The world building playbook for brands

Transcript

Worldbuilding is one of the most important concepts in modern marketing because the world of identity and media has radically changed over the last decade. Marketing used to assume a communication between the buyer and the seller, which made sense for a single transaction. But increasingly, products are sold on identity. Worldbuilding treats everyone like they're a character in a brand's mood. And that's not just you viewing that brand's film. You're a participant in it. We're all actors in their world. We're using their props. We're shaping what that story looks like. It's fun. It's compelling. And it works. But how do you actually do this? So in this video, Scott and I are going to go through brand examples, principles from both brand building and from film, to share the process, share examples, share things that we've worked on, and things we respect that can help you really understand worldbuilding. Let's lock in. When we talk about worldbuilding, a brand that never ceases to come up, and that brand is Vacation. And so I know you have a relationship there. You understand the brand. Talk to me a bit about that. What's your history with them? And let's dive into it. I'm very fortunate to be an advisor and investor in Vacation, which is how I got to know them. And even before then, I was a fan. What struck me from the beginning is the setting, right? It is a world. And I believe that that concept of setting is important to understand in the context of worldbuilding. What are your thoughts there? What do you think of that setting they've built? To understand the setting of Vacation, let's understand the psychology first of the category, right? So sunscreen, right? That was one of their first products, and that's what the brand is known for. And sunscreen has changed a lot over the last 50 years. Sure. Yeah. So sunscreen used to be about fun in the sun. It used to be about play. It used to be about the beach. It used to be about togetherness, having a wild time. And then sunscreen became about health and safety, and it became clinical. It became about protection, UV radiation, the fear and the efficacy, right? That all took over the sunscreen category. And then, so many categories, it was upgraded and brands traded up into beauty. So how do you make the package smaller? How do you make the margins bigger? How do you sell it in more and more fancy doors? And how do you put it in a really slick-looking package that almost becomes part of your skincare routine versus going out into the wild and having fun in the sun? And Vacation asked, well, what would it look like to make sunscreen fun again and represent that fun in the sun? And so the world of Vacation, the setting that they've built, is to transport you to the time when sunscreen was about having fun. And so they made a whole bunch of creative decisions to transport you to that setting visually, aesthetically, with photographs. It lives in this dreamlike world from the late seventies to the late eighties, where there was Club Med and digital cameras weren't something that everyone carried around. Cameras were something you'd take on vacation, and you'd shoot a lot of photos where you wanted to have memories. And so the brand world of Vacation is very much rooted in vacation photography from middle-class Americans that are going down to the Caribbean or down to the Gulf Coast, right? Or hanging out in San Diego. One of my favorite thinkers and investors, Charlie Munger, has this quote: take something and take it seriously. And worldbuilding is all about taking it really seriously. And they took it extremely seriously. So you could take something and say, okay, well, we're going to use a little bit of inspiration from packaging in the seventies or the eighties. But of course, we're going to have a modern website, and we're going to print the packing slip with a normal font, or really just think through one element of it. But what Vacation does is, no, no, no. How do we take this to an 11 out of 10 in terms of transport, of worldbuilding? And so, for instance, one of the ways they did that was they found someone's Flickr profile, a dad who had taken photos of his family on vacation through the eighties and nineties and happened to scan them and upload them to Flickr. And they ended up licensing that material, that photography, so that they weren't just using AI or trying to recreate slick photo shoots, but, at the origin of the brand, they said, how do we actually take this family that had documented their vacations and make that part of our lore and build our visuals around that? So they had this whole mosaic of visual material to work from and layer on. Now I love that idea of taking it seriously across everything. It's really important. I remember one of the most interesting things I felt they did was when they launched in Target, you saw even the Target advertisements still lived 100 percent within that world. Taking something that seriously is something so few brands are willing to participate in. I feel like that's what's required to build, as we're talking about. Exactly. Because in a movie, you have great actors who are character actors or method actors, right? Yeah. Method actors don't break character when the director says cut. They keep it going and they commit to the bit. And worldbuilding brands commit to the bit. Agreed. I like the example of pulling from that Flickr account. It's a good example of this idea of citizens of a brand's world. Okay, we are, whether we're a consumer, whether it's an influencer, whether it's a founder or member of the brand, there are people that exist within that. I would love to hear your thoughts on that concept. Well, traditional brands will grow by distribution. They'll grow by promotion. Worldbuilding brands build by initiation. They grow through inviting people to be members of that story and cast members of that movie. And so, to use Vacation as an example again, they made a really important creative choice at the very beginning around their email list. Because when you sign up for a brand's email list, you get an email that says, are you sure you want to opt into what might be years and years of spam in the future? Yeah, it's your percent off. Yeah, exactly. And so what Vacation did was, instead of "subscribe to our email list," they said, well, do you want to be a junior executive in the Vacation Corporation? And if you want to be a junior executive in the Vacation Corporation, sign up for your summer job here. You put your email in, put your name in. And not only do you get an email saying you're on the list, but you got a business card, an image, a JPEG of a business card, that had a randomly determined title of your functional role as an executive in the Vacation Corporation. So I'm the head of nautical matters. Some people are shrimp boat captain architects. Other ones are inflatable pool toy mechanics. And so everyone has this mad-lib title of what they exist in, in the Vacation story. And so that gives people now permission to play the role even further. So you'll find people commenting on their LinkedIn posts about, well, as the junior executive responsible for my Thai concoctions, I, for one, am really happy with this new product introduction. And on the other hand, in terms of committing to the bit, Vacation doesn't just communicate like a brand in the normal world. They very much, tongue in cheek, on a 10 out of 10 basis, communicate as the quote world-famous Vacation Corporation. And they exist at a time in the eighties when corporate was cool, right? The Patrick Bateman calling card and the rise and the ascent of the yuppie. Since then, corporate