Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / The Hidden Forces Shaping What We Buy, Wear, and Talk About: with Culture Strategist Linda Ong (Cultique)

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The Hidden Forces Shaping What We Buy, Wear, and Talk About: with Culture Strategist Linda Ong (Cultique) · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:03
Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
0:05
Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
0:11
Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
0:16
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe and each week, my guests and I come
0:19
Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
0:22
Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
0:28
Speaker 1: And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join
0:33
Speaker 1: the conversation. It's time to question everything. Hello. I hope
0:40
Speaker 1: you're having a really great week. I have been thinking
0:44
Speaker 1: about hope and optimism lately, and before we jump into
0:47
Speaker 1: today's episode, I just want to share something with you
0:50
Speaker 1: that I learned hosting the World Happiness Conference, because there
0:54
Speaker 1: were some of the world's leaders in hope and optimism
1:00
Speaker 1: and happiness and mental health and they were all sharing
1:04
Speaker 1: their knowledge. I said this on my Instagram. You may
1:06
Speaker 1: have seen the video, but those speakers on the stage
1:09
Speaker 1: had over five hundred years of knowledge and research and
1:12
Speaker 1: experience between them. I really felt like I was taking
1:14
Speaker 1: a masterclass. And the first speaker of the day was
1:18
Speaker 1: doctor Dan Thomasulo, who researched hope and this was super
1:24
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. Hope is the only positive emotion that
1:28
Speaker 1: requires uncertainty or negativity to be activated. And why that's
1:34
Speaker 1: so interesting is I think a lot of people mistake
1:38
Speaker 1: hope or optimism even as blind positivity. But hope is
1:44
Speaker 1: not about ignoring what's hard or sad or even dark. Hope,
1:48
Speaker 1: I think is looking at all those things and still
1:53
Speaker 1: acknowledging them and seeing the light at the end of
1:56
Speaker 1: the tunnel. It's saying, I don't know how long it's
1:59
Speaker 1: going to take me to get and I don't know
2:00
Speaker 1: exactly how I'm going to make it to the end
2:02
Speaker 1: of the tunnel, but I know that when I do,
2:05
Speaker 1: I'll be better and stronger for it. And so I
2:07
Speaker 1: always think of hope as those little glimmers of light
2:11
Speaker 1: that you see in the distance, you know, like if
2:13
Speaker 1: you're driving down a totally dark tunnel, you can't see
2:15
Speaker 1: the end, but see you see a little glimmer of
2:18
Speaker 1: light from a car or something ahead of you, you know.
2:22
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to share that because a lot
2:25
Speaker 1: of my friends have been talking about how hard it
2:27
Speaker 1: is to find hope lately. And I do think that
2:30
Speaker 1: our brains are wired to pick up things that are negative.
2:33
Speaker 1: So if we think about hope is imagery like that
2:37
Speaker 1: little glimmer, and we practice maybe like a little appreciation
2:41
Speaker 1: or a little gratitude each day. At least for me,
2:45
Speaker 1: it helps me stretch my hope. I just find little
2:48
Speaker 1: things in my life that spark joy, and I just
2:52
Speaker 1: feel like they stack up. I hope that wasn't corny.
2:54
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it a lot, and usually if
2:57
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it, you guys are too at some point.
3:00
Speaker 1: So ah, that's my ted talk today, Okay. And speaking
3:06
Speaker 1: of thinking about things in the distance, I've always been
3:09
Speaker 1: fascinated by the people who can see things before the
3:13
Speaker 1: rest of us do. And I know I'm not talking
3:15
Speaker 1: about psychics. I'm talking about the type of people who
3:19
Speaker 1: can look at a TikTok aesthetic or a fashion show,
3:22
Speaker 1: or a vampire movie trend or the Kardashians and just
3:27
Speaker 1: know that this isn't random, that this moment in culture
3:31
Speaker 1: is part of something bigger. And Linda Ang is one
3:35
Speaker 1: of those people. She's a cultural strategist and the co
3:41
Speaker 1: founder of a company called Cultique, which advises some of
3:44
Speaker 1: the world's biggest brands. Think lvmh American Express, Lego, HBO, Disney,
3:50
Speaker 1: like brands on that level, okay, and she advises them
3:53
Speaker 1: on how to not just keep up with culture, but
3:57
Speaker 1: actually understand where it's headed, where it's going. The New
4:00
Speaker 1: York Times that her company, Caltique quote sells cool, but honestly,
4:05
Speaker 1: after interviewing her, I feel like that barely scratches the surface.
4:08
Speaker 1: Linda doesn't just study culture, she literally feels it. She
4:12
Speaker 1: and her co founder, Sarah Jane Hall, help brands read
4:15
Speaker 1: the room before they walk into it. She calls herself
4:18
Speaker 1: a real time anthropologist, and they were both supposed to
4:22
Speaker 1: come on the show together. They have a really fun
4:24
Speaker 1: dynamic and Sarah is so awesome, but she got food
4:27
Speaker 1: poisoning the night before our interviews. So today it's just
4:30
Speaker 1: Linda giving us the goods and the goods she gives. Okay,
4:34
Speaker 1: what is culture, who is shaping it? And how is
4:37
Speaker 1: it shaping us? I had so many questions because I
4:39
Speaker 1: think that culture isn't just trends in tiktoks. It's honestly
4:43
Speaker 1: the signals all around us that hint at the future
4:46
Speaker 1: we're building and the stories that we're telling about ourselves
4:49
Speaker 1: and each other. You can probably tell if you've been
4:51
Speaker 1: listening to this pod for a while that I'm obsessed
4:55
Speaker 1: with pop culture, and not in the traditional sense. It's
4:58
Speaker 1: not because I love gossip. Okay, maybe a little bit.
5:02
Speaker 1: I have been very interested in this Blake Lively justin
5:04
Speaker 1: Baldoni case, but that is a story for another day.
5:08
Speaker 1: I'm not in the weeds of pop culture drama. What
5:11
Speaker 1: I love about culture and pop culture is that I
5:15
Speaker 1: really believe it holds up a mirror to where we
5:17
Speaker 1: are and where we're going. I mean, think of the
5:20
Speaker 1: rise of tradwives on TikTok, right, It's not just this
5:24
Speaker 1: traditional homey aesthetic. It's a signal. I think it's a
5:28
Speaker 1: reaction to feminism, to burn out to capitalism. And honestly,
5:31
Speaker 1: even loneliness trends like this don't just appear, they are
5:35
Speaker 1: saying something. And in this episode, I think we're really
5:39
Speaker 1: going to hold up that mirror. So some of my
5:42
Speaker 1: questions why is there a sudden rise in private member
5:44
Speaker 1: clubs like Zero Bonn and San Vicente Bungalows, why are
5:48
Speaker 1: horror movies trending right now? And where is the future
5:52
Speaker 1: of luxury headed like will Gucci Belts ever be cool again?
5:56
Speaker 1: Linda has some interesting thoughts on that and these all
5:59
Speaker 1: might sound silly questions, but I promise you all of
6:02
Speaker 1: them are signaling something much deeper happening beneath the surface.
6:06
Speaker 2: Culture is it's an ecosystem of ideas, but the ideas
6:11
Speaker 2: are all created by men and women civilization. They're the
6:16
Speaker 2: products of our time.
6:17
Speaker 1: I want you to keep an ear out for how
6:19
Speaker 1: Linda describes culture. She says she sees it as a
6:22
Speaker 1: wave or a bell curve. Okay, so it can be
6:24
Speaker 1: broken down into three boxes, emerging, dominant, or recessive. Emerging
6:30
Speaker 1: meaning what's coming, dominant meaning what's happening right now, what's dominating,
6:35
Speaker 1: and recessive meaning like what has.
6:37
Speaker 2: Been snl would always pick targets that were residual because
6:43
Speaker 2: everybody can laugh at them.
6:45
Speaker 1: But my favorite part of this conversation is when Linda
6:49
Speaker 1: shares her why why she does this work. She opens
6:53
Speaker 1: up about growing up as a Chinese, Indonesian Dutch American
6:56
Speaker 1: in Houston, Texas at a time when nobody knew what
7:00
Speaker 1: to make of her, and then she talks about how
7:02
Speaker 1: that experience of being misunderstood made her develop a kind
7:06
Speaker 1: of emotional and cultural radar that she now uses every
7:10
Speaker 1: single day.
