Starting Line
We were sitting in the audience at TrailCon this summer when Matt Sharkey wrapped up his panel by recommending both Second Nature and The Brand Report to the audience. In that moment, it hit us: “we need to get Dan Coe on the podcast!”
Some Things Never Change
Dan Coe, who writes The Brand Report and spent years at Nike, joins Aaron and Dylan to break down the “primitives” he believes decide whether a young brand survives. Marketing technology keeps changing and the funnel has collapsed into a single swipe, but Dan argues that why people buy hasn’t changed, and that the basics are where small brands can beat big ones.
They work through three of them: knowing your customer down to a single person and being for someone rather than everyone; showing that customer the brand is for people like them through episodic content, with examples from Huckberry, Burton, Bandit’s Unsponsored Project and a cafe that gives free coffee to anyone who dances; and selling transformation instead of features.
Along the way they get into whether brands should resist growing beyond their core, what brand marketing is really for and how to measure it, what a brand and a community actually are, and why Dan chose depth over dopamine for The Brand Report.
Check This Out
Our friends at Popfly have been hard at work, launching Popfly Shop, a curated site where the creators that work with Popfly have all put together articles and recommendations for all of their favorite gear. Check out Aaron’s shop here!
If you’re an athlete or creator that wants to get in on the platform (which we strongly recommend, especially now), here’s a link to get it going:
We’d like to thank Popfly for their continued support of the podcast, and if you haven’t already, now might be a good time to chat with their team. This Popfly Shop project is a big release, but there’s some other stuff coming for Brands and Retail very soon that you should get in on. Hit the link below and get a custom demo:
Job Of The Week
🏔️ SENIQ is hiring a Marketing Manager. We are huge fans of this crew, this would be an incredible team to join!
🏆 Our friends at Popfly are hiring a new Account Manager.
👉 Tracksmith has an open role for Merchandise Planner based out of Boston.
⚽️ The New York Red Bulls are looking for a Senior Director of Brand Marketing.
Show Notes
Article Of The Week
Today’s guest on the podcast, Dan Coe, is a prolific writer and publishes incredible deep dives on The Brand Report. We couldn’t pick just one article, but just trust us, they’re all incredible. Click the link and check out his writing, you won’t regret it.
BPC - Brand, Product, Content
BPC is our closing segment where we share Brands we’ve discovered, Products we’re using and Content that we love.
📕 Primal Intelligence (Book)
🎙️ Rick Rubin x Angus Fletcher podcast
🤘 Sclar PBJ Hardtail
✈️ Sondur Travel
⚽️ Kylian Mbappe x On
Thank You
A huge thank you to Dan for joining us on the podcast this week - stay tuned for next week’s episode, we have two co-founders who have been on an absolute rocket ship the past few years, and aren’t showing any sign of slowing down. It’s a fascinating conversation about their origin story (which is very different from all the other founders in their category) as well as their approach to scaling the business.