isn't cool anymore. People don't want to work in offices. They don't want to work in cubicles, right? It's all counterculture. Everyone's got their side hustle. Vacation, again, transports you back to a world where the HR department wasn't trying to be cool and hip. And they're communicating in very technical corporate language that becomes high intensity. It becomes funny because, at the end of the day, you have these two polar opposites: a very serious, buttoned-up, formal corporation that is all about fun in the sun. And I think brands that often look at something like Vacation, they go, there's no way we could build that. We couldn't go all in. They've already taken that eighties idea. And I think one of the first exercises is just looking at that vernacular, right? What that exercise, the first email, does is it points you into all the words that build the brand: the shrimp boat captain, pool toys, et cetera. I feel like almost any niche can be in that. I look at my friends at Air. They did something similar, like a generator. You could put your picture in and it would give you a meme, but it was in their language, all the language of creative direction and people that are overly online or have that ambiguous-income job, et cetera. Because that's a lot of their actual consumer base, in these ambiguous creative jobs. And I think brands that often look at something like Vacation go, "There's no way we could build that. We couldn't go all in there. They've already taken that '80s idea." And I think one of the first exercises is just looking at that vernacular, right? What that exercise, the first email, does is it points you into all the words that build the brand: the shrimp boat captain, pool toys, et cetera. I feel like almost any niche can be in that. I look at my friends at Air did something similar, like a generator. You could put your picture in, and it would give you a meme, but it was in their language, all the language of creative direction and people that are overly online or have that ambiguous income job, et cetera. Because a lot of their actual consumer base is in these sort of ambiguous creative jobs. And I do think that one of those exercises, just going through every one of these ideas and concepts and words behind it and defining those words for a brand, is so much more important than whatever's in the brand guide, right? The quote-unquote. It's like, what do we really think about that? How do we really look at that? And to segue this a bit, when people go, "Okay, well, how do I find inspiration? How do I actually hunt that down? How do I begin to have it for a brand?" All this is really just taking these principles from film, right? The movie analogy is a good one because it's so accurate. It's also where we draw a lot from. I'd be curious to talk a bit about where those rootings and world-building come from when it comes to movies, film, and action. Yeah. Well, world-building comes from cinema, and cinema is this beautiful, rich, visual, auditory kind of social construct that's all around story. And we'll talk about story. But I think one of the best world-builders in cinema, not the first, but I think one of the most beloved and one of the most current, is Wes Anderson. Of course. Yeah. He's really famous for his world-building. And so, as an example here, my favorite Wes Anderson film is Grand Budapest Hotel. Grand Budapest Hotel is a masterwork in so many different ways. And so the question for us today is, well, what separates simply good art direction, right, like you'll see in a film like The Substance, from true world-building? And what Wes Anderson does is borrow a lot from children's literature and different mechanisms where he goes beyond simply the idea of setting to think about institutions. Okay. So he shows institutions in his films. In the case of Moonrise Kingdom, it's the Khaki Scouts, not the Boy Scouts. And that little kind of concession there of taking something from the normal world, right, the world that we all live in, like the Boy Scouts, and just tweaking it a little bit and making a slightly fictionalized version of it makes it just real enough, but also just enough fantasy to really work in a world-building setting. So if we take Grand Budapest Hotel, for example, there's a fictional country called Zabrovka. And Zabrovka is this amalgamation of an Alpine Central European country. It's part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It's a little bit of the Czech Republic. It's a little bit of Austria. It's a little bit of Hungary. And it's an imagined institution, right, this idea of that part of Europe at the time. And then you take the Grand Budapest Hotel itself. There are these imperial hotels that were built in kind of spa towns in that empire. And you know, as soon as you see it, that this institution existed before the film, it's going to exist after the film. And then institutions within that, like Mendel's Bakery, right, the storied bakery that takes place in it. Or instead of the SS, it's the Zigzag, the ZZ, right, sort of just mirroring that little icon that goes on the soldier's gilet. So these are things that build story for Wes Anderson, these films. The other thing that he does is the ability to go really, really tight on props. So every object is a representation of this world. When you zoom in on it really quickly, whether it's a matchbook, whether it's a menu item, it has all the details of that world that allow you to place yourself in it. And I think that's an important kind of item for brand-building, because when you are a brand-building or when you're a world-building brand, you create essentially props in this movie that you're creating. And you've got to pay attention to those little details. Don't take them seriously enough, right? There's this, yeah, oh, it's the average, it's your koozie, it's your holder, and people talk about merch. But there's a real conversation around that. I mean, Palantir, for better or for worse, has gotten a significant amount of conversation around releasing a French chore coat, a streetwear drop, but they're building artifacts, right? And I like the idea of artifacts from a film as the same as artifacts of a brand, but they're almost more important because you have so few actual touchpoints. If you're going to spend the $2 or have the website like Vacation does, it's important. Yeah, the artifacts and the totems, right? The design, to the extent that every single object, every detail of it, right, like this kind of Baroque, ornate '80s, down to the gold foil reflectivity, which is gauche, right, and over the top, but that's the point, because it fits into that world. And you even see that when you go into the Sephora merchandising, and you'll see the same thing, or Alta, wherever they are, you'll see every one of those displays is an extension. I love that a lot about what Vacation's done. Extrapolating this to any company, right, product companies, consumer companies work great, but really any type of company, is you've got to remember that human beings make meaning and organize everything through stories. We are the only species that do this, is understand and have the logic that defines our life through stories, not facts, not evidence or data, but stories. Because stories are how we make sense of things like morality and identity and challenge and relationships. And so what brands do is they hijack the neural circuitry that was developed for human beings to relate to each other with stories and translate it into what they're trying to achieve with their brand and their growth. And what a story is, at the most fundamental level, is a character, a hero, who encounters a crisis or a challenge, and