• Hyper
  • Posts
  • What's in our bookmarks this week

What's in our bookmarks this week

Author

Hyper
December 07, 2024

It’s been a hell of a few weeks.

Black Friday’s over. Oren just finished running brand workshops in Napa and Austin, while Clayton’s trying to figure out how to keep operating at the same pace with two young kids at home. To be honest, it’s still incredible that we get to do what we do every day, and we want to say thanks.

Thanks for following along, watching our videos, reading our emails, buying our reports, and supporting us. It means more than you know, and we’re constantly trying to improve the content game next year.

Quick note: We’re in the process of completing our Best of 2024 Awards (something we did for the first time last year), and we’d love for you to submit any ideas that you think make the cut:

  • Best product drop

  • Best retail experience

  • Best collabs

  • etc.

Send ‘em to us at [email protected]

How do you know when a brand is cooked?

If you’ve spent enough time scrolling the newsfeeds this year, you’ve likely been served a sponsored ad from Aimé Leon Dore.

No, that’s not a typo.

ALD’s been running ads for a bit now (I’m sure someone could pull the numbers on Meta for me), which is funny because they got their first 1 million followers without running paid ads on Instagram.

Someone posted this screenshot on Twitter, and the tweet went viral, served with a myriad of comments that went like “ALD is so cooked bro 😭 “

It’s a fascinating thought.

How do you know when a brand is cooked?

Cooked is relative to the current zeitgeist, or the last decade on the internet, where information everywhere cheapens the experience of real brand connection.

For ALD, there was a time (circa 2018-2021), when the way they marketed, the campaigns they ran, the seasonal collections, the styling, everything… it all felt novel and exciting for what it was. They poured creative energy into the brand in a way few other brands did.

They could do no wrong.

Now, it seems (at least to American consumers) it’s the opposite.

Is it the ads? Was it because they took the bag from LVMH? How do we know they’re cooked?

There’s a great line from Bobby Hundreds in his well-known book, “This is Not a T-Shirt”, where Bobby recalls a DM interaction with an early fan who told him The Hundreds had sold out for doing collabs with Adidas or “taking the bag”.

But that’s the problem with scale, isn’t it?

If you want to build a business—let alone grow or scale it—there’s always going to be someone you isolate, move past, or piss off.

What’s ALD supposed to do? Not grow?

For a brand that’s easily doing mid-eight figures in revenue, when enough people know you exist, there’s always enough people to not like what you do.

And you can’t really avoid that.

This is how you drop a new product

So many sports franchises (ahem, Man United, ahem) fall flat when they announce or introduce new kits.

Every season, without fail, the creative direction, the styling, the photography. All of it is wrong. For companies with such large budgets to produce great content around their products, it’s a little baffling.

And then there’s Portland Hearts of Pine.

The semi-pro club from Portland, Maine, hasn’t even played a match, yet its inaugural jersey announcement is incredibly good.

Why? It’s human, and it feels connected to real people. Given the rise of sport as a global commercial opportunity, the olden days of fans who supported their hometown club have dwindled.

But I think so many of these larger clubs miss the mark because they neglect their roots.

Portland’s club sourced the models from within their community, and there’s a realness that we can all learn from.

Now I need to buy this kit from a team I’ll never support!

Don’t tell us, show us

There’s an art to showing customers how good your product is, and this product video from Mertra, showcasing their newest heat-reactive puffer, perfectly represents that.

Anyone can take a cool photo of a model in a plain backdrop, and they could’ve stopped there. Looks like it worked too, because the jacket is sold out.

There is a full video in the link above, but here are the screen grabs.

The Best of 2024 Awards

Oren and I are putting together our picks for the best of 2024 across categories. We did this last year and felt it was a blast looking at great memes, product drops, collabs, brand launches, internet moments, etc.

So, we want to do it again before the end of this year, and we’d love to get your perspective on what you liked and disliked about brands and products in 2024.

If you’ve got an idea, email it to us [email protected]

A selection of links to videos, articles, brands, websites, products, and ideas worth considering.

Want to finish the year strong?

The Cut30 squad is offering a free seven-day challenge to learn to make short-form videos for yourself or your brand. The challenge kicks off Tuesday.

You’ll complete three different types of videos, with support and training from Oren, Landforce, and Alex Garcia along the way.