The Science of Building a Premium Brand — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00This is a guide to creative operations. The  modern conundrum is how do you manage product
2. 0:05development, content strategy, building a brand,  and living your own life as a creative? And the
3. 0:10truth is, every arc is really different, and  that's okay. In this video, we talk with three
4. 0:14businesses here in London about their very unique  journeys. How Earl Veast built their fragrance,
5. 0:19label, and retail all the way up to two stores  before they even left their jobs. How About Blank
6. 0:23built a monster clothing line in just 4 years  through relentless focus. and how our friends
7. 0:27Alan Reggie and wholesales started as curators  into resellers. This now led to wholesales
8. 0:34breaking off into his own brand standard format.  And videos about this have been one of our most
9. 0:38requested topics. How do you start out? How do  you begin curating? How do you keep this alive?
10. 0:42What's the pressure like to focus on a brand  or live your life together? We're super excited
11. 0:46to walk through these journeys with you and then  share some tips on how to think about your brand,
12. 0:50your content in this modern era and actually  build a strategy for creative operations. So
13. 0:54Clayton's got the stony on. We're going to go get  kicked out of Fortnite and Mason and lock in. Hey,
14. 1:01so while in this video we talk a lot about  journeys and arcs and how people got to where they
15. 1:05are with their brands and their creative journey.  The real creative operations, creative strategy
16. 1:09comes down to what interesting standout unique  things do you do to actually make your brand
17. 1:14resonate. You've got some incredible examples. I'm  excited to hear. One of the first examples I want
18. 1:17to touch on is Pain World, a new and interesting  independent footwear brand. And before they ever
19. 1:23launch a single product, they were generating  thousands and thousands of followers from their
20. 1:27email list and social accounts by seeding out  product to influencers and having them post about
21. 1:32the product. There was no paid ads. There was  no billboards. It was just generating interest
22. 1:37through people who have genuinely good taste  and using that as a lever to be in the right
23. 1:42circles. By the time they launched, they already  had a huge funnel with demand on their website. So
24. 1:47I think what goes into the operational side of a  product launch is having a plan for a content in
25. 1:52the first place, seeding it to the right people  and and creating momentum which leads to greater
26. 1:56brand distribution before you even launch. And  probably one of the most interesting niches that
27. 2:00I think we're all talking about is is tennis is  continued to like everyone thought it would peak
28. 2:04during co there's like a resurgence. Everyone's  kind of awaiting for a challenger brand. But then
29. 2:07one brand's been standing out in particular,  right? Yeah. What's interesting about a lot
30. 2:10of these individual sport brands like golf and  cycling and running is that they've all had their
31. 2:15own respective renaissance moments. But tennis is  one that has sort of stood on the outside looking
32. 2:19in and is sort of waiting for this clear player  in the market to step in and fill the void. And
33. 2:24I think a brand like Spence that's based in the  US is doing a really good job by having a clear
34. 2:29POV through their creative and art direction. So  whether you're auditing their email marketing,
35. 2:33their social content, their video, their art  direction, it is crystal clear that they're
36. 2:38operationally building a brand that has a distinct  philosophy because you want your customer to buy
37. 2:43into your perspective and not just the product. So  at a time when individual sports are having their
38. 2:48respective first movers, there's something really  important about being the first mover because you
39. 2:52get to own and dictate how you present yourself  to the consumer. Yeah. And I think that that
40. 2:56first mover happens in generations, right? Where  it's like we've had these brands around forever.
41. 3:00like who's moving inside of a new position or  a new moment or a new kind of piece of cultural
42. 3:04resurgence. And if you're passionate about  something, it's about kind of preparing yourself
43. 3:08for that right time when the consumer is ready for  it. Yeah, I think it's a good reminder, too, that
44. 3:12just because a category is quiet doesn't mean that  it's dead. There's always room, as you've said,
45. 3:17to have ripe disruption into specific categories  regardless of price point. All right, let's go
46. 3:24dive into some creator operations, go pour some  candles, and see where it takes us. [Music]
47. 3:34Yes, boys. How we doing? Right. Give you guys a  little tour. So, everyone obviously works in here.
48. 3:39Downstairs, we've got a nice uh gifting lounge  plus all of our kind of sampling production. Over
49. 3:44here is when we have like meetings and over here  is obviously where we have current collection.
