Weird on purpose

29:32And so when you are inverting a structure, there's a lot of potential upside in the human brain, like wants to understand exactly why that is happening. And so, you know, I think of like, the whole emergence of like the trad wife trend and how how culture has been so liberal for such a long time and is very intentional. Staying away from that once you go. Oh. But it's moving in a different direction. Like a lot of pop culture is becoming much more conservative right now in terms of its tone and stuff. Or you look at like Balenciaga and how a lot of stuff has become in terms of its polish. You know, even talking about Zara, luxury had become a polish, a certain aesthetic of photography and stuff.

30:14And Balenciaga went the completely different direction and started creating shoes that looked like they had been rotting in a dump for three decades and sold them for like$7 ,000 or whatever. Like this whole like kind of trash aesthetic. And that's something that like Balenciaga could do because of where it came from before and it created a very high contrast. Like these are all things that are inverting or challenging the norms. and because of that have a lot of high signal value to them in the cultural marketplace. Correct. If Balenciaga was not known for its craftsmanship, it would creating like deconstructed converse sneakers would never be noteworthy.

31:01If Zara was not known for fast fashion, it would not be noteworthy that it uses. So it's basically, I'm just thinking as a brand, when you say, hey, if you're a fast food brand or if you're a coffee brand or if you're a fashion brand, how do you kind of like go in the opposite direction of that in order to create friction? Yeah, like the thing that would build on top of that is it's like, you can't just identify a trend and just say, okay, well, I'm going to do the opposite. Like, because sometimes like... What about the trends at all? No, no, I totally know that. I'm more just thinking about it from the perspective of like an operator who has to figure out what to do.

31:39Like I would almost think of it from the perspective of like, if a trend has been around for a while, that probably means it's ripe for a counter point of view to enter the market to invert the trend. If a trend is starting to catch and move and scale, that's probably not the right time to do it because it's just starting to crest and it hasn't fully formalized and become cognitively salient to the majority of people. So like the whole millennial minimalism and soft pink and avocado colors and stuff. It's bad. It's gone now. It's bad. This spring, you're going to see a lot of soft pink because Tumblr is back.

32:17Okay. But I was just going to say like. Like obviously it was like saturation. And then when it becomes saturated, these are trend adoption curves. I would say for a minute, a little closer. Say you're McDonald's and say you're known for fast food. Then you know what they should do? they should create high-end restaurant literally with like white table cloths with like silverware with that you know that would catch attention yeah create advertising is super high-end whatever zara is doing that would catch attention like i would do that because that would then stand out no one is going to mistake mcdonald's for one second for for for for the five michelin star restaurant tree or whatever is the thought but that is gonna create the contrast and then you can even play and you have half of mcdonald's regular mcdonald's half of mcdonald's is is real blood like and then you're like does it taste different you know and you know what i mean but it's kind of gives you like a lot of room to play with it to capture attention and be written about.

33:26McDonald's, hire me. Or better yet, just pay me. Yeah. Okay, so you want to go to the next one? How many in five years are we going to do this? Yeah. You want to go to the next one? Absolutely. So we have also, and I also loved what you said about Boxing Corps, because I've been obsessed with Boxing Corps I think two years ago because I think it's just time for whatever streetwear did for fashion 20, 25 years ago. I mean, this is not new. This is what sportswear is doing, but I think it's that kind of rough aesthetics and that rough wellness. And I had this guest writer on the sociology of business who wrote exactly around that, which is kind of like, how do you do wellness with the beer in hand?

34:11You know, how do you do aggressive wellness? Which I, that's it. That's kind of like when you hear the wellness reach its peak and everyone is zen. How do you like drift a bit, you know, make it a little real? Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that we often talk about is the idea that the measure, one of the signals of a really good strategy is that the opposite is also a really good strategy. And so, like, if culture is moving in this direction of, like, soft, you know, wellness, quiet wellness and so on, then the opposite of, like, a more aggressive, more hardcore wellness can also be really desirable in the market.

34:50And so I think to your point, I think that's why you're seeing this aesthetic, this sensibility kind of emerges this term kind of boxing core because boxing core is more of like a blue collar sport. It's more it's not as fancy. It's rough. It's aggressive. You know, there's pain associated with it. You know, you're literally beating someone in the face. There are broken jaws. Yeah, no, there's broken jaws and stuff. But like even you start to see it with like what Jake Paul's been doing with Netflix and stuff. And so how that's starting to become much more of a cultural event. And Netflix wouldn't be showing this stuff again and again if it wasn't drawing audiences.

