When Selling Out is Buying In

Announcer: [00:00:02] Today on VISIONS.

José Cabaço: [00:00:07] And then it's easy to pay someone to endorse your brand. It's easy to get into the fandom business, but it's really, really hard to be genuinely adopted by the culture that you're trying to be a part of, engage with, promote to the benefit not just of your brand, but that culture that you're putting the spotlight on. And I think there are very few brands that do it nicely.

Announcer: [00:00:37] Welcome to VISIONS. VISIONS is an annual audio-visual trends report that covers the changes in culture and commerce. It is meant to be a companion guide to our new Zine, The Multiplayer Brand. Buy your copy today at TheMultiplayerBrand.com. Episode 2: When selling out is buying in.

Phillip: [00:01:08] Hi, I'm Phillip. In the intricate dance between culture and commerce, how do iconic brands like Nike and Adidas seamlessly weave together narratives that last for generations? Today, we'll hear from experts that suggest that it's by collaboration with athletes and valuing insights that brands can create a multiplayer relationship with their customers. And beyond that commerce relationship with the customer, they create a cultural context. Today, we'll hear that the true risk isn't in artificial intelligence, but in overlooking genuine connection. We'll observe brands that merge with cultural causes that cause us to reevaluate and ask the questions about whether authenticity and collaboration provide a means for us to not sell out, but to profoundly buy in. Today, on Episode 2 of the second season of VISIONS, we're going live to the VISIONS Summit, recorded in June of 2023, in Chicago, and we'll listen in to our special guest, José Cabaço, the former Global Creative and Storytelling Director of Adidas and Orchid Bertelsen, the CEO of Common Thread Collective and former Head of Innovation at Nestle Foods. Two experts who discuss the very real challenges we face in an ever more artificial world.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:02:40] So I was so excited for this conversation when we were just kind of preparing last week. You said many brilliant things, but one especially brilliant quote I'd like to read because I think it's going to guide a lot of our conversation around brands and culture and what is the difference between selling out and buying in?

Announcer: [00:02:58] Orchid Bertelsen, Chief Operating Officer at Common Thread Collective.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:03:03] So the quote is, "There are a million brands who think culture is a sticker they can put on their product." Would you like to expand on your brilliance?

José Cabaço: [00:03:13] I mean, it's easy to pay someone to endorse your brand.

Announcer: [00:03:17] José Cabaço, artist and Global Creative Director and Head Storyteller at brands like Hurley, Nike, and Adidas.

José Cabaço: [00:03:25] It's easy to get into the fandom business, but it's really, really hard to be genuinely adopted by the culture that you're trying to be a part of, engage with, promote to the benefit not just of your brand, but that culture that you're putting the spotlight on. I think there are very few brands that do it nicely, and fortunately, we are in that time where we have so much fragmentation of communication that that seems to be a problem that hopefully will disappear.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:04:06] So when we were thinking about the idea of a sellout brand or creator pairing, one thing that came to mind was that limited edition drop by Basquiat from the grave and Coach. How do you and we haven't talked about this, how do you feel in your gut about that partnership?

José Cabaço: [00:04:29] I mean, there's been so many like that before that one. That is a common practice of brands to get into deals with the estates of the artists, of many genres and many generations, and slap on their wine bottles or labels of their cans. So it didn't even faze me. Meaning, to be honest, I didn't even realize the conversation. So that for me is kind of the ongoing use of art, artists' work, cultures, and their cultural expressions on a daily basis. So don't know how to fight that. Not even interested. And fortunately, I've worked with brands that have a completely different approach to how to engage with culture to create together something.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:05:35] Yeah. And I think, by nature of your deep experience and working with some of the world's largest and most well-known brands like Nike and Adidas, they have kind of won their place, I think, through their deep brand experience, their agility, it's really built into their DNA, and it allows them the privilege of working directly with their consumers. As a part of those brands, what exactly do you think is in the special sauce, and how do they behave differently that allows their engagement in multiple communities and cultures to be authentic?

