What makes a brand iconic

(upbeat music) - Iconic brands are built on products people obsess over. Air Force One Raybuns, Big Mac, Levi's 501s. Each of these products are a creative expression first, a shape, a taste, a aroma, a texture. Their form and function don't just sell units, the influence culture, spark sub-cultures, and create fandoms. This is where real brand creativity lives, noting 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 two of Hit Makers, the show detracts how culture moves margin, multiples, and market help. (upbeat music) - Hi Lee, happy new year. - Hey Anna, you ready? You're ready for 2026? - Oh, I've been ready for 2026 ever since you know when. - I was ready for 2026 and 2024. I just wanted to skip over over 2025. - Say something of something like that. (laughing) - You know, these break has been both long and short somehow. - I've gotten really good at like turning everything off on the breaks and 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, cleaning the other side and being like, oh, this is what life is like. And then, you know, then 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. - Oh, that's gonna last until Monday. - Well, I also have some good news to share with you. - Oh. - We have hit a milestone in hit makers. 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 250 years? (laughing) - Yes, for me it is. - And my mother-in-law likes our show. - No, he does. - 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 told her, but she listened. She listened to a bunch of the episodes. She really, she's probably listening right now. She 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. So anyway, I'll send you a plaque mother-in-law improved soon. - That is, honestly, I really do need a little flat over here to put, but it's really funny. Thank you, actually, thank you for reminding me because my dad also listened the episode and he's 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. And he's like, who's that buddy of yours? He's good. And what my husband earned that. - Now I shouldn't feel so insecure about doing this podcast. - So no, like, no, no, no, last episode. He's like, maybe thoughts about inversions, contradictions. And, you know, so kind of he keeps bringing it up in the past, we, but he's like, and he's like, who is that sunny boy? - He's good. - This sunny boy. - I mean, that's the translation. He would like all the fashion terms, sir. The answer to this kind of like. - Oh, I say, got it, got it. I was like, does he deliver the 1940s or something? - Well, he does, I totally want him. - That sunny boy. - He would say that if he were a Mexican. - Got it, got it. - You made the cuts. - Oh. - I 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, 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, there's part good. - But I'm really glad that you, I'm really glad that you like it. It's that podcast really, really broke through. Which is, we have a lot work to do for us to break through. But 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 have a legit name, mother-in-law test. - She'll be our pre-air focus group test. So we can tweak anything before we lodge it. - Thanks for sharing, thanks for sharing. So, honestly, you know why I put America's in our market moves, America's 250th anniversary, only because I wanna hear you say semi-quantessential goal. (upbeat music) - So let's do some market moves today. So, happy birthday, Ahana. Today is America's big birthday. It's semi-quintessentennial. Nailed it. - I can't say. - It'll be celebrated on July 4th of this year. Marking 250 years of the adoption of the declaration of independence. Also, Saks Fifth Avenue CEO steps down. Mark Metric is out as CEO of Saks Global Effective Immediately Executive Chairman Richard Baker will take over as CEO consolidating control across Saks Fifth Avenue and even Marcus and Bergdorf-Girdman. Metric'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 Mark is acquisition, missed $100 million interest payments this week and reports of bankruptcy preparations are underway. Department 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 Paul van 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. Lululemon stock jumped on the news but shares are still down sharply from recent highs as competitors like Viori and Alllo, pressure its market share. In other news, Rolex, Audemultique and Tudor have kicked off the new year with price increases, raising US sticker prices by an average of 7% and mid-single digits in the UK, according to WatchProt. The hike span both steel and precious metal models setting a combination of factors, including a new 15% US tariff on Swiss watch imports, record high gold prices and lingering inflation. But this move is more strategic than reactive, with 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 ozimpyc. Their challenge is to entice those with reduced appetites to dying 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 size portions of regular menu items like seabring. In New York City, Clinton Hall, a burger joint launched a teeny, winy, mini meal and Cuba Libre, an American chain, offers a GLP wonderful menu. 2026 restaurant mantras 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 redefine 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, underarmers signed a landmark 10-year extension with the University of Wisconsin, shifting its role from gear provider to content co-producer. The message is a really interesting