The Magic of Cultural Hitmaking With Ana Andjelic

FC - 382 - Ana Andjelic - Episode

Phillip: [00:01:17] Welcome to Future Commerce podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:01:22] I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:23] And today, we have a very special guest. Ana Andjelic is a global brand executive and the author of books like The Business of Aspiration. And today, we are gonna cover her next big hit, the next big hit it's called Hitmakers. Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture. It's out today from Rutledge, and we're gonna get into it. And this is a big moment for us, Brian. We've been talking about Ana for ages.

Brian: [00:01:50] I know. I can't believe we got her. I can't believe we got her.I'm so excited.

Phillip: [00:01:55] I know. I know. And welcome to the show, Ana. And for those who aren't already  acquainted, tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us your CV and tell us  what you've been up to, what you're working on.

Ana: [00:02:06] A combination of things, which is, I guess, always a good to be a polymath these days. So I have a PhD in sociology where I studied sociology of innovation, but have always been focused on brands and brand building and how that practice evolved over the years. Worked at digital agencies, worked at creative agencies, and then focused on luxury fashion and life style practice and went brand side with the Chief Brand Officer job at Rebecca Minkoff, then Mansur Gavriel, Banana Republic, and Esprit. I wrote two books. The first one, The Business of Aspiration in 2020, and now the second one in December '24, Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture.

Phillip: [00:02:56] Right here.

Ana: [00:02:56] I run a newsletter, Sociology of Business every Monday. You were talking about me about newsletters. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:03:04] Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Ana: [00:03:07] And then also work a lot... I have a lot of advisory roles, a lot of consulting roles with clients as well as technology, CPG, footwear.

Phillip: [00:03:20] Great. I'm so excited to get into your new book here today, and I'll show it here for the YouTube. It is called Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture. And you had a short run podcast of the same name for a bit. Is that right?

Ana: [00:03:36] Yeah. Because we wanted to create the world, as we talked a little bit before probably off the record. It's basically how can we capitalize on this moment when there is a book coming out? There are a lot of book launch events. There was one in Paris. There is one upcoming in London next Friday hosted by Lyst. The one in Paris was hosted by Vivendi. There are New York ones. There are Australia ones. So it became a little moment. So in addition to it becoming a moment in time, we were like, how can we give it space in a sense to unpack some of the things that are not in the book because I wrote them later on, but they also belong to the same sort of Hitmaker's universe.

Brian: [00:04:29] I love that.

Ana: [00:04:29] So that is the idea of the 10 episode podcast arc that is with Hitmakers. And probably after the 10 episodes, it's gonna be a break. I'm gonna do something else with someone else, and we'll see how it goes.

Phillip: [00:04:44] Oh, wow. Can't wait to see what that looks like too. And the book out from Rutledge right now. And you can get it on Amazon or anywhere. And I love it. I've read it twice. Looking forward to talking about it. And Brian, you got into this too. It gets into some stuff you really jam on.

Brian: [00:05:05] I did. Yeah. No kidding.

Ana: [00:05:06] I've seen a lot of post it notes there.

Phillip: [00:05:09] Yeah. Well, this is how I consume stuff, especially when I'm gonna interview an author. So yeah. I tear books apart a bit. Yeah.

Brian: [00:05:18] I read it on Kindle, which is a little embarrassing. I actually prefer paper typically, but it was a busy few weeks, and I know that everyone here listening to the show probably also had a couple of busy weeks with NRF going on. And the thing that Phillip is referring to, I think you really dive into storytelling as a part of this building brands. You even said without stories, there are no brands. That, I completely agree with. It's interesting. Everything we do in brand is actually it's made up. It's, like, not real. These are stories that we make, and we build things around narratives that are myths in many ways. And so I'd love to kinda just maybe to open things up, and I want to get into your experience applying a lot of your thought processes that are in the book to brand. And Phillip mentioned we love one of those. That would be Banana Republic and the work you did with them. Maybe we could kick things off just by defining what story means to you and how story is so connected to brand.

