Is This Our Post Malone Era?
I think about AI campaigns, the dated marketing funnel, a modern business strategy for athletes and creators plus a heavily used art direction playbook.
I have a couple exciting projects coming up that I’m not quite able to announce yet but they are going to give us next level access to brands in the running space and you’re coming along. I’m going to level up this newsletter thing and leverage my video background. Subscribe and stay tuned.
I couldn’t settle on one idea to write about this week so I wrote about four. None too long. None too deep. Just four ideas or observations I’m working through and as always I’d love your feedback in the comments or chat.
The Consumer Facing Role of AI
Nnormal released an apparel collection that leaned on AI to create abstract art based on real life photographs. It didn’t work for me. The big benefits of a small brand are the personal touches, the human connection and the care that go into everything they do. Nobody at a small brands is punching the clock and going through the motions and that is an absolute asset. Lean into it.
Instead we see Nnormal, a very small brand with a strong environmental focus, utilizing a massively energy intensive and impersonal computer process to create products we are supposed to connect with. Just doesn’t seem at all on brand to me.
On the other hand, of course small brands are going to utilize AI when their resources are limited. It’s a time and money saver. Is it different if the AI use occurs behind the scenes for innocuous things like note taking on a zoom call vs consumer facing content? A study by MIT concluded that generating one AI image used roughly as much energy as charging your smartphone. Even if they generated dozens of images isn’t this less energy than would be used over the course of a photoshoot? Maybe this makes sense?
Then we saw Speedland drop an AI image of a wolf staring down their new road shoe. This one didn’t bother me nearly as much a Nnormal. Knowing how trail runners feel about running on the road, I thought the ad’s concept resonated and it’s a big ask for Speedland to arrange an IRL wolf. That being said it seemed to me this one had even more skeptics than Nnormal from the community.
I think it just comes down to the branding ramifications of consumer facing AI. We all accept that big brands seek efficiency, process and safety - not risk taking and creativity. This fits with the idea of AI. We’d expect and likely accept these moves from a massive brand (of course Coke is going to create its Super Bowl commercial with AI). However, I greatly prefer to see small brands harnessing the analog nature of human creativity. Too much of their competitive advantage is linked to the human touch they can uniquely provide vs. a big corporation.
The Modern Entrepreneurial Strategy
Athletes and creators should be pursuing two paths concurrently - a cash business and an equity business. This article from Nat Eliason really resonated because it manages to articulate a strategy I had arrived at myself about a year ago. Photo and video production is a cash business - very rarely is anyone able to cash out of an equity position. Not much is being built long-term. It can pay well monthly and then you do your best to keep it going. I’d also say the same about most creators generating cash from YouTube ads and brand deals on Instagram. The newsletter business could be described the same way. Traditional athlete sponsorship deals fall into the same camp. Pay me now to do this thing now and when it turns off it’s over.
The complementary play is to think beyond the lifespan of that cash business and use it to fund the long-term venture of an equity business. The equity business eats cash and time in the short term and pays next to nothing for a while (think years). But unless you have a trust fund collecting dust somewhere you need that cash business to make it happen and now is far better than later to get started. It took Satisfy 10 years before most people had ever heard of them, then they suddenly took on investment of $10m and were able to hire the best running shoe guru in the game. It’s a slow churn until it isn’t. Hoka and On were orthopedic shoes and garden hoses back in 2009/2010 - 15 years ago. Auteur Sportif is my equity business in a lifestyle space that I think is massively under indexed. It’s crazy early so time will tell how that strategy plays out.
A shout to DBo on the latest episode of Second Nature for bringing Nat’s article to my attention. Give it a read if you’re a creator, athlete or anyone running a cash business.
The Tired Marketing Funnel
Here’s a take that got me thinking - We’ve exhausted the old marketing funnel and need to rethink the fundamental question we are asking. The typical funnel asks "How do we tell our story?" and then we seek to move people along from awareness down to conversion. For decades it has guided so much of the everyday work at brands. Everyone is playing the same game.
But is this still the right question to be asking? Is there an advantage to be had by playing a different game?
This article from Rei Inamoto really clicked for me. In today’s world should we instead be asking "How do we activate our unique POV for customers to tell their stories?"
More on unique POVs in the next section.
The Art Direction Playbook
Is it me or is there a playbook for art direction circulating around the growing litany of small performance apparel brands? You’ve seen the look - sunglasses, gold necklaces, tattoos, muted colors, neck bandanas, mostly dudes. I’m a very visual person so the lack of distinction makes it tough for me to remember many of these brands by name. It’s such a similar lens that seemingly speaks to the same audience. I like to think there are distinct narratives buried in there somewhere but I’d struggle to tell you UVU from UNNA.
I took a cursory look through IG to pull a bunch of links. What are we calling this? Is it some sort of gorpcore offshoot? Something about it gives me Post Malone vibes.
Is it a pendulum swing away from 90s neon running? Or just my algorithm tossing me down a rabbit hole? How can these brands separate themselves? What’s next?
As always thank you for subscribing and sharing. Let’s talk through your ideas in the comments or chat. Until next time ✌️
Great take on the art direction playbook. I think the biggest issue is that all these brands have come about around the same time with the same mindset using the same reference points. In the end when its all branding and no product differentiation, what will keep them alive? We know that 5 years or so from now many of these brands will not exist, because they didn't differentiate now.
Thanks for sharing Nat’s framework. Very helpful!