35:27And Champion is starting to drop collabs of boxers. Purple Brand is releasing fight night collections and stuff that are really desired but kind of exclusively managed in their distributions and stuff. So boxing is kind of – it's sort of like – boxing is sort of emerging as this sort of inversion to the rise of like tennis and high-end hotel lifestyle. hotel lifestyle. Like, again, both these things can exist in the marketplace, but they do represent kind of like inversions of each other. Yeah, for those five-star missions. That would be a nice coincidence, which is the next one. That would be, you know, like coincidences are the meaningful alignment of independent events, signals, or ideas that are not designed to connect but appear to do so.

36:18Coincidence equals unexpected convergence. So now, Lee, do you want to enlighten us by it captures attention? Yes. So I'm the nerd on this one. So I always like knowing kind of like the mechanics behind some of this stuff. So there's this thing with coincidences called apophenia. And so basically, your brain becomes obsessed with finding meaning within random noise. And that's what apophenia is all about. because there's like a dopamine reward to it. Like you want to clean up things that don't feel like they fit together. And so one of the things that I really love of recent kind of pop cultural memory is the Barbie and Oppenheimer conversation that just sort of catalyzed everyone.

37:05The two came out in the summer, both were blockbusters, very high profile, very marketed, but they represented two very different narratives and two very different cultural conversations. And then rather than culture having those, you know, separately, there was this natural convergence of them. And it became a whole conversation about what does it say about us when we have these two movies coming out at the exact same time. And so the brain's need to literally fit these two incongruent things together into a unified worldview was manifested as Barbenheimer, like literally a portmanteau that tried to push these two things together to say these are the same idea or not necessarily the same idea, but these are part of the same conversation.

37:50It's just a really good example of apophenia. It is a really good example, but I do think that you need to explain what portmanteau means to those who are not initiated. Oh, so portmanteau is essentially... I do happen to know that. Sure, sure, sure. What? So a portmanteau is a term for when you smash two words together to create a third word that has unique and distinct meaning to it. Give us more examples. I'll give you more examples. This is like asking me what restaurant should we go eat at tonight. My mind immediately goes blank. So a portmanteau. Well, if people ask me to recommend what they should watch, I'm like.

38:32A portmanteau would be breakfast. Break fast. You're breaking your fast from the night or smog. Smoke plus fog equals smog or motel, hotel plus motor. So you end up creating words that represent a distinct idea by blending together two related concepts. Frenemy is a really good one. Friend and enemy. Yeah, streetwear. Streetwear. Spork. Sitcom. Cyborg. Close that window now. I think the window has a lot of examples. Well, I do like example of analog coincidences that, is it a coincidence, that animal culture and AI kind of like roles at the same time, which is kind of, you have occurrence and it's backlash.

39:24Is it coincidental or is it literally one point? Is it causation? So we already talked about Taylor Swift selling a lot on vinyl. So that's expression of fandom. That's also a marketing trick. But people do have lo-fi listening parties. People do invest in vinyl as a way to go and connect with each other and nerd out. and nerding out is also another way of creating friction, of sowing effort, developing your own taste. Book clubs. Every celebrity has a book club now. Running clubs, music clubs, like video clubs, movie clubs, whatever you have, these are those that are analog culture, craftsmanship, coming back.

40:17And I don't mean craftsmanship in a literal, oh, I'm going to weave something. It's like human-made things. And that is connected with this idea of anemoya, which is invented words that depicts nostalgia for things, places, times that we never experienced. And we are seeing that a lot among Gen Z, who is digital generations, who are very longing for simple times before digital times. when they can socialize, when they can consume media that was not mediated by digital. And especially they were like, oh my God, 2000s, when millennials were ruling the world. And I'm like, you don't want to go back.

41:03You know? And so I think that's kind of, is it coincidence that evolution of technology takes us further and further in the past? Because we talked about this, that medieval aesthetic is coming over and it's not an accident. Together with fragmentation of culture, you almost have those like, a return of those city-states, fiefdoms, it's kind of deglobalization. With globalizing technology, you have the opposite effect. Do you want to know something interesting? Do I have a choice? Anna Moya is also a portmanteau. I did want to say that, but I thought that you already had your three minutes. No, that's fine.

