Live at Klaviyo London, Kunle Campbell joins Future Commerce to explore the tension between idealistic wellness brands and the realities of scaling in a capitalist system. Kunle and Phillip explore intentionality, identity formation, and how conscious consumers can navigate the cascade of marketing messages while staying true to themselves.
Live at Klaviyo London, Kunle Campbell joins Future Commerce to explore the tension between idealistic wellness brands and the realities of scaling in a capitalist system. Kunle and Phillip explore intentionality, identity formation, and how conscious consumers can navigate the cascade of marketing messages while staying true to themselves.
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[00:00:07] Phillip: Kunle Campbell, welcome to Future Commerce. Thank you so much. I talk a lot about the intersection of culture and commerce. What does culture mean to you? You talk a lot about wellness, but what does culture mean to you in your perspective?
[00:01:56] Kunle: Culture, communication, it's community, it's the zeitgeist, it's really that. It's the way you communicate. So I was born in Nigeria, in Lagos, Nigeria and my kids, they're born here in England and they're English. Culturally, they're English. But my core culture has been defragmented and sort of spread into certain things I've picked up that align with my values. So at the core, if you were go deeper into culture, I think it's very much that baseline is really values and what you build on those values and how you communicate. And then every other thing falls into place, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's music, arts, and the like. I think the value system is very, very fundamental when it comes to culture.
[00:03:09] Phillip: I think value systems is an amazing way to describe a culture because value systems are so highly subjective to the people that inhabit the cultures, right? I think people have overused the word culture. Culture in our commerce industry has become synonymous with commercial opportunity. You know what I mean? When I talk about the intersection of culture and commerce, what I'm talking about is more of what you define it to be, which is the recognition of value systems and sometimes those things being at conflict with the commercial opportunity that people are trying to extract from the culture. And I think that comes down to the core of your work, which you earlier defined for me as being focused around intentionality and optionality. I think under all of these, under the umbrella of wellness? How do you reconcile that work overall with the fact that we are in the commerce industry? Is there reconciliation?
[00:04:24] Kunle: It's a beautiful question and I don't know whether the stars are aligned because I'm reading The Whole Story by John Mackey and here's this chap, he's in his 20s, he's a hippie by every definition of the word...
[00:04:40] Phillip: The Whole Foods founder.
[00:04:41] Kunle: Yeah, the Whole Foods founder. And he came to the realization, so he was in a commune of vegetarians. He was living in a essentially collective more or less. And they all hated money, they all hated cash. But their values at the time was essentially good food, food that enriches you. There was yoga, certain wellness modalities they operated that really sort of put that culture together. But what he didn't realize was that all over the country, The United States at the time, there were pockets of similar dwellings and subgroups just popping out. And he was the buyer for his collective. His dad was quite an accomplished CEO. So he was able to kind of merge the wisdom from his dad from a commerce and capitalist perspective to changing the world from that core. At some point, Whole Foods had to sell meat. It was called SaferWay at the time. But in order to reach more people, I do think that you need to make certain compromises. The world can't necessarily reflect your idealism and everything you stand for, but that comes at scale. So in order to change the world, like at scale, you're going to have to make some compromises.
[00:06:20] Phillip: So pure idealism is not enough?
[00:06:22] Kunle: No. Not in a capitalist system. Not if you want to reach more people. You're going to have to, as in the Google we know thirty years ago...
[00:06:31] Phillip: Why is that? Is that because the capitalism is not a fit for... The operating system of capitalism is not fit for idealism?
[00:06:42] Kunle: You're going to have to make certain decisions, hard decisions, as you get to certain inflection points to really cut through. It depends on how big you want to be. I mean, have a Whole Foods kind of store, I think it's called Wild Honey in Oxford. That's where I live, in Oxford. So it's similar to what the first version of Whole Foods was. And they've kept it small, they've kept it intentional, but they can't scale that model. It's just not possible. And the other thing to bear in mind is cost. So you find that in the wellness space, good stuff is expensive. It's more pricey to buy organic. It's more pricey to get the best supplements. And if you want to reach more people further down, yes, you have economies of scale, but there are going to be compromises, I think.