through that challenge becomes transformed to become a better version of themselves. Hero's journey. The hero's journey. And what brands do is they sell a better version of yourself, a better version of the hero. And so the question is, how are you transformed through this journey? And what world-building brands do is they put you as, most of the time, the hero in that journey, and they show an incredible level of cinematic detail that is highly evocative and plays on your imagination of, what do I look and feel like when I'm transformed by this product? So today we're going to add a real skill to your toolkit in 120 seconds, brought to you by Framer. Every time a consumer clicks on an ad or goes to download your ebook or to book a call on your website, they're hitting a funnel, landing page, and pages after that. And most suck. They're not building your brand's world. One of the highest-value skills you can do as a creative is to be able to improve this funnel to build it, because that drives more sales, more email subs, and when you can quantify the work, you get paid more for it. Framer is a complete website platform, and I love it for quickly being able to spin up brand assets like this, especially for software services and personal brand sites. And today I want to talk about the new Framer agents and the workflow to create new sites and sections of sites. So here, this entire site that you see was generated by Framer agents. I gave it a reference Bento-style layout like this, some of my links and imagery, and a picture of myself to create, and it made this for me. I did not design anything. I was able to go in and edit those call to actions. And what I just asked for, you can see here on the right, was for it to give me a placeholder section for testimonials and for FAQ. And it gives it to me in mobile and on desktop. I can preview it right here. I've asked for special effects for the rollovers. You can adjust. I'm doing all of this. Everything you see here was created in chat with Framer agents. And all of this matches the design style of my website overall. So if you're building this, you want to start with a landing page. The sections you want to call out to have are an aggressive title with a subtitle. Anchor that in your customer pain point, your core section, the header you saw there, where you can put the value propositions of what you're trying to get. Ideally, a video about the product offer, if you have one. And the ability to sign up or act on the offer right there, the way you saw with my form. And what I just asked for, you can see here on the right, was for it to give me a placeholder section for testimonials and for FAQ. And it gives it to me on mobile and on desktop. I can preview it right here. I've asked for special effects for the rollovers. You can adjust. I'm doing all of this. Everything you see here was created in chat with Framer agents. And all of this matches the design style of my website overall. So if you're building this, you want to start with a landing page. The sections you want to call out to have are an aggressive title with a subtitle. Anchor that in your customer pain point, your core section, the header you saw there, where you can put the value propositions of what you're trying to get. Ideally, a video about the product offer if you have one. And the ability to sign up or act on the offer right there, the way you saw with my form. And ideally, all that is above the fold. They see that right when they land on the website. And then below it, you can get into testimonials and proof points. Dive into the top features. More video or graphic examples, UGC testimonials. Big call to action to act now. And then a frequently asked questions section to really get to any reason they might have an objection. That's a great landing page structure to use. But then if you're booking a call, or even if someone buys something from there, the confirmation page they get is ultra important. Because it can radically increase the chance of conversion on a call or even upsell another product. I've been putting a personal video from the CEO or a freelancer there. Along with a personal message and what they can expect next. It doesn't have to be high-rise. It can just be a yap. But literally, take that outline for this page, drop it into Framer with the agents, and ask it to make those sections with placeholder copy you can update. Or ask it to generate initial copy. Or bring in copy that you've already done and have it make the complete site. It can polish your drafts, refine your design. I started that whole bento layout just from a screenshot of a similar site. And ask for little world-building elements. They go a long way. Photos or design that tie to your social media, video embeds, stickers with your logo elements, websites, or extensions of your brand story. And you can just ask for them in chat with Framer. Ship your sites faster with Framer today. And use code ORIN for 30% off of Framer Pro Annual Plan. Link is in the description. This is actually a good time to bring up your background. My world-building resume starts with Sir Kensington's. Which is the company that I founded. And what Sir Kensington's was, was reimagining condiments. So we actually started the brand and the world before we even made the first product. And the way it started was the idea that there are so many different types of mustards out there. And there's only one type of ketchup. And the type of ketchup that's out there is obviously dominated by Heinz. And then every other brand is in the same package, with the same product inside and the same texture. And it's ubiquitous, but it's not really saying anything interesting. But at the same time, ketchup has an absolute stranglehold on the American refrigerator. It's in 98% of American refrigerators. And Heinz is a cult brand that everyone knows. Almost like a Kleenex. And so we realized that if we were to just simply make a better product, we would fail. Because it wouldn't capture anyone's attention. So we said, let's do the exact opposite of Heinz. If Heinz is going to be in plastic, we're going to start in glass. If Heinz is indiscriminately squeezed, we are going to be scooped. Like a high-end European... I love that. Look at what's happening in the market. Okay, how do we elevate or do the opposite? It's a great way to look at things. Do the opposite. And if Heinz is Americana and synonymous with the roadside diner and fast food and really central to America, what's the opposite of that? Yeah. Let's be English, right? And how do we be English? Well, we needed to create a lore that was drafting off of heritage that we were inventing. Because we didn't have heritage. The product was brand new. We were kids in college at the time. You guys weren't in the U. We weren't Michelin-star chefs or anything like that. And so we committed to the bit, and we built a brand of 11 out of 10 intensity on that method acting. So we created this elaborate story before we even made our first jar of ketchup. Sir Kensington himself went to Cambridge for undergrad and Oxford for graduate school. And he did a treatise for the queen in Constantinople on Ionian chutneys and spice sauces, and worked among the spice traders of the Bosphorus. He returns to England knowing that he cannot alone make sauces as a way to make his fortune. And so he has the brilliant idea: who is insuring the insurance companies? I'm going to start the first reinsurance company to insure insurance companies in this sort of loop. He does very financially well on that. And of course, he doesn't just retire and kick back. He says, I'm going to gather the greatest creative minds in Europe, create a salon