7:11
Speaker 2: If you don't tell people who you are. They will
7:14
Speaker 2: assign qualities to you that are not necessarily who you are.
7:18
Speaker 1: We talk about the shift from exclusivity to experience and luxury,
7:23
Speaker 1: why collapse went from cool to kind of cliche, and
7:27
Speaker 1: what it really means when a word like woke becomes weaponized.
7:32
Speaker 1: But I've thrown out a ton of questions. The big
7:35
Speaker 1: question we're circling today is how does culture really work
7:40
Speaker 1: and what does it reveal about who we are becoming? So?
7:43
Speaker 1: Who are we becoming? It's time to question everything with Linda. Ah,
7:57
Speaker 1: this has been a long time coming. I'm so excited
7:59
Speaker 1: to talk about culture with you.
8:01
Speaker 2: The suspense has been building, and so much has changed
8:04
Speaker 2: since we started talking. And that's culture today.
8:06
Speaker 1: I know. So I think in order to find a baseline,
8:10
Speaker 1: we have to figure out what the definition of culture is.
8:13
Speaker 2: What is it? What do you think it is? I'd
8:15
Speaker 2: love to hear how you define it.
8:16
Speaker 1: Oh, I've been thinking about this as I've been preparing.
8:22
Speaker 1: I think when I was growing up, culture was about
8:26
Speaker 1: mass appeal, desirability. It's music, fashion, food, all of the
8:33
Speaker 1: things that make up culture. And now I'm not sure
8:38
Speaker 1: desirability is even part of it anymore.
8:40
Speaker 2: That's a great change. I think you're one hundred percent right, okay,
8:45
Speaker 2: And I would maybe just dimensionalize it a little bit.
8:48
Speaker 2: But I would love to wind back a little bit
8:50
Speaker 2: and say in two thousand and eight, when I started
8:53
Speaker 2: working in culture, after years of being a marketing lead
8:57
Speaker 2: and brand strategist, I would go round to clients that
9:02
Speaker 2: had been very loyal and long term and smart clients
9:06
Speaker 2: in the entertainment business, and I said, I want to
9:08
Speaker 2: start looking into culture and adding that on to my
9:13
Speaker 2: brand practice, and people, for the most part said culture,
9:18
Speaker 2: you mean like yogurt? Literally literally two thousand and eight.
9:23
Speaker 2: So since that time, culture is one of the most
9:28
Speaker 2: search words on Google. You can see the spike and trends.
9:33
Speaker 2: And to me and I think, the way my co
9:37
Speaker 2: founder Sarah Hunger and I think about culture is it's
9:41
Speaker 2: an ecosystem of ideas. But the ideas are all created
9:44
Speaker 2: by men, men and women civilization. They're the products of
9:49
Speaker 2: our time. So desirability plays. So you're right when you
9:54
Speaker 2: say art, fashion, we would say sports, architecture, writing, television, advertise, internet,
10:01
Speaker 2: social media. Like a lot of people when they say, oh,
10:03
Speaker 2: you work in culture, you must be a social listener,
10:06
Speaker 2: It's like, no, that's like a teeny tiny part of
10:09
Speaker 2: what we do. But it's anything that man creates, that
10:13
Speaker 2: civilization creates. It's like we're real time anthropologists.
10:17
Speaker 1: So if that's interesting that you said, it's just a
10:19
Speaker 1: little piece of it. How much is URL versus ir
10:23
Speaker 1: L Well, I.
10:24
Speaker 2: Would say you it's a great question. I think in
10:26
Speaker 2: terms of tools, the Internet is our primary tool. But
10:32
Speaker 2: in terms of the things we're looking at, you know,
10:35
Speaker 2: we go to art fairs like you know, Freeze in
10:38
Speaker 2: La or Art Basel or Venice, the Bienale we go to.
10:43
Speaker 2: I have a background in fashion. I grew up going
10:45
Speaker 2: to fashion shows and shooting interviews with designers and supermodels
10:50
Speaker 2: before Naomi Campbell had thrown a phone at anybody. You know,
10:53
Speaker 2: it's really about being immersed. And actually one reason Sarah
10:57
Speaker 2: and I have decided for cull Tia to have a
11:01
Speaker 2: four day week, we actually were pioneers in participating in
11:06
Speaker 2: a study, a global study during the pandemic on people
11:09
Speaker 2: switching over to a four day week. And we did
11:11
Speaker 2: that not because we didn't want to work on Friday,
11:14
Speaker 2: but in order to do our jobs well, we have
11:16
Speaker 2: to be out in the world and immerse ourselves. And
11:19
Speaker 2: we also found the best analysts are not on staff.
11:22
Speaker 2: There are people who are digital nomads or running the
11:24
Speaker 2: world or exploring And I think that being in culture
11:29
Speaker 2: is as important as reading about it. But of course
11:32
Speaker 2: the Internet is a great portal to learn about people
11:36
Speaker 2: in places and things to explore.
11:38
Speaker 1: So you mentioned starting in two thousand and eight, and
11:41
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, culture became the word of the year.
11:45
Speaker 1: It's so ever changing. I love that you use the
11:48
Speaker 1: word ecosystem. It really feels like it's growing and contracting
11:53
Speaker 1: all the time. Who are some of the celebrities, artists, architects, like,
11:59
Speaker 1: who are some of the people that on those fridays
12:01
Speaker 1: when you have time, yeah, that you're sort of checking on?
12:04
Speaker 2: Yeah? Wow. A lot of our inquiries are directed by
12:08
Speaker 2: our clients. We actually kind of laugh that we get
12:12
Speaker 2: paid to be smart, and it's you know, for people
12:14
Speaker 2: like our team who are just already incredibly smart but
12:18
Speaker 2: incredibly curious, right and we want to know about the world,
12:22
Speaker 2: you know, Like we had one client who wanted to
12:25
Speaker 2: understand the history of horror movies and vampires and you know,
12:28
Speaker 2: why is no Sperato doing well right now? You know,
12:31
Speaker 2: and it's like that kind of stuff is so fascinating.
12:35
Speaker 2: But I think, you know, when we look at culture,
12:38
Speaker 2: you mentioned desirability. Desirability is a really great framework and
12:42
Speaker 2: lens for looking at culture because we think of it
12:45
Speaker 2: as a curve, like a Bell curve in school, where
12:48
Speaker 2: the top of the curve is what we would call
12:50
Speaker 2: the zeitgeist ideas. The things that people who pay attention
12:53
Speaker 2: to culture are conversant. They all know, we all know
12:56
Speaker 2: Travis and Taylor are dating. Whether you like that or not,
13:00
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't it's not a judgment. It's not
13:02
Speaker 2: a value judgment, right. The desirability is to you could
13:08
Speaker 2: say desirability is to consume, but sometimes the desirability is
13:12
Speaker 2: just to have a conversation. So I think of those
13:14
Speaker 2: Zeitgey's moments as if you go to a cocktail party
13:18
Speaker 2: and you meet somebody for the first time, what are
13:20
Speaker 2: you going to talk about? You're going to pick a
13:21
Speaker 2: topic that you think is somewhat available to them, right,
13:26
Speaker 2: So that's a desirability of a conversation. You used to
13:29
Speaker 2: have conversations about other topics that you don't have those
13:33
Speaker 2: sort of Zeitgey's conversations about anymore, but they may be
13:36
Speaker 2: very present in culture, they're just in the background now
13:38
Speaker 2: that we're the zeitgeist is in the foreground. The residual,
13:41
Speaker 2: as we call them, ideas are sort of less desirable
13:45
Speaker 2: as conversation, but we all know if we take them
13:48
Speaker 2: for granted. It's sort of like if you took a
13:50
Speaker 2: retail analogy. If you go to Walmart or Costco, you
13:55
Speaker 2: might buy you know, toilet paper or discount body lotion
13:58
Speaker 2: or whatever, and you just you'll patronize that, but you
14:01
Speaker 2: may not talk about it as much unless it's ironic,
14:03
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean?
