What makes a brand iconic

0:02Iconic brands are built on products people obsess over Air Force One Rayburns Big Mac Levis 501s Each of these products are a creative expression first, a shape, a taste, aroma, a texture. Their form and function don't just sell units. They influence culture, spark subcultures, and create fandoms. This is where real brand creativity lives, not in messaging, but in products itself. When products are designed with cultural intent, innovation becomes identity. The product stops being what you sell and becomes what you stand for. In this episode, we explore how products become iconic. Welcome to Season 2 of Hitmakers, the show that tracks how culture moves margin, multiples, and market cap.

1:04Hi, Lee. Happy New Year. Hey, Ana. You ready? You ready for 2026? Oh, I've been ready for 2026 ever since you know when. I was ready for 2026 and 2024. I just want to skip over all of 2025. I want to say something like that. You know, this break has been both long and short somehow. I've gotten really good at turning everything off on the breaks. I can feel like my body slowly shutting down and going through like a detox of like, you know, productivity and getting stuff done to, you know, coming out clean the other side and being like, oh, this is what life is like. And then, you know, I have to get back into it come January and warm up all those muscles again and try to do it in a little bit more of a healthy way for a year.

1:57But that's going to last until Monday. Well, I also have some good news to share with you. Oh. We have hit a milestone in hitmakers. Very important milestone. We should probably like carve it into like a bronze plaque or something for ourselves. Is it more important than America's 250th anniversary? Yes, for me it is. My mother-in-law likes our show. No. Yes. What did she find out about it? Well, she's my mother-in-law. Oh, so you told her about it. No, well, I didn't tell my wife. My wife told her, but she listened. She listened to a bunch of the episodes. She really she's probably listening right now.

2:35She really likes it. And she's like not she's like not in the industry at all. But she's like, you guys are so good. You make it all sound really interesting and you help me understand it and you really break it down. I'm like, wow, that's very nice to hear. Oh, anyway, I'll send I'll send you a plaque. Mother Alon proved soon. That is, honestly, I really do need a little, you know, like flair over here to put. But it's really funny. Thank you. Actually, thank you for reminding me. Because my dad also listened to the episode and he still managed. And my dad is like the most highest standards. He's like engineer, you know, like the IQ of 3000, you know, like he doesn't like anything.

3:18And he's like, who's that buddy of yours? He's good. But my husband earned that. Now I shouldn't feel so insecure about doing this podcast. No, no, last episode, he's like when we talked about inversions, contradictions. So he keeps bringing it up in the past week. But he was like, who is that sunny boy? He's good. The sunny boy? I mean, that's translation. He was like old-fashioned term in Serbian. So that's kind of like. Oh, I see. Got it. Got it. I was like, does he live in the 1940s or something? Well, he does. That's Sonny Boy. He would say that if he were American. Got it. Got it. You made the cut.

4:07I feel really special now. I'm blushing. You can tell Brian I really like his podcast. Actually, the year and one that they did. Oh, really? I thought it was really good. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was really nice. It's actually fun when him and all his co-hosts kind of like argue with each other on the verge of like sounding really angry with each other. It gets good. They get so much good positive feedback on that podcast. Yeah, they're smart. But I'm really glad that you I'm really glad that you like it. It's it's that podcast really, really broke through, which is we have a lot of work to do for for us to break through.

4:45But that last episode actually did start to kind of pick up. So I think that we should take your mother-in-law test. That should be like, I think it should give a legit name, mother-in-law test. She'll be our pre-air focus group test so we can tweak anything before we launch it. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing. So honestly, you know why I put America's in our market moves, America's 250th year anniversary? Only because I want to hear you say semi-quantessential. Go. So let's do some market moves today. So happy birthday, Ahana. Today is America's big birthday. It's semi-quintessential. Nailed it.

5:29I did not say that. It'll be celebrated on July 4th of this year, marking 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Also, Saks Fifth Avenue CEO steps down. Mark Metrick is out as CEO of Saks Global, effective immediately. Executive Chairman Richard Baker will take over as CEO, consolidating control across Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf-Gridman. Metrick's departure ends a three-decade run that saw Saks evolve from a traditional department store to a luxury e-commerce player. But the timing is telling. Saks Global is under pressure. ongoing net losses, a debt laid in$2.6 billion Neiman Marcus acquisition, missed$100 million interest payments this week, and reports of bankruptcy preparations are underway.