[00:07:46] Phillip: [00:07:46]I've been studying this material from a company called Praxis recently about new and emergent business models. And they have this small set of literature about what they call redemptive business. [00:08:01] So you have this concept of concentric rings of the styles of business. At the center, you have extractive or exploitative businesses, which is, I would say, is the bulk of what businesses exist in a capitalist system. So you have businesses that purely extract or take from a culture. And this is because I think generally businesses exist to create a profit. Right? Funny enough, on the other side of this door, we were joking with Roy Sutherland just before we walked in here. It's like one of the doors out there is Marx. Karl Marx would have said like, "Yeah, profit and labor." Right? It's like profit exists to extract from the labor of the worker and that is like a fundamental form of evil. And that's what an exploitative business is at its core is it's meant to be extractive. Outside of that are businesses that are actually the style of businesses that are, they give back businesses. They're the businesses that are, they're like Tom's. These are businesses that are meant to generate some sort of goodwill in the world. In a binary system, you would think that these are the only two style of businesses. There is a third alternative that they put forward, which is there is a third style of a business that should exist in the world, and that is a business that actually limits its own scale and by its own nature exists to be like a benefit to others at its own cost. So it neither generates, not just generates a profit, but it specifically exists to give. And I think that that's they call that a redemptive business. Nobody's talking about that. In fact, nobody would ever probably talk about that in many circles. But I think that that's such an interesting concept and something that in a commercial system it's not sexy to talk about in a marketing automation sense. The thing that comes to mind about the emptiness that a lot of people feel in the way that they're operating within the terms of commerce is that they don't feel like they're actually they feel like they're taking part, or I feel like I'm taking part in a system that I don't fully agree with, and I feel like maybe that's because we don't feel like we have all of the options available to us.
[00:10:32] Kunle: That's why I do... Interesting on the redemptive commerce, I would research redemptive business model, I would definitely research it, I'd like to know examples and figure out examples. But I'll give you an example. So I said I live in Oxford, that's not entirely correct. I live in a small village that's 10 miles from Oxford, where my kids do school in Oxford, so I to go to Oxford every day. Now in my village, as with most villages in The UK, you have a local co op. It's a cooperative, it's a grocery store, it's not quite the scale. They're cooperative, so they're not for profit per se, and everything is ploughed back to members and they're better for you. When you go into a co op and you want to buy flatbread, you get the worst options with myelodextrin, the ease or the emulsifiers in there, and there are better options out there. And you're wondering why they're training us essentially to eat unhealthily. And you see it reflected for people who are not very conscious about like the ingredients, you see it reflected in just the malaise from a health perspective of the population. So it's those options. In the wellness industry, we really need to build community through education. And I think the opportunity now is so, it's just there right now with social media. There are many independent social media influencers and personalities that are starting to educate people at scale, and that is triggering supermarkets to do better.
[00:12:18] Kunle: So Tesco, the biggest grocery store in The UK, recently created an accelerator programme and every member of the accelerator programme is a Better For You brand.
[00:12:29] Phillip: Wow.
[00:12:31] Kunle: So I would not agree that we can't do anything. I think we can, there's activism and it doesn't mean you need to go into the streets. It just means sharing more of that, what you come across and amplifying the message so people know and are aware. Because with capitalism you do lose consciousness. And consciousness is the start of change. You can't change behavior if you're not conscious of your behavior. So what I'm doing in commerce is essentially helping this better for you brand accelerate in ecommerce. So they then have that platform to say, Hey Tesco, hey co op, we've done these numbers in commerce, we have this huge community, we educate, we deserve our spot on your aisles. Aisles have to change.
[00:13:28] Phillip: Yeah.
[00:13:29] Kunle: They have to change. It's just, it's sad what's going on. And I don't want to complain, I just want to essentially just take action.
[00:13:41] Phillip: Yeah.
[00:13:42] Kunle: Really, and just give people more options. And you see, that is how culture then sort of changes. And you see it's happening, but we're small pockets and people label us all sorts of, not in a negative way, but it's a bit cliche sometimes.
[00:14:06] Phillip: Let's talk about a few things that are terms that you come back to a lot in your online content. Intentionality. What does intentionality mean to you?
[00:15:21] Kunle: It's identity. So before you have intention, you have to claim an identity. And to claim an identity, you need to shift behavior. To shift behavior, you need to be conscious that, okay, what I'm doing is not really serving me. It then sort of layers up.
[00:15:40] Phillip: So it's funny you say identity. When we talk about commerce as a sort of big C commerce as a system, we talk about commerce as if it's a metaphysical, like human, greater than a human characteristic. Not to go too psycho spiritual about it, but when we discuss language of spirituality we use words of exchange and trade. So we use these human mechanisms of exchange and trade to discuss things of spiritual natures. Like we layer things of commerce to understand all kinds of spiritual principles as well. There's something about commerce that's fundamentally really important to the human experience. When we talk about identity in commerce at Future Commerce, we talk about commerce and a transaction as being a form of identity exchange. I am buying into a form of identity when I buy something. And some forms of identity exchange are holistic and some are sort of extractive of your person. And that's where we start to see that in your sense of intention, I fear that there are the predatory marketing tactics and certain things that we're starting to see around that nature, the identity exchange feels very imbalanced away from a positive relationship with brands into a less positive relationship with brands. How do we rebalance that?
