it was literally 12 months before. Heck, it was different six months before.

55:00

So, here we are, skeleton crew. I show up with my team. We’re going to do this together. Well, we get there, we have 60 plus calls in the queue because marketing thought it would be a great idea to change the promotion every hour. So, you can imagine, you got 20% off an hour ago, and now you get 40% off. What do you think people are going to do? They’re going to call in and say, “I want my extra 20.” Okay?

55:23

I hadn’t even seen the backend of our website to help anybody with anything. But you know what I did? I got my butt on the phone, because I knew that I had the power to make things right. So, when I get on the calls and someone’s asking me, “Hey, I just placed my order, and I waited online for you guys for an hour, an hour and a half, or two hours. And now the promotion is that this percentage, I want you to adjust my rate.” Did I know how to do that? Heck no. I wasn’t signed into anything but the phone.

55:56

But what I did is, I took notes. And I knew that I had the confidence to make that call. And that confidence showed up. Another thing I did is I told the customers the truth. I was like, “Hey, this is my first week.” You know? And that actually somehow built some sort of relationship between me and them. They felt like, “Oh wow, well, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here.” They were so warm and welcoming. And while I didn’t know how to do the work, I knew what needed to get done.

55:26

So, I think that that’s a good example of how the confidence of you being able to actually make those decisions will resonate with the customer, because the customer is contacting the business. And they don’t know that they’re talking to Ty. They don’t care that they’re talking to Ty. They were talking to the name of that company. And so, they expect whoever picks up that phone, replies to that email, that they know everything about them and that they can fix their issue. So, you’ve got to make your employee feel and understand and know what their span and scope of control is, so that that can resonate on the call. And if they don’t have all the answers, don’t harm them for that. So what they don’t know all the answer? Make sure that they feel confident enough to communicate to the customer, “While I may not know that, I know that I can get that information for you.” That’s the key.

57:13

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, what you’re describing, I think, would sound a little scary to some founders or leaders within a company, to give that much autonomy in CX or even just customer support, when a lot of the problems are kind of still in a black box. Like, you don’t even know what you’re dealing with yet. I’d imagine that could be a difficult thing to convince leaders and CEOs to adopt, right?

Ty Givens:
No, you’d be surprised.

Jasmine Bina:
Okay.

57:41

Ty Givens:
Reason being is, most startups that I’ve worked with, and I’m talking about the ones that are growing super fast, they really focus on hiring people that they believe make good decisions. That’s actually scary though, because what does good mean? What I think is good, you may not think is good. Just because I finished and I got a degree from a really great school, that doesn’t make me a good decision maker. That means I can stick to something. And so, because of that, in a lot of startups that I have worked with, joined, either in a consulting capacity or even as an employee, they hire certain prototype because they feel that this person makes good decisions. But they’re largely inexperienced in a lot of ways. They’re not actually making good decisions, they’re just doing what they think makes sense. But they don’t actually understand fully.

58:35

And so, what happens is, and you have these side by side train the trainer type experiences. So, let’s say I walk in, this has happened before. I walked in, inherited a team of six. This is as an employee. All six of the people who were on my team did the work a different way. They all did it the way that they thought was best. There was literally zero strategy associated with how the work was getting done. And so, when it came time to putting in some structure and some rules, some guidelines, if you will, because I do believe that you have to give people the ability to make decisions in order for them to feel valuable, because if everything that you’re doing is logic based, it’s this, then that, yes, then no, let a machine do it.

59:21

Customers don’t actually have a problem with machines, they have a problem with incorrect information. They have a problem with waiting for incorrect information. But if you can make it where they can get that information right away and it’s accurate, they don’t care who gives it to them. So, I’ve seen a lot of times where there’s a lot of autonomy in CX. And as that company scales and grows, that process starts to break down because there was never any strategy behind it. I honestly think that companies forget that customer experience is tactically strategic. You have to be able to actually do the work that’s associated with the strategy.

59:58

Jasmine Bina:
Can you describe that a little bit more? Like, it feels like what you’re talking about here is also what makes people good decision makers. And I think that’s kind of like the big question. Like, how does a strategy make people good decision makers, but still give them a lot of autonomy?

01:00:00

Ty Givens:
First, you have to help them understand your brand voice. Who are you as a company? A good example that I think we all often use is, and it’s controversial, but a Chick-fil-A. When you go to Chick-fil-A, you get greeted automatically. When you ask for something and they provide it to you, they don’t say, “You’re welcome.” They say, “My pleasure.” And is that natural to them? Is that what they probably say when they’re with their friends and family? I doubt it. But it’s required for the role. So, what happens is, you start to formulate phrases, terms, things that are acceptable within the company that sound like the brand. And you present that to the team. And you’re like, “This is how the brand speaks. It may not be natural to you, but this is how the brand speaks.”

01:00:58

You also have to personify the brand. So, if there’s a person internally who represents the company, it’s almost like you’re thinking, “What would so-and-so do? What would that person say?” And that kind of becomes your nomenclature and your speech.

01:01:11

Jasmine Bina:
Is that like a shortcut that some brands use? Like, you know, so and so in the company, imagine what they would say. Like, their kind of archetype for what this brand sounds and feels like?

01:01:23

Ty Givens:
Exactly. And so, when you start to talk about the decisions and what’s a good decision, you have to kind of mirror that person. What would that person do? So, I worked for a company where there was a person internally. She was not the CEO. But she was the company personified. And so, when we would go into these different interactions with customers, the question would always be, “Well, how do I handle the situation. What would she do?” Because she is the company. So, once you understand who it is that you’re modeling after and you spend time with that person and you get to know that person, because they have to be very visible, obviously. That’s where you start to get into what is a good decision, because a good decision for me may be different from the brand that I’m working for or working with. And that’s the part that’s key is personifying that. You have to turn that brand into a person, because essentially the company to the customer is a person.

01:02:23

Jasmine Bina:
It also highlights something else that I’ve heard you talk about, which is that, especially with COVID, things like customer experience. But specifically customer service, for some brands, even especially in beauty, has become like the new showroom, because you’re going to customer service for the same things that you used to get at the actual store, which is education, experimentation, being guided, understanding what their brand stands for. Can you talk about that a little bit and how that’s changing what people are actually doing strategically in their customer service channels?

01:02:57

Ty Givens:
Yeah, 100%. I’m seeing brick and mortars turn into contact centers on a consistent basis. And the experience that you have when you’re servicing a customer directly in a retail business is so different than what happens online. So, for example, if I am working with you behind a counter, I’m talking to you. We’re making eye contact. You can hear the inflections in my voice. You can see that my expressions match what it is that I’m saying to you. We lose all of that context when we’re doing this either by email, live chat, over the phone. Anything of the sort, we lose the ability to have that emotional intelligence to be able to look at a person and kind of feed off of that energy.

01:03:47

So, you have to almost overly create it when you’re not physically in front of them. And you have to establish yourself as a subject matter expert. Specifically for beauty, it can be really, really challenging because nine times out of 10, if you are say a makeup brand, you have people who are coming to you and they’re asking you, “Which color should I be purchasing to match my skin the best?” Well, I’m not looking at you, so how can I make that decision? I can’t swatch anything on your skin to test it. So, instead, we have to build a rapport with one another where we’re sending photographs back and back, moving to some sort of channel that is may be visual. Asking for photos in natural light. So, you’re actually essentially building trust, right? In a different way than you would normally have to do. And you’re building a relationship because this person has to believe what it is that you’re teaching and telling them.

And a lot of businesses have just not been prepared for that shift pre-COVID. And now they’re in a place where they’re saying, “Hey, everybody. Make good decisions.” And they’re finding out that good means so many different things to so many different people.

01:04:59

Jasmine Bina:
Let’s talk about the customer side of things a little bit. You’ve been doing this for so long across so many different categories. And working with pretty big companies that are very brand focused, especially in certain consumer categories. How have you seen users change over the years? Like, how have people’s expectations or beliefs or their actions or whatever, how have they evolved over time in how they interact with the brands?

01:05:26

Ty Givens:
So, customers see a brand, a company, a business, like I said, as a person, one unit. So, for example, if I go into a brick and mortar store and I have an experience there, there’s an expectation that if I have to move that to the eCommerce channel, that that person on the other end of that message or system, that they know and understand me too. For the people who are actually physically in retail, they are not the same people that are answering the phone calls when you call the 800 number. So, you have to have systems that are able to almost trick the customer into believing you know everything about them, because the customers fully expect that you know.

01:06:10

They’ll say, “I went into the store yesterday and I bought this item.” They’re expecting that you can see their purchase history. Whereas, before we didn’t really have that experience where the customer expected you to know everything about them across the board. If you went into, say Macy’s and you made a purchase, you weren’t necessarily going online and expecting that the person in the retail store understood. But that was 10 years ago. Today, you have a full expectation that they know you almost by name. And that’s the way that the customer is. The customer expects that you know what it is that they’ve purchased, what they need, what didn’t work for them. They see the company as a person and they want that personalized relationship.

01:06:54

And I attribute that to great marketing in a lot of ways, because for example, this is not a client of mine, but I’m going to use Sephora as an example. I get a notice via email from Sephora that says, “It’s time to buy more of …” whatever product. What’s crazy is that, they’re always spot on. How do they know? Feels so personal. And so, even though I’m getting that email, right? And I live on the other side of things. But I’m getting that email and I feel like they know me somehow. And when I go into the store, I actually feel like the people in the store have some sort of way to understand all of my experiences, all of my purchase history, what store I was at. It’s a very personal thing. And customers just have that expectation. And we didn’t have that before.

01:07:43

You know, when we spoke on phones only to different brands, I mean, it was a much simpler type of engagement. You called Office Depot, you asked for pens. They sent you pens. The pens were not the right color, you call in, you ask for more pens. There’s no expectation that you have this amazing experience. And now, when you write in to Office Depot … Excuse me, when you order pens from Office Depot and you order blue and they come purple, you almost expect that someone on the other end is going to magically know that they sent you purple pens. And not only are they going to send you the blue ones, but they’re going to send you red ones for the inconvenience.

01:08:20

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. I mean, as a user, it feels really jarring when you feel like whoever you’re talking to on the brand side isn’t anticipating your needs, because you know, you’re also giving them so much information. We’ve gotten so used to giving a brand so much information about ourselves that we expect that immediate understanding in return. And I know what you’re saying about Sephora.

01:08:43

This makes me think of something else. So, obviously it’s easy to control all these interactions in the channels that you own. But more and more, I see communities popping up that a brand doesn’t own. But they act as substitutes for customer experience. So, The Ordinary. So, The Ordinary has a couple of gigantic Facebook groups, you have to be accepted into them. Once you’re in there’s a whole … Speaking of indoctrination, there’s a whole indoctrination process, because to use The Ordinary’s makeup products, you have to really learn how to combine their products. And they don’t teach that to you right away.

01:09:21

But I just see a lot of women on these platforms. And it’s died down because the brand has changed, but in the beginning, there was such an engaged community of people. They’d post a picture and they would be like, “I have this skin condition. I don’t know what it is,” or, “I can’t find a match,” or, “I’ve tried this regimen. It’s not working. Should I be combining different products?” And you’d get a ton of comments of women who kind of could diagnose you and help you fix your problem within The Ordinary universe. The Ordinary doesn’t own any of this.

01:09:52

I think once in a while, The Ordinary would send the Facebook group some free product to give away to their audience. But they had no control over that. My question to you is like, in situations like that, are there good rules for what a brand should and shouldn’t do in terms of interacting with these autonomous communities? Is there a way to overlap them and to tie them together? Or do you just let that be what it is and hope that it amplifies your customer experience?

01:10:20

Ty Givens:
Yeah, so I can’t speak specifically for The Ordinary. I’ll tell you what I’ve seen on my end when it comes to the community. So, although communities appear to not be regulated, I assure you, they are, okay? No one is going to let anyone take off and run with their brand and messaging and have nothing to say about it. Believe me that they are definitely regulated. And it just may look like it’s being regulated by a normal person. But I assure you, they are regulated. That’s one. But I mean, good job if it looks like it’s not, because that’s the goal.

01:10:55

The second thing is that a lot of times, the people that you hear that are most vocal in those community spaces, they are not employees. But in a lot of ways, they could be influencers or ambassadors of the brand. And so, they may have relationships where they can get product for free or they get it at a discount. And maybe they can sell it to their cohort, etc. But essentially, there is a relationship that lives there, whether we see it or we don’t see it.

01:11:22

Jasmine Bina:
So, you’re describing environments that are somewhat engineered. Is that generally good practice? Or is there room where these communities can kind of take off on their own? I just want to get into the mind of, if I was a brand and I see a community forming that I don’t have control of, not yet at least, what should I be doing?

01:11:44

Ty Givens:
Well, first of all, you need to get somebody in there who can help review the messaging that’s going on and make sure that it’s actually true, right? Or that it’s right. And so, the way to do that is to get somebody in there who represents your brand, even if you don’t have that information shared publicly or it’s not directly clear. And the reason why you want to do that is because you want to make sure that the information that’s being shared is accurate and true related to your specific brand.

01:12:13

What it does for the customer though is, you’re actually getting information from someone you trust, because under the surface, if you have no idea whether or not that person represents that company, but you feel like the information that they’re giving you is tried and true, whereas the company obviously has a vested interest in telling you how to use their product because they want you to buy more. And what happens with the communities is, it kind of tricks the customer into believing that the person that’s telling them what to use and how to use it is not, in fact, a person who has any incentive to be sharing that information. They’re doing it out of the kindness of their heart and because they’re passionate. And in reality, they probably do just have some sort of relationship with the brand. And that’s the reality of it.

01:12:55

The other thing to think about in communities is people who work for companies nine times out of 10 are not as fanatical about said company as the users are. And so, because of that, even when you’re calling in or you’re speaking with someone from the customer experience team, they may or may not be as passionate as a community member. You’re going to get a lot more passion out of the community member than you are out of a customer experience person who was taught, if a person says this, then do that. If a person does this, then do that. They may or may not be users of the brand.

01:13:33

So, the community actually from a product standpoint can be a really, really, really strong place to develop and get more advocates and to help people to better understand how to best utilize your product, your service, your brand, whatever that is. And then have support be responsible for things that are operational, because like I said, the person who is actually replying to the customer may or may not be as passionate. And a lot of startups that I’ve seen, they try to hire specifically for passion. But it’s not the same.

01:14:09

A good example of that is hiring a makeup artist to do customer service. For me, who I’m a worker bee. I have my office hours, etc. It doesn’t bother me to have that type of structure. But makeup artists are creatives. So, when you give a makeup artist an offer for a job that’s say, full-time, what they hear instead of, “I’m going to have consistent pay and I’m going to get benefits and I’m going to have paid time off,” what they hear instead is, “Oh my gosh, if someone calls me to do a gig on Tuesday, I’m not going to be able to drop everything and go because I have to work.” Doesn’t feel good, right?

01:14:47

But if you put that same makeup artist in the community and give them access to free product to sell to their cohort, the ability to speak on behalf of your brand and encourage people to use it, not only are they going to feel more fulfilled by that because it’s passion for them, they’re also going to be in the space where they’re going to be able to get more clients to the kind of work that actually feeds them. So, it’s to a brand’s benefit to have a strong community of users, of people who … Because they’re going to actually teach the company about their product in a way that people internally will never even know or understand because their focus is just different.

01:15:23

Jasmine Bina:
Have you seen any remarkable or super creative, out of the box customer experience journeys or touchpoints or campaigns? Or anything out there, maybe even things that you’ve worked on that reinterpreted what customer experience could actually be?

01:15:40

Ty Givens:
I think I might have to go back to that brand that I mentioned earlier, who actually made their whole company customer experience people. That one really stuck with me. I mean, their inquiries were low. The volume of the product that they sold was very high. They had very satisfied and delighted customers. And it was all because everyone took ownership of the decisions that they made internally. And that also for the CX team, made them feel like they were as valuable and as important as the rest of the company. There was no such thing as hierarchy between departments.

01:16:20

And they didn’t spend a boatload of money on their customer experience, because a lot of times companies see CX as a money pit. Like, you’re hiring all these people. You don’t have to have a bunch of people. You just have to have the right processes. You can invest one good time in a good training structure and invest one good time in a good plan. And then, find the right leader to run it day in and day out. And you can do it for less money if you put together the right formula. A really good formula is to make everybody responsible for their own outcomes. It just really helps.

01:16:51

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. A lot of the things that you’re describing are just, and we’ve mentioned this with the previous interview with Sari, is just aligning the self-interests of the company with the self-interests of the customers. But you’re saying also with the self-interest of the employees too.

01:17:07

Ty Givens:
Yeah, you know, I worked for a company that put employees first. This was over 10 years ago. Yeah, over 10 years ago. And what’s funny is that, a lot of us who came from that company most immediately had a hard time finding another company that we wanted to work and and put in the same level of effort.

Jasmine Bina:
Oh wow.

Ty Givens:
Yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
They ruined you for other companies.

01:17:29

Ty Givens:
They ruined us, because it was the best thing though, because you know what? I remember after that, I would go to a company and they’re like, “We’re employees first.” And I’m like, “Well, let’s see what this looks like.” And I’m like, “They don’t even know what that means,” you know? I got my MBA. I finished in 2013, but I left that company in 2010. And so, when I started to do my coursework for my MBA, wouldn’t you know that I was finding that a lot of the training that I was required to do there, it was like 40 hours a year, not a big deal. But they did invest in you. A lot of it was coursework for my MBA. So, I was already ahead, right? Go figure.

01:18:06

So, that’s investing in your employees. And that’s how you teach good decision making, right? You give them resources and access to information. You help them to become better, right? You invest in them. And when you do that, you have happy employees who absolutely delight your customers. And at this particular company, the NPS was around seven, which is really, really high. And that’s because they had really happy employees.

01:18:35

Jasmine Bina:
Okay, I’m going to ask you a very big, very unfair question. How do you turn a really angry and unhappy customer into a happy fan for life?

01:18:46

Ty Givens:
It’s going to sound too simple, but you just have to listen. Okay, I was running customer experience for a brand. And this particular customer, they went from frontline agent to elite, from elite to a supervisor, from a supervisor to a manager, to me, okay? I get on the phone with the person, which to me, it shouldn’t have gotten this far, but it did. Okay, fine. So, I’m on the phone with this gentleman. And I just let him talk. And when I let him talk, I mean, he was going on and on and on. I literally put the phone on speaker, and I had to mute it because there was a lot of background noise. But I just let him talk. And every now and again I would say, “Yeah, I hear you. Okay, no, I understand. Oh yeah, that’s no problem,” right? By the time he was done venting, and this lasted a good 40 minutes.

Jasmine Bina:
Wow, what?

Ty Givens:
Yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
40?

Ty Givens:
40 minutes. 40 minutes.

Jasmine Bina:
40 minutes, okay.

01:19:54

Ty Givens:
Yes, 40 minutes on my cell phone, mind you. When he was done, he says, “Are you there?” I said, “Yes, I’m here. I heard everything you said.” And I told him, “Here’s what we’re going to do for you.” I didn’t give him anything that was ridiculous. I just made good on what he asked for. And I apologized for the experience he had. And he said, “Finally, somebody who listened.”

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah.

01:20:17

Ty Givens:
And I think it comes down to, when you’re dealing with irate or angry customers, what you have to realize is that it’s not personal. It’s not about you. They’re not mad at you, they’re not angry with you. They’re angry about something that happened, and you happen to be the person that’s going to catch the wrath of that because you are answering the phone for the company, and the company to them is a person.

01:20:40

Jasmine Bina:
So, I know you don’t do this too much in your strategy work now. But when you did used to get behind the phone, how does it feel for you personally when you take a negative experience like that and make it a positive one, and actually turn somebody from a customer to a fan?

01:20:58

Ty Givens:
You almost want to scream it to everyone who will listen, because CX is hard work. Now, granted, I’ve been doing it forever, so I’m probably going to say it’s the hardest job ever, but it’s the only job I’ve ever done. So, what do I have to compare it to?

Jasmine Bina:
A little biased. Whatever.

01:21:13

Ty Givens:
Right, you know? So, when you have those experiences, you actually feel so validated as a person that you’re good at what you do, that you know what you’re doing. You are empowered to make good decisions for people. And it just makes you feel validated in a lot of ways, because most people don’t call up a company just to say, “You know what? I think you guys are amazing. That’s all. Have a wonderful day.”

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah.

01:21:43

Ty Givens:
That would be nice. Doesn’t happen. So, when they call, they’re usually very upset about some experience that they’ve had. And when you are able to turn that into a positive, like for that gentleman that I spoke with for 40 minutes, that’s 40 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. But I gave him my cell phone number, right? And I told him if he had any problems, he could call me in the future and it’s no problem. And I mean, he didn’t have to call me back, right? And he ended up remaining a customer. So, it’s little things like that, giving people the access and making them feel like you care. You care and you heard them and they matter.

Once you’re able to get that conveyed to a customer and they feel good and they feel happy, or you even get to that point where, when they call in they say, “I want to talk to so-and-so.” Like, oh my gosh. Your feathers just fluff because it’s like, I did such a great job that they only want to deal with me. And people, they love it. They love it. So, I think that it makes me stand up a little taller. And it validates me as a CX person, because our job is really all about caring for other people and making brands, like we’re the voice of the brand now in our marketing. But marketing speaks through us, because anything that marketing says, we said. And so, we want to make sure that we’re making the customer feel as valuable and as important as the marketing, sales, and growth team set out to do.

01:23:18

Jasmine Bina:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Unseen Unknown. If you’re new here and like what you’re listening to, do us a favor and leave a review. Those reviews mean a lot. I love reading them, and it helps our audience grow. Secondly, I’d love to give you more of our brand strategy thinking in the form of articles that we write, videos that we publish, and anything else that captures our attention. Just sign up for our newsletter at conceptbureau.com/insights and I promise, you won’t be disappointed. Thanks for listening. It was great to have you here, and we’ll catch you next time.

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Podcast

14: The Radical History of Self-Care & the New World of Wellness Brandin‪g‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date July 16, 2020
No Comments on 14: The Radical History of Self-Care & the New World of Wellness Brandin‪g‬

Wellness and self-care have taken over nearly every industry with a whole crop of new brands. But there is a much deeper story about the connected history of politics, race, gender and identity that underpins the self-care space today, and how it’s many interpretations reflect our American culture. We speak with New York Times journalist and editor Aisha Harris, as well as Jerome Nichols, founder of cult favorite self-care brand The Butters, to understand the very radical roots of this now-mainstream movement.

Podcast Transcript

July 16, 2020

50 min read

The Radical History of Self-Care & the New World of Wellness Brandin‪g‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
Welcome to unseen Unknown. I’m Jasmine Bina. If you’re like me, you don’t know when it happened, but one day self-care and wellness were everywhere. Those messages about taking care of yourself, healing, thriving, making yourself whole, being enough, reclaiming your power, owning it. They were all around us from cereal boxes to the makeup counter, to advertisements for things like furniture, rental or CBD sticks, mobile apps, your everyday cup of coffee, and you mindset about how to be, but also about how to consume had started to settle in. A second nature as this may all seem right now, the concept of self-care actually comes from a very radical place in recent American history.

I spoke with journalist Aisha Harris about how we got here today. I issue as a writer and editor of the New York Times Opinion section, where she covers culture and society. But before that, she wrote an important article in early 2017 for Slate magazine called A History of Self Care. And in it, she outlined how the self care movement actually started was later adopted by the yuppie cohort and merged with the hippie fueled wellness movements. And after the election of Donald Trump had a sudden, politically inspired resurgence. Yes, self-care and it’s close cousin wellness are everywhere, but it wasn’t always this ubiquitous. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture and she points to a 1979 episode of 60 Minutes with Dan Rather where the early commercialization of wellness sounds more like a pseudo science or as he says later in the episode, maybe even a cult.

01:58

Dan Rather (audio clip):
It’s a movement that is catching on all over the country among doctors, nurses, and others concerned with medical care. Wellness is really the ultimate in something called self-care in which patients are taught to diagnose common illnesses and where possible to treat themselves. More than that it is a positive approach to health. What one doctor calls recognizing that health is not simply the absence of disease.

Jasmine Bina:
This clip had already come a long way from the beginnings of our cultural shift. And we’ve come a long way since then. I sat down with Aisha to talk about the connected history of politics, race, gender, and identity that underpins the self-care space today and how it’s many interpretations reflect our American culture.

02:42

Aisha Harris:
Basically self-care has been around for decades, probably even hundreds of years, but I think in it’s most modern incarnation, we can kind of look to the as having been starting around the 1960s with the civil rights movement, there was very much an emphasis around the fact that black people were not getting the support system and the care that they needed from the institutions that were supposed to provide them, whether it was healthcare education financially. And thrown in with all of these marches and fights for equality was this emphasis put on the fact that schools were inadequate.

So going along with the fact that there were all these concerns about equality within that, there was also the concern about education, the inequities between black schools and white schools and healthcare and medication. And you see that happening in the ’60s. But then once the women’s rights movement kind of kicked off in the late ’60s and into the early ’70s, they adopted a lot of the similar concerns that were occurring.

03:58

And so women and especially women of color were founding organizations and clinics to specifically address the needs for women, whether it was abortion, single motherhood, and these places were a way for women to take care of themselves. It was very different from what we’ve seen today. It was all about survival in many ways. And even after the civil rights movement, you also saw this pickup with the Black Panther movement as well. Alondra Nelson has a book called Body and Soul, which focuses on the Black Panthers. And in part of that book, she really talks about how they started these clinics, these survival programs that provided medical testing within the black community, especially for diseases and illnesses that tend to afflict the black community in disproportionate ways like sickle cell anemia. And those were ways to make sure that black people were getting the help that they needed.

And it was all community oriented. The government wasn’t doing much to help in that regard. You also see that with the Black Panthers notable breakfast program, which provided, which provided free breakfast to kids going to school because they realized kids need to eat. If they weren’t able to get it at home, they could get it from them early in the morning. And so it was a really radical view of self-care that existed. And it was primarily started by women and people of color. And even alongside that same vein was, this was also happening in more like medical social terms as well. When you look at people who committed themselves to being social workers, therapist, the idea of self care also came into play there because the idea is, you can’t help others if you can’t help yourself.

05:47

So, there were studies being done showing that social workers, especially people who were working with people who had even worse problems than them like taking on that emotional baggage and that mental baggage was draining and they would report burnout and inability to both take care of themselves, but then also help the people they’re supposed to be helping. And the weird thing about that is that wrapped up in that is this idea that you need to take care of yourself so you can care for others. So, well, it is about your own wellbeing. It’s still about providing for other people in a way. Yeah, there’s this weird tension between that idea of self-care. But once you move into the ’70s, there is this movement that’s not quite self-care, but it’s like an offshoot of it.

I think most people who study this would say that wellness and self-care are two different things, but they’re like two sides of the same coin in a way. And with wellness that was more attributed to the hippie culture, this idea of eating and living holistically. It definitely had a different aspect in terms of class. It wasn’t so much about survival, but about making your life better. So, you’re at a different starting point. These are people in the San Francisco Bay Area who were seen as a cult. There was in my article I referred to this segment on 60 Minutes with Dan Rather. And he comes to them and talks to them about how they are seen as a cult.

07:23

This in itself is also a rejection in a way of traditional norms, but not in the way that women and people of color were dealing with it. And the fact that the government clearly wasn’t providing them with the basic needs for survival. These were people in the wellness movement really felt as though they were trying to reject Western medicine and felt that there were better ways to live. It was about improving your life starting from a higher, better level of livelihood than most people of color were dealing with at that time. And so that’s kind of where you see this movement towards living your best life and it becoming corporatized. One of the things that I think really crystallizes that one of the moments is Jane Fonda’s workout videos and like the whole exercise movement in the ’80s.

Jazzercise and all of those different things that like really attributed being skinny, equals healthy, eating fresh equals healthy and equals wellness. And that’s where we see the strains of what we see today with the influencers and goop and all of those things as well.

08:35

Jasmine Bina:
Right. This point that you’re describing in the ’80s with the Dan Rather interview with Jane Fonda, the whole proliferation of products that came around hippie culture. This is when we first start to see it really disassociate from being a political statement. And some have argued that now it starts to pull from its roots and it becomes more of a class thing like you described. It’s not even serving the people that it was there to serve in the first place, right? Now you have to pay for this kind of wellness or self-care. And another thing that was interesting about what you said was the start is a very community oriented thing. The purpose of it was so that you could contribute to your community ultimately, but the self-care of today, which there’s a few more steps I want to… We’ll get to like how we got to today. The self-care of today is really individualized. It seems like the community aspect has been cut out in a lot of ways. Would you agree?

09:34

I think in some ways it has, especially for a woman of color, I think it still is very… it’s become individualized, but not in a way… Women of color, especially are still often starting from similar points as their previous generations, where in terms of not getting the adequate care that they are supposed to have. We’re seeing it now with COVID where black people are disproportionately getting sick and dying from this disease unlike almost every other demographic aside from the Latino community. And so obviously self-care has become much more mainstream, including among black women and women of color. But at the same time, it’s still about survival because it’s not just about scraping by, in terms of needing food or needing like the right care. It’s also about daily microaggressions in the workplace.

Just racism and the PTSD that I think a lot of people experienced now that we’re seeing so many people of color… Well really specifically, black people being killed on camera. And having to relive that and having to see these headlines all the time that has been tied now to self-care and how to handle yourself and how to deal with that while also trying to function in the world and be professional and feed your family and take care of your health. So it’s all really, I think that’s happening alongside this influencer, Instagram, Lululemon, goop culture that very much exists. I think also like another form of self-care I’m seeing is think of something like the wing where the whole point of that institution was to have women have a space, specifically designed for women.

At first it was like, “Oh, men weren’t exactly welcome.” And there is that whole thing. And so the idea was like, “This is a space for women.” Of course, we’ve learned through a series of exposes that Thursday, very specific type of woman who is often invited to join that space, usually white, young, and not necessarily queer or queer identifying, but that is also in its way, this weird word version of self-care because that is supposed to be a space that’s values womanhood over anything perpetuating like masculinity or the typical male dominated spaces.

12:09

Jasmine Bina:
Right. And then what about the LGBT community’s role in the rise of self-care? Especially in the beginning

12:17

Aisha Harris:
The civil rights movement really has been the template for every movement that’s come after it. And it’s very clear the LGBT community has been very instrumental in dealing with that. One of the people I interviewed for my article on Slate was Jace Harr, who is a trans man. And he wrote a very interesting article or flow chart called You Feel Like Shit: An Interactive Self-Care Guide. And essentially the flow chart is a way for you to check in with yourself. It asks you questions, prompting you to check in, and it’s like, have you drank water today? If not drink a glass now, and then move to the next step, have you gotten enough sleep, if not, take a nap, then move to the next step. And it’s another form of radical self-care in dealing with as a queer person, LGBTQ person, having to deal with the things that they do.

It’s a way to fight against that and to really take care of yourself because as my LGBT friends have told me, and as trans people are making it very clear through social media and through articles and whatnot, just their existence is an act of resistance. And then it is a radical act and you have to take care of your body. There’s that really hokey phrase like the body is the temple, but it is the vessel. It is you. And so that concern with taking care of the body is really, really central to any disenfranchised group of people.

13:53

Jasmine Bina:
Of course. So, as you described, it seems there were these two different branches of self-care and wellness, if you want to include that too. Co-existing and moving on parallel tracks. And I think a lot of people, including yourself have said that 2016 though, was when self-care really came into the mainstream. Can you talk about that a little bit.

Aisha Harris:
2016 was a year that was definitely a turning point, I think for a lot of America obviously 2020 probably has it beat now, but that was kind of the precursor to it because you had people really, really stressing out about Trump and his presidency and what that meant and what that meant for especially women, people of color, immigrants. So many demographics were endangered. And so you saw this rise in both self-care, but also… I actually did another article right after the election or a couple months later about the rise in self-defense classes that were taking place across the country.

Jasmine Bina:
Oh, wow.

15:03

Aisha Harris:
Where especially ones that were targeted at LGBTQ people and black people and people of color because people were legitimately scared. And so that in itself is kind of like another offshoot of self-care of like, “Okay, how do I prepare myself if something goes down to protect my body from violence? Physical violence, not just like institutional systematic violence.” So that was very much the turning point. And when you see lots and lots of articles coming out about how to handle yourself and how to do self-care. Before that there had been, I think also there’s a moment there was a turning point before that also with which was like the rise of feminist blogs in the early 2010s.

You had everything from the Hairpin to Jessica Belle and all these other feminist blogs that also have like components of self-care embedded into them. And talking about the ways in which you take care of yourself, whether it’s shutting off your cell phone for how many hours, get off Twitter, go pamper yourself, treat yourself. All these things were wrapped in and embedded in the feminist blogs. And I think that those were the building blocks towards 2016 and made self-care. It didn’t just come out of nowhere, but it definitely, they led the way for that to happen. I think in 2016. And then that’s where it just became part of the vernacular across the mainstream.

16:36

Jasmine Bina:
Another thing that I’ve read was that really 2016 was the turning point where more than ever, you saw particularly white woman embracing self-care and the culture and mindset pieces of it, the pieces that they wanted to use. And that’s what kind of burst this new DTC economy of all these brands that were leering self-care and wellness over a product. The other thing also that I think contributed to all of this is as wellness and self-care are becoming more mainstream, you kind of have this peak around hustle culture, right? Silicon Valley has been exported to the rest of the world and we’re romanticizing the hustle and the grind, which dovetails so perfectly into the American identity.

Anyways, this idea of like working and there’s virtue and hard work and hard work always pays off. And it almost seems as the volume on one got louder, the volume on the other got louder as well.

17:34

Aisha Harris:
Yeah. That work hard, play hard mentality is and has been very, very much a part of, especially the millennial culture. And I think that’s been amplified by social media, especially when you think about Instagram, you think about all those influencers who are constantly like hashtagging, hustle, like, “I’m hustling, here’s what I’m doing.” But then it’s also like, “Oh, and then here’s me laying on the beach, self-care.” There’s that weird dichotomy that also very much comes from this place of having access to certain types of self-care and being able to do those things by traveling especially has become a big thing.

And especially for black people, there’s been a lot of articles about black travelers, black women traveling, traveling together, groups and organizations that have been started to organize group trips together. And those in themselves are seen as this act of self-care in part, because there were times when black people were not able to travel as much, they didn’t have the funds, they didn’t have the opportunity to do those things.

And so in a way being a black person who is able to travel now seem as both a privilege and also a way of an act of self-care as well. It’s like a way of getting out of the country. It can be a way of getting away from American racism. There’s lots of articles about black woman relocating and actually living in and European countries and Caribbean countries because they feel as though they’d been treated better there. There’s all these like really interesting strains of self-care that are happening from group to group, from age group to age group. And I really do think so much of that has to do with social media and how we live our lives on online now.

19:29

Jasmine Bina:
Right. And we can’t forget Instagram’s influence and all of this it’s created this weird nonsensical dynamic where it almost doesn’t count unless you can display it, but to actually practice self-care, you have to pull away from displaying and showing. And I think that’s also kind of morphed the meaning of self-care. And what I want to talk about now is the brands that were involved in all this Instagram is a big one. I think we understand their influence in a really making self-care, a very visual consumable thing. What about other brands? Goop is an obvious one, but what are the ones that we don’t think about that have been instrumental in kind of pushing the narrative around self-care forward, changing what it means helping us kind of develop our current American relationship to what it is?

20:20

Aisha Harris:
I definitely think that we already imagined the wing, but I think that the wing is very much of that ilk and other places, there’s been many off shoots like it of like, “We’re going to create this social club that is specifically for this group of people or are these types of like-minded people.” Obviously there’s a Lululemon, which has paired self-care with like the whole athleisure industry is very much about this weird corporatized self-care, but also just gyms, the luxury gyms I think especially something like Equinox where it’s like you play a very high premium price for not just access to gyms, but like boutique classes. And they have towels for you that are free, but they’re free because it costs so much to go there. But that you can go to the spa, it’s everything you want to pamper yourself in line.

So I think like that combination of exercise with self-care and corporatization has definitely been a really big thing, but even just like beauty brands have done the same thing, Glossier, Fenty, they all are about treating yourself, making yourself feel your best in ways like that. Some could argue are just reinforcing beauty standards for women. But I think that they are often wrapped up in this sense of like, “Buying makeup. it’s my act of self care.” I feel like those are some of the really big ones. The big brands have been really capitalizing off of that.

22:02

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. I was trying to trace back when self-care and wellness broke out of like the traditional fitness and food categories and spirituality too, which I think is a big one that we haven’t touched on. And then it just kind of went cross category. And I think from what I can tell it’s because of beauty and there’s a really good example of this with sexual wellness brands. There’s a brand that I love that I think has an excellent work and like educating woman. And there are a lot of brands that do this, but they were one of the ones… like the Splasher ones I think, and that’s Dame Products. And there’s a very wellness aesthetic to it. They took out all of like the salaciousness and made it more about wellbeing taking care of yourself. This is something that touches your body.

It’s the same kind of theme and storytelling that we see with a lot of like feminine hygiene products and now male hygiene products as well. And the interesting story about Dame, which I’ve written about in the past is the fact that Dame was just seen as vibrators for women. And they made a very conscious decision to wrap it as a self-care item. By wrapping it I mean in their storytelling and the packaging and the overall experience.

And once they did that, it became so palatable along with the ideas of the culture getting more open-minded to these things that’s how they went mainstream, then brands like that were in CVS. They were in Walmart and not like one or two, I’m talking like 50, 60 skews. And that’s what it took. It wasn’t necessarily directly feminist ideals or breaking down the patriarchy, although those things were happening in the background, of course, but the minute they changed the positioning of it, that’s when it kind of broke out. I feel like sexual wellness under the guise of beauty, this is part of your beauty routine now is a remarkable proof point of how powerful the self-care and wellness ideal has become.

24:00

Aisha Harris:
Yeah. That even makes me think of like the infamous Rabbit Vibrator that Sex and the City basically propelled to make lots of women want to buy it. And I feel like that was the first time that women’s sexual desires and cravings were taken seriously in a way for all of that shows issues…outdated as today the fact that they made a vibrator very extremely popular and mainstream, you can argue that that was like a precursor to this new sexual wellness in terms of the ways in which it really just normalize taking care of yourself sexually.

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. So now this makes me think of, I don’t even know how I’m going to draw the connection here, but it just makes me think of, you had written something about how a lot of media, and we’re talking about a TV show. Now whitewashes the past. I know that Sex and the City is not like the distant past, but you had an example. I think you were talking about George R. R. Martin. He was responding to criticism about why as game of Thrones, all whites and you had pointed out his response was, “Well, this was way back in time.” And the fact that him just saying that proves that there’s an assumption, that things that come from the past were white dominated. Am I paraphrasing this correctly?

25:24

Aisha Harris:
Yeah. The other thing was that he was The Game of Thrones isn’t a real story, it’s completely fantasy. So like you can make the world look however you want, because like Westeros does it exist. Yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
Right. So my question here is, would you say that the kind of whitewashing of media and the fact that media was so instrumental in a lot of ways for propelling self-care and wellness in the way that we see it now, especially through like Instagram and TV and movies, do you think there’s a connection there? Do you feel like that’s how we… part of why we got the second track of self-care and wellness it’s a little divorced from its roots?

26:07

Aisha Harris:
Absolutely. I actually think, you asked me earlier about the biggest brands that have contributed to this depiction of self-care and wellness. And I hadn’t mentioned when I think is probably the biggest one, at least the one of the last 25, 30 years had to been Oprah, right? Oprah has built an entire empire on her favorite things, which are very much about pampering yourself and expanding your cultural horizons in luxury items and that sort of thing. Oprah’s a black woman obviously, and lots of people love her, but a lot of white women love her.

And I love the products that she hawks are by white women or by white people. I’m not trying to accuse Oprah of whitewashing, the self-care movement. But I do think that like her audience in many ways, they are the parents of my generation, the millennial generation who were very much the precursors to self-care of buying that fancy cookware or whatever, to treat yourself or buying that bracelet or anything she’s … favorite things where over time, I think really that in itself is about self-care in many ways.

And is in it’s way whitewashing of self-care because it’s… she’s not like advertising for Forever 21 items or something, these are all very pretty moderate to expensive items. And that in itself is a way I think that it’s been whitewashed and divorced in a way from it’s roots.

27:59

Jasmine Bina:
What’s the future of self-care and wellness. Where is it going? How has it changed people? But what should we be focusing on?

28:07

Aisha Harris:
When it comes to self care? I think what it should be and what it has been for a lot of people and what it hasn’t been for another huge segment of the population is the important thing to remember is that self-care doesn’t mean you completely tune out and you are useless in the world.

The point is to take that time to recharge, to make sure that you are caring for yourself in ways that are fulfilling in ways that are energizing in ways that will help you get through the world a better person.

And that is what is missing from the Instagram and influencer focused self-care wellness, wholeness aspect of it. Also we need to realize that self-care, shouldn’t take much money if any money to do again it’s the little actions. It is not reading as much of the news so that you don’t cause yourself unnecessary anxiety. It’s cutting people out of your life who are not serving you well, who are harmful to your health.

There are ways to do this. That don’t necessarily require money. It doesn’t have to be a spa day. It doesn’t have to be a gym membership at Equinox. It can be many other things. And I think that’s what we should be moving toward. Considering that we’re in a pandemic that kind of be a where we are moving toward because there are no gyms there’s not much traveling happening. Or if there is, it’s much more minimalized, I would love to see that going forward.

29:53

I think what brands need to do is really get back to the basics of why their brand was started to begin with, to really think about like, who are you trying to serve? Are there other communities you could be serving that are outside of what you and who you think will like your product? There are ways to engage especially by bringing in people of color, LGBTQ people into the space behind the scenes, hire them, hire them in managerial positions, positions where they can actually make decisions and make change.

And then I’m not going to say that just because you’re a person of color doesn’t mean that you aren’t necessarily going to serve the customers the best way. But I think that really making it more inclusive and recognizing that there is more than one way to do self-care could really, really help, not just in terms of building a brand, but also in terms of committing to different versions of self-care

31:00

Jasmine Bina:
Self care and wellness boomed into a multi-billion dollar industry with huge players, bringing their own version of the ideology to the masses. There’s been a crop of upstarts that are bringing it back to its core. The Butters Hygienics Co is a cult favorite with devoted fans from across the country. The company was founded by Jerome Nichols in 2016, a crucial year in our recent history. And since then has only grown it’s vegan, it’s cruelty-free and you’ll find a range of products from lotions and leave-in conditioners to face scrubs, soaps, and lube. Jerome has built a very thoughtful brands. And once you dig in more, you start to really understand how it’s so much more than just a set of high quality products. And I wanted to know how he created a unique experience of self-care successfully in such a crowded and oftentimes diluted space.

31:50

Jerome Nichols:
And the brand started basically because I was trying to solve the problem of finding a lotion, essentially I wear shorts a lot, I have very dark skin, I get dry and I could not find a lotion that would last more than an hour or so, until the water was evaporated. And then I’d go back to being ashy. And then like all the emulsifiers and stuff would start showing up on my dark skin. And that was not at all what I really wanted from any lotion or product. So I just started playing around with different formulas and things. It took several months to come up with the first iteration that I actually thought was pretty cool.

The idea was that I could make something that was inexpensive, simple and ingredients, but also exactly and perfectly effective at the task at hand, which that ethos has become the question behind almost all of our products is, how do we solve X problem naturally simply, and then making sure that it absolutely solves that problem. I don’t like having to try a million different things.

33:11

I’ve always had a very sophisticated tastes like even as a kid and if stuff doesn’t work, I just don’t like it. If it doesn’t smell right I just don’t like it. If the, if the vibe is not right, right I just don’t like it. And for me, the Butters was my way of making sure that I could get out that… I’m going to use the word perfection, because that is the closest thing I can think of. Or let’s say expertise. This expertly made product, this solution-based thing into people’s hands, which is what I’d always wanted.

Years of going to different stores and buying stuff for my hair, that didn’t work stuff on my skin that didn’t work. And just not quite understanding that these products aren’t actually made for me and they aren’t made for even serving the desires that I’m looking for. Part of the reason why lotion is the way it is, is because it’s mostly made for people with lighter skin, one. And it’s mostly made because people just want to feel kind of soft. There is a fear of like oiliness or greasiness among the majority population here in America.

And that makes really moisturizing things kind of offensive. There’s this one thing that I’ve always seen specifically white people do when they try my product is they’ll often feel it on their hands feel that it’s like rich and has a little slip at the beginning, and then they’ll start wringing their hands because they’re not used to having something that actually is like a moisturizer, they’re used to something that feels a little drier in the way that lotions typically do. It just feels like you’re, you’ve got some wet skin with a tiny, tiny bit oil there, which is what most people are looking for.

35:01

Jasmine Bina:
That’s interesting. So you’re saying that we weren’t even really addressing the problem of something so basic, like moisturizer, because there’s this weird bias about what moisturizer is supposed to be.

Jerome Nichols:
Yes, exactly. There’s a lot of just like a fear of feeling… the word that I always come up with this nourished because that’s often what’s happening. For example, one of my biggest overarching goals with the Butters is to help white people stop washing their hair. So doggone much turning it into straw, leaching out all the color that they dye into it, turning the blond color that they dye it brassy, just doing all these things that make their hair, not be rich, full, hefty, and oftentimes much more curly hair that it naturally is because what they’re trying to do is get it to look like the people that you see in magazines and stuff, just like black people do.

They’re trying to straighten their hair to make sure he doesn’t even have the slightest wave. You know, when Sharon did that back, whenever she made that popular, she changed the way everybody thought about how hair was supposed to look. And that really damages people all the way up until right now.

36:19

Jasmine Bina:
There are two things that you said that, that make me think on this topic. So one the fact that you really wanted to make something that works. And I noticed on the labels of the bottles that you use for your products, it says you can use anything from the Butters… I’m paraphrasing. You can use anything from the Butters in your regular routine. You don’t have to buy all Butters stuff my stuff just works. And what’s interesting is… That’s a very… I felt your voice in the brand. And I want to talk about this for a second. Your voice is all over this brands. I feel your presence even coming to the homepage of your website, it starts at the top with a description of what you are using right now. Was that a conscious decision?

37:03

Jerome Nichols:
Absolutely. I’m a very opinionated person firstly. So that makes me very apt to what to share my opinions on things. I’m also very proud of who I am and what I do and what I make and what I put into the world. My brand’s voice is meant to be comforting and authoritative. It has a very masculine edge to it. It’s very in your face. It’s very bold. And at the same time the colors and things that we use, the color Butters blue, which is definitely not blue, it’s very green, blue, it’s more green than anything.

It’s meant to evoke a sense of calm and peace and serenity and safety. And I spent quite a while putting that color together, making that color myself, looking at it and making sure that I did actually feel what it is that I wanted people to feel. In my choice to brand the Butters, the way I do, which is what the tagline 100% bullshit-free. It is meant to be just that a lot of times when you’re buying into a brand you’re buying into their emotional experience. And while it’s true. The first things out of my mouth were, “I want to make you feel comforted. I want you to make you feel safe and you know, like you’re making a good decision.” But at the same time, I’m not lying to you about that. You are actually making a good decision.

38:43

When you come to the Butters, you’re actually making a choice that is going to be worthwhile for your dollar, your time. You’re getting a product that is made to last, and that is supposed to come through with that bullshit-free thing. We tell you everything that’s in our products. We don’t use shit that you don’t want to put on yourself. We don’t use parabens. We stay away from alcohols as much as possible, except for like hand sanitizer.

We purposefully make sure that we’re actually staying on the cutting edge of things to take out of products. And we’re making sure that even down to making sure that like the ingredients, the version of ingredients that we get are extracted safely, they’re coming from cruelty-free places. Um, and we’re just making sure that everything is thought completely through. And that sense of completeness and upfrontness and thought rightness is a part of who we are. Our brand values, that 100% bullshit-free thing. It actually breaks down into a set of values that are courage, prudence ingenuity, respect and honesty. Those are the five that we live by here. And I think they’re important to every business, but for us, they are what we are putting forth as the things that matter most to us.