14:05
Speaker 1: Yes, there's like a kitchiness right to it, and it's
14:08
Speaker 1: just it looks like it's familiar and traditional as opposed
14:12
Speaker 1: to kind new of an excite doesn't animate people? How
14:16
Speaker 1: does that come about?
14:17
Speaker 2: Like?
14:17
Speaker 1: How does it? Is it all marketing?
14:20
Speaker 2: Not necessarily in fact, less so marketing these days than
14:23
Speaker 2: it used to be, because I will say, the other
14:26
Speaker 2: end of the curve, the ascending part, is what we
14:28
Speaker 2: call the emergent ideas, and those are ones that are
14:31
Speaker 2: starting to shake things up or evolve from what the
14:34
Speaker 2: zeitgeist is, or even be counter to the zeitgeist. Okay,
14:38
Speaker 2: and so that's really where Sarah and I and Cultique
14:42
Speaker 2: love to live is like looking at what's emerging, how
14:45
Speaker 2: it's changing. The zeitgeist really focus on shifts more than
14:49
Speaker 2: we're not trend forecasters. Were really looking at what is
14:53
Speaker 2: changing and why, what does it mean? And so sometimes
14:57
Speaker 2: that can happen because somebody, you know, like, let's talk
15:01
Speaker 2: about the core hashtags, right, Like that wasn't marketing. That
15:05
Speaker 2: was people talking about things and framing them in a
15:08
Speaker 2: language where you know at the time and still you know,
15:12
Speaker 2: asthetics are a huge identification tool, especially for gen Z, right,
15:18
Speaker 2: and somebody I don't even know who invented the core hashtag,
15:22
Speaker 2: you know, started coming up with cottage core or you know,
15:26
Speaker 2: gothcore or whatever, like anything like it's core core, right,
15:30
Speaker 2: and it just becomes gen Z in particular are really
15:34
Speaker 2: handy with messaging codes and q's and their natural analysts
15:38
Speaker 2: cultural analysts because they've grown.
15:39
Speaker 1: Up digitally codes and cues. That's interesting. So when you
15:43
Speaker 1: say you are not a trend predictor are figuring out
15:48
Speaker 1: the why?
15:49
Speaker 2: Yeah?
15:49
Speaker 1: Why is the why important? Is culture cyclical? Are you
15:52
Speaker 1: able to spot or predict even what will happen because
15:57
Speaker 1: of understanding the why.
15:59
Speaker 2: Well, it's a great question. We don't like to use
16:01
Speaker 2: the word predict because it sort of puts us into
16:03
Speaker 2: a fortune teller kind of place. But we do give
16:07
Speaker 2: an able yet no, but we anticipate and I like
16:11
Speaker 2: to think of it as our telescope lens is just
16:14
Speaker 2: higher powered and more focused on the edge of what
16:18
Speaker 2: people are aware of. But back to your question of like,
16:21
Speaker 2: who are the people in places and things that get
16:24
Speaker 2: my attention? I think wherever change happens. I was thinking
16:27
Speaker 2: this morning and working on a project and for a
16:30
Speaker 2: music project, and I was trying to think of a
16:32
Speaker 2: musician who's been influential in culture but for a long
16:35
Speaker 2: time in different iterations, and I was thinking about Pharrell,
16:38
Speaker 2: and I was thinking about the song Happy, and it's like,
16:41
Speaker 2: you know, Pharrell just came out with another spectacular men's
16:45
Speaker 2: collection for Louis Vutant, and that is somebody who can
16:49
Speaker 2: really move culture in different directions. And he's obviously a polymath.
16:53
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of amazing personalities who are like that.
16:57
Speaker 2: But you even have you know, I mean, let's talk
16:59
Speaker 2: about Travis Kelcey and his brother, you know, starting an
17:03
Speaker 2: entertainment and empire, like the Mannings, and so I admire
17:07
Speaker 2: people who are able to take what they do and
17:10
Speaker 2: have that core skill set and just expand and not
17:14
Speaker 2: be kind of beholden to old ideas and kind of
17:17
Speaker 2: staying in your lane.
17:19
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you come from the like Rick Rubin
17:22
Speaker 1: school of thought, where it's like, do what you're interested in, yeah,
17:26
Speaker 1: and like build it and they will come, or if
17:29
Speaker 1: you think, after like after analyzing all these companies, if
17:33
Speaker 1: it's really important to tap into the audience.
17:35
Speaker 2: I'm kind of in the middle. My background is advertising
17:39
Speaker 2: and brand strategy, and I really believe that that DNA,
17:43
Speaker 2: which is language that Sarah and I use, what is
17:46
Speaker 2: your cultural DNA? What is the cultural DNA of the brand?
17:49
Speaker 2: Is incredibly important And in fact, we've done studies where
17:54
Speaker 2: we looked at reboots of TV shows that were really
17:58
Speaker 2: popular and which were successful and which were not, and
18:01
Speaker 2: by far the ones that were not successful forgot what
18:04
Speaker 2: their DNA was, and that is something that we love investigating.
18:10
Speaker 2: And in fact, before I brought in the cultural discipline
18:13
Speaker 2: of my practice working as a brand strategist, I would
18:16
Speaker 2: work with a lot of times we end up working
18:18
Speaker 2: with legacy brands that want to reinvent themselves. But the
18:21
Speaker 2: first place I go to is Wikipedia and said, why
18:24
Speaker 2: did this brand start, why was it successful in what years?
18:29
Speaker 2: And what was going on in the world. So to
18:31
Speaker 2: your point about audience, I think context is everything, which
18:34
Speaker 2: is why when I evolved my practice to move from
18:38
Speaker 2: brand strategy to include culture, it was really about just
18:42
Speaker 2: trying to make sure that we weren't creating brands in
18:45
Speaker 2: a vacuum, that we understood the context. Culture is a context.
18:49
Speaker 2: Like one of the things I say is our clients
18:51
Speaker 2: are launching rocket ships and we monitor the atmosphere, so
18:56
Speaker 2: if the wind changes, or a hurricane's coming, or you know,
19:00
Speaker 2: you have to recalibrate. And people spend so much money
19:03
Speaker 2: to launch a brand a lot of times in marketing,
19:06
Speaker 2: but if you don't, I mean Starlink or NASA would
19:09
Speaker 2: never launch a rocket. In fact, sometimes they scruble launch
19:12
Speaker 2: if the condestions are right. So that's what we're doing.
19:15
Speaker 2: We're just monitoring conditions.
19:18
Speaker 1: As I'm hearing you talk about culture, I'm really curious
19:21
Speaker 1: what in your life prepared you for a job like this.
19:24
Speaker 1: It's so unique.
19:25
Speaker 2: Honestly, I never really thought there was a job like this,
19:30
Speaker 2: and I just lean into what works for me, honestly,
19:35
Speaker 2: and really I look at the work I do as
19:38
Speaker 2: kind of a coping mechanism for all my personal issues
19:41
Speaker 2: which were growing up as a fifth generation Chinese American.
19:49
Speaker 2: But my parents were born in Indonesia, which was a
19:52
Speaker 2: Dutch colony during the war. So after the war they
19:54
Speaker 2: went to school and the Netherlands, and then they moved
19:57
Speaker 2: to the States, got married, had me. I was raised
20:01
Speaker 2: in New York. They spoke Dutch all the time. Nobody
20:04
Speaker 2: in my family speaks Chinese. And then when I was eight,
20:07
Speaker 2: we moved to Houston and there were at that time
20:10
Speaker 2: very few Asian people. Now it's a very Asian metropolis,
20:13
Speaker 2: but at the time, I was like one of five kids,
20:16
Speaker 2: did not understand who I was. And I realized a
20:20
Speaker 2: couple of things. One is about branding is that if
20:23
Speaker 2: you don't tell people who you are, they will assign
20:27
Speaker 2: qualities to you that are not necessarily who you are.