41:46Anyway. People can look it up, but it is a portmanteau. But yeah, no, I think. It's spelled A-N-M-O-I-O. Yeah, it's the portmanteau of the Greek word for wind and mind. Oh, thanks. It's hard for me to think of a brand that had sort of engineered a coincidence, but I can think of many examples where culture has tried to like fuse two different things together and say, well, these two things are happening. And how do we rationalize and make sense of them? And so I find it really interesting, for instance, like the papal conclave memes that were happening, because you have like this very old tradition, you know, going back centuries of the papacy going and figuring out like, or the cardinals going and figuring out who the next pope is going to be.

42:36And it's very secretive and everything's, you know, lots of information is withheld and stuff. But then you have like Internet culture, which is the complete opposite. Yes. It's about real time. It's about constant stream of information. And so what you see is internet culture trying to have fun with the conclave by turning it into a reality TV show and creating these memes and this commentary as if it were, like I said, a reality TV show. But there was all this like amazing content that happened from it, which totally changed the conclave from this mysterious secretive religious ceremony into this fodder of entertainment and social commentary and cultural production and stuff.

43:23And that's like an amazing opportunity for a company to kind of jump in and be a part of the conversation. Because, again, these are two things that are happening in the world. And as there's a bridge that's trying to be built between them, it's just rich for content production, conversation, and so on. And so what you saw on internet culture was just a concentration of attention around that moment, which is, again, makes it really ripe for brands to kind of jump in and participate in that. and also Tantone color of the year which is kind of like a little bit separate is it coincidence that for the first time ever it's Cloud Dancer which is this really boring excel beige neutral like fresh star doesn't mean anything tranquility it's kind of as if you want to wipe your hard drive in a way.

44:25So it's almost like you need to project meaning on that color. Is it coincidence? Or did you just kind of male details? I think a lot of those decisions are made like months and months in advance. No, I know they are, but it's still like the world changes fast, but not as fast with the color. Yeah, no, I mean, when I heard that that was the color, I was like, oh, I know everything that's about to happen. And it did. But don't they still pay attention to color of the year? I never did. I don't even understand it. I don't even understand why people care about it. That's what I mean. Right. Okay, let's move to the next one then.

45:06All right. Audities. A singular element that deviates from the surrounding pattern without directly opposing or revising it. Audity, a statistical anomaly. Yeah. So this is a really interesting one. Hide right into Bayesian inference, please. I'm not going to talk about Bayesian inference, but I will say the brain is like a betting machine in that to simplify the cognitive load and stuff, your brain is always making bets on what's going to happen so that it doesn't have to process and burn too many brain cells along the way. Like in many ways, like your brain is like a battery and the more heavy lifting it has to do to make sense of stuff, the more it depletes the battery, which is why like at the end of the day, a lot of people are like, I'm so tired.

45:53I don't even want to figure out what movie to watch. I just want to put on like horrible reality television. So I don't even have to think. Or people are like, I don't, I don't even want, I can't even write an email. I'm too exhausted. And it's like, obviously, that's not a huge cognitive lift. But when your brain's battery is so depleted, it feels like you're sacrificing a lot to achieve a small thing. And so basically, the bedding machine nature of the brain ensures that you're not burning too much of that stuff. And so anytime there's this statistical anomaly that sits outside of that pattern that you're surrounded by, that stands out and your brain has to process it and kind of figure out how to integrate it back into its thinking.

46:35Now, from like a marketing standpoint, brand building, cultural standpoint, something that's a statistical anomaly that is true but unresolved in our understanding is a very high signal piece of content. It's something that says this is important, not just this is random. And so the brain is always trying to close that kind of curiosity gap and trying to, you know, it's almost like a hunger where you have to satisfy it. And so your brain ruminates on it. Your brain pays attention to it a lot. And so you have to resolve it. And so it's one of the ways that it holds your attention. So for me, that's made in China.