series. He hosts salons at his country estate. In one of these salons, Catherine the Great of Russia is in attendance. The emperor of Japan has also made the trip across the ocean and has brought a cut of Kobe. Hitherto never tasted in United Kingdom. And of course, Catherine the Great of Russia says, well, I would like to try this Kobe beef. Do you have any ketchup to pair it with? Sir Kensington, thinking to himself, I can't serve a tsarina high fructose corn syrup and something that I just bought at the local supermarket. I need to make something better. So he goes in the kitchen, pulls the tomatoes together, pulls the raw sugar, finds a malt vinegar, and concocts on the spot Sir Kensington's ketchup for her to try. I love that the lore is just off the top of the head. Let's go. Yeah. And it changes every time I tell it. I think that what's really important here is what you're hearing is play. This was not, we need to turn the business around. This was not, we need to get in a whiteboard and figure out what Q2 is going to look like. We had no idea that this would actually ever be a business. We were in play because storytelling and world-building is play. And you've got to be able to get yourself in that mental space. And I'm curious how that permeated to the culture of the company. To start with that culture, we did create this lore and almost these artifacts, if you will. And so, for instance, when we launched, we worked with a wonderful artist in New York named Eric Adolfson to sketch and draw all of the various vessels that Sir Kensington's attempted before stabilizing on this ketchup jar. And all of the different circumstances that you could use the condiment in, right? This really deep level of detail. And for the company culture, we really thought about the mission to bring integrity and charm to the ordinary and overlooked. And you'll see here, we gave everyone this steel tablet, right? Again, this sort of lore, almost like a set of commandments. Not a four-by-six card, a steel tablet. Something that has real physicality to it. And the language that had this internal voice and consistency. So, integrity and charm, right? These are words that have a subtle English, almost aristocratic feel to them. They sound like they came out of Eton. And one of the other great rules of branding is humanize. Always humanize. And so, in the character of Sir Kensington, you have the personification of integrity and charm. And you have integrity and charm as the watchwords in our mission. And then beyond that, culturally, we as the team members were the acolytes and the students of Sir Kensington. And so, when we would go to a trade show or when we would go on a sales call, I had a mustache for seven years of my life, just as Sir Kensington did. And we would wear suits, dark suits with ties, because take something and take it seriously, right? And I think if I have one regret, it's I didn't take it too seriously. We didn't take it seriously for long enough. Yeah, I think that's what's interesting. How do you grow with that? Some of my vocation is just embodied for so long. As you begin to get a company and you have outside sales reps and, oh, now we're in Australia, then how do you keep that going? I think that's an interesting challenge. Yeah. And I think that's the challenge of the artist, right? That's the challenge of the artist. I like to use this model that an artist is known for expressing themselves and telling their story with no definition of success beyond that. It's not about how much you sell, right? It's not about how you change the world. It's really about self-expression. And I think if I have one regret, it's that I didn't take it too seriously. We didn't take it seriously for long enough. Yeah, I think that's what's interesting, is how do you grow with that? Some of my vacation is just embodied for so long. As you begin to get a company and you have outside sales reps and, oh, now we're in Australia, and then they're like, how do you keep that going? I think is an interesting challenge. Yeah. And I think that's the challenge of the artist, right? That's the challenge of the artist. I like to use this model that an artist is known for expressing themselves and telling their story with no definition of success beyond that. It's not about how much you sell, right? It's not about how you change the world. It's really about self-expression. And then on the very, very end of that, you have a hack, right? Yeah. Someone who is only doing something as a J-O-B. Someone who's doing something simply to solve a problem. And in the middle, you have craft. A craft person is expressing themselves, and they're putting in the care of an artist, but they're delivering the function of a job to be done. And so that's the question, is how do you find the right balance of craft? Because you've seen, and we've all seen, so many brands that are these beautiful artistic expressions that are dedicated to these things, but the commercial element, the job they're doing for the customer, isn't satisfied. Exactly. And the story isn't legible, right? And then we also see lots of products that are there to make a buck, right, and check all the boxes, and those don't last either. And so the question is, how do you figure out what do you listen to? Because it is important, right, to talk about your organic bona fides. It is important to make sure that you put the right features and benefits on your Amazon page for all the different practical matters of someone buying ketchup online, right? And so I think, if anything, we were pushed a little bit more towards the blander side of things. If I were to go back in time, we would have committed to the bit a little bit harder. And I love that it was rooted in the shelf, right? And I think that's a great thing for anyone working on something like this to look at, is what actually happens on the shelf in your category. So even with sunscreen, you look at people that are thriving in sunscreen. Look at someone like Kosas, who took, okay, it's skincare and it's sunscreen at the same time. It's Sun Bum, they're living inside a surf. It's Supergoop, they've gone all in on the ingredients. It's Vacation, they've gone on the lifestyle. All those brands are disruptors in their space because they looked at a boring shelf and said, we have an angle. Same thing with what you talked about in food. And a shelf can mean a physical shelf if you are actually in retail. But also, if it's AP software, it's just how do you have a perspective inside what those other ones are looking at? Is it more tech-enabled? What world can you build? And I think that rooting whatever world you build inside a position, saying, hey, we're going to be the opposite of the diner, and that's the thing that we're going to do with our ketchup, is an important way to actually tie it to that, the J-O-B end, the value end, the list on the Amazon. Yes. And I think one way to do that, and what we did, was recognize that because no one knew who we were, we needed something that was so weird and different on shelf that someone would have to do a double take. It was impactful. I remember that was my initial experience with this. You're like, wait, you got what? And it cost how much? And that thing. And it's like, that's a great, there's very little conversations you have around ketchup. Yes. And to be seen is to be sold. And so similarly, whether it is vacation sunscreen or Sir Kensington's, going back to the Wes Anderson aesthetic of the matchbook, right, and the dedication to detail, it's when you are creating a product that is going to sit on shelf, how do you make it abundantly clear that this is a prop that belongs in a different