20:30
Speaker 2: I mean, I was bullied as a kid. I got
20:32
Speaker 2: beat up by my girl Scout troop when third grade
20:34
Speaker 2: for being different, and I never really understood. In the beginning,
20:39
Speaker 2: I was ashamed, and then I understood when I went
20:43
Speaker 2: to college that I had control over how I presented
20:47
Speaker 2: myself to the world, and I could embrace the things
20:50
Speaker 2: I liked about myself. So that really the DNA piece
20:55
Speaker 2: I just translated to my work, and that's what I
20:58
Speaker 2: preached to people, is that you you don't tell people
21:01
Speaker 2: what your brand is, they are going to decide for you.
21:03
Speaker 2: So you back to your question about the discipline of
21:06
Speaker 2: branding versus, you know, just letting people be who they are.
21:10
Speaker 2: I think codifying those pieces are really important, and I
21:14
Speaker 2: think I subconsciously did that. The second thing is because
21:17
Speaker 2: of my crazy upbringing. I would literally come to the
21:20
Speaker 2: dinner table every night and ask my mom is this
21:23
Speaker 2: food Chinese? Is it Dutch? Is it Indonesian? Is it Texan?
21:28
Speaker 2: Is it from me? Like what? Because I didn't know
21:31
Speaker 2: as kid, we just have soup, right, where's the soup from?
21:34
Speaker 2: And she'd say, oh, this is a soup that you
21:36
Speaker 2: know is a Dutch tradition or whatever, and the next
21:38
Speaker 2: day we'd have Chinese food. So for me, culture was interchangeable,
21:43
Speaker 2: and what I learned at an early age is there
21:45
Speaker 2: many ways to look at a bowl of soup.
21:49
Speaker 1: That's really powerful.
21:50
Speaker 2: Linda Well I don't know how to process the world
21:54
Speaker 2: any other way. So I mean, one thing of my
21:57
Speaker 2: one kind of guiding principle I've had throughout my professional
22:01
Speaker 2: career is I always wanted to be the best at
22:03
Speaker 2: whatever I did. And so I would say, Okay, I
22:06
Speaker 2: want to be an art director, which is what I
22:08
Speaker 2: did after college. And then I met these art directors
22:11
Speaker 2: who were so much better than me, and I'm like,
22:13
Speaker 2: I can't do that anymore. I got to do something else, so,
22:15
Speaker 2: you know, kind of shifting and changing, and then you know,
22:18
Speaker 2: even brand strategy. I thought I had a unique approach
22:21
Speaker 2: to brand strategy, and I did that and got to
22:24
Speaker 2: develop amazing brands like Bravo and Univision and Animal Planet.
22:29
Speaker 2: But then all these brand strategy companies came up and
22:32
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, there are a lot of people,
22:34
Speaker 2: there's a lot of smart people. I better do something else.
22:36
Speaker 2: And I added culture, you know, and now like everybody's
22:39
Speaker 2: in the culture business. So we're pivoting once again. But
22:42
Speaker 2: I kind of look at my career as kind of
22:44
Speaker 2: I think professionally, just as we physically have a metabolism.
22:48
Speaker 2: I think that about every eight years, I look back
22:51
Speaker 2: at my career and I've changed. I pivoted a little bit.
22:56
Speaker 1: I hosted a marketing conference and they had all these
22:59
Speaker 1: brilliant speakers come, and one of them was this guy
23:02
Speaker 1: known as the billion Dollar Man, and it was because
23:04
Speaker 1: he like sold over a billion dollars or in ad
23:07
Speaker 1: dollars to these companies. He was like in charge of
23:10
Speaker 1: the priceless MasterCard campaign. Okay, And I said, how did
23:15
Speaker 1: you sell all these things through? Like what was the
23:18
Speaker 1: what was the secret? And he said, very plainly that
23:24
Speaker 1: he knew what people wanted before he walked into the room.
23:28
Speaker 1: And I said, that sounds like a great line, but
23:31
Speaker 1: how do you determine that? And he said, well, very honestly.
23:34
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Midwest and I was gay
23:37
Speaker 1: at a time when that was not accepted, And because
23:41
Speaker 1: of that, I developed this spidey sense of understanding if
23:45
Speaker 1: somebody was going to be okay or not okay with me.
23:48
Speaker 1: I could feel people, and I just like had this
23:52
Speaker 1: moment when I it was sort of a light bulb
23:55
Speaker 1: for me that so much of our pain as people, ultimately,
23:59
Speaker 1: if you can somehow direct it, Yeah, comes the spidey
24:03
Speaker 1: sense in it. That's what I'm hearing it.
24:05
Speaker 2: Really became my superpower. And I think, you know, meeting
24:08
Speaker 2: Sarah and the wonderful people that we get to work
24:11
Speaker 2: with on our team all seem to have what I
24:15
Speaker 2: call like a super sensitivity to change. I will be
24:19
Speaker 2: the first person to be cold in a room. I
24:22
Speaker 2: will be the first person to say in a restaurant,
24:24
Speaker 2: somebody just lit a match or lit up a cigarette, like.
24:27
Speaker 2: I just am sensed like and I'm emotionally extremely sensitive.
24:32
Speaker 2: I'm an EmPATH. So when culture shifts or things change,
24:36
Speaker 2: I mean it could be we were talking about cozy
24:38
Speaker 2: and q's a new word or a word being used
24:41
Speaker 2: a different way than it had ever been used before.
24:44
Speaker 2: You know, there was David Lynch just passed, and there
24:47
Speaker 2: was a piece in New York Times yesterday about how
24:49
Speaker 2: Lynchian became an adjective like that's a cultural. Culture is
24:53
Speaker 2: just what civilization decides, right. So words and visuals and
25:00
Speaker 2: owns and smells are all cues and codes, right, and
25:03
Speaker 2: so we're just more sensitive to them, and especially when
25:07
Speaker 2: they're new or they change, or look at look at
25:10
Speaker 2: how a word like woke over the last six years
25:13
Speaker 2: has gone from a value to a liability.
25:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the people that are using it has shifted.
25:23
Speaker 2: Context and how they use it and what they mean.
25:26
Speaker 2: You know, it's all shifted. So that's and depending on
25:30
Speaker 2: that one. That's a really good point. Also when I
25:33
Speaker 2: talk about the curve and the zeitgeist and what's residual
25:37
Speaker 2: and what's emergent, every brand, every culture has a different curve.
25:42
Speaker 2: It's not just one, right, And so that's why our
25:45
Speaker 2: business is about tailoring the curve to a person or
25:49
Speaker 2: I've worked with a lot of personalities in the entertainment business.
25:52
Speaker 2: Or it could be a brand, or it could be
25:55
Speaker 2: you know.
25:55
Speaker 1: When you say you work with a personality, I mean
25:58
Speaker 1: I've worked with talent. Right, but what do you what
26:00
Speaker 1: would you do for talent?
26:02
Speaker 2: Well, one thing we do is look at what their
26:05
Speaker 2: cultural profile is. Where do they live in the culture,
26:07
Speaker 2: how do people regard them?
26:09
Speaker 1: Right?
26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah?
26:10
Speaker 1: Interesting?
26:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so again not just social media, but yes,
26:15
Speaker 2: social media is a part of it. But we can say,
26:17
Speaker 2: what if critics said, what has this person put out
26:20
Speaker 2: in the world? What have they said? What are their
26:23
Speaker 2: most lauded or most loathed pieces of work?
26:28
Speaker 1: Right? There's also this interesting distinction between digital sentiment like
26:34
Speaker 1: social media sentiment, and what people are saying at a
26:37
Speaker 1: dinner table. Yeah, and they could be two separate things.
26:40
Speaker 1: Like I think about the Justin Baldoni Blake Lively situation.
26:43
Speaker 1: The sentiment online is different than the sentiment right at
26:46
Speaker 1: a dinner.
26:47
Speaker 2: Right, Well, because it's an ecosystem, right, And like Justin
26:52
Speaker 2: Baldoni's gonna have a very different lens on culture than Blake.
26:55
Speaker 1: Lively, Right, Sarah, your co founder, said, pre pandemic, understand
27:00
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist might have been a nice to have for
27:02
Speaker 1: a big brand. Now it's a must have. Yeah, how
27:05
Speaker 1: did the pandemic change that?
27:07
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I haven't thought about that. Well.