Ana: [00:06:30] First of all, what stories mean to me is like we, [00:06:34] as human beings, we never make decisions in isolation from each other. We are always influenced by what we read, what we see, what we listen to, each other. So in a sense, all of those interactions are narratives or they're fibers of the narrative [00:06:53] and without getting too crazy in metaphors, it's literally like how something becomes a trend, how does something influence, become something that people are talking about is because a lot of people are talking about. So, basically, narratives are made of things people talk about. Stories are made of many participants. It's not one to many. It's many contributing at all times. Just look at TikTok, look at Instagram reels, YouTube. It's kind of like stories and even this, like podcasts, we are happening at the same time. But then for this to really become a cultural story, a trend, the zeitgeist, you have a lot of people who are talking about similar things that we are talking about here. So in a sense that I would say the story of culture is a story. It's a story that we tell ourselves to make sense of the world, to explain the world, to explain a place in the world, our relationship to others, to understand when where we are sitting within that entire system of relationships. And then brands are stories that are part of this mega story. So the best brand really contribute to this mega narrative, Coca Cola happiness, Apple creativity, Nike running. They get to own part of culture. So now what I think is the best stories are those that are subcultural stories that are more micro stories that can identify one specific emotion and one specific part of culture and really, really, really own that. And you see that with Liquid Death, for example, you see that with Tracksmith for example, you see the end of the day with Banana Republic as an example.

Phillip: [00:08:53] Interesting. And those are all resonant with me personally. I think what's an interesting, so Hitmaker is a really specific term. So a hitmaker to me, you know, I was a musician in former life, and I think of myself... A hitmaker sort of like a Quincy Jones. There's somebody who had a specific form of a taste, maybe a producer-minded person who could recognize talent or weave together a series of sounds or produce a series of collective sounds or weave together a series of hits that creates culture and makes it sustain beyond a moment into, like, a generational impact. And it sounds like that's kind of what, not only have you, I think, said that explicitly in the book, but you've actually sort of outlined how brands do that. So Hitmakers, you've actually said that it's not just that this is incumbent on something that maybe musicians or other cultural exports that, you know, humans do in form of artistry. It's that maybe that's also in brands can do that too. And you've outlined that it's not just that brands that we buy do that. It's that there's other kinds of hitmakers. Now in the modern era, it sounds like there's curators and new creators and creator collectives have a role to play in the future here as well. So maybe you could talk about this idea of hitmakers and how that formed and why you decided to write about it.

Ana: [00:10:36] Yes. I'm gonna start by saying that that's not an original name. As you said, there are more music podcasts called Hitmakers. There is specific meaning. There is a Derek Thompson book called Hitmakers. The idea was not to... The idea was really to capture that vibe, that energy, that atmosphere, and see how brands influence culture. That means some brands become hit, some brands products become hit, some brand campaigns become hit. As we know, throughout the history in the eighties there were Jordans with Michael Jordan and Nike in the nineties with Britney Spears and Pepsi. So they were just these big cultural moments that were just massive massive hits, but then as we went to 2000, 2010s, 2020s, my main question is, can we reverse engineer hitmaking in a sense? Can we say we cannot produce anymore of those massive hits because cultural environment, culture and industries markets are incredibly unpredictable because they rely on social influence, things like how we influence each other, so you can never know which way something is gonna go. Look at the Brat Summer, for example, it completely exploded, but it was very much considered and strategically designed with IRL, URL combo to make it go as far as fast as possible. But what you see on the TikTok trends, micro trends, there is nothing but micro trends these days. Sometimes things bubble up and they capture imagination of culture, of pop culture at large, global pop culture, but then they last for a really short time. So that is the whole premise of my book. In that environment, how do you really set yourself up to influence culture? Because that's brands again, if we say the brands are stories that exert their influence through their story, how strong is their story, number one. And the second, what is their strategy? How they tell that story? What do they use? Do they use their products? Do they use campaigns? Do they use merge, collaborations, experiences, real time events, spaces, archival issues, their own past, intellectual property? So the toolbox has expanded. And then the third part then is like, yes, if you can't really know what is gonna work, better strategy is to release a lot of different things and see which one is gaining traction and use your media buying and adjust your media plan in a way that it amplifies it. And so that is not easy because the traditional media plans are done at the beginning of the year. They're done quarterly. It's pretty much outlined. The entire years are outlined in advance. You can change all these small things. So then it's really the question, what does the hitmaking organization look like? How do you organize yourself to be nimble and responsive? In a sense, like you say, "Hey. This merge drop is doing so well. Let's find some paid social to support it, or let's do additional gifting, or let's make sure that we introduce it in our next campaign," and so on. So, basically, when I say that, and I say in order to do it like that, it's best to kind of outline your marketing strategy as a strategy of cultural influence, so you do an annual plan when everything is connected with everything else. So every single activation, every single cultural product basically builds upon and amplifies.

