Why brands need outsiders, with Noah Lekas

“If brands are to be more human, and humans are to be better brands, the logical conclusion is a perfectly optimized train wreck. Any history book will tell you that, in commodification and colonialism, humanity and culture as a whole always lose. Whether this is starting to sound like a utopian dream or a dystopian nightmare, the good news is that change is inevitable.” – Noah Lekas , writer, strategist, and musician?

As a writer, strategist, and musician, Noah Lekas has made a career of championing the voices and perspectives of ‘outsiders’ in polite branding society—from rock artists and journalists to YouTubers and poets. His interviews and articles look at branding from a slanted perspective, favoring grit and risk over polish and predictability. And if brands like MTV and Vans have taught us anything, it’s that knowing what’s cool is more important than knowing what’s popular.?

Here, find a sampling of interviews from Noah’s Insights with Outsiders series with Robert Von Blasko , former metal bassist-turned-designer of brands like Liquid Death , and Finn McKenty ?? , creator of Punk Rock MBA on YouTube (1, 2). Next, find a couple of Noah’s own articles on branding less instead of more (3) and why brands should leave solidarity to the people. (4)?

In the world of businesses and their brands, homogeneity is the norm. But outsider, countercultural perspectives deserve a place in branding—as long as they can keep their cool.??

Insights with Outsiders: Rob Blasko?

“Brandingmag: When was the first time you became aware of branding and what were the first brands that really impacted you?

Rob Blasko: People like us, Noah, we navigate life by what we think is cool. When I was seven, I made my mom drive me to the record store to buy a KISS record. And it was because I thought KISS was cool. But she’s like, we have records here. Here’s Joan Baez. Here’s Peter, Paul and Mary. All the folk stuff of that era. And I was like—that’s not cool to me. I don’t identify with that. KISS was cool. Peter, Paul, and Mary, not cool.

Noah Lekas: It’s interesting because there is a thing that happens, for some people, where we want to automatically transmit to the world who we are. You know, like, I want to look like the music I love. Then, brands in those niche worlds almost become the gatekeepers. The first gate is knowing about them. The second gate is to pull off getting it, cause it’s just out of reach enough that getting it says something about who you are. Having long hair in high school is just hard enough to pull off that, if you do it, it says a lot about who you are. For some reason, we woke up one day and decided that we want to look how we feel. . . .?

How do you see the dynamic between counterculture and monoculture now? Is monoculture dead, or are subcultures gaining ground?

Rob Blasko: Fortunately, we progress. Technology progresses. Generations progress. The way my generation experienced entertainment and countercultures is different than, say, this generation, right? I’m Gen X. Gen Z has a completely different experience. Gen X, in terms of monoculture, we experienced things simultaneously. There was the water cooler. There was the thing that you talked about because you knew that everyone else was watching the same thing at the same time. There was some comfort in that.

Nowadays there’s a bit of an option paralysis in terms of where the competition is. On your phone, you have this option paralysis. Your competition is an infinite amount of options on Spotify, on YouTube, in video games, on Instagram. The attention for the consumer, the audience, the fan, what have you, is so thinly spread that it justifies why everything is such limited short content. That’s why shorts are popular. That’s why TikTok is popular. And you have these really bite size nuggets of content, and that’s the way this generation consumes content. It’s probably never been harder to get heard and get seen because of the amount of competition on one device. It’s overwhelming when you think about it. To be able to rise above that is a real challenge.

Noah Lekas: One solution for the noise is this idea of building cult brands, or a cult following. When I was younger, I would hear artists like Nick Cave described as a cult artist. Now brands want that. Success for many people is having this die hard advocate, or fan base. In the music world, you’ve obviously played with bands who are revered cult favorites. Rob Zombie fans buy everything he does. They are all in. So how has your experience been taking what you’ve learned in the music world and applying it to brands?

Rob Blasko: When you start trying to create a cult brand, you’re trying to solve a problem for a particular niche of people.

With Liquid Death, it was categorized as a cult thing at first because we identified the early adopters, but it quickly spiraled out from there. We did not think that water in a beer can with a skull on it was going to appeal to a suburban mom out of the gate. Right? It wouldn’t have. It makes sense that it does now because their kids are identifying with it because it makes them feel cool–it’s cool to drink Liquid Death. Then the parents are like, ‘It’s just water, so who cares? Whatever, right? I’m not scared of it anymore. . . .?