world, and the world that you've built? And then when you use the prop, what I love most about this is I've pulled this out of a beach bag and people comment on it. Whether they know the brand, someone knows the brand, like, oh, is that Vacation? They don't know the brand, you're like, oh, is that some aloha, back in the day? Yes. And then it's immediately, you are the owner of the artifact. You're in that brand film, like we talked about before, and it comes, and it's as simple as a package. You are initiated, and you are now a junior executive in the Fahazian Corporation. It's brilliant. So the prop attitude is really important. And I think what's interesting is when you see this go even farther, right? And so I want to talk about Ralph Lauren because they've built now many worlds, right? You see a brand that has gone from they stand for so many things, to the American West. They stand for the Ivy League. They're the Olympic representative of America. There's purple label sub-brands. And so the brands actually build this out so much into, and you see it in everything from cafes to clothing. That's where it takes on almost a new life of its own. I just have a great appreciation for those brands. And I guess I'm curious, how do you feel about that brand? How do you feel about actually extending that world beyond, you built a brand in a category. You had to build greater than that. What's the ideas and playbook there? Yeah. Well, clothing and apparel and fashion is such rich territory for this because clothing is our costume, right? It's the number one way where we can immediately express our identity to friends and strangers and how people see us. And it gives us the confidence or the attitude for what we want to project, right? And so costume is quite literally part of the cinematic experience. And I think especially, call it, in an urban setting, right, in a city, when you walk out of your apartment, no matter what your apartment looks like in New York City, how small it is, how grungy it is, when you go outside, you become part of the city, right? And you become characters in that city with this costume. And this, I think, goes back to the late 19th-century France and the development of this cosmopolitan culture and urban culture, right, through the 20s and beyond. And so Ralph Lauren is, of course, a storied and beautiful example that isn't just one world, but it's a world of worlds, because Ralph Lauren has the New England prep, and it also has the rugged Wild West. And where and why I think this works, going back to the idea of the transformed individual, right, and what you become through the transformation of participating and enrolling in a brand, is about fantasy. And Ralph Lauren, in their world of the prep aesthetic, it sells a fantasy of unearned privilege and elegance and being able to be included in any room, right? And when you think about going back to storytelling, fundamental human psychology and neurocircuitry, the most important thing that we can do every day is make sure that we are not severed from society and that we are not mocked, that we are included, that we are participating, that we will find a mate, that we will procreate, that we will be respected in the community. And when you draft off of WASPy American culture that was at the top of society, right, at that time, and all the tropes of that aesthetic, you can live into the fantasy of being high-status, included, and of having this unearned privilege that people fantasize about. Similarly, in the American West, right, it's the other side of the country. It's a different fantasy, but it's a fantasy about freedom. It's a fantasy about being able to self-express in nature to some extent, but still connected and respected in society in kind of a maverick, rugged way, an individualist way, where the prep aesthetic is all about a cohesive community and kind of a societal acceptance way. So there's these different psychologies going on, but they all fundamentally go back to the fantasy of identity and of social inclusion. And what's interesting is, if you were in a vacuum, and you were talking about the American West, you were talking about the Ivy League prep, it wouldn't make sense that they would live in one category, one world of worlds under a brand. But that through line of Americana, of that ideal, is so excellently executed throughout that brand. Similarly, in the American West, right, is the other side of the country. It's a different fantasy, but it's a fantasy about freedom. It's a fantasy about being able to self-express in nature to some extent, but still connected and respected in society in a maverick, rugged way, an individualist way, where the prep aesthetic is all about a cohesive community and a societal acceptance way. So there's these different psychologies going on, but they all fundamentally go back to the fantasy of identity and of social inclusion. And what's interesting is you would put those, if you were in a vacuum and you were talking about the American West, you were talking about the Ivy League prep, it wouldn't make sense that they would live in one category, one world of worlds under a brand. But that through line of Americana, of that ideal, is so excellently executed throughout that brand. What I find interesting, I want to dive into some of these worlds in particular, is their appeal. So for instance, the Western world, the idea of the Wild West, the idea of freedom, that's as big in Japan. Japan has co-opted so much of, they make better Americana Western wear than America does at this point. It's equally as fascinating from Australia to Europe, the concept of Texas. There's these ideas that are just so much bigger than the brand itself you can jump into. I feel oddly, it's the same way we saw with whether it was Sporty and Rich immediately took that into a modern female at a point in time when they were at their peak. There's all these little ways to co-opt it. What other worlds are there out there? What are those other things that people can tap into? You did that a bit with aristocracy. We've seen it with 80s and nostalgia. I think it'd be cool to put some ideas out there for people that they could tap in. Yeah. I mean, I would say it's whatever you fantasize about and whatever has the depth of a world. I mean, let's take a left turn here and talk about the brand Andrel. Yeah. Brand, it's a company, right? And Andrel is a defense tech company, right? It's a new defense tech company started by the founder of Oculus. And most defense tech companies, right, they don't actually want to be seen by the outside world. Like United Technologies. What do they make? Bombs. Right. But what Andrel does is Andrel has realized that, wait a minute, there is a fantasy of American technological superiority that wasn't really being told. And when you have the rank and file members of the Pentagon and the government that now grew up on first-person shooter video games and the world of video games and the internet, then how do you build an aesthetic world for them? Right. That people can fantasize about and that relates to American pride. And even the artifacts, you can buy the metallic alloy, the same thing they use to make whatever space grade inside a Game Boy. You can see these together. And the mod retro in, I think it's titanium, the Andrel edition mod retro, is exactly that, is we are going to pair this idea of a video game with ballistic missiles, right, and with this intelligent technology. And that's perfect for an era where we are now in point-and-click warfare, right, with the drones and the technology that we have right now in the Gulf. It is point-and-click warfare that is directly related to that lore