José Cabaço: [00:06:13] Well, first, I don't think it's a privilege of those two brands to be in that place. It's a very clear, conscious decision that it's at the root of their existence. If you look at the two brands, there are two brands that operate in the world of sports and the culture around it. But they started with a very pure willingness to engage with athletes, Adi Dassler or Bill Bowerman, and hear from them. How can they help them improve the product that they create to serve them? And that exchange determined for the rest of their existence, the nature of how they create products, how they start innovation. Oh, innovation happens. It happens because you listen, you collaborate. The outcome, the data conversion of that is product that then betters your performance, becomes desirable beyond the function it was created for, and it ended up turning these brands into more than just product that is specific to sports practice. But it permeated and became part of the entire existence of how we dress, the trends it started triggering. I mean, we've seen where it ended, right? And where it ended never was the place of stopping that collaboration. So what these brands do is a continuing engagement and exchange with communities in a way that the communities feel is genuine, that they feel that they have a real opportunity to be heard, to be listened to, to participate, and nowadays participate even in the creation of the products that the brands do.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:08:37] On Season 3 of Infinite Shelf, we talk about the evolution of direct to consumer to direct with consumer. So I think in your example of Nike and Adidas, really starting with working with athletes and co-creating and making that technical product better, I think makes a ton of sense from their core consumer. But now they have infiltrated, I think, in a good way, I don't mean that in a bad way, but in multiple different facets of culture, of streetwear, of sports that aren't, well, what are some sports that aren't professional? Pickleball? But I mean, they've really expanded their range in the lifestyles and cultures that they're a part of. So how do you do that when you're moving away from just a single audience?

José Cabaço: [00:09:25] The brands didn't decide that. Consumers did. If you think of tracksuits that were created for your warm-ups in between, before, and after the games that you would be performing with other products, the jerseys that you created for the teams to play in. All of a sudden they leave the court and they are found in stands with the fans wearing them, and all of a sudden you have an entire amount of product that was created for something but consumers decided that it was cool to wear for something else too, and this kept growing. When you look at an Air Force 1 or the now very on-trend Samba, these were futsal, terrace football shoes. In the case of the Samba that permeated, you know, left the courts and went into the stages of rock bands with musicians wearing them, went into catwalks, went into the streets. Same thing with Nike with the Air Force 1. Could be the third biggest brand at the time I was at Nike if it was separated as a franchise ahead of many other brands that exist out there. So that is allowing yourself to listen to the consumer, see what it does with what you created that you had an intent to it in the starting point, but it ended up being adopted for a million other things. And you just pay attention to that, continue to let it happen.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:12:27] I think it's great. And I think to your point about listening to the consumer, in the case of the Adidas Maker Lab, that was not a passive invitation into co-creating. Maker Lab was a very intentional activation, multi-year, multi-country that really was a formal invitation for consumers and creators and artists to come build with Adidas. Can you share more about that program?