one that universities are no longer just training grounds. They're becoming content studios. For Nike and underarmer, 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 Bowbag. Anderson is repeating the playbook that made Lueve the hottest brand in the world. He's replacing logo heavy luxury with sculptural silhouettes. The Bowbag, which turns a historic Dior motif into the actual structure of the bag is priced around about $4,300. It is already seen high sell through in Seoul and Paris. By 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 Book Tote, featuring embroidered versions of classic novels like Madame Bovery 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. Also in fashion, new financial filings released in January 2026 reveal that Phoebe Filo, the eponymous label from former Selene Creative Director is projecting 40 million in turnovers for 2025. You know, the tripling revenue since launching in late 2023. The brand's 2024 revenue hit about 14 million, almost double the prior year, validating or ultra-curated limited drop model. Backed in part by LVMH, the label releases collections as edits, A, B and C. And instead of seasonal lines, feeling scarcity and rapid sell-outs. The brand's power lies in its quote unquote, if you know you know status among Filo Files, fans who see Filo as the patron saint of the female gaze. Assuming flashy logos for clothes are defined by silhouettes, fabric, and subtle authority, not male gaze appeal. More than fashion, Filo is building a stealth luxury platform. It's financial trajectory, cultural cashier, 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 299 grocery bag has become an international status symbol from sold Melbourne to London. The canvas carrier is the latest marker of being, well, traveled in the know. As the tote has joined the ranks of geographically specific status bags, like those from London's dot books or Paris's Shakespeare and Company. In addition to London, they're being carried in soul, Melbourne, and Tokyo. Because there are no Trader Joe's stores abroad, the bags are listed on resale platforms, like Deep Hop eBay and Korea's carrot market for up to $10,000. With some eBay listings reaching $50,000. Would you pay $50,000 for a Trader Joe's tote? I don't know, but man, I gotta get on to eBay and get into the eBay game. 'Cause if it's selling for $50,000, I have a few yachts that I can buy with the stuff that my wife has. - I don't really pay with those clothes. - Who would pay with those clothes? - 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. I think we have like the first one they did. We have like a bunch of them. Like literally, we walk past the 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. - Yeah, which quickly. (laughing) - Screw the creativity business. I'm in the ARP. 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 gonna be like who needs a tote. The same is New Yorker ones. You can be seen alive wearing that thing anymore. - No, 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 a thousand, that's kind of like maltruple. - True. (laughing) - I just want to know who pays more than $2.99 for it. That's it. I want to list. - Definitely. You'll be in my box. - Because I have a lot of other things to sell them. - Yeah, I mean, that's kind of left field one, don't you think? - Like, if someone asked you last year, would you have predicted that? - No, it's so hard. But honestly, at the same time, I think that's like a really good transition into this iconic product stuff. Because sometimes it's really hard to anticipate what product is going to be iconic. Something you can engineer to be iconic in a certain way, but other times it just happens randomly. And you gotta make the most of it. - But I also think if it happened to anyone, it would have happened to trade you to Joe's, because you know, like, okay, so let's go to like Levi's 501s or Birkenstocks or Crocs or Air Force 1. So, back in the day, they were at the time of mass culture. They 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 Ireland. Then you would have low lives that would steal Ralph Lauren and Vedid had to tow. And the point was styling. So 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 arts scene, downtown arts scene, streetwear was created. And the whole idea of streetwear, when it combined with Sydney 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. And 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're gonna 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 what 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. One 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 stuff, where the legibility is, happens through an embrace by a subculture. So what I think a lot of people don't know, and again, we'll unpack this is that Air Force One's 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. And that store in the community in Baltimore embraced it and to exactly to the point that you're just meaning, 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 subculture 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 a creative product. - Yeah, 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, the ability is so-so-proof, but that is becoming more and more dominated by algorithms. On the other hand, legibility is meaning, cultural link in the electoral capital which is something that is not viral necessarily. It 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're who, they're there, but they're not viral, they