Ukraine should have lost its war with Russia by now. The data is very clear, and data doesn’t lie.
The data shows that Russia had overwhelming superiority to Ukraine in virtually every measurable area of military might.
At the beginning of the invasion Russia had about... -Five times the number of tanks that Ukraine had -Almost five times the number of active military personnel -More than ten times the number of fighter planes -Twelve Black Sea Combat vessels compared to Ukraine’s one -Over twice as many military reserves -Over ten times Ukraine’s military budget. But, as of now, Russia is getting pummeled. -They have lost almost five times as many tanks as Ukraine -Combining all types of heavy military equipment (tanks, transport vehicles, airplanes, helicopters, etc) Russia has lost about four times as many units -More than a third of all equipment lost by the Russians was either abandoned by their forces or captured by the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are now using that equipment against the Russians -And, of course, the Russians are getting their asses kicked on the ground every day There is a point here for the data-obsessed marketing industry. I won’t insult you by spelling it out.No TikTok Account? No Problem. They’re Following You Anyway.
There are so many unknowns about online tracking that it is hard to single out one in particular. But if I had to choose one online mystery that I’d like an answer to it’s TikTok.Here’s what we know:
-TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company headquartered in Beijing.
-China has the most crushing and tyrannical surveillance system the world has ever known.
-TikTok has admitted that data collected in the US is accessible to some employees in China
-There have been credible press reports of close contact and sharing of data assets between US and Chinese teams within ByteDance
-No one in China says “no” to the government.
We have a delicate balancing act. We don’t want to be guilty of hysterical “yellow peril” nonsense, but we do want to know what the hell the Chinese government’s role is in collecting information about us. Is this just one more example of an adtech company abusing personal privacy? Or is it one of the greatest spying operations in history being conducted in broad daylight?
You don’t have to be a Google or Facebook user to have them following your every move. They use tracking pixels they place on other websites that infect you when you visit those websites. Google and Facebook follow you around and collect information about you whether you are a Facebook subscriber, Google user, or not.
BTW, TikTok recently paid a fine of $29 million in the UK for harvesting data from kids under 13. Lovely people these adtech creeps.
Worst Re-Brand in History?
This chart from The Wall Street Journal raises an interesting question. Has there ever been a more disastrous re-brand than Meta?
But the trick has not gone well. Zuckerberg now has two disreputable brands on his hands.
The month before Z-bag announced the re-brand, Facebook had reported year-over-year revenue growth over 40%. Since the announcement the company has lost about 60% of its value.
It’s pretty clear that the Facebook social media platform is in free fall, if not a death spiral. The question is, will betting the farm on the metaverse, whatever the hell that is, bail them out?
As the Journal says, “The former Facebook’s real world will long haunt its virtual one.”
Tim Cook Is Meta-Averse As you know, Apple and Facebook are mortal enemies. According to The Verge, last week Apple CEO Tim Cook aired his skepticism about Facebook’s metaverse obsession.
“I always think it’s important that people understand what something is... And I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.”
But the real way you can tell how dicey the whole metaverse thing is is to watch the marketing lemmings dive head first into the deep end. There isn’t a marketing dimwit in the known universe who isn’t finishing every sentence with the word “metaverse.” It’s this year’s crypto-NFT shiny object..
Why everyone in the $127 billion sneaker business wants to work with Salehe Bembury
BY MARK WILSON
It’s impossible to walk with Salehe Bembury and not stare at everyone’s feet.
The asphalt is stick-to-your-soles hot as Bembury, one of the most famous shoe designers on the planet, threads his way through the stalls of Pasadena, California’s legendary Rose Bowl Flea Market where, once a month for the last 50 years, designers like Christian Louboutin have gone elbowto-elbow with bargain hunters in search of unique treasures. The thousands of stalls filled with millions of knickknacks feel, in many ways, more oppressive than the blacktop, a seemingly endless array of faded Yu-Ghi-Oh tees and frayed Lakers jerseys, mid-century dining tables, and 35 mm-era Olympus point-and-shoots. But as we walk, a quick glance beneath the card tables reveals a whole other world, a tacit language gestured through our footwear.