But if it’s not authentic, it won’t connect.

Liquid Death found a very active marketplace of bottled water, and they identified that there was no cool brand in the space whatsoever. Water is a multibillion dollar business. So could you look at any businesses like that and go like, oh, well, where is there something that isn’t cool? Let’s specifically make a brand that is cool and insert ourselves in that conversation. In terms of the brand itself, it is an honest extension of the authenticity of the owner. He is a righteously tattooed, metalhead, punkrocker, skateboarder. That initial identification was that cult audience–that is all those things, that’s who identified with it first. . . .

Noah Lekas: Do you have one takeaway lesson from your corner of niche cool that you think the larger branding world could or should learn from??

Rob Blasko: Break the rules. Look at it from a different perspective and understand what’s unique, and what the world needs from a unique perspective. I think that’s kind of it. Brands have to look at things from a different perspective, and push themselves a little further outside of the comfort zone because there’s a lot of noise you’ve got to cut above nowadays.”

Insights with Outsiders: Finn McKenty ?

“Finn has reached well over 9 million people globally with Youtube channel. With a background in brand, design, and punk rock, the channel was originally intended to serve alternative audiences with business, branding, and career insight. Now with over 500,000 subscribers, 80,000 Instagram followers, and a host of other impressive metrics, Finn has created a brand, leveraging his marketing and branding experience with DIY ethos that’s not just a content platform, it’s a content community.

Finn on Procter & Gamble’s approach to customer testing

‘What Procter and Gamble is incredibly good at is ask people what they want, but learn how to go several layers deeper and understand what they’re really saying. Because what people say they want is oftentimes different than what they actually want as revealed by their actions. And the people who are the best at this are able to parse out what you really want, what you’re telling me. You said X, but we have developed a process or we’re just innately good at understanding that what you meant when you said that is Y.’

On strategic work

‘There is one very simple question that all of us should ask ourselves at all times with everything we are doing, whether that is about managing our own careers or doing client work, or if you are on the client side when you’re thinking about the strategy work that you’re doing or branding, any of these things, the question you always have to ask yourself, and be brutally honest about it is ‘who gives a shit?’ You made this 75-page PDF, who gives a shit? I’m not saying that work is useless, but what I’m saying is if it stays a 75-page PDF that somebody paid a bunch of money for and only the five people who worked on that project ever really understand deeply and the rest of the people just skim it and that’s all it is, that’s a failure because nobody will ever give a shit about that work.’

On listening to your audience

‘If it’s ‘I’ and driven by me and by what I want, that’s going to be a tough pitch because at the end of the day I don’t get to decide what’s meaningful in this world. I might get lucky and maybe it so happens that what’s important to me is also important to hundreds of other people all over the world, but it might not be. And I don’t get to decide it and you don’t get to decide it. The people get to decide. And that’s the part where I think a lot of people maybe go wrong. It’s ultimately a self-centered, selfish point of view. If it’s not important to everyone else, then you’ve got to recognize that and make some adjustments.’

On his own brand strategy

‘The problem that I wanted to solve with my content was, for people who have the mindset, I wanted to give them the skillset. And I didn’t realize this at the time (and this is an example of a branding strategy framework that actually is meaningful), are you trying to give people the skillset, the mindset, or both? That’s a very important strategic decision that has huge consequences. In hindsight, that’s what I was trying to do. And the strategic mistake was trying to give people the skillset when what they really need is the mindset.’

‘We don’t get to decide what people think is meaningful. They decide.’”

Branding’s Perfect 10 – Less Branding

“The arms race we call branding is reaching its logical conclusion. From searing flesh to shaping language, and reframing reality, branding has always been a colonialistic venture. Today, every thought, action, activity, and identity is branded to an almost unfathomable degree, making it nearly impossible to have an autonomous sense of self outside of someone else’s narrative. Society is dominated by an uncountable hoard of heavily outfitted brands hellbent on defending their space and interjecting their often absurdly concocted perspectives into the most vital moments of our lives. Over the last few weeks, the question posed to me by Brandingmag, ‘What is the perfect future for branding?’ has left me with only one honest answer: less branding.

With no identifiable moral impetus, imperative, or ideology, brands dictate the very fabric of our society based solely on their ability to own it. . . .?