6:18Department store traffic continues to decline and investor confidence is wavering. This leadership shakeup signals a urgent pivot or a prelude to a major restructuring. Speaking of which, activist investor Elliott Investment Management has built a stake of more than$1 billion in Lululemon Athletica, positioning itself as one of the company's largest shareholders amid slowing growth and leadership change. The move comes as CEO Palvin McDonald prepares to step down in January this month, and Elliott is reportedly backing Jane Nielsen, a former Ralph Lauren CFO, COO, as a potential successor to help revive performance.

6:58Lululemon's stock jumped on the news, but shares are still down sharply from recent highs as competitors like Viore and Aulo pressure its market share. In other news, Rolex, Audemars Piguet, and Tudor have kicked off the new year with price increases, raising U.S. sticker prices by an average of 7 % and mid-single digits in the U.K., according to WatchPro. The hike spanned both steel and precious metal models, citing a combination of factors, including a new 15 % U.S. tariff on Swiss watch imports, record high gold prices, and lingering inflation. But this move is more strategic than reactive.

7:35With wait lists still stretching months or years, these list price increases are less about cost coverage and more about margin reinforcement, scarcity signaling, and status consolidation in a market where demand continues to exceed supply. In restaurant news, restaurants are changing their menus for the age of Ozempic. Their challenge is to entice those with reduced appetites to dine out. So restaurants are launching menus of exquisite bites. They allow diners to get all the luxury, but in small quantities. A mini menu has smaller snack-sized portions of regular menu items like Sebring. In New York City, Clinton Hall, a burger joint, launched a teeny weeny mini meal, and Cuba Libre, an American chain, offers a GLP wonderful menu.

8:212026 restaurant mantra seems to be think small. Also, this is a really interesting one. Universities are becoming the new influencer houses thanks to NIL. Between December 11th and 28th of last year, a wave of name, image, and likeness deals redefined the future of college athletics and sportswear strategy. Nike extended its LSU partnership with the launch of a first-of - its kind NIL innovation hub on campus designed to help students, athletes build and monetize their personal brands. Meanwhile, Under Armour signed a landmark 10-year extension with the University of Wisconsin, shifting its role from gear provider to content co-producer.

9:01The message is a really interesting one, that universities are no longer just training grounds, they're becoming content studios. For Nike and Under Armour, college campuses are now treated as decade-long influencer incubators securing early access to the next generation of cultural capital. Also, Jonathan Anderson's first collection dropped on January 2nd. It's an accessory collection for Dior, which arrived in stores and led by the Dior Bow Bag. Anderson is repeating the playbook that made Loewe the hottest brand in the world. He's replacing logo-heavy luxury with sculptural silhouettes. The bow bag, which turns a historic Dior motif into the actual structure of the bag, is priced around about$4 ,300 and has already seen high sell-through in Seoul and Paris.

9:52By introducing the surrealist touches he's known for, like the Lady Dior Clover featuring a tiny red ladybug, Anderson is successfully targeting the high-spending Gen Z and collector demographics that had previously migrated towards niche brands. He also launched a high-margin book cover series for the Dior Booktote featuring embroidered versions of classic novels like Madame Bovary and Dracula. This is what you might call intellectual luxury. Instead of just selling a bag, Dior is selling a literary identity. It's a move that increases the average transaction value of the book tote to over$3 ,650, as these versions are marketed as limited collectibles rather than seasonal accessories.

10:40Also in fashion, new financial filings released in January 2026 reveal that Phoebe Philo, the eponymous label from former Celine Creative Director, is projecting$40 million in turnover for 2025, nearly tripling revenue since launching in late 2023. The brand's 2024 revenue hit about$14 million, almost double the prior year, validating her ultra-curated limited-drop model. Backed in part by LVMH, the label releases collections as edits, A, B, and C, and instead of seasonal wines, fueling scarcity and rapid sellouts. The brand's power lies in its quote-unquote if-you-know-you-know status among Philophiles, fans who see Philo as the patron saint of the female gaze.

11:29Issuing flashy logos, her clothes are defined by silhouettes, fabric, and subtle authority, not male gaze appeal. More than fashion, Philo is building a stealth luxury platform. Its financial trajectory, cultural cachet, and drop-based exclusivity make it one of the most strategically interesting players in luxury today. In similar fashion news, let's talk about the Trader Joe's tote like we have in past episodes. The Trader Joe's$2.99 grocery bag has become an international status symbol. From Seoul to Melbourne to London, the canvas carrier is the latest marker of being, well, traveled in the know.