don't go ever viral. Air Force 1s, don't go viral. But you are not gonna go when you wear Air Force 1 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. And meme products are those that are attention-grabbing products that are lower meaning, but that are high on attention like La Bubus, like, for example, Starbucks Barista Cup, which has high potential. All meme products have high potential to become a iconic product if they become legible. That means if they're enriched with meaning, and that is gonna 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 two rights now, in attention economy, too much of cultural production is focused on making meme products versus creating future icons legible products. - Yeah, so actually one thing that you made me think of in that, and by the way, everybody should read that article 'cause 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 meme 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 quick product, launch it into the market really quickly if it works, it doesn't work, if it works. Usually a lot of these like influencer brands, they're making meme products. They're not particularly high quality. They're really just kind of 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 that they stop buying and they're like, fine, I don't care. I got to hit that I wanted from selling this stuff. Now I'm gonna just move on to my next meme product and just repeat. And like I see that again and again with a lot of 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 Dior gesture, iconic gesture and built it into the product like the bow bag. So what you have with Dior is Jonathan Anderson continuing this legacy that other people before him had done, like Goliano used it in these big theatrical ways, rafed 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. Beast 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 501's or Air Force 1 or Dior bow or Chanel Camille 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 Dior bow was not like, oh, this is going to become iconic. Let me protect it with a copyright. It, when 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, he had been doing with Sydney Sherman, he has been doing what Andy Warhol has been doing, what Dan Barbara Krueger has been doing, where 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 Krueger's signature, art form. But then Liam McSweeney married to the mob, Brent founder and now one of the real housewives of New York used that and created Supreme BITCH and think out of control and then James J. Bia sent her season deceased. And then of course Barbara Krueger was like, OK, you guys, when the riff of a riff of a riff gets too far, which again goes back to the practice of boot lagging, which is riffing off, which is to me, the only legitimate form of creativity now. When you have the counter faiths that are becoming so good, that are impossible to distinguish from the original, you have boot lagging as a 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 that per den who interpreted luxury designs and appropriate them in their own style in their own way and created incredibly creative styles. What's interesting about the boot lag thing and it's a 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 boot lagging coming out of Baltimore and today Air Force One is still the second best selling shoe for Nike after Nike discontinued it and it was the people who wanted to resell it and boot lagging in Baltimore that actually resuscitated it. But I think the interesting kind of almost economic lens of boot lagging is that when you think about boot lagging 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 boot lagged product. You're taking my IP and making a counterfeit product and taking away a sale that I could have. But when you put boot lag within a cultural market, boot lag is an art form, it's an homage. It is a way of in viewing 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, boot lag, a pejorative term and 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 this show is, has flows into creating financial value for the business entity. And I think as we move much more in towards a market, an economy of symbolic value rather than material value, boot lagging will increasingly be seen as like a core activity of a business versus something that you try to stick the lawyers on to. 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, it was at the 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 dog martens. And then when those iconic products were associated with subcultures, when work where he was or where hip hop appropriated prep lock with low lives, for example, and what it completely in a fresh and super innovative way, or where you had, when you had basketball shoes, 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 Jordan's, 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 bottom-up innovation that were happening in all those different cultures. That's why you have all those rare Nike's. And Nike itself had a special team and they had those the rares 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's dunks, they were for college basketball. They were never meant to be for street and before for surfs. But yes, Baltimore, 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, '70s, the surf was starting to take off and then quick silver 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 surfs subculture. And then it started getting legibility, the meaning, the