27:11
Speaker 2: I think two things. One, I started in two thousand
27:14
Speaker 2: and eight, when I started the cultural practice, it was
27:16
Speaker 2: right in the right as a recession hit. And I
27:19
Speaker 2: think what happened because of the rise of social media
27:23
Speaker 2: and the iPhone in that era two thousand and eight
27:25
Speaker 2: to twenty ten, people just became more aware of things
27:30
Speaker 2: beyond their own immediate surrounding. And I think when the
27:34
Speaker 2: pandemic hit, it sort of doubled down on that idea,
27:38
Speaker 2: which is, there are other people who were suffering like me,
27:43
Speaker 2: what are they doing? And there was way more interest,
27:47
Speaker 2: especially in global activity, of what how other people were
27:53
Speaker 2: dealing with the same situation. So essentially, my bowl of
27:56
Speaker 2: soup that I didn't know whether it was Dutch or Chinese,
28:00
Speaker 2: or Indonesian or Texan was the pandemic for people, and
28:04
Speaker 2: so everybody could look at everybody in the world could
28:08
Speaker 2: look at the pandemic and go, oh, that's how they're
28:11
Speaker 2: dealing with it there, or you know, oh, people are working.
28:14
Speaker 2: What is this zoom thing? You asked about cycles before.
28:18
Speaker 2: I do believe that there's a great book by some
28:21
Speaker 2: really amazing cultural theorists Strauss and Howe called The Fourth Turning,
28:26
Speaker 2: and it's for me, it's sort of my fundamental culture tone.
28:32
Speaker 2: But I do subscribe to their theory, which is basically,
28:36
Speaker 2: there are four cycles, and we tend to repeat them.
28:39
Speaker 2: They always manifest differently, Yeah, but they have certain kinds
28:43
Speaker 2: of elements that are the same.
28:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:46
Speaker 2: So you know, when we did this horror study that
28:50
Speaker 2: we just did, you know, we looked back at wise
28:52
Speaker 2: horror having a moment. Now, well, horror is a way
28:54
Speaker 2: that people process uncertainty. Some people want to escape and
28:58
Speaker 2: just watch you know, like smooth Brain TV. But other
29:02
Speaker 2: people want to feel the pain but not but in
29:05
Speaker 2: a safe space. Right. So like the Demi Moor movie
29:09
Speaker 2: The Substance, which i'd heard about and heard about it.
29:11
Speaker 2: I don't really like horror, but I like Demi Moore
29:14
Speaker 2: and I heard her performance was spectacular. I wanted to
29:17
Speaker 2: watch it. I wanted to watch it. The only day
29:19
Speaker 2: I could watch it was the day before Halloween because
29:22
Speaker 2: I was kind of like in a Halloween mood, and
29:24
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, now watch a scary movie.
29:27
Speaker 1: That was the only horror movie I could ever read.
29:29
Speaker 2: I yeah, it's really scary.
29:31
Speaker 1: So pop culture is forever changing. Yeah, and now with
29:34
Speaker 1: social media, it changes sometimes by the day, by the minute,
29:37
Speaker 1: by the minute. Have you noticed any through lines between
29:42
Speaker 1: things that really pop off?
29:46
Speaker 2: I mean yes and no. Yes, and that we think
29:50
Speaker 2: culture always follows a thread that all these you know,
29:54
Speaker 2: part of our work in the ecosystem is connecting the dots.
29:56
Speaker 2: So we're looking at those threads. Are those what are
29:59
Speaker 2: those through lines? But at the same time, culture is
30:03
Speaker 2: a living, breathing organism and it's going to do stuff.
30:06
Speaker 2: It's it's why you know. I know, we're not going
30:09
Speaker 2: to have a huge conversation about AI. But It's why
30:11
Speaker 2: AI and human created content will never be equal because
30:18
Speaker 2: there's a randomness and imperfection to humanity that AI and
30:25
Speaker 2: technology have never been able to replicate. It's why when
30:28
Speaker 2: you see an AI model, there's always something off. You know,
30:33
Speaker 2: it's it's called the uncanny valley, where you can just
30:36
Speaker 2: kind of there's just like a weird feeling you have
30:38
Speaker 2: that it's not it's just too perfect. It's too perfect,
30:41
Speaker 2: and it's also yeah, it's also it's just not human.
30:44
Speaker 2: And humanity in an AI context is imperfection and inconsistency
30:49
Speaker 2: and flaws. And you know, so I think that it's
30:53
Speaker 2: going to be the next you know, five, ten, twenty
30:56
Speaker 2: years is going to be really interesting to see what
31:00
Speaker 2: the human component is.
31:02
Speaker 1: What creates a phenomenon.
31:06
Speaker 2: Momentum. And I think, you know, another thing we look
31:10
Speaker 2: at when we're anticipating, and we have a really good
31:15
Speaker 2: published track record of what we say, calling things a
31:19
Speaker 2: year and a half to two years before people are
31:21
Speaker 2: really aware of them. We did studies that Sarah read.
31:24
Speaker 2: Sarah led to a study during the pandemic on how the
31:27
Speaker 2: workplace was going to be changing because we had our
31:29
Speaker 2: American Express Global Business Travel client Their business was business travel,
31:34
Speaker 2: and the pandemic closed everything, and in order to assert leadership,
31:37
Speaker 2: they wanted to be able to go to their clients
31:40
Speaker 2: and say, here's what you need to be thinking about
31:42
Speaker 2: for the future. So they commissioned us to do a study.
31:45
Speaker 2: And what we saw was that this idea that your
31:50
Speaker 2: work life and your home life, you know, were very
31:53
Speaker 2: segregated like severance, you know, wasn't actually real and that's
31:57
Speaker 2: not really gave people fulfillment. So just understanding those kinds
32:02
Speaker 2: of changes allowed us to understand what a phenomenon hybrid working,
32:07
Speaker 2: remote working it's going to be. Because people were realizing,
32:11
Speaker 2: in the context again context being really important of people dying,
32:16
Speaker 2: that what you do when you're not working is actually
32:19
Speaker 2: maybe more important than what you do when you're working.
32:22
Speaker 2: And that was a huge shift from a very very
32:26
Speaker 2: capitalist couple of decades.
32:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were coming off the heels of girl boss culture.
32:35
Speaker 1: I read a book cup by Derek Thompson called hit Makers.
32:38
Speaker 1: He looked at like musical phenomenons and MTV, and his
32:43
Speaker 1: sort of consensus was that a hit happens when it's
32:48
Speaker 1: familiar and different enough. There is something to that. I
32:52
Speaker 1: interview will I am yeah, And I asked him because
32:56
Speaker 1: he has so many number one hits and I was like,
32:59
Speaker 1: what how do you keep making these number one singles
33:03
Speaker 1: these hits? And he said, you want to know the
33:06
Speaker 1: real answer, and I was like yeah, and he goes, well,
33:08
Speaker 1: you take a nineties hit song and you change one chord.
33:14
Speaker 2: We use the term familiar but fresh all the time
33:18
Speaker 2: with our clients. Give them something familiar because people in
33:23
Speaker 2: a world where our attention is you know, everyone's vying
33:27
Speaker 2: for attention, it's actually much harder to educate and differentiate
33:34
Speaker 2: at the same time, right, Like I'm going to tell
33:38
Speaker 2: you this new idea and I'm going to tell you
33:41
Speaker 2: why you're going to love it. At the same time,
33:43
Speaker 2: it's easier to say, hey, you know this thing that
33:47
Speaker 2: you know and love. That's an entry point, right, It's
33:52
Speaker 2: a point of connection, and then we're going to take
33:54
Speaker 2: it over here, like lego. You know what a lego
33:57
Speaker 2: brick is, but now I'm going to make it into flowers. What. Yeah,
34:01
Speaker 2: that's new. I've never seen that before, So yeah, I
34:04
Speaker 2: think that's right.
34:06
Speaker 1: Do you think it's possible to hack culture?
34:10
Speaker 2: Well, I think we've seen people do it, right, We've
34:12
Speaker 2: seen people break the Internet, like, I'll never freak?
34:15
Speaker 1: Was it?