When information, truth, and facts are all branded, it crowds out discovery, growth, and curiosity because the conclusion of said pursuit is already written into the process of pursuing. Meaning, how the information will serve to cultivate an ownable and defensible place in culture is already baked into the decision to explore said information. In the hyper-branded world that we now live in, every activity and every action is building or diminishing your brand consistency. And if you think that is hyperbolic, I respectfully challenge you to name one activity that you regularly participate in that a data analyst or strategist wouldn’t be able to weave into a consumer segmentation that a narrative strategist couldn’t target you with. . . .

Unbrand the future

What if it’s as simple as ditching brandkind and rejoining mankind by serving the communities, cultures, and people groups that your business arose from, instead of attempting to leverage, package, and optimize them? A less-branded society provides the space that humans and their businesses need to grow, evolve, dream new ideas, find revolutionary solutions, and be of real value to their fellow citizens. It’s about being what you are rather than manufacturing who you think it’s most profitable to be.

To the business owners still reading, please believe that you don’t need to optimize and transform the business that you love into a lifestyle. You can be a service. You can be a product. You can be ‘Joe the shoemaker’ with a little shop downtown. You can be exactly what your community needs–all you have to do is listen to them. And your community will always be within earshot if you start employing them. Let’s turn and take a real step forward instead of stepping off the cliff. At the bottom of the ravine is nothing more than an Orwellian nightmare complete with rogue computers and disgruntled robots. Or, at the very least, it’s an ever-growing boneyard of brands who were so too busy commodifying culture to ever contribute to it.

In short, the future of branding will improve when we stop hiring colonialists to do a community-building job.”

Solidarity Is Not for Sale

(This is an article from 2020 that, in true evergreen Noah style, presents lessons that are as relevant today as they were then.)

“Marketers have an uncanny ability to redefine words and frame situations in their favor. The current global situation is no different. I’ve received a flurry of emails over the last week, aimed at convincing me that buying products I don’t need is an act of ‘solidarity’ and ‘being in this together.’ I wish I was more surprised. The relationship between crisis and opportunism is as old as time, but we should demand better. . . .

I’m sure you’ve seen at least a handful of ‘togetherness sales’ and ‘solidary sales.’ For many brands, the definition of ‘being in this together’ has always referred to the intersection of their product or service and your money. The strategy of a lifestyle brand is—essentially—to convince you to define the value of your life with their brand. While many would argue this definition in crass, I hold that a pandemic is no time for mincing words. Now, in the face of a global crisis, these same lifestyle brands are choosing to pivot that strategy by inauthentically adopting the character and tone of a caregiver archetype.

The strategy is to create a perception of solidarity. But it’s hollow when your platform is a coupon for 15% off silk blouses or a discounted ticket for a cruise ship under quarantine. In order to truly be a caregiver brand, you need to care more about helping your customers move through this crisis than moving your dead stock. Empathy and compassion must permeate your every action. And you had to start yesterday, not tomorrow. If you aren’t offering meaningful and relevant information and solutions, then you are distracting from true solidarity.?

Attempting to co-op solidarity is criminal. Solidarity is not a sales pitch. It is a battle cry, an ethos, and a bond between working people everywhere to band together against the hierarchical systems that seek to exploit them. Solidarity is about bolstering each other up in the face of maltreatment and persecution. It means locking arms in service of one another, not for a lifestyle brand. Companies and employers have no claim on solidarity, it belongs to workers who have spent the last 100+ years fighting, bleeding, and dying for it. Don’t disrespect the people, or the lasting severity of this pandemic by trying on language that is in direct conflict with your brand’s true interest.

In a world where cause marketing—the act of investing in social good for the purpose of advertising—is a regular extension of every marketing plan, and altruistic capitalism is the go-to move for billionaire PR spins, why should we expect a crisis to bring out better behavior in brands? We probably don’t, but we should.

Now is not the time to badger your email lists and social media followers with veiled offers and coupon drives. It is the time to offer real value to your customers, many of whom have lost jobs and are staring down the barrel of 6-8 weeks without pay, if not longer.

‘Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.’ — Henry David Thoreau

Everyone is going to take a hit, but maybe your brand could take that hit in a way that is actually useful. Instead of marking your non-essential products down 15%, you could donate to food banks, hand out hygienic gift bags, provide supplies to medical personnel, and offer materials or your manufacturing capabilities to produce the much-needed medical equipment. Invest in solutions and discount products that are actually useful for home quarantine and cleanliness efforts. . . .

Solidarity will never belong to a brand. It belongs to the people, and those people really need help.”

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