Gen Z goths and Gen X home-improvement types rock the same black Vans Old Skools (though in the latter case, they’re bruised and ripped at the seams). The millennialswith-a-job wear stock Air Max 90s and Yeezy 350s. Then there are the hypebeasts who have chosen something quirkier to signal their elevated taste. When we turn a corner, three young men are waiting—wearing, respectively, mintcondition Midnight Navy Nike Dunks, Off-White x Jordan 5 SP “Sails,” and turquoise New Balance “Water Be the Guide” sneakers—and that’s when I realize that this group isn’t here by coincidence.
I’m a professional design writer, and I can’t tell you who designed my car, my couch, my refrigerator, my home. But I do know that the 6-foot-3 man standing next to me created those shaggy-textured New Balances, as does everyone else in that group. They can also tell you that it’s the second most sought-after color combination of his reinterpretation of New Balance’s 2002R shoe, meaning it’ll run you about $300 on a resale site. The most coveted version—Bembury’s Peace Be the Journey, which captures the golden hues of Antelope Canyon—can fetch more than double that.
Bembury’s fans are the freshest dorks the eye has ever seen. They don’t ask, “Are you Salehe Bembury?!?” before sheepishly requesting a selfie because they already know— recognizing Bembury from his Instagram posts, where he’s grown his follower count from virtually a standing start to more than 541,000 in the past two years, and confirming his celebrity by the shoes he’s wearing. Not just his impossibleto-get Crocs Pollex, but Pollex in the black “Sasquatch” colorway, which at this moment, haven’t yet shipped to the public. (Another tell: Bembury is conspicuously holding a just-purchased, single size 22 high-top that was made for the one person who could wear it, Shaquille O’Neal.)
Bembury, who carries himself with a contemplative presence, perks up, smiles, and leans in for some photos. Only afterward does he confess to me how uncomfortable he is with his new recognizability, how the only time strangers usually come up to you to talk is when they’re drunk on Halloween.
“I low-key became famous during COVID. So it went from, like, no one knows who I was to, oh, lockdown is over, suddenly we can go outside again. And everyone’s like, ‘Salehe?’” Bembury says. “I’ve got a good poker face, but it just throws me because I’m not that far removed from being that person. I remember being at the Rose Bowl four or five years ago and seeing Jeremy Scott!”
Shoes are the only piece of apparel that keep their shape after you take them off—meaning sneakers are as much sculptures as they are clothing. Yet, as far as art goes, they’re relatively affordable, which is why sneakers have become such a democratizing cultural force of our era, driving a $127 billion global market. Constructed of high-performance materials that stretch around and support various parts of the foot with pinpoint accuracy, sneakers are also featherweight marvels of biomechanical physics. Whereas creatives of the 1960s dreamed of designing a chair, and in the 1990s and 2000s they strove to mold plastic and aluminum around consumer electronics, today they aspire to stamp their name on a sneaker. Bembury is the perfect embodiment of this new kind of celebrity industrial designer, as fluent in fashion as function.
To understand the significance of Bembury’s contributions to footwear, you need to understand how sneakers are made. The bottom of the shoe is generally created from molded foam, for bounce, while the top is crafted from one of countless types of stitched and woven textiles (necessary to conform to your rounded foot). To change a colorway— altering the hue of the fabric upper—is simple for most shoe companies. But to change a silhouette requires going back to the last (the technical term for a foot form) to fashion the upper, while developing new molds for the bottom “outsole.” This is a major undertaking within industrial production because it requires retooling an assembly line and making a four-to-five-figure investment for each individual size that’s offered, simply to build injection molds for each size of outsole. From a financial standpoint, the lazier a sneaker collab, the better for a company—especially because most sneaker collaborators are either fashion designers or celebrities: people who don’t actually know how to build a shoe in the first place.