Phillip: [00:16:21] Hearing you explain it this way gives me a much greater sense of the scale than what I took from just reading it because I now have a sense of why you contextualize it against the emergence of LVMH as a holdco. Because to me, the context of a creative collective like MSCHF being able to constantly have its constant creative production feels very similar to a hedge in the same way that LVMH has constant creative production because of its brand's constant scale. All of its brands are constantly producing at scale because LVMH is constantly producing at scale because every brand has its constant production at scale. And that's a really interesting... So you have the micro model and the macro model. I think that it feels very much like profoundly modern where the world is both,   it's the macro and the micro happening at the same time, and they mirror each other. That feels like a perfect example of that is the modern world all at once. That just kind of snapped into place for me. Is that sort of, an accurate... I just got that. You didn't say that directly, but that's sort of what I took from what you just said.

Ana: [00:17:48] Look. I think that, like, my intention is always for people to take what is the most useful for them. So a lot of people are gonna have different associations and examples. And, I mean, you took in a direction that's relevant for you, but absolutely. I mean, why not? What do you think, Brian?

Brian: [00:18:09] Good question. I do think there's this element, Phillip, that you were just mentioning there where you're feeling everything happening all the time at once where it's constant.

Phillip: [00:18:21] Right.

Brian: [00:18:21] And you actually even sort of referred to this earlier on the idea that everything is, like many people contributing all at one time. And we had Yancey Strickler on the podcast not too long ago now, and he said the future, he saw it as many to many. And I believe that that is exactly what we're experiencing right now. And as a result, you are getting micro and macro at the same time. Things are bubbling their way up. The thing that I think is really interesting and difficult to discern, and I felt this tension in your book, is we're now in the attention economy, and we're judging things based on attention. And so you talk about engineering these hits and reverse engineering them, I should say. And there's this really difficult tension between doing something that you know is a good story but may not garner immediate attention. And I think you even referenced a couple brands who said, "We don't care. We're going to tell the stories we want to tell." And then as a result, the impact isn't necessarily brat. Right? It doesn't happen now. But it's in 10 years from now, people are gonna look back and say, "Wow. They knew how to tell a story." And then the financial impact will hit. How do you balance that?

Ana: [00:19:53] Well, I honestly, I do think that very soon, thanks to AI, we'll be able to really connect the sales, the timeline horizons, and the actions that you do in culture because, honestly, social influence has more to do with engineering, with information, cascades with the structure of the network, with the number of models, which how information than it is what we talk about culture. It's really how do you make those models of social influence. So imagine AI doing that unbelievably quickly at unbelievable scale. So then you would hear things like, "Give me a movie that was not a success when it was released."

Phillip: [00:20:36] Clue, is a good example or yeah.

Ana: [00:20:39] There you go. So that took years to become, but then it got the cult following. It was revived, and it then got financial success and so on. So it's kind of all looking at, well, things that succeed are those that really are aligned with the zeitgeist. And what I said in zeitgeist is a lot of people talking about the sort of similar same thing. And when you do something that's either mega mega original, so it doesn't really fit, or it's outside in some other way or it's not distributed, so with enough power of money behind it, then it kind of gets the life of the owned when it can go into obscurity or it can be revived according to certain timeline. So I'll give you an example from business world. At Banana, when we did the rebrand, we did it very quickly in nine months, and then it was the new aesthetic, the new product, the new website design, the new visual merchandising, the new campaign, everything was very consistent and it was very like from 0 to 1, very fresh. So that is what you do to influence culture. But then we looked when is the revenue gonna hit because revenue is the lagging indicator of brand.

Brian: [00:22:06] Right.