50. 3:49This is AW25 drop one, drop two, and then it goes  into the rest of the year up until December. This
51. 3:55is all our core caps. Caps are probably our  second biggest category at the moment. They're
52. 4:00flying out. We've obviously got quite a custom fit  and shape. It's taken us so long to get it right
53. 4:04as well. We were both so specific about what we  wanted and how we wanted it to look. It It took
54. 4:08us honestly nearly 2 years to get it right. For  those who don't know, I previously had a men's
55. 4:14wear Instagram page which was like heavily  influenced on curating other content. It was
56. 4:20called NCL Gallery. So when Perry and I started,  that was going to be a main driver to actually
57. 4:25push the brand. It was like an interesting time in  the in the land social media landscape like reals
58. 4:30were just starting up. Tik Tok was obviously on  on the rise hugely. So we just tried to use our
59. 4:37existing skills and and like put like a strategy  in place and sort of ran with it. It helps if you
60. 4:43have experience elsewhere or things that you  can try elsewhere. So, for example, if you're
61. 4:48doing your own personal content creation and and  you want to start doing reels where you talk to
62. 4:53camera or you want to curate things, things like  that, make a video every day or make a,000 videos
63. 4:58and then your thousand video will be good because  you just figure out what works and what doesn't.
64. 5:02And I think having other platforms and other pages  can help you like navigate that cuz you can apply
65. 5:06different things. Your strategy shifted a lot.  You guys were really really focused on carousels,
66. 5:10great created editorial, stuck with it. You  started having some more video and campaigns
67. 5:13and stuff. What have you seen? how how's the brand  kind of evolved in content over time. We started
68. 5:17off um really getting a lot of traction from reals  and it was very very fast. It was a lot of behind
69. 5:24the scenes like a mood board in a real with a  little bit of product in it. We developed that
70. 5:28further and started to have more sort of cinematic  videos and a little bit more behind the scenes
71. 5:33rather than like the mood film sort of stuff.  I think that's like a good pointer for brands
72. 5:38starting out because what people don't realize  is when you're doing a shoot, especially when
73. 5:42you have low budgets, having one background, one  camera position, you can run through like 20 looks
74. 5:48in like half a day. That's what we used to do. So,  on the topic of product drops, you mentioned you
75. 5:53do monthly drops as a brand. I'm curious just what  your views are on the idea of a drop as a brand. I
76. 5:59feel like people are definitely starting to get  more fatigued. As you grow, it's harder to have
77. 6:05those drops have such an impact because you have  more product, you have more customers, you want to
78. 6:10have people who buy every day. I think when you're  starting out as a small company or an individual,
79. 6:15it's a great way to sort of get everything in  a chronological order. So, you design around an
80. 6:20idea or a theme, build the hype, and then try and  transition into more of an evergreen um process
81. 6:26with with those drops. walk us through some of the  creative process or the mechanics behind how you
82. 6:32bring that drop to life. Well, this autumn winter  has been a little bit different for us where we
83. 6:36haven't tied ourselves to themes so much and more  build themes around product. So, for example,
84. 6:42we have some puffer jackets. One of our big things  is like versatility and showing the full look and
85. 6:46how to style it. And then we're thinking right  what is the key points of the puffer? The big
86. 6:51ones like versatility. It's not too overpriced.  We want to show it obviously in these different
87. 6:56locations and settings to show that it's warm,  it's like water resistant, things like that. And
88. 6:59then work back from there looking at what's been  done, looking at what we can do, looking at what
89. 7:04our budget is, which is generally 10% of of what  the whole commercial value of the shoot is. So, we
90. 7:11try and work with that on like a ballpark figure.  And then in terms of content formats, lookbook is
91. 7:16is strong. Trying to do more um like static shots  on the details and things like that. And then
92. 7:22um video for a real and also video carousels is  something that we're trying to do more of now as
93. 7:27well. Love to see you guys have your crushing. Oh,  thanks for coming by. Nice to see you again. Yeah,
94. 7:34likewise. [Music] So we started nearly 11 years  ago. It kind of happened by accident. We had a
95. 7:49er started as a journal. We eventually were like  we should just do something and start making. So
96. 7:55we started making at home. We have friends in LA.  We used to go often and we were like there's this
97. 7:59big craft scene here and there's no one doing it  in the UK. And so we started a candle brand. We
98. 8:04started trading at the market. And I think because  of the market and where it was in London Fields,
99. 8:09it started to open doors for us like we were  featured in New York Times really early on or
100. 8:13the market was as a whole and we were just like  okay this is something. it went from being like
101. 8:18a weekend thing to taking over every minute that  wasn't the 9 till5. So, one of the things that
102. 8:23I think is most interesting about the brand is  that you are visionaries in the way that you're
103. 8:27building it. Was that always the vision for you?  You wanted to build something bigger than just
104. 8:31making a simple candle and selling it to friends  or has that evolved as you've grown the business?