Bembury has created new molds at Crocs and New Balance over the past few years, and his slate of 2022 collaborations includes other iconic or cult brands such as Vans and Brandblack. But Bembury’s ambition extends far beyond creating new silhouettes across the industry. While most industrial designers are inept when it comes to fashion (consider that Apple, the preeminent industrial-design firm, makes just one fashion-oriented product, the Apple Watch), Bembury is not, allowing him to turn the model of success inside out. Sneakers aren’t his reward for fame in another field but rather his foundation, his muse—from which he’s growing into outdoor gear, home goods, and high fashion. (The first work from his partnership with Moncler is slated for 2023.) “I think I’m always gonna introduce myself as a footwear designer, no matter what I make,” Bembury tells me, reflecting the primacy that sneakers hold in popular culture. “Yeah, there’s something nice about that.”
Slipping on Bembury’s Crocs Pollex is a strange sensation. The undulating, ridged mules, which he designed for the $2 billion–plus footwear brand and initially released in December 2021, feel less like wearing brand-new shoes made overseas than a fresh pair of feet shipped from another planet. The aesthetic invites the world to comment on your feet—and boy, do they comment.
Only when you walk through something forgiving—sand, water, a high-pile carpet—do you realize the degree to which Bembury has put his signature on the shoe. The Pollex’s impression left in your wake clearly resembles a thumbprint. Bembury’s, to be precise, for those in the know. So you’re not just making your own mark on the trails you blaze but you’re spreading Bembury’s. (Technically, the design is a combination of three of his fingertips, so you cannot hold up a Pollex to unlock Bembury’s iPhone.)
At the same time, the form of the Pollex contains its function. Bembury beefed up the Crocs’s treads to offer a surprising amount of grip, and reinforced its heel and toe with rubber to stand up better to wear. He chose a nylon strap for durability, and redesigned its connection joints like vintage military clips, a nod to the Pollex’s utilitarian function. He even tweaked the ventilation holes to ensure the wearer’s three smaller toes remain covered in the shoe. He went so far as to draw a diagram of the human foot to convince Crocs of this necessity, demonstrating that people’s first two toes are generally the most attractive, whereas the other three are often bent and unkempt.
“I don’t want to design this beautiful thing, and then the most raisin pinky toes are popping out of one of the holes,” he says, laughing, before noting that it’s a serious concern because a single bad photo of the Pollex could turn into a trend-killing meme on Instagram. When I point out that it sounds absurd for a shoe to be designed with the specific function to look good on the internet, Bembury doesn’t budge: “I would argue that you might actually pick up your phone before you look at your feet when you wake up.”
Since Crocs launched, in 2002, it has relied upon the same Danish clog mold—and Bembury was the first external designer offered the license to change it. But what few people realize is that Crocs are a uniquely made shoe: They’re created from molded EVA foam that eschewsstitching and fabrics for cheap and easy injection-molded production. Not until Bembury’s former employer Yeezy debuted the landmark Foam Runner—three years after Bembury left Yeezy and almost 20 years after the original Croc debuted—did anyone take that technology and create a significant new silhouette that would be impossible to produce through other production methods.
Once the industry went to foam, shoes became clay, and no designer has seized on the opportunity created by this revolution more than Bembury. No shoe has encapsulated that fact better than the Pollex, which followed Ye’s streamlined, future-forward design with that biological ripple inspired by his fingerprints. Whereas the Foam Runner counterintuitively popularized Crocs, doubling the company’s revenue since 2019, the Pollex popularized a new wave of organic clogs in 2022.
That is, in fact, the Shaquille O’Neal shoe on top of Bembury’s cubbies. [Photo: Obidigbo Nzeribe] During the reporting of this story this spring and summer, I watched the impact that the Pollex had on the market. Half a dozen imitative products cropped up from shameless shoe labels—even Crocs itself. “[It’s] like they gave it to an associate designer, and they’re like, ‘Hey, design a Croc that’s inspired by the Pollex, but it doesn’t look like the Pollex,’” says Bembury. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, they just took my design identity and, like, bastardized it.’”