José Cabaço: [00:12:52] So I left Nike, did my non-compete year, joined Adidas, and joined Adidas together with some former Nike colleagues, started a place in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Creative Farm. And that was a decision of the brand to create a design R&D center outside of the main headquarters in Germany and in the US in Portland, to have that space to be a place that was equipped with some capacity of manufacturing, of sampling of product, both footwear and apparel, but also a place where we would rotate designers from the design community of the brands. Ten at a time. We went through ten rotations, ten people coming from different places around the brand, around our creation centers. Asia, Latin America, Europe, the US and come to the place and immerse themselves in a real-time exchange with the fabric of a city like New York, a massive crossroads of multiple nationalities, multiple cultures, multiple sports, multiple types of people, a city with as many micro-cultures you can think of. An amazing city from a sports standpoint through high school, college, NFL, MLS, NBA. I mean, you have everything. And so that place became a hub for the brand to exchange, to engage in conversations with athletes, the pros, the amateurs, with the creators being graphic designers and fashion designers, and come together on topics that we thought were relevant for us as a brand to pay attention to. From that exchange, we saw the vibrant excitement of people that were from the outside of the brand to come into a place where they had access to exercise their point of view, and sometimes see that point of view going forward being adopted. And so when we did that for a variety of times, we decided to take it consumer facing in LA at All Star Weekend. And we did it specifically around basketball. We invited a lot of people to register online to come to the place to experience a co-creation with our best designers, and it became this real time, real life experience where you get a crash course on footwear creation, tutorials, some sort of a democratic masterclass. Then we saw the success of that and we said, okay, what if we want to launch this franchise here? We launch it with an experience that allows consumers to see a new shoe model at the same time as they are already invited to question that same footwear model by creating their own version. This real time, at the same time we're launching, we're already open to rethink it. And as these things grew, we decided to okay, let's do something that is what you've been looking at, that finally goes to market, because none of these experiences were going to market at a time. So we did Campus. We knew that this model had an amazing history. It was kind of dormant. How do we reinvigorate? How do we make it relevant again? So we invited three designers from two markets where the model Campus had a great history, and we invited them to recreate it. But we used this to also innovate in terms of time to go from creation to market in the fastest way we could. So try to use this exercise to shorten, go to market, then go to market. How can we innovate here? We did the first IPO in partnership with StockX, and we allowed consumers to determine the price of the footwear. So we kept evolving the nature of how we engage and how much are we willing to give consumers room to take us into places we wouldn't if it wasn't because of this conversation, and that was the beauty of it. And then unfortunately, Covid happened and the rest is history. The platform was over. I don't know how it's going to now evolve. And now we have a set of amazing ingredients in our plate, like AI that hopefully the brand will make the best of it.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:18:25] Yeah, and I absolutely love that example because I think it absolutely takes courage from a brand to very meaningfully and intentionally open up a platform and use a very iconic product that they have that has a lot of history, a lot of legacy. And you know brands like control. So for them to see that in a meaningful way and creative way and invite the audiences in and to your point about the relationship or the ending of that program because of Covid, in our previous conversation, I had asked you, do you think that program could come back to life again? Would it come back in the metaverse? Would it come back in a way of Tiffany and Nike with generative AI coming up with different features? How would you imagine it in the post-Covid world?

José Cabaço: [00:19:16] I mean, even before Covid threw a wrench on it, you were already seeing us entering the metaverse world, the gaming world, the digital co-creation. It's not something new. I'm sure from there there's going to be a lot more to come. And AI that's for me, a gold mine. We were talking about I don't know which one of you already mentioned the notion that if it's generated in AI, it's not property of anyone or a brand can claim the property of it or the ownership of it. Kind of. Because, for example, if you look at these two brands and you see the amount of archives that they have of their own products, if that is their prompt, that is theirs still. So for us to go through all the tech packs, all the iterations that were done of a Samba or an Adizero, the AI is going to create based on that input, so it's still of the brand, it's still of whatever brand that pays attention to archiving, and that's what's important. And you were referencing the guys in Reddit making sure that no more videos disappear, because that is in the days ahead of us where data is going to be critical for us to use AI in a way that is still true to what we are as brands, as people. I think it's an amazing time for us to pay attention to the past, and hopefully we kept enough of it to feed these machines and still give some stuff to the consumer that it's ours.