40:11

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. And now that you mentioned those five things in those, the second thing I was going to mention there is a feeling, once you get into the brand, once you use the products, read the language, watch the content, follow you. There’s also a feeling of rebellion, I think, rebelling against what you should expect. And I think those five things kind of capture that. That’s super interesting. Something else I noticed about your brand that… let me know if it’s actually there, but I get this sense that there’s something ritualistic about the way you’ve kind of packaged these products. And let’s talk about some of these products, too. You have everything from haircare and skincare to sexual wellness things like lube, you have packages for like pregnancy and for moms, which was so interesting to me.

How do you start about the rituals around these things? Was there a ritual put into the sprint? And I asked because one, I sensed so it’s a big part of self care right now.

41:08

Jerome Nichols:
Absolutely. For me, rituals are a part of my life. And when I’m making all of these products, it’s inevitable that I’m thinking about the way in which you’re going to be using them, the experience you’re going to have everything from going to the website, through opening the package, to actually using it. The way the instructions are written are supposed to give you a strong sense of presence and where you are and centering your mind. One of the most common ones that people point to is the instructions for our scrubs.

A lot of them say something to the effect of damping your skin, take a little bit of scrub, rub it in lightly, let the scrub do the work, rinse off, glow up, and then make them pay your rent and never call them back hashtag.

And while I don’t necessarily always support taking things from people I do expect that you should feel like you’re worth that while you’re using our scrubs. Scrubs are luxurious thing. They take time, they take purpose from the opening of the jar. Their sound their smelled radiating up from the jar. You have the sounds of the water, the feelings of the water running over your skin. You have the actual scrub itself, the texture, the grit, all of that against your fingertips, against the actual skin itself, you can feel and just sort of be in that moment.

42:49

And every single one of our products has that thought put into it. It’s why when you open the jar, they’re so beautiful looking while the texture is just like so smooth and things are sort of like tweaked to a perfect gloss so that you can really feel special and take some time out of days that are very rushy.

A lot of the people who buy from me are like retail workers. That’s a lot of the people who I serve. It’s part of why the prices are the way they are. Most things are under $10. Well, not mostly like 90% of things are under $10. But I would say even like 75% of them are under like $7. You can get like a two to four ounce for that price. And that allows for people to actually come to us and add bits of luxury, bits of ritual, bits of mindfulness to their day, which helps us out overall as a community, as a people. And that gets into like self-care as a thing being one of the things that I push with all of my products.

43:58

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. Let’s talk about the pricing. I noticed it was like wildly affordable and they’re really nice products. And you really demonstrate through the user experience, all of this thought that goes into each one of them. So did you know who you wanted your user to be and you developed this for them or did your user evolve and you came to learn about them and then kind of build a brand around them. How did that work?

44:23

Jerome Nichols:
For me when… Okay. When I was sitting down to talk with my business advisor and we were discussing these things, when I actually figured out that I wanted this to be a real business and I was going to work to make this into what I call it the Jiffy mix of health and beauty. What I said to him was that I am essentially the customer, because at the beginning of this, I was the person that I was trying to serve. And I am unique, but not singular. And I think a lot of people are unique in the same way that I am.

They have similar issues that I have, or I have the expertise to help them in a way that bigger corporations do not want to. One of the values that is at the core of me is making sure that all things are equitable and that’s equity not just in chance, but in outcomes.

So I understand that there are a billion, different shampoos on the market. There’s a billion, different lotions, body butters. You can go different places, get things. There’s a lot of people who make stuff. But the fact of the matter is no one was making stuff for me, nobody was making things with a masculine edge that were also soft and comforting and caring, and actually did what they were supposed to do. And there’s a lot of like, “Oh, I like how this smells or I like how this feels, or I like how this looks.” But when you buy the butters, you’re, you’re supposed to experience all of it at once.

46:04

Jasmine Bina:
It’s a unisex brand, you, most of your products, it seems are for everybody. But I did get the sense that you are presenting a very rich, nuanced, new look or take on masculinity.

46:20

Jerome Nichols:
Yes, absolutely. I grew up in a household full of women. There is me, three female cousins and then over the years there were aunts and aunts. [crosstalk 00:46:34]. We didn’t have a grandfather because he died before I was born. My entire life has been surrounded by women. I mostly socialized with women. And from that, there has been a lot of, men are trash, men are horrible. Men are this or that and a lot of times men are horrible people. It’s like, we are humans. But that did leave me a little worried about what it is means to be masculine, what it means to be a man, what is my nature? What is… who am I in this modern world? What desires of mine are normal are things that… Are there parts of me that are antiquated and shouldn’t be put away? Or are they situational? All these different thoughts about masculinity that led me to question myself a lot.

And in the time leading up to the creation of the Butters, I was often making sure that I was not shying away from masculinity, making sure that I could experience it for myself and sort of redefine it for myself. And when I got around to actually taking the time to graphically design the brand, it was important to me that it not look girly, but not also hard-edged and masculine, because the hard-edged masculinity that you often get is dealing with like leather and birchwood and pine and [inaudible 00:48:10]. And like all these other like stupid things that are just… I don’t even want to call them stupid. They’re just a vestige of a period in time that like our president is from where things were made to be big and explosive and coked out and crazy. And that is not the person that I am.

48:29

That is not the masculinity that I have. I am a very chill dude and I think that is a type of man and a type of masculinity that we don’t get to see a lot but I think it’s very important to share. The brand is all me, the brand is all myself and my values and the things I want to push forward in life. So having that right there in front, that boldness, that courage, that prudence, those values, it is crucial to making sure that the Butters is what it is.

Jasmine Bina:
And then how did men respond to the brand? What kind of feedback do you get?

Jerome Nichols:
I surprisingly get a lot of men buying. That alone is an endorsement because men often shop differently than women, or even just say like masculine or feminine people, oftentimes more feminine people want a more social experience.

49:31

They want help. They want to be told about things and oftentimes guys just want to have the information put out in front of them or masculine people want to have the information put in front of them, or they’ve come to the store already mind made up about the thing that they need. And they just want to get it in the most efficient way possible. And I try and cater to both of those needs by making sure that all my product are descriptive.

We’ve got reviews from lots of different people, including like user reviews that we have on the site. We’ve got videos on a lot of things, instructions, all the ingredients, things that it doesn’t have, things that’s compatible with, all this very important information that if you are a person who’s like going to go out there and actually read the information for yourself, you absolutely can. Then there’s this other facet of what we do here, which is a very close communication with all of our customers. And we allow… we have a phone and email that you can just contact us when people call the phone number.

50:32

Jasmine Bina:
Yes. I’m going to interject here and mentioned that on the homepage not at the bottom, not hidden boldly in the middle of the homepage, you have your phone number and I called it and you picked up before I even knew I was going to do this interview. And that’s typical for you, right?

50:48

Jerome Nichols:
Yeah. We get, we get quite a few calls a week and sometimes people will just text message me to ask me a question about something and being able to just be there for people to offer them that helping hand is super important to me because that’s what they need. And when I was speaking about equity earlier, a lot of it is making sure people have what they specifically need to succeed, which is why we have so many different products. This is why we have so many different variations.

It’s why we make even small batches of things that may go out of stock for awhile. But we also offer the ability for you to wait list and be made… So that we know how much to make, we can make more. And we’re always trying to make sure that even things that aren’t selling the most are kept available for people. Because one of the things I hate is when things get taken away, that you finally found something that really worked for you and it disappears.

51:41

Jasmine Bina:
What I’m hearing is you have a real sense of responsibility to your customers that seems.

Jerome Nichols:
Absolutely. I’ve always had a sense of responsibility to just the community and people around me. It is just kind of my natural state that when you are in my space, in my presence, it is incumbent upon me to make sure that things are chill and cool. It’s not necessarily a big servant type person, but I absolutely make sure that people have the comfort. And when I have different friends over, I’ll make sure that they have three different drinks. If they all like something specific, I will just do that. For me that’s just normal.

52:26

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. I did feel that like when I had the unboxing experience and I started using your products, by the time I had gone through so many things and just as a customer, not even doing research, just casually coming across the brand, looking at some of your content. It felt like you’d created a vibe in my home. I think that’s really powerful. I want to talk about, you have a huge spectrum products, but one of your absolute best sellers that seems to get like out sized press and awareness is your lube.

And I’m going to talk about this because it feels like and it’s been researched and we’ve talked about this, wellness and self care kind of created an avenue for sexual wellness and sexual health to really come to the mainstream into the forefront. Without shame, without old baggage, without having to go to that weird sex store in that district of town, it’s suddenly like a public good almost. It’s a moral obligation to take care of your health sexually. What part of sexual wellness did you want to explore with your brands? I know that you have the lube and it’s a functional product, but what was your thinking behind adding this to your product mix?

53:38

Jerome Nichols:
Well, I didn’t add it to my product mix. I added everything else to the lube because the product that started the Butters are the Butter Original Moisturizer, but almost immediately thereafter was the lube. Because when I was thinking of this, I wanted something simple. That would be versatile. And then I wondered if I could make something that would be both like a great body moisturizer, something that would keep me not being ashy. And then also something that would allow me to have sex on the way that I wanted to have sex. Because like before I had started the butters, I was a blogger for about seven years…seven years just kind of threw me off.

I ran a blog on LTASEX.com. It’s still available actually. And I post probably two or three times a year with updated things and I’m still actually working on a book and stuff, but that is separate. Before I got into the Butters, I was doing that and I went to college for sexual health. I was in high school, I was reading how to sex books out of interest. I’ve always been a very sexually interested person.

And somewhere along the way, I kind of understood that sexual liberation equals all other liberation because sex is the one of the unifying things about the entire human race and all animal race really there’s very, very few things besides like respirate and the basics of life that we do but sex is one of those things. And for humans specifically, sex is a bonding thing. It’s a healing thing. It’s a pleasure thing. It’s a safety thing. And a lot of times we treat it as just like this scary procreative mess. And that is not how a little gay me could ever experience it really, except for the mess part and I was lucky… but-

55:48

Jasmine Bina:
Sorry, I was going to say when you describe it as pleasure bonding, healing, all those things you just said, if you take it out of the context that’s self-care, it could be self-care-

Jerome Nichols:
Yeah absolutely.

Jasmine Bina:
… it can be sex, it could be wellness, it can be health. It’s interesting. If once you unpack all the stigmas it’s what’s left, it only makes perfect sense that it would be considered part of your self-care routine.

56:11

Jerome Nichols:
Exactly. And for me, there’s no option, but to have it there, sex is just a part of my every single day life. And I think for a lot of people that is the case, whether they’re waking up and just looking at themselves in the mirror and being like, “Oh my God, you look so great. Oh, my God…” Or falling asleep at night with their hand on their chest and being like, “Oh, I like the way that feels.” Or whether it’s masturbating or whether it’s all things. Uh, just in any number of things, rather that evoke that sexual arousal, that pleasure, that awareness, that being aroused causes any of that helps you feel more grounded and safe.

I literally use masturbation is one of my mindfulness practices because it allows for extended breathing, repetition, it’s basically meditation.

57:13

Jasmine Bina:
It does force you into the present too.

Jerome Nichols:
It does. In the same way that many of my other rituals do, including all of my products.

Jasmine Bina:
So, where do you feel like the future of sexual wellness in this context, sexual self-care, whatever you want to call it, this part that you are working in, where is it going? Where do you think it’s headed? And also, what are you trying to create or push forward for your customers, especially the men because at that part interests me.

Jerome Nichols:
Although I plan a lot of things, this is not one thing that I have planned or even thought about, but the phrase that came into my mind instinctively was that it’s all good. And I mean that in like the black people, way of that, like even down to the molecular level, everything is fine.

It’s working the way it’s supposed to work. Everything exists, everything’s normal. And we kind of have to get past a lot of the stigma that’s been put on throughout society as we’ve come together and like bigger groups and made different norms. We have to peel back through that and go back and understand why it is that we’re doing a lot of things that we do. And that’s bigger than sexuality, but it’s still crucial to like our health overall as like a community and a society and as a people.

58:42

Jasmine Bina:
Right. So do you see anybody besides yourself in the landscape doing anything interesting or provocative or kind of moving the needle in a way that you admire in any of these spaces?

Jerome Nichols:
For me, that answer is hard because I respect a lot of people, but for my specific brand of sexuality and pushing things forward with open arms that are ever working to be wider, I don’t know that there is, but that gets to why the Butters exist as well, which is the sense within me that if it doesn’t exist to make it, so I’m making it. I’m making a space wherein trans people are normal. I’m making a space where the language is different. I’m making a space where things are chill and I’m pushing that message that lifestyle through the brand of the Butters. It’s that masculine, emotional penetration skill that I enjoy using so much.

59:52

Jasmine Bina:
That’s amazing. So you’re creating this space, you’re holding it for so many people and it’s… the brand is a fantastic experience. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it, but I have to ask you right now, what are you doing personally to practice self-care?

01:00:10

Jerome Nichols:
Making sure that I take it easy on myself. That is hard for me because I am a boy and I like working hard. I like even straining my body and being put through things that are a bit treacherous. I enjoy that. It’s just a part of my nature. And one thing that I will do is I will often overwork myself because I enjoy working.

And right now I need to be sitting my down and delegating, practicing being the CEO that I said I wanted to be, practicing relying on people, practicing being a part of a community. And those things are not things that always come naturally to me. But there are things that are really important to me being able to feel healthy and safe and that this thing that I’m doing, I’m not just extending all of my care and energy out into the world and then leaving myself an empty husk. But instead I am actually being fulfilled by what it is that I’m doing. And when I can’t do as much, I can still be fulfilled because I’ve built something that people want to be around and be within.

01:01:31

Jasmine Bina:
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Unseen Unknown. If you’re new here and you like what you’re listening to, I have one request and one offer. First, we’d love it if you left us a review, I read those reviews. They mean a lot to me, but more importantly, they help us get this podcast in front of the right people. Secondly, I’d love to give you more of our brand strategy thinking in the form of articles that we write, the videos that we publish and anything else that captures our attention, just sign up for our newsletter @conceptbureau.com/insights. And I promise you, won’t be disappointed. Thanks for listening. And we’ll catch you next time.

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Podcast

13: Race, Identity & Power In Our Online/ Offline Space‪s‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date July 2, 2020
No Comments on 13: Race, Identity & Power In Our Online/ Offline Space‪s‬

Author and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom joins us for an intimate discussion on how the mechanics of the internet, social media, digital marketing and real-life institutions amass power along racial and gender lines. We discuss how certain cultural narratives create our understanding of ourselves and others, how consumption is becoming increasingly political, and the role that brands play in the larger discussion.

Podcast Transcript

July 02, 2020

50 min read

Race, Identity & Power In Our Online/ Offline Space‪s

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
Welcome to Unseen, Unknown. I’m Jasmine Bina. On this week’s episode, we’re talking to =, a sociologist whose research spans higher education, work, race, class, gender, and digital societies. You likely know Tressie from her podcast, Here to Slay, which she cohosts with Roxanne Gay, or the way I know her, which is through her highly acclaimed book, Thick. A collection of personal essays that capture her life through the lens of American culture and societal institutions.

Tressie’s work has had significant impact on our current discourse around race and gender. In our conversation today, we talk about how those two things operate in our digital spaces. Think the internet, social media. But also think digital marketing, branding, consumerism. All of the pieces that make our world go round. These spaces have become the new stage for police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, and white supremacy. Well before all of this, they housed the social and cultural constructs that brought us to this point.

I started our conversation by asking Tressie how are notions of race and racism play out in our worlds, both online and offline, and where those notions are headed. Listen closely to this conversation, because no matter who you are, it will reveal something to you about yourself and about your world that you didn’t see before.

01:42

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
There are parts of the covert and overt patterns of racism that the internet, especially platforms, are really good at exploiting and uncovering that also operate in the quote, unquote, “real world”, but they’re just more difficult to see. Then the reverse is also true. There are forms of covert and overt racism that are easier to see in the real world. So maybe thinking about it like the architecture of the real world, the physical world, obscures and uncovers different forms differently than it does online. But there is really just one big pot of stew of stuff that is happening person to person, or what we would say, interpersonally. Groups have these forms of interaction, and then there’s like the big pot of stew, which is like the culture, economics, those big ones that aren’t a place or a thing but that are still really powerful ideas.

So politics, economics, culture, consumption, that shape how race and racism play out in our everyday lives. Then race and racism shape those things. So I think it’s about what’s uncovered and the patterns of race and racism can reveal different forms of how those things work online. But I think it’s all emerging from that same sort of ooze, of stuff that creates culture and experience.

03:10

Jasmine Bina:
So what’s an example of a platform that kind of brings this to the surface in a way we wouldn’t normally see?

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I can think of two examples, and I’m absolutely borrowing some work from one of my recently graduated graduate students, a big shout out to Tabitha Locher, who did a wonderful thesis about humor, irony, and racism on the streaming gaming platform Twitch. We were able to think through how something about how Twitch is designed, or the architecture of that platform shapes different kinds of racism and what we would call race talk, or the way that we talk about race in everyday life, even when we ostensibly are not talking about race.

So her example. We know that when we say that, “Oh, we don’t go to that side of town,” we know what that means, right? We may not overtly say that that is about race, but it is a certain way of talking about race. So one of the things that she finds on the Twitch platform is that because it privileges anonymity, as you pointed out, and because people are disembedded from their local context. So when you log into something that is a streaming platform, there is something about dropping into this stream of constant activity, the way that one does on these gaming platforms, that I think cognitively separates you from your real world.

04:34

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
So there are things that you would say in that space because the consequences seem different. Right? The people in the machine aren’t these sort of fully fleshed out people to you. But the problem you have there is that you need to build instant culture, instant community. So when I log on to Twitch at 3:00 A.M., from say, Indiana. I could drop into an ongoing stream of people from all across the world in different time zones, and that’s what cool about it and what is attractive about the platform to me. But if I want to be a member of the community, I need to instantly be able to communicate with these people. We need to share a language.

Here’s where the real world part picks in. The biggest ideas, the most global ideas that we share across time zones, across identity, across place, are ideas about race. So one of the easiest ways for me to become a member of community really quickly on something like a streaming gaming platform is to make a joke about racism. Or to make a racist joke. Because it works whether I am in the UK, whether I’m in Indiana, or whether I’m in Mexico, right? So that’s a way to just really quickly shortcut the community building in a streaming platform.

Another example is a platform that I use a lot, which is Twitter. Where it’s actually a little harder to do, so you see more covert forms of racism and more implicit forms, I think, of racism, on those platforms, which is why I think there’s been such a coordinated conversation and pushback against trolling, against these coordinated misinformation campaigns that so often use race and racism as part of their attacks on people.

Because on Twitter, we aren’t dropping out of a stream and into ongoing stream. You see sort of the same accounts over time. You develop a language that doesn’t need to rely so heavily on overt ideas of race and racism for you to be in a community. So when somebody drops in, and suddenly starts race bombing the conversation, it’s a norm violation, and people can feel a certain way about that.

So it’s the same behaviors, but something that would instantly build community on Twitch actually undermines community on Twitter. But they’re both pulling from the same ideas, which are, what are the acceptable ways to talk about race and racism in certain places?

07:10

Jasmine Bina:
Right. There are also visuals or memes that I think you kind of have to dig a little bit to understand that even though they get wildly popular, they are reinforcing racist beliefs. As you were talking, it made me think of, do you remember that meme? I think it was last year where it’s like, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and they’re in a picture together, and it’s like a 100 and whatever billion dollars in one picture and not a Gucci belt in sight. Not a flashy, you know what I’m talking about? Yeah.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yeah, yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
You’ve talked about something along these lines in the past about consumption, luxury, wearing, displaying. How does a meme like this, if we had to decode this, what is it really telling us?

07:53

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Decoding is the exact right word. So Stuart Hall is this famous cultural historian of race and racism, and he had this idea that the way that racism perpetuates itself in a contemporary society is through the way we can encode messages in our everyday discourse so that for you to get, it’s like getting the joke. Right? Which is actually it. So a joke and a meme is a really good example of this because it only works if the people who are sending the meme and the people who are receiving the meme share the same understanding about the symbols in the meme. Right?

So you could send that same thing about Bill Gates and a Gucci belt to someone in Korea, and they’d be like, “I don’t get the joke,” because consumption and status work very differently there. There’s no race attached to the idea of status symbols in other cultures. In the US, race is encoded so deeply in our ideas about class and the right way to consume things that for that meme to work, we both have to share the idea that, oh, poor people of color buy things wrong. They spend too much money on luxury consumer goods.

I have talked about the idea that the joke works if I think I am part of the group that consumes right. So the joke actually really falls apart if I go, “Hey, I actually absolutely understand why a poor person would spend money on a luxury item.” Right? It could signal belonging very critical ways to a group of people. It could be a way for you to get status in a world where there’s very little of it to go around. Listen, status makes your life easier. When I can walk into a room, and people assume the best of me, I get different access to whatever the group controls. Right? I can get a phone call sooner. I could get the clerk to respond me in a different way. I could get a teacher to speak to me differently.

So I can actually think of a really good reason why a poor person could have the Gucci belt, but if I can’t think of that reason, then the meme is funny. So yeah, memes tap into our shared understanding about race and also class and gender, I might add, and sexuality, and heteronormative. If the joke lands, it has to be because I share your ideas about the symbols in that meme. If it doesn’t land, here’s the wonderful thing about memes. We can always say, “Oh, well, they don’t matter. They’re so low. They’re such low hanging fruit.” No one’s hurt when we share a meme. But the ideas that make the meme work actually do hurt people.

10:41

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. What was surprising to me about this one too is it was so widely shared. I wonder if half of those people realize that it was resonating with them because of the racist beliefs that they had adopted. Let’s keep talking about visuals and images here. I think you wrote someplace that visuals can be hard for a sociologist because you have to break them again.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yes, they can.

Jasmine Bina:
But visuals have been a big part of the social discussion right now. Visuals of black men being killed by white police or black woman being killed by white police or images of people who are murdered, but back when they were at their graduation or with their family. The thing about these images, as we contemplate them, is that you have an immediate emotional response. They’re easy to share. They compel you to do something in the short term. But isn’t short cutting something? Is it kind of allowing us to skip some sort of larger moral process?

11:44

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I think so. So the thing about images. When television was invented, and became a widely available technology, there was all this fear, truly, about whether or not human beings were capable of processing images in this way. That it would sort of reprogram our relationship to reality. Now, that may have been overstated, but I think one of the things that we are really grappling with over the last few years is it may not have been as overstated as we would like to believe.

Images work because they do seem to have a direct path to our emotions in a way that text does not. You can escape into text. But you have to work at it. Right? You have to sit down with a book. You have to engage in the stories. You have to adopt the premise of the text. So you have to sort of buy into it. Visual images shortcut the buy-in. You’re in that world whether you elected to be there or not. That’s why they’re so powerful. It can play on your emotions without you being consciously aware of the fact that that is happening.

12:57

This is what I think we lose in the process. There is a lot of social science, actually, to this, that people develop greater capacity for empathy through reading than they do through visual images. We think that might be because you have to be consciously engaged with what you are interacting with when you are reading the text, whereas images work on us in a passive way, and therefore don’t ask much of us. So once the image stops, your empathy stops. So then what’s the feedback loop? It sets up a set of incentives kind of like the way Facebook reaction emojis do, which is you start to crave how many likes you get on Facebook, which shaped us for Instagram, which made us ready for TikTok, where it’s all about the audience feedback.

That’s why the internet runs so much so on images, because it does that. It sort of shapes our capacity for feedback, but it also creates the desire for more feedback. So we’ve become the mouse chasing the pellet. So we never stop to think about it because once the image is gone, the emotion ends. So the risk of that is, what has to happen in the case of police violence and the images of it, for example, is that for a state and a place of empathy, people have to keep being abused by the police. We need another image. We need another image. We need another image, for people to care.

That’s the catch-22, and what I think a lot of really brilliant activists have pointed out. The limits of the empathy of video images of police brutality is very narrow and doesn’t develop the capacity for sustained change.

14:57

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. We’ve spoken on this podcast before about how, we’re so limited in terms of empathy anyways. We have a hard time empathizing with the group, though we can empathize with the individual. We can hear about causes for entire nations or displaced people, or it won’t compel us as much as an image of a little girl, let’s say, who’s starving someplace.

It brings up this other point too. Tell me if you agree. I feel like sometimes if you see these images, the reaction for some people is to distance themselves from being part of that system. It makes me think of the Karen meme that’s just going around everywhere. The idea that Karen can be so neatly packaged, and she’s just this other. We’re not complicit. We didn’t create. We’re not a part of that.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I’m not a Karen. Yeah, yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
Exactly. It feels like by identifying her, by naming her, by putting parameters around her, by giving her a certain haircut and putting her in a grocery store, it’s so clear that she’s not us, but it actually erodes our potential to really understand our role in all of this, I think.

15:49

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
So labeling the thing that is happening is a really powerful tool for resisting something that would oppress you. So what starts out as a subculture in this case, young, black, online culture, I would say, creates this idea of Karen. But they didn’t create Karen. They didn’t create Karen-ism. They labeled it and they packaged it for their form of communication, which is online sharing and meme-ification. The flip becomes when we start to focus on the signifier or the package or the idea of Karen, and we stop critiquing what made Karen, and who is Karen.

I think this would be powerful if white women’s engagement with that meme, for example, should be not, “I’m not a Karen,” but to sit in, instead, the space of, “Wow, how am I like her?” Right? We don’t have the same haircut, but I’ve overreacted like that in an environment. Or I’ve also assumed the worst of someone in an interpersonal interaction. It wasn’t the grocery store, it was the workplace. Or it wasn’t at Red Lobster, it was at the bank.

But to look for points of similarity, that moves from a place of consuming the Karen meme to developing, yes, the capacity for being what we would call critically self-reflexive, which to think about yourself. Not in a narcissistic way, but to think about yourself as others experience you. Can you be reflective in that way? It’s an uncomfortable space. But to look at those memes that are about whiteness in particular, I think it’s really important. Because it’s the most unspoken of our race talk. Right? The racial ideology that we’re not supposed to label and speak about.

17:41

But to think about how you’re similar. Not to distance yourself. Because here’s the thing. Karen’s don’t fall out of the sky. They’re not anomalies. They came from somewhere. If in a culture that is as racially segregated as ours is, very few white people, for example, have non-white friends. We know it statistically. So if black people are experiencing Karens with the frequency that we can now document, then some white person somewhere knows a Karen. I mean, that’s just statistically the probable case, right?

So I will often say to people who immediately jump up and they go, “Oh, God, no. That’s not me. That would never be me.” I go, “Well, you must know someone. You must have seen this somewhere.” The real space of moving from consuming what I would call the racist signifiers, which can make you feel good in a moment. Like, “Ooh, I’m not her. Ooh, good for me, right?” And moving instead to a place of, is this good for anybody for this kind of thing to exist? Is to sit in the moment and reflect on whether or not anything about that meme is similar to you, instead of moving so quickly to the ways that you are different from it.

18:56

Jasmine Bina:
This work of being self-reflexive and seeing how you connect, can that happen online? Or does it need to, by definition, happen offline?

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
That’s a really good question. I am almost sure that I am professionally obligated to say that it can happen online. Whether or not I think, so okay, I think in the internet we have, it is difficult for it to happen online. But the internet we have is not the only internet that could be. There was a way for us to do digitally mediated or the internet connections that is not the form of platform capture that we have right now. So there’s a way for us to have these dense forms of internet based connections that are not monetized, for example. Or that are not captured in an app or on a social media platform, where I think those types of authentic spaces could be created.

20:01

In the internet that we have, that monetizes attention, that actually shrinks the size of your world. So one of the perverse things that platforms have done to the internet is that they’ve taken connections that were supposed to make your world bigger, but through marketing and targeted advertising actually makes your actual world smaller. So you have 50,000 friends, quote unquote, “friends.” But based on those 50,000 friends, the platform now delivers to you a smaller and smaller sliver of the culture, because it will only give you the things you like.

Right? So that’s the perverse relationship. So in that space, it’s really hard to become self-reflexive because you never spark against anyone else, right? Never have that moment of friction that is necessary for that space to open up. So it is possible on a version of the internet. It’s really tough with the internet that we have.

20:59

Jasmine Bina:
Right. Now, when you’re talking about the fact that the way these platforms are monetized, and the fact that the algorithm, essentially, shows you more of what you want to see, even though, let’s say, the people you are connected to is a fair cross section of the US.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Exactly, right.

Jasmine Bina:
How does this start to shift power and resources and attention capital in certain ways around race or gender or any parameter? How does it start to pull all of that?

21:29

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
When what we pay attention to becomes as segregated as where we live, the powers accrue the same way online as they do offline, which is that we narrow the pool of voices that are considered legitimate. We start to attach a value to them, whether that’s attention or money. What’s starting to happen online is those two are starting to converge as both attention and money. That’s what I think influencer culture is, the consumer power of online purchasing does to us. By turning so many of interactions in to exchanges. So we attach a value to a smaller pool of quote, unquote, “legitimate,” or desirable voices, the targeted groups, the high quality groups of users. We’ve got affinity groups. We have all this wonderful language for it, that really boils down to we are recreating the offline status hierarchy of race online.

Once that codifies, then all of the new forms of quote, unquote “disruptive technologies” really have to replicate that to disrupt. So the disruption cycle just sort of accelerates the accrual of resources to a smaller group of people. Whether again, that’s attention or their value to marketers or those who invest and sell goods online.

22:55

Jasmine Bina:
The way you’re describing it, it sounds like it does it even more efficiently than it might happen.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Benjamin’s a wonderful social scientist, and he has this wonderful book about race and technology where she makes the point about, that what technology promised was this disruption of the cycle of racism, because it would open up the space for minority groups to basically flatten the power differential of size. So one of the problems that a minority group has is just that there are fewer of us, right? Numbers matter. What the internet was supposed to do is connect those smaller groups to other smaller groups, and sort of level the assymetry of numbers online.

Instead, because the way platform capture works, and advertising models have driven the shape of the internet, it speeds up the process of hardening the lines of race online. It just speeds up the cycle, because it becomes so much easier to coopt those minority voices, sort of whitewash them very quickly, attach them to the more desirable accounts or brands or ideas, and make them valuable, and technology has just sped all of that up.

24:11

Jasmine Bina:
This is where I think it gets really interesting. We’re talking about resources and attention capital. I don’t know that there’s a place where you can see it more clearly than in the beauty space. You can’t talk about beauty without talking about Instagram. It’s basically where beauty brands and lifestyle brands are born. It’s where they thrive, and Instagram is setting a lot of the norms for what counts as beauty. What are some just obvious and not so obvious ways that Instagram has defined our current standard of beauty? Or maybe just amplified what was always there.

24:44

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). There as this very hopeful moment when the internet looked like a way to surface alternative versions of beauty and value and worth. Right? It was a place where you could find other people that not only maybe valued what you value, but more importantly, what we were all looking was a place where we were valued. That’s really important for people who live in a majority culture where they are the minority, because nothing you value is ever going to be thought of as inherently valuable unless it’s stripped from you. There’s nothing more a better case of that than the case of beauty, which is minority or subcultures can come up with their own versions of what’s beautiful. But at some point, you’ve got to leave your subculture, if only to go to school, to go to work. Right? To encounter the external world.

Where beauty is a very form of capital, particularly for women who have to use because of how patriarchy is set up, they have to use beauty to a certain extent to gain access to spaces where they can compete and develop themselves. So the minute that we have to trade on beauty, again it becomes valuable, and that’s what Instagram figured out. That we love to look at beautiful things, and we love to promote our own ideas of beauty, but we also like for people to pay attention to us. When those things are in tension with each other, you will start to mimic each other or mimic the dominant form of the belief system, in this case, what is beautiful, so that you can get more attention.

It is again, the attention economy of what will attract the I’s. If there’s a preexisting idea of what constitutes beautiful or acceptable bodies, then that becomes monetized on the platform, and the beauty industry has taken the Instagram, for obvious reasons. It gives them that visual story, that again tends to short circuit our path to empathy, right? That’s why we like to think of our preference for what we find beautiful as apolitical. Like, oh, no, that’s not politics. I just like what I like. I’m just hard wired to like blondes.

26:58

Jasmine Bina:
Which is a lie.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Right, such a lie. Everything that we have a quote, unquote, “preference” for, we are pulling from these big cultural ideas. But on a platform like Instagram, that gets lost. There’s no context on Instagram. There’s just the snapshot and the caption and how many people like you. There’s no context for where the idea of blonde comes from, or blue eyes, or thinness or height or long legs, big boobs. All those things get sort of excised from the culture that produces them, and suddenly it just becomes preference, and customer taste. Right? What your followers want to see.

Then it also has created a space of freedom for minority beauty influencers, to try to create their own thing, but that also allows the majority culture to take the parts that they like from that minority culture, and then turn them into something valuable without paying the people who produced it. So you see a really tiered system in that influencer culture, beauty influencers on Instagram. Where some of the most popular influencers might be from minority groups, but some of the people that are earning the most money are not. It’s the Kardashian-ization of [inaudible 00:28:17] life, right? Everything likes some of these things that come from minority cultures the moment they become divorced from the minority people. Instagram, like we were talking about, Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever, just sort of speeds up that process, and adds a whole other layer of profitability to it.

28:34

Jasmine Bina:
In case anybody’s confused, I came across a stat that said filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed than unfiltered, and 45% more likely to receive comments. You learn that super fast. When you get on the platform. Then there’s some more obvious stuff too. Like you described, the basic whitewashing of influencers, or even just simple things like filters that create a new standard of beauty, and all of them lighten your skin tones.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
That is correct. It’s lightening creams, it’s the digital versions of lightening creams, which is one of the number one best global beauty sellers. There’s not a culture in the entire world, and you talk about a dominant idea about race, by the way. One of the most dominant ideas about race around the world, places where they’ve never even seen an actual blonde person, right? Is the idea however, of a global beauty ideal. That is one of the most successful ideas, and it is an anti-black idea.

One of the ways that we measure that is that every society you can buy skin lightening cream, everywhere. Loreal is one of the biggest sellers of skin lightening cream all around the world. They package it for different local context. So whether she want to be fairer skinned in East Asia, or you want to be lighter in South Asia, or you want to be whiter in South Africa, right, it is the same idea all over the world.

Instagram and filters and Facetuning have just taken that idea and digitized it. So yes, every filter not only quote, unquote, “softens” your complexion, but it also lightens it, because the idea is that to be lighter is to be more beautiful, and therefore attract more attention.

30:23

Jasmine Bina:
It literally is in the air that we breathe. I didn’t even really see it that much until I started reading your book last year, and I realized how much colorism there is in Middle Eastern culture. My parents are Iranian, and it’s very prevalent. But you don’t even realize that you’re observing that narrative until, well, for me, I read your book, and then I couldn’t unsee it.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Well, that’s amazing in an I’m sorry kind of way. But yeah, that’s amazing, thank you.

Jasmine Bina:
Well, your book is incredible. We’re going to talk about it now. So your book is a collection of essays. Every one of them is profound, and all of them focus on the structural violence that is committed against black woman. You can’t read this book and not realize how that structural violence isn’t making all of us sick in some ways.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yes. Yes. That for me is the takeaway. Yes, that it implicates us all and makes us all worse off.

31:30

Jasmine Bina:
Absolutely. Something that was interesting to me, it was clear to me when I read your book, a lot of these ideas, and this happens in our work too all the time, come back to capitalism. It’s inescapable. You have a passage in the book, and we’ve already talked about this a bit, but I just want to read this passage, and if you want to expand on it, that’d be great. But it’s a long passage, so I’m going to read it. You say:

Our so called counter narratives about beauty and what they demand of us cannot be divorced from the fact that beauty is contingent upon capitalism. Even our resistance becomes a means to commodify, and what is commodified is always, always stratified. There’s simply no other way to coerce. Beauty must exclude.

I don’t even know if you need to explain that. I feel like any woman hearing that is going to feel it, and I understand that this is from your perspective as a black woman, where it’s extremely personal as well. It would be great if you could talk a little bit about what the context around this was. What you really meant by this.

32:34

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yeah. I was responding to several things. One was as a sort of publicly visible academic and sociologist, I often get these calls from brands, especially over the last two or three years, where there’s a lot of cultural capital attached to the brand that quote, unquote “gets it right”, it being diversity, inclusion, of what have you. So often times a brand will reach out to me saying, “Hey, we just want to strategize on this thing we’re launching. We want it to be inclusive,” and they always list as the example, the idea is the Dove beauty campaign. They want to do what Dove did with beauty. Which makes it sound like Dove got it right.

Jasmine Bina:
Oh, they didn’t.

33:24

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
No. Exactly. They absolutely did not. They’re always so surprised when they get me on the call. I go, “Well, hey, I’ll talk to you.” I already know they’re probably not going to like what I say. Because I’ll say to you, “Well, first of all, you’re starting with an ideal that I think is actually fundamentally flawed.” If you want to do the Dove beauty campaign, that’s not something I would encourage, because the Dove beauty campaign promotes this idea of everyone can be beautiful, in a context where we know that is empirically untrue.

The selling of the idea that we can individually overcome these big structural forces that absolutely do shape our lives may make us feel good in a moment, but kind of like the way visual images shortcut our empathy, it really obscures the reality of people’s lives, particularly women’s lives, where again, our value is still contingent upon whether or not we are viewed as physically acceptable.

As long as our value as human beings is conditioned on whether or not we are desirable to someone, then beauty will always be political, and when you make money on beauty, then you’re dealing in the politics of that exclusion. We have to deal with the fact that there are actual barriers to being included in that narrative that no amount of working out, eating well, shaping up, narrowing, lightening, whatever, is ever going to overcome. Until we accept that, until we get to a point that there are limits to what an individual can do, we are trapped in the very system that is abusing us for economic gain.

35:12

So what I have argued is that there is a setting yourself free when you acknowledge that I can like myself and all of my imperfections, but that the political problem is not what I have done to myself, the political problem is what has been done to me. Why do I have to consume these ideas about myself to participate in the world? Why do I have to dress this way? Why I have to perform a certain type of acceptability?

One of the things that we ask of women, particularly when they are deemed not attractive, which by definition, non-white women, by definition can’t ever really become as a group. There can be exceptions, but as a group of people, it cannot happen. So one of the things that happens when we stop accepting that that is the case, is we can say, “Oh, I can stop twisting myself into a pretzel. I can reject that. I can say, ‘I feel good about myself.'” That’s just fine. But I can reject the idea there’s something I need to buy to make myself better. That’s the economic piece.

36:20

Jasmine Bina:
It’s not easy.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
No, it is not.

Jasmine Bina:
It takes a lot of decoding and unbundling the world outside of yourself, and it’s different than what that Dove campaign was doing, which was saying, “Oh, if you’re just confident, you’re beautiful.’ Which puts the burden back on the woman. It’s a moral failing on your part if you can’t be confident in this world.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
My God. They drop us into a whole world, where from the moment you’re born, you are shaped into a performance of desire and beauty, and then blame us when we try to do it.

Jasmine Bina:
Yes.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I mean, how perverse is that? If a person was doing that to us, we would say the person is abusive. We would say that person is emotionally manipulative and abusive. But when a brand does it, it whitewashes the abusive part of it, and I use whitewash quite deliberately there. Yes, because it takes away the violence of what that does to a person, to drop you into a system, and then say, “How dare you have conformed to it?”

37:21

Jasmine Bina:
Yes, and that was I think a tough pill for people to swallow when the reality of that Dove campaign, years later on, started to surface. Because that’s what all lifestyle branding became about.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
That’s right.

Jasmine Bina:
It was all about, you can change yourself, and you talk about this. I don’t think this quote I have here, I don’t think it’s from your book. But you had said in an interview somewhere that the lie we tell in our Western ideal of meritocracy is that there’s something that those people can do to themselves to fit in better, but the ultimate truth is that there’s nothing you can do.

This ties really well to another essay in your book, that I think is the most popular essay. It seems like most people found themselves in your essay called Dying to Be Competent. That was an example of, you did do all of the right things, and that’s when you really saw the lie. Like I said, you can try to unbundle yourself from it, but you catch yourself in it all the time. I would love it if you could talk about that a little bit.

38:24

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yeah. This is absolutely was coming from the sociological side of me, and then the personal side of me, and it’s the point where the two meet. Which is sociologically, we’re trained to look at these big systems, and figure out how they work and who succeeds in them, and who fails in them. As a person, however, who lives in a body that the system was not designed for, I had experienced that sociology very differently than the way we sometimes talk about it, which is from a distance and with a certain amount of expertise is supposed to be separated from your personal experiences, et cetera.

Well, as a black woman who is also a sociologist, there really isn’t any such thing. Instead of saying that was a problem, I wanted to say, “No, but look how much sharper our understanding of the world is when we don’t have that false divide.” When I could speak about the fact that there was a system designed to deliver medical care to me, healthcare. I was pregnant, and I was going through the healthcare system in a pregnant, female body, which is already a very vulnerable position, by the way. Any woman who has ever been pregnant can tell you about the ways that you’re gaslit, infantilized, the way that people speak over you. They want to talk to your spouse or your partner instead of you. The way medical providers don’t listen to you about what’s happening to your body, the way they try to discipline you so you are pregnant the right way. Gain weight, gain too much weight. Don’t think of yourself as disabled even though you’re in crippling pain. Work through it, get over it. Snap back.

39:59

Oh my God, I hate this language where immediately upon having the baby, you’re supposed to snap back, meaning to your original body, forgetting the fact that this major transformation has happened to you physically. The healthcare system does that to every woman, but by design it is structured to do that to some women more so than others, and I was one of the women, that there was an assumption of competence that was afforded white middle class and upper class women in that healthcare system that was not afforded to me, despite the fact that I was very much middle class. I have all of those external markers of competency. I was highly educated, I had degrees, I was married. I had the quote, unquote, “good health insurance” from a quote, unquote, “good employer.”

But in the moment of interacting with the healthcare system at every single step of the process, I was only granted access once I would concede that I had made a mistake, that I was incompetent, that I had misread my signs of labor, that I should not have been here, that I had done something wrong. That’s a broader critique on the very idea of meritocracy in our society. This idea that meritocracy, our systems that are supposed to promote meritocracy. In my case, I used healthcare, but it’s just as true of education, of work, of technology, of democracy, the criminal justice system, that there is an assumed subject that that system works for.

41:34

But the most basic level is the person who can read English, because all the forms are in English. It’s the person who can afford a representative. Whether that’s a lawyer in a courtroom or an agent of some sort, that signals to people that you need to be treated in a certain way. But there’s an assumed subject in all of these systems, and by design, system after system after system, it becomes clear that none of them are designed for me. I am always the exception, and that there is no amount of earning, external validation, and credentials and symbols that are going to overcome the fact that this is not structured for me.

To circle back to where our conversation started, that yeah, that’s about me. But it’s also about how what happens to me impacts what happens to other people. When the system is designed to make me vulnerable, just to stay efficient, it’s going to make a whole bunch of other people vulnerable too. So yes, the thing that’s designed to exclude me by definition never stops at just me. It will always, always to become more, more efficient, so when we talk about an organization becoming lean or flexible or nimble or flat, what we’re talking about how can it more quickly and efficiently figure out who’s competent and who’s incompetent. How can it sort people more efficiently?

43:06

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
The minute we do that, it’s not just about women, you all, it never stops there. It’s also going to pick up disabled people who may also be black women, but may not be. It is going to pick up people who are not English speakers. It doesn’t stop there. It’s going to pick up poor people. It won’t stop there. It’s going to pick up working class people who are maybe just a little less working class than others. Then it’s going to tap into middle class people, which incidentally is where I think we are right now. It is middle class people feeling that they are not as different as they thought.

Jasmine Bina:
Really, who is middle class right now anyway? I mean, do any of us have savings that will last us longer than a couple of months? It’s a complete fiction.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yes. If the pandemic has not shown us anything else, I hope it has shown us that. That very, very few of us have enough resources where we are not the incompetent subject really, really fast.

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. I think very few people realize that that entire phrase was completely made up. I think as part of a political campaign. I don’t know how many generations okay.

44:10

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Oh, comes out of the 1940s, yeah. Yep. Yep.

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, I’m talking to a sociologist. So obviously you know the answer. Okay. I want to mention, you touched on this briefly. What was really powerful about this book, and a lot of your writing, is the fact that we talk to a lot of sociologists on this show, and sociology sometimes just feels very divorced from what it’s actually studying. I’ve spoken with sociologists that are experts in digital worlds just like you, but they don’t even engage in digital media.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Isn’t that weird?

Jasmine Bina:
I know. I still want to interview those people, so I’m not going to critique it.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
No, it’s totally fine. As a sociologist, I think that about my profession all the time. It’s actually really delightful for me to hear someone from outside the profession comment upon that, because I actually, and I’m in a place professionally where I’m thinking about that a lot, by the way. So yeah, no, I know. Totally happens.

45:11

Jasmine Bina:
It feels like you’re opening the door for other people in your position to start writing like this. Because if sociology, I don’t know what the ultimate goal is, if it’s not to actually put a mirror up to our faces, and effect change, right? Because I don’t know that we can trust our social systems or political systems or financial systems to make that change for us anymore. So I do feel like sociologists need other tools, and that’s what makes your writing so, I think, effective for a lot of people. That’s why people see themselves in your book, across the board, people see themselves in your book.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Thank you.

Jasmine Bina:
So you have, it seems, a real opinion on the corporate stuff of all the things that we’re discussing here. I don’t think it’s fair to ask you, “Okay, so what’s the answer?” I don’t know if that’s fair.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Well, thanks. I appreciate it, because we don’t do answers. Because nobody’s ever going to like my answer. My answer is like, more of what we’re doing now, and everybody’s over it, right? But yes, it’s more protest, it’s more pushing back, it’s more naming and shaming and organizing and being super uncomfortable far longer than we want to be uncomfortable. But yeah, nobody likes those answers, which is fair.

46:26

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, well, but if you have the answers, I would like to hear them. My question was going to be, beyond these attempts. Forget diversity, inclusion, that should be table stakes. Forget posting whatever and making sure your messaging is right. What would it take to kind of solve a problem, like here’s an example. I think it was a New York Times article about how luxury brands are boarding up their store fronts, speaking of imagery. Then they go and hire muralists to paint BLM murals. When they’re really taking their capitalist intentions of protecting their assets and wrapping it in a message. I mean, you don’t have to dig very far to see that. What kind of change would it take for stuff like that to stop happening? That is a big question.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
If we haven’t learned anything from the just phenomenal success, not necessarily good success, but the phenomenal success of monetizing our attention, in the attention economy, in the digital connected society, what I think we should have learned is that our attention is so valuable in a consumer society. Maybe even more valuable than the things we actually buy, which seems perverse to us, which is why I think we haven’t really taken to the idea.

47:50

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
That we will do these boycotts. Amazon blackout day. Literally Amazon doesn’t care. Amazon was designed to be distributed enough that no disruption in any part of its market will affect the overall health of the company. That’s the way globalization works. It was the whole point. But what does start to impact the company, like Facebook, who apparently this week is shaking in their boots over the last couple weeks at the idea that advertisers are starting to pull out, or quote, unquote, “boycotting,” but they’re not boycotting just in money. What they’re really saying is we will turn attention away, and other people saying they will follow suit.

I think our attention and what we will pay attention to is maybe more valuable than where we even spend our money because the way global capital works, the way we spend our money just doesn’t disrupt the way it did 30, 40 years ago. So for that sort of crass performative capitalism, where they quickly co-opt the images of revolution while calling in private police forces to protect their $10 stuff in a store. Probably the best thing we can do is to deny them our attention, believe it or not. Which would mean not taking the pictures of H&M got it right. Or, well, look at this brand with this really cool ad about Black Lives Matter.

49:23

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Frankly, it shouldn’t matter what Nike says about whether or not black lives matter. Nike should be held account to taxation and democratic participation in keeping our society functioning. We probably shouldn’t look to them for a consumer brand message. Now, we should hold them accountable for not being anti-black, but probably trying to seek out a message from them that is pro-Black Live Matter really isn’t the right form of politics for our moment, because it’s too easy to perform it. It’s just far too easy to perform it, and to obscure the way the business actually works.