Ana: [00:22:07] And it hits three months later, one quarter. From September, it was in January, and it was 24% year on year comparable sales growth, which was amazing. So it's like, great. People respond really well. We hit into something in culture. They're liking it. It's a very consistent world, and we are seeing results. Sometimes it's three months. Sometimes it's two weeks. Sometimes it's six months, but I do think that now we will be everyday. Yeah. We will be able to predict the actions, the money you put behind them, and then the impact on sales we're gonna have.

Phillip: [00:22:46] I've queued up for next week right before the show actually comes out, like, a ton of social quotes. I've highlighted a 1,000,000 things. A quote from the book, "Despite all of the reverence for the past, the creative economy is ultimately disrespectful of it. The past that the creative economy exploits had once been the future." And I think that that's to me, and originality was such that it broke the confines of its present. How did you treat the archive at Banana with such reverence, and do that in none months, while still trying to figure out how you...

Ana: [00:23:36] It was not reverence. Sorry to interrupt you.

Phillip: [00:23:39] Okay. Yeah.

Ana: [00:23:40] We didn't treat it with reverence. Are you I mean, like, no.

Phillip: [00:23:46] Love that. Correct that.

Ana: [00:23:46] No. No. No. So you never do that regardless of how dated and how of the time... They were very dated. The catalogs. However, what you take from archives, and I do believe very much so that with Banana, with Esprit, and then with brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton and Dior and so on, they were all innovators, they brought something new to the world. Lacoste. You know? So they always brought, like, some sort of innovation, which was either something that didn't exist before or something that existed, but they did it in a new way. So in Banana's case, the founders, the Zigglers, they were Mala Patricio Zigler, a photojournalist and a writer, and they upcycled military garb into safari gear. So that's the first innovation. You take one aesthetic, one kind of fabrics and materials, and you create something new. So that's the first innovation. The second innovation is to really create and to write down these fantastic stories about imagined worlds that don't exist. So Banana Republic for them was like Wakanda or Shangri La.

Phillip: [00:25:17] Right.

Ana: [00:25:17] Or or Atlantis or like the territory that that's not real, that doesn't exist, but they made it so rich that it became real.

Brian: [00:25:27] Mhmm.

Ana: [00:25:27] So in that sense, the maps, they were nowhere, you know, you couldn't... But it was always like, "Oh, if you turn around across the river through the woods, behind the bush, then it's this." So they were so detailed and so specific that imagination was so rich that when original Banana Republic created this unbelievable brand universe and much layered because they're stories. So that second innovation, which is that story, that brand story. What is the brand about? Product, brand, and then third was the experience, the retail environment. Banana Republic did experiential retail before experiential...

Phillip: [00:26:11] They had a truck in the store. You would go in, and it was this like the jungle.

Ana: [00:26:15] There was literally a jeep. Yeah. Palm tree, a real palm tree. Like, you know, it was so you walk in and you walk into this world. And, yes, it wouldn't stand today because it was super colonial. And at the same time, if you look at it from the storytelling brand innovation perspective, it was something that was you enter the fantastical world. So when I first went into the archives, which are in New York, I believe they're still in New York on Thomas Street, and you just go and you look this, like, packaging that is in the shape of rhino or a lion or giraffe, and you can hold it like that. Everything was so consistent. And in that world, everything from the catalogs to the clothes, to that packaging, to whatever props they had, and those materials were unbelievable. They had photojournalist vest with, like, giant pockets. So our job then became, I didn't want to copy paste. That's not gonna do because, honestly, colonialism is colonialism and racism is racism no matter what age. You kind of don't want to go there.

Phillip: [00:27:39] Sure. For sure.

Ana: [00:27:40] But what you do want to go there is to take that intention, those imagined world intention. And also the reason why brand was innovative at the time in its expression is not the same reason it may be innovative today, but, again, that intention is there. So how do you translate intention from the 1978 to 2021/22, which is when I was there. And what we did is literally take the archives, take the elements, see what are the icon products. Photojournalist wear vest, Gerca pants, a button down. So you kind of identify the signature product. Then you sort of modernize that idea of imagined worlds, and you have a family of models. We have, like, a group of models that they used for a year, repetition, repetition, repetition, and they're always somewhere, and they were obviously very diverse and very modern in a sense, but also modern in a way that they were shot, which is I said this is gonna work if it has element of surrealism to that. We can't just be like, let's go on adventures. We'll be like, no. That's not what you want to be associated with. But if you kind of add surrealist angle to that, so you have a boat in the middle of a desert or you have furniture hanging from the tree, then you have, "Oh, we are in imagined territory." Then adventure becomes something that's possible and allowed and acceptable. So you see how [00:29:27] you have to be both sensitive to the zeitgeist and cultures, but also stay true to that innovativeness of those brands because all those founders did create something that didn't exist before. [00:29:40]