12:05as the tote has joined the ranks of geographically specific status bags like those from London's Daunt Books or Paris's Shakespeare and Company. In addition to London, they're being carried in Seoul, Melbourne and Tokyo. Because there are no Trader Joe's stores abroad, the bags are listed on resale platforms like Depop, eBay and Korea's Carrot Market for up to$10 ,000 with some eBay listings reaching$50 ,000. dollars would you pay 50 000 for a trader joe's tote i don't know but man i gotta get on ebay and get into the ebay game because if it's selling for 50 000 i have a few yachts that i can buy with the stuff that my wife has how many famous do you have i mean honestly i think we probably have like 10 are you serious i think my wife was like well we have like the halloween one we have the easter one.

12:57I think we have like the first one they did. We have like a bunch of them. Like literally, we walk past a Trader Joe's every single day taking my kids to school and stuff. And so if you go there at like 8 a.m. right when they get the totes, there's nobody there for the totes. So you just grab like a box of them and walk off. Get rich quickly. Sure. Screw the creativity business. I'm in the canvas tote arbitrage business. For real. I mean, look at that. It's kind of like you can make some real money. And honestly, in two years, they're going to be like, who needs a tote? The same as New Yorker ones.

13:31You can't be seen alive wearing that thing anymore. Oh, I know. All these things go in and out of fashion. But I actually really want to track who's buying this$50 ,000 one. I want to know who did that. If it sells at that. If it sells at that. But you know what? Even if you sell for$1 ,000, that's kind of like multiple of life. True. I just want to know who pays more than$2.99 for it. That's it. I want a list. Because I have a lot of other things to sell them. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of a last field one, don't you think? Yeah. If someone asked you last year, would you have predicted that? No.

14:12It's so hard. But honestly, at the same time, I think that's a really good transition into this iconic product stuff. because sometimes, you know, it's really hard to anticipate what product is going to be iconic. Some things you can engineer to be iconic in a certain way, but other times it just happens randomly and you got to make the most of it. But I also think if it happened to anyone, it would have happened to Trader Joe's because, you know, like, okay, so let's go to like Levi's 501s or Birkenstocks or Crocs or Air Force One. so back in the day they were at the time of mass culture there were a lot of subcultures right and then you would have a lot of people who would take a mass produced product and made it their own like subcultures so you would have a hip-hop 70s 80s then you would have bootlegging in highland then you would have low lives that would steal ralph lauren and where it had to tow and And the point was styling.

15:16So the thing was not what product was created, but what you did with it. So that was that creativity in subcultures that really, really, really mattered, you know? And so the question now is, can you engineer for that? Can you create that? Because streetwear originally was created from California surf cult. And then they came to New York, and then they merged with hip hop. And from that combo, downtown and plus art scene, downtown art scene, streetwear was created. And the whole idea of Streetwear, when it combined with Sidney Sherman, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, was homage meets ripping off meets remix, which is that hotbed of taking a product, riffing on it, and making it iconic.

16:17And that's the story with Nike Dunks. That's the story with Air Force One. That's the story of Tommy Hilfiger, of Ralph Lauren. That's the story of, at the end of the day, Supreme, which kind of cashed big. And yes, we are going to unpack all of that. But the whole premise of this conversation is, can iconic products be made iconic? Yeah, I think like, you know, in the prep that we were doing for this call, I think what was really interesting for me in our conversation was this notion of legibility, which we'll talk some more about in the course of stuff. Iconic means legible. And I think what is powerful is there's two ways of creating legibility.

17:05One is through intentional ingredient design into the product. And so you can think of like – and we'll talk a little bit about this in a moment – but Apple's iMac G3, the sort of translucent candy plastic shell Macs that became wildly popular. That was intentionally designed into it to be iconic. It looked like nothing else. It broke expectation. Then there's the Air Force One path, which is kind of in a way what's happening with the Trader Joe's stuff, where the legibility happens through and embraced by a subculture. So what I think a lot of people don't know, and again, we'll unpack this, is that Air Force Ones were discontinued until there was a footwear reseller in the inner city of Baltimore who convinced Nike to reissue them in limited run colorways to just that store.