So I actually think so many of the young activists, by the way, totally get this.

Jasmine Bina:
I was going to say that.

50:09

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I think they get it. They’re the ones who have actually pushed my thinking on this, and have shown that this works in community after community, who I think needs to get this is frankly those of us who are maybe no longer considered young. Okay. We might need to learn it. I think sort of middle America safely ensconced in sort of our own little social world, we need to learn that message. But I’m telling you, young people have got it. They’re not anti-consumption, but they do not look to consumption as their politics in the same kind of way that some of us were raised and socialized to do it.

So I think the right answer is to deny these things our attention, to pay attention to the things you care about. Is the way I’ve heard that said, and it sounds really simple until you realize if you ever track your media diet or something, and you realize you really have spent way more time focusing on the things that you don’t want to see reproduced, and not nearly enough time promoting things that you do what to see reproduced. In an attention economy where so much lives and dies on what we pay attention to, we should probably pay attention to what we want.

51:20

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. It seems like our generation, for some reason, because we were born into this. We were the first generation. We just don’t understand the value of our attention, and we don’t have a good grasp of where we spend it. But I do feel like our children or the next generation, this young generation coming up really does understand it.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Man, do they ever. Which is, this is the natural course of things. They are supposed to understand it better. But I marvel at the speed with which they can just sort through corporate lingo and language and branding and brand speak, and signaling. I mean, they can just slice through it. The part where I think we can help is we can maybe help give them some language around some of that, what we know about consumption and about politics. I do think we have maybe more experience with that, having seen the shift happen. But they absolutely have a speed with which they can analyze those things that we cannot top.

52:23

Jasmine Bina:
Going back to Nike. So tell me if I was hearing this right. You feel like it is their job, because this is where it gets thorny for some people. It is their job to be very political with how they run their business and where their money goes, and where they invest.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Yes.

Jasmine Bina:
Got it. My last question for you. I can’t get away from the book, and it was something that I was thinking about the whole time that I was preparing for this interview. You have a collection of beautiful essays in there. What I kept wondering was, what were the essays that weren’t included?

52:57

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
What an amazing question. I got to tell you, I don’t think anybody’s asked me that. I absolutely love that question. Wow. So I’m in a creative moment where I’m thinking about the next project, so because of that revisited the development of the last book, and so I was thinking about that a lot. I think we started want, I know I started with over 100 essays. There were some previously done. There was some that were kind of seeds of ideas. But I started with a lot, and so it was more a process of integrating some ideas and narrowing than it was broadening the scope. It really was for me about focus.

When you do this type of collection, part of it was that the structure of the essays and how they spoke to each other was as much the message of the book as any one individual essay was. That whether a reader realized it or not, I hope they came away at the end of having read them in their totality together as a conversation across the essays, and that big idea was, “Hey, look what happens when we take black women’s lives seriously.” Look what happens. Look what you understand about yourself now. Look at how differently you’re looking at the things you love. Look how much better you can explain what you believe in. Look at what happens when black women’s humanity is really serious.

54:23

It doesn’t exclude. It actually includes in a way. It’s using a particular language. Black and woman, to include. We think of being particular about our language as a tool of exclusion, and I wanted to show that no, it’s an actual, a calling in, not an exclusionary process. So one of the things I did when I was going through the essays was does this serve this bigger sort of feeling that I hope people walk away with? I’m always thinking when I’m writing, did I write this for me or did I write this for the world? Because there’s a difference. There’s some things that are about me writing to myself and my own understanding, but that won’t necessarily push the understanding of a reader or push a conversation that I think is important.

So for example, there were essays where I was endlessly fascinated with something, and I just had to realize, other people maybe are not.

55:20

Jasmine Bina:
Such as?

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Let’s see. I have a whole thing about where did all of the mixed race, interracial couples come from in branding over the last couple years, and I had this theory that we could track it to the rise of interracial couples in network television, and really I ended up tagging it to Shonda Rhimes. I was like, once you gave a showrunner the freedom to cast in a colorblind way, but the showrunner was a black woman, you got these pairings of romantic couples that had never been seen on network television before. And they worked.

So brands start to pick them up as a way to signal diversity without having a diversity message. So a Swiffer now could be diverse if you put a mixed race couple in the ad. Cheerios was another good example. So I have what I call these diversions that I go down, but I thought, does it move forward a conversation, or is it just something that I think is interesting? So that’s once of the ways that I decided, and that’s an example of one of the ones that didn’t quite make the cut. But it’s not any less fascinating to me for it.

56:28

Jasmine Bina:
I was very pleased to learn through one of your blog posts that you and I have something in common. We both have read a lot of harlequin novels, for some reason.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
So many. Oh my goodness, you should have said that in the introduction. We should have started there. Okay, so did you grow up with them, or did you come to them later?

Jasmine Bina:
No, I discovered them when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley, and I didn’t go home one summer because I don’t know, I was depressed and not talking to my parents, and I was like, okay. I have to fill my summer with something, and there was a giant stack at the Salvation Army.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
That’s exactly where I would get them. Because for a dollar, they’ll give you a whole sack of them for two dollars. They’re so cheap.

57:12

Jasmine Bina:
There’s so much. You don’t have to read too many to see the same patterns emerge, and it’s like eating junk food. You feel icky after reading them. But I need to know, where are you zeroing in on this content? Why does it resonate with you?

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Oh, what a wonderful question. I now attribute it to, in part, I think I’ve just always been curious about how other people live. Nothing in a harlequin book resonates with my actual life. There’s no dukes or lords. Nobody’s coming on a horse to save anybody where I’m from. So it was quite literally like reading, I don’t know, the cultural diary of people that I would never engage with in real life. It was actually a very long time before I realized all white people did not come from a duke or a lord, and did not grow up on a horse farm in Wyoming with an attractive head of the family, who left a whole bunch of money. In the will, there was a requirement that you had to marry someone who would take care of the cows. I didn’t know that that actually didn’t happen in real life.

But I was fascinated by the peak into, and I think what I can now say it was, I was fascinated with privilege. I was fascinated with inheritance because I just didn’t operate in that way in my world. Actually, I learned a whole language of class from them, because so many of them borrow from the British system of class, which is not how it works in America. So you get these, what titles were, and how property worked, and that women were always property. I think it was a peak into trying to think about what gender meant, and how gender worked. Talk about beauty economy, right? The entire harlequin world is built, there’s not an ugly woman in harlequin. There isn’t a single one who doesn’t have flaxen hair that blows in the wind and eats all she wants and never gains weight, and she’s always desirable. So that fiction and ideology was just endlessly fascinating.

Then there was also just a little taboo breaking. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be reading them. That part’s always a little fun.

59:42

Jasmine Bina:
I think anybody would have that experience now too because there’s something weird about, they were always impossible stories. I saw the same thing, the same trope where a jerk falls in love with a beautiful woman, and he’s a total, I was going to say dick to her. He’s not nice to her at all, and she has to somehow get him to fall in love with her, but she can never voice how she feels. It always comes to this climax where she can never say how she feels, he has to just come to understand it through her withholding or whatever weird thing that she does.

Jasmine Bina:
Which is also thematically, I don’t watch too many Hallmark films, but I know you always have an interest in Hallmark films too.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I’ve watched them all for you. You don’t need to watch them. It’s totally fine. Some people find it very weird that a scholar of race and racism and inequality and economic class would watch Hallmark movies. So one of the things, though, that I like about Hallmark movies is that there’s no guessing. So much of my professional life in the real world, especially now, there’s so much predicting we need to do, and it’s all happening so fast. So the Hallmark universe is so predictable. There’s never going to be a villain who’s motivations I don’t understand. Every story is going to end nicely. It’s going to be wrapped up.

01:01:03

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
But I also think of it as like a weird Wes Anderson universe, in that it is the exact inverse of the real world. So it has all of the elements of our everyday life, but flipped upside down. Yes, all of the world in Hallmark is white, but in that world it’s good. The residential segregation seemed to have happened, but everybody likes it that way. Yes, there are poor people in the Hallmark universe, by the way, which I find so fascinating. But they’re never hungry or cold or homeless. They’re just kind of temporarily out of money. Which is such an American fantasy, right? We all think we’re just temporarily broke.

Jasmine Bina:
Oh, yes, I know that myth. Yes.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
Right. In the Hallmark universe, it actually happens. Right, and so it takes all of these really American idea and flips them upside down in a falling through the looking glass kind of way. That as a sociologist, where my whole job is figuring out how the social structure works, it sort of de-familiarizes it, in a really interesting way. Like, Hallmark did gender and class. Flips them upside down so I can examine them, which is really helpful because again, I don’t navigate those spaces of privilege and wealth, and as a sociologist, it’s actually really hard for us to gain access to those places. If you’re not born to them, you’re not going to just walk into a really elite social group and start studying it. Power doesn’t like to be studied.

So one of the ways we can do that is through the popular culture that’s created about power and privilege, and believe it or not, I think Hallmark is an example of that. They wouldn’t say so. They think they’re working class culture. I’m like, no, this is all a love story to capitalism. It’s all a big love letter to money. That’s all it is.

01:03:02

Jasmine Bina:
Is it true that you’re going to cover this for a new podcast?

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I kid you not. I’m actually talking about this. I’ve got an actual team of people. We’re getting together to talk about the perverse mundaneness of the Hallmark universe and what it says about our real world.

Jasmine Bina:
There must be so much to dig in through there.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
I think so. I mean, I hope it’s not that essay that I tossed to the side, where I thought it was only interesting to me. I think if we do this right, that it is interesting to people who don’t read Hallmark novels. I think this is interesting on so many different levels, once you get over the sort of ick factor about it being a Hallmark movie.

Jasmine Bina:
Right. Well, thank you so much. This was such a rich conversation.

Tressie McMillan Cottom:
It sure was. I cannot thank you enough for being a wonderful interlocutor, and having me on. This was so much fun for me.

01:03:59

Jasmine Bina:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Unseen, Unknown. Our family of listeners is growing fast, and we appreciate each and every one of you that’s coming along for the ride, asking questions of the world, and having big conversations with us. Come join us online too. You can find me @triplejas on Twitter and Instagram. That’s triplejas. Sign up for our newsletter at conceptbureau.com/insights. We’ll talk to you soon.

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Podcast

12: Celebrity Culture, Platform Brands and Parasocial Relationship‪s‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date May 28, 2020
No Comments on 12: Celebrity Culture, Platform Brands and Parasocial Relationship‪s‬

The nature of celebrity culture has changed in recent years, most notably with the rise of the influencer brand. But why is this happening now, and how have our digital tribes changed because of it? We speak with Cameo co-founder Steven Galanis about how he built a platform that has taken celebrity-fan culture to new levels of access, and sociologist and author Chris Rojek about the parasocial relationships and ‘presumed intimacy’ that is outpacing other forms of relationship in our lives.

Podcast Transcript

May 29, 2020

50 min read

Celebrity Culture, Platform Brands and Parasocial Relationship‪s‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
Katherine Kendall lives in New Jersey with her husband and her ten-year-old son, Calvin. Calvin is a highly creative and imaginative kid, and he and his mom have a special connection over RuPaul’s Drag Race, the American reality competition TV series, searching for America’s next drag superstar.

Katherine Kendall:
Drag Race is our thing. RuPaul’s Drag Race, we watch it together. We’ve watched it for so many years. Calvin has an encyclopedic memory of all the contestants. We watch reruns. We drive my husband crazy watching reruns.

Jasmine Bina:
Catherine noticed that recently Calvin has been feeling a little down with the reality of the pandemic and stay at home orders. He’s just old enough to feel complex emotions about what’s going on, but still too young to know how to process them.

Katherine Kendall:
Calvin is 10 and he understands what’s going on more than most kids, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard for him. And especially with children’s emotions, like this pandemic you’re asking them to color something with 108 kranz, but they’ve got a box of 10 as far as emotions. He misses going to his martial arts class. He misses normalcy. He misses his friends going to school. We’re doing these weird Zoom play dates. It all feels unnatural. And he had a day where it just all got to him and he was crying out of loneliness. And that got to me.

01:38

Jasmine Bina:
That’s when Catherine got the idea to cheer Calvin up with a Cameo. If you’re not familiar with Cameo, it works like this. You either go to the website or to the app and you have the option to browse through thousands of celebrities in film, TV, sports, and social media. Starts from today, starts from 20 years ago it doesn’t matter. If you’re looking for someone, chances are they’re there and you can pay a celebrity to make a personalized video for you or a loved one, a friend, a colleague, whoever. People have bought celebrity Cameos as birthday gifts, as love notes, breakup messages, Cameos to tell their bosses that they’re quitting their jobs or to tell their parents to stay home during a time of COVID. You can buy a Cameo for any occasion from almost any celebrity, and they cost anywhere from $5 to $2,500 and up. Catherine realized that she could buy a very special Cameo for Calvin. One that would mean something to him.

Katherine Kendall:
I found a contestant who was on in the earlier seasons of Drag Race, Tatianna. And Calvin and I, we always rooted for Tatianna and even we even used catchphrases of Tatianna’s with each other. So it’s kind of become like an inside joke with us. And I saw that Tatianna was on there, Tatianna is probably not since she was an earlier contestant doesn’t have that same level of probably fame as more recent winners. So I thought I would take a chance and I thought, well, I’ll write a note Cameo and kind of explain this is going to a young fan.

Tatianna:
Hi, Calvin. It’s Tatianna. Just wanted to check on you and see how you’re doing. I know that this whole quarantine thing is scary and it really kind of sucks, but we’re going to get through it. Everything’s going to go back to normal pretty soon. Just stay hopeful.

03:24

Katherine Kendall:
Calvin was just surprised. And I think he was so surprised. I don’t think he knew what to really make of it. His spirits were definitely lifted. It’s just like a little bit of a sugar pill, is that. That just kind of it’s a little bit of a treat. And I didn’t expect it to completely change his outlook on the pandemic, but there was a connection there, and it’s not just a connection between Calvin and Tatianna. It’s almost like a connection between Calvin and Tatianna, and with me

Jasmine Bina:
This week on Unseen, Unknown, we’re going to explore the nature of celebrity culture, the rise of the influencer brand and how we form digital tribes around the personas, characters and heroes that are becoming increasingly easier to touch through social media and technology. We all feel connected to a public figure that we don’t know in real life, a TV star we might love, an athlete we feel bonded to, or even a politician we might hate. Regardless of the emotion, there’s something there. And it’s starting to open up new frontiers in both branding and culture. When Steven Galanis and his co-founders launched Cameo in 2016, they noticed two things happening in the celebrity landscape.

One, famous itself has blown up with more celebrities existing than in any other time in history. And two, these celebrities collectively enjoy more fame than their counterparts in the past. The overall mass of celebrity is increasing and Cameo was built as a marketplace to give that celebrity mass more efficiency in reaching its fan base and of course monetizing it. As Cameo approaches its millions video made, the company has unlocked an enormous well of unmet demand and it’s become one of the fastest growing marketplaces in the US. I spoke with Cameos Co-Founder, Steven Galanis about the cultural drivers that make a company like this possible during a time like now and how he made some very specific decisions in positioning and branding that have started to pay off.

05:30

Steven Galanis:
I think the first relationship actually is in with the celebrity, but it’s really the customer with Cameo the brand. And I think Cameo almost becomes your connected friend. You could imagine being at a party and it’s like the craziest party you’ve ever been to. And you see a section with a red velvet rope and behind that red velvet rope is as favorite person on earth and everyone you’ve ever wanted to meet. And all of a sudden you’re looking at the red velvet rope and you notice someone you haven’t seen since high school, they don’t remember you, you’re sure and you vaguely remember them, but you make eye contact. They instantly recognize you. They wave you to the red velvet rope. They open it and they introduce you to every single person that you’ve ever wanted to meet.

That’s cameo, I really believe. The secondary relationship is, the Cameo purchaser or recipient with the talent themselves. And I think that the number one reason the talent join Cameo is to have a more personalized, authentic one-to-one relationship with their fans in the world of social media. That’s actually harder to have than ever before. Somebody might have millions of followers and they get tens of thousands of direct messages. And it’s so overwhelming that it’s in some ways it’s harder for talent to ever interact on a one-to-one basis. So Cameo in many ways becomes a safe space where they have the time to like actually learn your name and learn a little bit about you. Unlike going to a meet and greet at Comic Con where or running into a star on the street and asking for their autograph where it’s such like a hasty, short period. It’s kind of giving them room to breathe and interpret everything and create this completely unique piece of content along with the person that booked it. That makes it so special.

07:33

Jasmine Bina:
You know, what’s really interesting too that I’ve noticed is, it’s somewhat transactional. You’re paying for this and you get a video created based on what you want the celebrity to say or to address. But I’ve noticed that a lot of celebrities really speak to their fans in a very heartfelt way. Like there seems to be like heart and soul and thought that’s put into these Cameos, even though they’re just a few seconds long. And you’ve mentioned in other interviews people like Gilbert Gottfried do so many in a day. And I think he was, you said one of your top earners recently, like why do you think that is? I mean, is that even sustainable the fact that these celebrities are really actually making these one-on-one connections because it’s new. Usually it’s one to many, like what kind of feedback are you getting from people? Like, where do you think it’s going?

Steven Galanis:
I think one of the big uncovers that we’ve had with Cameo as we’ve started, is we’ve learned that price is a necessary friction, which actually enables fulfillment. So the price of somebody’s Cameo isn’t the value of their time or it’s not their net worth. It’s really like a good proxy of what their fans can actually afford. And it can be throttled up or down with the willingness that talent has to do more or less of these at any given time. So if they’re on tour or it’s a busy season for an NBA player and they’re getting ready for the playoffs, they may raise their price do less of them. If they’re in the off season or it’s something like what’s going on right now with COVID and every single athlete, actor, celebrity is sitting on the couch, wanting to do more and wanting to have connections with their fans since their concerts are canceled and the meet and greets aren’t happening and their games are postponed.

09:14

What they’ll do is lower their price to become more accessible. And ultimately pricing has been the thing that’s enabled any of these to get fulfilled outside of there being a price next to it, the only way you could get a Cameo before Cameo was to happen to know the person’s agent or to run into them on the street and have the courage to go up to them and have that person say yes, and be of the right mindset to remember that your sister is obsessed with that person. And she’s graduating college this week and if this person congratulated her, that would blow her mind. So it was so rare. I mean, this is something that talent has done not just basically, since there’s been front-facing selfies, people have done things like Cameo, but it was priced. That was the magic that enabled the fulfillment to happen. And ultimately that’s, what’s allowed people to have this deeper relationship. Then you can have a normal social media, which is super one to many and super transactional.

Jasmine Bina:
You know, we have a lot of brand strategists listening to this, and I want to talk about your guy’s brand strategy. You mentioned how really this brand feels like it connected friend and your first relationship is with the brands. And I think a lot of companies that have platforms like access to experts or to thought leaders or celebrities, or whoever struggle with that. And the brand that is on their platform oftentimes is a lot bigger than the brand that the platform actually owns. But you guys have kind of reversed that. And I would love to know, how you were able to do it because I think you’re right. People do feel a connection to Cameo first that’s where like the first order of the relationship is, and then as they’re filtering through and then choose their experiences that other relationship with us every comes into play with their decision-making. But what have you guys done strategically or as a brand or anything with your positioning to kind of make this happen?

11:23

Steven Galanis:
I think it was all very intentional. I had run a book about category creation. I believe it was called Play to Win. And I really took that to heart. And as we were thinking about the idea for Cameo, it was very clear that there had never been a business like this before. It was a completely new product in a completely new category. And because it was a new category, we had to think about how we wanted the brand to be positioned. And that’s why at the very beginning, it was so critical to have the right name, which my little brother came up with. We had hired a branding for him to pick the name and four of the names that could have been Cameo that aren’t were Hypd, H-Y-P-D, Thrillo, what was another one, Power Move and there was like another, Oh, Hero Hub was the one that we like almost became.

And the thing is it’s like Cameo was really the perfect name. It’s like we’re recreating these tiny moments in your life that are super impactful and memorable where somebody recognizable is coming and making a brief appearance in your life. And I think it started with the name. I think the logo was really critical to being able to develop the brand equity that we needed to make Cameo at once something that was cool enough for the most like hottest people in the world right now, but also accessible enough that someone like my dad could come on and purchase there. We run the gamut from super hot TikTok stars to people like Dick Van Dyke.

And the thing that’s so cool about Cameo is that while our top demographic for purchasing is 25 to 34, 34 to 45, 45 to 55, 55 to 65, 65 plus all by more Cameos than 18 to 24, even though 18 to 24 year olds visit the site the most.

13:30

Jasmine Bina:
Wow.

Steven Galanis:
So it’s really become this thing where mom can buy a Cameo for her mom for mother’s day. Like grandma can find the YouTuber that her granddaughter loves. The granddaughter can find something for father’s day. And it creates this culture of giving where we really have somebody for everyone. And that was extremely intentional from the beginning to do that. The other big brands strategic decision we made early, was to choose authentic over high quality. When we first started, there were a lot of people that said things like, “Hey, what you should do is, you should go book a celebrity and put them in a Hollywood warehouse for one day and have them record every possible name and every possible creating and have sounded lights and all this type of stuff.”

But at the end of the day, we had high conviction that the magic was seeing these people in their natural environments, like having them be in their house or being in the locker room or the fact that you never know what you’re going to get. And I think that anticipation of never quite knowing what is going to be said, or how it’s going to look is another, like Hallmark of the way that we’ve been able to surprise and delight so many people

14:48

Jasmine Bina:
You’re absolutely right about that. And I’ve been surprised, I think with almost every Cameo that I’ve seen and it’s for that reason, although you don’t think about that, you don’t articulate it as a user. You just experience it.

Steven Galanis:
I think that’s the hallmark of a iconic brand. We did a lot of thinking about that, so you don’t have to. For us, it was all about how do we make you feel? And one of Cameos corporate values, our first value is actually roll out the red carpet. And we really use that for every single interaction that a customer has with our business. A talent has with our business or an employee or prospective employee has with their business. We’re always trying to roll out the red carpet and make everybody feel like a VIP on our platform.

Jasmine Bina:
It makes me think also you were talking about celebrities, like showing up in their homes, kind of like not made up or I’ve seen celebrities without makeup or in their beds or at the kitchen table, things like that. And you always hear this old adage of like, never meet your heroes because it kind of deflates the world that you’ve created around them, but that’s not happening here. And that’s something I’ve been thinking about, why do you think this isn’t doing that? And instead it seems to just be strengthening people’s relationships.

16:05

Steven Galanis:
Totally. It’s actually really funny that you mentioned that we’re currently in the middle of partnering with the new creative agency and the agency that I just talked to before this kind of pitch their whole pitch was around. The old adage was never meet your heroes because they’ll disappoint you, but on Cameo, it’s like you can meet your heroes and they become bigger heroes of yours than ever before. And one of the things that we’ve long talked about to talent as a value prop is, the people at the other end of these Cameos in many cases are your single biggest fans in the whole world. So the opportunity to come and talk to them and for 15 seconds to a minute, take a tiny amount of time out of your day, but have a such a massive impact on their life.

I think it’s a really powerful thing. And I think that’s why we haven’t had that disappointment, because it’s so unbelievable that most of these people that this can happen. And even in a world where Cameo now is three years old, coming on year four. And even in a world where we’ve done nearly a million Cameos, people are still surprised every single time, as you mentioned, you get one, you’d never know exactly what’s going to come. And I’ve always loved this idea of the talent and the customer almost co-producing a piece of content together. This is an idea that I’ve thought a lot about it. And ultimately, I think that’s part of it. It’s like you, as the customer are a huge part of the creative process here. And it really is much more of a partnership than like going to Hallmark and just selecting a cheeky card.

17:49

Jasmine Bina:
Right. And then how many celebrities you can say are on the platform right now?

Steven Galanis:
We now have over 30,000 talent on Cameo.

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. So that number says so many things. One, the whole celebrity world has just completely blown up or talent, as you say, which I want to talk about. But first I want to ask you, how do you guys define or decide what constitutes talent that can actually be on the platform?

Steven Galanis:
Yeah, that’s a good question. Historically we had said that, to be on Cameo you either need to be a person of note or you needed to have like X amount of followers on Instagram, 20,000 followers was early the number that we picked that we saw you could still do well on Cameo with that. There’s actually a woman named Legion from Andreessen Horowitz who just wrote a pretty interesting report about this. And she called the time that we’re living in for creators. She calls this whole economy, the passion economy. And one of the big parts of her research was that today with the direct to consumer monetization platforms like Cameo or Patriot or Substack, a creator only needs a hundred true fans to actually like support them. If you can get a hundred people to pay a thousand dollars a year to support you, you can make a living and you can actually support yourself.

19:17

So I think that’s a pretty interesting concept. And I think Cameo is part of the larger trend of direct to consumer monetization for talent in every industry. And there’s good reason for that. On YouTube, the top 3% of creators makes 97% of all the ad revenue, on Spotify, the top 1% of musicians makes 1% of all the streaming revenue and off the platform, they make the vast majority of the concert and merchant revenue as well. So I think this A-plus versus long tail problem is something that exists in every single genre. So the fact that we never built Cameo to like make Drake more money, we really built Cameo to be a place where talent could monetize their social in a way that’s actually brand positive. So our core value prop to town is, you’re getting paid to become more famous on Cameo.

Jasmine Bina:
You were talking about how we’re at a point where people can have deep engagement with their audiences but not necessarily be that big. And that kind of authenticity is what you were looking for. And it kind of brings me to this concept of culture. I know we talked about sub-culture a little bit, but I want to know, I know that you guys have gotten a lot of press and I’m guessing your numbers have jumped because of COVID because people have the time, or maybe people are just seeking some sort of creature comfort or connection, but before COVID even, you were really starting to skyrocket, why do you think culturally right now we’re ready to receive something like Cameo, because I don’t know that we would have been 10, maybe even five years ago.

Steven Galanis:
Totally. I think that’s a great question. So to answer it, yes, we have seen a huge boost in our business since COVID started. Bookings are actually up a thousand percent-

21:08

Jasmine Bina:
Wow.

Steven Galanis:
Since COVID started. Ahead of that, we were already the fastest growing consumer marketplace businesses in the country. So Cameo had been growing really fast ahead of COVID. But I think the reason that we’ve really seen this explode is on the supply side, on the talent side. Like I mentioned, nobody talks about this, but every single talent at scale is really a gig economy worker. They get paid per game, they get paid per concert, they get paid per appearance. And right now in a world of shelter in place, everybody is out of work. And historically, a lot of people that we had talked to had said, “Hey, Cameo school.” But I’m making too much money to be on it, or I don’t have time to do it.

21:51

They’re suddenly not having income coming in and they have a lot more time because they’re sitting on the couch like us. So I think that, that really has caused our business to turbocharge maybe multiple years in the future. I think it’s very similar to what you’ve seen with Zoom prior to COVID. There were 10 million monthly active users on Zoom, after COVID there are now 300 million daily active users. So I think something like COVID and the shelter in place orders largely prompted social change and cultural change to just accelerate. And I know we’ve certainly been a beneficiary of that. Secondly, on the why, now. So even outside of COVID, I think it really comes down to the proliferation of more social platforms.

So today, if you look at some of the most famous people on earth, whether it’s Justin Bieber or Chance the Rapper, these people came up on YouTube and SoundCloud, respectively. David Dobrik has the highest engagement on Instagram, who’s a huge vlogger right in and was an original Vine star. And I think one thing that’s interesting is the celebrity of 2020 is very, very different than the celebrity of ’80s or ’90s. When the classic like Michael Ovitz CAA model was holding Tom Cruise out of commercials or television shows because that would hurt him getting a movie deal. Today because social and Snapchat, I think started this, but then Instagram story, and TikTok now, and YouTube, because social media enables talent to have the ability to interact with their fans on a daily basis.

23:38

That is becoming the expectation. And it would be weird if J Lo wasn’t on TikTok, but maybe five years ago it would have been unthinkable that she ever would have been doing it. And I think when you’re looking at the biggest celebrities on earth, whether it’s Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber, I think go on it’s on Instagram every single day and make Instagram stories for free because their fans are demanding this content. But over the last five years, you’ve seen less of Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt or George Clooney, because again, they’re kind of these old house Hollywood stars that while they’re a plus and iconic, they haven’t embraced the tools that are available on social as much as some other folks.

24:28

And I also think too, that every social media platform has kind of created its own stars. And when you think of Twitter, you think of Ashton Kutcher and Shack being like two of the people that just skyrocketed to fame because of that platform, or when you think of Snapchat, it’s all about DJ Khaled. And what do you think about Instagram? It’s the Kardashians and the Jenners that just took that platform and went to another level. But I saw the Hollywood reporter did a big feature on TikTok and the most famous person on TikTok is a girl named Charli that’s got 50 million followers and she’s just a random girl from Connecticut or something like that, a 17 year old girl.

So I think that’s another interesting thing is that every single platform creates its own talent that are uniquely situated for it. And that’s why you see on cameo, someone like Gilbert Gottfried, for example, or Michael Rapaport they’re not the most famous people on the platform, but they might be the best at delivering on the value prop that Cameo uniquely gives. And if their content and their videos are ultimately better, that trumps how famous they are in comparison to other people, and that enables them to do better. One other general thesis I have about why now for Cameo, I believe that today there are more famous people on earth than there’s ever been at any point in history. And secondly, I believe that fame is more enduring and lasting than ever before because of social media.

26:00

Steven Galanis:
Imagine you’re a one hit wonder in 2020, you may have the biggest song in the world like little Nozstock stayed last year with old town road. And you may develop 20, 30 million followers on social media. And those people are going to stick with you no matter what, you don’t unfollow people on social. So going forward, these people now have a platform that they can monetize off for the rest of their life, where you and I were kids, like who knows what happened to Jumbo Womba, but their song was every bit as big as old town road here 20, 30 years ago, but now nobody knows where they are. So I think that’s a huge point in one of our thesis is about Cameo, is that there are, we believe there’s 2.5 million people in the world today that could charge for Cameos to be talent.

And we believe that number will double in the next five years, as TikTok and SoundCloud and YouTube and all these new platforms keep churning out new, emerging talent. I also think, with every Netflix show, we see new stars so far this year, the most booked people on Cameo have been people like Jerry Harris from Cheers or the cast of the Tiger King.

Jasmine Bina:
Wow.

Steven Galanis:
These people literally out of nowhere are doing better on Cameo than people that have been famous for 20 years. So, that’s another aspect I think of the culture that really gave rise to Cameo.

27:31

Jasmine Bina:
That’s super interesting. And then you’re talking about these other platforms where talent is developed and in non-traditional ways, it’s not like the usual path to becoming famous or a celebrity. Can you see a future where Cameo might be the platform where people kind of start to develop their fame and grow through that kind of relationship instead of through social and content?

Steven Galanis:
I think it’s certainly possible. But the thing that I think is really interesting about our positioning is that we kind of today, like we let people get famous in whatever capacity it is, whether that’s from YouTube or Netflix or SoundCloud or Instagram, but ultimately we are the place that everybody can go to engage with their fans at a one-to-one basis and monetize their social in a brand positive way. So I really like that positioning for us. Would it be very cool if the next Justin Bieber emerged on Cameo versus YouTube? Like yes, of course. I think that we’re constantly thinking about ways to help promote, especially the long tail of talent and figure out how to take some of the people that are making the best videos in the world that might be unknown. Like how do we surface those folks better? But for right now, I think our place in being the best place in the world to connect directly with your fans, I believe that’s a really strong position to be into. And we’re happy to fill that role.

Jasmine Bina:
So on the user side, as we get closer to our cultural heroes and leaders and celebrities and whoever as fans and platforms like Cameo, give us such intimate one-to-one connections and actual like, yeah. Well, they’re kind of two way conversations because you put in a request and you get an answer back. Is this sustainable? Like what’s going to happen? Like what comes after this?

29:27

Steven Galanis:
Yeah, that’s a great question. From our perspective, we believe it’s really diving even deeper into that back and forth and facilitating two-way conversations. The next product that we’re launching is called Cameo Direct. And in that product you’ll be able to direct message anyone on the platform and start a texting conversation back and forth with them, which I think goes to your point of making Cameo something more accessible for somebody to do to themselves. But B it actually helps deepen the relationship and makes the use cases for giving a Cameo or engaging with the platform. It opens it up infinitely and then suddenly you could see texting for advice or asking a recommendation for something or micro coaching or mentorship. And I’m really excited about the early data that we’ve seen in our beta test of that product. And I think it has the potential to completely transform what we’re doing.

30:34

Jasmine Bina:
I did want to ask you what would be your prediction for the future of social, like let’s say in 10 years, social or celebrity culture, what’s your craziest prediction that none of us see coming, if you had to just throw one out there?

Steven Galanis:
I think the craziest prediction I have is that you’re going to see the rise of avatars and things like little Mikayla. So I believe that the celebrities of tomorrow may not even be human or living, but they may be computer generated or they may be, you know, things like characters in fortnite, for example. So that I think is pretty crazy. But in the interim I do believe that the pure amount of fame in the world is increasing. I have really strong convictions about that and I believe that will happen, but I just saw a little Mikayla got signed by believe CAA this week. And this is the first time that I know of that a non-human has been signed by a major Hollywood talent agency. And I think you will start to see more fast followers and more things like that. So that’s probably my crazy prediction.

31:47

Jasmine Bina:
And I’m guessing you would want your own Cameo.

Steven Galanis:
For sure. And animation like look my co-founder Martin has twin six year old daughters. So ever since we started the platform, he was always like, man, if we could get The Smurfs or we could get My Little Pony I’m here, but the Disney Princess is my daughters, Sabrina and Sabana would absolutely go nuts. So we’ve always thought about that. And we’ve had some really interesting discussions with different studios about how to do it. But as of now, the technology to create personalized versus stock animations is pretty laborious right now. And it’s not quite there, but I do believe that it will eventually be there. And I don’t see there would be any reason why every Disney Princess couldn’t be on Cameo in the future.

Gilbert Gottfried:
Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried. This is Frank Laura, and it’s being sent by Jeff. Now, Jeff says he forgot to send you a thank you God for christmas. How the hell you forget a thing like that. How difficult is that to remember? Anyway he claimed she forgot it, which means she cheated.

33:18

Jasmine Bina:
The nature of celebrity has changed over the past 10 years. But even before the internet, celebrity was starting to change was normal people becoming stars on reality TV or talk shows or game shows, obviously as time has moved on. And with the proliferation of social media platforms, we’ve all become a lot more engaged in fan culture. And not too long ago, the influencer was born, a new kind of celebrity that’s starting to change the rules. We feel remarkably close to these people. There’s something happening here culturally. And it starts with our relationships. Cameo has captured an emotional layer in celebrity culture that is really resonating right now, but to understand why this is happening, we need to understand how celebrity fan relationships operate. Sociologists call these parasocial relationships and chances are you’re in a pair of social relationship right now.

Chris Rojek:
Parasocial relationship isn’t on-screen or online relationship with someone who you are not interacting with face-to-face. So the whole thing is conducted by social media now, but also a parasocial relationship would refer to the kind of relationship you have with people on television, people in film, people that you’ll never meet, but with whom you develop strong attachments in many cases.

Jasmine Bina:
This is professor Chris Rojek. He’s a sociologist who has written extensively about celebrity culture, its evolution, and how it sets certain norms for our interactions and behaviors. His most recent book, Lifestyle Gurus, co-authored with Stephanie A. Baker is about how authority and influence are achieved online. In 2015, he published Presumed Intimacy where he discusses media power structures, the impact of relationships of presumed intimacy with our celebrities and of course parasocial relationships. I talked to Chris about my own parasocial relationship with the TV show, The Office, I’ve watched every episode of The Office multiple times.

35:15

Jasmine Bina:
I know the plot points in every episode and even though I don’t really laugh at the jokes anymore, I might throw the show on in the background if I’m anxious or bored, because it feels familiar. I feel like I’m in the office with my friends. It’s easy and it’s safe. And I can relax with people or characters that I know personally and intimately, according to Chris, this is a classic pair of social relationship. And it’s a trick of the mind.

Chris Rojek:
What you’re describing is actually self deception. You are thinking you are with friends and everybody is thinking in the same way as you are, but you don’t know that since you can’t see the audience. So it’s a kind of confidence trick that brings you into a term I’ve used elsewhere into a relationship of presumed intimacy. Usually when you get to know someone, you develop intimacy as a result of trial and error, but presumed intimacy is automatic and it comes from on-screen, online trust relations that you formulate with figures that you like.

Jasmine Bina:
That’s interesting. And is there a biological predisposition to this? I mean, this is such a universal thing that people experience, like why do we form these pair of social relationships?

36:25

Chris Rojek:
Well, the answer to that really is not so much biological, but social. If you look at societies, when they move from the struggle for survival, they get involved in a struggle for acceptance and approval. Once the survival question’s been handled, once we’ve got enough food, we’ll have accommodation and so on, we become much more concerned with the kind of impact we have on people and the kind of impact they have on us. So this whole celebrity culture relates to changes in the personality structure of Westerners.

Jasmine Bina:
And then what’s led to the rise of this. I mean, I think it’s fair to say that parasocial relationships, what we’re describing here is probably flourished generation after generation as more and more media becomes a part of our lives. Over the last generation specifically, have there been events or developments or technologies that you think have really led to where we are now?

37:22

Chris Rojek:

To answer that I have to wind back a little bit because parasocial relationships are very, very contemporary. The people who develop the concept we called Horton and Wall to Americans and our paper published in 1956. And what struck them was the rise of television that hadn’t been there before you had best television in the States. And suddenly you were getting ordinary people falling in love with weather girls or newsreaders and following whatever the weather goal did. And then the magazines and newspapers reinforce that by having interviews with the weatherman and the weather girl. And so you began to feel, you knew about their private lives and began to feel you’re immersing yourself in a friendship relationship with them.

38:10

Although, as you said before, parasocial relationships are largely one-sided you, you don’t really have much power to impact the onscreen or online presence. But in addition to what I’ve said, in order to clarify your question, we have to make a distinction about different types of celebrity. And there are three types. The first is a scribed celebrity. These are people born into fame. People like the queen in this country, Prince William, anybody who acquires social prestige through bloodline, they were pretty dominant until the 1800s, 1900s when democracy and industrialization took off. And they were kind of elbowed out to a certain degree by achieved celebrities.

These are the dominant type and achieved celebrities, a movie star, sports idol, a pop star, or somebody who’s achieved fame as a result of their talents and accomplishments. The third type is called sally toyed. And a sally toyed is someone who is famous for short periods of time and then is entirely forgotten. And these are becoming far more plentiful in society, mainly because the TV and social media outlets revolve around them. They want to find people who are sort of interesting for a few days. Then they’re dropped and people then move on to the next sally toyed. People think of celebrity as if it’s just all the same, but actually it’s quite important to make those distinctions.

39:48

And just to give you some sense of the dynamic involved here, Princess Diana was to begin with an ascribed celebrity. That is to say she was an aristocrat, who married the future King of England, but it was only when she went on television and talked about three people being in this marriage, that she became a supernova celebrity, somebody that everybody was talking about. She achieved celebrity because she was going through something as a woman, a married woman, that many married women go through and, you know cheating, adultery, these kinds of things. So in trying to understand her popularity, we have to use two lines of thought. One is that she was born into fame, but in showing her vulnerability to the world audience, she actually magnified that original fame.

40:40

Jasmine Bina:
What you’re describing here is something that, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve also talked about micro-celebrities as well, which I think are subcategory of sally toyed.

Chris Rojek:
Again, let me rewind it and try and focus it in context. In the 1960s, there was something that academics talked about, which was the nod count. The nod count was the number of people you are on nodding terms with, but who you never really talked to. So there are people that you notice on your local railway station in the mornings, when you catch the train, they may be the guy you buy your coffee from. You’re aware of them but you don’t really formulate relationships with them. In the ’60s though, most people were thought to have about a hundred of those kinds of relationships. With social media we now have those kinds of relationships in the thousands because we’re following lives online.

Following lives on blog sites with people who we never really interact with, but who we are very, very informed with. It’s a huge paradox that when we meet a celebrity, we know a lot about their private life automatically as a result of following them, that’s quite different from me meeting you. If I met you, we’d have to get to know each other, but with a celebrity the being is known before the encounter to kind of strange dynamic.

41:57

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. And you’ve described, this self-disclosure as a product, the idea of disclosing parts of your personal life like that helps you in some ways acquire attention capitalism as you described it. I feel like we can see that with our Instagram influencers today, but you have to remember that even somebody like Princess Diana, like she did disclose parts of her personal life. And that was how she managed her celebrity I guess you could say in some ways.

Chris Rojek:
She didn’t just disclose. She manipulated the media to get her own way. I mean, she was an abused woman in the relationship, but she knew what she was doing with those interviews with Martin Bashir, she was creating space where people would identify with her, in her plight. You asked about micro-celebrity that is slightly different for solitude in that. A micro-celebrity is someone who builds up a blogging site and has many, many followers. And there are now thousands of these sites available. Last year I was teaching a course and I asked an Italian student about micro-celebrity. And he said, “In Italy, I am a micro-celebrity.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “I have 55,000 followers.” And I say said to him, “Well, what do you talk about? What do you do?” And he said, “Nothing. I woke up, I went to the lecture. It was a nice day.” But he says he has 55,000 people following them.

Now there are more and more and more of these micro-celebrities. And they are known in the literature as social media influences. That is to say, they’re not just friends, but they shape opinions and they can also shape buying habits. Belle Gibson is an Australian who created a site in the last 10 years called The Whole Pantry. And that was the site giving recipes and advice for people who were suffering from cancer. She claimed that she had suffered from cancer. And in following the dietary advice that she was giving to others on site, she’d cured herself. She got many, many followers, hundreds of thousands. And she also signed a book deal with Penguin for a cook book called Cooled The Whole Pantry. She became Australian cosmopolitan woman of the year.

44:16

And then it was discovered that she’d lied from start to finish. She’d never had any kind of cancer. She’d never been to a hospital. She just made it all up. You may say so what, the real issue here is that many of the followers who followed her, I now dead because one of the things she was advising people to do is not to take chemotherapy, not to take radiotherapy, just to use whole food solutions to their plight. Now, this kind of advice is fairly unregulated. I mean, she prospered for quite a few years, but it’s also lethal. And micro-celebrity particularly in the area of health, but also in the area of how to get a job, how to find a partner, how to look cool? Micro-celebrities can have huge opinion formation influence without much accountability.

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. There was something you had written about that really drove this point home for me because lifestyle influencers in the US are a huge force right now. And a lot of millennials and Gen Z consumers, I don’t want to over-generalize, but I think a lot of people do get their lifestyle and health cues from these kinds of influencers. And you said something that was so interesting. You said they rise to fame in a culture that continues to associate heroism with overcoming pain and suffering. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Chris Rojek:
Yeah. Many of these micro-celebrity sites are set up in the same way. The person who is running the site presents themselves as somebody who’s overcome a hurdle, it may be health. It may be a bankruptcy. It may be some life problem that they’ve got to grips with. And in doing that, they have solved the problem. And that’s really the basis for their authority. That’s why people listen to them.

46:11

Jasmine Bina:
I even think you described that this can happen even after a star has had a misstep or fallen with the pair of confessional, as you describe it. And I think Belle Gibson even did that. When she apologized and she disclosed, she tried to explain why she had lied about these things. She captivated our attention again.

Chris Rojek:
Yeah. I mean the classic case is Tiger Woods David Letterman, both of whom had committed adultery. Tiger Woods lied about it to begin with and pretended it hadn’t happened. And therefore, when he had to come clean and admit that he had committed serial adultery, the public never really forgave him. David Letterman was in the same position, but what he did was immediately go on Prime Time television and say he was being blackmailed because of his adultery. And he confessed on live to the audience that this has happened. So celebrities who are kind of honest and straight, get a lot more purchasing power with their fans than those that try and pull the wool over their eyes.

Jasmine Bina:
Is there something positive here in kind of seeing these people for who they actually are people with flaws and accepting them for them?

47:17

Chris Rojek:
Yeah. I think it’s quite hard to generalize about celebrities because an individual celebrity may influence people in very positive ways. They’re not all bad influences. Celebrities present perfection, but the problem with that, is that perfection does not exist. It’s always manufactured. People are always straining to give a particular impression which cannot be actually sustained. So people sometimes say to me, when we reached this point in the discussion, will we get beyond celebrity? Well, we won’t. And the reason for that is quite apart from the things we’ve spoken about already, celebrities I like to think of as primarily informal life coaches, that is to say, they give tips about how to look good. What the right things to say are, how to hold your body. This is important because seven out of 10 jobs in America and Europe are in the service sector. They’re people skills, jobs, communication, information, knowledge, retailing, the people who have the best people skills are celebrities.

That’s why they’re paid so much. And they play an important part in present day life in giving people hints about how to behave. I’m not suggesting that they do this by design. I’m just saying that by presenting themselves as successful individuals, people pick up on what has made those individuals successful. The second reason why I think celebrity will not disappear is, celebrities give us two things. First of all, they give us a scapeism. We can get away from the monotony of our lives by following a celebrity of our choice. But perhaps more importantly, they give us at a time when religion, at least organized religion is in decline.

They give us a sense of transcendence, a bigger personality, a bigger story than our life scripts, the life scripts that we lead. So celebrities in that sense provide an important sense of grounding for individuals. You can follow, if you’re interested in Tom Hanks, you don’t have to contact on that. She may not know how to contact him, but you can find out what he’s doing on a daily basis simply by looking at the internet. You can develop a relationship with him over time, which is one of presumed intimacy, one of closeness.

49:45

Jasmine Bina:
Do you ever indulge in any parasocial relationships yourself? I mean, we’re all human. I know you study this stuff day in and day out and it’s been your life’s work, but I mean, do you have any parasocial relationships or interactions?

Chris Rojek:
I think I have a parasocial relationship with Donald Trump. I follow whatever he is saying when it comes out and shake my head in wonder. You can’t avoid parasocial relationships because they’re the relationships of our time. We are relating to individuals that we don’t know on a kind of minute by minute basis. When we look at the internet, we’re finding out about people who are famous and we’re following stories about them and those stories into law with certain aspects of our own life. So you might as well stop eating in terms of trying to stop being influenced by our social relationships. They are ubiquitous.

50:49

Jasmine Bina:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Unseen, Unknown. We hope you enjoyed it. And the other episodes we’ve published so far, we feel really passionate about helping you understand business through culture. And if you like what you’re listening to, please leave us a review or give us a shout out. We’d love to connect. And if you want more brand strategy insights, we have a newsletter where we share our writing, our conversations, videos, events, and you can subscribe by going to our website, conceptbureau.com and clicking on the insights tab. We’ll talk to you next time.

Interesting Links & More Reading

Podcast

11: Who We Become When We’re Lonely & The Rituals That Will Save U‪s‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date April 30, 2020
No Comments on 11: Who We Become When We’re Lonely & The Rituals That Will Save U‪s‬

Brands are facing the fact that loneliness has become a part of our identities, crisis or not. But you can’t talk about loneliness without talking about the meaning of rituals. We speak with Sasha Sagan, author of the social history book “For Small Creatures Such As We”, Harvard social scientist Kasley Killam, and Danielle Baskin, founder of the social connection app Dialup, about models of ritual, connection, and how loneliness can actually pivot our lives in surprising directions.

Podcast Transcript

April 30, 2020

50 min read

Who We Become When We’re Lonely & The Rituals That Will Save U‪s‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
This is Unseen Unknown, I’m Jasmine Bina. Loneliness has been an epidemic across developed nations around the world well before COVID-19 forced us to socially isolate even further. Loneliness unravels the fabric of society. It makes us anxious. It makes us more susceptible to being taken advantage of. And if you’re lonely long enough, it can make you physically ill. In today’s episode, we’re going to explore how loneliness has become part of our identities and how it’s affected our behaviors and beliefs of the world around us. But our conversation actually starts with the first part of our identities that is often affected by loneliness and isolation, and that is our rituals.