47:14It's like for the longest time, this was like signaling something that's not expensive, that's quickly made and so on. That's like when growing up, that would be like Reebok with one E, like foods, you know, it was knockoffs. But now they have such great homegrown brands that their young consumers are obsessed with, with a really, really good reason. And especially Love of Gold is a fantastic success story, which combines Chinese design motifs with Western aesthetic. And they're called the Hermes of China. And they're performing better than Cartier and Tiffany and other brands. I mean, given jewelry brands are very local, so you have Tiffany in the US, you have Cartier in Europe and so on.

48:16But that is an example of what is going to happen more and more when you have made in China starting to signal something that's well-made, high quality and competitive on a global stage. And we've started seeing that rise of soft power with LaBouble this year. And that's just going to accelerate, especially in luxury sector. And then another oddity is how resale value of the item started dominating its sale price. So item is deemed valuable and its price is justified depending on its resale value on secondary marketplaces. And that is something that's been that started happening only recently with the growth of secondary marketplaces and the value of secondhand items.

49:10And by the way, did you hear about the toddler skincare brand? Absolutely did. Mommy and me, you can have also like face masks for toddlers. Absolutely. Love it. Also for teens. For teenagers, but twins, young teenagers. Oh, no, but there's one called Rini, which the whole internet blew up about because this woman, Shea Mitchell, had looked at data and saw all these young people were using skincare. And so it was like, well, I'm going to use that data point. I'm going to launch a toddler skincare brand. And of course, everyone blew up and was like, this is awful. This is awful. This is awful. But in a way that Shay understood.

49:50Well, I know, but this is sort of the point. And I'm not casting like an ethical point of view on whether Rini is good or bad. But Shay kind of understood this idea of creating an oddity and how that becomes a lightning rod of attention in an algorithmically driven culture where everything's fragmented. You have to have a story. You have to have something that pulls everyone together. And so she was inspired by some data that she saw and said, well, I'm going to launch a toddler skincare brand. And she engineered an oddity, which grabbed everyone's attention. And actually, it completely sold out.

50:27From a business perspective, as much as people were saying this is the adultification of young children and blah, blah, blah, this is awful, people still bought it. And again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is a really good example of how in a highly competitive, highly fragmented beauty space, you use one of these strategies to create friction to create a cultural conversation and it drives business outcomes. and Rini's a really good example of that. Now, is it going to be sustainable? Is it a good business model over the long term? That's a different conversation. I do think we're going to see more of that though.

51:04And then another oddity to me staying within the beauty category is how a celebrity person, Hailey Bieber, created the brand road and then celebrity aspect of it was not actually celebrity person, but celebrity. product, which is not even a beauty product, which is her iPhone case that contains a lip gloss. So it is an oddity that you do have a product that doesn't even belong to a category, lift the entire brand. Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, even the idea of like combining those two things, a lip gloss with an iPhone case, that in itself is an oddity product. Like nobody makes that type of stuff.

51:50But it was great because like, you know, I'm sure there was research that said, you know, young women carry both of those things. And so why not combine them into something of utility that is distinctive? You just need to open Instagram and see like the amount of selfies that are taken. Yeah, yeah. Well, totally fair. Totally fair. But it's that, to your point, is a really great example of an oddity that helped kind of drive the iconicness and growth of a particular company. And the same vein is like Wild Cherry, a restaurant from a film production and distribution studio A24. Why does the film studio open a restaurant?

52:30It's an oddity. So going into the final friction ways is contradictions to coexisting claims or signals that logically oppose each other and cannot both be true at the same time, yet are presented as such. Contradiction is a logical opposition. Cognitive dissonance, the favorites of favorites. Well, that's like my state of being. Of constant cognitive dissonance? Yeah. I'm sure that's like a disorder, constant cognitive dissonance. Either a disorder or a gift. So, contradictions are two coexisting claims or signals that logically oppose each other and cannot both be true at the same time. yet are presented as such.

53:18Contradiction is a logical opposition. That's modern luxury. So, can luxury be both scarce and luxurious? Can a luxury item be both scarce and luxurious? So, according to the blend, luxury depends on scarcity and revalorousness. So, revalorousness means my consumption, if I consume something, you cannot. It's zero-sum gain. And then scarcity comes from that. Something is luxurious, not only because it's costly, because one person's consumption diminishes others' ability to have it. So look now at luxury conglomerates. So we have a contradiction. Luxury conglomerates, luxury brands are at every corner of major cities at every single market.