105. 8:36You know what's nice about starting something and  never really intending for it to become a brand
106. 8:40is you say yes to a lot of stuff. From the very  first market stall, it was always just more than
107. 8:44our own product. We always kind of curated other  brands. It was always for us about working with
108. 8:49best in category cuz then that became the playing  field for us. So working with you know like a firm
109. 8:54living or a hay in homeware becomes your playing  field but then we became the add-on product and
110. 9:00also the thing that they would come back for.  So it was a really good way to kind of build a
111. 9:03customer base. I'm curious. You have a really wide  range of products. You've developed all kinds of
112. 9:08interesting things. Obviously some are passions,  some are are business choices. you know, what's
113. 9:12the process which you bring something new out and  decide we want to make this real? I think there's
114. 9:16always an element of feeling fulfilled in what it  is we do and enjoying it and learning. Often we
115. 9:22also release products cuz they're just necessary  cuz the customers have asked for it cuz if you
116. 9:27look at the catalog, it's clearly missing. There's  a gap and we should fill it. That's a really
117. 9:32important thing for a lot of other brands to look  at for themselves and be like, we are not just
118. 9:36making products that we like. We're making stuff  that the customer actually wants. And there's
119. 9:41a delicate balance between the two. I'm curious  how you think about that. One of the things that
120. 9:44always comes back to us is you're unique in that  you don't just have one bestseller. So for us,
121. 9:49what we did is kind of we looked at it and said  we should invest in the scent family. Candles,
122. 9:53incense, air fresheners, room sprays, lots of  different touch points for people to be able
123. 9:58to invest into their favorite scent. You know, our  amber jar candles are quite minimal. The cafe line
124. 10:05is the opposite of that. And then we were like,  let's do a dynamog which is iconic which can be
125. 10:10refilled and do sustainability but in a fun novel  way and see if it sticks. What was the evolution
126. 10:15of making all this in house beginning to work  with other brands? Cuz you can save a lot of money
127. 10:19probably a few outsourced things to different  places. But yeah, I think it is special to have
128. 10:24a singular place where everything happens at once.  The pandemic came at a point where we 6 months out
129. 10:30had just transitioned into it being full-time  and it paying for us to live. And so we were
130. 10:34always like, doesn't matter what happens, we'll  be fine cuz we've got workshops, we have DTOC,
131. 10:39and we have wholesale. We were also fresh out of  advertising. So we'd been having conversations in
132. 10:45that first 6 months about do we just outsource  stuff and do we kind of position ourselves more
133. 10:50like a creative studio as a brand, keep the team  small. The first thing we did is we went who's
134. 10:55got money. And I'd spent 15 years in media knowing  that there was a lot of money and nowhere to spend
135. 11:01it. We were bankrolled by like Pinterest and Meta  and Google. All of which like in that pandemic
136. 11:06were like we have budget and we need to show love  to our clients. Anyone who didn't have the full
137. 11:13control and weren't fully vertically integrated,  they couldn't do anything. So we became like a
138. 11:18client care pack business. For us, once we  had that experience, we were like that's our
139. 11:22superpower. Having designers in house, investing  in creative and content, producing the product,
140. 11:28formulating the scents, having retail stores  whilst it comes with a lot of overheads also
141. 11:33gives us a competitive edge. It's basically where  we make everything. Everything is handmade by
142. 11:40the team. And yeah, over there we're just getting  prepared to pull more of the cafe collection that
143. 11:45we've kind of mentioned. Y I can eyeball. Oh yeah,  there we go. the seasonal helpers. That's right.
144. 11:55I'm I'm available for contract. I have two kids.  They could help. They might not be very helpful.
145. 12:04[Music]
146. 12:09This is where the magic happens. So, what do we  walk into here? We came in through an art gallery
147. 12:13downstairs. What do you guys have going on in our  So, this is like the first shop in the building.
148. 12:17It's my shop. It's It's just my name, Shop Dan  Reggie. And I mainly do Japanese brands like CDG,
149. 12:24Isumiyaki, but I also do some European labels  like Armani, Hugabos, and it's mostly vintage
150. 12:29from around the '9s, early 2000s, and everything  is shoppable in here basically. You guys started
151. 12:34kind of reselling more casually, but then it  built into these really interesting combinations
152. 12:38of like archives, retail. How do you even describe  what what you've got going on here? Me and Louis
153. 12:44just started off as really like collectors. We're  very much into everything we sell. At the start,
154. 12:48we were just showcasing what we were kind of  collecting and then some pieces was we were
155. 12:52selling on the side and that kind of just  built it into like a whole another world.