Instead of stewing, Bembury confronted Crocs brand president Michelle Poole directly, later telling a fan who asked about the similarities on Instagram that “I recently spoke to [her]about it privately.” Crocs declined to make an executive available for this article, but a spokesperson offered a statement from Poole praising Bembury for “embracing innovation.” Ultimately, Bembury found peace, recognizing that Crocs is promoting his shoe more than the knockoff.
Bembury was obsessed with objects from an early age. He recalls being besotted by one of the first “As Seen on TV” products: the Penalli Pen Set, a plebeian fountain and ballpoint pen kit bundled with replacement parts that he bought with his own money. “Surely no teenager was buying pens!” Bembury exclaims. “That was some shit that only a designer would do.”
Coming of age in 1990s New York City—Bembury grew up in Tribeca, with a father who was a photographer and mother who, despite working in the corporate world, “really aggressively encouraged individuality and creativity”— sneakers were naturally his favorite. At the time, shoe fanatics existed in a speakeasy streetwear culture, tracking down hidden storefronts that sold deadstock or that served as proto pop-up stores selling limited-edition offerings. But Bembury didn’t just want to collect the shoes; he wanted to make them.
With the aspiration to one day become an anonymous associate designer at Nike, Bembury majored in industrial design at Syracuse University, learning how to create goods for mass production. The first object he ever designed was for his senior thesis: the whimsically named “U-shi Sushi knives.” He lathed the blades by hand, and built a handle that allowed a sushi chef to change its texture, weight, and color.
Bembury was ecstatic when he landed his first job designing shoes at Payless in 2009. He then did stints at the direct-toconsumer brand Greats and Yeezy, before spending three years building Versace’s sneaker business from scratch. Bembury landed the job after reaching out to the company on LinkedIn, and working with just a single assistant, he went on to release dozens of Versace sneakers—including the haute Chain Reaction (2018), which featured a marshmallowy outsole imprinted with a Cuban link chain that GQ lauded as “the waviest sneaker of the year.”
As the world went into pandemic-induced lockdown in 2020, Bembury, like many others, had time to assess his life. He’d always loved hiking, but now he made it a ritual, traversing the hills of Los Angeles, frequently alone, to meditate. He lost 50 pounds, started spending more time chronicling his work on Instagram, and launched his own side project in December 2020, called Spunge, to make clothing, accessories, and even a throw pillow.
His lifestyle changes informed his perspective as a designer who, despite licking the cupcake frosting off the biggest brands in footwear, developed a style that would soon became instantly recognizable for its rugged, organic designs that embrace outdoor activity. “I often joke that if I didn’t hike, I don’t know what my design inspiration would be!” he says.
“So much of the streetwear world has been dominated by ultramasculine figures, and a toughness,” says Brendon Babenzien, who led design at Supreme for more than a decade and is now the creative director for J.Crew’s menswear. That hard edge, in Supreme’s case, was born from the brutal sport of skateboarding, which forces you to endure pain and explore gritty parts of the city to participate. But Bembury designs streetwear that is inspired by nature and function, with products that can, in true made-for-TV fashion, be both clever and self-aware. “His approachability and that whimsy seem to go hand in hand,” Babenzien says.
Why You Need a Branded Podcast (And How to Create and Brand Yours)
Podcasts are among the fastest-growing forms of popular media, and branded podcasts are no exception. Immersive and intimate, they constitute a rare opportunity for businesses to connect with listeners without being too invasive.
By Phil Caplin
In branded podcasts, the branding stands out from its surrounding content, helping to land the messaging better than global radio benchmarks, where brand mentions score 5% lower on average, a BBC study found. Brand mentions in branded podcasts deliver, on average, 16% higher engagement and 12% higher memory encoding than the adjacent content.
So, branded podcasts are a proven and effective way to achieve more brand awareness and grow your audience successfully.
But where should you start? What exactly is a branded podcast, what are the benefits, and where do you start with branding one? This article will tell you what you need to know about branded podcasts.