code, the symbols associated with that subculture. But if there were in 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. - Yeah, no, I agree with that. Well, and I also think you're, I think your point of saying that part of the reason why the bootlaking work is because there was such thing as a mainstream culture back in the '70s, '80s and '90s. I think that's a fair point though. I mean, pushing back a little bit. I think groups of people are always going to try to find things to anchor their identity in. Regardless if there's a mass culture or not, because there's always codes and cues of how people translate their cultural and community values into physical, visual expression. Sometimes it's a product, sometimes it's a color, sometimes it's a place, sometimes. But you got to encode that in physical things. And so I think what I don't see bootlaking diminishing simply because there's no mass culture. It may diminish for other reasons, but I don't think the mass culture is one. I don't know if you agree or disagree with that. - No, I think that now it can still exist. You don't have, like, but Luke, how are you going to make it happen now? You have so many trends happening at the same time, and which is great. And you can say, and then there is so much mining the past at such a speed that, and when you have remix and riffing off, and actually legibility is what gives cultural capital and cultural currency. So you see cultural capital is what products here, that distinguishes them from other products. If you will in culture in the most simplistic terms, or you can also say, oh, cultural capital is non-financial as set, like identity status and meaning that makes them desirable and recognize the reference, okay. So you say, how do you make that today? If not through legibility, through debt accumulated. How do you accumulate that cultural capital going forward? - So let me talk about that by bringing up the aftermarket topic. So I'm sure I know you've seen it, and I'm sure a lot of people listening have seen this, but like the aftermarket, the second hand market, particularly of clothing, of jewelry, of bags, and watches, and things like that, continues to grow. And so there's this ongoing desire for things that have some enhanced element to it that gives it meaning. Now, Remoa has the used luggage that they resell out of markup. Ralph Lauren has resell stuff from past collections or limited runs or dead stock materials or whatever the criteria is that people also buy. There's something in that that to me goes back to this idea of after you release a product, the game isn't over. Like you haven't done your job as a marketer, you haven't done your job as a brand builder, but by just saying, oh, we sold the product. I think you have to see then how the product is being used in culture where it's popping up, who it's being associated with, what are the contexts, where the story's being told around it. And then the next job begins of saying, okay, which of those things are starting to show seeds of accruing value to our products? That if we put attention on it, that we help grow it, that we take it seriously in some way, that it can become a core part of what the product stands for. And so, I'm sort of trailing off in my thought a little bit, but it's the idea that marketers historically have made sure a product is sold to the market. But then there's this next thing, I don't know if you call it a marketer and if you call it something else, maybe it's like a second marketer. Like a better term, but it's like what's happening in the cultural markets now that the products out there that we can continue to build around and into the products through collaborations, through bootlegs, through storytelling, whatever it is, to increase the cultural capital value of the product. Does that make sense? 'Cause it feels like a material change and a new role within an organization to take advantage of building or not take advantage of, but to build cultural capital and product iconicness. - Well, I think the main point is, who is gonna wait for a product to become iconic? I mean, that's the thing. Everyone wants to have a vital product because that's gonna help them either quarterly results. - Yeah. - Like, I mean, or you're gonna meet your, whatever your goals are, the whole point is, if you're gonna build your cultural currency through legibility, that means that you're gonna do, you have to build a context. That means, what am I gonna connect this product? Which imagination? Because when you say, hey, Juicy Couture is when Paris, Hilton, Hawaii, why 2K? So if you're to create a new Juicy Couture, you're gonna say in 2026, there is this like really big feeling of form nostalgia, fake nostalgia. So I'm gonna build my product, I'm gonna embed this fake nostalgia word. Better yet, analogue culture is back. So there is, I saw today a camera where you can pick how your photos are gonna look from 1930s to 2020. So if you're really gonna say analogue culture, people are hanging out, no, everyone's dumb phones, no one wants anything digital, no one wants anything sloped, everything, everyone wants like low-fi. Okay, how am I gonna design that into my products? So that's number one. But that means, even if you design that, knowing that there is no must culture, that you have to then say, it's gonna take, either it's gonna take off really quickly, or it's just gonna take me, like, or I need to be really strategic how I'll relocate my marketing budget. In