of video games. Well, it's also continuing a lore. People always look at, oh, well, you have your United Industries or someone who can't talk about anything, but there's also a lot of lore inside infrastructure, science, government, propaganda. You look at NASA and the craziest brand guide ever and the most licensing possibly done. And that's done to get a, it's HR, it's we're recruiting by getting people excited about science by putting these things out there that you can then treat as, you know, get artifacts. And I think even with defense, we look at Skunk Works and these things that happened in the past. They were more tongue in cheek, and they've just adapted that to the modern age. But I do encourage, whether you are a fan of the industrial war complex or not, the idea of looking at any single niche you look at, there is that way to attract people's excitement about it by finding a world that you're targeting this, you're already loves those people are hat. You had some moments with a Game Boy as a connection point to a defense company, is really about the kind of people who have had that childhood, chose to pursue that into engineering. I want to connect all those dots together. It's built a world for them. I got another one for you. Let's go. I've been thinking about, so a lot of ink has been spilled about the Japanese imagination of America and workwear and denim and rockabilly, right? And what we're seeing now, especially recently, is the American imagination of Japan. Interesting. And so if you think about, obviously it's an Australian brand, but an Aesop store, the interior of an Aesop store is minimalist, but with organic materials and textures. It's a Western interpretation of Japan. And, or District Vision, who just opened a shop a few blocks from here, that is very much inspired by Japanese minimalist design and with materials and plant life and lighting. And then again, this is a Japanese brand, but it has taken hold in the West as Snow Peak. Yeah. Right. Snow Peak is a brand that represents not performance in nature or domination over nature, but a Japanese concept of coexistence with nature. And Snow Peak has the materials. They have what they call, I think, a campsite or a camp land up in Washington state that you can go to and visit as a physical place. They have stores, and all of these little artifacts that they make are beautifully milled and machined in that level of Japanese craft detail for the outdoors. And they play into the Western fantasy of a simpler, minimalistic life that has less stuff, but better stuff, which is in the world of Washington Timu and Amazon and Walmart. We have too much stuff and we need to go back to those middle-nust roots. I think there's a lot of conversation around running brands like Satisfy, et cetera, and not nearly enough around District Vision, because I think District Vision is a fascinating brand. And I was a big early consumer of it because they really have that mission and methodology locked in. This fits for mindful athletes. It's based in meditation practice at the beginning. And you look at a lot of brands trying to find, how can I attach this to something bigger, has more meaning in life? How do I make a mission statement mean something people actually care about? Right. And they're a great example of a brand that really rooted it in that. Because not only is it just saying, this is for mindful athletes. Hey, here's the meditation thing you can purchase from us. Here's the program you can buy into. When you go on our brand trip, you're going to a center for establishing whatever it is, but your inner journey. There are very few examples of people who really have that mission. It's actually rooted in anything serious. I think they're a good one. Yeah. And where that, I mean, where that comes from, and people talk about authenticity, a word that gets bandied about, right? Okay. Well, what does that mean? And art and craft is a self-expression, right? And some of my favorite brands are self-expressions of founders and artists. And so, yeah, when we talk about how to practically apply these, it's not really going to work if it's not deeply inside of you, right? So I am an Anglophile. I love to perform. So for me, the Sir Kensington character and the world was like living out a personal fantasy and a personal belief. Similarly, the two founders of District Vision, this is not something that they're putting on a spreadsheet and saying, what do we do next? It's, this is an intuitive feel for them, right? And it is, in some ways, the gift that they have to give. Yeah. Similar with a vacation, right? It is about community and is about taking a world that the fun has been drained out of and figuring out, how do we inject fun back into this world and take it really seriously? If you want to get practical with this, you had this idea called the hotel test. What is the hotel test? So for me, the Sir Kensington character and the world was living out a personal fantasy and a personal belief. Similarly, the two founders of District Vision, this is not something that they're putting on a spreadsheet and saying, what do we do next? This is an intuitive feel for them. Right. And it is, in some ways, the gift that they have to give. Yeah. Similar with a vacation, right? It is about community and is about taking a world that the fun has been drained out of and figuring out how do we inject fun back into this world and take it really seriously? If you want to get practical with this, you had this idea called the hotel test. What is the hotel test? Well, the hotel test is, if you imagine your brand, whatever brand you're working on, as a hotel, first of all, is it easy to imagine or is it hard to imagine? Right. If I want to imagine a Hyundai as a hotel, I don't get a lot of detail. Zoho. Yeah. But if I want to imagine Ferrari as a hotel, I know exactly what that hotel looks and feels like. Right. Great world-building brands pass the hotel test. As a great exercise, I'd say, what is the hotel for your brand? When you walk into the lobby, what does it smell like? What does it look and feel like? When you're greeted at the front desk, how is the attendant dressed? How do they greet you? What's the language that they use? When you go up to your room, what's the music that's playing in the elevator? What's waiting for you on your pillow? When you go into the bathroom, what type of soap is there? Right. And when you leave, what type of little trinket do they give you on the way out? What does the key card look like? If you can build the details in the hotel test, then that's a great entree into world-building. And even if it's not for rebranding your entire company and rebranding your brand, treat it as a, we're going to do a campaign around this. We're going to take this hotel test and we're going to funnel it into a campaign, which is exactly the same way that what artists do with album releases. Right. Think about each Kanye album, right? It has a different structure and look and feel. And sometimes it's transparent, and sometimes it uses photography, and sometimes it uses bright colors, and sometimes it uses handwritten scrawls. It signals an error. It signals an error. Right. And so campaigns can be the exact same way. I like what the hotel test is. Okay. First, you need to define it yourself. You need to understand what the brand stands for. And then it's how do you get your customer to be able to say that same answer back to you, or them to be able to picture in the mind the way you and I were both able to picture a very similar Ferrari. Yeah. And I like to think of, too, in the influence world, the idea of the brand trip test, I think, is an interesting extension