Tom:
Hi, I’m Tom from Milton Keynes in the UK. I live with my fiancé, Emily, and we’ve been isolating together for over a month now. I’ve been furloughed, which in the UK is where it’s a government scheme to pay 80% of salaries to help businesses, but I’m not allowed to work for about a month.

01:12

Aton Kaspi:
Hi, I’m a Aton Kaspi from Tel Aviv, Israel and life has really changed for me since COVID-19. Israel has taken this crisis very seriously. And as a result, everything ground to an almost complete stop. Rituals have completely disappeared from my life, so much so that right now it’s difficult to remember how things were only a year ago.

Annie Chen:
Hi, my name is Annie Chen and I’m from Los Angeles, California. One of my new rituals is streaming workouts and I do them every morning during when I would normally be commuting, which I think is a pretty awesome trade off.

Tom:
Our rituals have completely changed, as has everyone else’s. For example, we get up later because there’s no rush hour and there’s generally less rush and stress in the mornings.

01:15

Annie Chen:
On Fridays, I take a break from the nonstop kitchen madness and order in, and on weekends I really try to devote more to self-improvement and learnings.

Aton Kaspi:
This is the first time in my life to have celebrated the religious holiday of Passover apart from my family and friends. In two days, I will celebrate Independence Day in the same fashion.

Jasmine Bina:
If rituals and traditions are the glue that keeps us together and protects us from devolving into loneliness, then it’s important to understand how they’re created and what makes them work, how they frame our perceptions of things like time and change and meaning. We’re going to talk to three people, a thought leader, a brand founder, and a researcher, all of whose work has significantly impacted our perceptions of loneliness today and will help us understand how loneliness actually reveals something much deeper about our culture.

01:55

Sasha Sagan:
It was a wonderful, wonderful way to grow up, but the shortcoming of science as a philosophy is it doesn’t have culture. I mean, it does in a way, but it doesn’t have holidays and it doesn’t have recipes, and it doesn’t have these things that sort of get passed down through the generations in family settings.

Jasmine Bina:
This is Sasha Sagan. If her name sounds familiar, that’s because she’s the daughter of astronomer and educator, Carl Sagan and writer and producer Ann Druyan. She grew up in a secular household, watching her parents collaborate on dozens of scientific essays, books and the original Cosmos TV series, which spurred a mainstream fascination with the universe in the 1980s, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. Sasha was raised with a sense of wonder and awe for what can be found in the observable world and has written about her experiences over the years, most recently in her book, For Small Creatures Such As We. She believes in every ritual, there is a code and in that code a way to bring us closer to one another.

04:03

Sasha Sagan:
Our ancestors were Jews, and even though we don’t have the same theology, we adopted some of the rhythm of life that says, “Okay, in the springtime you do this and in the winter you do this.” And the way that those two elements of life can be intertwined and the ways that they’re sometimes in conflict and sometimes not became really interesting to me. And when I was 14, my dad died, and then there became sort of another large question about, well, what do you do with mortality and loss and grief in this framework? And that really became one of the big philosophical questions of my life. And eventually, many years later, led me to start writing about it, and at first it was an essays and then eventually it became my book called For Small Creatures Such As We.

Jasmine Bina:
I think to really put into perspective what you just described… And you’ve mentioned that your upbringing was secular, but not cynical.

Sasha Sagan:
Right.

05:08

Jasmine Bina:
There was love, optimism, and wonder, and appreciation and gratitude for the natural world.

Sasha Sagan:
Exactly, that’s absolutely right.

Jasmine Bina:
And if you really stop to consider the natural world, it can be almost too much, it can floor you. And that’s what I want to talk about, the second half of that line, that your book title came from, tell us about that. Tell us the whole story behind it, because I think that’s really where this whole conversation starts.

05:36

Sasha Sagan:
So the title of my book comes from a line in Contact. Originally, my parents wanted the story that later became the novel and movie, Contact. They saw it originally as a film, but it took a really, really long time to make, 18 years actually from the time that they first conceived of it to when it actually premiered. And during that time, they tried it out as a novel. And my parents worked together on everything it was the collaboration and not the line that the title of my book comes from is, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” And it’s actually my mom who wrote those words.

And I think, as a species have gone from seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, as though this planet was the focal point of everything that ever was and slowly zoomed out to the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy, and the greater universe, and realize that we are on a tiny out of the way planet in an enormous, mind-boggling vastness, the existential crisis really sets in and it’s hard not to sort of have that sense of almost panic at the just huge grandeur and vastness of which we are such a tiny, tiny part.

07:15

And I think it’s hard for us sometimes, and once we look at ourselves that way, we have to ask ourselves, well, If all this wasn’t made just for us, and we’re not the focal point, what do we have? And I think the answer that that can be found in that line, and then the philosophy that my parents instilled in me is the idea, well, we have one another. And even if it’s for the blink of an eye, on a pale blue dot, in the middle of nowhere, we’re here right now together, and we’re sharing this little lifeboat. And I think that is really powerful and it can be really reassuring and meaningful, even though it’s not the largess that other philosophies might give our species.

Jasmine Bina:
You said this line in the past, “Science isn’t thought of as romantic, but it should be.” And it’s the idea that science is so much more than science. You can find a sense of love and romance, and all those other very human things that are oftentimes explained and accommodated foreign religion, but not so much in scientific study. So you mentioned the togetherness piece, which is what this conversation is about. So your book is so profound because it really talks about how to create rituals and traditions that can help us grow. And I wanted to talk to you because right now I feel like that’s especially hard for people in a time of isolation and loneliness and crisis, and we’re all feeling very vulnerable, even though there are so many calls for togetherness and for Zoom videos, and virtual birthday parties, and all the commercials about, “Hey, we’re in this together.”

08:54

Sasha Sagan:
Right.

Jasmine Bina:
But I feel like that problem of feeling isolated, it has to start with yourself. The togetherness has to come from you first, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you. So tell us, first of all, how can tradition combat loneliness for those that are isolated or for people who have lost their sense of identity because they’ve lost their jobs, or just in general have felt that their lives have been turned upside down?

09:18

Sasha Sagan:
Oh yeah. I mean, this time presents so many conundrums and has changed so much of our ideas of ourselves. And I think one of the things that we keep coming up against is this idea of, well, what day is it? And time blending together in this way that we’ve lost track of the things that separate time into little chunks, days of the week feel the same because we’re doing the same things over and over again, we’re not going anywhere, we’re not seeing different people. And I think, especially if you’re not working or your schedule has changed or you’re working less, then the weekends and the week days start to blend together, it’s very confusing and it can be very jarring. And I think that we crave this feeling of actually physically being together, and I mean, FaceTime and all that stuff has been great, but it’s not the same as being at a party or at a dinner.

And I think that one of the things that we have to create for ourselves in this very difficult time is the sense of rhythm. And I really think that that is so much of what ritual is about, is to give us a sense of rhythm over the course of the year, over the course of a day, over the course of a week and over the course of our lives. And I think that even the really small things that are like, okay, you got up and you make a cup of coffee and you do a YouTube exercise video or whatever it is, those things giving us a framework is really powerful.

11:02

And it does something else too, I mean, the idea of a ritual that is a rite of passage, even a very small one, is this idea that there’s a threshold and you’re one way before, and then you pass through this threshold and then something’s different. A marriage would be a very classic idea of that, right? You’re two to people, you go through the ritual of marriage and then you are a married couple and you’ve transformed in this way, through this ritual. But I think even the small rituals of, I’m going to wake up and do this thing, and my day is starting or at the end of the day, okay, it’s six o’clock, I am now changing from my day pajamas into my evening pajamas or whatever it is, where we have this idea of, okay, you’re still moving forward, you’re still going through these thresholds, these changes, these rituals that even the very small ones are rites of passage, and I think it’s really helpful for the really personal stuff.

In terms of the group dynamics that we’re missing, I think so much of religion and other organizations is the desire to be part of a group. This is how we have evolved, and everybody doesn’t feel this way, and there’s definitely people who are introverts and loners and that’s totally fine, but on a large scale, there is an evolutionary advantage to liking being in a group, working together, wanting to be a member of a club. And sometimes that goes really awry because sometimes our desire to be accepted makes us, over the course of human history, do terrible things, but sometimes it brings us together because it’s such a deep craving and we can do wonderful things with it.

12:57

Sasha Sagan:
And I think that a lot of what religion offers is that feeling of this is your little tribe. And I think a lot of people I’ve known in my life who maybe are not a hundred percent on the theology are like, “But I love going to this place of worship every week. I love being a part of this group, this is my second family.” And I think losing that in-person element right now is really, really difficult for a lot of people and is making this experience doubly difficult. I mean, and then with a third layer is this lack of funerals and things like that, that are such a necessary element to dealing with so much loss that people are experiencing and not having that, it’s really, really a terrible combination of issues that are a really hard time.

But what I think this little pause in society does give us is a moment to step back and think about what our values really are, and what are the rituals, and what are the events, and rites of passage and holidays that are really meaningful to us and are the ones that feel like they are representing what we truly believe or think rather than the things that we go through the motions, because we feel obliged, because right now there’s no obligation to do the things that people feel like, “Oh, well, so-and-so will be disappointed if I don’t do X, Y, and Z.” This is the moment where we can really reassess so that when things returned to whatever normal they eventually come back to or go forward to, we can really have a set of perhaps new, perhaps old, perhaps a combination of the things that we want to make really special for our families.

15:06

Jasmine Bina:
It’s so interesting that you say that because I felt like one of the themes that comes up in your work over and over again, is this idea of pausing in the rituals that you describe, and there’s one in particular that I want to talk about, the weekly ritual.

Sasha Sagan:
Yes.

Jasmine Bina:
And it’s this idea that… You described the purpose of the weekly ritual, which every religion has that weekly ritual, you have the Sunday service or the Friday night Shabbat celebration, or whatever it is, and it’s about marking the transition from work to rest and to help us internalize the passage of time, which is especially interesting right now, because without the ritual of work, time is kind of a blur for a lot of people, like you’ve described, and it works on different levels, but let’s look at it on a very literal level, this idea of really marking, okay, you’re not working anymore, you’re resting now.

15:58

I personally have found that that’s disappeared for me because I’m not maintaining my daily rituals around when I work and when I rest, or when I’m with my children, or when I’m with my partner, when I’m consuming media. So I’m finding myself working later and later into the night, and I can say yes, I feel like I’ve lost track of time. There’s a lot of reasons to lose track of time right now, but that’s, I think the big one. How can people create weekly rituals that help them still draw the line between work and rest and marking that passage of time in a meaningful way, even though you may feel guilty about not working? Which I hear from a lot of people, or it’s hard to even know when you’re supposed to be working or what you’re supposed to be working on.

Sasha Sagan:
Right. Right. It is so hard. And especially for those of us with kids and two working parents, it’s like, well, if one person can be not working, then the other person is like, “Oh, I ought to be working.” And then both partners and the children aren’t all together at the same time, because I’ve found when my husband’s not working over the weekend, I’m like, “Oh, this is the time that I should really buckle down because he can watch our daughter.” And I think all of that stuff has been really hard to manage, and the feeling of, well, if I don’t have to get up so early… I mean, with kids, you always do. But for people who are like, “Well, if I don’t have to get up to be somewhere tomorrow, I can stay up later and later and later.” And it’s so hard to not creep into like a nocturnal existence.

17:32

But I think that the things that you create right now, even if it’s something very small, it will become such a source of relief in this situation, especially the break from work. So as I said, it’s been really hard because my husband works a regular job and I’m writing and doing stuff like that. And so it is hard to manage the time when he’s not working, and making sure that there are moments where the three of us are together. So what we’ve started doing is there’s a national park that’s like 20 minutes away, all the facilities and stuff are closed, of course, but the trails are still open. We hardly see anyone else there, it’s very easy to keep six feet away from people. And we’ve just made the decision that every weekend, whichever day is nicer weather, we will go there, the three of us, and take a long walk outside in the forest.

And it’s been so special and such a central part of our lives right now and what we look forward to, and our daughter’s two and a half and what she talks about to the point where she said the other day, “When everything goes back to normal, can we still go to the forest?” And I, at first was like, well, I can’t believe I’ve been depriving her of this experience, I mean, we live in the middle of Boston and we do a lot of activities, but we’re not in the woods all that often. And it’s clearly so meaningful to her, but it’s also just this thing that we discovered that we wouldn’t have probably otherwise done, at least not on a regular schedule.

19:14

Sasha Sagan:
And so I think the things like that, that you discover that maybe you wouldn’t have done otherwise, even things that are like, okay, well, we’re going to have this particular meal this day of the week, or we’re going to do board games, something like that, where you have a night where you do that, or something out of the ordinary on a regular schedule, for your family together to have that moment. I think when we look back at this time for all the really painful, really difficult, heart breaking elements of this moment, I think that the new rituals that we create for ourselves, especially if we can find a way to keep them going, will be a little Ray of sunshine for families and for individuals, anyone who’s looking to pull something positive out of this heart-wrenching moment.

Jasmine Bina:
I love that you say that. So I’ve been talking to people about the rituals that they’ve created in anticipation of this episode, because I wanted to get a feel for how people are approaching this. I know for me and my husband, even though I’ve kind of given myself a blanket excuse that it’s quarantine, there are no rules, if I feel like you’re not sticking to a schedule. There is one thing we always do every day, and that is we go and take our twins to a patch of grass in our complex, and when we spend two hours in the sun every day from 4:00 to 6:00, and it wasn’t until I read something that you had written that I realized that this was so much more than just giving the kids a chance to be outside and giving us a chance to stop working and start relaxing.

20:56

You wrote in your book, and I’m going to quote it, you said, “Time is an elusive concept, it’s passing constantly, it’s so hard to feel.” And you seem to argue that it’s really important that we find ways to feel that passage of time or else we won’t be able to appreciate the everyday wonders and sanctity of things that make life meaningful, like a friendship let’s say, or watching your kids grow, or the love of a family, or even feeling yourself grow. That’s what these weekly rituals, that originally our religions have afforded us, but it could also be like you’ve described like, even a weekly happy hour with your coworkers or a weekly cycling class or something like that, it’s that they force you, or at least give you the opportunity to reflect, and as you say, check in with your beliefs, your community and yourself to actually measure and appreciate what’s changed.

Sasha Sagan:
Yes. And there’s something about the week, there are daily rituals, there are monthly rituals. There are of course, many, many annual rituals. There are things that we do every four years, like elections and the Olympics and things like that, but there’s something about once a week because every day the change is… Even if you do something everyday, first of all, it’s very time-consuming depending what it is, but also it’s too small an amount of time to really see those changes. It’s like with your own children, seeing them growing, it’s just all of a sudden, you turn around one day and you’re like, “Where did this kid come from? I had a baby.”

22:31

You don’t perceive it in the same way you do when you don’t see a friend for a years, and then you see there a little one, and you’re like, “Wait a second.” But there’s something about once a week that lets you measure something, and the week is not an innately astronomical or biological event, it divides evenly into our months, which are loosely based on the lunar cycle. So maybe there’s something there, but throughout time there have been other… Weeks aren’t always seven days in every culture that ever created a calendar, it could be eight days, it could be 10 days, whatever, but there’s something about just that kind of chunk of time that allows you some kind of reflection and some kind of break. So much of the traditionally religious, weekly events are about, okay, this is the day of rest, or this is the moment where we’re stopping the work of the week to transition into this other thing.

And you know that Friday night feeling, not… I was going to say, “Not in a Jewish way,” but in a Jewish way too. But that Friday night feeling of like, okay, the week is done and we’re now going to do this other thing, it’s very hard right now to have that sense of like, oh, I’m going to go out tonight or I’m going to whatever, watch a movie, or just break from the feeling of, okay, tomorrow we got to do this thing. Tomorrow, this is happening. Tomorrow, that’s happening. And I think that if we can…

24:03

This is happening tomorrow, that’s happening. And I think that if we can try to create those divisions and maybe it’s not the normal times of the week that it has been because everything is so upside down right now. But if we can have those moments, I think there’s something really valuable in that. And we have so many rituals that we don’t recognize as rituals. And if you go to the same yoga class… I mean, yoga is such an interesting example because it does come from a religious and philosophical tradition, but has taken on this secular life of its own and mindfulness and meditation and all this stuff that has this relationship to a religious tradition. But is its own modern thing now in a lot of ways and is very secular in a lot of ways, but still gives us that sense of this pursuit of peace and this pursuit of understanding ourselves and our world more deeply. I think is really powerful and it’s really interesting how that has taken on a life of its own and how it is often a weekly marker.

Jasmine Bina:
That brings me to my next question. I was considering the rituals that we create for ourselves. And I think I know the answer. I do believe that even if you have religion or faith or community, it’s still important to create your own rituals just because they add dimension to your life. And if you look at something like Burning Man, for example. It’s such an identity marker for people, my husband jokes, that you can usually walk into a party and you’ll know, within the first three minutes, who’s a burner and who isn’t. That’s how much people want to just proclaim that they are part of this movement and this group of people. And those kinds of rituals really work. There are people that have to go every year. And then there’s another kind that it’s surprising. I don’t know if you’ve heard of secular congregations, like Sunday Assembly and Oasis?

26:05

Right. They were born out of the fact that people who leave their religious communities or maybe just feel indifferent to religion, but they still feel there’s a hole in their lives. They want to have a sense of togetherness and rally around a sense of something bigger than themselves, but it may not be a God. And they start out strong, but they tend to Peter out. And there’s different reasons given for that, but it’s hard to get people to meet every week and to volunteer their time and their resources and their energy and their attention when you take something like a God out of the equation. And I don’t know if you have a comment on that, but my real bigger question is, what actually makes a traditional ritual actually stick? If you are looking to create one for yourself.

Sasha Sagan:
It’s such a good question. And it’s true when something’s new, it’s so hard to not feel a little bit contrived, and it’s so hard… when there’s not the pressure of some, somebody very powerful who created the universe is going to be mad at me if I don’t show up. When there’s not that pressure, it’s a lot easier to let things fall by the wayside. I think the thing, and I’ve said this before. The thing that I admire most about organized religion, Christianity in particular is the social pressure to do good, works of charity, being a central part of the goal of what the community comes together to create in many cases. And that’s something that I wish was a bigger part of secular life. And I think that’s something that does get people to show up.

27:46

Fundraisers and volunteering and things like that when it’s not just about ourselves, but about how we can make the society closer to how we wish it could be. Especially for those of us who do not believe that there is a karmic safety net, the good guys will get their reward and the bad guys will get their comeuppance. If you don’t think that then I think it’s on us to make the world a little bit more fair. But I think that the way that traditions really work and really stick in many cases and this is true of every modern religion is that it’s built a top the ruins of something slightly different, which was built to top to something else. And I think that the way things transform over time and the way that sometimes it’s totally appropriation and sometimes it’s the way that a new change, new power comes in and wants to help unwilling converts, make things a little bit more easy.

There are many incarnations of this, but so many of the most popular traditions and rituals and holidays in the world central to major religions have history that takes them back to earlier religions, to polytheism to other kinds of philosophies. And I think that, that really tends to make things stick. And I think the other thing is for every religion and every philosophy and every worldview that survives, several thousand years, there are dozens that just fall away and that’s normal.

29:30

But I think that there’s something about feeling connected to your ancestors and feeling like you are part of a lineage, even if you’re changing it, even if you’re adapting it to your modern worldview, that just makes it a little bit easier to commit to. And I think the other element is that when we peel back all the specifics, when we peel back, the lore and the mythology and the theology of any one tradition. When you get back far enough, there is something there that is tangible. And in my position is that it’s a scientific phenomenon. The solstices and equinoxes, the biological changes within each of us, that these are the signposts that are evidence-based and real. And we can study and measure that all of our rituals in one way or another, or nearly many of our rituals I should say are in one way or another built a top.

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. It’s funny. It makes me think of a story that you had described. I think it was at one of your Google talk discussions where you talked about how there is a story that your family’s traditions and approach have been based on. And I think it was with your grandfather after he came back from university.

31:01

Sasha Sagan:
Yes. My great grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. They were Orthodox Jews and they came to the United States and settled in New York. And they were absolutely devout to the point where, my great-grandmother, if a dairy fork touched a piece of meat, the fork had to be buried in the backyard for a year. I mean, they were very, very religious really. And they were very poor. And my great grandfather when they couldn’t pay the Jews for the synagogue, he volunteered as a night watchman so that they could, stay, be part of the synagogue. And they had their kids. My great aunts were born in Europe, but my grandfather was born in New York. And he went to college and as it commonly happens, became a little skeptical and more cosmopolitan and the philosophy that they had raised him with stopped adding up for him.

And one day he came home, as I write about in the book and he found his father praying davening and he waited for him to finish. And you can just imagine that feeling of having that knot in your stomach and getting up the nerve to say something really difficult. And he said, “I have to talk to you about something. I’m not going to go to shool anymore. I’m not going to keep kosher. I’m not going to do all of these rituals because I don’t believe. I don’t believe in God.” And his father looked up at him and said, “the only sin would be to pretend.” And that just really… that’s a story that came down through the generations to me. And it really was… it’s such a position of such moral clarity to me is and this idea that this is not something that can be forced. Belief or lack of belief.

33:10

And, and the people I have known in my life, who I see as true believers, truly devout, I think, are not threatened by the skepticism of others. And I think it’s when you’re afraid that the asking of questions is going to elicit your own doubt, that it becomes… that censorship comes into play and you try to force your beliefs on others, but I don’t know, I thought that was just a beautiful, profound reaction to someone you love coming to you and saying, look, I don’t see this the way you see it. I don’t feel it. And the idea that faking is more dishonest and worse than going along with it to not upset, the Apple cut, I think is a real deep wisdom.

Jasmine Bina:
You’re so right. And I want to say two things. This observation you have of, when religious people are confronted by maybe a non-religious person like in the case of your ancestors and the fact that it doesn’t shake them in their own beliefs, there’s a real beauty to that. And also something else that’s really beautiful about your story is that it’s not like that event caused a discontinuation of the story of your family. It wasn’t a break. It was an evolution of one branch of a larger family. And I hope when people listen to this, there’s value for this, for people who are religious or not religious. And that really both sides of the equation are about building beautiful traditions and honoring something that you feel is worth honoring in your life and enriching the life of your own. Considering so much everything that has happened, are you seeing any good examples of new rituals and maybe, they’re group rituals, individual rituals, maybe rituals in the kinds of stories our culture tells itself or anything that you can think of? Anything that you’re finding interesting?

35:16

Sasha Sagan:
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, as a person who is really interested in our relationship with science, this is such a moment where critical thinking there’s so much information and misinformation out there and there is information coming from people who have spent their entire lives studying how viruses spread and studying epidemiology and studying, these very complex ideas and then there’s information coming from people who have no expertise on the subject. And I think it’s shedding such a interesting clear light on our relationship with science. And I just, I don’t know. I think it’s related to what you were just asking me, but it’s this moment where I think if we instilled critical thinking in children from a very early age, if that was a part of curriculum for fifth graders.

How do you know when something’s true? How can you question something until you can verify? Who can you trust? What sources are trustworthy? And how can you ask questions to suss out reality from snake oil salesman ship? I think that if that was taught to very young children, we would be so much more prepared for something like this. And I wonder sometimes if the reason that it’s not is because the adults don’t want to face our own difficult questions and they’re worried children are going to… Given those tools we’re going to say, well then wait a second, what about this? And what about what you said last week about what happens when you die? Or where babies come from? Or whatever else. Right. And so I think that’s been really interesting because I do think of questioning as a ritual. And it’s one of the things I feel most fondly about Judaism is that there is such a tradition in many cases, not all of celebrating the asking of questions.

37:25

That’s one thing that’s wrapped up in this strange time. But I also think as much as technology is a double-edged sword and as much as it’s sometimes the bane of our existence, it also allows for traditions, but also a more traditional lifestyle in certain ways. I give this example sometimes, but I have my same best girlfriends that I grew up with in Ithica, New York. And we live all over the country from each other. And for most of history of pre-Industrial Revolution, we would have lived in our village together and lived out our lives together and our children would be friends and that would be normal. And then post-Industrial Revolution if we moved away, we would be gone. And we would maybe see each other again, maybe not maybe send letters, but not be together.

And now just recently, it’s because of technology. We can both each go do our own thing in our own new place and be together and be together, not just when something happens and you have to write a letter or call, but in the everyday ness of it. But even still, even though we all send texts and videos of our kids and stuff all the time until this happened, we didn’t really start having five way video chats. Like we were face to face through the computer or the phone until this happened. And my husband also grew up in Ithica and he still has his same buddies and they’re doing the same thing. And I think that there are a lot of ways in which the combination of technology and isolation is bringing us together, not just with the people who are in our immediate area, but the people who mean the most to us, wherever they are on earth.

39:21

And the other night, my husband caught up with a couple of guys he worked with when we lived in London 10 years ago and they had a little video chat, happy hour with them. And hadn’t done that in all these years. And we’d been back every couple of years and seen them, but no one had made the effort to do this kind of thing. And I think that that and I’m noticing it’s for a lot of people, it’s on a weekly schedule where it’s like, okay, Fridays, Saturdays, can you do this at this time? And everyone is trying to figure out the time zone differences and make sure that there’s a point in the day when everyone can get on. But I think that is something that is really interesting and I’ll be very curious to see if it lasts, when things go back to normal. If we’ll still carry on these visits with people who live far away, but who we love and miss and want to feel close to, even when we’re not totally isolated from the people outside of our households.

Jasmine Bina:
You’re listening to a call I’m having through the app, Dialup. People all over the world are creating new rituals of connection through technology right now, and Dialup a free app on iOS and Android is one of the foremost apps giving us the chance to do that. What’s unique about Dialup, however, is how it works in connecting strangers. You log in and choose different lines to join, which are basically just topics of discussion that happened at a certain time every day. The topics have prompts like, read a poem to each other, watch the full moon together, describe your breakfast or of course the obligatory quarantine chat. Then Dialup, randomly connects you with another person in the world to talk.

41:49

The prompts start simple, but soon the conversations get deep. My conversation with Ananda quickly came to be about cultural family values. I spoke with a grad student in India the day before about international politics. Before that I spoke with people in places like New Zealand, France and Albuquerque about everything from quarantine fashion, to the ache of feeling your life path diverged away from a childhood friend. And these conversations weren’t short either. Everyone I spoke to said the same thing. Dialup has become a new ritual that’s helped them stay grounded in a time of social distancing. I spoke with the co-founder of Dialup Danielle Baskin about how she created the app and the totally unexpected and wondrous ways a simple product has grown to be so much more.

How did you come up with the idea for a Dialup? I mean, it seems like a perfectly timed app, but I know this has been around for a while. What was the original impetus behind this? Why were you interested in creating something like Dialup?

42:52

Danielle Baskin:
Yeah we’ve had Dialup around for a year, but actually Max and I, Max is the co-creator of Dialup. We have been randomly connected on the phone for three years and I mean that a bot calls us at random times and connects us. We set this up pretty quickly after meeting each other, but Max and I are both really interested in voice and phones and he actually was working on a software because he had a project in 2012, connecting people in the middle of the night to discuss their dreams. Years later, he was trying to rewrite the call software and I met him and was like, “Oh my God, this is amazing. But why just dreams? Why not connect friends? Why not connect people during the day?” And I just thought of all these possibilities for voice communication. We started just automating calls between us and then added friends and then turned it into this public app where strangers could meet each other.

Jasmine Bina:
The thing about Dialup is it really forces you to be super vulnerable. And I know people including myself who won’t even pick up phone calls from their friends, because we just don’t do the phone, if it’s not a text. I understand why people might be open to it now, because they’re opting into it. But why do you feel like with your original experiments with your friends, which led to the development of this app, people were so surprised by the magic of it?

44:21

Danielle Baskin:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a phenomenon that Robert Hopper wrote about in a book called Power Hegemony. Power Hegemony is this experience that happens on a phone where if you’re calling someone you’re the one who needs something or wants something. And so you’re interrupting someone. And so there’s a power imbalance on a traditional phone call. And I think also people have this fear from robocallers or just the fact that no one calls, unless it’s an emergency that, if your phone rings there’s a lot of anxiety to pick up. There’s also a lot of anxiety to call because you’re afraid that you’re seeming as though you want something, but maybe you don’t, maybe you just want to catch up. And there’s so many people just in my contacts list that I would love to talk to. It’d be wonderful if I ran into them, but I’m not going to call them because I don’t feel like we’re close enough, I don’t know. What if they’re busy? What if they reject my call?

And so I think our solution is, you just have an app that calls you. There’s this external force that’s matching you on the phone. It removes all power imbalances and anxiety about calling someone.

45:31

Jasmine Bina:
So it basically lifts the emotional burden on both sides of what it means and all of the subtexts around what it means to have a phone call with somebody today. Okay. Very cool. You guys have blown up obviously since the crisis started, how has Dialup evolved and changed? And also your user base, how has that changed as well?

Danielle Baskin:
Yeah, I mean, for the last year we’ve been quiet and running different experiments. We only had 3000 people using the app up until the middle of March. And it’s people who found it on Twitter and there wasn’t much press about it and it was people that I knew that told other people. It felt like a community that knew each other in a way, when everyone started going into lockdown, we decided to create a quarantine specific topic called quarantine chat. And it was pick up the phone and talk to someone else who’s stuck at home. And this story resonated with people. It was also, we wanted to do this to simulate what it would be like to go outside and have a random conversation with a barista. If you’re stuck at home, you’re not going to meet anyone new, so we thought our app was perfect for it and we launched this, but I think that that story resonated with people and so this got a lot of press.

46:52

Danielle Baskin:
And what happened was it appeared… I mean, it spread all over the world because just people would read about it and one article and then share it on their Facebook in Ghana and then someone in the Netherlands would write about it. And then it appeared on local news. The variety of people on the app is pretty fascinating. You never know who will be on the other end. It’s always a surprise person, different ages and locations all over the world. It’s in 183 countries now.

47.25

Jasmine Bina:
Yes. I had just had a Dialup call this morning with somebody in India and we talked about breakfast. It was very interesting. Thus, the app has really surprised me in that way. Do you find that the user base has shifted towards maybe people who are alone? It can be hard to make Dialup work unless you’re signed up to a bunch of channels, which I am, but life still happens and I’d say life is even more messy now because there’s just so much mixed into, just the every day. There aren’t structured times for certain things. Who are the users? You’re like, “what do they look like?”

So who are the users here? What do they look?

48:04

Danielle Baskin:
I mean, it’s totally mixed, but I think that the majority of people who are able to pick up are people who are living alone, just because, if you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone you live with, you’re not going to be able to pick up the phone. I mean, it’s a design of our app to only call once or twice a day.

So you can’t choose, I want to call now I’m available. And so I think it’s generally someone who is able to pick up the phone, because they’re not engaged in the conversation at home.

48:40

Jasmine Bina:
You mentioned friendships too, are people making friendships because you kind of reach a point at the end of the call where it’s like, are we going to keep talking? Should we exchange information or was this just a nice moment?

Danielle Baskin:
There’s so many friendships that have developed, which has been surprising. I don’t even know. I know that people send us emails to describe the person that they met and say, oh, we’re staying in touch now. Thank you so much for introducing me to this person. So definitely heard about it and also read about it through Twitter and people have blogged about it.

I mean, a few people have started quarantine chat blogs, where they write about all their calls. So I read those and people are definitely staying in touch. I think it’s so dependent on your particular dynamic. Sometimes you’ll have a 10 minute call. Sometimes you’ll have a two hour long call. We can see the call times. And so I think the longest call has been six hours and 17 minutes.

49:38

Jasmine Bina:
Wow. Really?

Danielle Baskin:
Which basically is just you hung out on the phone the entire day. Yeah. I mean, you have to develop some sort of bond with them, even if I have an hour long conversation with someone, I do sort of consider them a friend just because you cover a lot in an hour. We’re actually building a feature to stay in touch with people that you’ve talked to previously because right now everyone just sort of disappears.

Jasmine Bina:
And there’s a lot of pressure, like sometimes the calls are only 20 minutes and it’s a lot to be like, I think I want to stay in touch. It kind of is a lot for a conversation like that. Although it seems like if both sides are kind of signing up to be vulnerable, like we said, are you finding people are more open to talking about things and doing things like sharing private information that they wouldn’t normally do because of the way this app kind of puts you in a situation?

50:33

Danielle Baskin:
I mean, I think because it’s voice and it’s just one-on-one you, someone’s listening to you and you know nothing about them, there’s totally a lot of vulnerability that happens. On the app you don’t have to provide context for who you are and tell your life story, but you could just talk about whatever’s on your mind.

Whatever energy and whatever thing you’re feeling before going into the conversation, you could just make part of the conversation. And I think potentially it’s because you’re not distracted with eye contact and you don’t have a face in front of you. It’s more comfortable to share vulnerable stories.

So I’ve read a lot about heart to heart conversations and it’s pretty incredible that you would immediately tell a stranger that you just broke up with your fiance, or you’re telling the story about finding out who your birth father is, and just all these interesting life stories that you might not even tell your friends.

51:34

Jasmine Bina:
What’s the craziest story you’ve heard besides the six hour conversation, which I think is pretty good?

Danielle Baskin:
I sort of run the missed connections. So two people are having a conversation, they’re in the middle of it, they get disconnected, one or both of them will email me and ask and they don’t know anything about the person they talked to, but details. Sometimes they even forget their name.

They’re like, oh, woman in Maine who lives on an island and works at a bookshop. Can you find her? And if I ask your username, I could figure out who your partner was, but I don’t even have their email address. So, I have to send a push notification to their phone and try to reconnect them.

And I don’t reconnect everyone. There has to be a good story, but what’s pretty cool is that people have been finding each other that are both searching for each other. Actually the woman who was looking for this other lady in Maine found her before I was able to reconnect them just by searching every island and finding, looking at a list of employees. Simultaneously, the other person was searching for her through Craigslist missed connections in Oregon.

52:45

Jasmine Bina:
That is fascinating. You’ve created something really incredible here that is actually compelling people after a one or two hour phone call to literally search for each other and spend time trying to find one another, sight unseen, just based on a conversation, which usually starts with a pretty basic prompt, like, read a poem to each other or describe the full moon and stuff like that, whatever the channels are.

And I’ve noticed you’re a prolific creator. And it seems like if you look at the projects that you’ve created, like LineCon or the Hold Music Awards, or the fact that you hold funerals for expired domain names, which I want you to describe all of these things for people, but it seems to me like you have a passion for making seemingly fleeting moments of time and our lives actually matter.

53:35

Danielle Baskin:
That’s an interesting way to put it. I guess to me, these moments do matter so they don’t seem seemingly fleeting. Well, I think a goal of a lot of my projects is to get people to talk about things they don’t normally talk about. For example, the experience of your domain expiring. There’s very intense stories behind every domain name.

Maybe it’s a project you had with a friend or a blog you’ve kept for 10 years. And when you get a notification from your domain registrar like, you have five days to renew in all caps and it’s red, it’s just very cold. And so in your mind, you’re like, oh, but should I renew it? This project meant so much to me, but there’s no venue for you to talk about that. And that’s also a strange conversation topic to bring up.

54:27

So having a dedicated event where there’s a microphone and you go up and talk about your domain is an event that I’ve done in San Francisco. Similarly, the experience of waiting in a line is usually sort of an annoying, frustrating, potentially solitary thing. And so LineCon is a place for people to share their line waiting stories and hang out in lines and learn about line related topics and sort of transform the line waiting experience, which results in people that are in the line, just attending a conference suddenly, they didn’t expect it.

And then a few people have found us in LineCon. I mean, we started as the first time we ever did this in 2016, it started as a group of 12 people that showed up and the line actually picked up other people in waiting in the lines and they joined us for a few more lines. One person found us in the morning and went to all the lines with us till 5:00 PM. I didn’t have anything else to do today, this seems cool.

55:33

Jasmine Bina:
Wow. Your work has a way of bringing people together. I really love that. So, I’m sure you’ve thought about this a lot yourself, is this kind of habit of connecting with strangers and having these really great discussions with people and everything that Dialup affords, you think this is a new habit that’s going to stick with people? Is it changing them enough that they’ll continue to after the virus passes? Or do you think that we’re still kind of just in a novel period and it’s yet to be seen?

Danielle Baskin:
I mean, I think what’s happening now because all of our communications are virtual, even with people that you used to hang out with in reality or not in the physical world, I don’t know where reality is, I think what’s happening is that there’s kind of a blurry line between stranger and friend, right?

56:24

Like, my internet friendships feel just as real as my physical friendships now because everything is virtual. And I think a result that’s happening from this period of time is actual connections are forming through the internet versus, interactions on social media are typically not that in depth.

Maybe you have some friends on Twitter, but you’re both just kind of trying to be clever with each other and not actually having a long conversation. You might not actually know each other. I think what I’ve noticed is I’m in longer DM threads in Twitter and I also am using the app and, hopping on the phone with people and I am developing all these relationships through the internet that sort of, I feel early 2000s internet friendships that sort of disappeared in the last 20 years.

57:19

I think that that habit might stick because there’s so much value in connecting with people outside of just, convenience and habits and whoever’s near you.

Jasmine Bina:
And the early 2000 things that you mentioned, there’s definitely a sense of nostalgia here. I would say even the aesthetic, was there any thinking about the UX and the actual visual look of the app?

Danielle Baskin:
Yeah. I mean, I think, talking on the phone is something that people did in the late ’90s and for many years in the 1900s. But I used to love talking on the phone and the surprise of just someone calling my family’s house and not knowing who it was. And this was before there were automated robocallers and that was sort of just the way to communicate and the way to hang out with friends.

58:12

As a kid, I would just, at 9:00 PM, couldn’t leave my home, but I could just call anyone and we could hang out on the phone. And then that sort of, disappeared when we started getting used to image and text based communication virtually, but with Dialup, I mean, I think we wanted to evoke sort of the past of talking on the phone, even though we’ve redesigned how it works and it’s not a regular phone call, we wanted to evoke that feeling of getting a surprise phone call and also sort of evoke early internet because I think the internet before websites had the like button and everything was sort of a popularity contest and competitive and focused on, having a quick one-liner joke.

In chat rooms, people used to get into in depth conversations and you weren’t really that self-conscious of your brand and competing for attention. You would just kind of talk and, talk about anything and be in these long chats in AOL. And so we wanted to sort of evoke that time of just intimate one-on-ones, but not the sort of vanity contest that the internet is like now. So, that’s our aesthetic choices. It’s called Dialup and then we just have a lot of sort of retro imagery. We have floppy disks and modems and all that.

59:41

Jasmine Bina:
You totally just took me down memory lane. I think I had forgotten what it felt like to be in a chatroom. And I was obsessed with chatrooms. I remember I would go into music chat rooms to talk about the bands I was following as a teenager and I would sneak out of my bedroom and go to the computer room and turn it on. And I was supposed to be asleep and I would get into big trouble.

But I would sign into chat rooms to talk about whatever band and we would get into deep discussions and there was such a beautiful innocence. And also it was very self-expressive and it did feel magical, magical in a way that I think social media has kind of lost, or maybe you could say even hijacked. And I wonder if that’s what makes Dialup so unique and special.

There are a lot of apps out there right now that are helping people connect. But why do you think Dialup has really captured such a wide audience of avid users when it really could have been anybody, but you guys seem to be the one that’s kind of rising to the top? Why do you think that is?

01:00:40

Danielle Baskin:
I mean, it’s a totally different feeling than the adrenaline and excitement you get from being on Twitter is sort of like, oh, these little bursts of dopamine when someone likes your tweets or you’re laughing or finding things clever. I think the feeling of being on a Dialup call feels transformative in some way, after every conversation, a conversation that’s long and I feel like I click with the person.

I feel like my perspective has shifted on something or I learned a lot about another place or another person or a book recommendation, or all these things kind of shift. And I’ve had to tell a story and verbalize it. And that’s also a different exchange of energy. I think there’s also, the internet can feel deeply isolating. I’ve been to Zoom parties where there’s 15 people on a Zoom call.

01:01:37

And sometimes there’s no chance you get to talk or just the etiquette is all strange. You don’t want to interrupt someone or you just feel very passive. Also, the internet is lonely, the aspect where you tweet and no one likes your tweet. And that feels really sad. I mean, there isn’t really the experience of feeling sad on our app because anyone you talk to is like, they’ve picked up the phone too, and also wants to talk to someone.

Both of you said, yes, I want to have the conversation. Both of you are listening to each other, you have each other’s attention and there isn’t this feeling of being left out or being, you don’t feel like, oh, I’m not clever enough. Or, oh, there’s no chance for me to talk or I’m outside of something. So I think, just knowing that the other person there is there to listen to you and it’s just the two of you is sort of a totally different feeling and something that people are actually craving.

01:02:38

Jasmine Bina:
So have you found that considering what is happening with COVID and this bubbling up conversation about loneliness and what isolation actually does to people and loneliness was a problem before COVID even happened, which is just compounded now, how has that kind of changed the approach to how you guys talk about the app or anything that you’re doing with its design or the UX?

Danielle Baskin:
And we’re intentionally not using the word loneliness or feel less alone with our app. I mean, I think people are writing about it that way, but we want the language behind it to seem fun and talk about specific topics and not directly addressing mental health, because I think a lot of people don’t want to admit that they’re lonely or just reject the idea of needing a mental health app.

01:03:30

I mean, I like to think that Dialup is just secretly a mental health app. And I also think the focus of it is not like, you’re lonely, talk to another lonely person. It’s more like, hey, did you just read a book? Talk to someone else about this book and having that focus sort of makes that feel exciting. I think there’s issues if the app is discussing how you feel alone. The conversations are much less interesting if it’s like, discuss the last time you went hiking or there’s specific stories, then that’s a more engaging way to have a conversation.

Jasmine Bina:
Sometimes creating an experience of sincere connection, whether that’s within a brand, a product or just in our own lives, requires us to dismantle our notions of what it means to connect in the first place. Even rethinking something as basic as a phone call, a chance encounter, a hello can lead to new bridges between people.

01:04:34

And if there’s ever a time for us to explore new formats for that kind of connection, it’s now. People are expressing a new level of openness and they’re willing to allow brands to try new things, to push us a little further, if it means helping us get closer. Which brings us to the third part of our discussion. Rituals create continuity, connections give us a reason to move forward.

But what about loneliness? How does loneliness manifest itself over the longterm? And what do we know about loneliness that can help us explain what will happen after COVID-19 has passed? I asked Cassie Killam this question. She’s a social scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health and has worked with the World Economic Forum and Google Life Sciences to address the loneliness epidemic.

Her research has advanced our understanding of social health at community and population levels. And she has a unique insight to how loneliness can actually pivot our lives in surprising and not always negative directions.

01:05:33

Cassie Killam:
Long before the Corona virus struck, there was a huge body of literature around this topic. In fact, there’s been decades of research and different studies that have shown that our social relationships play a huge role in both our physical and mental health. And conversely, loneliness has a really detrimental effect. So there’s everything from, if you do not have close connections, you’re more susceptible to catching a cold, all the way to things much more severe like long-term depression, cardiovascular disease, and even premature deaths.

So there’s been some really alarming studies that have shown that if you are lonely you’re as likely to, or you have as higher risk of dying as things like smoking or being obese or being physically inactive. So it’s really incredible the amount of data that’s on this. And I kind of joke that there are very few things that scientists agree on all the time, but this is one of the things that is consistently a finding that really social connection makes such a huge impact in our physical and mental health and loneliness can be really problematic. And some of the reasons that we’re seeing for this underlying mechanism is one, there’s this notion of a stress buffering effect.

01:06:57

So essentially when you are lonely, you don’t feel like you have close connections. It triggers a stress response in your body, which can cause too, inflammation and weakened immune system. And in turn, as we know those things lead to disease and illness. And there’s been some really interesting research, actually, a study came out recently in MIT showing that loneliness triggers the same brain regions as physical pain.

So there’s literally this reaction in our bodies that’s absorbing this loneliness and it’s causing all sorts of long-term effects. Another kind of reason for this connection that people point to is that when you have close social connections, that capital brings you information and resources and different social norms. So if I have friends who are able to tell me where there’s a testing site that I can go get tested for coronavirus for free, or if all my friends exercise all the time and it creates a social norm where I feel like I have to do that as well, those are the kinds of things where our relationships benefit us in a much more kind of tangible ways.

01:08:06

Jasmine Bina:
That’s really interesting. I think we all kind of passively through different campaigns and the research that we see passively as consumers understand that loneliness can actually kill you or harm your health, but A, you don’t think about the second order effects of the fact that it actually just changes your world too. It makes your world smaller. It makes you less informed. It makes you less likely to understand social norms that may actually protect you in the long-term, things like that.

We’re obviously in a prolonged state of isolation right now. And like you said, this was a problem well before COVID even hit. And more than that, it’s not just loneliness that some people are probably experiencing, it’s uncertainty and fear and vulnerability. And I would say even people who maybe felt super connected before, there’s still got to be some loneliness creeping in.

01:08:54

I mean, I’m seeing this among my network where even though you have digital ways of communicating and people check in on each other physical isolation, it does bring on some mental sense of isolation as well. So what do you think this is going to do? Is this going to have a long-term effect on us? Or do you feel like how resilient are people? What can we expect from this?

Cassie Killam:
That’s a great question. Well, I think two things. On one hand, I’m definitely concerned. I share what you’re expressing that there’s definitely a risk of exacerbating existing mental health and other issues, right? There’s a chance that this could exacerbate loneliness, that more people could become lonely or that people who were lonely before will experience that in a much deeper way.

01:09:43

There’s also things like addiction or depression or things like that, that I definitely am concerned that those might worsen. And that long-term damage, I mean, that’s not even talking about the economic toll and the disparities and the access to healthcare coverage, and all those kinds of things. I mean, just focusing on kind of the psychological and emotional impact. I definitely think there’s a risk and I’m going to be paying close attention to the research that comes out.

On the other hand, I am cautiously optimistic. I think to your point, humans are very resilient. We’ve seen this at every stage of humanity and throughout history. And I am optimistic that this could bring us together. I think I’m seeing much greater awareness about the fact that relationships are really important to our health and to our wellbeing and to our sense of joy and fulfillment.

01:10:39

And I’m seeing a deeper appreciation among many people around that. I’m also seeing people reaching out to neighbors for the first time or to old friends who they might have lost touch with. And those kinds of actions and behaviors I think are really powerful collectively. I’m also seeing a lot of innovation in this space.

So some of these things are signals to me that there could be really positive outcomes from all of this. And my hope is that when we look back on this period, of course, we’re going to remember how difficult it was and how many lives were lost, I also hope that we will be able to say that it galvanized us and that we made different improvements to our culture and to our society as a result. I think humanity’s absolutely resilient. All the research suggests that, and I am definitely cautiously optimistic that in some ways this will strengthen our social health.

01:11:32

Jasmine Bina:
I think cautiously optimistic is the word. I don’t know. I feel like Americans are creatures of habit. We had a wealth of evidence to show us that loneliness was a true epidemic. It’s crazy to me that loneliness increases risk factors as much as, or I think I even read more than things like smoking, but you don’t really see too much cultural change around it. I was going to ask you why this epidemic even occurred beforehand, but I think the bigger question is what we’re talking about …

It even occurred beforehand, but I think the bigger question is what we’re talking about here, is it actually going to be top of mind after this is over as well? And I think it depends on how long this lasts too. I think right now we’re feeling the initial effects, like job loss, uncertainty, and fear, a lot of changes in our routines and habits and in our daily lives. But the longer that this lasts, I think the more of a chance there is that we’re going to come out of this changed people with changed priorities. Not that I want this to last longer at all.

01:12:34

Cassie Killam:
No, I can certainly speak to that. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right that this idea of habit building is really important, right? And I think if it were to end today, maybe we would just return back to our normal lives, but it’s looking increasingly like that’s not going to be the case and we are going to be dealing with this for many more months to come. And I think as horrible as that is, it does mean that the habits we’re developing right now around the ways that we connect with people, the relationships that we’re nurturing in different ways. Those habits could become really ingrained. And I think that’s where we can kind of see this as an opportunity to practice better habits, right? Better habits with regards to how we interact with social media and how we use technology. Better habits with regards to staying in touch with loved ones and prioritizing human connection as an imperative part of our lives.

