This week Clayton talked about physical spaces as a part of your brand story, and Oren looked at what it takes to make a custom zipper pull, getting a price breakdown with manufacturer Crease Group.

In this edition of HYPER we talk about designing website for visitors who are your true fans, creating and implementing a brand vibe, deadstock suppliers and a few of our favorite bookmarks.

Let’s begin.

Cultural reactions to our overstimulated human experience are dominating the summer. No amount of media articles or X personality jokes can hold back the week-over-week explosion in run club attendance, the desperate yearnings of people of multiple generations to have their Brat summer, the general feeling of people to want to get outside amongst others, and feel something.

Real life connections, dating outside of apps, moving from parasocial interactions on livestreams or social media to shared experiences in real life… there is more of a demand for experiences, workshops, hangouts, popups and moments than there are services, brands or locations to hold them. The generations who create so much want to create the reality shows themselves rather than watch them. We don’t want to hear someone speak to us at a conference, we want to share ideas together, workshop, finish something off the list. The very notion of experiences and how we and brands participate in them are changing.

There’s a noticeable shift in the air from saving bookmarks in your social media to doing something about them, an influx of Partiful invites, a general sense of chaos that feels right for Summer 2024.

For much of the last 12 months, brands and marketing personalities have talked endlessly about “community”, but it has become increasingly noticeable that to really activate that idea, there needs to be shared moments in-real life, or it’s all just a cosplay of something happening, of a shared movement. The energy is coming from the people doing things together, and its a significant shift.

Let us know what you’re seeing where you’re at in the world.

The 1% of Visitors

For many brands sales mostly come through internet channels - Amazon, TikTok shop, or retail channels where they’re presented as the retailer sees fit, not the brand. And now on social media its more about the formats that work, the creator’s vision or the affiliate’s vision, making something that works for the algorithms and succeeds for the brand instead of something 100% for the brand vision.

So website traffic becomes one of the last controllable experiences, where there’s a bit of a linger, an opportunity for more, for a creating a special interaction, on your brands terms. Making moments that are worth the extra minute for someone to browse. So today we’re going to spend a little time on a page that doesn’t get the love it should, the About.

The About page on your website might only be visited by a fraction of your web traffic, but anyone who visits this part of your site cares about your story. They should leave the page:

• Understanding your value proposition

• Getting a glimpse of the team and their personalities

• Being immersed in video and graphics that shows what makes you special

• Genuinely impressed by the care you put in your brands and products

Our friends at Vaan Group made an overview of different about pages and the strategy for making the most of the consumers that care enough to visit.

About Page References

Creating a Brand Vibe

This week Oren took a long-form video look at how a brand feel is formed, from the confluence of values and imagery, to application of imagery onto product, leading up to the full release of his new Valuable Studios. One of the core functions of the new Valuable project is to be a “brand that builds brands” providing a more “open source” look at behind the scenes to help others build. As part of our focus to make tactical content at HYPER, we’ll spotlight some of the brand building process directly.

Deadstock Suppliers

​This week Oren put out a video looking at deadstock as a fun, more sustainable (but definitely more work intensive) approach to collections, merch lines for brands and creators, or as the foundation of a new brand concept.

A few providers:

​https://vintagepacks.com/​

​https://thriftvintagefashion.com/pages/bales
​​
​https://lavintage.com/

Kitchen Sink

The confluence of AI and brand identity (we’re gonna dive deeper into this in August).

Oakley is reading the zeitgeist

If Hawk Tuah can have surprisingly decent merch quickly, why can’t your brand?

A reminder of how far Alani Nu has come visually

Always a fan of cross-category design inspiration:

Hyper Reports

Check out our market reports. We spend many hours researching markets, categories, and brands & products within the consumer space so you don’t have to.

• How to Source Blanks 101 — HERE — a guide to finding and producing your own merch

• Reports on Running, Golf, and Tennis — HERE — a guide to each sport, the market opportunities, and how to launch your own brand

Inquiries? Shoot us a note here: [email protected]

We’d love to chat!

Oren & Clayton ❤️ you