34:16
Speaker 2: Kuim Kardashian on the cover of Paper magazine was like
34:18
Speaker 2: the first time that phrase was used, break the Internet.
34:22
Speaker 2: So I think people do. I don't think there's a
34:24
Speaker 2: formula for it. I think it's always it's the same
34:28
Speaker 2: as you know, we've worked in television a long time.
34:31
Speaker 2: Every person will tell you that they never saw the
34:35
Speaker 2: hit show coming, right if they're honest. Some people may
34:38
Speaker 2: lie and say, oh, I knew it was going to
34:40
Speaker 2: be hit. Most people will say we had no idea.
34:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
34:45
Speaker 2: Jersey Shore was a show that MTV.
34:48
Speaker 1: Was trying to bury and it became a phenomenon.
34:52
Speaker 2: It became a phenomenon, and that was a show that
34:55
Speaker 2: was familiar, but fresh people knew what containment shows were
35:00
Speaker 2: never seen an exotic subculture that had been marginalized for
35:04
Speaker 2: the past, you know or whatever centuries and culture. Nobody
35:08
Speaker 2: had ever seen guidos before. And in the midst of
35:12
Speaker 2: the recession, when everyone is feeling really fearial, to see
35:15
Speaker 2: these kids just having a great time and loving their lives, yes,
35:18
Speaker 2: like that was inspirational for people.
35:21
Speaker 1: So this is sort of tangential. But as we're on
35:24
Speaker 1: the topic of reality TV. I think a lot about
35:26
Speaker 1: like the Rise of the Kardashians or Duck Dynasty, which
35:29
Speaker 1: happened in the same work on Duck.
35:30
Speaker 2: Dynasty you did. Yeah, we help them come up with
35:32
Speaker 2: that name.
35:34
Speaker 1: Well, it's sort of when things become a hit like that. Yeah,
35:39
Speaker 1: there's this element of timing. Yeah, I think that happened
35:41
Speaker 1: right after nine to eleven probably, Yeah, you know, and
35:45
Speaker 1: so like we're in this cultural moment and then this
35:51
Speaker 1: thing happens and you can't plan that. No, no, but
35:55
Speaker 1: it's timing.
35:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I think for us it would
36:03
Speaker 2: be when we see something happen and blow up in culture,
36:08
Speaker 2: we always want.
36:09
Speaker 1: To know why.
36:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, again, we can't. I don't think
36:13
Speaker 2: you can manufa. I've never met anybody who could manufacture
36:16
Speaker 2: a hit, anything like manufacturer a phenomen a phenom on
36:21
Speaker 2: their own or a TV show or a musical single
36:24
Speaker 2: you know that they knew was going to be number one.
36:26
Speaker 2: It's never like that. But I think you can do
36:29
Speaker 2: a post analysis and look at what we're the cultural
36:32
Speaker 2: conditions allowed that to happen, and typically we would say
36:36
Speaker 2: there's a shift involved that nobody was paying attention to
36:40
Speaker 2: right then, and then people. You know, part of what
36:45
Speaker 2: makes an idea go from like dominant zeitgeist to residual
36:49
Speaker 2: is when too many people copy it. Everybody does collapse. Now,
36:52
Speaker 2: so collabs are not so special collapse or you know,
36:55
Speaker 2: sort of on the checklist.
36:57
Speaker 1: Twilight was a hit, and then there was twelve vampire shows. Yeah,
37:02
Speaker 1: I want to break down some cultural trends that we're seeing.
37:06
Speaker 1: Get your thoughts on them. I know you have a
37:09
Speaker 1: lot of heart for the ever changing workplace. Yes, talk
37:13
Speaker 1: to me about what you think is dominant right now
37:15
Speaker 1: and then where we're going.
37:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the workplace is becoming a battleground in
37:20
Speaker 2: an interesting way. I think that there's so much change
37:24
Speaker 2: happening so quickly and at such scale that I think
37:31
Speaker 2: a lot of old rules and expectations are not going
37:34
Speaker 2: to serve people well in this world. You have five
37:37
Speaker 2: generations in the workplace right now, and they all look
37:41
Speaker 2: at work extremely differently. And just even the battle I'm
37:46
Speaker 2: talking about is you know, remote versus hybrid versus rto,
37:51
Speaker 2: which I think is the reason I frame it as
37:54
Speaker 2: a battle, is because there's a lot of economic discrimination
37:59
Speaker 2: in those conversations. There's gender discrimination, and I'm talking about
38:03
Speaker 2: even like return to office like that discriminates against largely
38:08
Speaker 2: women who a lot of them parents as well, parents
38:11
Speaker 2: as well, which, let's face it, as much as men
38:14
Speaker 2: are involved, women are still the primary caregivers. But yes,
38:18
Speaker 2: parents in general. This hybrid working is the new reality,
38:22
Speaker 2: and I think that especially if you have more and
38:25
Speaker 2: more people working independently in the creator economy. I just
38:29
Speaker 2: think the workplace is a different entity and serves and
38:34
Speaker 2: really should be a place that connects people. But forcing
38:38
Speaker 2: them to be there in the office every day is
38:40
Speaker 2: not necessarily the way to do it, my opinion.
38:44
Speaker 1: I'm really curious about your thoughts on luxury. I remember
38:47
Speaker 1: Virgil Ablow's twenty sixteen Fall Winter Runway show and he
38:52
Speaker 1: had a neon signs saying you're obviously in the wrong place,
38:56
Speaker 1: and I thought that signaled such a shift. It's obviously
38:59
Speaker 1: referencing a pretty woman in the movie line, which is great,
39:01
Speaker 1: but I think it meant that, like aspiration never meant
39:08
Speaker 1: more or less.
39:10
Speaker 2: Hmm, Well, you know, rip Virgil Ablow. Yeah, you know,
39:16
Speaker 2: he was always playing with the irony of selling to
39:23
Speaker 2: an economy that he felt that that proposition was already ridiculous,
39:29
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean? So he really do.
39:32
Speaker 1: You mean like he had like sarcasm about luxury. Yeah,
39:35
Speaker 1: but I think that changed everything.
39:38
Speaker 2: It did. However, I would say, you know, having worked
39:41
Speaker 2: in the fashion business in my younger days, I still
39:45
Speaker 2: follow it and I look, you know, you've got gen
39:50
Speaker 2: z who are incredibly scared with good reason about the
39:53
Speaker 2: future of the planet, and yet they're the number one's
39:56
Speaker 2: consumers of fast fashion. So fashion is always lived in
40:00
Speaker 2: a sort of counterintuitive, juxtaposition, ironic place, and that makes
40:07
Speaker 2: it even more so in this world of you know
40:11
Speaker 2: and gen z is generations. It's inherently contradictory. It's like
40:17
Speaker 2: they're the most optimistic nihilist or the most nihilistic optimists
40:22
Speaker 2: you will ever find, because the world is not a
40:25
Speaker 2: hospitable place to them right now. And yet they're young
40:27
Speaker 2: and they want to have the optimism of youth. But
40:30
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting about luxury is that luxury the
40:35
Speaker 2: business has had been doing really well, that global business
40:39
Speaker 2: is faltering. There. I think luxuries big emerging markets are
40:44
Speaker 2: going to be you know, like India and Africa going forward,
40:47
Speaker 2: and that's really you know, that's the anticipatory part of
40:51
Speaker 2: our work, and a lot of creativity is coming out
40:53
Speaker 2: of Africa and it's going to be very exciting. But ultimately,
40:57
Speaker 2: all of the luxury companies are in the mass market
41:00
Speaker 2: business because they don't make money off coture. They barely
41:04
Speaker 2: make money off ready to wear. They make money off
41:07
Speaker 2: perfume and key chains. That's I mean, that's because.
41:10
Speaker 1: People want a piece. People want changing because things like
41:14
Speaker 1: the real real and these resale shops that have I
41:18
Speaker 1: think really exploded over the last five years in particular.
41:22
Speaker 2: Have changed.
41:23
Speaker 1: Who can buy a Gucci belt.
41:25
Speaker 2: Yes, but again it's making it more mass market, it's
41:30
Speaker 2: making which accessible, which.