So I do think you’re absolutely right. And I’m interested to see if those do last, but you’re also right that this has been an issue long before the pandemic hit. I mean, I talk about that in my recent article about how one of the studies that came out in January before this was getting as much attention as it is now found that 79% of Gen Zers are lonely on a regular basis, 71% of millennials, 50% of baby boomers. I mean, that’s a huge proportion of the population that feels lonely and chronic loneliness we know takes such a huge toll. And so I think it’s interesting to think about what were the cultural factors that were going on before Corona virus that led to this. And there’s quite a few, I mean, I wish there was just one because if there’s just one cause then there’s one straightforward solution, but that’s definitely not the case.

01:14:25

So one of the reasons that people point toward is overuse of technology, right? I mentioned this before that people often rely on social media as a substitute rather than a compliment for human connection. So we stroll through our social media feeds and we don’t actually engage in meaningful ways. And it’s easy to kind of feel saturated or full in some superficial way, which is such a different experience than when we spend time together in person. So this is an interesting thing to think about. Some of the research that’s coming out about this is quite mixed actually. So there’s certainly been some findings that spending a lot of time on social media can put you at risk for depression or things like that. But there’s also findings showing the opposite. There’s studies that have come out saying that people who have a healthy, emotional relationship with their technology and really see it as a tool to connect with people that they are actually better off and happier when they use it to do that.

And I think what this tells me is that, it’s complicated, right? It’s how you use technology and social media that matters. But certainly that’s one of the factors that has led to loneliness before the Coronavirus. A second factor is different trends and how we live, right? So it’s quite normal now, especially in the millennials to move around really often, I’ve lived in, I think, nine or 10 cities at this point throughout my lifetime. People are much more transient. They move around, which means that you go to a place and you develop some friendships and then you leave and it’s harder to sustain those. And similarly, there are other trends in how we live. So there’s kind of the social norm in different urban areas or cities to not even know your neighbors. And we’re seeing that change now with coronavirus and people reaching out to help one another.

01:16:12

But that was very much the social norm before. Similarly, it’s very common to live alone. I think more people live alone in apartments or homes than have ever done so in history before. And that’s where it becomes important to think about the difference between isolation and loneliness, right? Just because you live alone, doesn’t mean you’re going to feel lonely, but it certainly can be a risk factor. And then there are many other factors that lead to loneliness before Coronavirus.

There’s the way that our cities and apartment buildings are physically designed. There’s the amount of time we spend on work that needs little time for being with loved ones, there’s social anxiety or things like that, that prevent us from engaging in kind of a free way. There’s so many different factors. And I think all of that, to me, it says that this is really complex. It’s really nuanced. There are many different reasons that people feel lonely. And that means that there are many different ways that we need to support those people and different solutions that need to be built. And now the Coronavirus is kind of an added on element to all of that.

01:17:18

Jasmine Bina:
You bring up so many good points here, and there are a couple that made me think. You know, this idea of cities actually not being built in a way that promotes connection or community in a way that would combat loneliness. I know there was a really influential book called going solo that was written by, I believe it was a researcher at NYU talking about how more and more people were putting off marriage or were living alone later in life. That research became, I believe the basis for a lot of city planning in New York and zoning and permitting for living units that accommodated just one person. And it’s interesting because when you say it’s complex, yes, there are a lot of different factors, but at the same time, each one of those factors goes back. If you want to change it, you have to go back so many different steps before you find the root of the problem.

Another example of that is when you talk about transients and people moving around a lot. On our last episode, we were talking with Rory Sutherland and he was talking about how we don’t realize it. But when you sign up for a graduate degree, you’re signing up to move because you need to work to pay off that debt. And so you’re going to have to go from wherever you are to some sort of city center. And the chances are, especially with the way work is changing. You’re going to have to move more than once to justify that decision that you made so many years ago. And then that brings up even bigger questions about, how do we change the norms around education and what it means to get a degree. So it’s complex at least on two dimensions that you talk about. I think that’s fascinating, but when you start to talk about technology, I know that you’re right.

01:19:00

There are some technologies that I’ve seen reports about, mostly kind of AI tech that provides some sort of companionship to senior citizens and people who are in nursing homes or people who are in hospitals. I’ve seen that kind of tech proven to actually improve moods and help people heal faster where they feel like they’re connecting to an avatar or something like that. But it’s weird because the conventional advice has always been, there’s no replacement for human to human interaction, but now we don’t have that. But you described that there is a good way to use technology.

I think you’ve talked about this in the past. You’ve mentioned that even little changes, like instead of liking somebody’s post, actually send them a small note that says why you liked that post or actually communicate with them. And that’s the problem with social life, I feel like it lets you connect or be present in somebody’s world without forcing you to communicate with them. What do you think of that? You don’t have to agree with me. That’s just something I kind of spit balled right now as I was talking. But, what do you think draws the line between technology that helps and technology that looks like it would help, but it doesn’t really?

01:20:11

Cassie Killam:
It’s such a good question. I think we’re still figuring this out collectively. I think what inspires me is seeing technology used to connect people who wouldn’t otherwise connect. For example, I used to do a lot of research in the mental health space and there are tons of support groups online for people who have different illnesses or rare diseases or things like that, or new moms or you name it. There’s some sort of community for you online. And I love seeing examples like that, where someone in the middle of nowhere America can connect around a shared experience that they have with someone growing up in a completely different environment. So those kinds of things inspire me. But, I also think you’re touching on this sector that is really emerging. And it’s one that I would identify as kind of social wellness startups, right? And we’re seeing tons of companies and brands take this on and start to think about how we can relate to technology and use it as a tool to connect with one another that isn’t through likes and follows and those kinds of more superficial interactions.

And I think it’s been really interesting to see how some of these are getting attention now with the Coronavirus, but they were before too. And, you know, platforms like Zoom and Skype and FaceTime and the ones that we’re all using all the time now weren’t designed for what we’re doing now, right? They weren’t designed to host weddings or birthday parties or bar mitzvahs or any of these kinds of really meaningful gatherings. It’s actually very basic functionality. And now that user’s needs have changed. I think brands need to respond to that and we need to get way better at designing platforms and tools that enable people to connect in the good ways, rather than the bad ways like you’re talking about.

01:22:10

And I’m seeing people approach this from all different ways. So there are startups where the goal is to make new friends. So there’s one, I mean, I could list so many here. I probably shouldn’t. There’s Hey! VINA, there’s We3, there’s Panion, there’s Friended. There’s tons, just with the goal of making new friends. And then there’s ones with the goal of communicating with your loved ones or your neighbors in really meaningful ways. And some of those are Nextdoor, which I love some of the stuff they’ve been doing during the pandemic. There’s also smaller ones like Cocoon

Jasmine Bina:
Wait, are you talking about Nextdoor, the neighborhood app?

Cassie Killam:
Yeah

01:22:48

Jasmine Bina:
You know, Nextdoor is also a bit of a cesspool though. I don’t know. Nextdoor shows. I’ve seen a lot of hate on Nextdoor where neighbors are just terrible people to each other. It’s great that they’re doing things to connect people, but every time I’m on there to talk about something, there’s no way to not get trolled by somebody.

Cassie Killam:
What’s so interesting is it’s mirroring people, right? It’s a pool and people are going to be the way that they are and some people are wonderful and I’ve seen as, I’m sure you have many examples of people connecting in great ways through Nextdoor and other platforms. And also there are people who would be better if they didn’t engage. At least there’s the option, right? You can reach out on those kinds of platforms if you do need help from a neighbor. And I think there are many stories of that going well.

01:23:40

Jasmine Bina:
That’s true. Actually I did. We’ve had some package theft and I’ve noticed when I started talking about it on Nextdoor, we were able to band together and actually effect some change in our community because of it. But at the same time, I’ve deleted posts because people just went bat shit crazy.

Cassie Killam:
We need to teach empathy and compassion, emotional intelligence. That’s just a whole different issue.

Jasmine Bina:
Right. There is something that I’ve read in your work that I think is so interesting. And I want to give enough time to talk about this. And that is the fact that you’ve mentioned, and I’m going to quote you here. You said, “no one is exempt from suffering”. And I think people understand that right now, everybody is suffering in some ways. And we all know about post-traumatic stress. And I think people are starting to consider, if we consider this a traumatic event, what will be the post-traumatic result of it? You know? And that’s one thing, but you talk about something called post-traumatic growth that’s been researched and there’s evidence for the fact that there’s more than one way to actually internalize what trauma actually is and how it affects your life afterwards. And I would love it if you could describe that for us.

01:24:57

Cassie Killam:
Absolutely. Yeah. So this was something I researched five years ago now, because at that time I was going through some things in my own personal life. Some of my loved ones were going through some challenging times. And it seemed like in the news, all I could see, I mean, I guess this is always true that time I was really struck by some of the shootings and different things that I was seeing on the news all the time. And I was seeking answers. I wanted to know, there must be research on how we make sense of this kind of experience and how we can draw strength from it. And my background, I started out studying positive psychology, which is this field that says mental health is not just the absence of illness. It’s also the presence of wellness and you need to study and help people build up those assets and those resources.

So I started digging into the literature on this idea of post-traumatic growth. And this is the notion that more than just being resilient through really difficult times or through adversity, people can actually emerge stronger and happier and healthier in certain ways following adversity. And this seems counterintuitive. It seems crazy, but actually a lot of the data shows that by actively searching for good, in a terrible experience, people can actually use adversity as a catalyst for growth and for development and for a different level of psychological functioning. And this isn’t to say that we should diminish or disregard suffering or anything like that. I mean, absolutely we all go through horrible things and we need to give ourselves time to mourn that and really feel that, but the research on post-traumatic growth shows that in addition, there are ways that you can grow in meaningful ways.

01:26:47

And so there were five elements that I outlined in the article you’re referencing, and these are kind of signals of post-traumatic growth. And I find that really helpful to think about because they point toward ways that we can think about our experiences and grow from them. So the first is around personal strength. This is the idea that when you go through something terrible and you get through it, you realize how awesome you are and how powerful you are and how you can be resilient despite really challenging things. And that gives you this gives you the sense of feeling much stronger. So that’s the first way. The second is relationships, right? So through adversity and suffering, we bond with other people, whether it’s deepening our relationships with the people we go through that experience with or connecting with completely new people.

And I think we’re really seeing this in the context of Coronavirus, because we are all collectively going through this shared filed experience and we’re supporting one another in new ways. And so that’s such an important part of healing and, just this idea of strengthening our relationships. I mean, suffering can give us empathy and it can give us compassion. And right now we’re all experiencing loneliness to some extent, perhaps for the first time, which gives us empathy for people who may experience that chronically even outside of a pandemic. So it’s that second one of relationships I think is really important. The third signal of post-traumatic growth is life appreciation. So this is the idea that when you go through something rough, you value the good things in your life that much more, and you might have even a renewed sense of motivation to make the most out of your life.

01:28:34

So that can manifest as gratitude, as savoring or being mindful of the pleasures and joys in each day. So the sense of greater life appreciation, I think is something that perhaps many of us are going through right now or recognizing how much we appreciate our friends and family. We appreciate nature in any way. We appreciate our health, if we’re lucky enough to have it in a new way. So that’s really important one. And then the fourth is around beliefs, right? So whether that’s religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs or how you make meaning out of different experiences, those can be either reinforced and become stronger or actually changed through adversity and suffering. So you think about someone who is very religious and who derives meaning about the relationship with God, through going through a really challenging experience or conversely someone who loses their faith in God, after going through something horrific, so fourth, is beliefs.

Jasmine Bina:
What’s important about this one is that it’s not necessarily about having beliefs. It’s about reassessing them and becoming more resolute in what your beliefs are.

Cassie Killam:
Exactly more resolute or shifting entirely that is lasting. And that can, can be beneficial in a way.

01:29:52

Jasmine Bina:
Interesting. Okay

Cassie Killam:
Yeah. And then the fifth and last one is around new possibilities. So this idea that when we go through really challenging times, we kind of have a moment where we reassess our lives. We consider a new career paths or new places that we might want to live or new hobbies, or we really re-envision what we want our life to look like. And I think, again, that’s quite relevant to this pandemic. People are thinking about, do they want to keep living in cities or would they rather be somewhere with more trees or, what are the kinds of careers that they want to dedicate themselves to when this is over? So I think there, again, it’s really relevant.

So yeah, the bottom line on this research on post-traumatic growth is really that, we can turn suffering and challenges into personal development and use them in ways that help counteract the stress. And it’s not to say it’s easy. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t feel negative emotions or that it reflects poorly on you if you go a different route and feel tremendous stress and grief from this, that’s so valid, that’s such a human experience that we all share. But I think it gives me hope and optimism seeing that there are ways that we can transform some of these experiences into benefits that are long lasting,

01:31:15

Jasmine Bina:
And these five, that you describe your personal strengths, relationships, gratitude, beliefs, and new possibilities. It feels like it cuts both ways. So when you look at people who have post-traumatic growth, they exemplify these five things. But if you feel like you are experiencing post-traumatic stress and want to see if you can change it to growth, you can use these five things as a framework for getting there.

Cassie Killam:
Exactly.

Jasmine Bina:
I’m not a scientist or a researcher, but I would say even just focusing on one or two may be helpful. And I think what’s interesting about these five is if you look at the market for wellness technology solutions or products, right now, a lot of products seem to focus on one of these five somewhere, which is interesting to me, you know, maybe there’s more of a macro view where there’s a way to incorporate all five of them. But it’s interesting that there is probably a specific set of solutions for each one of these things, if you should need it.

01:32:13

Cassie Killam:
Absolutely

Jasmine Bina:
And I feel like, correct me if I’m wrong. When I look at these five, I think you’ve even said this in your writing. Collectively, what it’s really saying is it’s about deriving, meaning from the experience. So you don’t have to believe that it happened for a reason, but you could ascribe a meaning to it and live into that meaning.

Cassie Killam:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s something that I first learned reading Viktor Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he was a, I believe a psychiatrist who lived through the Holocaust. And that was his main message that the people who were able to get through that absolutely horrific time were the ones who A were lucky or B were able to create their own sense of meaning. And hold on to that sense of purpose through the horrific circumstances that they were going through. So you’re absolutely right. It’s not to say that there’s some innate meaning or purpose for suffering. I definitely would not argue that, but we can create our own sense of meaning and decide what is the message that we want to take from getting experience.

01:33:30

Jasmine Bina:
Thank you for listening to our podcasts. We appreciate each and every one of you. And if you liked this episode, share it with a friend. If you really loved it, give us a review on whatever podcast platform you’re using to help us spread the word to other thinkers like you. And come connect with me personally. You can find me Jasmine Bina on LinkedIn and I’m on Instagram and Twitter under the handle, triplejas. That’s T R I P L E J A S. You’ll see me share parts of my personal life, as well as my thoughts on brand strategy and on Instagram, I often hold strategy AMS that people seem to like, so come join us. I would love to talk to you.

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Podcast

10: The Power of Perception, Permission and Choice in Society and Governmen‪t

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date April 23, 2020
No Comments on 10: The Power of Perception, Permission and Choice in Society and Governmen‪t

Rory Sutherland, author of ‘Alchemy’ and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy talks to us about psychological and branding techniques for managing behavior during and after transformative cultural moments like COVID-19 and beyond. We explore models of human behavior, social norms, belief systems and the nuance of what he calls America’s “gloriously optimistic consumer base”.

Podcast Transcript

april 23, 2020

50 min read

The Power of Perception, Permission and Choice in Society and Governmen‪t‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
This is Unseen Unknown, I’m Jasmine Bina. We’re living in a time of major cultural change, and we’ve talked about how that change can look on an individual or tribal level, but what about on a country level? How can governments use different psychological and branding techniques to change behaviors around work, life, and crisis situations like the one we’re living in now with COVID-19? Not too many people are qualified to answer a big question like this, but Rory Sutherland is a unique person. He’s the vice-chairman of Ogilvy, a very respected thinker, prolific writer, and the author of Alchemy, which is one of the most popular brand strategy books around right now. His TED talks have been viewed over six-and-a-half million times, and a lot of his thinking has literally shaped the world around us.

Rory’s work has boldly explored human psychology and behavior for global airlines, international conglomerates and of course, governments. He calls himself an anarchist, I’ve seen others call him a contrarian, and NPR has labeled him one of the leading minds in the world of branding. There’s nobody like Rory, and this was truly an interesting conversation that I didn’t want to end, and I think you’ll feel the same way too.

01:34

The first question I want to ask you is like, we understand the policies in the rules are being put in place to control populations across the world, but what I really wanted to start this conversation with you about, was managing perceptions and emotions, especially of a population in panic, and I think we’ve seen different governments do different things, and you seem to have a real international perspective on branding and perception and persuasion and all that, what have you seen across the world that you think is working, where governments are taking psychology into account and people’s subconscious motivators and things like that?

02:12

Rory Sutherland:
It’s a really interesting debate between persuasion and compulsion, and one of the things I thing we were probably remiss about everywhere was it was assumed … now maybe I got this wrong, it’ll be very interesting to look at the final results, and to be honest it’ll be months before we fully know what’s going on I think, but I noticed that the UK had gone into voluntary seclusion to a significant extent before it was made mandatory, and that might be a mixture of fear, it might be a mixture of, as I said, slight laziness which is, “Well if I’ve got a good excuse to work from home today, which is the possible threat, I might as well do so,” and I think a very interesting thing will emerge when we need to come out of lockdown, which is what mixture do we use of rules, and there will need to be rules, for example I think it’ll be a long time before mass audience events reopen, whether that’s theatrical performances, cinemas, or sporting events.

That will need to be rule-driven. Some part of it could be voluntary. I mean I’ve always half joked but there’s a serious point to it, which is that a large percentage of the working population are introverted by temperament, and in many ways, quite like a degree of self-isolation or working from home, and it’s always worth remembering that the patterns of behavior in society tend to be disproportionately set by the most extrovert, the most sociable, and the most active, and it’s also worth remembering that the social norms are set by the active, because active people are visible, whereas people staying at home and watching television, by definition, aren’t.

04:07

So as soon as you leave your house you’re exposed to lots of active people, whereas inactive people, I mean people who are quite content with a screen and a book, are by nature, tend to be less salient and less visible. And so I think there’s a part of it which is that you can significantly reduce the amount of people traveling at peak times on public transport and the amount of people traveling into city centers if you legislate for a degree of choice. Now no one’s yet suggested this, it’s what I call libertarian legislation, which is that you actually legislate … now it’s generally assumed by libertarians that all legislation is welfare limiting because it’s choice limited, but I think it’s possible to legislate … if you read John Stuart Mill on liberty, as much of his concern about the constraints to individual liberty were directed at social norms and conventions, as were directed at government and government compulsion and forced action.

And it’s simply an area for discussion. I’ll give you an example of libertarian legislation which is here in the UK we have a first term female member of parliament for Faversham called Hellen Wakely, and her legislation is simply around what you might call a norm or a default, and she simply says that when you advertise a new job in any form, it’s assumed that the job offers a degree of flexible working unless the ad states the contrary, and so that’s simply changing a norm so that by default jobs are deemed to be flexible unless there’s a good reason for the opposite. Now at the moment what you tend to have is a default where jobs are assumed to be nine to five, five days a week, no flexibility of place, no flexibility of time, unless the advertisement specifically states otherwise.

06:06

And what was very interesting about this was it was intended, and rightly so, particularly to benefit women who were either careers or for example working mothers, but it was equally popular as she discovered to her surprises, that she got equally as much support among men, and it’s an interesting point about this, which is … I mean one of the things that always fascinated me about business behavior is how little use we made of video conferencing, if you consider the fact that in some respects it’s like a superpower, you know, you can talk to an audience of 50 people in Romania and 20 minutes later I can be talking to three people in Atlanta. Now you can’t even do that if my employer gave me a Learjet.

You know, it’s a pretty special ability, and yet I never fully understood why people didn’t sit down and go, “This is an important technology, it enables a significant improvement in quality of life, in freedom of whom we can employ and how, and under what terms, and I think brings with it pretty significant cost savings and productivity gains, if we use it intelligently.” But nobody really did that, they just kept on working as though it was 1984 and plowing into the office at eight o’clock. I mean this has struck me as weird for a long time, in that people get up early in the morning, they travel into work on crowded roads or crowded railway trains, and then when they get to the office at, let’s say, 8:45, they spend the first two hours doing their email.

07:36

But your email’s exactly the same at home, there’s no point in coming into an office to do something which is location irrelevant, and yet people still did. So I think there’s a role for what I call libertarian legislation, which is just giving people a right, according to their preference and their specific circumstances and needs, the right to do things differently in defiance of what are arbitrary conventions.

Jasmine Bina:
That’s really interesting, so it seems like you’re saying the choice isn’t enough, you actually have to sometimes change the defaults so that people are forced to make a choice?

08:12

Rory Sutherland:
Yeah, because I mean we’re a kind of … you know, very much a copying species, what is weird is generally defined by what most other people don’t do, and you can understand why the workplace, someone who’s slightly nervous about their job, is going to be terrified of working from home on a Friday if the other person who’s after the next promotion comes into the office on Friday, so there’s a kind of FOMO going on there, quite literally I think, which creates a kind of presenteeism. Now that may have absolutely nothing to do with productivity or the economic value you create while you’re at work, I mean famously the founder of my own company David Ogilvy says he never wrote a single word in the office. He’d go into the office to talk to people or administer things, but all the ads he wrote, all the books he wrote, he wrote at home.

Now he was obviously the company founder so he had the freedom to do that, and I’m a kind of vice-chairman so I have the freedom to adopt fairly whimsical working patterns that happen to suit my temperament, and I like long periods of discretionary time alone in order to work, I also am a bit of a night owl, so I have the freedom, I suppose partly because my job title’s eccentric, you know, pretty much to work at a pace and pattern that suits me fairly well, and I think my productivity is boosted by that. Now 95% of people in the workplace don’t have that same freedom. If you’re naturally an early bird and you’re naturally highly extrovert and you don’t like … some people like a very, very strong partition between their work life and their home life, and if you’re one of those people, the existing arrangement probably suits you fine, and you’re probably in, if not a majority, at least a fairly large minority.

10:04

But there are a lot of people who are essentially forced to go with the flow, it’s rather like if you were a bunch of friends at a bar and people buy drinks in rounds, you’re sort of forced to drink at the pace of the heaviest drinker in the group, because otherwise you miss out, and I think those same problems affect human behavior. I learned a lot of this, by the way, by reading books by a great guy who’s at Cornell, I think, called Robert H. Frank, and he’s written books called The Darwin Economy for example, and one of the points he makes is that there’s an awful lot of human behavior which is really signaling behavior, it’s all to do with things like imagery and presentation and self-marketing, which is not really about mainstream productivity, it’s done … so we travel to Frankfurt to visit a client not because the meeting couldn’t be performed more effectively on Zoom, but to signal our commitment to that client, and let’s say there’s a client issuing a pitch, if one of your four competitors decides to fly out to Frankfurt to take the briefing, then the other four companies are basically obliged to do the same, for fear of being placed at a relative disadvantage.

And there’s an awful lot of human consumption and consumer activity which is positional rather than absolute in its gains, and so it’s worth remembering that, you know, don’t think that naturally competitive behavior, as adopted by individuals, is necessarily the same as what is collectively optimal or rational.

11:40

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah that’s really interesting, this idea that you’re describing that you can give people permission, I guess, to kind of … especially, let’s say, introverts to kind of be introverts and not have to go with the norm by just changing some defaults or changing the way choices are made around things like video conferencing or visiting a client in person, like that can be very, very powerful, and that’s engineered by some governing body. What was also interesting to me that I wanted to talk to you about is that in some countries you did have the public reacting really positively to the pandemic, so like in Hong Kong for example, they did really well, they claimed an early state of emergency because they still remembered SARS, people already had their masks, they were pretty well organized, but it wasn’t perceived as a government effort or a government success, it was really perceived as a success on behalf of the people, because the government seemed to be lagging.

Rory Sutherland:
Yeah I mean those are … you know, according to the [inaudible 00:12:37] measure, Eastern societies tend to be more collectivist, so you have the opposite in the United States where you have a very strong individualist tendency, and a large group of people are actively resisting the lockdown and demanding to go back to work, for example, and so part of that I think does reflect cultural differences, and it’s worth remembering … it’s always worth remembering in any international setting, that Anglo Saxon cultures of which we’re both part of one, are anomalous in fact. I mean there are very, very many things about your typical … I don’t mean this racially, I mean this culturally, that if you’ve grown up in the United States or the UK, or to some extents, you know, Scandinavia for example, your particular world view is likely to be much, much more individualistic than is typical for the world as a whole.

13:39

And also there are simple patterns like our approach to extended families is completely different to that which would be seen as completely normal in three or four billion of the world’s people. You know, broadly speaking we have very, very nuclear families, we don’t live with our grandparents et cetera, et cetera. Now we think of that as perfectly normal, in the wider scheme of things it’s rather an anomaly. In fact David Brookes interestingly, who I think is a very interesting commentator in the New York Times wrote a piece recently suggesting that you know, the idea of the nuclear family was a mistake and it’s kind of a luxury for the rich.

Jasmine Bina:
Yes I read that article, and it kind of stopped me in my tracks.

14:25

Rory Sutherland:
Me too, because we know … we have … you know, there are strong elements where because Anglo Saxon cultures have been quite successful in some dimensions, we don’t ask ourselves nearly often enough whether at the absolutely personal level, at the level of lived experience as opposed to economic success, whether there’s an invisible cost, just as for example there’s an economic gain but an invisible cost to the extent to which Americans, until recently, were unbelievably prepared to up-sticks in search of pay rises. You know, you’d move to the other side of a continent in order to get a 20% pay rise, I’m sure that economists regard that highly desirable, I mean Brookes’ piece made the point that at some level in extended families there’s a mutual support network and an intergenerational support network, which protects people, I think, against all sorts of downsides.

There’s also, I guess, a kind of reputational framework if you look at something like the Indian divorce rate and compare it to the American divorce rate. The Indian divorce rate is absolutely minuscule, now you know, a large part of that may be cultural tradition, but some part of it may be wider parental pressure and societal pressure. So the degree to which a young Anglo Saxon person, this is often called WEIRD isn’t it? It’s … what’s it? White educated industrialized rich and democratic is the acronym, and a large amount of behavioral science work is done on students or graduate students from WEIRD countries, and it is worth remembering, for example, that people who are living in highly cosmopolitan settings in, let’s say, New York City or London, are in a megalopolis, they have lives which are hugely atypical, and I don’t mind that, by the way, the fact that they’re atypical, what I do mind a little bit is the assumption that their style of life is also inherently superior, more sophisticated and more desirable than someone who lives more locally.

16:37

Jasmine Bina:
Right.

Rory Sutherland:
And so there’s a degree of it, by the way, which I also think is actually dishonest. That in many ways people are forced to move to large cities for economic reasons and having done so, they confabulate the reasons why those cities are so great. I think if one’s being completely objective about it, there’s a hell of a lot to be said for living in suburbia, or living in smaller towns, simply in terms of convenience [inaudible 00:17:05] particularly … if you’re in defense of small towns, it’s worth remembering that the internet and online shopping and so forth, and online stimulus through Netflix or whatever it may be, the cultural deficit you suffer from living further away from a large city is a fraction of what it would have been 20 or 30 years ago.

You know, in other words I could go and live in West Wales or Snowdonia or something and my Netflix will be just as good as yours, and my Amazon will be just as good as yours, and you know, it’s not as if you’re no longer have access to interesting or exciting stimulus, regardless of the place you find yourself in, so logically the case for living somewhere out of a large city should have grown, but equally it sort of baffles me that young people, understandably to a degree, say, “Oh no, property is completely unaffordable.” And you go, well actually, if you’re prepared to put up with a sort of commute by train rather than a commute by tube, there is in fact fairly affordable, fairly attractive property, it’s just not the property that suits your own particular self-image.

18:16

And so this is where I think there is an economic trap in that once you’ve got into debt acquiring educational credentials, the only place you can actually pay that debt back in terms of salary differential, is by going to a huge megalopolis and therefore being forced to do so, and being forced to do so in order to keep up with your friends, to an extent, then forces people, I think, to post-rationalize reasons as to why city dwelling … because I’ll be absolutely candid with you, okay this is why I’m mixed, which is I pretty much thought I’d never leave London, and then I had twins. Now, had I had my children not through batch processing but one at a time, I think I would have stuck it out … I would have stuck it out in London for child number one, and then at the point of child number two and wondering where they went to school and so forth, I probably would have bottled it.

But what I in fact did is I moved out once we had twins, fairly rapidly, and in defense … and this may be a dose of post-rationalization as well, I suddenly discovered that there were extraordinary gains in terms of convenience, ease of movement, and actually that business which is you’re just bumping into the same people time after time rather than endlessly doing business with strangers, which do make life quite a bit easier. Maybe it’s something you care much more about when you’re 50 or 40 … I was … what was I then? 35, 36, maybe it’s something you care about more when you’re 36 than when you’re 26, but it struck me that there were all these extraordinary benefits to living slightly outside London, that up to that point had never occurred to me.

19:54

Jasmine Bina:
Well you bring up a good point though, when you sign on for that expensive degree, you don’t realize that you’re signing on for all these second order commitments as well.

Rory Sutherland:
That’s beautifully put by the way, that’s really … that’s a lovely expression of it.

Jasmine Bina:
Thank you. I wonder if also this common threat has allowed for other kind of exceptional things to happen, for example Apple and Google partnering up to create that contact tracing system, which so far in the media in the US has been pretty well received, even though you would imagine it brings up a lot of privacy questions, but I wonder if these kinds of things get fast tracked because public is so much more willing to embrace them because there’s a public enemy, they no longer see corporations like Apple and Google as the enemy, they see all of us aligned against a different enemy all together?

20:45

Rory Sutherland:
You’re absolutely right, and I think it was Ronald Reagan who made this point when he was negotiating with probably Gorbachev, was it? Which is if we were invaded by aliens, the Russians and the Americans would bury their differences within seconds, and the extent to which we’re only properly one in the presence of some external other, perhaps a regrettable facet of human psychology, but it may be at some level true. I mean the thing that’s fascinating me here, and I’ve just written a piece about this, is that we’ve seen a variety of engineers from companies … one area where Britain really excels is in Formula 1, in car racing. Car racing with curves, not where you go round, and round, and round, just for American listeners, you know, where you might actually make a right turn occasionally.

So strangely I think all but about three or four of the Formula 1 companies are headquartered in the UK and some of them have produced extraordinary prototypes and indeed started the manufacture of essential medical equipment, in an incredibly short period of time, and the question I was asking exactly in this article is how come we can do this under conditions of crisis? Why don’t people go to McLaren in ordinary … under ordinary conditions and say, “What can you do here which is spectacularly inventive?” And it is exactly that thing of necessity being the mother of invention, but what is it that’s possible that could motivate us to do exactly these things under normal conditions?

22:15

You know, I don’t think the economists have got it right, patent isn’t money. It may be that, you know, I did … one theory is that the levels of bureaucracy that normally apply and if you are someone who worked for the Formula 1 team I imagine, as I said in my piece, three hours dealing with healthcare regulators would leave you wanting to bite your own arm off with the sheer boredom of it. You know, if you’re used to working in the high octane, white knuckle world of Grand Prix racing, then dealing with the kind of bureaucracy or healthcare procurement might be a bit of an obstacle, but there is something there which we should be able to capture in normal times, and for whatever reason, we don’t do it.

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah, I always assumed that for some reason a crisis gives you the ultimate permission, like there’s just … it almost feels like no holds barred, in a way that I don’t know that your boss could give you.

23:09

Rory Sutherland:
It gives you permission to fail, certainly, in that you could argue that normal institutional businesses, and entrepreneurs are distinct from this, entrepreneurs have a very different approach to upside and downside risk to a desk jockey in a corporation, but your typical institutionalized man, actually, and I might actually use man in both senses here, is very, very biased towards what you might call incremental, quantifiable improvement under normal circumstances, but you might argue that something that has a 20% chance of spectacular success but an 80% chance of failure is actually a bad career move for that person, because 80% of the time he loses his job, fails to get the promotion.

Now, under wartime conditions, Churchill actually, if anything, as a wartime leader had too great an appetite for bonkers ideas and some of his advisors had to kind of throttle back on some of the more insane ideas Churchill would entertain. You know, things like, for example, the bouncing bomb, made famous in the Dam Busters Raid, you know, would that have been given much consideration in peace time? I rather suspect not.

24:25

Jasmine Bina:
I always felt like these grand, ridiculous but important ideas really characterize a time in the past, but I don’t … do you feel like these ideas, like this culture of coming up with these kinds of insane ideas, at least on like a cultural level is happening now?

Rory Sutherland:
Maybe it’s harder. I mean it’s worth remembering that, that … I mean if you look at probably the most significant period of innovation in world history, I mean people argue about this and there’s a huge argument because some people, and with some good reason, would say, “No, in its effect in human life, the washing machine was a bigger invention than the internet.”

Jasmine Bina:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

25:07

Rory Sutherland:
Now the argument was before the washing machine, any poor to middle income household would have to spend … typically the wife of the household would spend a day in laundry work, so domestic appliances, by enabling women to join the workforce in much greater numbers, arguably had a bigger societal effect than something like the internet. I’m not, by the way, taking sides in that argument, I’m just saying the argument exists. Some people calculate that the 1930s was pretty much the high point for meaningful innovation, and that we … in many cases … so in some cases, like speed of transportation we’re up against the laws of physics, you can make a train go at 500 miles an hour but it’s really damn hard.

I would argue that it’s also slightly pointless in that for a large number of journeys, making the journey productive or entertaining gets you far better gains. I’d also argue that there’s something, if you think about it, which I always comment on, and apologies if anybody’s heard this before, which is that if you take my grandfather who was a doctor in a Welsh mining town, so you know, he was pretty well paid in fact, there were huge categories of goods that he could buy, that ordinary people couldn’t. The difference between a middle-class … a wealthy upper-middle-class salary which his was, and a median half salary in terms of what you might call, not numerical wealth, but actually effective utility, so just to give you an example, a bottle of whiskey in 1920 or 1930 would have been a week’s wages for a working man, okay?

26:46

That’s a bottle of spirits, now my grandfather could buy a car, he could employ some servants, he could buy a radio, he bought a washing machine, he bought a dishwasher, ultimately he could buy a television, these were absolutely transformative technologies which he could buy and other people couldn’t. Now if we take that experiment on another 50 years and we … you know, let’s take you and me, and you multiplied your salary by 10, or even 15, I’m not saying it wouldn’t make a big difference to your life, and you might retire early and do something like that, there isn’t actually something you can buy … okay, you’d sit at the front of the plane rather than in the middle, or you know, wherever it is you choose to sit, and your holidays would become progressively a bit more exotic or a bit more sybaritic, you know, you might go and stay in one of those sort of huts on stilts in the Maldives or something, but it’s not like your life would have been changed spectacularly by any of those things.

And so there is an interesting question, if you regard the fact that traditionally the rich have provided early funding … early stage funding for meaningful inventions which eventually trickle down to the less rich, we don’t really see that happening anymore. A little bit of our inner socialist would go, “If there is a reason for redistribution of wealth at the moment, it isn’t like rich people are funding things which would make a huge difference if only they could be manufactured at scale more cheaply.” In fact you know, very large amounts of wealthy people’s expenditure are almost spectacularly pointless, like luxury yachts and so forth. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’d be highly tempted if you gave me a billion dollars to buy a yacht, but to be absolutely honest I’d still … I’d buy it on the grounds that what’s the point of being a billionaire if you don’t have a yacht, I’m not sure the yacht would add that … even while I was writing the cheque, I wouldn’t be that confident that the yacht would add that significant into my happiness.

28:45

And at the same time of course we devalue things, you know I always make the point that King Louis the 14th would have given you half of Gascony in exchange for your 4K TV, and so there is that interesting debate which is maybe meaningful … I mean this is why I do ask questions like, “After this crisis can we change working patterns to some degree to give people a little bit more leisure?”

Jasmine Bina:
I did want to ask you about this, as a society whether it’s consumerism or work like you described, do you think anything will change permanently, or could?

29:17

Rory Sutherland:
I don’t know. I mean I hope there are enough people like me who will try our damnedest to make it change, I think it’s also meaningful that a lot of people have been exposed to remote working and technologies like Zoom, and have discovered that there’s a significant upside to working this way. It’s not all downside, the view of video conferences being a … it’s a very, very misjudged view that a video conference is a poor relation to a physical meeting, in many respects, not least the ease of attending, and the fact that it doesn’t have to last two hours, there are huge advantages to meeting in this way. That’s not even factoring in the environmental impact which is not negligible either, and so I hope it changes.

You see standard economic theory assumes that we choose the balance of work and leisure that is optimal for us. Now, this is so stupid as a model of human behavior, first of all because how hard do you work? Well in most environments you have to work a little bit harder than the person in the desk next to you, for symbolic reasons, not productive reasons. Secondly of course the unit of money is almost infinitely divisible, whereas the unit of leisure isn’t. There’s not much point in working a four-and-a-half day week is there really? Okay.

30:33

Jasmine Bina:
Right.

Rory Sutherland:
Well you know, … the other thing is, which I think is really interesting and something Ogilvy’s exploring and I’d like to share more widely, one of the things we debated during this commission, which we weren’t able to enact but I’m determined to keep alive, is an idea that either when a company runs into a bit of a rocky patch, or as a norm, certain people could go into a four day week for either every week, or three weeks out of four, for 90% of salary. Now, the mathematically able among you will go, “Well that’s far too much because if you’re working a four day week it should be 80% of salary.” No one is going to take that deal because they know damn well they take a 20% cut in salary, they’ll end up working about 92% as hard as they did before.

So you’d have to be a total mug to take the four day week deal if you are paid pro-rata, unless you worked in one of those fields where you literally … you know, you close down your laptop and you walked away and you didn’t do a thing, okay? And so no one’s going to take that trade-off, but the 90 for 40 trade-off where maybe you work a bit longer two days a week, and maybe you do work Fridays one week in three, now we’re starting to create exchanges which people might willingly opt for, either permanently or for part of the year. I would also hope that Millennials will start to factor this kind of thing into who they work for, the possibility of flexibility or work and one of the things I’m fanatical about with my team, because I’m a fanatical early Zoom convert is look, if you think you can be just as productive and you don’t have any meetings to attend and all your work can be done virtually without requirement of being in a specific place, if you want to go off to Marbella for a week and work there, it really doesn’t bother me.

32:28

Jasmine Bina:
I think Millennials in the US are a little primed for this already, because before any of this started there was this backlash starting against the idea of hustle culture and overwork which has really become romanticized in the last 20 years.

Rory Sutherland:
If I’m right, Bernie was keen that everybody in the United States should have a mandatory … was it three weeks paid holiday a year?

Jasmine Bina:
I don’t know, I’m not sure exactly what it was.

32:51

Rory Sutherland:
Certainly the North American approach to vacation entitlement is horrendous. I mean I have a friend who turned down a job at Google for this reason, and she was a Brit, and she said, “Look I’d absolutely love to work for you, the money you’re offering is fantastic, but let’s be realistic okay? I’m in a strange country which I want to discover and I need to understand better, I won’t be able to discover that country adequately with two weeks vacation, because one of those two weeks I’ll have to spend going back to the UK to visit my parents.” Hardly unreasonable.

Jasmine Bina:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rory Sutherland:
“So what you’re saying is I would then have five days worth to discover America, and part of my reason for moving to the United States is that … I mean yours is a country with a hell of a lot of shit to see, I love going to the United States,” but the idea … this is a classic case because I can genuinely say this, I’ve never met anybody … this is an example of how social norms become very heavily enshrined, going back to John Stuart Mill’s point, I’ve never met anybody in Europe, at all, zero, okay? Who is so right-wing they think we should have less vacation.

Jasmine Bina:
Right.

33:58

Rory Sutherland:
No literally, I have met one or two people who think that there are too many public holidays or bank holidays, which is where you get a Monday off. So I’ve met one or two people, and they generally go, “Look it’s all a bit of a disruption, and then it means that a lot of people then take the next four days as holiday.” In France it’s even crazier because you often get a public holiday on a Wednesday, which means everybody does a thing called [French 00:34:21] which is to make the bridge, where they take the Monday and the Tuesday or the Thursday and the Friday off, and then that means the entire country’s dysfunctional for a week, just because of [inaudible 00:34:30] public holiday.

I’d sympathize to people, but in terms of the amount of vacation we get, I’ve met some right-wing nutters, but I’ve never, never heard anybody even suggest that, “Gosh, if you think about it we could get another 2% of GDP if we just had only two weeks holiday,” nobody’s ever said that. Robert Frank does an experiment where he says, “Would you rather live in a world where the average person earns $80,000 a year and you earn 60, or would you rather live in a world where you earn $50,000 a year and the average person earns 30?” And quite a lot of people say, “I’d rather live in the world where I earn 50 and most people earn 30, because it’s a relative measure.” Wealth matters … if I want beachfront property and other status goods, relative wealth is more important than absolute wealth, okay?

35:21

But on the other hand, if you do the same experiment with vacation entitlement, would you rather have four weeks vacation when everybody else gets six, or would you rather have three weeks vacation when everybody else gets two? Nearly everybody plumps for four weeks. So vacation and leisure is an absolute good, whereas wealth is a positional good. I think it’s a wonderful thought experiment actually, it’s one of the simplest things I’ve ever seen to prove a very, very simple point.

Jasmine Bina:
That is very interesting, I would have never thought of it like that. Can we talk really quickly about stimulus packages across the world?

Rory Sutherland:
Yeah, not an area of expertise, but interesting nonetheless. Yeah.

35:58

Jasmine Bina:
Well what do you think? I mean I know that, like you said, a lot of these things are complicated, and maybe we hesitate to draw conclusions, but what do they reveal, if you had to say something about them? The fact that the US has a one-time payment of $1200 or something like that for most families, whereas other countries are doing a high percentage of people’s wages, others are doing actual monthly payments in one or two thousand dollar amounts, do you think it reveals anything about our social contracts or anything interesting that’s kind of surfaced because of this?

Rory Sutherland:
I think from my perspective, the US has always had a slight … it’s been a slight outlier there, in that in some respects you believe something which is both very good and very bad, which is you kind of believe that everybody’s the author or their own success, which … you don’t really attach much belief in luck, really. Okay, and to some extent you venerate very, very successful business people in a way that most other … many, not most, many other countries don’t. You know, in Britain is someone’s very, very rich there’s admiration mixed with suspicion.

37:11

Jasmine Bina:
Yes. I know what you’re talking about.

Rory Sutherland:
Which is that … you know, they might be highly worthwhile people but they might be either a bit psychopathic or else, you know.

Jasmine Bina:
Right.

Rory Sutherland:
Now the fact that you believe everybody’s the author of their own destiny is in a sense a wonderful illusion, which has, by the way, very, very positive effects in that the extent to which people put an effort into doing what they do very, very well is generally gratifying. The only thing is it does make you correspondingly a bit merciless to the victims of misfortune, and sometimes misfortune, by the way, is self authored. I’m not one of those people who goes … although it’s complicated, you know, I’ve had friends who are alcoholic, is that their fault or is it genetic? I mean who the hell knows, you know? But you can be a bit merciless to the victims of simple back luck.

37:59

Jasmine Bina:
I also feel like it kind of engenders this belief that if you aren’t successful, it’s your own fault. Like it has this other opposite contextual story that it’s telling.

Rory Sutherland:
Yeah, the other thing I think that becomes awkward for America, which is never talked about, which always interests me, and by the way, do not take this badly because I’m a huge Americanaphile.

Jasmine Bina:
I can tell you are. No I love having discussions like this.

38:23

Rory Sutherland:
No, I’m also, as I said, a very broad Amaricanaphile, I’ve been to the Wisconsin State Fair, it’s not just the Statue of Liberty and … okay right, you know, it’s not just the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore kind of stuff, but if you think about the United States, you’d have a very unusual position for about … 1950 it had about 50% of the world’s GDP, and for a long period right up until the 1980s not only were you much wealthier than the rest of the world, but when you went to the rest of the world, the rest of the world was a bit shit, okay? Now you know, Britain in 1975 was shit compared to the United States in 1975, now Britain is still poor in the United States, not so starkly as it was back there, but the extent to which Britain is crap compared to the United States is much less, visibly.

Or Mexico for example. So the extent to which the good things about America to some extent migrated outwards, you know, I occasionally watch … well as often as I can I watch North by Northwest, and you have to remind yourself as a Brit that this was actually filmed in … I think it was about 1955, is that right? The details of the film and the architecture and the train, which would have … my dad who’s 90, he and his brother when they were teenagers, they used to get American magazines, I’m not quite sure how, but they used to get the Saturday Evening Post and something like that, and they said, “When you were a British kid in 19 …” what will it be? 1940-something, they said the car advertisements were like science fiction, it was, you know, convertible cars with an electric opening roof and V8 straight, extraordinary stuff.

40:05

They said it was like another planet, now that isn’t the same as it once was, okay? It’s not like your cars are an order of magnitude bigger or shinier than ours are or whatever, so there is an interesting thing in America which I think is awkward for people who grew up where you would just automatically assume that everywhere else you went was a bit rubbish, that’s another change which I always mention, because nobody else … I’m not … think it’s hugely important but mentioning it because I think nobody else mentions it, the contrast you’d experience in going from the United States in 1960 to Britain or whatever, would have been absolutely enormous, and I think there’s something interesting going on there as well, but no, I think you can be a little bit merciless towards people who are simply the victim of misfortune for whatever reason.

You know Canada is different there I guess, isn’t it? You know, not that different in many respects, but the Canadians would have a slightly less individualistic strain to them.

41:02

Jasmine Bina:
Well I think at the very least, when Americans see what these packages look like across the world, it does invite these questions about what that means in terms of what our government is to us, or what we expect of it, and I think those questions have been coming up in the US at least for a while as more and more private or public companies take over more of the infrastructure and services that you would expect the government to handle for you, I think it’s just something that Americans have been negotiating for a while.

Rory Sutherland:
Well I also think there’s a fundamental misconception of economics, which is the belief in economics tends to lead … now you know, in most countries, the United States included, and the United States by the way has one fantastic advantage, which is you have a very gloriously optimistic consumer base, so the typical American tends to assume that life is capable of almost infinite improvement, in other words it’s very low in cynicism, and therefore if you develop a new way of doing things, you have an automatic and fairly sizable market for it, because of the United States neophilia, call it what you want, but willingness to adopt new practices and new things, and that by the way is a wonderful attribute, and the United States is growing in wealth and GDP growth in the US is pretty consistent over a straight line, and one of the things I think that tends to happen with economics is it’s kind of a science which arose under conditions of scarcity.

42:33

Now it tends to assume that what everybody wants is more crappier stuff at a lower price, I literally read this, by the way, in an economics paper and I was almost in guffaws of laughter, it was an American economics paper pointing out how much more efficient in the 1990s the American brewing industry was compared to the German brewing industry, and you know, I’m not German, I’m a Brit, but even so I was going, “But there is kind of a quality difference.” Okay? Let’s be candid here, German brewing offers extraordinary change of choice, variety, Weiss beers, you’ve got the purity laws, you’ve got extraordinary rich ecosystem, whereas the American ecosystem, a bit like the American ecosystem for cheese 20 years ago, was all around scale and efficiency and low price, and not around quality and variety and diversity.

And what you see now is America’s gone from being, I would argue, once the hipsters took over, America went from being about the worst country in the world in which to drink beer, to one of the best, because they abandoned this assumption that what people wanted was cheep beer produced in extraordinary quantities with enormous economies of scale. So I think there’s a really interesting thing there which is that so much of economics is probably driving government to produce what you might call … or driving just businesses to produce kind of lowest common denominator product, and yet a simple glance at who the most profitable companies in the world are, the most profitable companies in the world by a huge margin are luxury goods companies, whether you call that Apple, which is a kind of luxury goods company, okay?