of that too. Because you want to define, okay, if you have all these experiences, but now who are the people? If they were on this trip, who would they be? What activities would they be doing? What would they be posting? Who would be viewing it? And would people care? And begin to build that out. And I could see people use Ramp as an example a lot because, obviously, they're one of the few companies in a boring industry that's done some real world-building, but there's The Ordinary, there's a few that have built outside of their niche. And you can do this in anything, whether you are doing that as a hedge fund, whether you are doing that as venture capital, whether you're doing it as a microphone company. I think there is the ability to conduct both of those tests and think about what they say is a powerful vehicle. And any parting thoughts that you want to leave anyone with? Take something and take it seriously. Commit. Take it to the bit and have fun with it. Absolutely. I appreciate you coming and talking through it. And we will link more information about Scott in the description. We'll cover all the world-building below. I appreciate you guys sitting with us and walking through it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And it gives us the confidence or the attitude for what we want to project. Right. And so costume is, like, quite literally part of the cinematic experience. And I think especially call it, like, in an urban setting, right, in a city, when you walk out of your apartment, no matter what your apartment looks like in New York City, you know, how small it is, how grungy it is. When you go outside, you become part of the city, right? And you become characters in that city with this costume. And this, I think, goes back to, you know, the late 19th century France and kind of the development of this cosmopolitan culture and urban culture, right, through the 20s and beyond. And so Ralph Lauren is, of course, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a storied and beautiful example that isn't just one world, but it's a world of worlds because Ralph Lauren has the New England prep and it also has the, the rugged wild west. And where and why I think this works, going back to the idea of the transformed individual, right, and what you become through the, the transformation of participating and enrolling in a brand is about fantasy. And Ralph Lauren, in their world of the prep aesthetic, it sells a fantasy of unearned privilege and elegance and being able to be included in any room, right? And when you think about going back to storytelling, fundamental human psychology and neurocircuitry, the most important thing that we can do every day is make sure that we are not severed from society and that we are not mocked, that we are included, that we are participating, that we will find a mate, that we will procreate, that we will be respected in the community. And when you draft off of waspy American culture that was at the top of society, right, at that time, and all the tropes of that aesthetic, you can live into the fantasy of being high status included and of having this unearned privilege that people fantasize about. Similarly, in the American West, right, is the other side of the country, it's a different fantasy, but it's a fantasy about freedom. It's a fantasy about being able to self-express in nature to some extent, but still connected and respected in society in kind of a maverick, rugged way, an individualist way, where the prep aesthetic is all about a cohesive community and kind of a societal acceptance way. So there's these different psychologies going on, but they all kind of fundamentally go back to the fantasy of identity and of social inclusion. And what's interesting is you would put those, if you were in a vacuum, and you were talking about the American West, you were talking about the Ivy League prep, it wouldn't make sense that they would live in one category, one world of worlds under a brand. But that through line of Americana, of that like ideal, like is so kind of excellently executed throughout that brand. What I find interesting, I want to dive into some of these worlds in particular, is like their appeal. So for instance, like the Western world, the idea of the Wild West, the idea of freedom, that's as big in Japan. Japan has co-opted so much of, I mean, they make better kind of Americana Western wear than America does at this point. It's equally as fascinating from Australia to Europe, the concept of Texas. There's these ideas that are just so much bigger than the brand itself you can jump into. I feel oddly, it's the same way we saw with, whether it was Sporty and Rich immediately took that into a, you know, like a modern female at a point in time when they were at their peak. There's all these little ways to kind of co-opt it. What other worlds are there out there? What are those other things that, you know, people can tap into? You did that a bit with aristocracy. We've seen it with kind of 80s and nostalgia. I think it'd be cool to basically put some ideas out there for people that they could tap in. Yeah. I mean, I would say like, it's kind of whatever you fantasize about and whatever has the depth of a world. I mean, let's take a, let's take sort of a left turn here and talk about the brand Andrel. Yeah. Brand, it's a company, right? And Andrel is a defense tech company, right? It's a new defense tech company started by the founder of Oculus. And most defense tech companies, right? They don't actually want to be seen by the outside world. Like United Technologies. What do they make? Bombs. Right. Like, but what Andrel does is Andrel has realized that, wait a minute, there is a fantasy of American technological superiority that wasn't really being told. And when you have the rank and file members of the Pentagon and the government that now grew up on first person shooter video games and the world of video games and the internet, then how do you build an aesthetic world for them? Right. That people can fantasize about and, and that relates to American pride. And even the artifacts, you can buy the, the metallic alloy, the same thing they use to make whatever space grade inside a Game Boy. You can see these together. And the mod retro in, I think it's titanium. The Andrel edition mod retro is exactly that is we are going to pair this idea of a, of a video game with ballistic missiles. Right. And with this intelligent technology. And that's perfect for an era where we are now in point and click warfare, right? With the, the drones and the technology that we have right now in the Gulf. Um, it is point and click warfare that is directly related to that lore of video games. Well, it's also, it's continuing a lore. Um, people always look at, oh, well, you have your United Industries or someone who can't talk about anything, but there's also a lot of lore inside infrastructure, science, government, propaganda. You look at NASA and like the, the, the, the craziest brand guide ever and the most licensing possibly done. And that's done to get a, it's, it's HR it's we're recruiting by getting people excited about science by putting these things out there that you can then treat as, you know, get artifacts. Uh, and I think even with defense, we look at skunk works and these things that kind of happened in the past, they were more tongue in cheek and they've just adapted that to, to the modern age. But I do encourage, you know, whether you are a, uh, fan of the industrial war complex or not, the idea of looking at any single niche you look at, there is that way to attract people's excitement about it by finding a world that, you know, you're, you're, you're