41:32
Speaker 1: Makes the people who could originally afford a Gucci belt
41:36
Speaker 1: not want it.
41:37
Speaker 2: Well, they still want it, but they want it customized.
41:41
Speaker 1: They want it different, they want it different, they want
41:43
Speaker 1: it familiar but fresh.
41:45
Speaker 2: They don't want the same Gucci belt that you have,
41:48
Speaker 2: They want owned version of that. And that's why for luxury,
41:52
Speaker 2: the luxury the future I spoke on a panel of
41:54
Speaker 2: years ago, but the future luxuries customization and personalization. Yeah, right,
42:00
Speaker 2: because that is luxury when you can in a mass
42:04
Speaker 2: market world, when you can have the only one, and
42:07
Speaker 2: that's why vintage is so popular, right, right, But now
42:10
Speaker 2: you go on you know, the real reel and it's
42:12
Speaker 2: stuffed from two years ago. You know, it's like, okay,
42:16
Speaker 2: well that's not it's just a marketplace.
42:18
Speaker 1: I also see a bend towards luxury being sustainability. Like
42:24
Speaker 1: there's this sort of shift I've seen that luxury is
42:27
Speaker 1: about a value system now, whereas before it was about
42:30
Speaker 1: just an item. Now it's like the story of the item.
42:33
Speaker 1: It's who would where who's won the item before you wore?
42:37
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's like the art world, right, the art
42:40
Speaker 2: world is and this is really a conversation to me
42:43
Speaker 2: about value, right, and luxury being the highest end of
42:46
Speaker 2: the value conversation. But like if you look at Mauricio
42:50
Speaker 2: Catalan's banana which just sold, you know, the banana that
42:54
Speaker 2: was duct taped. I was in art Basel. I saw
42:57
Speaker 2: the original that sold for one hundred and fifty grand.
43:00
Speaker 2: And I love Mauricio Catalan. He's the prankster of the
43:03
Speaker 2: art world. But it you know, a copy of it
43:07
Speaker 2: or the I guess a copy of the instructions for
43:10
Speaker 2: it just sold for six point five million dollars. Now
43:13
Speaker 2: the problem, and then the story was that they bought
43:16
Speaker 2: the banana for thirty five cents or something from the
43:19
Speaker 2: street vendor. But the problem with that in the value
43:22
Speaker 2: chain is that Mauricio Catalan got the one hundred and
43:26
Speaker 2: fifty thousand and paid his Galerus discommission. He did not
43:29
Speaker 2: get a piece of the six point five million, right,
43:32
Speaker 2: So something's kind of messed up. But in the art world, yes, provenance,
43:36
Speaker 2: that's what we call provenance is like for vintage. Yeah,
43:40
Speaker 2: if you're going to own, it's like when you see
43:42
Speaker 2: the Oscars and the Grammys and all these award shows,
43:45
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, well, you know, she's wearing the dress
43:47
Speaker 2: that Audrey Hepburn wore in nineteen sixty five. You know.
43:51
Speaker 2: But again, I think that's the aspiration. Do you talk
43:54
Speaker 2: about aspiration. That's the aspiration that it's unique in one
43:58
Speaker 2: of a kind. But again, in the luxury market, it's like, Okay,
44:02
Speaker 2: I'm going to buy that keychain that gets me closer
44:05
Speaker 2: to that thing.
44:06
Speaker 1: Do you think part of the future of luxury is
44:09
Speaker 1: investing in things that money can't buy Experiences health, longevity.
44:15
Speaker 2: For sure, but that's an experience, right, So like LVMH
44:19
Speaker 2: owns hotels, right, you know, LVMH was also just invested
44:23
Speaker 2: in F one. What's that about experiences? They want to
44:28
Speaker 2: provide next level experiences that nobody else can provide.
44:34
Speaker 1: Our invite only experiences or these supper clubs or private
44:39
Speaker 1: social experiences like soho how or Sandacenti, Bungalows or zero
44:44
Speaker 1: Bond in New York? Right? Is that part of emerging culture?
44:47
Speaker 1: Is that even residual at this point, I would say
44:49
Speaker 1: it's dominant trending residual. We anticipated in the pandemic that
44:55
Speaker 1: private and social clubs would would rise. And why don't
44:58
Speaker 1: we anticipate that because people were already behaving that way
45:02
Speaker 1: in the pandemic. They were selecting their pods of people
45:04
Speaker 1: that they trusted to be around from a health perspective.
45:09
Speaker 2: Right, So when they emerge from the pandemic, that behavior
45:11
Speaker 2: doesn't just go back to I'm going to be with strangers.
45:14
Speaker 1: No.
45:14
Speaker 2: In fact, the people go out less other than like
45:18
Speaker 2: big sporting events and concerts, which we know has been
45:21
Speaker 2: like huge, but like just sort of like socializing, you know,
45:26
Speaker 2: has a health price, a health risk now, right, So
45:30
Speaker 2: people want to socialize, but they want to do it
45:33
Speaker 2: in safer spaces. So that's why those clubs have become
45:37
Speaker 2: really popular. And now, you know, I mean Sohouse is
45:40
Speaker 2: already a publicly traded company they're talking about Daniel Lobe
45:44
Speaker 2: is talking about now taking it over from Ron Berkele.
45:47
Speaker 2: So to me, that means it's all trending. Residual. Yeah,
45:51
Speaker 2: one thing doesn't mean.
45:52
Speaker 1: By do you mean that means the sale means it's residual.
45:55
Speaker 2: The fact that so many people are talking about, you know,
45:59
Speaker 2: putting money into it and it's got fifty three clubs
46:01
Speaker 2: around the world and whatever. By the way, residual can
46:04
Speaker 2: be extremely profitable. It doesn't mean that it's not good.
46:07
Speaker 2: It just means it doesn't have necessarily like the you know,
46:11
Speaker 2: oh private club Like, yeah, it's sort of like, oh,
46:16
Speaker 2: you know, which private club do you belong to? Because
46:17
Speaker 2: I belong to these three. You know. It's sort of
46:19
Speaker 2: like it's like having a loyalty program with an airline.
46:22
Speaker 2: It's like you probably have more than one and it's great.
46:27
Speaker 2: It's not you know, culture. When we look at culture
46:30
Speaker 2: on the curve, it's not a value judgment. It's just
46:32
Speaker 2: about what's animating people. Right. So, private clubs, by the way,
46:37
Speaker 2: you know, Walmart, Costco, CBS, very residual brands make a
46:42
Speaker 2: lot of money. So it is not about money and success.
46:46
Speaker 2: It is just about cultural cachet.
46:49
Speaker 1: And well, like the New York Times said that you
46:51
Speaker 1: guys basically sell cool.
46:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, we wouldn't say that, but that's the word I
46:58
Speaker 2: keep thinking about, right. I think it's a shorthand, right,
47:01
Speaker 2: And I think because what we do is really abstract
47:04
Speaker 2: and intangible, and we still have a really hard time
47:07
Speaker 2: explaining it. But I you know, I think real time
47:10
Speaker 2: anthropology is sort of like how do you take what's
47:14
Speaker 2: going on and find opportunity in that. That's really what
47:18
Speaker 2: we're like, you know, opportunity hunters for businesses and really
47:22
Speaker 2: putting business lens on culture. So oh, you know talent
47:26
Speaker 2: and talent, well, like a lot of people are talking about,
47:29
Speaker 2: you know, dating in your like Golden Bachelor age right
47:33
Speaker 2: when we've been talking about that for a long time.
47:35
Speaker 2: But now with Golden Bachelor and Grey divorce and people
47:39
Speaker 2: are becoming you know, we have a lot more movies
47:42
Speaker 2: of women in metopause, so there's more interest now in
47:45
Speaker 2: the older lives of women, and so you know, that's
47:48
Speaker 2: opportunity for businesses, for brands for personalities and so depending
47:53
Speaker 2: on you know, we we we follow what's changing and
47:59
Speaker 2: then helped translate that for businesses.
48:02
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to do some rapid fire with.
48:03
Speaker 2: You, Okay, the Queen of course, Time to be.
