How Emergent Brands Lean Into the Beautiful Mess of Humanity
Social media has failed to create real brand relationships. But people are still connecting to brands that embrace variation and the messiness of other people.
Last time we introduced a new class of brand we see forming — Emergent Brands. These companies are always in motion and deeply human. They stand out both as brands and businesses. They (like all emergent things) are growing, changing, and shifting. But Emergent Brand behaviors are not limited to the new and novel — some existing brands are exploring these same themes.
There are four key principles of Emergent Brands. Let's look at the first.
Lean into the beautiful mess of humanity.
Humans are deeply messy and complex — and, because of that, they are interesting (and I mean this in the literal definition of interesting, not the ironic one). Dynamism and unexpectedness capture attention. And one thing I’ve learned over the last decade of marketing is that algorithms and targeting are, well, none of these things. Optimizing to them has at best plateaued growth and at worst created a massive wedge between people and brands.
This is probably old news to most marketers, but it’s worth spending just a minute reflecting on the technology that promised us intimacy but in execution delivered the opposite.
Here are three truths:
Social media has failed to create real relationships. This is not a very controversial statement for anyone who spends time on Facebook or X. But it’s worth stating that these are not good tools for brands either. Fewer than half of companies describe their social media strategies as “very effective” at strengthening brand image, increasing sales, and growing their consumer base. Source: Forbes
CPC is through the roof. There are many compelling studies that show why. But the upshot remains the same: We have those great algorithms to thank. The average cost-per-click (worldwide) has risen 17 percent in just one year (2022). Source: Statista
And lastly, performance marketing is completely ignorable. Again, most marketers know this, but don’t feel like they have many other options. For years there have been studies showing that over 50% of display and other performance marketing ads that are published are never seen by a person, and the ones that are often fail to drive any conversion. Source: New York Times
Put the stats and facts together and the takeaway is clear: no one should bet their business on web2 tech solutions. The Web2 platforms have simply out-grown their usefulness due to their extensive commodification.
But people still connect to the variation and messiness of other people. And while this might seem anti-tech, it’s not. Web3 is creating new ways for decentralized and collaborative creativity. If you’re hearing alarms bells because of some crypto-bro baloney, I totally get it. But there are amazing applications of web3 tech that CAN foster intimacy. It’s about aligning the best of humanity with the best of tech to unlock new possibilities.
So, how does “Lean into the beautiful mess of humanity” show up? There are a few things we are seeing that are worth exploring.
Stoking the interestingness of humanity
Some brands specifically are engaging wildly varied audiences and subcultures to create mixtures of interests, values and identities that are totally unexpected. From the outside, these combinations don’t make sense, but from the inside they feel fully realized, both textured and dimensional.
Two amazing examples of this: MetaLabel and Early Majority
We have already noted Early Majority as the spark for the Emergent Brands articulation. For those that are not familiar Early Majority is creating an eco-socialist utopia using performance outdoor gear. But their brand is varied, messy, and imperfect because it’s built on multiple, diverse audiences — artists, athletes, activists, protestors, government agency workers, urbanites, outdoor adventurers, etc.
They combine their many composable brand assets — editorial detail, composable gear, interchangeable badges, web3 brand ownership, community conversation — in unexpected ways to connect with these audiences. Then take the next step of partnering deeply with them — designing badges, suggesting and implementing brand services, etc. — to bring even more facets of the brand to life. From a business perspective this is effective as well. This strategy allows them to keep CPC incredibly low, earning double the profit margin per customer than comparable brands.
Individual advocates expand the story-verse and create relationships
This isn’t about using influencers or superfluous brand partnerships, this is about the brand itself having different faces.
Peloton is really the master class on this strategy. Peloton specifically doesn’t “brand" or control their instructors — their uniqueness is what's appealing. They are full, tangible personalities you can connect with and relate to, which of course is why these instructors have loyal followings.
It’s like they have 50 different brand identities instead of one monolithic one. People, again, connect to people and these individuals are a major reason why Peloton’s churn rate is under 1%, compared to 30%+ in the category.
Businesses are blurring their brand edges by innovating through citizen-assembly
This is more than just “send us your product ideas” — it’s having full dedicated initiatives and even sub-brands focused entirely on co-creating the future of the brand and product together.
There are older brands who are doing this alongside some newbies.
Nike, for example, has always found ways to push and stretch their brand. Their latest creation is about bringing consumers in to push and stretch the brand collectively. dotSWOOSH members use web3 technologies to create digital shoes and apparel, some of which will be made and sold as physical Nike products.
Using community and member involvement and modern tech is an ingenious way to unlock potential and relationships with brand advocates.
But you don’t need Web3 tech to make this happen. Lego Ideas falls more on the traditional side of the spectrum. Similar to dotSWOOSH, Lego Ideas shifted from UGC to consumer-generated ideas and then consumer-generated product. This experience allows fans to submit their own designs for new Lego products. The submissions are then voted on by the Lego community, and selected designs are then produced and sold by Lego, with the original creators receiving royalties. Just like dotSWOOSH, Lego Ideas blurs the edges of the brand and blurs the line between creator, maker, user and owner.
That’s a lot for just the first tenet! But the over-arching mantra is short. Lean into humanity. Technology has focused on creating processes that are more efficient, but also more forgettable. Redirect efforts to humanity and lean into the people that make your brand worth developing a relationship with.
Coming up next: how Emergent Brands make the unseen world real through editorial and experience. Stay tuned!
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Fun! Great read thanks. It sparked a conversation with a hotel client on what their brand might look like if we tucked away the physical property and amenities – putting only stories of travelers front and center. A challenge that bubbles up in this thought experiment is how to carefully tread the territory of 'perfected avatars' and indeed lean into human messiness. In our desire to break free of boxing people into categories, there's a danger in creating millions of perfect little glossy boxes that hide true humanity.