54:11So ubiquitous, they're at mass scale, yet there's still luxury. So you have mass and luxury coexist. That's a contradiction. So now the outcome of that contradiction, when you have a luxury good, a Dolce & Gabbana bag, a Louis Vuitton speedy, a pair of Prada shoes are accessible to everyone who has a few or tens of thousands of dollars to buy them. It's accessible. It's not before you had to be on a wait list, you had to know someone who knows and so on. So accessibility and luxury are now contradictions that coexist. This contradiction, most importantly, gave rise to spending that completely opt out of material possessions and went into experiences.

55:06So what we have here is this weekend, before the holidays, December 2021, 50 % drop in luxury leather goods sales compared to 24, 22 % surge in experienced memberships like Casa Cipriani, Sofo House, private club tiers, suggesting the ownership economy is losing out to the excess economy as the year closes. And I would add to that, if we go into a brand example like FIFA. FIFA is holding a World Cup in June in the U.S. across different cities. So the prices surged like nobody's business because prices to musical events, to sporting events, are the new luxury goods among high net worth individuals.

55:57So that is your status signaling. But at the same time, they are preventing the true fans. The true fans are those who go to every game of the sports clubs, of those players, to go to those games. So we have a contradiction. Are you going to have an amazing experience in a game which is impossible without having fans in the stalls? Or are you going to make money for the sport and put it back in the system? I really like what you're saying about, you know, what's happening in sports, the contradictions that are happening in sports as like almost a luxury good. In many ways, sports are becoming a luxury good.

56:37I mean, you see this with F1 in many cases, and you see this with a lot of the leagues and with FIFA raising ticket prices and having these unique experiences around it because so much of luxury is going towards experiential stuff because it's rivalrous. It's like one person can have that ticket in that moment and no one else ever can. So it's much more rare in that sense. And so I think a lot of the sports leagues and teams are really trying to resolve this tension of it's for the people, it's for the fans, it's for the community. But at the same time, there's a lot of upper echelon of the economy money coming into sports and it's becoming a lot more desirable and elevated because of that.

57:18And so there's this real tension in that. And it's growing. You have like World Cup in Qatar, you have like World Cup coming to the US and it's sort of allowing. Oh, but you know what? Actually, I want to say here that stadiums are now being built, which is also contradiction because sports since the ancient times were those mass activities, but now they're being built for members, for private booths, for viewing clubs, for, you know. Now they're starting to be like, because there's such a luxurious experiences and that's where the money comes from. They're starting to be those elevated private experiences.

58:01So how can you have, that's a contradiction. You have a private experience in the crowd. That's not good for the sport because, you know, you can't have hooligans in a booth. Yes. I love my hooligans. And they're an iconic part of the experience. Yeah, but and again, I think I've mentioned this on one of the previous episodes. I definitely think sports teams are going to become, if not already are becoming a new luxury good, a new luxury object. But look, I think the point here with these contradictions is that culture is filled with contradictions. Like culture is vast. It's vibrant. There's a lot of stuff emerging in it.

58:46And so in many ways, you can find these contradictions, but the questions are becoming which contradictions do you mind? What's the tension in those contradictions that you pull forward and, as we said at the start of the podcast, sharpen rather than try to smooth over? And so like some that just kind of come to mind and kind of broader culture is this urge for individualism, standing out, being unique, rising above. But then there's a lot of algorithmic conformity that's happening. Algorithms drive a lot of conformity. And that's why you see a merging of aesthetics across the globe, sort of like as people talked about for a while, that Instagram aesthetic.

59:23On one hand, we celebrate self-expression and unique behavior, but on the other hand, we consume algorithmic conformity all the time. Another one that kind of comes to mind is this idea of authenticity and how we're always looking for what is authentic, but at the same time, our culture is becoming increasingly performative, where you have to show your authenticity, quote unquote, to everyone and be relatable in many ways. And so what are we optimizing for? Are we optimizing for authenticity or are we optimizing for performance and being seen by everyone? You know what's really funny? I have two things to say.