156. 12:56Everything we do is quite unique. So, obviously  the brands like that because they can find unique
157. 13:02references. But I think we're getting a lot of  like just regular consumers who realize that
158. 13:06they don't really want the new thing that's  the new reference. They want the originals.
159. 13:10I just finished a pop-up where for one week  the whole shop was vintage CDG. Basically,
160. 13:15this is I mean probably more CDG than anyone's  seen in a room, even including in a CDG store. So,
161. 13:19how do you research? How do you kind of get into  the lore of it? How do you kind of experience a
162. 13:23brand as as a more of an archist? CDG was like  one of the first brands I ever bought. You know,
163. 13:28it's just it's just about learning about um all  the labels and all the years and all the eras
164. 13:33that they had basically. Yeah, I really like this  one cuz it's quite an unusual take on a leather
165. 13:38jacket. I tried it on earlier. Disclaimer, it did  not fit. Everything's just very subtle. like this
166. 13:42is from I believe 99. Not many people would  know that like CDG did this in the '90s and
167. 13:47that's like my favorite thing cuz across all  the labels they've probably done everything
168. 13:50at some point. I'm also interested, Louis, to  check out your space upstairs so that we can
169. 13:54see just the balance between the sportsware side  and some of the nostalgic sportsware that you can
170. 13:59pair and merge with um standard format. If if  you're down, let's go check out the collection.
171. 14:07Yeah. Yeah. I just pulled that right out the nut.  This one's a 1988 Stone Island helicopter. I love
172. 14:14the like liquid effect on the mesh as well.  What's the process in which you decide like,
173. 14:19hey, this this makes sense for my store. This  makes sense for the page. I'm sure it's the
174. 14:23same with Alan and Tom as well. I literally only  sell what I would wear myself, but there's loads
175. 14:27of brands out there that also experiment in the  technical space that might be interesting. It's
176. 14:31more from a case. If you can pick a piece up and  talk about it for 20 minutes, then that's kind of
177. 14:35the stuff that I would put in here to be honest.  These are some of the more iconic pieces. This is
178. 14:38from the same collection I just previously spoke  about which is called Nike code. So this is like
179. 14:44one of a thousand Nike. And yeah, these are pretty  iconic too. [Music] This literally is what blew up
180. 14:54the page. I got contacted by a seller um that  happened to be in Pakistan of all places that
181. 15:01just had a a box and was just like, I've got a  box of these if you want them. And I was like,
182. 15:05are you are you for real? Is this a scam? And  yeah, that kind of helped obviously project
183. 15:10the business forward. But yeah, Louis, thanks  for showing us around the upstairs space. Orin
184. 15:14and uh and and my partners will uh thank us for  for not spinning all our monthly uh rent here.
185. 15:23[Music]
186. 15:27So, we covered a lot inside these conversations  about everything around a brand's arc,
187. 15:31but now it's time to get tactical about actual  creative operations and creative strategy.
188. 15:36And I want to start with this idea of the funnel.  I think a lot of creatives, even modern marketing
189. 15:40people are taught that like the funnel is  a bad word when really it's the core of how
190. 15:45you want to think about any piece of marketing  that's happening in the world or how your brand
191. 15:48approaches the market. At the top of the funnel,  you have brand awareness. How people learn about
192. 15:52your brand. In the middle of the funnel, people  actually begin to grow affinity to your brand. And
193. 15:56then at the bottom of the funnel, they actually  do the conversion. But you have to think about
194. 16:00this in terms of your creative strategy as well.  What initiatives do you have that are filling that
195. 16:05top of the funnel? So for instance, in the first  example that Clayton gave earlier about a shoe
196. 16:10company that was seeding out to influencers, they  use that to start top of funnel leveraging others
197. 16:15influence to do it. Then you have to have a  recurring strategy for how you educate and
198. 16:19let people learn more about the product over time  and that middle of the funnel strategy which most
199. 16:22brands do on social media. But we're seeing a lot  of new strategies for this now. Some brands are
200. 16:27opening up their communities. Outlier NYC pushes  people to Reddit and to Discord to learn about
201. 16:32what their products look like. So you can actually  engage onetoone with other owners and customers.