a sense, how do I relocate my marketing budget for meaning? Which means, how do I then invest in analogue marketing, knowing that it's gonna take forever for people to discover if I don't rely on slop, if I don't rely on AI, if I don't rely on algorithms. You know what I mean? - Yeah. - And I don't have much culture anymore because no one is watching TV. So they're literally going to cave age of advertising. - Yeah, but so I agree with that. But I think we're mixing some stuff. So you're having a product marketing conversation, which everything you said makes sense in that frame. I think I was having a product design conversation. So part of the way that we kick this off was saying that iconicness comes through product. And so the boot lagging is about how you redesign the products to continuously be iconic and the way that you figure out how to increase the legibility of a product's iconicness is pulling the culture capital into the product. And you can only really know how to do that with the product after the product is launched and market. - Yes, yes, yes. But this is only the first one that I was. So I just started with, if you're starting legibility, knowing that the currency is where do you sit in popular imagination? And I was saying the popular imagination right now is everything analog. - Yeah. - So that's number one. So you're going to design for everything analog meaning that if you're in technology, you're going to create really dumb technology. If you're in retail, you're going to take cues from decades past, which is in fashion anyway, the cycle is repeat. You know, that's not going to impact you that much. Then you're going to go to the next thing that creates really that legibility. You're going to say, hey, I need superior product quality and functionality, because I really need this product to last a long time. I'm not creating Mr. B's products that are going to fall apart. When I'm going to build something for resale, which means this needs to be this generation of person who wears it, but then resale generation and then third generation of resale. So basically when I'm designing, I'm going to think about, is this color going to be relevant for generations to come? Is this teaching? Is this shape? Is this pattern going to be relevant for future to come? So you're not designing. Your design brief is a resale value. Your design brief is not the current value. Your current market. You're not designing for current trends. You're designing for the resale value for the future trends. This is paradigm shifting if you work in fashion. You see, that's a giant difference. You're creating a forever product, which means you're not creating a trendy product at all. So first of all, the functionality, the utility, and then what you're creating with quality needs to be such the vistine, the secondary marketplace, the resale market that is growing way faster than the primary marketplace, which means completely ignore fast fashion. Create something that's going to last a really long time. And that is the most important point. And then you're going to look for entrancing attachment with human emotion, behaviors, user validation. Is this going to elicit? Is this going to be like, if you create cashment, if you create denim, if you create something I'm thinking from my own perspective, fashion perspective, retail perspective, how are you going to elicit emotion, which goes back to Phoebe Fyllo? Like look at hers, she's creating a great business model. That resale value is going to be for generations to come. And the core point of Levi's is that Levi's from 1950s now goes for thousands of dollars. It would not be possible if that thing fell apart. The ladder from the past, denim from the past, is much higher quality than now. So that means that investment needs to happen. And immediately you have that user validation, the emotion, the motivation, the behavior, is embedded in the product. So I absolutely say the same thing as you are. I just went in that trajectory because the first point I was making was, where do you place it within human imagination? And all of this is, again, analogue, because that activity of products is very analogue. So luckily, it all fits together. I think the other thing about iconicness is-- and this is where I'm going to have a bit more if I could create a conversation or commentary-- is the potential for iteration on it. So anyone who works in creative spaces know that there are some ideas that have a short runway of what you could do with it. And then they kind of lose steam of how do you express it? How do you reinterpret? And then there are other ideas that you're like, I can come up with a million different things to do with this idea and constantly reinterpret it. And when trying to design that legible IP into the product, whether it's utility or material or use or whatever it might be, that kind of criteria of, is this something that I-- is this thing that I'm designing into the product, something that I can iterate on in many, many different ways? And so colorways, like with shoes, is one way to do that. There's just so many different ways that we can do it in Taylor and stuff like that. And one that I really love is from the high-end jewelry and watch company Shepar. In 1976, they created this innovation within this space called Happy Diamonds. I don't know if you're familiar with it and stuff. But basically, the designer Ronald Clarowski was watching a waterfall. And he was noticing how water