17:59And that store in the community in Baltimore embraced it and to exactly to the point that you're just making, styled it, made it part of their culture. You saw it on the cover of hip hop albums and so on. And so all of a sudden it became highly legible in a culture because it became a kind of foundational component of the look and style of a culture. But in either case, you cannot be iconic unless you are legible above the noise in the broader kind of cultural market. And you can do that intentionally or you can do that through cultural subcultural collaborations. And I just thought that was like a really useful way to think about something which can feel so desirable, but out of reach for people who are creating product.

18:46Yeah. So I'll just take a step back because on Monday I published on Sociology of Business, my newsletter to those who are listening to this without reading, Sociology of Business, the legibility economy. And where I claim what Lee is referring to here that legibility is more important than attention in contemporary culture, meaning that when attention in attention economy is all about the timeliness, shareability, social proof. But that is becoming more and more dominated by algorithms. On the other hand, legibility is meaning, cultural link, intellectual capital, which is something that is not viral necessarily.

19:47It can be, but it is like all iconic products. They have subcultural meaning, but then through that subculture, they have cultural meaning. Again, Levi's 501s, they are cool. They're there, but they're not viral. They don't go ever viral. Air Force Ones don't go viral. But you are not going to go when you wear Air Force One to this day and age. you have a lot of riffs on them that may go viral, but themselves are not viral. So what Lee is saying about that legibility, the way I positioned, I had two by two there. And you have products that are legible or those iconic products. You have products that are very visible, that are meme products.

20:49And meme products are those that are attention-grabbing products that are lower meaning, but that are high on attention like labubus. Like, for example, Starbucks barista cup, which has high potential. All meme products have high potential to become iconic products if they become legible. That means if they're enriched with meaning. And that is going to be my next argument. How can you enrich products with meaning now? How can you design meaning into products right now? But it's important to distinguish that too, right now in a tension economy, too much of cultural production is focused on making meme products versus creating future icons, legible products.

21:38Yeah. So actually, one thing that you made me think of in that, and by the way, everybody should read that article because it's great, is there are people who play in, like you said, the attention economy and the legibility economy. And the people who, depending on which economy you play in, you and I didn't think of this until kind of we're talking right now, you either end up creating mean products or you create iconic products. And so here's I want to contrast two people, two completely random people for a second. I want to contrast Mr. Beast with Jonathan Anderson because Mr. Beast is using his attention capital that he has built like this billion-dollar empire off of and is launching Beastables, Swarms, all these things that play off of his name to make a quick product, launch it into the market really quickly.

22:38if it works, it doesn't work. Usually a lot of these influencer brands, they're making meme products. They're not particularly high quality. They're really just attaching their name to it. They launch and they probably sell a lot for maybe a year. And then they crash because the product quality is so bad and people realize it and they stop buying. And they're like, fine, I don't care. I got the hit that I wanted from selling this stuff. Now I'm going to just move on to my next meme product and just repeat and like i see that again and again with a lot of these these products not all of them but a lot of these influencers are doing it that way and the reason i pull up jonathan anderson particularly with this accessory stuff that he did was because he went back to he didn't make meme products he went back to like the bow which is a classic classic Dior gesture, iconic gesture, and built it into the product, like the bow bag.

23:36So what you have with Dior is Jonathan Anderson continuing this legacy that other people before him had done. Like Galeano used it in these big theatrical ways. Rafe did it in more kind of like simple, minimalist ways and stuff. But the bow was there each and every time. And so by creating this bow bag and bringing it forward, it's increasing the legibility of the bow as an iconic element and signaling of Dior because it draws on that intellectual capital that's been a part of the brand for a long time. So it feels substantive. It feels meaningful when he applies the bow to something. And then therefore, it feels like it has durability and endurance as a product and quality as a product versus, you know, like in this very high contrast example, the crap that Mr.

24:26Beast puts out just to activate his attention capital for profit very quickly. I don't know what you think of that. Absolutely. And that is the kind of like legibility is created only through repeated cultural interactions through subculture. So you do have Levi's 501s or Air Force One or Dior bow or Chanel Camellia or all those signals or what you and I discussed ingredients of IT and we'll get that to that later because what is relevant that you kind of don't set and say hey it's never really a finished product because you don't say hey when your bow was not like oh this is going to become iconic, let me protect it with the copyright.