44:16

Or it’s Louis Vuitton or whatever, it’s those companies that most ignore that kind of thing and concentrate the most on brand differentiation, brand value, and perceptual value, rather than on narrow definitions of efficiency, that make the most money.

Jasmine Bina:
So are you saying that maybe GDP is not really a measure of the real economics of a country?

44:40

Rory Sutherland:
I certainly wonder about whether … if you printed … I just ask this question because I’m interesting in behavioral science, if you printed a stack of money and gave everybody lots of money, the assumption would be you must not do that because it will cause inflation, and I’m simply not sure that’s true anymore. That patently … okay, if the price of something absolutely non-substitutable goes up, and that would be gasoline, bread, grain, if you have the price of bread doubled under the Roman Empire, that inflation caused inordinate problems because you couldn’t really substitute for it. Do I think in the same way that if you gave everybody huge amounts of cash there would necessarily be a huge inflation in the cost of, for example, flights? I’m not sure.

Because if you think about it, this is terrible marketing bullshit, but it’s always worth doing. When people buy a flight, what are they buying, okay? Well at the simplest level they’re buying transportation, but actually a marketer would say, “No they’re not buying transportation,” depending on how [wanky 00:45:41] the marketer was they’d say, “They’re buying self-actualization.” Or they’re buying … or they may say they’re buying status, they’re just showing off on Instagram that they’re in the Maldives and you’re not, but you can interpret these behaviors, consumer behaviors, in lots of different ways. Now you can’t really substitute for oxygen in the environment and you can’t really substitute for calories in our food supply, but you can substitute for a lot of those positional goods quite easily.

46:09

And then there’s the question of whether inflation necessarily matters in some of those areas.

Jasmine Bina:
That’s interesting. That’s a big idea.

Rory Sutherland:
I understand there’s a weird group of people who are involved in something called Modern Monetary Theory which more or less says something similar, which is that actually government could spend huge amounts of money basically apportioning it fairly willy-nilly and actually this would have actually a fairly paltry effect on actual behavior, and therefore an inflation. Now that seems an incredibly bold view, but it’s not … it’s one of those things which maybe you shouldn’t act on it, but it’s certainly worth exploring as a possibility.

46:49

Jasmine Bina:
And you seem to think that the probability of inflation actually happening with these circumstances is different now because people’s consumerism has changed?

Rory Sutherland:
And of course there’s the question of how undesirable a reasonable amount of inflation would be.

Jasmine Bina:
I see.

47:07

Rory Sutherland:
Which is that one thing about inflation is it does something which arguably is quite necessary which is it redistributes wealth from the old to the young. Inflation would also enable house prices to return to some sort of sanity in metropolitan areas, without necessarily leaving people under water. It would cancel debts fairly effectively, so you could argue that in a world where we generally regard intergenerational inequality as a major problem, inflation around the 3 to 4% mark may not be all that unhealthy.

Jasmine Bina:
This is fascinating, I kind of wish we had started the conversation with this. I’ve never heard an argument for inflation like this before, and it all seems so logical.

47:48

Rory Sutherland:
Now I mean the only thing is I’m always conscious of the fact that this is … I’m being deliberately contentious here, but equally the reason I’m contentious is that most thinking on most matters of this kind falls back to standard economic theory as a lazy default, and of course what we know about complex systems is depending on the circumstances, the same impetus can have very different behavioral results. We always talk about inflation, “Gosh isn’t inflation terrible?” Yet house price inflation, which is among the most disastrous things, hasn’t been included in the measure of inflation.

So how can you have a measure of inflation where a place to live and the cost thereof is not included in the basket of goods? Because there’s this delusional belief that increasing house prices is good news. It’s only good news if you’re planning to downsize, or if your parents are planning to die shortly, for everybody else through the course of their life, increasing house prices is a bad news story.

48:49

Jasmine Bina:
Well let me ask you something else that this brings up then, why are we so married to these really faulty measures of growth and economic gain?

Rory Sutherland:
I don’t know. I mean there have been attempts to kind of … Bhutan’s gross national happiness, I think a bunch of economists worked with the French president at one stage on trying to get better measures, and it’s worth remembering of course that part of the problem is we look at nearly all measures, are snapshot measures, whereas life is lived by an individual over time. Now I didn’t introduce ergodicity and non-ergodicity into the debate, because it would have added another half hour to the podcast, of which 15 minutes would be explaining the distinction, but what matters to your happiness is generally whether your wellbeing increases over the course of your life.

49:36

Now there’s … an awful lot of statistics are misrepresented because of this snapshot. Now this is … you know, if you look at the United States, the poorest 15% … 25% have hardly gained or indeed have lost out in relative terms, the richest 25% have gained fairly spectacularly, but they’re not entirely the same people. So you know, a trainee lawyer might well be in the poorest 25, certainly in terms of his assets, might well be in the poorest 25% of the American population. No one would think of him as poor, because his prospects are probably spectacular. So one of the problems is that it’s much easier to get and compare snapshot data of what’s happening to a particular group in a particular time, when actually the extent to which that translates to feelings of wellbeing may be incredibly inexact.

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah.

50:29

Rory Sutherland:
One of the reasons why you may … you know, you may have greater poverty in the poorest 25% of households is just smaller household size, or actually more people attending higher education is arguably creating more poor people.

Jasmine Bina:
Right.

Rory Sutherland:
So how the thing looks in a snapshot, and how the thing plays out over time, doesn’t even connect very well to begin with, and so we’re often looking at something at 90% off the angle we should be looking at.

50:57

Jasmine Bina:
That’s so interesting and I think so emblematic of this entire discussion which is really everything just seems to come down to a sense of perception, everything is so relative, and speaking of perception, I think that’d be a nice way to kind of end the discussion, I like to have these conversations come to a point where we ask you something personal and get your kind of more human take on what’s going on. So I’ll ask you, how has this pandemic changed your perception of your life, your work, your family, your world? Whatever it is, how do you feel that it’s changed you?

Rory Sutherland:
I’m a bit of an introvert. To be honest, in terms of … there’s mild anxiety all the time which I could do without, I had a bout of mild anxiety when our neighbors contracted the disease, so I could do without that mild sense of awkwardness. In general though I regard it as, and always have done, the ability to be content within your own head, which is despised by extroverts, I’ve always seen as a bit of a badge of honor. Just to give you an example, I love this fact, which I only discovered the other day, and it’s my favorite fact of the month, which is that there are only two sorts of … two animals on the planet who can watch television without having to be trained how to do it, which is humans and dolphins, isn’t that fantastic?

52:19

Jasmine Bina:
Oh that is very interesting.

Rory Sutherland:
So chimps don’t really get television at first, they go, “It’s a load of moving shapes, I don’t really get this,” and eventually you can kind of get them into, “No this is kind of a representation,” and apparently you can kind of train chimps, but dolphins get telly immediately, they go, “Oh look at that. What’s he doing with that fish?” Right? I always think that’s evidence that watching television is evidence of higher intelligence, and that the ability to enjoy this vicariously, by which I mean virtual tourism on YouTube’s great fun, have you ever done this? Just find some people who are walking around Prague with a 4K camera for two hours, and just leave it on on your telly.

52:58

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah.

Rory Sutherland:
It’s nearly as good as going there.

Jasmine Bina:
Is it? Okay.

53:04

Rory Sutherland:
So actually … no, the opportunity … one, I like working on Zoom, I like working remotely, and I like working through video calls to a huge degree. My writing has improved because I have more time at home to really, really focus on written output. The one curse is, and this is where we’ve got to fight it, the one remaining curse is email, that’s the one bane of my life, which is every moment I’m taking to someone, which is like my job, doing my real job, every moment I’m doing that, there’s an equivalent amount of unnecessary email building up in my inbox, and the extent to which email destroys your control over your time in a way that of course video calling doesn’t, video calling destroys the constraints of space, but it doesn’t impinge on your time in the same way. It’s email that we’ve got to fight.

And actually, that’s been, I think, a bane in most working life for ages, but I like the family time, I like the fact that the second I finish work I’m already at home. I like that fact that we eat together, I like the fact that if I go on walks, which I never did because you can work when it’s dark and enjoy the day while it’s light, to a degree, you know, I like the fact of the birdsong and the relatively empty roads. To a great extent it’s … you know, there are elements of this which are of course a huge human tragedy, we mustn’t forget this, but there are elements to it where we can turn it to our advantage by not losing sight of what we like about this.

54:35

Jasmine Bina:
If you liked this episode, share it with a friend. If you really liked this episode, sign up for our newsletter at conceptbureau.com/insights. We share a lot more than just our podcast, I also publish articles on brand strategy, we have videos, a lot of great discussions. If you’re on Instagram or Twitter, follow me at Triplejas, that’s T-R-I-P-L-E-J-A-S, I share my daily thoughts on brand strategy and culture, so come join the discussion, and if you’d like to see all of my writing, I’m on Medium, just find me under Jasmine Bina.

Interesting Links & More Reading

Podcast

9: What should brands be doing in the time of COVID-19‪?‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date April 9, 2020
No Comments on 9: What should brands be doing in the time of COVID-19‪?‬

The big question: how is a brand supposed to act during a pandemic? How can CEOs and brand owners serve their users in a meaningful way while still struggling to survive themselves? It’s not as simple as “We’re here for you” founder letters and reduced prices. To really serve your users, you have to read the room and know one thing - business may be slowing, but culture is accelerating.

Podcast Transcript

april 09, 2020

50 min read

What should brands be doing in the time of COVID-19‪?‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
This is Unseen Unknown, I’m Jasmine Bina. In today’s house episode, Jean-Louis and I are going to be talking about brand strategy in the time of coronavirus. Right now as we’re recording this, we are four weeks into self isolation and quarantine. It’s been a really crazy four weeks and everything is changing by the day. But it’s important that we have this discussion because there are companies out there right now that have no idea what to do. And I think we’re at a point where we have some idea about what’s around the corner and what we should be doing about it.

It’s hard to talk about brand strategy and culture without talking about the future. And it’s hard to talk about the future without making some predictions. So we’re going to rest this discussion on one big prediction, and that is that the quarantine is going to last longer than four months. This conversation is just as much about understanding where things are going as it is about figuring out how we navigate today.

01:03

We’ve given this some thought, we don’t want to be over optimistic, but we don’t want to fear monger either. It’s just important that we explore these ideas because they need to be explored and we need to figure out our direction forward together. Let’s not talk about the basic stuff like how you should turn off your short-term promotions, maybe not do any new product launches or change your ad mix. Let’s consider all of those knowns that are at of baseline.

Let’s talk about some of the more complicated, morally complex questions around us and what a company needs to do to survive in these changing circumstances.

01:43

I want to start off this episode by painting a picture of where Jean-Louis and I are right now. We are sitting on our living room floor with all of our podcast equipment spread out. It is 12:15 in the morning. I’m watching my children sleep in our bedroom, on the baby monitor and we are surrounded by baby toys. And I think that this image is a really good encapsulation of how much our lives have changed in the last four weeks and what that means for business.

Or to put this another way when everything is so chaotic in the worlds, and not just the big outside world, but also our internal, private, smaller worlds, what are brands even supposed to be doing right now? Because everything is topsy-turvy. This is an interesting discussion because it’s a lot about how our relationships to different things are changing. And I think the first thing we should really talk about here is our relationship with the home, how our relationship with the home is changing.

02:46

For some of us, our living rooms are now daycares or classrooms for our children. Our bedrooms have become our offices. Our kitchens have become cafes where we’re constantly frequenting because we’re at home and what else is there to do? We’re moving furniture around, we’re putting stuff up on walls. Things that felt like they were temporary changes are becoming more permanent changes. And this is where I think this story starts. If we’re going to understand how brand strategy is changing in accordance with actual consumer lives, it does need to start in the home.

03:20

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I think what’s kind of fascinating when we talk about our relationship with the home is really our relationship with ourselves. Because what’s happening is we’re becoming a lot more self-reliant than we used to. For some of us, maybe cooking is a frontier that we never really pushed, but now we’re forced to, we don’t have a choice. Laundry, maybe you went to the laundry mat or the dry cleaners, and now you have to do it yourself. Even being a handyman at home when something’s broken, you can’t just ask someone to fix it, now you have to do it yourself.

And so I think we’re starting to see that the roles we play on our homes are changing and we’ve been forced to give ourselves permissions where we used to say, “Oh, just get a cleaner and they’ll take care of it.” Now it’s, there’s no backup, we have to do it ourselves. So we’re starting to maybe see ourselves a little differently and tell ourselves a different story, and that could last a long time. That’s a self-perception that really over the next month or maybe quite a few months is really going to start to become ingrained that actually maybe we’re capable of more than we thought.

04:20

Jasmine Bina:
I think what you’re talking about is self-reliance. This the weird thing about self-reliance, I feel like I’m constantly in this situation looking for contradictions, and I feel like I see one here. We have this belief that like, okay, we can do it, we can be self-reliant. We see all of our peers online, so many videos of people creating lesson plans for their kids or creating new recipes, or dare I say, baking bread, or everybody’s new office set up or Jesus, the workout videos, which I would be really, really happy to never see again.

I don’t need to see people doing yoga in their living rooms, but there’s this story above the surface about how, yeah, man, we’re getting by, we’re doing this, but you can’t deny that actually there’s a lot of friction in the home. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be physically. And we’re expected to relax where we work and work where we relax, which we already know is not a good practice and is not something that you can negotiate. And we are going to be stuck in this state of literal dis-ease for months on end.

05:35

And I always tell people, “There’s a brand opportunity when somebody is telling themselves a lie,” and this is a lie that we’re telling ourselves here. There’s an opportunity for brands to help people bridge the gap between who they perceive themselves as and who they actually are when it comes to the home space. I don’t think I’ve seen too many brands actually do this too well right now. I think we’re in a stage where a lot of brands are like giving you permission like you were describing.

Brands like Brella or other kind of childcare or parenting brands teaching you how to create play spaces for your kids, or a lot of professional brands and accounts out there helping people cope with how to create workspaces. I’ve seen so many email newsletters about how to create an itinerary for your day as if any family can fall in itinerary and how crazy the world is right now. But this is the beginning.

I think there will be brands that can come in and help us actually revise the story in our heads so that we don’t feel this disconnect between what we want to be and who we actually are.

06:41

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I think you bring up a great point that really we are faced with this huge challenge of renegotiating our home spaces. And obviously the immediate demand is to find balance. To find some level of workable compromise. I think at the end of the day, there’s a lot of compromise going on. Our homes are just not equipped to do all the things that they suddenly need to do. We spent maybe half of our week in our homes and aggregate and a good portion of that was asleep. So now, there’s a whole new function and so balances this huge demand. And you’re right over the next month or two, we’ll probably see a lot of content to service that.

I think what’s especially interesting here is that when we talk about yoga and working out, and these kinds of activities that we have to make space for, it’s always like, “Yeah, I could work out at home, but I’d much rather get a gym membership.” And so now, we want to follow and continue these habits of working out and taking care of ourselves and we’re having to figure out how to do it in our homes. And I wonder after this is all said and done, how this is going to impact these going back out into the world.

07:44

Are we all going to go back out and get gym memberships just like we did, or some of us are going to stay on our Peloton bikes and keep it going at home? Or are we going to renegotiate a lot of these seeming fundamentals, and our behaviors, and routines?

Jasmine Bina:
What do you think?

Jean-Louis:
I think that we’re going to be a lot more intentional about how we act and behave afterwards. I think especially when it comes to food and maybe the services that we get. Because we’re going to feel more self-reliant, we’re going to feel that if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it when we need to do it. And so I think we’re going to maybe make more of going out to eat, and maybe the hope is that we do possibly fewer but better things. We go to fewer restaurants, but we make sure they really count.

08:27

We hire fewer handyman or service providers, but we make sure that that’s when we really need it because we can handle the rest. And with exercising, I think that maybe there’ll be a good portion that actually finds a manageable level of balance at working out at home, for example, so they’ll stay at home. And maybe you find that others will be much more intentional and look for possible trainers because they know exactly what they want to get out of it.

So I think my main assumption here is that we will be more specific and more directional about these behaviors when we come out of this. But I think that the real subtext is that this is just going to change the way we see ourselves and how we operate.

09:05

Jasmine Bina:
Something else that I was thinking about as we started to talk about this was the fact that we have old scripts in our head that are really hard to take apart, and I have a perfect example of this. And a lot of these scripts are in the home. I’ve been buying so much dish soap lately and I couldn’t understand why. I thought maybe it was because I was buying new brands and maybe the soap wasn’t as concentrated or effective. I thought maybe I was wasting it or the nanny was wasting it. Really, for weeks, I couldn’t understand why am I buying literally twice as much dish soap.

And it took a month to suddenly realize, of course I’m using that much more because we are cooking every meal at home. It’s so logical, but it’s a very new story that I couldn’t put two and two together. Another example of something that everybody can relate to is toilet paper. I think we’ve all collectively agreed that there is a shortage of toilet paper because people are crazy and they are panic-buying and hoarding.

10:13

You’d be hard pressed to find a different explanation, except guess what? There is a different explanation than is actually true and it’s not false like the hoarding story. Toilet paper actually has really fixed supply chains with really thin margins, so it’s hard to change the actual production of toilet paper. And the interesting thing is that there’s two kinds. There’s literally two industries within the industry. There’s consumer toilet paper and commercial toilet paper and they are wildly different.

Consumer and commercial don’t even come from the same mills. They aren’t shipped the same way, they aren’t packaged the same way. They aren’t consumed the same way. They aren’t even actually structurally the same. You can’t even put one on the actual role of the other. And what’s happening is, not that we’ve doubled our purchases of consumer toilet paper, it’s that all of our purchases on the industrial side, so when we use toilet paper in our offices, in Starbucks, in the public places that we frequent, all of that demand has shifted to the consumer side.

11:21

And because these supply chains are so fixed, we’re always going to be experiencing this shortage. I’ve seen countless articles with psychologists, and experts, and thinkers talking about all this is panic-buying and it’s all emotionally driven, but nobody stopped to explain that there is actually very, very logical market reason for this. And wow, that just shows you how blind we are to the actual truth and the realities of what we’re living. That’s what I think is most interesting about this pandemic.

And what we’re all experiencing right now is that we are so habituated to our old narratives, like how much dish soap I buy that it’s hard to overestimate how much of an impact that’s going to be honest and mentally as we start to deconstruct these beliefs about ourselves and our consumption.

12:18

Jean-Louis:
I think there’s so much going on right now that we’ll only ever really come to some level of understanding from the benefit of hindsight. We’ll only really understand what’s going on after all of this has happened and we can really get a macro view. Because right now, all of our attention is focused inward and on ourselves. And I think what’s interesting about this is, we talk about toilet paper, but when you take a step back and you take a pause, you can look at it, but the whole point is that we’re not in our offices anymore.

And we’re being forced to take a step back and look at our work differently too, and I think that’s particularly interesting. We talk about how home is changing us. I think the way we look at work and our relationship to work is really going to shift. For a lot of people, they are realizing that they are not in a secure position as they thought they were. And they may even have a great amount of savings, but just their livelihood is much more ephemeral than they thought they were.

13:16

And so I think what’s really fascinating here is that sort of like what is the collective mindset around work and how is that going to change? How are we going to walk away from this? Because they’re talking about 30, 32% unemployment in this country, which is by a very significant margin, the highest it could ever be. I think the Dust Bowl Depression was 25% unemployment.

So now, people are having a real amount of time to pause, look back and think about their livelihoods. And my assumption out of this is we’re going to realize that actually what we really… We’re going to be much more intentional again about what we look for in our work. We’re going to look for purpose because we can’t… Even in industries that we thought were indestructible and couldn’t be moved, there’s still a level of insecurity.

14:05

And so we maybe can’t find security anywhere, but what we can find is purpose. And so I think that maybe in the beginning, we’re going to be rushing to refill our bank accounts and get a paycheck, but gradually we’re going to start looking for more meaning in our work.

Jasmine Bina:
This was a trend that we were seeing well before this even happened is the corporate world changed, and people’s identities changed, and we embraced work more and more as part of our identities. Then it became a stand in for more meaningful things and we weren’t starting to look for jobs with meaning. But I think we were looking for jobs with meaning that would tell us that we were valuable, that we meant something to the world.

14:47

I think after this, that meaningful change. We’re not looking for meaning that tells us we’re valuable. I think we’re going to be more looking for meaning that tells us that we are actually providing value. And that’s two different things. So far what we’ve described in terms of the change in the meaning of work and the change in our relationships to our homes, it sounds like this is accelerating the growing up of a generation.

I think you and I are generally talking about millennials and Gen Z, who will probably be the most impacted by this. I think as we talk, we’re going to see that really the big theme behind this pandemic and how it will affect business and culture is acceleration. Is going to accelerate a lot of behaviors that were at a tipping point, is going to accelerate a lot of technologies, a lot of organizational structures, not just within our companies, but within our societies and within our homes, and a lot of identities and roles in society as well.

15:44

Jean-Louis:
Yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
Something that I also want to talk about when it comes to work is leadership. I think we’ve seen every week more and more leaders are coming to the surface and talking publicly about what they’re dealing with and you see different leaders handling it differently, and I want to bring up something here. I think we all know that the rule of thumb right now is if you’re a brand, you have to show compassion and empathy for your user. That’s like a baseline.

But I think what a lot of people don’t understand is you really, really cannot show compassion and be empathetic unless you’re willing to also be vulnerable. Because compassion without vulnerability is really just grandstanding in my point of view. I saw two really good examples of this. The first really good example was Arne Sorenson, who is the CEO of Marriott, and he was one of the very, very first, I think, just two-and-a-half weeks ago, but it feels like a fricking lifetime ago, the very first to come and make a public statement.

16:45

I saw it on Twitter. And I’m going to tell you, honestly, I don’t think it was that good of a speech. I think I would have expected something else, but it was so well received and a thread through every piece of feedback about this great leader who was leading with such compassion and empathy. Actual words that people were using was the fact that he was very vulnerable in that talk. First of all, he opened his vulnerability. That was the first time a lot of people had seen him without hair because he’s been going through chemo.

And he talked about that upfront before he even addressed the issue. And he made it clear that his publicist told him it might not be a good idea, but he said that this is the way he wanted to do it, just be an authentic version of himself because he really needed to talk directly to his audience. He showed emotional vulnerability. He became teary in the talk. He was very honest about the fact that this business was on the verge of collapse in some ways.

17:44

This was lauded as a beacon of amazing excellent leadership in a time of crisis. And let’s not forget, we’re talking about Marriott. I think I have seen workers protesting Marriott in front of those hotels in maybe five or six cities in my lifetime.

Jean-Louis:
Me too.

Jasmine Bina:
This is a brand that is not known for good leadership, it’s not known for treating its employees well. It’s not known for being the first to deal with a crisis, but it was his vulnerability. It just shows you how much vulnerability can carry the effort in being compassionate. One other example that I thought was amazing. Not too many people know Robin Berzin, but she’s the founder of Parsley Health. Her personal brand, isn’t that big, but if you follow Parsley, you know who she is because she’s a big part of their front facing communications.

18:39

And she just had a baby, and I think she only had a baby like three months ago and on her personal Instagram, she said something that floored me. She posted a picture of herself holding her child and she said that her and her husband had made the difficult decision to start sleep training their baby, I think only at two months old. I might be wrong, don’t quote me on this even though I’m recording this podcast.

But let me tell you, to tell people that you are sleep training your child at such a young age, even though medically it’s fine is really opening yourself up to attack. Especially, if you are in functional medicine, which is all about parenting and child rearing with I think more leniency and compassion while we’re talking about it than more traditional forms of parenting. And she said she had to do it because she wasn’t sleeping for two months.

19:33

We’re in the middle of a crisis, she had to lead a team, she was no longer functional. And as a doctor, she’s expected to have all the answers. And I don’t want us to overlook the significance of what she did here because when she opened herself up to something so personal and so debated among people in that space, she was actually giving other women who were dealing with the struggle of child rearing in a quarantine, which is a struggle for real, by the way, permission to make compromises. That was a gesture of generosity.

The fact that she did that for other people, that was an amazing sign of leadership, but that was also an example of when you add vulnerability into the compassion and empathy equation, it becomes exponentially more powerful.

20:28

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. When we talk about purpose-driven brands, most brands are trending towards this. And to your point out earlier about acceleration, this is rapidly accelerating brands that create purpose, especially the ones that are attracting talent. How do you differentiate between all of these brands if they’re all aligning around purpose? and really leadership is the only way that you can really differentiate. And now I think it’s so interesting that it’s really putting companies to the test.

There are those that have really strong leadership and are able to show that vulnerability, but really show what they care about by the way that they treat their employees in this, versus brands that just do it as lip service. They do it from marketing point. They won’t give their employees hazard pay, even though they’re really putting their employees at risk. Those are the companies that you really start to see who’s who as Warren Buffet puts it. When the tide goes out, you can see who’s been swimming naked.

21:23

That’s what’s happening right now is we’re really putting leadership to the test and I think we’re going to come out of this with a much deeper vocabulary to understand what good leadership is and what it looks like and be able to align ourselves towards it.

Jasmine Bina:
I do want to mention too that everybody is paying attention to leadership right now. I had interviews with some consumers for our clients over the last couple of weeks in flyover states. These are people that you would think if they come from more conservative backgrounds, they’re a little less concerned about like the activist employee story, a little more concerned about the market story. That’s a gross oversimplification and generalization.

22:05

But I will say, I was surprised with the kinds of things I was hearing from people in these states that were saying that they were paying close attention to what different airlines were doing as they laid off and furloughed their employees. What different major consumer brands were doing, what different major financial brands were doing. And these people were actually actively changing their brand allegiances based on how these different companies were responding to the crisis and the fact that they were downsizing.

So people are paying attention. And a smaller note, everything is political now. I don’t mean that people are voting with their dollars along party lines. That’s what’s interesting about this time period right now, it’s I think changed all of that. For example, Everlane had to lay off a bunch of employees and there was some kerfuffle about how it seemed like they were using these layoffs to mask the fact that they wanted to fire some employees that were trying to unionize.

23:11

And Bernie Sanders actually commented on that. I think he commented aggressively saying that these were really terrible practices by a company and Everlane was forced to respond or chose to respond by saying, “We’re suffering right now and this is something that we have to do.” And I think that could have been avoided if they were just a little more careful about the way that they had handled that communication and maybe addressed it with some sort of vulnerability and a bit more compassionate front.

Maybe that’s a bigger what if question, but the fact is people are watching closer than ever. What a leader does in communicating to its employees has become such an outward-facing thing now. This reminds me of something else. We have a client called NakedPoppy and they’re a clean beauty brands. They’re amazing like all the companies that we work with, but they have a founder, her name is Jaleh and she did something interesting last week. She showed vulnerability in her communications.

24:12

She sent an email out to her audience and she said, “Listen, I know we’re all suffering right now and I’m living through this pandemic just like you guys are, but I do know something about crisis.” And she went on to tell her story about dealing with cancer and what she learned from that experience, and imparting two people who wisdom on what they could expect, because we all want some sort of expectation of what’s coming up. It was done in a really sincere.

Let me tell you why this was so smart. One, she got a world of response from her users that immediately felt connected to her, not just people who had similar life experiences. Who hasn’t been touched by cancer even just by someone that you love? But because they responded to the fact that she had some honest, sincere insight, even though she’s never led people through a pandemic before.

25:03

But another great thing that it did was that it actually opened up the communication. So when people started responding, she was able to get a snapshot of where people’s minds were. I want to explain why that’s important. It’s the suddenness of all of this that’s insane. It’s the fact that this happened so quickly and that we’re coming to terms with it more and more every week. That just when you think you’ve wrapped your head around it, a new week comes and you think, damn, I was so naive. The mood changes every week.

For example, I think week one, we were all in shock and denial. There were lots of memes about social distances, but lots of optimism about connecting virtually. I know we got tons of texts from people. We were just starting to do FaceTime with friends, lots of messages, like, “Hey, hope you’re well.” That was week one. I think by the second week we had like reached the height of digital connection. It was really novel. We were really into apps like Houseparty and Zoom and Dialup.

26:02

These apps were all being touted as like social currency. All of a sudden on like influencers Instagram feeds, you would see snapshots of like the Houseparties or the Zoom parties that they were having with their friends. And then week three, which was last week or the week before, how are you’re calculating your days in quarantine. I think we all got less phone calls. I think there were less check-ins.

I think we had all gotten over the novelty of virtual connection. A lot less Instagram stories and I follow a lot of people. Chris D’Elia made a fantastic joke that I think said, “Oh, great. One influencer I don’t give a shit about is going live with another Instagram influencer I don’t give a shit about.” Which I think characterize the fact that people didn’t care anymore about that.

26:51

And we all went inward, became domestic like this was the birth of the sourdough boom to the point where we were having sourdough shortage… Excuse me, yeast shortages and flour shortages. For some reason, the week after that was all about playlist, every brand was pushing a playlist. I got a Glossier playlist. I think some of the streetwear brands I was following sent me a playlist. It was strange, playlist were like everywhere.

And now, me and you are recording this on a Monday… Tuesday in the morning technically. This is going to publish on Thursday and I guarantee, things are going to feel different by then too. So this is my point, you have to constantly be reading your audience. You can try doing it by social listening, you can watch users’ behaviors, but sometimes just putting something out there and seeing what you get back, like Jaleh did with NakedPoppy will help you read the room. And again, that’s important because the rooms mood is constantly changing way faster than you think.

27:48

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. Now is probably the single best time ever to start experimenting with how you connect with your audience, how you build your audience and the format through which you’re having that conversation. You’ve got so many different people, so many celebrities and influencers trying out new things, brands too. You’ve got Jimmy Fallon reading kid’s books, you’ve got Questlove and D-Nice doing live DJ sets and a whole bunch of fitness influencers doing live classes.

We are starting to collectively create replacements and new formats to replace the needs and services that we used before and find comfort in these things. And so there’s a lot of new things going on and we’re very, very open to it right now because everything we’ve been doing has been disrupted. And so as a brand, you can really be forgiven for taking a risk and it not working out, so it’s a fantastic time for that.

28:40

But I think this is telling us a slightly deepest story about what’s happening here is that as we start to fulfill these needs online as opposed to offline, we start to find equivalence for events that were in-person that now we’re doing collectively through video. What’s happening is we’re starting to see the internet become more and more embedded into critical infrastructure. Like now there are huge incentives to do obviously education online, but medicine to government services.

A lot of things are going to start to move online and become part of that critical infrastructure. There’s a lot of things that’s going to change with that, but one of the first things is that it’s going to change the policy conversation about the internet. It’s going to start to be given a lot more rights and we’re probably going to see a lot of disruption with the major internet service providers as it becomes recontextualized. If access to critical infrastructure like medicine and education is prerequisite on internet, then accessibility is going to be something that the government is really going to have to mandate.

29:43

But I think what’s really telling about the shift towards the operating system of our daily lives being online is that it really creates a phenomenal incentive for automation. Like if you imagine all of these services go online, suddenly there’s all this new surface area that can be automated. So, scheduling and logistics, setting up appointments, billing, all of these things that there used to someone in front of a desk, they can do online.

You’re going to have a lot of doctors and other services that can be slightly improved. If you can imagine a doctor with a bit of AI can maybe boost their efficiency by 10, maybe 20%. You’re not replacing the job, you’re just making them slightly more efficient. Maybe you’re just saving them time, maybe you helping suggest diagnosis that can speed up their workflow. The point is that if you can make them 20% more efficient in theory, you would get rid of 20% of the jobs.

30:39

Now, with doctors, it’s not going to happen because there’s a huge demand that isn’t already being met. Then other fields like lawyers and other areas where there isn’t such kind of static demand, we may find the automation here is going to really start to kick in. And so what coronavirus may be when we look back is the very beginning of the automation curve really turning and really starting to be something that’s going to absorb a lot of jobs.

And so we’re going to see that companies are really going to have to understand their value and probably streamline a lot of things that are outside of that.

31:12

Jasmine Bina:
I have a feeling we’re going to look back at the coronavirus, this period, and we’re going to see it as the birthing point for a lot of huge cultural shifts. And one of them will be automation, coronavirus might be when a lot of new paradigms, and norms, and culture shifting advancements were actually set into motion.

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. And let’s not forget too that a recession is the best time to do this. There’s no downside, no bad PR for automating because all the incentives are pointing in that direction. You can really cut a lot of corners with these things. Now is the time, and so you won’t feel it, but then suddenly afterwards, there’ll just be this lingering bottom line where the unemployment won’t quite get back as fast and we’ll start to see, and this will gradually accelerate. But this right now, this is the turning point.

32:04

Jasmine Bina:
Obviously if we weren’t already aware, a great deal of uncertainty in the market. And what you were saying before, which I want to summarize again here, but you were saying it at the top of the discussion was, we’re going through a great deal of change right now. But once we leave this period and we start a period of healing, there will be just as much change during that time as well.

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. And we’ll only realize the change that we’ve already gone through then. We’ll only realize when we look back that, wow, this was the time when everything started going online. There’s suddenly all of these government services, all of these companies services suddenly by merit of going online had access to so many more automation tools. This is when we’re making that transition.

32:53

Jasmine Bina:
While all of this is happening in industry, at the same time, this is something you and I have discussed, the consumer… As industry is basically I think, ramping up and accelerating into the digital realm, especially like the laggards like government like you said. While all of that is going up, the consumer is literally free falling down to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy. So we definitely had reached self-actualization in a lot of ways, and now we’re back down to basic survival needs again.

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. We’re at safety needs, not quite at physiological needs, although we’re getting scarily close to that. But definitely brands that played the esteem playbook like Supreme, AWAY, Louis Vuitton, even S’well bottles. Those brands are not relevant anymore. When I’m worried about getting enough toilet paper, I couldn’t care less about those things. Definitely we’ve changed paradigm, and now we’re looking for safety, we’re looking for stability. And a lot of that is expressed through looking for comfort.

33:57

So the types of content we consume, the types of content that we’re creating on social media. TikTok especially in China has been inundated with comedy content and people making other people laugh. And it’s a collective coping mechanism, but definitely the ways and the types of things we’re consuming. I would expect that if the probably nostalgia is going to be something we’re going to be looking for, because for a lot of people, nostalgia represents a lot of safety, security, and comfort.

Jasmine Bina:
And there was already a lot of nostalgia in our culture as it was. Look at like fashion and all of the retro designs. In fact, like you see licensed bands tees from like the ’60s and ’70s everywhere on every girl that goes to Coachella, she’s wearing a tee with The Doors or The Grateful Dead on it, even though I don’t know that she fully understands what she’s wearing. But the fact that stranger things literally grips a huge audience of viewers because it delivered that nostalgic promise, nostalgia in design, in funds, typography and colors, and a lot of DTC brands.

35:03

There’s a whole faction of DTC brands that were playing with nostalgia. We were already at a tipping point with nostalgia, but it seems like you’re saying we’re going to go super deep into it.

Jean-Louis:
Given the needs that it fulfills in terms of comfort and that feeling of safety, there’s going to be an increased appetite for it for sure.

35:19

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. Another thing that I think I’ve noticed about the hierarchy in our really rapid fall to the bottom is that I’ve noticed it has revealed a lot of cultural lies. Another thing about Maslow’s Hierarchy is I feel as we’ve swiftly come to the bottom of the pyramid again, it’s revealed a lot of cultural lies that we’re coming to grips with. Just as an example, I’ve written about this in the past.

There was an app called Digit. I don’t know if it’s still around, but it was a savings app. So instead of actually having you save money, it had this algorithm that was siphoned off little amounts of money from your account every day based on what your spending was, so that you would save. And that way, you would feel like the responsible person that you thought you were without actually having to be a responsible person.

36:10

That’s just an example, but let’s talk about some of the gaps that I’m seeing, and I think a lot of times these gaps show up in language. This thing about calling doctors, nurses, and teachers, heroes is fascinating. I’m not the first person to talk about this, but calling these people heroes is green in some ways. It helps unify our society, but it’s actually also really destructive in other ways.

Think about it, when you call these people heroes, you really leave no room for them to feel fear. You don’t leave room for them to discuss how difficult the job is. And it makes it really easy to overlook that these are human beings that need more support than just a thank you, or a shout out, or a meme, or a sign out of a living room window. It doesn’t let them be weak, and I think that’s profoundly unfair.

37:02

There was a really telling example of this. There’s a woman named Dr. Rebecca Lawrence. I think she’s a psychologist, I’m not sure if she’s a psychologist or an actual medical doctor, but she went on Twitter recently and she posted something that went viral and I’m just going to read it like word for word. She said, “I’m going to say something unpopular. I wish I wasn’t a doctor, I wish I wasn’t terrified at what I may be asked to do. I wish I could self isolate. Sorry.”

She knew that this was going to be met with a lot of pushback and criticism, and it was. This went viral, and if you scroll through these comments, a lot of them are pretty negative. People are angry that she is weak. People are angry that she’s scared. And when you call people heroes, it perpetuates the myth that they’re not allowed to feel these things. Now, for teachers, it’s a little different. To call a teacher a hero is to erase the fact that she’s treated very unfairly in really unfavorable circumstances.

38:05

And it’s so disingenuous, even saying teachers are heroes, all these moms, all these celebrities who had to homeschool their kids for a week are now calling teachers heroes on Instagram and on Twitter. It’s disingenuous because we all know there’s no way in hell that these teachers are going to get paid more when we come out the other side of this. There’s no way they’re going to get more respect. There’s no way they’re going to get more support. Absolutely nothing will change.

It’s like a slap in the face and it’s such an interesting thing that you start to see these cracks more and more in times of crises. I think you see this with other expressions like strong black woman. It absolutely erases the suffering of those women. I think even a phrase like tiger mom, for example, even though that comes from someplace different, it was self-described because I think there was a book called Tiger Mom by an Asian-American woman who actually called herself that.

38:58

But also again, a racist or avoids the fact that motherhood, you have to be very vigilant if you want your child to be successful and happy in this world. And all that burden is placed on the mother. The mother is always the one that is responsible for the thriving of their child. And if their child isn’t thriving, then it’s her fault. And here’s what’s really happening, here’s what really matters here. The human instinct is always to reframe the ugly as something more palatable, but the longer this pandemic and social isolation lasts, I think the less and less we’re going to be able to actually do this and lie to ourselves about these things. And the mood is just going to keep shifting.

These phrases and images protect us from the carnage underneath all of it, and the unfairness, and the inequity, but they can only work for so long. And I wonder what’s going to happen when they start falling apart, when the word heroes, when people start to realize it’s and it doesn’t do what it used to do.

40:05

Jean-Louis:
There was a great article in Politico about coronavirus and professor of political science Mark Lawrence Schrad had a great point here that maybe after all of this, what we may find is that our sense of patriotism may change. Often 9/11, the soldiers were the heroes, they went out and shut the enemy. And as he says, as he put it, “You can’t shoot a virus.” And what we may find is that actually patriotism becomes demilitarized and instead focuses on the service providers that really protect us and becomes less about the enemy and more about the collective.

And so we may change our identity around, patriotism may change a little bit, and we may see this through a different lens. And so I think maybe at a values level, these things will shift, but the problem is to really fix a lot of these challenges is a structural governmental issue. And that’s something that is going to be much harder to do, but I think at the end of this, there’s going to be a lot more tension about it because even now, there’s so many videos coming out about doctors in New York who were literally using trash bags to protect themselves. They’re risking their health and they have literally nothing medical to protect themselves.

41:20

And so there’s a lot going on here, and you’re right in the sense that we use the term hero, but very rapidly, I think our understanding is going to change and we’re really going to start seeing this as a tragedy almost, that these people are risking a lot absolutely not protected. And maybe we value them culturally as heroes, but we certainly don’t treat them that way.

Jasmine Bina:
What you’re saying right now reminds me of something when we were doing work with a media brand that served veterans. It was a content brand for veterans. We found in our research that really veterans were allowed to occupy three identities and they could never be more than one at a time. And it was the hero, the villain or the victim. And we ascribe these really limiting roles to people. And there are roles that really only come into play in times of crisis like this.

42:11

It reminds me also of something that I think a lot of people may have read, which was David Brooks’ opinion piece in the New York Times recently. The title had something to do with the word plague, but I think he was describing the pandemic like a plague. But he was saying that what’s interesting about the coronavirus is that it’s really hit us where we’re the most vulnerable and in a very surgical way, exactly where we’re the most vulnerable.

We’re divided as a nation, but now this pandemic makes us even more separate from one another. We define ourselves by our careers, but now those careers have basically evaporated overnight. We’re what, he calls morally inarticulate, which is an awesome phrase, but now we have to actually have very difficult moral discussions. And that’s what these stories around being a hero and phrases around our identities, those are also part of the moral discussions that are difficult to have that we’re probably going to have to start having soon.

43:08

Jean-Louis:
Right now, we’re at a point now, especially in New York where doctors are having to be given impossible situations. You have two patients that are both critical that you have to choose who gets the ventilator. That is happening more, and more, and more. Can you imagine during a rush and there’s so much going on, you’re exhausted. You’ve been working 14-hour shifts for weeks on end.

You’re worried about your own safety, you’re worried about the safety of your friends and then suddenly you’re liable for so many things because you’re in a situation where you’re having to triage in real time, multiple times a day. It’s an incredibly difficult situation and I think we’re going to have to start really seeing this differently because that’s a very, very complicated moral conversation that we’re by no way ready to have at a societal level, but we’re being forced to have it.

44:06

Jasmine Bina:
And the big question here, I think for people is, so how do we as individuals, how do we as brands solve this problem? I don’t know that it’s the role of brands to solve these things. I could see later on with brands that have like actual alignment in these areas where it’s true to their values and the actual product and DNA of the brand that they could start to have some of these discussions, but there’s a bigger point here. It’s the fact that everything you do right now is a signal, everything you do is politicized.

The fact that Everlane had to lay off, I think it was like 44 employees. Would have been a run of the mill thing, but the fact that they laid off a handful of employees that were also trying to unionize at that time, made this something that Bernie Sanders actually responded to. Bernie Sanders felt the need to say something about Everlane’s layoffs at a time where you would think any layoffs would be forgiven.

45:07

And it just shows you that nobody is going by unscathed. Everything you do is saying something about what you is it you believe in your values as a brand, and values have just become political. I just want to mention, there’s different ways for brands to approach these things. You can be a brand that does well, you could be like Zara that’s making scrubs or LVMH that’s making and distributing free hand sanitizers.

Now, I don’t think these are just like employees or ways to feel like they are part of the larger conversation. These are definitely sincere acts, but what’s interesting is the fact that they actually converted their operations to start producing these things. It’s interesting because I feel like it tells me that these companies aren’t just do gooders, but they see themselves as custodians of the people. They actually are here to protect the wellbeing of the people.

46:08

And if you hear that, that sounds like how you would describe a government. It’s an example of how governments and brands, the line is really blurring. It’s a really elevated position for these brands and it works. I think those brands did it really, really well. I think other brands like Ritual giving away three free months of vitamins to healthcare workers, that was great. You see a lot of Elliott clothing brands have pivoted their operations to making face masks.

But even still now, face masks are selling out everywhere, but a lot of them are only selling them in a buy one, give one model, which I think is also great. I think this is like the V1 of what it’s going to mean to do something as a brand during this pandemic. But I do want to talk about taking it a step further. I like what brands like Cameo are doing. And this is an interesting one so just hang on with me.

47:03

Cameo, if you don’t know who they are, it’s a platform where literally every celebrity, I’m not joking, every A list to Z list celebrity is on Cameo and you just pay a few bucks and ask them to create a video greeting on their smartphones for your friend’s birthday or for your anniversary. And it’s literally just you’re paying 10, 20, I don’t know what it is, but it’s a super cheap amount for like 15-second clip.

Like Gilbert Gottfried, the comedian is actually one of their top performing celebrities and he’s, I don’t know if you’d call him a D-lister, but he’s A-lister. He described making $4,500 in 30 minutes and he was making upwards of six figures a year just spending a fractional amount of his time making these videos. This is what Cameo is. It’s a really interesting marketplace that actually has been working.

47:57

And it’s been one of those breakup brands that you probably haven’t heard of if you’re outside of Silicon Valley, but they’re doing really, really well. What can they do? What’s their product? What they’ve decided to do is launch something called Cameo Cares, and it’s basically like a three-day virtual summit or a three-day virtual event where they’re going to be raising money with having all these D-listers come on and do things like give behind the scenes access, or talk live from their living rooms, or play music, do a comedy hour and do like an exercise session.

And what works here is the belief behind Cameo is that one person’s D-Lister is another person’s favorite celebrity in the world. And so if that’s their core value, giving people access to these favorite celebrities in kind of a very nostalgic way like you said, that feel good nostalgic way. These are celebrities from your childhood, celebrities from your past, they’re almost never current celebrities.

49:01

It feels like a new telephone, the modern telephone, although I don’t know, because it hasn’t happened yet, so I’m not sure what it’s going to feel like in terms of format. But it just shows you that they found what their brand was about and they aligned it with actions that would benefit people during this crisis in a very on-brand way. And I think that makes it super, super effective.

It lets them do something, Jean, you were talking earlier about you’re experimenting with new tech platforms and new ways of communicating? They’re able to do that and I think this was smart, this was thoughtful. Because people want this connection right now. They want human and imperfect. And once there’s human and imperfect, more than a D-list celebrity on your phone.

49:48

These are some examples I just wanted to make sure we got out there of brands that are thinking of creative ways of not being opportunistic, not using this as a way to tout themselves, but using their resources in the best possible way. Because sending an email to people that says, “Hey, we’re here for you,” is not the best use of your resources. But these examples are good uses of resources.

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, that’s a great point. If Cameo is about nostalgia and that kind of connection, then I think we have to talk about escapism, and the best place to look at that is online gaming. Online gaming is really spiked because of the situation. I don’t think people really appreciate how significant this is. If you look at this younger Gen Z generation who are in the late teenage years. Now is when they’re really forming the normative social behaviors and what the defacto is for their generation.

50:45

Online gaming is a huge part of this, more and more. And it’s a very social activity too. I think nowadays, something like 70% of gaming is considered like a social activity with more than one friend. So it’s really like, this is the way that that generation is socializing, and we may not feel it now, but there are repercussions of this. And being forced to almost exclusively socialize in these contexts, that’s going to have a ripple effect for that generation.

And I think that maybe in five, 10 years when Gen Z, suddenly the younger end of Gen Z comes into that purchasing power, brands are going to have to meet them in new places and a new norms. I don’t think they can underestimate the significance of difference between Millennials and Gen Z. That generational change is happening more and more rapid. Cameo may work really, really well for a millennial audience, but I wonder if for a Gen Z audience they’re looking for a different kind of relationship and a different kind of dialogue.

51:43

It may be much more peer to peer and much more maybe tribal. I don’t think we really know what that looks like, but when we’re talking about brand and the repercussions of the coronavirus, I don’t think we can underestimate the… It’s having an effect to consumers right now, but there’s a bracket of people who it’s going to be much more foundational and how it impacts them.

Jasmine Bina:
Again, we’re talking about acceleration. This is going to accelerate the divergence between two generations, the Millennial generation and Gen Z faster than it would have happened otherwise. It’s funny, what you’re describing, I think when people ask me how we’re doing, when we get texts from friends, just checking in on us, “Hey, what’s up? How are you guys holding up in there?” I tell people that I’ve been questioning the nature of my life decisions and you’ve been playing grand theft auto. That’s how we’ve been coping.

52:40

And I think a lot of couples and other people can also speak to the fact that there are stages to this and we’re all going through different stages. So it is 1:15 in the morning and I think this would be a good time to wrap this up with our personal segment at the end. I actually just came up with a question for you and I think we can both answer it. Let’s end positively. What has been your most positive memory so far or experience in our new reality?

Jean-Louis:
I can’t think of a specific memory off the top of my head. I think there’s a lot of shifts in our routines that have actually been really nice, particularly spending more time with the kids. But I think to me, I’ve noticed this realization of just how collectively really started paying attention to how much we value our communities and how much we value our friends. It’s become very, very much aware of how much that connection means to us because it’s been withheld from us.