was falling off and beating and the way the light hit it and reflected in these droplets was really, really beautiful. And so this kind of like leading image kind of gave him this idea to create this whole concept called Happy Diamonds that, rather than creating jewelry and watches where the diamonds are locked into place with prongs and stuff like that, as everything is done, he actually said, well, what if I designed something where they move freely and dance around in a playful way, activating the motion of the diamond? So he did that between these two sapphire crystals and what ended up happening was this really beautiful effect that hadn't been done in the space at all where the diamonds, particularly in these watches, are like dancing across the dials. And so this inaugural model was this cushion-shaped men's watch that had a black dial and gold case and had these 30 floating diamonds in it. Which is, I mean, it's really cool to actually see this highly structured, architectonic high-end watch, which is this pile of diamonds thrown on top of it that kind of dance everywhere and enhance the sense of movement as they're playing. So anyway, one of this major design award and led to this entire creative direction for the brand where they expanded into women's watches and it became a signature of the brand. They did a sports version, which is super sells a lot. But they did ones where not only is it dancing across the face, but they did ones where they created these rails around the watch and the diamonds like five diamonds slide around the watch. Or they did new shapes, they turned the diamonds into fish. And so now the fish on a blue dial are like swimming around on it and stuff. And it was just this like super innovative thing that you can just innovate on again and again and again. And so that is a really critical part of the product design element is that it has legs in terms of reinterpretation. And I think that's a really important part, not just about legibility, because the legibility is in many ways about kind of breaking rules and doing something very different. But it is about the longevity of the idea. And so when we're thinking about this iconicness in trying to design sort of something intentional into it, I think the part that I would add to it is not only the legibility, but the potential longevity of the idea being played into it. And I know you can't always do that like with Levi's 501s and stuff. You can't necessarily design the longevity although arguably the material is designed in that way. - I think legibility is the outcome of longevity. There would be no legibility without, because think about what legibility is. It's ability to discern meaning. It's like standing out in a literal sense is readability. It's kind of clarity of signal, right? - Yeah, totally. - If you say, "Hey, I know who this is for, it's very clear." And without that original legibility, you wouldn't be able to refer it and still preserve that identity. And I think that identity is insanely important. Because with those time, with your example, it's still the same identity. You know matter what you do with it, with Levi's, with Nike's, with Puma's, no matter what. What the street creativity was. They were still, Nike's, they were still Puma's, they were the whole point was that insane originality of riffing off them. That's why, that's why it's remarkable. And that's why I think that identity is really important. And that's why even when you see what low lives are doing with the raw of, there was like, raw would never put it like that. But that's why it was the innovation. Like you can't go look, wow, amazing, promise. - So I think your comment about the longevity, almost being a characteristic of legibility. That legibility is an output of longevity, simply because as the design choices you design into the product allow for longevity, it increases the legibility of the product over time. Because it endures. It breaks the root, no matter what the error, what the trends are and stuff like that. So that's, I buy that. I think that is, I agree with that. I think, I think one thing that's interesting for us to touch on in the time that we have left is what happens when a brand or a part of a brand becomes iconic to an undesired subculture. And how do brands kind of handle that? Because I think there's some really interesting stories of that happening. - I mean, yes, and I mean, my contribution, and I know that like our examples converge. Fred Perry and proud boys and Burberry, Burberry check and quarter century ago when it became associated with, you know how they have classes in Britain? And I know that I have to put it like this, not to come. - So you know, like when you get, when your identity, when you're basically product identity, which you are known for, get adopted by a group of people that was not necessarily reflecting what your brand wants to associate with, what do you do then? - Oh, so now you're asking me? - That's not what I'm asking you. - So I would say, that's Perry didn't do much. As far as-- - Well, they start producing the specific polo that the proud boys were wearing. And put out a press release saying they-- - Well, I think there's not too much. - Yeah, no. But like one example I think of is actually Marvel Comics. So Marvel has this character called the Punisher. His name is Frank. I can't remember the last name of the character, but they turned it into TV shows. There's been movies. I think there's news of like