What Is a Branded Podcast?
In 2018, Fast Company described branded podcasts as “the ads people actually want to listen to.”
As the name suggests, a branded podcast is—drum roll please—the official podcast of a brand .
In other words, a business or company decided to launch its own podcast in which it is likely to discuss relevant industry topics and insights and mention its own brand, products, or services from time to time.
Why Start a Branded Podcast?
In the US, many families have incorporated podcasts into their everyday routines, and the use of the medium is set to grow over the coming years. Therefore, considering a branded podcast as part of your marketing strategy is a logical idea.
If you don’t do so, your competitors surely will—and they are likely to attract more customers and conversions for their company.
A full 75% of podcast listeners respond to the sponsored messages they hear in a podcast, including the branded messages, NPR has reported. That is significant because it shows that podcast promotions can sound natural and that potential customers are willing to act on them.
How to Brand a Podcast
1. Define your goal or objective for your branded podcast
Business podcasts usually exist to create a positive impression of that business, which means that subscriptions, downloads, or chart positions might not be as important as KPIs that consider brand awareness, engagement, and authority.
You might want your podcast to work as a tool to gain vital feedback, or you could use it to become a thought leader in your industry, or perhaps secure a dream guest that will generate value for your listeners.
2. Establish your ideal branded podcast audience
Like a customer persona, an ideal listener is the one person who represents your listeners, and you should outline the person’s age, occupation, gender, location, job, and interests.
Suppose your overall goal is brand elevation, and your 59 target audience is female CEOs age 35-45. In that case, you’ll create a branded podcast that is hyper-focused on that specific audience’s interests.
3. Establish your branding
In other words, why are you here? Podcasters rely heavily on their audio, but first impressions matter when branding is the concern.
Consider nonaudio elements: strong and visually powerful podcast elements are vital for getting your podcast noticed in the first place. That might include colorful fonts, quirky descriptions, and an inimitable tone of voice.
Use your brand guidelines to ensure you are getting branding right. If you are a legal advice company, you will likely want a professional and serious tone of voice, whereas a makeup brand is likely to want something more personable and fun. Jingles can also help distinguish a podcast at the start and end of an episode.
Research your competitors’ cover art and note which ones would attract you to listen. With 700,000+ podcasts out there, it’s never been more important to stand out from the crowd—and a large part of that comes down to unique and compelling branding.
The Benefits of a Branded Podcast
The nature of podcasting is precisely what makes it so beneficial for a brand: The conversational and intimate way the content is conveyed helps create an optimum environment for engagement and brand awareness.
The BBC report referenced earlier found that there are many benefits of a branded podcast:
• They achieve unique cut-through with ad avoiders. Users who tend to avoid ads were 22% more engaged with podcast brand mentions than those on TV.
• Their listeners are active. A full 94% of listeners consume podcasts while doing something else, whether driving, exercising, or housework. Strangely enough, that activity makes listeners more receptive to brand messaging. The other activity helps keep the brain occupied, which enhances its ability to absorb information at a level of “low-involvement processing,” meaning the messaging is retained for much longer.
• They encourage positive association. Listeners create subconscious associations with brands based on words they hear in their podcasts. For example, if the word “innovative” is used repeatedly, listeners are likely to refer to the sponsor as “innovative” too, showing that they instinctively link the brand with the message.
• They offer additional airtime for brands. People consume podcasts during windows of time when they would not usually be available to traditional advertising. That is an enviable commercial opportunity, as it adds a new target to the media mix.
To elaborate further on that last point: only 20% of audiences read an entire blog article; and although videos around the 2-minute mark receive 70% engagement, that dramatically drops at the 6-minute mark to 50%, and below 50% after the 10-minute mark.
Although 70% is a good consumption rate, the length of content across which you can maintain user attention is minimal. The average length of a podcast is 28.5 minutes; it can hold the listener’s attention for 14 times longer—an impressive length and engagement rate for any branded content.