53:42

And so it’s been nice to see, I think with immediate friends of mine, but I think just in the news as well. We’re starting to realize just how important it is. And I hope that maybe at the other end of this that we have a renewed sense of value in community. And that might actually be a very positive thing, when you have a unifying enemy you have something you can all rally together against and there’s a collectivity to that. And that actually might be a really quite valuable.

That’s me. What about you? What’s a good memory out of all of this?

54:19

Jasmine Bina:
I think like you, maybe I want to revise the question, it’s not so much a memory, but it’s more like a realization. I was on a call with somebody last week and I was late to the call and I apologized, and she said, “Oh, it’s okay. There’s no sorry in a quarantine.” And I thought, wow, I’m going to use that. I use it a lot to forgive myself for a lot of little things that I just can’t control because there’s so little that we can control in our lives right now.

Whether it’s work, or family, or home, or just keeping good mental hygiene, or sticking to your routines, all those things that take so much willpower during the day. But I like telling other people that. I’ve mentioned that to a few people now and people love hearing it. It’s a gift. It’s a really strong message that I think people actually package in their brains and pull out later. It’s like a tool that people have used.

55:17

It’s like a device or a vehicle, and that’s what I want to give to people listening. There are no sorries in a quarantine. You pull that out when you need it and you use it as often as you need to. It’s a magical phrase, it can only do good things.

If you liked this episode, share it with a friend. If you really like this episode, sign up for our newsletter at conceptbureau.com/insights. We share a lot more than just our podcast. I also publish articles on brand strategy. We have videos, a lot of great discussions. If you’re on Instagram or Twitter, follow me @triplejas, that’s T-R-I-P-L-E-J-A-S. I share my daily thoughts on brand strategy and culture.

56:04

Today, I did an AMA on brand strategy and answered a lot of people’s questions about their companies and what we’re seeing in the marketplace, so come join the discussion. And if you’d like to see all of my writing, I’m on Medium. Just find me under Jasmine Bina.

Interesting Links & More Reading

Podcast

8: How We Consume Fear in a Time of Crisis, and the Brands That Change the Stor‪y‬

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date March 19, 2020
No Comments on 8: How We Consume Fear in a Time of Crisis, and the Brands That Change the Stor‪y‬

Times of uncertainty have a way of revealing the mindset of a society, and today’s imminent threats - from COVID-19 to political instability and global warming - are revealing a mental shift that emotion-led brands are responding to. We speak with BBC and Vox journalist Colleen Hagerty, eschatologist and end-of-world expert Phil Torres, and founders Ryan Kuhlman and Lauren Tafuri of the popular disaster kit brand Preppi to ask one big question: How do you brand in a time of crisis?

Podcast Transcript

March 19, 2020

50 min read

Celebrity Culture, Platform Brands and Parasocial Relationship‪s‬

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
Welcome to Unseen Unknown, I’m Jasmine Bina. A quick programming note before we start our episode today, considering what an uncertain time it is in the world right now, in the added layer of complexity that comes with things like coronavirus and social distancing, and a volatile market, and an election year, we’re dedicating this episode, and the next few episodes of the show to business topics that can help us make sense of the current climate, both in branding, and perhaps even more importantly in our personal lives.

We’re going to explore topics like loneliness, the emergence of anxiety culture, optimism in times of chaos and survival stories, which applied to both business and to culture. Each episode will help you understand brand strategy and yourself on a deeper level. Jean Louis and I hope these discussions can provide some meaning as we navigate the future together.

00:47

Costco is one of the only retailers doing really, really well with millennials right now. And that’s largely for two reasons. One, they’re extremely smart and responsive in how they stock trending products that people are actually willing to buy. And two, Costco actually spends a lot of time and a lot of money to make their stores look like Bare Bones warehouses. That’s not by accident, those warehouses don’t just pop up like that. The warehouse feel is actually very much by design and it’s become a haven for people that are looking to stock up on vegan superfood creamers, and paleo pancake mix. The abundance of product which is just stacked on pallets that reach up to the ceiling, this has a framing effect.

It’s a carefully crafted environment that makes you see your impulse buys, not as superfluous purchases, which they may very well be, but rather as pantry staples. Buying premium products in large amounts makes you feel good and safe. But Costco has felt very different lately in the wake of the coronavirus and a stampede of people to shore up on items in the face of a very uncertain and unnerving period of social distancing, aisles have gone empty.

02:06

Jasmine Bina:
So I think it’s here.

Co-shopper (audio clip):
Yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
This is where it would have been.

Co-shopper (audio clip):
That’s creepy. It’s all gone.

02:14

Jasmine Bina:
So we’re literally in the toilet paper and water bottle aisle of Costco, which would usually go up to the ceiling and there’s absolutely nothing here. The crates are gone. It’s like five cases of water that people are taking up right now. And that’s it, there’s nothing else here. As we kept walking, we saw there were no frozen fruits, no frozen vegetables, door after door the cases were empty, empty boxes everywhere, no potatoes, no sweet potatoes, definitely nobody handing out samples. Costco felt like it had been ransacked. The sense of safety had been replaced with an uncomfortable reality that sometimes felt funny, but really most of the time felt alarming. We spoke with an employee who said, “Despite nightly restocking shelves would be emptied out by 9:30 AM.”

Store employee (audio clip):
So, I haven’t been here for before, like when they opened today, but just for the last couple of weeks or so. The lines have been going just basically around the whole lot. And then everyone’s just buying like before, there was no restrictions on water and toilet paper. So everyone’s just buying maybe like a full flatbed full of waters. And then once people figured out, there was no water, I think it starts slowly starts to die out and they go somewhere else.

03:31

Jasmine Bina:
Times of uncertainty, you have a way of revealing the mindset of a society. Costco, isn’t the only place running out of supplies. And they’re definitely not the only brand that’s tapped into the new mentality of the consumer.

Colleen Hagerty:
I think a lot of it is kind of been a buildup over the past two decades, of a lot of different events. So some of them being on the more natural side, obviously with the effects of climate change, we’ve been seeing a lot of disasters here in the U.S and abroad that are just called unprecedented. So it’s these once in a lifetime floods or once in a lifetime hurricanes, but they’ve happened a lot in our lifetimes, in the past five, 10, 20 years. But then we’ve also seen some political instability and that’s something that’s worldwide, certainly here in the United States. And I think there’s just kind of this underlying layer of anxiety that certainly has fed into a wellness industry, but also on maybe a deeper level people have that kind of primal fear of, what if the worst does happen to me? And these kids give you a way to address that fear, that’s really easy.

04:42

Jasmine Bina:
This is Colleen Hagerty, she’s a journalist for the BBC, Vox, The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report, among others. Colleen is always thinking about global communities and how they’re reckoning with our changing climate, social dynamics, technologies and politics. She’s thinking about the big things. And lately she’s noticed that there’s a new class of premium disaster and emergency products on the market for consumers, brands like JUDY, Preppi, BioLite, these are beautifully designed emergency kits and survival products that don’t look like your regular Johnson & Johnson first aid box. JUDY interestingly is often hawked in celebrity unboxing videos on Instagram, like this one posted by Chloe Kardashian back in February.

Chloe Kardashian (audio clip):
I wanted to share something with you, this is a JUDY box. This is basically an emergency kit with everything and anything you could want in case of an emergency. This is a first aid kit with everything in it, a box of tools.

05:44

Jasmine Bina:
These products are chic, they’re bold and fun, they’re intuitive in their form, but don’t be misled by the design. Colleen there’s a much more profound and significant value to them than what meets the eye. Something going on in the subtext here that can help explain a shift in our cultural mindset.

Colleen Hagerty:
So it’s not creating a plan for the worst necessarily. It’s going online as you do, seeing an influencer or going on a website of a story you like, and kind of having this all in a nice box, really easily digestible box that you can put in the back of your closet, not think about, but it’s cute, it doesn’t look that different than something you’d be buying for your day-to-day life. And I think that can take the pressure off of a lot of people, of thinking, well, you know what? I bought this and so if something that does happen, I’m prepared. And I know it’s good because I’ve seen it on Instagram from my favorite influencers or it was in Oprah’s round of gift guides for Christmas. So that’s where they’ve really been able to find that specific niche of these kinds of growing fears that our generation has had is we’re seeing the world changing in ways that are as people say unprecedented.

06:57

Jasmine Bina:
I think it’s genius what you just described. These brands understood that before maybe the mentality was that you actually needed tools to help you survive in case there was a disaster. And while that need is still there, there’s like an even more important need, which is before the disaster, you need kind of these emotional tools to make you feel like you’re in control that you’re safe. And that’s where the beautiful design and Instagram worthiness of these products come in. It’s like an emotional benefit that they serve first, making you feel like protected and it’s something that you can understand, it’s designed in a way that it’s something that you can understand versus a huge toolkit of things that you would never know how to use in the wild. And then they serve the need of actually giving you what you need if that disaster comes. So it’s almost like a product that’s way more for right now. Well, okay, not today’s climate, but let’s say you were buying these products a month ago, these are way more products that make you feel better right now before the disaster even comes.

Colleen Hagerty:
Yes, definitely. And when I spoke with Simon Huck, who’s one of the founders of JUDY, that was exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to create something that as he put, it would help take some of the fear out of this, because obviously there’s a lot of fear associated with disaster or with crisis of any sort, whether it’s a natural disaster, whether it’s the climate we’re in right now where there’s a pandemic, whatever it is, of course people are going to feel scared. And Simon’s point was that he wanted this to be something that kind of helped take that away from people so that there wasn’t the barrier of this is not just scary, but it’s overwhelming, because how in the world am I supposed to live if this terrible thing happens to me? He wanted it to be that, oh, okay, so at least I have a starting point.

08:42

And within the kits that he’s selling, he made sure to really clearly label the different items that are in there and everything like that, because if you look at a lot of the kits, if you just went on Amazon right now, which I maybe don’t suggest in this current climate, because there’s a lot of high prices for some of the items you might be looking for. But if you did go on there, you’d see a lot of disaster kits that are these big backpacks or these kind of bulky items and they’re just stuffed with things.

It’s a huge box and it’s filled to the brim with things, and if you’ve never opened it, and then something happens, you might be unfamiliar with a lot of what’s in there, because there’s water in there, but it doesn’t look like water, it’s in pouches. It’s all of these things that the average person might not open a box and be able to really find their way around it. So part of what he wanted to do with JUDY was create something that, aside from having those greatest aesthetics that were going to play really well on social media, do you have a purpose and do you have a function which is to help people look at it and think, okay, this, I can handle, this I understand.

09:46

And I love the way you described that. Because I was thinking to myself before this interview, even like, why is there even a market for premium disaster kits? It’s something that looks beautiful and sheek, it feels like a really well designed product, is almost superfluous to the fact that you just need these items to help you survive. And I see this all the time when we’re talking about brands too, like anything has to overcome an emotional barrier first before you can actually sell the utility of the product. And then that was what was missing in this space, and that’s what brands like JUDY are starting to understand.

So talking about the JUDY kit just to describe it a little bit, there are nested boxes within these beautiful orange bags or the kit, and they say things like, “Tools, warmth, safety.” You immediately know what need you need to take care of and there’s a box labeled for it right there. It’s very instinctive, you just have a gut reaction to the kit in a way that you wouldn’t have with another kit. I don’t feel that when I opened my Johnson & Johnson first aid kit under the sink.

10:49

Colleen Hagerty:
Right. And for anyone who does have a first aid kit like that, which I do as well. And if you open them up, things are usually bursting out of them, right? It’s like the band-aids are coming out. And again, if you don’t really know what you’re looking for, if you’re not familiar with that kit, I spoke with some experts in the past and they’ve said their fears with a lot of these kits is that people do buy them, and do put them under the sink in the back of their closet, and they don’t actually look at them. And then when something does happen, they do have that unfamiliarity. They do have a barrier that they need to get over, to actually start using it. And when you’re in that state of panic or fear already, that can be kind of difficult.

Jasmine Bina:
But you know what’s interesting about JUDY, they have that texting service. So for people who are listening, JUDY will let you plug in your phone number or your area code, and they’ll give you advice or answer questions that you have about whatever you need for your disaster preparedness. So I just tested it and I said, “I have two babies at home, what I need to do?” And I actually got a fantastic response that went beyond just what the CDC guidelines were, they talked about anything about what you need your kids for two weeks. It’s not just stuff to help them survive, but stuff to keep them comfortable, their foods, their medications, whatever, things like that. What was interesting about that was I realized, oh, wow, this is so much more than just a product. This is a brand that I feel like I can trust, that can guide me in gaining that sense of control well after I’ve gotten the bag, well before the crisis hits,

12:23

And it’s like this really interesting interaction point, and we’re seeing this more and more with brands that are offering this text layer. So on one of our previous episodes, there’s this new brand called Equal Parts, Emmett Shine, the founder, and it’s just housewares, but he was talking about how they have a texting service where, you can text and ask about, “What should I cook tonight? Or how do I make sure my chicken is done or whatever,” and people are actually using it. But the great thing about this added layer is, it’s not just you on your own, you’re part of a group that’s helping you. It’s a really incredible point of research for them.

They gather so much more anecdotal data about what people want, the way that they’re talking about these things, the way that they’re actually asking these questions, reveals a lot about how they’re thinking about disasters. And it’s an incredible source of information that they wouldn’t otherwise get through traditional forms of like, user interviews or even quantitative research, or anything like that. So the more you use that service, the stronger it becomes. And that’s what I thought was super interesting about that. So before we go on, I just want to get an idea. You mentioned that this is bleeding into wellness and what isn’t bleeding into wellness at this point? Everything is probably wellness.

13:31

Colleen Hagerty:
Yes.

Jasmine Bina:
So, how big is this market now?

Colleen Hagerty:
This market has grown a lot and I had done some research into these numbers, and it feels pretty crazy because these are numbers that are new, but of course we have to assume that the last few months have completely upended any research that had been done, any projections that had been done. Because the few numbers we do know from specific companies, point to the fact that this has obviously been a boon for companies that have any sort of disaster preparation products, but the numbers that were out there via allied research marketing was that in 2017, the market was $75.5 billion for incident and emergency management. And they were expecting that to jump up to $423,000,000,000, by 2025. So it’s something that’s clearly on an upward trajectory. And certainly I would imagine it’s completely changing at this moment in a way that this is going to be something that people really do start looking to integrate into their lives after the global experience we’re all having right now.

14:36

Jasmine Bina:
But there are some people that are already very survivalist minded. I want to talk about this a little bit because you’ve covered some of these people in the past, you had a 2018 BBC story about a small town in Washington called Joyce. And what they’re doing, I would love it if you could describe that and tell me what’s going on there.

Colleen Hagerty:
Yes. So I want to set the scene for you a bit that this community in Joyce, Washington, it’s all the way up at the tip of the state, you drive all the way out there through all these beautiful trees, it’s this incredible space. I mean, it’s trees, it’s mountains, it’s beautiful, it’s also incredibly remote. So in order to get to this town, you have to drive over a series of bridges. And there was a local official in the town, his name is Jim Buck, who years ago he was a state representative, he was participating in what was just kind of this routine briefing. And they were talking about the Cascadia earthquake, which is an earthquake that has the potential to cause some serious damage on the West Coast here up by Washington State.

15:41

And when he was listening to the plans that were in place, not just for his town, but for the state, he started to feel really concerned that, if something was to happen, his community really wouldn’t be prepared. And there wasn’t going to be the government response that I think a lot of people had anticipated before. It’s something that after Hurricane Katrina, I think a lot of people realized maybe if something really big does happen, there won’t be someone immediately at my door to help me. And maybe I do need to have some sort of preparation in place. And Jim definitely had that feeling at that time. So what Jim did is he decided to kind of take measures into his own hands and he created this group called JEPP, which is Joyce Emergency Planning and Preparation. And pretty much just kind of rallied his community around the idea that, okay, if something happens, our bridges are going to go down, people aren’t going to be able to get out to us.

If cell towers go down, we’re this small community kind of way far out here. So we need to really be there for each other and for ourselves. They pitched in a bunch of money. They’ve had bake sales, he hosts community preparedness courses, and they managed to buy themselves kind of like a little bunker, they filled up with supplies. And they’ve created a community-wide plan of, okay, if something goes wrong, we have these people who are planning on checking on these neighbors. We’re all going to try to rally at this place, which we chose because its infrastructure is likely to withstand the earthquake. We have cots here, we have this food. And a lot of people in the community have adopted their own individual roles based off of what they know, what supplies they have at home and what they can contribute. It’s a really kind of incredible model that you see there.

17:29

And I went with Jim as he was hosting some preparedness courses locally, maybe a 30 minute drive away. And I mean, he was packing local libraries and he’s like a small celebrity in this area, because people really trust him. And he’s really been able to get people together around this idea that maybe an earthquake will never happen in their lifetime, so hopefully it never does, but if it does, here’s how we’re going to make it through it and we’re going to do it together.

And like we were talking about earlier with getting rid of some fear. I mean, when you feel like your neighbor has your back and there’s a plan in place, that’s a huge relief. This isn’t you up against something that could happen at any moment and, oh my gosh, what do I do? This is you saying, “Okay, if this does happen, I’m going to call Jim and we’re going to put this plan in place, we know what we’re doing.”

18:17

Jasmine Bina:
What’s interesting about this is, it’s so common to see individual’s plan or family’s plan, but it’s really rare to see actual communities plan for a disaster together. Even though in a lot of cases, it’s the community that’s probably going to be what saves you? Why is Joyce rare? I’m assuming Joyce is rare. I haven’t seen anything like Joyce. Why doesn’t this happen more often?

Colleen Hagerty:
Yes. So it’s interesting because, I live here in Los Angeles and California as a whole, but I can speak specifically to this city, has been trying very hard to get communities to do this together. They’ve been trying very hard to get people to care. There’s a program through the city here where you can host preparedness classes together and try to meet your neighbors. And community centers all of the time are holding these sorts of events, but people just don’t do it. They just don’t care. And I think part of what worked out for Joyce, is it is a very small community, it’s already very remote. So it’s people who kind of already have that mindset of, I need to have some materials stockpile, because even if there’s a bad storm, we’re on our own here. So I think there’s some factors that play into that.

19:30

It’s also an older community. So it’s a lot of people who have retired and maybe do have some extra time to put towards these sorts of practices. So I think part of what’s really difficult and something that I know that kits to kind of go back to the products also have struggled with and are now trying to address, is that, when you’re thinking about something like an earthquake or even like a pandemic, it’s so hard to imagine that happening to you. You always see that on the news where people go, “I just can’t believe this happened here.” And it’s just human nature where it’s really hard to say, “I’m going to plan for this scenario that seems so wildly far-fetched to happen in my backyard.”

Jasmine Bina:
Something else that I was thinking about as you were describing Joyce that occurred to me was, Joyce is pretty homogenous. Everybody’s basically the same age, everybody basically looked like they probably have the same upbringing, all whites from what I could see in the video. And this is not a comment on them. It’s a larger comment on the fact that I’ve seen this in branding over and over again, that it’s a lot easier to plan for the future and band together as a community. When your neighbor looks like you, it’s a lot harder when your neighbor doesn’t look like you. And that’s just an internal human bias. And I think the brands that are successful at getting people to kind of bands together are the ones who draw attention to the fact that, maybe we’re more similar than we realize.

20:55

I think that’s why you’re starting to see a lot of rhetoric in Instagram posts and inspirational messages around now, we’re all in this together, and whatever. A lot of it is lip service, but I see this in community building, whether it’s in times of crisis or not in times of crisis, if you can convince people that their neighbor is one of them, people behave very, very differently and it’s a lot easier to mobilize a group that way.

Colleen Hagerty:
Definitely.

Jasmine Bina:
So speaking of mobilizing groups, can we talk about this subculture of survivalists?

Colleen Hagerty:
Okay.

21:28

Jasmine Bina:
I don’t even know if I should…because these are the people that will probably outlive us all. But this is thriving in the U.S right now, I know you’re intimately familiar with them. So just for people who are listening, I’m talking about things like Prepper Camp, which is a three-day disaster preparedness and home setting expo in North Carolina, which has been described many times as a survivalist’s Burning Man. So it’s not just about learning to survive, it’s the excitement and the thrill of learning to survive, and being with like-minded people. You’ve got people like Bear Grylls, whose captivated our imaginations. You have shows like Alaskan Bush People, which PS, oh my God, that show.

But, which may or may not be scripted, but so much is suddenly in our daily pop culture about survival and not just regular survival, but this kind of really paranoid on the edge of a cliff kind of survival. And I can’t help it compare it to the images that we would see, in the 50s and 60s of nuclear families in their metal bunkers waiting for the nuclear bomb to go off.

22:32

Colleen Hagerty:
Sure.

Jasmine Bina:
And I wonder, are we more divorced from reality now than we were back then? Are we just as delusional? Are we more sober now? Generationally, what’s the difference? Has something changed or are we repeating the same thing?

22:49

Colleen Hagerty:
I think a lot of it does go back to our human instinct, which certainly hasn’t changed to a large degree in terms of how we feel fear and how we approach potential solutions to addressing the fear that we have. So a JUDY kit in the closet today is maybe the millennial way of having a bunker before for our parents.

There’s a lot that has changed though. Of course there is the financial situations that people find themselves in. I mean, I think it’s hard enough for a lot of people to afford a home, let alone an underground home at this moment. I think the threats themselves have also changed significantly. I think at the time when everyone kind of was on the same page about maybe we should be having these sort of cold war bunkers, there was a very clear enemy. There was a very clear, specific threat. Today, depending on who you talk to, of course, at this specific moment, there is an overarching concern over one specific problem. But on any given day, the people who you speak to you are going to have different concerns about why they’re going and purchasing one of these kits or some of these supplies.

24:05

For some people, it might be fears over the climate and what the future looks like for the environment, but other people it might be who was just elected and whatever election is happening. We know that sales for all of these items tend to spike and for guns and other ammo as well around elections, because people on one side or the other think, well, this was the worst case scenario because my person didn’t win and now everything’s going to fall apart. So I think that’s a really key part of it is that, we’re no longer quite as United on what our threat is.

We have different media we can consume, that maybe if I’m only reading this one outlet and you’re only reading another outlet, we have very different views of what our immediate risk is in the world. And to your point earlier about trusting your community, I think that definitely plays into it as well as the sort of anxiety we have around our neighbors and fellow Americans at this moment, is largely stoked by having different perceptions of what this reality that we’re in right now is. So I think that’s what really has had the most significant shift in that period of time.

25:16

We’re not all necessarily on the same page, so everyone’s taking a different approach to how to address this threat. And then you factor in things like the inequality and issues of finances that largely especially the millennial generation is having a tough time being able to put that deposit down on a home. It changes the way that the sort of playing field that we’re all approaching these problems from.

25:40

Jasmine Bina:
I would totally agree with you, before, you could find an objective consensus on one, what reality was and two who the enemy was, but today we don’t know who the enemy is, and we can’t agree on what the objective reality is. And it’s a very, very heavy, additional layer of uncertainty that didn’t exist before. So in some ways, perhaps we are a bit more divorced from reality because we don’t know which reality we should be subscribing to, at the same time we’re maybe a little closer to reality because we’re just closer to the deadline and I really liked the way you articulated that.

I’m going to jump to the other end of the spectrum when it comes to reality and ask you, what does it mean that things like Preppi, when Preppi specifically showed up on Oprah’s Favorite Things list and on the Goop Gift Guide last year, are we fetishizing our impending doom? Why would survival kits suddenly be the it product that’s hawked by these aspirational lifestyle figures? Why is this happening?

26:50

Colleen Hagerty:
Yeah, it’s definitely been an interesting shift to see, because I know when you speak with the founders of a brand like Preppi, they say, when they entered the landscape five, six years ago, largely, some people made fun of them. Some people were just like, “What is this?” And I’m sure it was difficult for them in the beginning, especially to find their way onto shelves. And now there’s a brand like JUDY, that’s pretty much a direct competitor in this very specific luxury survival sort of kits. So there has been that clear change where the pendulum swung from this is a subculture, maybe the idea of prepping our survivalism to, this is something that’s going mainstream. And I think this sort of surreal moment for me is certainly seeing brands like this on gift guides or lists.

But going onto Instagram and I first discovered JUDY because I saw it in influencer between doing a hair tutorial or something, was suddenly unboxing a survival kit. And that was a huge leap for me, that it went from being something that a lot of times, when you do see these listed on something like a gift guide, it is under the guise of this specific event happened. So maybe the wildfires in California, which I think largely put a lot of these items and concerns into the scope of celebrity mindset. So when we saw the wildfires out here in Malibu, in 2018, those directly threatened a lot of celebrities. And from there you saw some change in rhetoric around natural disaster. In 2012, with Hurricane Sandy, in New York city, same thing, you have these hubs where people who are very influential in the media space are personally impacted. And then from there, change their behaviors and maybe share those behaviors with their large audiences.

28:47

Colleen Hagerty:
But seeing someone like Kim Kardashian posting and unboxing of a JUDY kit was just really wild to me, because you have to imagine, her whole family posted this on Instagram and that is millions of people who are going to see it, millions of people who maybe aren’t reading the Oprah’s gift guide or other websites that aren’t aimed at their demographic, but this is Gen Z. This is millennials who are following the Kardashians, and this is going to be on their radar in a very real way. All of that said this under threat of survivalist fantasy as you put it, is something that we have had in our culture. It’s if you go to the movies, it’s how many dystopian movies and books are there out there? And I think everyone likes to believe that in those scenarios, they are the Katniss from the Hunger Games, that they’re the ones who are going to be able to pick up the bow and arrow and make the best of the situation, and rebuild society themselves.

And that’s very clearly reflected in the entertainment that we enjoy consuming both on a fantasy level. And as you’ve mentioned in the reality shows we watch, we like seeing the celebrities we love go out with Bear Grylls into the woods. We like to believe that we still have these essential nature skills that a lot of people think are core to humanity. That if we did end up out there in the wild, we could make the best of it and live like our ancestors and all of those skills would just kind of come back into our brains so they’re instinctual for us.

30:20

Jasmine Bina:
What Colleen points out is obvious. How can we not be preoccupied with our own demise when it’s everywhere around us, from film and TV to politics and just general society. But what I wanted to know is how people are actually consuming the products that will save us in the end. What are they thinking and feeling when they purchase a filter or a generator, or a disaster kit, can we find any clues in their behaviors that might explain the current mindset of our society? I decided to speak with the founders of Preppi myself, Ryan Kuhlman, and Lauren Tafuri founded the company in 2014, and since then have grown to serve people all over the world, and not just millennials, by the way, in fact, many of their early users were baby boomers or older.

It started as just a mock-up of an idea, but it spoke to something bigger. Like so many other founders I’ve met, they were tapping into a collective mentality that had an aunt reached the surface of our consciousness. They asked the question why don’t people prepare and how can we get them to care about something that seems so utilitarian on the surface, but is actually quite emotional underneath?

31:28

Ryan Kuhlman:
We started the company in 2014. And the moment that we had was Lauren and I both experienced a very small earthquake in Los Angeles. We had both lived in L.A for about 20 years and you heard people talking about earthquake kits, but we had never actually seen one in person. And we quickly realized that that was the trend amongst almost everyone that we knew including family. Basically the last major earthquake that had happened in L.A was 1994, the Northridge quake, and afterwards people got prepared, they got emergency kits, and kind of the guideline is about a five-year supply of things that you need. So basically everyone’s supplies ended around 2000 and for the past 14 years after that, everyone kind of just shrugged about emergency. They weren’t feeling earthquakes in L.A and-

Lauren Tafuri:
We saw a lot of complacency surrounding the matter.

32:24

Ryan Kuhlman:
… Completely. Yeah. And then we thought maybe that was just Southern California. But it tends to be, we’ve seen, it’s kind of everywhere, every kind of place in the United States or the world has some sort of emergency scenario that they’re facing and most people are not prepared for it. So it used to be California has earthquakes, maybe it had its mudslides, maybe it had it’s fires. The South and East had hurricanes, obviously there’s tornadoes and floods in the Midwest, and pandemic wasn’t necessarily something on people’s minds. And now it suddenly is. So things have definitely changed in a few years in the six years since we started.

Jasmine Bina:
And then the design. So the design is so intentional. I would love it if you could speak more to like how you guys decided to design it. I think you have an interesting story about, the original mock-up and how it came to be an actual product. I would love it if you could share that with us.

33:25

Lauren Tafuri:
I mean, going back to the origin story, we wanted to create something that would mitigate this complacency and help engage people in the preparedness process. And everything on the market at the time in 2014 was something that was designed to go into your garage or goes to be stored somewhere that you would forget about it, even forget about the expiration dates. So we wanted to use design as a tool to get people, both interested in the item and interested in keeping the item in their home. So it would sit in a room or they live in and they would be more cognizant of the expiration date and where their supply is for.

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. So I think this is the genius behind the product that is easy for people to kind of overlook. It looks like a really, really beautiful product, but that’s very much on purpose. If it’s a beautiful product that you kind of enjoy purchasing and going through, and familiarizing yourself with, and looking at, it’s going to stay top of mind, you’re going to take preparedness more seriously, you’re more likely to use it the way you’re supposed to use it. You guys were really solving a problem that other people hadn’t seen yet, which was that people understand that they should be prepared, but for some reason they just weren’t getting over the hump of actually doing it. This is the complacency that you were talking about. You were solving the complacency problem.

34:50

Ryan Kuhlman:
Complacency with preparedness. And I think that with a lot of things that has been complacency with design too, the old adage form follows function, sometimes with preparedness things became so utilitarian that they were so bare bones, that it was kind of the cheapest ugliest backpack or a PVC bucket. And technically, yeah, it was functional, right? But no one wanted to have that. No one wanted to shop for that, no one wanted to keep that in their living room. So we used design as the function, right? And the two functions were one getting it into the spaces that you actually interact with, including not just the home, but the office too. So we have a product called the Preppi GoBox, right? And it’s designed to be the size of a book, so you can put it with your binders, you can put it with your books to the office and it kind of blends in.

You can kind of forget about it, but you know that it’s there. If there ever is an emergency event, food, water, first aid, everything that you need is kind of in this book that you can just grab off the shelf. So that’s getting into the space that the people interact with. But the other thing was actually, the shopping element of it. And by bringing this design to it, people were able to buy preparedness supplies in places that you’d never would have thought was possible. We just had a big pop of it, Nordstrom’s, would you ever have thought it would happen at Nordstrom’s?

36:12

What we wanted to do was say, you’re busy nine to five on the weekend, you want to relax. You want to do a little shopping, walking around. Do you really want to go to an army surplus store and spend your afternoons sorting through bins of emergency gear? Or do you want to, like, while you’re walking down the mall, “Oh, look, there’s a emergency kit. Oh, we kind of need one of those because there’s earthquakes in our neighborhood,” and you just buy it and your family’s prepared, and it’s not so much of a big deal?

36:42

Jasmine Bina:
And what’s your most popular product right now, considering everything that’s going on. I’m sure some of your skews are probably sold out or on back order, or there’s a wait-list, but what are people really clamoring for?

Lauren Tafuri:
Right now because of the pandemic the GoBox is definitely the top, the top seller is compact and it really is a great value. So people are seeing that because they’re shopping for emergency, they’re not gifting it for holiday.

37:10

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. Because I think the people are buying the full practicality of it, like actually for the utility of it right now. And so when something, basically our most inexpensive product is the hottest self-care for sure.

Jasmine Bina:
I see.

37:27

Ryan Kuhlman:
But that’s not necessarily the only thing it’s like we’re pretty much selling evenly across our line. So I think that’s kind of demonstrative of the wide kind of economy that we have here. And people have the money to spend a certain amount of money, they will spend that. And if you’re on a thriftier budget, you will spend whatever you can afford. But the one thing that we really tried to do with our product line is keep it as egalitarian as possible.

When anyone calls is a luxury company, like, I don’t understand that at all, because that’s for unattainable, but we have a line that starts no matter what your income is, we’re competitive with kind of the most inexpensive other preparedness companies out there, or anything-

38:07

Lauren Tafuri:
Sure.

Ryan Kuhlman:
… at army surplus store at a $100.

Lauren Tafuri:
Obviously it’s a challenge because our products are assembled here in Los Angeles.

Jasmine Bina:
Oh, I see.

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. A lot of our competition there’s things that are trying to do some price cutting and stuff on Amazon, but almost all of those products or at least like the bags that they come in are made overseas. And they’re able to cut prices down a little bit, but were proudly made in the U.S and probably made in L.A.

38:37

Jasmine Bina:
Well I think when people call it a luxury product, it’s not necessarily just the price, you can indicate luxury with, and still be a really competitively priced product. It’s the fact that you guys have this really well designed experience. There’s a craftsmanship of being created here in L.A and like the quality that you guys are trying to ensure with the products too. I would imagine that’s where it comes from. I mean, that’s why I would call it. I wouldn’t necessarily call it luxury, but premium for sure, in that, it’s a premium product experience.

I’m going to ask you, you’re probably getting tons of emails from people and people are asking you a lot of questions about the products, and you probably have your finger on the pulse of the mentality right now. What kind of feedback are you getting from people? Is there anything interesting that’s coming up in your conversations? Do you get the sense that people are acting more with caution, more with fear? What is the feeling right now in the air?

39:30

Lauren Tafuri:
Well, we like to say preparing with caution is preparing before an emergency happens. Right? And so now here we are kind of past the point of no return on that department.

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. People are preparing in fear. I think at this point-

Lauren Tafuri:
I think we crossed the line a few days ago.

Jasmine Bina:
And now I asked that because I feel like I also live in L.A and I always feel like we’re in such a bubble. Like things will be happening in L.A and I don’t see it happening in other parts of the country, are you seeing this across the country?

40:01

Lauren Tafuri:
We’re across the country, we’re getting heavy traffic and orders from the East Coast and urban areas, DC, New York, were obviously they’re denser urban areas. And they’re more concerned, especially about supplies. We’re also getting international orders, which is interesting. Spain, Saudi Arabia-

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yes, London, Hong Kong, more international orders in the past few days than usual. And usually our main spots are Seattle, San Francisco, L.A, New York, kind of DC, I’d say Chicago maybe, but now it’s every small town, no matter what state, the response that we’re seeing is, really is remarkable. And even though these places have always had their emergency situation, that they could be facing this one just, it’s a little bit bigger of a question mark. We’ve never seen this before and the thing that we’re always pushing as a company is to get people prepared before this happens.

41:09

So you shouldn’t have to be stressed out, you shouldn’t be having to stand in line, at the store trying to buy some food or some water or something like that. And so fortunately the customers that did buy this stuff are feeling more confident, they are feeling better that they have at least a three-day supply, which comes in our kit, which is a great starting point, depending on what the emergency is. But three days is kind of the international standard and what’s FEMA has always supported of what you should have in hand, just in case, you never know what the situation is, whether it’s a hurricane or an earthquake.

41:44

Jasmine Bina:
Right, now, do you get the sense that this is just like the same old pattern where people are reacting to a situation and when it passes, we’re going to go back to our same old habits of not really taking preparedness seriously, or do you get the sense that there’s something unique about what’s happening right now that’s going to create a bit more of a permanent shift in how people perceive these moments?

Ryan Kuhlman:
Everything’s changing day by day. But I think I can very strongly say this is a dramatic shift, maybe a watershed moment happening right now. The old example that I usually give of how people reset and quickly forget is hurricane season. So every year August comes around and every year the news report is the Walmart, bottled water shelves are drained. Yet no one right in Florida prepares so that they don’t have to drain the shelves, but this time-

42:37

Jasmine Bina:
It’s happening everywhere.

Ryan Kuhlman:
… it’s happening everywhere and it’s deeper, and I think there is a generational shift that’s happening, that this is going to stick with the youth for years to come in the same way that maybe some of our parents that went through a war or grandparents that went through a war, came out of it very conservative. I think that the younger people are going to come out of this more conservative about their lifestyle and how they live, and what their priorities are. I don’t think it’s going to be dramatically changed, but there’s going to be some deep seeds planted that I think will root. We need to look at history here, these things that we’re going through. This isn’t like the first time our world has gone through a scenario, but our older generations have experienced that. Or the first time anyone’s gone through even a pandemic, we’ve just been very spoiled for decades. And I think that, when you’re shaking a little bit, it sticks for a little while and the whole world is shaken, I think it’s going to stick a little bit longer.

43:39

Jasmine Bina:
I know that it’s like a crazy busy time for you guys and you’re just working to fulfill orders and kind of meet demands. But have you given any thought to what this means for the company? How you guys might expand or grow, or what your purpose as a brand is now that this space has kind of exploded and not just exploded in size, but the definition, I feel like brands like Preppi and others, they’ve created kind of a new category of planning that is not just purely utilitarian, but also somewhat emotional as well. Right? So what does that mean for you guys? Have you given thought to the road ahead for the brands?

Lauren Tafuri:
We’re always thinking about this and there have been some publications and there was even a book that Mark Penn wrote a few years ago called, Microtrends, where he credited Preppi for mainstreaming, prepping from being a doom and gloom apocalyptic thing to bring it into the more mainstream. So I think that we’re seeing that, especially in the stories that are carrying us, now being on Oprah’s gift list in 2019, that we’ve been on this trajectory since we started.

44:57

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. Our approach is something that we really established hard and strong from day one. And we were like, “We have to get the doom and gloom out of this.” And I think that we’ve been fairly successful doing that. And I think it shows how the future direction that we’re going to take. And that is making this a standard item, it’s still not doom and gloom. It’s just sensible, preparedness like you would have a first aid kit. Most people have a first aid kit. Most people have a thermometer, underneath their sink or something like that. And we think that everyone should have a small supply of food, water in addition to that things that come into our kids in their home. And again, it’s nothing to be scared of, it’s just something that should be standard, it’s something that everyone should have. And there’s other places in the world that you expect preparedness a little bit more, like in-

Lauren Tafuri:
Yeah, let’s just say, it’s like a cultural-

Ryan Kuhlman:
… It’s very-

45:53

Lauren Tafuri:
… It’s a cultural difference of, we’ve been having a lot of short-term thinking, it’s the same reason that we don’t have enough, and then you find mass in our governments stockpile, or pandemic committee being understaffed, or non-existent and it’s kind of like, we need to set more standards looking into the future and I feel like that’s been missing.

Jasmine Bina:
So which cultures do you think respect the planning and preparedness a bit more I’m curious?

Ryan Kuhlman:
One example is in Turkey, earthquake insurance is required by every citizen as an example. And more people in Turkey have emergency kits than a lot of places I know. Also Denmark is known for preparedness and Japan also.

46:43

Jasmine Bina:
Interesting. Do you think there’s a cultural reason? I mean, obviously they probably may have actual very real reasons to be more prepared, but what do you see that is in the culture that maybe makes them more predisposed to taking these threats seriously?

Lauren Tafuri:
The vision that having the right preparedness plans in place protects national security in a country and the culture.

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. I think culture and community might be the driving force there. And if the examples that I listed are kind of a bit more isolated, right? Japan is very insular and keep things within. And so that would include preparedness thing, I guess, with Denmark.

47:25

Jasmine Bina:
The fact that I’ll just speak about California. So right now, everybody’s scrambling and reacting, right? And you can’t find toilet paper anywhere and you can’t find a lot of essentials anywhere. And it’s kind of revealing this behavior where some people are really hoarding, where it’s not really a communal effort to stay safe, it’s a very individualistic effort. And I want to know your thoughts on that. In the best way that you could respond to this? Like, is that distinctly American? Is that just our natural response to fear? Why is that behavior emerging right now?

Lauren Tafuri:
I think that the hoarding that it’s going on, I haven’t been reading so much about it, but I think that it’s going to hit a breaking point where maybe the people that are hoarding are going to have to like break it down. They’re going to see, there’s going to be these human moments that come through and they’re going to have to be sharing with their community. Because that’s kind of a hallmark of what happens after a big disaster. That’s kind of like an earthquake or something, you usually see people coming together.

48:35

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. We’re both hoping for that sort of coming together moment that happens while a lot of people are predicting the opposite. When there’s lines to buy guns and things like that, and civil unrest. We believe pretty seriously and we’re definitely hoping that there’s that moment of the community realizing we are all-

Lauren Tafuri:
We’re all in this together.

Ryan Kuhlman:
… All humans are the same, we’re all in this together. And the only way for this entire world to keep spinning is if we reach out with a hand and share what we have, and the smartest… When you start to get into preparedness and emergency scenarios, and [inaudible 00:49:14] people that you talk to always say, “It’s about community,” every single time. That’s the only way it works, because as much as you feel like you have everything, if you hoarded, at some point you need a doctor. At some point you need transportation is important, at some point you need someone to fix your car, you can’t do it all. And the only way this all works is if we all pitch in.

49:37

Jasmine Bina:
Would it be fair to call you guys cautiously optimistic?

Ryan Kuhlman:
Correct.

Lauren Tafuri:
Correct.

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. So how have you seen the Preppi story play out on Instagram? Because you were one of those brands that was born on Instagram and you have a product that really lends itself to visual consumption. How did that happen? What did Instagram do for the brand? How did the conversation around the company evolve on that platform?

50:03

Lauren Tafuri:
We posted our prototype before we really had a product and Fantastic Man, the magazine reached out to us to shoot it, just almost immediately. So it kind of turned from a concept to a prototype, to a real thing very quickly.

Jasmine Bina:
Somebody had an actual, immediate visceral response to seeing this, and it wasn’t even real yet?

50:35

Ryan Kuhlman:
Yeah. The first thing that was posted out into the world was just a Photoshop. And when an editor of a magazine asked to shoot it within a matter of days, it was like, “Wow! Instagram’s pretty powerful one.” Again, this is 2014, so it was like, everything was square and it wasn’t us. But, just the fact that someone had a response that quickly, I think we realized that maybe this was something. And then within this first six months of us launching this very tiny company, a bootstrapped, little boutique idea kind of company, we got into New York Times and the Goop Holiday Gift List. So there has been certain kind of people that have seen us and understood us immediately. And there’s some people that haven’t, but it seems like every year passes and kind of a bigger person that, this last year we were on Oprah’s gift list.

So it kind of keeps climbing up the chain of-

51:32

Lauren Tafuri:
Influence …

Ryan Kuhlman:
… taste makers. Yeah.

Lauren Tafuri:
We kind of stepped away a little bit from Instagram. It’s great one. We love when people post and do unboxings, but especially times like this, we’ve been a little silent, just because we’re not that kind of brand anymore.

51:52

Ryan Kuhlman:
I think that’s the lifestyle aspect of Preppi. I don’t think that we’re like the most lifestyle brands by any means. And it’s harder to make preparedness, to work in a brand of coffee or something like that. We’re a little bit dryer than I would say any other kind of Instagramming, storytelling brand right now. But, we want to have our Instagram channel be a little bit more informative, and that’s something that we’re working on for the future right now, for more relevant kind of emergency based messaging. Hopefully we’ll get that together for the next one.

52:31

Jasmine Bina:
So here’s what we know, community is a powerful emotional lever that stands in the face of our deep rooted American need for individuality and self-sufficiency. We also know that there’s a lot more emotion tied up in this kind of utility than we realized, and no utilitarian need can be properly met, if there’s an emotional barrier that has to be overcome first. But what about the bigger picture? You can’t help but sense that even though so much is uncertain right now, and so much is unknown, there’s actually a pattern here. There’s an expectation or belief about how this will play out, whether it’s the coronavirus and natural disaster or a manmade phenomenon, we have scripts in our society and rules that we abide by. The missing piece is an understanding of what this all means to us.

Phil Torres:
Yeah. So my name is Phil Torres and I study what are called existential risks. These are potential disaster scenarios that could either result in human extinction or some kind of civilizational collapse event. And I’ve written quite a bit on this topic. My most recent book is called, Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing in introduction to existential risks.

Jasmine Bina:
I talked to Phil about the macro-context around all of this and how, even though the threats we’re experiencing today maybe novel, our perception and the way we make sense of them or don’t make sense of them is actually deeply ingrained across centuries.

53:59

Phil Torres:
Beliefs about the end times, really do pervade cultures across space and time going back millennia. So, one of the very first linear apocalyptic views came from Zoroastrianism that has influenced the Abrahamic traditions, which have very, very similar end times narratives, both Christianity and Islam may themselves have begun as apocalyptic movements and just throughout history there are… History is just replete with one example after another, the Millerites, more recently there was Harold Camping, there was Y2K. Historians have suggested even that Marxism and Nazi-ism both borrowed heavily from the Christian end times narrative, and Hitler promised 1,000 year Reich that parallels almost exactly the millennium idea that comes from Christianity.

And as I’ve written before, the two most catastrophic conflicts in human history were both almost certainly driven by these millenarian ideas. And by millenarian, I just mean this view that there is some catastrophe that is going to happen in the future, followed by utopia. And those two conflicts, one was the Taiping Rebellion, in the 18th century that happened in China and resulted in perhaps 35,000,000 deaths. And the second was what I had just hinted at a moment ago, World War II, where Hitler thought, as soon as we win this battle and the other side of this grand conflict, there lies 1,000 year period that will be utopian.

55:36

Jasmine Bina:
So I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you something that’s just, I think top of mind for a lot of people that are actually looking at what’s happening critically right now. And it’s the fact that if you look back, we used to have this idea of what a survivalist used to look like. Right? He was always that crazy guy, the loner, the guy that was always a little off the grid that had crazy conspiracy ideas, they were on the fringe. But now we’re finding that some of the biggest survivalists are actually Silicon Valley elite or hedge fund managers in New York, and these are people that are buying things $1,000,000 survival condos. And they’re not just condos that help you survive, they’re not old bunkers, these are things that have and movie theaters, and swimming pools inside of them.

A lot of people are buying property in New Zealand. I mean, the joke is that it’s called apocalypse insurance, because New Zealand is expected to be one of the last safe havens. You see people buying and investing significant resources in survivalist things across every socioeconomic background at this point. My question is, why has this captivated everybody? I know that we feel more social unrest in our culture, but I get the sense that there’s a little bit of like, almost an excitement underneath it all. And I don’t want to at all, diminish the seriousness of what’s happening, but people seem to… There’s a bit of a glee in preparing for what’s coming. Why is that happening? I mean, the fact that there’s a luxury market for these things, I think proves that. Why do you think this new mindset around it is setting in, or maybe it was always there, but why do people revel in this?

57:17

Phil Torres:
Well, I think first of all, what is more exciting than the apocalypse? It’s kind of hard to think of an event that’s more exciting in the sense that it’s a massively significant history, rupturing moment. And to be a part of that can be potentially very thrilling frankly, to certain people. I think it’s also probably tied up with notion of renewal. Historically there are many apocalyptic, eschatological narratives, according to which there’s some massive catastrophe at the end of time, Armageddon in the Christian faith, there’s a Armageddon like battle in the Islamic tradition as well. And what comes after that is eternal paradise. So, I think, on the one hand, as I was sort of mentioning before, there is an appeal to thinking that we’re living in the end of days, because that really means that heaven on earth is sort of right around the corner.

But more recently, because of the secularization of Western society and a shift to more scientific modes of thinking about the apocalypse, you do get an increasing number of individuals who have that same kind of psychologically deep rooted millenarian impulse, they’re thinking there’s going to be this, some kind of major global scale catastrophe, but on the other side, there is a kind of secular utopia that is going to emerge.

58:55

Phil Torres:
So you might have, Silicon Valley individuals who foresee a libertarian paradise on the other side, once all the governments collapse. Peter Thiel himself has said, he finds the idea of colonizing space most appealing because there are no laws on other planets. But then on the other hand a lot of these fairly well-educated individuals, do you take seriously this growing body of scientific and philosophical literature focused around existential risk, which is much more solidly grounded than past religious beliefs, but also propose similar disasters right around the corner, within the next two decades. You’re having to do with artificial intelligence, that’s a particularly popular idea among tech nerds, but there are various other potential risks associated the nanotechnology and synthetic biology as mentioned before.

Jasmine Bina:
Here’s what I’m hearing that, yeah, these are people who see the science and they’re acting on the science, but for some reason they’re still acting within this paradigm. A very religious paradigm of, after the end comes in new beginning, after the worst comes the dawn of a wonderful new day.