targeting this, you're already loves those people are hat. You had some moments with like a game boy is a connection point to a, uh, like a, a defense company is really about the kind of people that are, who have had that childhood chose to pursue that into engineering. I want to connect all those dots together. It's built a world for them. I got another one for you. Let's go. I've been thinking about, so a lot of, a lot of ink has been spilled about the Japanese imagination of America and workwear and denim and rockabilly. Right. And what we're seeing now, especially recently is the American imagination of Japan. Interesting. And so if you think about, obviously it's an Australian brand, but an Aesop store, the interior of an Aesop store is minimalist, but with organic materials and textures. It's a Western interpretation of Japan. And, or district vision, who just opened a shop a few blocks from here with that is very much inspired by Japanese minimalist design and with materials and plant life and lighting. Uh, and then again, this is a Japanese brand, but it has taken hold in the West as snow peak. Yeah. Right. Snow peak is a brand that represents not performance in nature or domination over nature, but a Japanese concept of coexistence with nature. And snow peak has the materials. They have a, what they call, I think, uh, uh, a campsite or a, uh, a camp land up in Washington state that, that you can go to and visit as a physical place. They have stores and all of these, these little artifacts that they make are beautifully milled and machined in that level of Japanese craft detail for the outdoors. And they play into the Western fantasy of a simpler, minimalistic life that has more than has less stuff, but better stuff, which is in the world of Washington Timu and Amazon and Walmart. We have like too much stuff and we need to go back to those middle-nust roots. I think, uh, I, I think there's a lot of conversation around running brands like satisfy, et cetera, and not nearly enough around district vision. Cause I think district vision is a fascinating brand and I'm a, was a big early consumer of it because they really have that mission and methodology kind of locked in this fits for mindful athletes. It's based in like meditation practice at the beginning. Uh, and you look at a lot of brands try to find, how can I attach this to something bigger, has more meaning in life? How do I make a mission statement mean something people actually care about? Right. And they're a great example of a brand that really rooted it in that. Cause not only is it just saying, this is for mindful athletes, Hey, here's the meditation thing you can purchase from us. Here's the program you can buy into when you go on our brand trip, you're going to a center for, you know, establishing whatever it is, but your, your inner journey. There are very few examples of people who really have that mission. It's actually rooted in anything serious. I think they're, they're a good one. Yeah. And where that, I mean, where that comes from and you know, people talk about authenticity, a word that gets bandied about. Right. Okay. Well, what does that mean? And art art and craft is a self-expression, right? And some of my favorite brands are self-expressions of founders and artists. And so, yeah, when you, when we talk about how to practically apply these, it's not really going to work if it's not kind of deeply inside of you. Right. So I am an Anglophile. I love to perform. So for me, the Sir Kensington character and the world was like living out a personal fantasy and a personal belief. Similarly, like the two founders of district vision, this is not something that they're like putting on a spreadsheet and saying, what do we do next? It's, this is an intuitive feel for them. Right. And it is in some ways, like the gift that they have to give. Yeah. Similar with a vacation, right? It's about, it is about community and is about taking kind of a world that the fun has been drained out of and figuring out like, how do we inject fun back into this world and take it really seriously? If you want to get practical with this, you had this idea called the hotel test. What is the hotel test? Well, the hotel test is if you imagine your brand, whatever brand you're working on as a hotel, first of all, is it easy to imagine or is it hard to imagine? Right. Like if I want to imagine a Hyundai as a hotel, I don't get a lot of detail. Zoho. Yeah. But if I want to imagine Ferrari as a hotel, I know exactly what that hotel looks and feels like. Right. Great world building brands pass the hotel test. As a great exercise, I'd say, what is the hotel for your brand? When you walk into the lobby, what does it smell like? What does it look and feel like? When you're greeted at the front desk, how is the, the attendant dressed? How do they greet you? What's the language that they use? When you go up to your room, what's the music that's playing in the elevator? What's waiting for you on your pillow? When you go into the bathroom, what type of soap is there? Right. And when you leave, what type of little trinket do they give you on the way out? You know, what does the key card look like? If you can build the details in the hotel test, then that's a great entree into world building. And even if it's not for like rebranding your entire company and rebranding your brand, treat it as a, we're going to do a campaign around this. We're going to take, we're going to take this hotel test and we're going to funnel it into a campaign, which is just exactly the same way that what artists do with album releases. Right. Think about each Kanye album, right? Has a different structure and look and feel. And sometimes it's transparent and sometimes it uses photography and sometimes it uses bright colors and sometimes it uses handwritten scrawls. It signals an error. It signals an error. Right. And so campaigns can be the exact same way. I like what the hotel test is. Okay. First you need to define it yourself. You need to understand what the brand stands for. And then it's how do you get your customer to be able to say that same answer back to you or them to be able to picture in the mind the way you and I were both able to picture a very similar Ferrari. Yeah. And I like to think of too, in the influence world, the idea of like the brand trip test, I think is an interesting extension of that too. Because you want to define, okay, if you have all these experiences, but now who are the people? If they were, if they were on this trip, who would they be? What activities would they be doing? Like, what would they be posting? Who would be viewing it? And would people care? And begin to build that out. And I could see, um, people use ramp as an example a lot, because obviously they're a, one of the few companies in a boring industry that's done like some real world building, but there's the ordinary, there's a few that have kind of built outside of their niche. And you can do this in anything, whether you are doing that as a hedge fund, whether you are doing that as venture capital, whether you're doing as a microphone company, I think there is the ability to conduct like both of those tests and think about what they say is a, is a powerful vehicle. Um, and any parting thoughts that you want to leave anyone with? Take something and take it seriously. Commit. Take it to the bit and have fun with it. Absolutely. I appreciate you coming and talking through it. And, uh, we will, we will link more information about Scott in the description. We'll cover all the world building below. I appreciate you guys sitting with us and walking through it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.