1:00:02First one is that usually how brands tap into this is using one side of contradiction through another. So they're saying, hey, we're going to celebrate Gen Z authenticity by being performative. through performing you know so it's kind of that is so is there another way that's my question for you number one and the second which is really important is that the culture in the past 20 years has all built around smoothing contradictions not not sort of celebrating them exemplified like i want a burrito but i'm lying on a couch i don't feel like getting up you know you have doordash you have uber eats you know what i mean so it's kind of all of all of the innovations tech innovations in culture started against again around smoothing innovations and kind of reconciling them and i think we're still like as brands we're still as brand professionals still stuck into that saying how to use one side of contradiction and and reconciling another instead of kind of mining the friction.

1:01:15Yeah, no, totally. I mean, the best - And maybe exposing the contradiction and staying in that mid space. I think another kind of interesting contradiction that I've sort of observed in culture, and this has been going on for a while, is this contradiction between we all have anxiety about privacy and want to kind of like own our data. We want to, you know, not have stuff shared about us. We don't want to be tracked and stuff. But at the same time, we're voluntarily opting into surveillance, whether that is, you know, creating content for everything that we do or data tracking that we're offering.

1:01:52It's this tension between don't track me, but yet watch everything that I do. And that's a real tension that I think is there. There's another one around this idea of like future optimism. We all sort of like we're sort of obsessed with the future and like where things are going, whether it's fashion or technology or whatnot. But at the same time, there is like this incredible obsession with nostalgia and seeing the same things over and over again or wearing old clothes or watching old movies or regurgitating old sneaker styles and so on. And so how can you have this tension of being both future oriented, but past oriented as well?

1:02:29And oftentimes, you know, I think whenever there's a strong urge towards one direction of culture, there's often a group of people who are going in the other direction as well. The nostalgia is to the time when everyone had same points of reference. So there was a shared heroes, shared icons. so Britney Spears, Aaron Jordan's, Back to the Future movies or whatnot. Shared icons, shared symbols. And now we don't have shared anything, but we have homogenized culture, which is not the same thing. And that's a contradiction again, because you would think when you have homogenization would be like, well, everything is like they're sharing the same references.

1:03:19No, you have such a fragmentation because the references are two of us differ because I saw it was all, it's an accident. It's just an accident. And you didn't like, you know, in this small pool and it really doesn't matter, but that's just an example how our consumption habits are very different. And at the same time, very homogenized. And we, again, we don't have the same points of reference because before we would have seen, it's a holiday season, we would all be watching the same three movies or two movies or whatnot. So for a brand, a challenge is not to create a shared symbol because it's impossible because of fragmentation, but it's also to fight homogenization and to milk that friction between fragmentation and homogenization.

1:04:13So to sort of force people to recognize their need to end up at the same place as everyone else. There is no other way, I think. Yeah. This was a great end of year conversation, Lee. And I think we gave our audience a lot to think about over the holidays, which is what people loved. Yes, this is it. It begins a classic holiday tradition in America. of reflecting deeply on the Hitmakers podcast and how culture is created and where friction can be mine for a capitalistic advantage. All the children will gather around the Christmas ham discussing this. Okay. So what's the true line for you? I just, you know, I just really love the idea of returning friction back to our experiences.

1:05:07I mean, so much of the past has been about or the recent past with social media and technology and stuff has just been about reducing friction in the experience and now it's all about adding it back in to create and generate more meaning and more creativity I actually find this as a theme that a lot of people are starting to talk about and I think this is this has just been a great kind of deep dive into it love that and would add to that it for me it's where things become interesting in if brands lean into that friction rather than trying to reconcile it. Because you know how when strategies put like, oh, it's this or that, and how is our strategy resolving it?

1:05:52Don't resolve it. Stay with it. And just use your campaign or your content and your cultural products to whatever you make, the collaboration, the merge, emphasize the friction, make it bigger. and that's because we're going to see more of it and you know if you're portman talk guy i'm the predicts because it's hey the end of the year it's we're going to see more and more people wanting to work for it to kind of put effort towards and that's happening in analog world and while we are never again going to have the same points of reference, what we are going to have is also sort of breaking through those smooth surfaces.

1:06:44And that's what's going to gain, what's going to get their attention. Because like, we're so used to easy that we don't want easy anymore, which is another contradiction, also called human aging. So next time, And we're going to talk about how culture becomes obsessed with certain products. So, yes, we have cultural fragmentation, but there's still products and brands that become cultural obsessions. So why, how, that's the next episode. Tune in in January 2026. Thanks, Lee. Thanks, Ana.