48:10
Speaker 1: What's a trend you're most proud of accurately identifying Brooklyn?
48:15
Speaker 1: You knew Brooklyn was going to happen. Yes, you and
48:17
Speaker 1: Lena Dunnam both.
48:18
Speaker 2: Now, I have clients who I had a client who
48:21
Speaker 2: came up to me at a conference like years later
48:23
Speaker 2: and he said, he grabbed me and he said, because
48:26
Speaker 2: it was a Manhattan brand, and he said, you you
48:29
Speaker 2: told us about Brooklyn and you were right, and we
48:32
Speaker 2: didn't listen.
48:33
Speaker 1: And so where should everyone move now? Is Montana going
48:36
Speaker 1: to happen? No, I would say Carolina's interesting. I think
48:42
Speaker 1: Utah is going to do really well, you know, South Texas. Okay,
48:49
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, we're we're looking a lot
48:51
Speaker 1: at tourism because we work in travel, and you know,
48:56
Speaker 1: the phenomenon of post pandemic travel has caused so much
49:00
Speaker 1: trouble for the usual cities that I mean, there's so
49:04
Speaker 1: much overcrowding and you've probably read about it, like protests
49:08
Speaker 1: in Barcelona and people are a lot of it's because
49:10
Speaker 1: of Airbnb, but a lot of it's just and remote
49:13
Speaker 1: work right with the pandemic. So I think I just
49:17
Speaker 1: was on a hillacious in a bad way.
49:21
Speaker 2: And hilacious is a good word or a bad word,
49:23
Speaker 2: but a hellish, a hellish Christmas trip that at a
49:26
Speaker 2: place that I won't mention. That was, you know, a
49:29
Speaker 2: resort area that everybody raved about, our friends raved about,
49:32
Speaker 2: and we got there was so overcrowded, and I think
49:35
Speaker 2: people just discovered it. So I think what you're going
49:37
Speaker 2: to see is people are going to go to places
49:40
Speaker 2: both to live and to travel that are highly localized,
49:45
Speaker 2: highly regionalized.
49:46
Speaker 1: Well, remote work has changed that too.
49:50
Speaker 2: Percent.
49:50
Speaker 1: Okay, what is your favorite place to travel to? Speaking
49:53
Speaker 1: of I love.
49:54
Speaker 2: Costa Rica right now. I find Costa Rica to be
49:57
Speaker 2: an energetic, energizing and you know, a healing place. I
50:05
Speaker 2: worry because the drug cartels are coming in again. I
50:08
Speaker 2: look at change right. Drug cartels are coming in because
50:11
Speaker 2: they're all coming in from South America. I love New Zealand.
50:15
Speaker 2: New Zealand's amazing. I like nature, I like really being immersed.
50:21
Speaker 1: What is a cultural contradiction that you could point to
50:23
Speaker 1: right now, Well, I would go back to the gen
50:26
Speaker 1: Z example. Okay, you know gen Z?
50:29
Speaker 2: Have you know gen Z? We look at as my son,
50:33
Speaker 2: who's twenty nine, is an older gen Z, right, and
50:36
Speaker 2: the younger ones are in their teens, maybe fourteen fifteen,
50:40
Speaker 2: but they've He was in on the fourth day of
50:43
Speaker 2: kindergarten when nine to eleven happened. We were four blocks
50:46
Speaker 2: from the towers in New York. His school was four
50:48
Speaker 2: blocks in the towers. His life has been defined by crisis.
50:53
Speaker 2: He's only known in America in decline. And I talk
50:57
Speaker 2: to gen xers and boomers and they it's not something
51:01
Speaker 2: that they understand.
51:03
Speaker 1: I want to ask something about what you just said.
51:06
Speaker 1: In America in decline? Are we living through the decline?
51:08
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of America? Oh yeah, Yeah, it's been it's
51:11
Speaker 1: the fall of the Roman Empire.
51:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, since nine to eleven. They've lived through war, they
51:17
Speaker 2: lived through recession, they lived through tumultuous political times, they
51:23
Speaker 2: live through a climate crisis. They can't afford eggs. I
51:28
Speaker 2: can't afford eggs. It's very different than when I grew
51:31
Speaker 2: up as a child of the sixties, where it was
51:33
Speaker 2: like coming out of the Civil rights era, and then
51:36
Speaker 2: you know, not that it was the end of the
51:38
Speaker 2: Vietnam War, and you know, things looked like they were
51:41
Speaker 2: getting better. The country was doing really you know, a
51:45
Speaker 2: lot of prosperity in the eighties and nineties, and so we.
51:48
Speaker 1: Also enjoyed a lot of progressive values that I think
51:51
Speaker 1: we're seeing the pendula like it's a backlash forwards completely completely.
51:55
Speaker 2: I mean, the post World War two world global pob
52:00
Speaker 2: is completely shifted, not just in America but in every
52:03
Speaker 2: country around the world. So, you know, it's just a
52:07
Speaker 2: different time for gen Z and they feel we used
52:11
Speaker 2: to joke about gen Z looks at boomers as the
52:14
Speaker 2: walking dead, you know, and they've squandered all the resources.
52:18
Speaker 2: They're literally dying. They've wrecked the world for youth. And
52:24
Speaker 2: then at the same time, gen Z are young and
52:27
Speaker 2: they're starting their lives and they need to be optimistic.
52:30
Speaker 2: So that contradiction exists, and that's their existence is about
52:36
Speaker 2: living with contradiction, and that's normal, and I don't fight that.
52:39
Speaker 2: That's just the way the world is.
52:41
Speaker 1: What's something every woman should try once.
52:44
Speaker 2: Thinking of their work lives and their personal lives as
52:47
Speaker 2: one life. Try that it changed my life.
52:53
Speaker 1: Literally, what's a book that you've read that did change
52:57
Speaker 1: your life? Something you think everybody should.
52:58
Speaker 2: Read a lot? There's so many. Well, I really loved
53:02
Speaker 2: Mirandagalize latest book, All Fours may not be for everybody,
53:07
Speaker 2: so good, it's so good.
53:09
Speaker 1: It was one of my favorite books of the year.
53:11
Speaker 2: It is so good. Yeah. For me. The last book
53:14
Speaker 2: that changed, the book that changed my life is probably
53:16
Speaker 2: the last or the book i'm reading or the last
53:18
Speaker 2: book that I read.
53:19
Speaker 1: Okay, grab the question everything card? Okay and pick a
53:23
Speaker 1: card which everyone calls you.
53:28
Speaker 2: What's the story behind my name? What's my nickname? And
53:31
Speaker 2: who gave it to you? I'll tell you that. So
53:34
Speaker 2: my name is actually not Linda. My birth name is
53:37
Speaker 2: Pick Lynn Ong Pick being a generational name that I
53:42
Speaker 2: share Pik that I share with my cousins of the
53:45
Speaker 2: same generation on my father's side. That's a Chinese tradition. Yeah,
53:48
Speaker 2: so I have cousins that have pick Chwo, pick Low,
53:52
Speaker 2: pick whatever, picto and Lynn. My parents named me knowing
53:57
Speaker 2: they they've alway they were the ones who called me Linda.
53:59
Speaker 2: I didn't pick Linda. They just raised me. They called
54:01
Speaker 2: me Lynn, but when I went to school, they said
54:03
Speaker 2: call her Linda, so it wasn't It wasn't me. And
54:05
Speaker 2: actually some of my nearest and dearest friends and my
54:07
Speaker 2: mom always called me Lynn, but my nickname was Buns
54:11
Speaker 2: in high school. It has nothing to do with my butt.
54:14
Speaker 1: It's that I was thinking you had a good dairy air.
54:17
Speaker 2: No, I didn't have a good dairy air. But it's
54:20
Speaker 2: Chinese New Year cool. And I was born in the
54:23
Speaker 2: Year of the Rabbit, and I always loved rabbits, so
54:25
Speaker 2: my friends called me Buns.
54:26
Speaker 1: It's super cute. Thank you for sharing so much with us.
54:29
Speaker 2: To thank you, that was really fun.
54:36
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today is a
54:38
Speaker 1: good day. To have a good day. I'll see you
54:41
Speaker 1: next week.