another movie coming out with the Punisher. So it's a very, it's kind of like a second tier superhero within the Marvel universe, but still very iconic because it's this vigilante policeman whose family had been killed. And so he follows the typical outlaw trope of law enforcement kind of like dirty hairy style where you are enforcing the law by breaking the law. Like that is the only way to stop bad guys is the thesis is you have to break the law and become more violent than the bad guys. And so that's what the Punisher is. And so this Punisher is character is very iconic because he wears this black tactical police outfit and has on his chest. Sometimes it's spray painted. Sometimes it's graphic, but it's this very iconic skull shape. And I mean, this character's been around since the '70s. Anyway, that white skull has always been associated with this comic book character. And what ended up happening was that the far right movement in the United States ended up adopting that skull as the symbol of their movement. And so Marvel had this real challenge of something that they had built really sustainable IP in since the '70s and were building entertainment in their Marvel universe around had been co-opted by a group of people who they did not want that particular IP co-opted by. And so similar to what Fred Perry did was they had to effectively cut loose that IP and give it up. And so what they did was they redesigned the Punisher's chest decal from that skull into something that looks more like a devil skull, something with horns and different, like they actually had to migrate the IP. So it's still this white skull, but they had to redesign it in a way so that it was distinctly different from what they had given up to the culture. And I know there was probably a lot of really heated conversations within Marvel about that, but I think it just goes to show like how powerful culture is when a particular mark or particular piece of IP from a company is adopted by it, it just becomes filled with so much meaning. - A subculture, yes. - Yes, that's right, a subculture. - Yes, but you know what I think again, we are going back to such short time horizons. And I think that really, I think that even when you have examples like this, it just shows you that IP ingredients, they're leaving in breathing things and that basically that product, again, product functionality achieves identity and the product identity is again in a constant dialogue and it all of that becomes a part of the product mythology and a product lore. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing at all because it's going to last for a long time. And even in the Berberies history, this is a moment in their history. As you can see, 25 years later, they're now completely embracing British. It's completely, and even they're embracing all sorts of accents and classes and subcultures and angles. And now if someone told them then that that's where they're going to end up, they probably wouldn't believe it, but because Berberie Trench has such functional characteristics that there, like that's a product innovation is in the material of that trend and that is only possible because of that Berberie Vedder that Thomas Berberie created that innovation, that is the product identity is what then be amplified by brand by advertising and everything else. - So are you saying that even if an iconic product from a brand becomes associated with a less than desirable subculture, that that's still not necessarily a bad thing as long as you manage it well, or I guess what's the point that you're trying to land on that? - I'm trying to land it like we're looking at short time horizons. When you look at it in Berberie's case, when you look at it, oh my God, that's a crisis for the brand and you say 20 years later, 25 years later, it's not a crisis for the brand, it's a part of the brand campaign. It's kind of like looking at, we're looking at such a short time horizons when you make decisions, you know? - No, I get that. - And I think that becomes a part of the law of the ecology of a product because products they outlast us all. - They don't? - No, no, no, I agree with you. It was just funny to hear that. Our products will outlive us. - Well, if they're good and that's why - Humanity will just be the sprawling, retail footprint of just products all over the earth while humanity has left earth. All of them are gonna be left behind for our products. - And if you have a really good product that I'd lawyer, you're gonna still be reaping. You see, like look, look at both Disney and Mickey Mouse, like originally known in Steamboatville, because that is, you know, that was not copyrighted. Like, Steamboatville was in a public domain, like doing his thing. And then all Disney was like, "Ah, I like Steamboatville. I'm gonna call him Mickey Mouse and I'm gonna pull the letter out." And no more public domain. And I'm gonna make gazillions of dollars based on it, you know? So that is, that's going back to the point that like, you don't know what's copyrightable until it becomes, it's not intellectual property until culture adopts it and celebrates it. So, well, that's, I think this is a great way to sort of wrap it up. And I know we had a ton of more examples, but I think that the point came across. And basically, it comes down to like a frequent use, sub-cultural use, Levi's, Air Force One, Ray Bans, pumpkin spice latte or Burberry trend. A frequent use gives product identity. All those different use