202. 16:37And then the bottom of the funnel, you actually  have to have an emphasis on how do you sell. This
203. 16:40is why I always love to bring up the examples of  people like wholesales. That's a classic example
204. 16:44of someone that curated, who developed their  own unique sense of taste, that had an idea
205. 16:47about design. But until you're actually selling  things and taking money from people and realizing
206. 16:51I'm going to whether it's reselling an item or  selling an initial product online that that's
207. 16:56actually a really personal relationship that  there's a sales process there. That's something
208. 16:59a lot of creatives don't think about. A lot of  marketing people try to remove themselves from
209. 17:03it's actually crucial and really important and the  more you are in that process especially as you're
210. 17:07learning is super important. But let's shift  over into social in general. I want to share
211. 17:11a bit of a social framework that any brand can  look at to actually improve. And I've built a set
212. 17:16of particular frameworks and strategies I think  are really applicable and every brand should look
213. 17:20at for their creative operations. So most brands  have content pillars. This is four or five types
214. 17:24of content that they do recurringly. But basically  break down your content into four core pillars and
215. 17:30then actually begin to measure it and you can say  of these four buckets and we do three of one every
216. 17:35month and five of one every month and then asking  how did it do better this 30 days than it did the
217. 17:39previous 30 days. Comparing apples to apples,  what product type is going well? how you're
218. 17:44working to improve it. And when you measure social  media, it's important to look at it over something
219. 17:48like a month because it takes time for content to  settle in and marinate. And context matters. But
220. 17:53then within the pillar system, it's important to  think about improvement. Making a decision point
221. 17:58for every pillar to say, "This month, we're going  to work on improving our educational carousels by
222. 18:02doing X." This gives you a framework and a  strategy that you can repeat that actually
223. 18:07allows you to measure what you're doing. Make a  plan for getting better at it and most importantly
224. 18:12explain it to people that don't understand  social media to know that you're working in a
225. 18:16metric driven process. So all that will be kind  of outlined in that creative ops guide we have,
226. 18:20but it's a really crucial way to thinking about  your content. And then next there's this idea of
227. 18:24campaigns. When you actually launch something,  you want to put out critical content. Have some
228. 18:28like really big moment that you're engineering.  But the new format is really creating more like
229. 18:329 to 15 pieces of content that cover kind of  your unveil of the first time someone sees it,
230. 18:37the actual launch, some of the BTS, like turning  those shoots into multiple shots on goal that can
231. 18:43all work as organic video with viral potential  and can potentially work as advertising. And
232. 18:47related to that, thinking about your content like  an ecosystem. It's not just about the content you
233. 18:52create. It's about what all your employees  create, your influencers that you work with,
234. 18:55what your customers do, who you're seating  and sending free product to. And even when
235. 18:59you're on a shoot, if the makeup artist has 15,000  followers and they're posting, or you can add that
236. 19:03into a contract, it builds this really interesting  tapestry that is your brand's creative world that
237. 19:08goes beyond your brand. The last piece I want to  talk about that forms a foundation of this content
238. 19:12strategy from your core pillars is this idea of  reactive content. If you've worked at a brand,
239. 19:17you've worked in content, you've probably  been sent something in Slack that's like,
240. 19:20"Taylor Swift just has dropped a new album.  We need to post something." And often times
241. 19:23you'll go whip up something bad that doesn't  even get approved anyway. But most brands need
242. 19:27to be reactive is an actual framework for  reaction. It works like this. First is how
243. 19:31you decide if you participate in something or  not. And basically, you have to ask yourself,
244. 19:35is this something my consumer cares about? Do we  have bandwidth to actually do something on this?
245. 19:40Well, if you answer yes to both those questions,  move on. But if you have no for whatever reason,
246. 19:43hey, our consumer doesn't care or hey, guess  what? we're actually not that good at responding
247. 19:47within 24 hours to a Taylor Swift album. Maybe  we shouldn't do it. Then you actually know where
248. 19:51you stand. And then the second thing is how do we  have a lens with which we attack this in a unique
249. 19:55way. I feel like savvy brands are starting to  think like, hey, if something culturally happens,
250. 19:58we have a recurring voice that participates in  it. What are the easy ways we have to respond?
251. 20:03Because a lot of this is about speed. It's about  saying this thing happened. We're going to get a
252. 20:07response out. And the more organized you are to  say, "Here's our decision framework, and we're
253. 20:11saying no because we say no for this reason."  That's how your brand actually participates
254. 20:15inside of this economy. Hopefully, that was a bit  of a framework to help you get thinking about how
255. 20:19tactically you approach creative operations for  your brand while also having all the context of
256. 20:23the brands we talked to. You can download the  full creative ops guide in the description of
257. 20:27this video. And as always, thank you so much from  Clayton, myself, and the team at Air for watching.