Phillip: [00:21:30] For a brand to merge with culture, they must commit to that culture. As the world changes, then the brand must change in turn. And that means they must embrace change but remain authentic. In order to find a lasting connection and find authenticity, they must sell out, but buy in. So how do brands like Nike and Adidas do this? José lays out the framework. Partner with artists. Nike and Adidas bring in artists like José to become storytellers to dive deep into culture. Why? Because there is an essence of artistry in the way that you tell stories. Artists create from a place of vulnerability and authenticity and a desire to preserve a shared history and culture, and that makes them the perfect fit to connect with athletes who, though they use different tools, are also storytellers and historians in their own right. As an artist, José helps others who are emerging artists to find their audiences through his nonprofit work. He has at times also sat on technology and innovation councils at prestigious organizations like the Guggenheim Museum. This is the intersection of culture and commerce: for the world's most famous brands to partner with artists who will tell their stories to new cultures and new generations.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:23:00] So I think just the previous example was such a great one of buying in. The brand buying into creating with the community, the community buying in that Adidas was offering them a genuine invitation to be part of the process. Is there a fine line between selling out and buying in, and what are some things that determine which side of the coin you fall on?

José Cabaço: [00:23:25] I don't think there is a fine line. I think there is a very clear line. It's very easy to make a mistake and that's part of the learning. But the line is very clear. You either are willing to be led in a conversation that you decided to engage with a certain culture, or you're not. If, like you were saying, "Can you please tell this and don't tell this?" If that is the setup, if that is the context, it's never going to work. And the good thing about that is when we were opening up the doors and saw people come in, we learned so much. So this notion that you're being led is something that is taking away or steering you away from where you want to go. It's also not accurate because a conversation is a conversation. You're not there just listening to the input and then executing the input that you are obtaining from that conversation. That conversation is that opportunity that you have to have with consumers and explain to them, yes, I take your point, but have you thought about this? Because this is what we were thinking when we were wanting to go that way. And the consumer also, or the participants of that conversation, will equally be willing to be led by you as much as they are giving you the input of it. So as long as the setup is for a genuine conversation and you're okay, and they feel that you are being respectful to what you're hearing, I think it's fine.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:25:24] I love it. So just kind of to close it out, if you're a new brand, you don't have the legacy, you don't have the cachet of a Nike or Adidas, and by new, I guess, anything newer than 100 years? I don't know how long those brands have been around. What would your advice be in really being courageous and inviting the consumers into cocreate because I could see the challenge of that? If you're in the nascent stages of establishing your brand identity, finding your place in the world, putting a flag down for your values and why the brand exists, what elements of a brand need to exist that you have a clear point of view on before you start inviting consumers in?

José Cabaço: [00:26:16] I think a brand for what it is, is already a very clear point of view on what you're doing and what you're creating. What's not clear, and that's the point of these conversations is necessarily for consumers, where are you heading? And when you go into these conversations, you just always need to be ready to make the detours that come out of these conversations. So the advice would always be to be ready to change. Be ready to change your mind. Be ready to take advantage of the insight that you don't have every day inside your structure necessarily. And that, for me is the critical thing to to pay attention to.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:27:12] So I think that's a great note to end on. And the quote that it really sparked for me was that change has never been this fast and it'll never be this slow again. So thank you so much.

José Cabaço: [00:27:25] For me AI, artificial intelligence, I'm more concerned about advanced ignorance than artificial intelligence.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:27:38] {laughter} Amen to that.

José Cabaço: [00:27:38] I'll take it. Let's play with it in the best way possible.

Orchid Bertelsen: [00:27:42] Yeah, great. Well, thank you so much for the conversation.

Announcer: [00:27:47] Next time on VISIONS.

Speaker6: [00:27:51] In general, we often overestimate the value of the information that we're finding. So what does that mean? It means that oftentimes we think we've done our research, we think we've done our homework, and we tend to neglect the heuristics that we're using to process that information. If you want to launch a brand on Amazon today, the first thing that crosses your mind is, "Okay, how do I get that Amazon's Choice label onto my product so that people can at?" This is a new phenomenon.

Announcer: [00:28:32] The VISIONS podcast is brought to you by Future Commerce. You can find more episodes of this podcast and all Future Commerce properties at FutureCommerce.com. Join our interactive and immersive Miro board that expands on our trends at VISIONS.FutureCommerce.com.

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