25:16When it does become iconic, you protect it with the copyright. And what is funny is that La Boo Boo was not protected by copyright until 2024, and it existed since 2015. So let's park that for a minute and let's go back to how is legibility created and how the layers of meaning are created. So what Richard Prince have been doing, what Sidney Sherman has been doing, what Andy Warhol has been doing, what then Barbara Kruger has been doing, were references from previous works of art and pop culture and elevating pop culture to the level of art. And then when Supreme came, the logo of Supreme was a reference to, by Futura, originally a graffiti artist, or Barbara Kruger's signature art form.

26:07But then Leah McSweeney, married to the mob, brand founder, and now one of the Real Housewives of New York, used that and created Supreme B-I-T -C-H. And thing got out of control. And then James J. Bia sent her season deceased. And then, of course, Barbara Kruger was like, okay, you guys, like, you know, when the riff of a riff of a riff gets too far, which again, goes back to the practice of bootlegging, which is riffing off, which is to me, the only legitimate form of creativity. now when you have the counterfeits that are becoming so good that they're impossible to distinguish from the original.

27:03You have bootlegging as an homage, actually, to brands and to creatives when you have other creatives who may not be able to afford an original but creative their own interpretations. That goes back to the subculture of Harlem, of Bronx, of the 70s, of 80s, of hip hop, and even further back to Dapper Dan, who interpreted luxury designs and appropriated them in their own style, in their own way, and created incredibly creative styles. What's interesting about the bootleg thing and its role in creating iconicness and why it is so critical in helping a product become iconic. And in many ways, Nike Air Force One owns its historic success to bootlegging coming out of Baltimore.

27:59And today, Air Force One is still the second best selling shoe for Nike after Nike discontinued it. And it was it was the people who wanted to resell it and bootlegged in Baltimore that actually resuscitated it. But I think the interesting kind of almost kind of economic lens of bootlegging is that when you think about bootlegging in the frame of a competitive consumer market, manufacturers say, well, you're ripping off my product and selling it. And I'm losing a customer because they're buying your bootleg product. You're taking my IP and making a counterfeit product and taking away a sale that I could have.

28:39But when you put bootleg within a cultural market, bootleg is an art form. It's an homage. It is a way of imbuing a product or a brand with cultural meaning that the manufacturer couldn't give itself. But makes that product, makes that silhouette of a shoe, makes that shape of a watch, makes that logo mean so much more than a marketing campaign could do, than a manufacturer could design into it. And so all of a sudden, bootleg, a pejorative term in an economic sense, all of a sudden becomes like an economically critical activity for increasing the value of something in a cultural market, which, as the whole premise of the show is, has flows into creating financial value for the business entity.

29:29And I think as we move much more in towards a market and an economy of symbolic value rather than material value, bootlegging will increasingly be seen as like a core activity of a business versus something that you try to sick the lawyers on to. It turns if you can still find those forms of creativity because everyone is going crazy for Mr. Beast. Everyone is going crazy for the latest viral thing. No one has, because look what, like it was at a time of mass products. And it made sense when there was a mainstream culture and there were subcultures and there were reactions to that culture. when you had punk and Doc Martens.

30:18And when those iconic products were associated with subcultures, when work was or where hip-hop appropriated prep look with lowlifes, for example, and wore it completely in a fresh and super innovative way. Or when you had basketball shows appropriated on the streets of Bronx and Harlem and associated with hip hop, with music subculture, and then with streetwear. Because what the dynamic was, when you look at Air Force One shoes, when you look at even Air Jordans, they were basketball shoes. But then when people started riffing off them, the Nike started paying attention and started issuing what they were seeing as bottoms-up innovation that were happening in all those different cultures.

31:16That's why you have all those rare Nikes. And Nike itself had a special team, and they had those the rarest of the rare were released just in those special stores. But that is the earliest way of how do you started creating an iconic brand through a dialogue with subculture. And then when you think about Nike dunks, they were for college basketball. They were never meant to be for street and before for surf. But yes, if it weren't for Baltimore, they would have been discontinued. But Nike noticed that surfer kids are wearing them. And because at that time, in the early 80s, late 70s, the surf was starting to take off.

32:05And then Quicksilver and then Adidas and then Nike and then Puma started paying attention. What are those kids wearing when they're surfing? And then later off the surf, they noticed that Nike dunks have been worn by surfers. And they're like, oh, that shoe is going to be then reappropriated for that subculture, for surf subculture. And then it started getting legibility, the meaning, the symbols associated with that subculture. But if there weren't those Baltimore sellers, it would never have survived, number one. And then if Nike did not notice that it actually the surfers are wearing it, it would not have taken off and become iconic item that it is.