01:00:19

Phil Torres:
Yeah.

Jasmine Bina:
The fact that Peter Thiel even describes it like that, it has kind of a religious connotation to it doesn’t it?

01:00:27

Phil Torres:
I think that’s absolutely right. Historically speaking, the prepper movement was very much imbued with religious ideas. You still find this, a lot of the most popular books out there right now on Amazon, which have 1000s and 1000s of reviews, they’re hugely popular books, but a lot of these individuals are Christians dispensationalist who expect the rapture to happen imminently. And so maybe one way to think about this is that there are these psychological tendencies to wish desperately for a better world, to see a better world within one’s lifetime. And for most of the past, there have been various layers of religious dogma that have accumulated on top of these deeper impulses that we have. And so over the past couple of centuries and particularly the past few decades, these layers have sort of been peeled back and what’s left is just this millenarian kind of urge or vision about the future that ends up being, cloaked in kind of secular or scientific ideas.

But fundamentally it comes from the same place of a desperate desire for a better world within one’s lifetime. There are a lot of people out there who are very worried about an end of the world type scenario, but who aren’t motivated by this kind of millenarian impulse, but there are plenty, I mean, there’s a guy named Ray Kurzwell who believes that the technological singularity, which is this point of…. Because of exponential technological developments and the creation of artificial intelligence, in the year 2045, there’s going to be this massive, completely unprecedented transition to what will ultimately be a cosmic paradise. We’ll go out and we’ll colonize the stars and we’ll use technology to radically enhance our bodies. We’ll merge with machines, we’ll upload our minds, all sorts of stuff like that.

01:02:42

And that strikes me as a really deeply religious view. The parallels between that view and the Christian narrative, for example, are pretty striking. In fact, some people have referred to the technological singularity as the techno-rapture, but on the other hand there are some perhaps more serious thinkers who don’t believe that things will necessarily turn out well. And who are really motivated to sort of understand various secular apocalypses to avoid a situation where huge numbers, billions and billions of people suffer in a way that in some event that has never before occurred in human history.

Jasmine Bina:
I get the sense of you’re one of those.

Phil Torres:
Yes. Yeah. Very much so. Yeah.

01:03:29

Jasmine Bina:
I do think you’re one of those people, I did see somewhere that you had written that you felt that Steven Pinker, a futurist, who I look to for hope-

Phil Torres:
Oh, where is this going?

Jasmine Bina:
… in this world, that you feel that he’s actually quite overoptimistic.

Phil Torres:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. That’s a major bummer to people like me.

01:03:49

Phil Torres:
Yeah. So basically, there are two issues with a lot of Pinker’s work, which is, I think laid out most comprehensively in, Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011 book. And on the one hand some of the trends are not quite as solid as he presents them, but nonetheless, I actually very much do agree that there has been moral progress, especially since the 1950s, which is when the rights revolutions began, gay rights, animal rights, second wave feminism. And I think that all of that is it should be celebrated, and it entails that we’re in a situation right now that is better morally speaking than the situation before the 1930s, or going back even further when things like cat burning was perfectly acceptable and in Paris, as a form of entertainment. So that’s appalling to too many of us these days.

So more or less, I think those trends are worth paying attention to, but there’s this whole other set of trends out there that he completely ignores. And these are the trends of humanity developing increasingly powerful technologies that are referred to as dual-use, because the very same artifact or information, theory, whatever that can be used to greatly benefit humanity can also be used to harm humanity in some historically novel way. And these technologies are not only dual-use, increasingly powerful, but much more accessible than ever before. So it took thousands of scientists to come together and build an atomic weapon. And these days a single individual or even just small group would struggle to actually manufacture a nuclear weapon in part, because you require uranium or plutonium. And that has to be enriched, that’s a very, very difficult to do. But that contrasts greatly with something like synthetic biology, already the past decades or more, there’s been a biohacking movement, where individuals spend maybe just a couple $100, they set up a laboratory in their garage or basement or whatever.

01:05:55

And they can manipulate the building blocks of life, manipulate genes in ways that only highly trained individuals in very expensive labs could just two decades ago. So this technology is becoming easy to use, you don’t need a lot of skills. You don’t really need to know what exactly you’re doing, because a lot of it’s just black boxed and indeed terrorists have taken note of this. When ISIS was at its peak, there were some members, including some educated members, I think who had PhDs, who had talked about biotechnology and synthetic biology being the ideal tool to inflict mass casualties are around the world. So this is all part of a second cluster of trends that I think is really, really worrisome and has led a number of experts who study this issue, study existential risk, to suggest that the probability of human extinction today or the century is almost certainly way higher than it’s ever been before in our 300,000 year history.

So, most figures tend to be around 20% or so, which is incredibly high. If you tell someone who’s about to board an airplane, that there’s a 20% chance of the plane crashing, no sane person is going to get on that plane, but that’s… Humanity right now is flying in a plane that at least according to the best conjectures of these experts has a 20% chance of failing the century.

01:07:30

Jasmine Bina:
Okay. That was very heavy. Okay. I have to ask you something a bit more personal.

Phil Torres:
Sure.

Jasmine Bina:
This must be hard work. Isn’t it hard to constantly be looking at all this stuff straight in the face?

Phil Torres:
It is, but the psychology of researching end of the world apocalyptic scenarios, is really interesting. There’s been almost nothing published on it, but certainly some individuals in the field have suggested that one reason, the idea of human extinction has been so incredibly neglected by academics and scientists, and philosophers, and so on over time, is that it tends to be a rather topic. You’re thinking about universal death all the time. And thinking about death itself can be difficult in terms of mental health. But here you’re thinking about the death of the entire species, 7.8 billion humans right now. And then if humanity were to disappear, you lose all of the potential goods that we could create in the future. Further advances in science that could potentially improve the human condition, furthermore progress and so on. So there’s a huge amount at stake with the human extinction and consequently thinking about it all the time constantly can be a drag.

01:08:46

Jasmine Bina:
That does seem like quite a burden to bear, but it makes me think that perhaps the reason that we upgrade our fears to be so apocalyptic, is because it helps create meaning. And I’d imagine in your work, studying all this stuff objectively, or non-religious really can be really difficult to kind of accept, even for the best of us. And so maybe for the masses, seeing things in this kind of context of the traditional story arc of the apocalypse, gives meaning to it all. It makes it seem a little less dire in its own way.

01:09:28

Phil Torres:
I think that’s absolutely right. And I feel like that is consistent with what I was saying before about this hope for a better world, or when you’re confronted by the vagaries and the vicissitudes of life and surrounded by suffering, and so on, the thought that at some point God’s will swoop down from the heavens, and make everything all right, can be just a huge source of [inaudible 01:09:53] or psychological comfort and can help individuals sort of make it through life. From the more secular or scientific perspective, there is no guarantee of utopia on the other side. So you’re confronting a scenario that really is about as devastating as it can possibly be. And so I do think a lot of people struggle with coming to grips with that.

And there are also various other cognitive biases that I think prevent individuals from taking seriously, something like human extinction. For example, there is a cognitive bias called psychic numbing, and that refers to the fact that as the number of deaths exceeds one in a single disaster or compassion, for those extra deaths declines very significantly. So, somewhat famously, not that I make a habit of quoting Joseph Stalin, but he… And this may be apocryphal, but it’s often attributed to him, that one death is a tragedy and 1,000,000 deaths is just a statistic.

01:11:03

So it’s really hard for people to wrap their minds around what exactly a global scale catastrophe would entail, what the loss of 7,000,000,000 or 8,000,000,000 people would involve. So that results in people tending to embrace a more dismissive attitude about human extinction, whereas I think if they reflected a bit more on what exactly it would entail, the true human costs, then they probably would have a slightly different view.

Jasmine Bina:
I think everybody can relate to the fact that it’s a lot easier to feel compelled to donate to somebody’s GoFundMe page, versus sending money to a cause that will help an entire group of immigrants that are fleeing their homes because of a war torn country.

01:11:52

Phil Torres:
I think that’s exactly right. A concrete rather than abstract cause is, it’s much easier to be motivated by this moral disposition of sympathy, when you have a face or a name in mind as opposed to just a number.

Jasmine Bina:
A week before we even heard the word Corona virus, Jean Louis and I hosted a dinner party in our home. And that evening, someone asked a question of the table, and it went something like this. “Imagine the apocalypse happened and in order to be led into the one remaining community, you had to provide one talent of value. What service would you provide as a member of the community?”

01:12:28

Jasmine Bina:
For me, it was to be the town historian. One of our friends said she’d be the town comedian, another said, she’d be the therapist. Somebody even joked about running a specialty avocado toast bar, the answers ranged from serious to humorous, but it revealed ultimately what we felt would be of value. I asked Colleen this same question and her answer I think echoes what most of us would say. We would find a way to add meaning to it all.

Colleen Hagerty:
If the world was ending tomorrow and I had to use my one special gift to enter into society, to pass through the gates, to be allowed in, I do think it would be. And I so apologize if this is boring, given my job, but I do think it would be the documentarian that I would want to be creating this record kind of the hieroglyphs of years past for this new society, where someday when people were looking back and viewing all of us as the founding mothers and fathers, as you have it, of this new society, and creating the next Hamilton musical about this specific moment that they could look back on the notes, and the records, and the videos and the photos that I was creating.

01:13:41

Jasmine Bina:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Unseen Unknown. If you liked it, share it with someone else who you think would appreciate it. And a friendly reminder that you can always sign up for our newsletter while you’ll get all of our latest brand strategy thinking, articles, videos, podcasts, a whole bunch of stuff, two to three times a month. Just go to, conceptbureau.com and click on the insights tab to sign up. And if you’re an Instagram addict like me, you can follow me, @triplejas, that’s triple, J-A-S where I often talk about brand strategy in the news, in between moments of my life. You can also find me, @triplejas on Twitter and Medium.

Interesting Links & More Reading

Podcast

7: Cultural Constructs Are The Real Brand Opportunit‪y

Post author By Jasmine Bina
Post date February 27, 2020
No Comments on 7: Cultural Constructs Are The Real Brand Opportunit‪y

Brands like Ring and Billie leverage the uncertainty of our changing value systems to create new interest in old paradigms. In other words, they play with cultural constructs: arbitrary systems determined by our culture or our community, rather than a truth that stems from an immovable aspect of human nature. They prove that when constructs start to change, real brand opportunities start to emerge.

Podcast Transcript

Feb 27, 2020

50 min read

Cultural Constructs Are The Real Brand Opportunit‪y

00:00

Jasmine Bina:
This is Unseen Unknown, I’m Jasmine Bina. A little housekeeping before we get started on today’s episode. We have a lot of new listeners that are part of the Unseen Unknown community. And I wanted to let that we also have a newsletter run by our company Concept Bureau, that is everything brand strategy. So in the spirit of what we have here on the podcast, it is about connecting cultural insights to brand and business insights. You’re going to find articles. You’re going to find video content. You’re going to find the events that we host. And it’s a really great way of amplifying the knowledge that you get here with really smart insights and actionable ideas that you can use in your business day to day. In order to get on that list, just go to conceptbureau.com and click on the insights tab.

No matter who you are, you’ve likely washed one of the viral front porch videos published on YouTube by the smart home security company Ring. One of their more salient videos was published on November 22nd of last year. And in it, a young brother and sister leave daily messages for their dad who was deployed in the Middle East. It’s a super cut of their morning and afternoon passings as each kid pauses on their way to school to tell their dad they love him or comes up running to the camera at the end of the school day to tell their dad something that happened. This is a very specific scene. It’s the front porch of a seemingly suburban middle-class home an American flag waves in the background. There’s some greenery across the street that looks a park and the children look happy, thriving. And most importantly, they’re unintended by an adult, they are safe.

01:49

Child 1 (audio clip):
Hi dad, we got a new hair cut.

Child 2 (audio clip):
Dad I love so much, come home soon. I love you.

Child 1 (audio clip):
Dad, riding a bike now. All I need for help is to push then am going by myself, with no training wheels dad. How cool is that?

Child 2 (audio clip):
I hope you come back home.

Child 1 (audio clip):
Bye dad.

Child 2 (audio clip):
Bye dad… We have to learn a lot.

02:29

Jasmine Bina:
Ring is an incredible example of a company that has used a number of cultural constructs to blast their brand into millions of homes across the US. They understood how the unspoken rules and cores of our society could be used to retell an old story. The best definition of a cultural construct that we found was this, it’s anything that is determined arbitrarily by one’s cultural background rather than something universally rooted in biology or some other unyielding aspect of human nature.

So sexual reproduction is biological in origin. On the other hand, the gendered idea that male babies have blue toys and female babies have pink toys is actually a cultural construct. And we have other cultural constructs to, diamond rings for an engagement or a tipping culture, or perhaps even the whole notion of money itself.

03:20

The difference between a norm and a cultural construct is that constructs add a layer of meaning that wasn’t there before. Death and mortality are unyielding, but the fact that you wear black to a funeral in America versus white to a funeral in Japan is based on cultural constructs. And those constructs give us a way to sanctify and memorialized life and death. These constructs matter for branding because nearly all brands are playing within them. Some brands exploit them or strengthen them and others pick up on a sea change coming up within society and work to change them. Either way they can’t be ignored, constructs create the rules that brands either have to play along with or work to consciously break down.

Constructs are everywhere but I think one of the most interesting places to look for them right now is in the home. If you think about all of this startup capital and new companies and products, and the frontier of brand storytelling, a lot of stuff is happening at our doorstep. It’s about these brands trying to get into our home. A lot of the big breakout brands of the last few years and the whole wellness economy and the lifestyle brands that brought DTC to us, they were all targeting you in your bedroom, your bathroom, your kitchen, your living room, your home office. And the home is an interesting space because it comes kind of packaged with another cultural construct, which is privacy. I don’t think you can talk about one without the other. The home is a new war zone for the privacy topic.

05:02

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. That’s something interesting from an outside perspective. So I grew up in the UK and UK has always been considered the nanny state, right? There are more sort of CCT cameras per capita than anywhere else. And so everyone is kind of quite used to that, but it’s a cultural conversation in the UK, your privacy and how we’re being watched all over the place. In the US it hasn’t been historically, but now what’s strange is that people are opting into this. We are opting into having cameras in our homes, around us. And so it’s not the government that’s doing it. It’s the private sector and the consumers are choosing to do that. It’s a strange phenomenon.

05:35

Jasmine Bina:
And let’s just be clear. It’s not just cameras. It’s your Wi-Fi, it’s the personal technology that you use. It’s your personal assistance in the home. It’s letting the Amazon package come to your doorstep and take a picture of the package being there, even little innocuous things like that are always little encroachments on the privacy factor.

So in the US like you were saying, I don’t think you can talk about the home or about privacy without talking about a company like Ring, who has been such a breakout success, who has had some really interesting/questionable practices about how they’re not just branding the product, but also creating alliances with local law enforcement and local governments to kind of create this nanny state that you’re talking about and bring the technology into the homes where we are now actually surveilling ourselves. So here’s the interesting thing about Ring.

06:29

I asked some of my friends what is Ring, everybody thinks the doorbell camera, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that Ring is a whole suite of cameras that actually look inside of your home. So people may start with the doorbell camera, but then they get the camera that’s in their living room or in their bedroom watching their kids cribs or in the kitchen which is maybe as a sliding door to the outside. So maybe it’s an easy break in point, but Ring doesn’t just look at our neighbors, it allows us to look at ourselves.

There’s an interesting article I just want to mention by Caroline Haskins for Vice’s Motherboard, she wrote a three-part series called How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs. It’s an amazing article, but here in this piece is where she talks about the fact that they’ve kind of positioned themselves as this omniscient, maybe almost benevolent third eye that’s watching over your family and keeping you safe.

07:25

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I think when we’re talking about privacy it’s worth putting it in context, sort of privacy has always been a sliding scale, right? You can go all the way back to the printing press. And literally they thought that books were the under privacy because suddenly anyone can get ahold of your ideas. And so this is not in any way a new concept, but you can sort of see how it’s been sliding for a long time.

We wouldn’t have had smart home assistants in our home. We wouldn’t have allowed microphones in our home 10, 15 years ago. That just would be kind of unheard of, it would be culturally taboo or kind of very questionable at the least. And now I don’t know, with a camera and a microphone in your home really what’s left as far as privacy is concerned. And the same is in the digital realm, the point is that our construct, our perception of what it means to have privacy has been shifting for a long time. And so I think in that guys, if you could sort of see that happen, you could almost predict that this is where we would end up.

08:18

Jasmine Bina:
Why do you think it’s been shifting? Has it just been a gradual change where we’re just are a little more apathetic each time one of these new things weasels its way into our homes and into our private spaces? Or do you think there was a tipping point?

Jean-Louis:
Well, I think there’s sort of two forces definitely on the one hand look at where we’ve given up major privacy, right? So when Facebook became a big thing, we signed up, we liked all the things that we wanted to like.

Jasmine Bina:
Uploaded pictures of our babies.

08:44

Jean-Louis:
Right. We put our lives online and we knew to some extent that these were being monitored. We knew the news that came out about how it was all being tracked.

We were aware of this, but we gave it up. We chose to make the discretionary choice to give up that privacy and our digital lives so that we could have that utility of connecting with our friends, having the convenience of consolidating so much information in one place. So that’s the case there. And I think it’s the same kind of rules that apply with Alexa or Google Home. It’s the same sort of thing where there is a convenience factor and we’ve given up the privacy of not being listened to on our homes or certain rooms. And from a consumer point of view, it has been under the guise of utility.

09:25

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. I think maybe there’s another layer to it. I just feel it has to be more complicated than that. I don’t think it was just a matter of convenience. Although convenience was kind of the trojan horse that made this all happen. But do you remember in 2017 when Mark Zuckerberg made that pledge to visit all 50 States? Okay, so I’ll just take us back there. So he had had a pretty tumultuous year. There were a lot of questions around privacy and the way that Facebook was using our data at that time. And he went on this road show where he was going to visit all 50 States. And at the time he had also just announced that he was no longer an atheist and that he was going to work on himself more personally. And everybody in the media thought, oh, this is clearly him showing his ambitions to run for office.

But I don’t think it was that, I think what we were missing at the time was the fact that he knew that as a huge influential public figure, running one of the largest companies in the world, he was no longer just a CEO. He was acting more like a government leader. It was a signal of the fact that power had shifted from our governments to private citizens or people who are running big corporations, public or private corporations.

10:48

That’s one of the bellwethers I think of when privacy started to shift. I think because we decided that our governments were no longer our authorities and companies like Facebook and Apple and Amazon, these were the new authorities. And we had given them that authority willingly, that shift had started to happen but we didn’t have a chance to realize that we were also shifting the responsibility of privacy to private companies. So we still expected our governments to protect our privacy, but we were expecting these companies to act as our governments and that didn’t work. And I think this was the most visible when you would see Mark Zuckerberg at congressional hearings at the time, Scott Galloway talks about this. When you hear the line of questioning, you see how impotent our Congress was in protecting our privacy in the face of a behemoth like Facebook.

11:40

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I think what you have to kind of take out of that whole narrative is that if the private company is now our new governments who is defining what privacy is anymore? Right. It’s these companies, these companies that tell you that privacy has nothing to do with having a speaker or a smart assistant in your home. It’s kind of they are shaping that narrative. Maybe it’s very subversive, but it’s happening. And the bedrock was laid for this a long time ago.

I think going all the way back to 9/11 and the Patriot act, we got this message from the government that we were going to give up a bit of our privacy for the collective security. And at the time we were kind of comfortable with that deal. And I think it made it very complex as a consumer to understand where does privacy sort of begin and end, right? Because the government with all these NSA leaks, that the government was listening to your phone, it was listening to your messages. It was reading your emails. It kind of became very confusing and so sort of going back to the story of how we chose convenience of a privacy, a lot of it was just the fact that that was a deal that we understood the terms of.

12:40

Jasmine Bina:
Well, I think it goes even further back. I think the reason we understood the terms of that deal was because of what was happening in the 90s, Faith Popcorn. I don’t know if people remember her still. She was an amazing futurist and thinker. And I mean, she would put out a huge report every year. I remember the tech industry was always waiting for it with bated breath. I’m sure she still writes, I don’t see her stuff surfaces often, but she said in the 90s, there was this phenomenon that was going to start to occur called cocooning. And I’m going to quote here, the internet, home entertainment, mobile phones, alarm systems, self-checkout, filters for our personal air and water, and all fair paraphernalia of cocooning are about a tendency towards more lonely solitary experiences in the last 30 years. So it’s interesting. The lonely and solitary piece is that could be a whole episode on its own, but in the 90s she was starting to see the trends that would make it possible for something like 9/11 and the Patriot Act to actually come into effect.

That would make it possible now today, for something like Ring to actually exist. You and I were talking earlier about what is privacy? Why is it construct and why do we care about it so much? I think you have to remember that everything always comes back to the American dream and the American ideal. When America was founded it was founded by people leaving what they felt were governments that were persecuting them. And it was all about finding your land and owning your land and it was between you and God. And nobody could interfere with that relationship between you God and your physical property. It’s kind of which you have in Texas, the whole shoot first ask later law. I don’t even know if that’s the law, but whatever that is, this idea that your rights are completely inalienable.

14:33

And if you think that that idea is dying, don’t be fooled because think of every immigrant that’s still comes to this country. I think of my own parents. They are escaping governments that are persecuting them. That gives them no sense of autonomy and no sense of privacy. Privacy and autonomy are kind of one in the same. There’s a huge overlap there. This idea of America owes you privacy in this sense is so deeply rooted, it’s not dying anytime soon. And any time you have a disconnect between the truth and what’s actually happening, you have a brand opportunity. And I think that’s where Ring comes in. So let’s talk about Ring a little bit, Ring was before called Door Bolt and it was positioned as a smart home device. And then in 2014, they repositioned it as Ring. And then it went from a smart home device to a security product. And that was a very, very significant move.

15:34

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I think you can see how that took place and sort of how they present themselves, right? And so there’s this sort of powerful juxtaposition. A lot of their marketing footages is kids at home on the front yard playing. It’s very joyful. It’s celebrating these happy moments and it’s the same camera footage. You understand it’s a Ring footage because it’s kind of warped. It’s very wide angle. You see people robbing packages, breaking into homes, you see very insidious and uncomfortable and really unpleasant things.

And I think part of what’s happening there is that’s sort of taking advantage of the availability heuristic, right? This idea that we as human beings we’re very hard at understanding kind of the rule of averages and statistics. And so we tend to set our expectations based on past experiences. So when we see a lot of this footage, we feel that it can happen all the time, it could happen anywhere. And we just over-index maybe on how often this could happen. And it creates this powerful friction between the idea of this perfect family, this perfect home, and then these terrible things that happen. And it’s all in the same camera footage. And so it feels it’s all happening in the same place. That’s very powerful because it sets a lot of emotional triggers that make you feel good and then they make you feel very afraid. And they’re part of the same narrative.

16:47

Jasmine Bina:
Yeah. Nancy Duarte talks about this. When you tell a story, if you compare what is versus what could be, so the scary world versus this idyllic world, and you go back and forth, you create momentum in a story. And the world’s greatest speeches actually have this pattern of, this is what it is, this is what could be, this is what it is, this is what could be. And that’s effectively what’s happening in these videos. Nancy Duarte is an incredible speech writer that’s worked with the top minds in the world and has been the person behind some of the best presentations and the most famous talks that have ever been given. And that’s what she sees over and over again in actual, very formal straightforward storytelling. But let’s not forget that these brands are in the storytelling business. Now, what you described, it’s interesting.

If you compare it to a company like ADT, we all grew up with ADT commercials. Who can forget in the 90s of it was always in a darkened living room and it was a single white blonde woman. I mean, obviously a mother not single, but alone in a living room, reading a book. And then you hear a rock being thrown through a window and the alarm go off and she’s terrified. And there’s these two dark intruders. And by dark, I mean literally dark, probably minority intruders who hear the alarm and they’re scared away. And it’s all about they just show one half of this sensationalized story of protecting the vulnerable woman. But Ring knew that that wasn’t enough. And there was a cultural construct here at play that they could really mold and it was the idea of the nuclear family.

18:26

You know what’s interesting? The nuclear family is truly a construct. So historically the family has been multi-generational. It has a lot of close ties and distant ties, but then when our economics and our culture started changing in the 50s and 60s, we got this new picture painted of the nuclear family, which was two parents and two kids. And that was very different, although it was the truth. And for a while, that really worked from 1950 to 1965, according to a really amazing article in the Atlantic that just came out recently by David Brooks called The Nuclear Family. It was a mistake which we’ll also put in the show notes. It was a very stable kind of family. They call him is growing and that family worked. But soon after that, it started to fall apart. The nuclear family itself is a cultural construct, but let’s talk about what the nuclear family really points to.

And it’s this idea of the children, protecting the children. I’m going to go so far as to say that childhood is even a cultural construct. And this is why. So before the 17th and 18th centuries the word childhood, the concept of childhood didn’t even exist. And the only reason we started thinking about what childhood is in this span of time where you’re a child and you’re growing and going through certain developmental processes that don’t happen in adulthood is because of people like John Locke and John Jacques Rousseau philosophers who started talking about this stuff. But before that, as a society around the world even we’ve thought that children were just tiny adults, they were just half formed adults. Even if you look back at Renaissance paintings, the kids have adult faces, they’re just tiny bodies. And that just shows you how profound a construct can be.

20:11

It can literally change the way you see yourself and your offspring. Can you imagine being of the mindset where childhood wasn’t a thing? Can you imagine being a parent and you don’t see your child as a child, you see them as a small adult that is just on their way to becoming an adult, that childhood is not a phase that they’re going through? So because there was no sense of childhood, there were no norms or rules or beliefs about this newly segmented time in your life. And that begs the bigger question, what makes a good childhood? And that’s where you started to see a whole flourishing of theories and ideas, and then later products and brands that would help you figure out what a good childhood is.

20:53

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. And I think especially now, because the world around these kids is changing so rapidly, the roles of what it means to have a childhood and really what that is, is the roles of parenthood. Those roles themselves are changing so aggressively. And it’s quite incredible to see, there is this very powerful rhetoric and Ring absolutely plays into this, that you as a parent need to protect your child. It’s something that so many companies do. It is the exact same thing that honest company does, right? They tell you that there are these scary chemicals, they’re going to harm your kids. And so you need to do everything to protect them. It’s the same reason why SUV sales are skyrocketing in the US because parents, they want to feel safe, they want to feel like they’re protecting their kids. They want to be higher in the road. And this comes at the actual literal cost of pedestrian safety. It’s much more lethal when there were more SUV’s on the road, but it’s this mindset as a parent that I must protect my child.

Jasmine Bina:
It’s a whole flood of brands, again, because this is a construct that they’re playing within. And there’s so much uncertainty here. What actually makes a good childhood happen? You have food brands like Yumi and Cerebelly, both of which I have used and bought for my kids. You have organic clothing and toys like the Tod. You have toys that come from a whole theory about how to create a beneficial and educational childhood like the Montessori method, they use only natural colors and natural materials because they feel like artificial colors and materials don’t set the kid up for a good relationship with their physical world. There’s a whole resurgence of natural birth and breastfeeding. And if you live in LA like we do, it’s almost embarrassing to tell people that you had a C-section or that your kid is on formula.

22:37

Jean-Louis:
I think kind of the subtext of this, and again, kind of going back to this idea of this is the cultural construct of parenting, right? It comes down to how the social interactions play out. They play out on largely on social media. That’s how people get that norms, right? That’s how people discover, oh, this is what I should do. And what’s interesting about parenthood is it’s all learned, right?

When you become a parent, you have to suddenly learn this entire new world, an entirely new language. And so, because it’s so quickly acquired and kind of, you have that interesting process. Unlike things like gender, which is something, it’s a construct that you’re exposed to from birth parenthood is a very new thing. I think because of that, it’s able to change maybe quicker in terms of the social dynamics, but it creates these powerful echo chambers because you hear the loudest voices. You don’t hear the average again, it’s the availability heuristic. You hear the people screaming that this is dangerous, and this is going to harm your child. That’s kind of what you’re exposed to. And I think we have a kind of a tendency to over skew and kind of that’s the norm. And so we’ve kind of over time, thanks mostly to social media gone into this very, almost frightened norm about parenthood.

23:48

Jasmine Bina:
You know what’s interesting about these brands that’s just occurring to me too, is that there’s no gray area with these brands. If you look at the Tot or Cerebelly or Montessori, or Ring even, there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way, there’s no in between, you’re not given a choice, either do it, or you’re a good parent, or you don’t do it or you’re bad parent.

Jean-Louis:
And the irony is I was reading Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, and he was talking all these statistics about how the world is getting better. There was one that really surprised me is that if you look at a stay-at-home mother from the 1950s and compare them to a single working mother today, that single working mother actually on average spends more time with her kids than the stay at home mother did.

23:40

There’s a lot of reasons, chores were more labor intensive. A lot of things took more time. But the fact of the matter is what we perceive as normal is not in any way, it’s very much a cultural construct. And it’s just these perceptions of what defines this, not the material objective reality. So I think something that we touched on how parenting is very new and we mentioned gender, right?

Gender is a huge cultural construct, which society to society. And you go through history, they’re perceived in such different ways. I was really surprised when I found out about how native Americans, some tribes had people who were considered too spirit and they would actively switch between identifying as one gender than the other. And they were in some societies deemed as sort of shams as wise people that you would go to for advice and that was revered. That was culturally a very respected role in society.

25:19

Now juxtapose that against today and it’s very different. And so the point is that gender has also been shifting and what’s fascinating is that what we’ve seen with parenting, and we’ve seen with privacy when a cultural norm starts to shift, it creates an incredible amount of white space for new brands to come in and sort of own that conversation.

I mean, very meaningfully the brand that’s really interesting from my point of view and that’s the company Billy. So it’s a women’s razor brand and Georgina Gooley, the founder her story, her position on the brand is that the brand is really all about inviting the idea of choice that women shaving their bodies is a choice. Now you compare that to the fact that in 1915, before then body hair was normal. And then suddenly Gillette came along in 1915, and they told all these women that you have to be shaved, to be a proper woman you have to shave your armpits. Right?

26:11

Jasmine Bina:
And this was through ad campaigns.

Jean-Louis:
Yes. They really created this story. And it’s interesting, a lot of these myths around the same time. Debaters coming out with a diamond engagement ring before then you would get engaged with a bouquet of flowers, right? And so a lot of these things were because of marketing campaigns that they created these social norms everyone was expected to adhere to. And so here you have a company coming along and they have advertisements, imagery, that’s very specific. You have women wearing bikinis and you can see pubic hair on the sides. You can see women with hairy armpits.

Jasmine Bina:
You’re talking about Billy now.

26:43

Jean-Louis:
Billy. Yeah. Even they were supporting Movember for women, right? The women could grow mustaches. And the point wasn’t that every woman should do this. The point was it was a choice. And you can see how we’re now at a point where that is a comfortable for most people, a comfortable conversation to have. 20 years ago they might’ve had a very hard time telling the same story and that the audience is mostly, they do really, really well with gen Z. That’s the bulk of that audience. And it’s a very specific aesthetic, but make no mistake they exist because the definitions in the binary around gender is starting to dissolve.

Jasmine Bina:
So it’s worth seeing how Ring was actually playing into a very cemented construct. So they were taking the construct that already existed and created a lot more gravity around it. Whereas Billy took a construct and realized that maybe it was starting to erode from underneath. So they created a brand that was working to change or fly in the face of a construct, two totally different approaches. What made them both successful was the fact that they identified what it was and they used it to their advantage.

Jean-Louis:
They were having a very specific conversation and it was crafted that way.

27:48

Jasmine Bina:
We always say that the brands that win are the ones that are willing to have a very specific point of view and that’s what’s happening here. The thing about gender too is it’s not too hard to read the tea leaves and see that this is happening and that it’s been happening for at least the last decade. So the growth of streetwear and the sneaker market, the fact that men’s sneakers were projected, I think last year to have surpassed woman’s shoe sales this year. The fact that men have a very unique and pronounced form of impulse shopping that women don’t have, even though women are believed to be impulse shoppers. Also the fact that men buy to collect, women buy to actually use and wear. But a lot of times, if you think about streetwear brands, especially men buy to collect, and when you collect something, you have a lot less price sensitivity, you’re willing to pay more and more of a premium as you become more invested in the collection and there’s always a new reason to buy.

It’s not that you need to wait until you have a special occasion or the shoes you’re wearing need to be replaced. The reason to buy never goes away. I mean, that is a huge shift in how men are shopping that I think is another indicator of how the gender binary is becoming less and less relevant at least the way that we know it. Also not just through streetwear, but through a lot of different trends in men’s fashion. I think men have been given a lot more permission to kind of express themselves through their style. So a lot more bright colors, a lot more flamboyant, a lot more statement pieces. I see a lot of men wearing jewelry now, or wearing hats, things that I definitely didn’t see 10 or 15 years ago, but that’s because the gender norm is shifting.

29:33

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. That gap between sort of women’s consumption really and men’s consumption is starting to shrink and they’re becoming much closer. And you can see this across sort of if you just imagine this cultural construct, right. Gender and how it’s moved it should be unsurprising that you have milk makeup and cosmetics kind of defining a whole new landscape of sort of gender neutral cosmetics that largely can reach men in a way that they haven’t before.

You have gender neutral clothing too good. And a lot of companies that exist around the periphery, there’s a new sort of style language. You have toys even, Mattel have come out with a gender neutral doll now, and you’re starting to get even the toy landscape at a very young age is starting to be affected by the changing cultural construct here. And then even pharmaceuticals. So going back to hymns that we love to use as an example, they are very successful because they’re repackaging pharmaceuticals that have existed for a long time, hair loss and ed medication. These things, but they’re wrapping it into this new conversation around. In that case what then this sort of new form of masculinity is, but that exists because this binary is starting to dissolve.

30:44

Jasmine Bina:
I think it’s easy for people to look at this stuff and say, ah, it’s just PC. It’s just people at the fringes kind of creating the mainstream, it’s easy to point to extreme communities like LGBT communities and maybe even some minority communities that are forcing this story, but that’s absolutely untrue. This is people electing with their dollars a new format for understanding their gender identity. And then it’s the longer spectrum. And why wouldn’t they, it’s so freeing to be able to do that. And I think women have been limited in a lot of ways, but in a lot of ways men have been extremely limited as well.

Jean-Louis:
I think an interesting way to look at this is that if you look at the cultural constructs of sort of, let’s say, 50 to 100 years ago, and then you look at how the new cultural constructs around gender are changing. You see that it used to be these authorities that would define it. These big companies would tell you, this is how you get engaged, right? These are the colors that you buy for your child. This is how you should do things. Whereas now it’s bottom up. It’s the consumers that are really defining this. And even going back to privacy, the government doesn’t tell you what privacy is anymore. The consumer is electing to define what it means for themselves. And so I think just this radical shift in who the stakeholder is, and the consumers becoming much more in control and empowered. And I think you kind of underestimate the power of social media to create a bed for that conversation to evolve and move, it’s very powerful.

32:14

Jasmine Bina:
I don’t know if I would call it power in terms of what’s in the consumer’s hands, but let’s just say they have more choice.

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. Well control. But I think when you look at gender and you look at how it’s evolving, you kind of look at where it is today. You have to look at sort of where it’s going to, because this is the thing. These constructs are constantly moving. They’re constantly evolving, kind of every construct that we interface with is in itself dynamic.

32:37

And so the real question is if you’re a brand, what is it going to look like in the future, the near future? What can you target? And so a lot of these things are starting to shift and around gender was starting to get to a point we’re talking about masculinity more. I think it wouldn’t be unsurprising in the next five to 10 years for aspects of toxic masculinity or the kind of the social components of what it means to be male specifically start to radically shift. We maybe we’ll see companies that are normalizing much more intimate friendships. And this may be on media too, but I would imagine that we should start seeing these kinds of things, whether it’s new formats for male social connections and the kind of new norms.

Jasmine Bina:
You said friendships. So I think what you’re trying to say is that women are afforded the kind of fluidity and freedom in moving between spaces with their friendships and their relationships with other women that men don’t have. Men are oftentimes siloed. And again, that’s not our opinion. We’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, there’s plenty of studies behind this, but you think those welds are starting to break down and give men more room to relate to one another in a free intimate way.

33:47

Jean-Louis:
And it shouldn’t be surprising because men have started to fall into types of consumption that have historically been kind of defined by women’s consumption. And so this is a trend that you should expect if gender really is a cultural construct that is shifting, it should be absolutely unsurprising that that’s the trajectory we’re headed on. And we’re starting to see early signals of this. And so in your industry, wherever you work, you can probably start to kind of build up a picture of what is the cultural construct at play here. What is sort of defining behavior and perception and start to make a prediction on where it’s going and that white space, that leading edge, that’s where the conversation is up for grabs.

34:25

Jasmine Bina:
I want to say something here about execution too this isn’t just about good words and a good website and a product that facilitates whatever statement you’re trying to make about gender. Billy, every little thing they did was a private signal to people, even in one of their more viral video campaigns or video ads, they had Princess Nokia, one of her songs in the background. If you know Princess Nokia you know exactly what she stands for, you know that she stands for a very specific kind of subculture. And if you know her you know that for a long time until recently she was partnered with the poet Hood Profet. I think he’s renamed himself to Mike Davis. A man who since the beginning of his poetry has constantly been exploring gender and going further and further in that conversation, not just by what he observed but by his own life experience.

If you don’t follow him, I’ve talked about him in the past. One of my absolute all time favorite poets ever, who I think is doing important work here in LA, I’ve gone to some of his porch poetry shows, his handle is @theyDavis. But I was able to infer three levels of meaning, just because of song choice that they had in that ad. That shows you that they’re here weaving all the different elements of this subculture into their brand, not just giving it lip service. That’s not an easy thing to do. That’s why more and more, I’m starting to become with a mindset that if you’re not of the culture that you’re trying to sell to, I don’t think you can effectively sell to that culture. We’ll talk about that in another podcast, it’s an important topic to cover, but I’m starting to grapple with what the rules are with who gets to tell a story.

36:10

And I think gender is one of those spaces where maybe the stories you get to tell are the ones that you’ve lived, compare that to historically where every major woman’s fashion houses is founded by a man, let’s say, or run by a man. Anyways, I’m getting a little off topic. But another thing I wanted to add here is that I feel personal hygiene is a hotbed for cultural constructs. The fact that I don’t know if people remember it, but I would say maybe seven or eight years ago, hyperhidrosis, which is a disorder of sweating too much. It wasn’t really on people’s minds. I don’t know if it was even really named, but it certainly wasn’t classified as a problem. If you went to your doc and you’re like, I sweat a lot, he wouldn’t give you a prescription.

It wasn’t seen as an issue. It’s just your body, until some medical brands started creating actual products for hyperhidrosis. And it just shows you the power of framing something. If a condition, a normal non constructs part of the part of your human condition is repackaged as a problem let’s say, that’s how brands create opportunities. That’s how Gillette created the opportunity for shaving. It’s still happening today. So if you heard John [inaudible 00:37:34] give that example and think man, people are so unsophisticated. No, people are still pretty unsophisticated. It’s very subversive when brands tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way, or they create a black and a white. You either have it, or you don’t, you’re either a good parent or not parent. You’re either sweat too much, or you don’t sweat too much. You either protect your family and surveil them or you don’t. It’s really hard to say you’re somewhere in between the two.

38:01

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. It’s incredible how you can very easily and almost cheaply try and create the perception of a new social norm that sweating is this huge-

Jasmine Bina:
Let’s just be clear, not norms because norms are different. We were talking about constructs, right?

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. I think norms are sort of the consequence of constructs, right? Is that you have this kind of bigger idea and the norms is sort of how they’re expressed in behavior.

So I think talking about how cultural constructs is shifting, I think one of the very powerful conversations that is very core, especially in Americans [inaudible 00:38:32] is this idea of success and what defines success. I think in the United States, it’s very, very strongly correlated with wealth, but there’s a lot of subtext to that. And it’s very important to understand. And so when we were traveling, I went to Vasai and you saw this palace and you have to understand kind of the context of old wealth, right? Old wealth existed in a time before capitalism, before stock market, before the idea that wealth was something that could be invested. And so the more money that you had, essentially the more things got covered in gold, the more you embellished your home, you had a large amount with more sevens and more beautiful things from imported from around the world.

39:12

That truly wasn’t anything to do with your wealth, other than really in some way or another embellish your life, right? You had more properties and it was very material because that’s all that you could do. And so success in that regard was a very different phenomenon. And then you had the emergence of capitalism, right? Where suddenly success, you could invest your money. So success became much more correlated with wealth and assets. And with that sort of became influence and power, right? You had, I think for a long time, the East India trading company had one of the largest armies in the world. It was a private company, they could take over entire islands in the Philippines and Indonesia because they had that kind of muscle. And that was a company, that was private wealth that did that. And so success has gone through a lot of transitions just like a lot of these constructs. It is very much a modern phenomenon.

So you can look at 100 to 150 years ago, these big figures like Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, when they were wealthy, they did a lot of philanthropy. They envisioned the idea of public libraries and public utilities in these services. Henry Ford tried to create utopian society is in South America for their rubber farms. And so there was a mindset that they were sort of custodians of society, that they were benefactors and they were trying to kind of shape how the world works. And sure there was a very decent amount of ego involved in that. But the idea was that there was a role that they had to play as a consequence of their success. And then you compare that to today, right?

40:45

Or let’s say yesterday with the app boom, and the internet boom, you had a lot of these people that became billionaires overnight. Mark Zuckerberg is the prototypical example there and you had all this wealth. And for a long time, we sort of revered these people, these mavericks that could create the new world, that could really define what a billion plus people did every single day. And we look to these people like gods, right? And now we’re starting to enter this new cultural rhetoric where we don’t like the billionaires, where they are sort of dragons sitting on a pile of gold where they’re sort of villains of society that are taking away our autonomy and that are defining our lives unfairly.

And so you can see how success has started to shift. And so if we’re sort of vilifying these billionaires, like where is this new definition of success going? I think there’s a few different things there. One of them has to be time. This is something I think we’ve touched on in the past that these influences who have these incredible lives that everyone aspires to have, what they have in abundance is time. Whether it’s showing themselves, traveling at these resorts, doing these experiences the luxury of time really is becoming, I think, synonymous with success.

41:58

Jasmine Bina:
Can I just throw something in here? So there’s something really interesting about the connection between time and money and by relationship success as well, that’s specific to American culture or probably most of Western cultures. There’s a great book that I’m looking at right now called Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, which I’ll also link to in the show notes. One of my favorite books that talks about how a lot of our cultural values are actually hidden in the language that we use. So he explains how time in our culture is a valuable commodity. And if you just look at the phrases we use, it kind of reveals that such as I don’t have the time to give you, how do you spend your time these days? That flat tire costs me an hour. I’ve invested a lot of time in her. I don’t have enough time to spare for that.

You’re running out of time. These are all phrases that we use in one way or another that show that the idea of spending or like some sort of currency is the vehicle through which we express whether we have time, whether we don’t have time, how much time is left and inevitably what time means to us. I don’t think you necessarily see this in all cultures. And there’s a reason why this happened. He says, in our culture, time is money in many ways. Telephone messages, units, hourly wages, hotel room rates, yearly budgets, interest on loans, paying your debt to society by “serving your time.” These practices are relatively new in the history of the human race and by no means they exist in all cultures. They have arisen in modern industrialized societies and structure our basic everyday activities in a very profound way, corresponding to the fact that we act as if time is a valuable commodity and we conceive of time that way. So it’s because we have basically monetized time in America. We speak about time in terms of like an asset that’s being spent.

43:53

Jean-Louis:
Yeah, I think that’s profoundly insightful. And it shows that this raising of the perception of value of time, how suddenly we’ve always had time. We’ve always kind of spoken in this way, but we’ve had a mindset that time has a correlation there. Yeah, I think it kind of proves that there is a foundation for this, that the time is at least a part of this new definition of success. I think another aspect of this is health and wellbeing, right? They say, what is it? Health is a new handbag. I think we spoke about that before that health and wellbeing is becoming a big part of what success is and status. There was a lot of status to be had at being healthy in the perception of healthy. The reason why people will spend so much money on all these fitness, athleisure brands, and kind of go to all these classes and things you can’t mistake that a big part of that is the signal, right?

You send the sig in a way that… Back in the day you might have rented a sports car, today you will show that you have the time and the health that you can really kind of do these fitness activities. And you can be part of that world, that is becoming a new part of the success.

44:59

And part of this is that if we talk about work being the new religion, right, then I think the question is like, where is this going? Why do we work? And you can see this, how there are a lot of statistics that show millennials are choosing lower paying jobs that have a higher degree of meaning in their lives. They are literally choosing that. If work is the new religion than what successes because success and work are very closely aligned. Success is different. And success they’re saying is in part due to meaning, right. And how they create kind of an impact in the world. And so I don’t think we have a kind of concrete summary of what success is becoming, but we can see that the language and the vehicles that we define it by a starting to shift significantly.

Jasmine Bina:
I think I disagree. I think if wellness is really just a display of the time that you have, if being healthy takes time, if people are trying to find jobs that give them meaning because they want to spend their time wisely. I think that’s no different than this story that we’ve always told ourselves, which is time equals success. If you have time, if you have a space for time, that’s the ultimate indicator of success. Maybe not back to like the Carnegie and Ford days, but the fact that we’ve been talking about time in terms of currency shows that maybe this is a new iteration or a new interpretation of it, but this has always been the same story.

46:28

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you’re right that it is becoming that key currency and you can see that we used to show off things that were expensive and now we show things that were expensive in time. And that’s kind of the new metric that maybe we display this by, but this is incredibly powerful. And I think we’re just starting to enter this new zeitgeist around success. And you can very clearly imagine a lot of companies starting to build off the back of that, of adding value and giving you vehicles to express your time in different ways. It’s a very powerful thing.

And I think it shows that cultural constructs are incredibly powerful at capturing our attention and leading a lot of behavior. So success is just one of many cultural constructs that affect us. We’ve touched on a few, but it’s an incredibly powerful device to sort of understand the world around you and really kind of build up a model of where it might be headed. And it really is definitive of where we see a lot of new brands finding success is following the trajectory of those cultural constructs.

47:35

Jasmine Bina:
Or working against them.

Jean-Louis:
Yeah. So in the tradition of our podcast, I want to ask a slightly more personal question, Jasmine, what’s a cultural construct that has personally affected you?

47:46

Jasmine Bina:
Many constructs come to mind that I think I’ve fallen victim to and kind of had to rise out of, but there was one that I think about all the time that I think many people will argue with me on. But a few years ago I went on a five day silent retreat to just meditate in the Ohio Valley for the better part of a week. And during that time we got some kind of discussions and lectures from the groups that were there to talk to us. And I remember somebody introducing the notion that unworthiness is a cultural construct and that’s for two reasons, one unworthiness isn’t really an emotion. It’s a label that’s applied to us by our society, our media, our religion, our peers, our parents. And when it’s applied to us, then we feel things like guilt or shame or fear. But in and of itself it’s not an inalienable feeling, it’s a constructed identity.

And then two, if we didn’t have these frameworks and these norms to tell us that unworthiness is a thing, we may never experience it. If you were a child that grew up without a notion of unworthiness, would it ever cross your mind, would you ever feel it as an identity? And that kind of blew my mind open. I realized on the spectrum of what you can feel as an individual, all the things that come along with this idea of being unworthy, which I think many of us feel if you really dig deep down into our histories or the things that hold us back today, I’m willing to bet unworthiness is underneath a lot of that. It is truly the most useless, the most constructed meaningless thing that we’ve created for ourselves, and the most destructive.

49:48

And maybe it’s not even really a thing. And when I realized that it just kind of freed me up, like even to this day, sometimes when I’m feeling bad, I ask myself is there a sense of unworthiness underneath all of this? And when I realized that, and when I can kind of, now that I’m out of that paradigm mentally, it’s a lot easier for me to springboard out of those feelings and just move forward with whatever it is I’m doing or wherever I am in life. That was a big one for me that I think I fell victim to in a lot of different places. And that that was an important moment.

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