[00:17:33] Kunle: It's a heavy one. It's a heavy one. I can only speak to my personal journey. And again, all in the context of conscious living as it applies to commerce. And it's of involved a lot of inner work, you know, myself individually, it's been shadow work, ego dissolution. There's also been detoxing completely. Like when you get into a fasted state, there's a lot of work going on in your brain, in your spirit. I don't want to go too spiritual there. It's about knowing thyself in every sense of being very honest with yourself. It's like businesses have PnL statements and balance sheets. You should know your DNA, what you're predisposed to and kind of work your way there. That would stack up to allow you make more intentional decisions. If I know I'm predisposed to certain cancers, at least if I know that, not everybody wants to know that, I think I'll make more conscious... I'll take more conscious action in what I consume. I probably won't drink alcohol, you know, or I'll drink very low alcohol for celebrations. I'm not in or out for that. But really knowing yourself...
[00:19:05] Phillip: It would change your behavior.
[00:19:06] Kunle: It would change my behavior. And what all of this marketing clutter does, it says, "This is an identity, claim it, take it," and then you lose your inner person. Can you do that, that skill? I don't know. It's my...
[00:19:25] Phillip: That's powerful. That's powerful. Hold on. I wanna get into that. That's something that I've not heard anyone say.
[00:19:35] Kunle: Because I have 14 year old son and I'm seeing him trying to claim identities presented to him. You know, there's that inflection point where daddy's no longer the hero. Who's my hero?
[00:19:52] Phillip: Yeah.
[00:19:52] Kunle: I'm soon to have a four year old.
[00:19:57] Phillip: Wow.
[00:19:57] Kunle: It's ten years apart and there's a lot to observe. But yes, it's data. It's like I'm wearing a Whoop now and again, it's behavior change. It's like, do you want the data? Some people don't want the data. Some people have tried the whoop and it's like, "No, I don't want to feel bad." But how are you going to use that data? And again, I'm not trying to advertise for them, it's really knowing myself to claim your own identity, know your flaws, and fix it as best as you can, within your locus of control.
[00:22:19] Phillip: I have a 13 and a 14 year old, and I've witnessed all the same, my two girls. And we're in this challenging time too where it used to be the thing I would be worried about is how many people around them alter their behavior. And now I also have to worry about how many brands in their feed alter their behavior. And now there's a coming time where I have to worry about how many AI messages that they'll have to compete with that they're also interacting with, that they have some agency to control that will reinforce the changing of their behavior. And so we're also, we're competing against our own ego to some degree too because our own ego is being shaped and reinforced of our own self image that's being reflected back at us. And all of those things I think come back to a lot of this, you talked about optionality, you talked about intentionality, and now it comes back down to consciousness. And I feel like that leads us kind of almost back to where we started, which is this idea of like just being conscious of this idea of this identity that we're all in search of. Any parting thoughts on that?
[00:23:51] Kunle: Meditation has helped. And I don't think the best modality, the best I think has been Joe Dispenza. But you need to wean off Joe Dispenza as in like him being your crutch. Because that body scanning method where you're able to scan from your entire body, sometimes I would scan my feet for as long as I can with breath.
[00:24:23] Phillip: Right, this is the methodology where you're sort of like examining like for tension or for... Right.
[00:24:30] Kunle: Correct. So the methodology is pretty simple. So you focus on every body part, the space and all. And then eventually, you state an intention after that. But the thoughts and the subconscious thoughts and person that comes off the back of when you're doing it over and over and over and over and over again, the insights you get about yourself, they're phenomenal. And breath walk is amazing. I went for my first group breath work experience last week, Friday. I have to say that it was refreshing. It brought a lot to the top. It was like 2D. It was just like, "Oh, this thought actually exists. You can bring it out." And you know more about you. You need to know more about yourself. And I don't... It might be breath work for you. It might be a DNA test. It might be blood tests, regular blood works, but you need to know more about yourself so you can sort of tailor your decisions around yourself. There's no one size fits all approach. Health, wellness is one to one. It's very personalised in my opinion. And then you start to curate a commerce experience. You choose the brands and you align with the brands quite well. What we're talking here in Klaviyo, what I'll be speaking with them stage with Klaviyo is how do these brands amplify their messages so there's a marriage eventually. So again, I love commerce, I love wellness, I love being conscious, I think. {laughter} There are brands out there that would sort of merge with your own unique wants and needs based on what you need for yourself. Don't lose self.
[00:26:35] Phillip: Amazing. I think that's a great place to leave at. Kunle Campbell, thank you so much.
[00:26:39] Kunle: Amazing. Amazing. Sorry, my hands are... You're amazing.
[00:26:42] Phillip: Thank you.
[00:26:43] Kunle: Cheers.
