Lots of new faces this week! If you are here from the tech pack journal PDF I did with Crease Group, you can get the file below. Special thanks to Crease Group for putting this together and helping produce the journals we gave out, make sure to check them out for any manufacturing needs!

Sketch templates: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/04kseh52ngcqvptsz3b8e/Crease-Group-Sketch-Templates.pdf

If you’re new here, this newsletter we talk about brand & creative strategy and making products, with an eye on what’s culturally relevant and keeping our audience as far ahead of the game as possible.

It is written by myself (Oren) in California and Clayton, in Amsterdam, sharing our unique, unfiltered perspectives. In personal news, Clayton is on red cap watch and Oren dropped a Black Friday prep checklist for website updates and email marketing with our friends ant Squarespace.

In this edition we cover

• better customer journeys

• ComplexCon scene report

• The death of the marketing middle class

Let’s begin!

Better Customer Journeys

Any brand with a product that has recurring purchases or that is focused on continuing sales over time to build consumer lifetime value has an optimization problem.

Everyone consumes products differently. Groups of consumers purchase in different patterns, at different times.

But automation tools and campaigns try to lump them in the same buckets, while the answer to correctly taking advantage of this lies in data you already have.

This is where Black Crow comes in.

They train a custom AI model for each brand to predict when each of their customers are most likely to buy again—if given a nudge—and then automatically trigger SMS and email flows at the best time for each customer.

They even identify who is most likely to become a subscriber versus purchase ad-hoc. 

Then each of these different segments gets sent to a unique, personalized storefront, recommending the products they’re most likely to buy, and increasing overall conversion rates.

Example storefront is here (but you may have even seen a real one out in the wild if you’ve bought something from one of the 300+ brands they work with):

The future for ecommerce brands who really leverage their data is tailored customer journeys for different types of consumers, all with less marketing guesswork and time wasted building complex flows.

In honor of Cyber Monday on 12/2, Black Crow is offering a $122 gift card—with 230 different options they can choose from—to Shopify brands with $2M+ in GMV that take a demo.

BOOK A DEMO WITH BLACK CROW

^{This segment is in partnership with Black Crow}

ComplexCon Scene Report

So this last week, I brought my new Valuable Studios brand to ComplexCon. It was an absolute scene, thousands of thousands of people, in particular the 18-25 year old youth of Las Vegas and surrounding states, all there to buy streetwear, meet stars from the internet, and catch a general vibe.

Some insights from the show:

- The kids we’re lined up deeeeep for Young Thug’s Sp5der (for reasons I cannot comprehend, it’s both not that tight and not that well made, but I guess… Young Thug) and Hellstar (more understandable), honorable mention to Hardstone (a collaboration between Don Tolliver and Guess, shout out Guess for tapping in smartly), Vetements (??) and Ditch 

- The adults were at Satoshi Nakamoto (grown men we’re running around doing scavenger hunts for their Vans collab), Vandy the Pink (absolute legend, who had a Pokemon collab release at the show) and Hidden

- There was a very wide array of personal style, but rhinestones, gems and crystals abound

- Grunge, metal, washed, distressed everything. I got a lot of eyebrows when I launched over-distressed gear this year, but it was everywhere with the hot brands and the styled kids at the show

- Tide (yes, the detergent) had a super solid corporate booth, they partnered with the vintage/thrift side of the con for some bin digging and customization. Separate video on this soon!

I will tell you, there was a LOT of sales at this show. Rumors have Travis Scott doing 8 figures (I could see thistc), I sold everything I brought besides a few odd sizes, think we came back with maybe 10 things of the massive boxes we brought. For context our booth was lightly popping at best… Brands we’re putting up numbers, connecting with fans, and there was a ton of new brand discovery at the show.

The IRL cultural moments are bigger than ever.

There is a lot of opportunity for savvy corporate connections here - especially in the creative industry and around ecom - lot of designers, aspiring designers, small brand owners there, tons of creators. Then same thing for food or bev companies trying to do interesting collabs, the Chips Ahoy booth was mobbed just by virtue of being there (and having a massive cookie).

They’re running one of these in Hong Kong in March too, I am angling to see if I can do something interesting there as well.

One of the new Valuable Studios 2025 items I debuted at the show is below, Japanese Fabric, produced by Crease Group, graphic design as always by Darkroom.

Waitlist for launch (Jan/Feb) here: https://valuablestudios.com/early

The Death of the Marketing Middle Class

If it seems to you like a lot of marketing is better than ever, and a lot of brands are absolutely bombing… you’re not alone.

We are seeing the death of the marketing middle class.

An entire generation of marketers 30-40 years old who should be Director or VP level, have realized their skill sets are worth far more than their pay scale, and they operate their own brands, are entrepreneurs or creators. A good marketer skillset, especially if they get an audience, has to be paid sums that make them the highest paid at the company in many cases, and a lot of existing infrastructure in businesses hasn’t come around to it.

This exodus of management has lead those that are still in the workforce in that position, to have their choice of work. And with so many interesting, cool newer brands doing amazing work…l they choose to work there versus at big agencies or traditional companies. This leads to a lot of great work at these spots, and no one to facilitate it in businessses missing the sauce.

And this leads to a major gap. Traditionally these in-between generation would help Gen-Z be able to level up with experience and mentorship in the workforce. Instead theres a big gap of comms between the CMO level and the Gen-Z workforce, with no one to bridge the gap to help explain who certain modern campaigns will do well, and cultural differences of work some teams arent growing out of.

The out of touch… stay out of touch. The frustrated, stay frustrated. And work gets approved that’s… bad. North Face’s terrible manifesto, the god-awful Jaguar rebrand ad, the Coca Cola spiced launch…. This won’t stop.

I (very positively, all things considered, I want to focus on identifying and solving gaps versus hating) break this down in the below videos.

The worst marketing of 2024

And a specific dive on the Jaguar scenario

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.

• The Guide to Making Great merchandise — 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