scenarios, the wear, the user validation gives product identity. And then, thanks to that, both identity and functionality, if Air Force One fell apart, the moment someone rift on it, the first time someone put them under sewing machine, they would be like, "No Air Force, the iconography." So, products start selling themselves. Thanks to that, functionally, they achieve an identity, sell themselves, and then marketing comes and amplifies. All of that. So, once you have only the root in culture and a sub-culture, then it's easy to start tripping off that. When you have Nike and a running or a hip-hop culture, app-ling creativity, amazing craftsmanship, fall and pumpkin spice latte, yes, you can then amplify that, but achieving that link that takes years. And I think that what the point is, design products now to establish that link. - Yeah, and I totally agree with you, that like a product doesn't become iconic until a sub-culture says it's iconic. And the reason that the Nike Air Force One is just such a great example to keep going back to and mining examples is that that's exactly what happened with them. A culture said this is iconic and we want to buy it and remix it and do all these colorways and so on. But I think the flaw in thinking to just that lens is this idea that, well, a product becoming iconic is a gamble. There's no real agency in helping a product become iconic. And I don't think that's entirely true. And that's a bit of my takeaway from this conversation is that designing legibility into the product and the way that we talked about is really important. And that is where the agency comes in. It doesn't mean that your guarantees that the product will become iconic. Again, that will be determined by the cultural markets. But you can increase the likelihood of it by designing highly legible IP into it, whether it's a bow, the way Dior did because Christian Dior thought that the bow represented all parts of femininity and it was kind of a core concept behind everything. But going back to the Air Force One, the reason the thing that made Air Force One's legible was the silhouette and quite specifically the thick, high soul. That was, we sort of take that for granted today because this just becomes so common. But back in the '70s and '80s, that was not common. Souls were much thinner. And so bringing that air technology into the midsole of a basketball shoe was a big high signal design choice in the industry at that time by Nike. So that high soul, that thick soul, is something that immediately screamed from a distance. This is Air Force One. And so, and I'm not claiming that that is why it became legible, but it was an ingredient that increased the probability of iconicness. And that was an intentional choice that Nike had control over. Yes, and I think this is a great way to sort of wrap it up because then again, we're going back to product properties. So yes, you have quality, real and leather. You then have functionality. When you say, oh, that thick soul and functionality, this is a sports shoe. It has a specific purpose. But then I wrote this down. You have a cultural imagination. This is a sports shoe for athletes who are heroes, who have plays in cultural imagination because you know their names. You know those basketball player names, and you kind of root for them, you know to the games. And then, you also have behavioral attachment because there is such an intersection between you play basketball. You hang out with the people who play basketball. You don't hang out with people who don't play basketball. Music and basketball is interesting. There is intersection on the street between music and basketball. Like, that's your hang. So that's kind of that kind of behavioral attachment. And then finally, that's like identity. The music, the sports, and street identity. So everything is contained in that one shoe. So that's not that hard to reverse engineer, really, when you think about it. So it's not like, well, let's give it to these youth ones that really think about it. It's a matter of design. Yeah, I mean, it gives us the schematic to people of things to think about if we want to make a product an iconic part of our portfolio. Like, I know not every product can be iconic, nor should every product be iconic, then it just kind of delutes everything. But if there is something that you're either launching or something that represents a new breakthrough for a company and you want it to become a core equity of the brand of the company. You got to design iconicness into it. Or if there's a product that's catching gravity, or catching kind of cultural heat and kind of starting to have its own cultural gravity, what you just described is a really good schematic with which to think of, okay, now what do we do? How do we think about this in a structured and an intentional way so that iconicness can become, there's a higher probability of this product converting into an iconic cultural product. Right, these are all parameters of legibility to wrap this all up. So for next time in their chase for iconic products, brands ended up with something way more approachable, which is merch, not bad at all. So far from being a brand side gig, merch is now their main act. A really high margin money maker, attention grabber and an occasional icon. So in the next episode, Leah and I are gonna unpack merch as one of the main cultural products that the brand used to influence culture today. Stay tuned, thanks so much, Lee. - Thanks, Ana.