Make the Unseen World Real Through Editorial

Emergent brands don’t just copy culture. They create it.

Welcome to part 3 of our series on Emergent Brands. Emergent Brands are a new class of future-forward brands we see forming. They are always in motion and deeply human. They stand for something both as brands and businesses. But notably, they (like all emergent things) are growing, changing, and shifting at a rapid pace. Emergent Brand behaviors are not limited to the new and novel—many existing brands are exploring these same principles. Quite simply, Emergent Brands are managing to connect most efficiently and humanly in an age of skyrocketing acquisition costs and shallow brand relationships.

There are four principles shaping Emergent Brands. The first one we covered was all about leaning into the beautiful mess of humanity. The second principle is an excellent way of doing that, but it’s also incredibly important in creating cultural appetite for a new way of living. Innovation brands need to create this appetite—many benefit from shaping the culture and the category of the market they serve. Let’s go deep on this second principle.

Make the unseen world real through editorial

There is an old truism of brand that we’d like to challenge here: “All consumers just want to see themselves in the brand.” This isn’t enough anymore. We live in such a fast-paced, distraction-prone age that there’s far greater value not in mirroring your audience, but in reimagining what they can be. People don’t want to just see themselves. They want to see a new side of themselves.

To us, editorial is the perfect vehicle. A short disclaimer here: We use the word “editorial” quite broadly. To us, it’s not just long-form writing or narrative. It’s any kind of story—physical or digital—that adds a new story dimension to your brand universe. This could be an apparel line extension for a water brand (hi, Liquid Death, and scads of others), it could be a digital magazine that tells the stories of your haters (hello, Oatly), or it could be an artifact or activation that makes a big cultural wave (MSCHF is aces here). Editorial is how we refer to a wide range of brand activations and storytelling. And there are many inventive ways to weave a good yarn.

The key is having a distinctive point-of-view.

It may sound obvious, but we think it’s worth saying why this is so vital: We live in the age of ignorable content, where seemingly no one is saying anything new. The mirrored halls of the internet often feel banal. Especially when it comes to brands. This is only going to worsen as generative AI content tools take hold, and ad permutations will show you not your humanity, but some shallow understanding of you multiplied by the mean. The most important thing a brand can do today is replicate the beautiful variation that defines humanity. It’s the key to connection.

So, what’s the brave new human world your brand wants to reveal? How are you showing people it’s real?

Put true artists in impactful creative positions

Every brand can learn a lot from the strides and missteps of the fashion world. But one of the greatest lessons is around the impact of leading with truly visionary creators—people with intensely personal and unique points-of-view.

Louis Vuitton, after the sad death of visionary men’s creative director Virgil Abloh, put Pharrell Williams at the helm. They could have chosen a fashion insider, but instead they chose a cultural luminary, someone who publicly stands for an extensive list of widely-appealing feats: musical innovation balanced with catchy melodies, versatility across genres, distinct and unique fashion choices, as well as visual artistry and humanitarian activism. They chose to put a real artist at the helm, someone whose life has been shaped by their passion rather than a playbook.

The result? His first show for LVMH generated a staggering 1 billion+ views. It’s easy to be cynical of the choice to name Pharrell creative director in an age of outsized celebrity. But that discounts the fact that today there still exist some celebrities with loads of actual talent and interesting perspective.

Photo Source: Acielle/Style Du Monde for Vogue

Tell nuanced stories that have an actual edge

What’s the cultural wave you’re riding? The easiest way to get there is by understanding and exploring real people with real struggles. Because we all have them. And conflict is what shapes any story worth connecting to.

Brands can be exaggerated things. We’re used to them elevating the superhuman and the extraordinary. Every CMO seems to be chasing the sublime. Aspiration has traditionally been seen through the lens of great feats of strength and perfect fairytale endings. But, rightly so, cynicism around glossy perfection is at an all time high, and instead aspiration today is about expanding what it means to be alive. It’s about capturing the nuance and reality of what life can be. It’s about living in a full spectrum of emotion. Aspiration is having hope in something better or greater ahead despite the many angles of our story that could point in darker directions.

Our work with Nike editorial focused on highlighting the real over the supernatural. If everyone with a body is an athlete*, shouldn’t we be telling stories that expand on this idea? To live this out, Nike needed to behave as a publisher more than an advertiser. We set out to create a new offense from the the iconic “big brand moment” storyteller as a global editorial engine, styled more as a newsroom than a brand house. It all started with a breakthrough point-of-view that lived up to their purpose: Tell stories that move you. Unlike the rest of the content world, we wanted to tell stories that got you off your feed and into the real world, moving your body.

We went deep on understanding content psychology and the barriers to movement. And we began to craft structures, strategies and stories to add a new, more connective and humanly expansive side of the brand. It’s a new voice from Nike, one that can grow with culture, not just talk to it.

Photo Source: Flo Ngala for Nike

Editorial, like all emergent things, is never finished. It’s a question followed by a conversation followed by another question. It’s the best way to evolve into new ideas. And begin to depict an exciting world that’s new.