Brian: [00:30:43] Yeah. I love this so much because I think what you're doing is you're observing something about the world. So what Banana originally created was it took something and it transformed it. You talked about the military garb being applied to the safari. Right? And so [00:31:01] there's actually a transforming, so taking one form and putting it into a new context, which is how myth begins. It's actually at the moment of transformation. [00:31:14] And so the other thing that I love about this is the observation of that myth. So when something is observed for the first time, and it's brought to the table, as a net new observation, and then it's re observed by someone else, those are two different phenomenological experiences. And so when you start to get these observation upon observation, this is how you get the money. And the myth. You start to see all the stories come together. And especially as people interact with the product, they're re observing over and over. So they see the campaign. They interact with the product. They make it part of their story, and that transforms their life through that myth. CS Lewis said that is not mythopoeia actually the least subjective of activities? That is to say, creating myth is objective. It reflects our personal perspective and helps us make sense of the world in a way that's more true than perhaps even just the facts. And so I think you... I love this approach to how you build a brand because I think it does come up against form and how to take a form and do something new with it. That's so cool.

Phillip: [00:32:35] 31 minutes, Mark. It took 31 minutes to get there. Okay. TheraFlu kicking in. Alright. Okay. Let's shift gears a little bit. We're talking about a cultural hit as an idea that captures consumer attention and drives engagement. But you talk about in the book that a purchase is not necessarily any longer the end goal of the brand's, it's not necessarily the only thing that the brand is trying to drive as the sole marker of having a means of success. Getting people into a store to buy something is not necessarily the marker of success for something anymore. Attention is something that we're trying to mark as success. How do you quantify that?

Ana: [00:33:29] Well, I think still that the product purchase is important.

Phillip: [00:33:35] Oh, yeah. For sure.

Ana: [00:33:36] That's the business we are in. That's how the the industry operates, and you need to sell things. But I think that as a unit, you have to look as well as products purchased plus other things, and I'll tell you what I mean. I'll unpack "other things" because it's very vague. So I think that it became very operational, which is a good thing, but I think it became very transactional, which is not necessarily a good thing when you work in retail. Not just fashion retail, luxury retail, but you go any sort of sports retail, mass retail, CPG retail. It's not good to have that performance marketing. Let's buy x amount of ads that are gonna get us x amount of clicks, that they're gonna generate x amount of sales. Because that usually means that you're not targeting your valuable customers. Very few of those customers are gonna come back if they came back because they were offered a sale or they were targeted as part of some other deal or the right place, right time, or they're bombarded and followed around the Internet and so on. So [00:35:00] there is time and place for everything. So performance marketing works really well with brand marketing, but demand is created by brand marketing. Demand is harvested by performance marketing. [00:35:17] So I think in a sense, what is measurable is really interactions with the brand, which means, yes, you purchased something, but what is your average order value? How often did you come back? How often did you purchase? Did you tell other people about it? Do you come to brand events? Do you go to brand stores? How often do you come to the site? Do you open brand emails? And do you tell about the brand to other people? Do you follow brand on Instagram and so on? So all those are metrics that ultimately lead as a more valuable indicator of sales. When you unpack, these sales came from a loyal customer who brought us ten more people. They shop every month, and these sales... Not all sales are made equal.

Phillip: [00:36:10] Right. Yeah.

Brian: [00:36:11] Yeah. It's interesting. I totally agree with you. I think it's what you win them with is what you win them to. And so there's a bit of a... I love the idea of demand marketers as harvesters of previous engagements. I think that brand engagement is the key thing. You get into a lot of different interesting things about the creative class. So, Phillip, you were you were touching on this a little bit already, but I think that you said that being a Renaissance man or woman is a matter of necessity. To stay relevant, creators need to keep riffing. So I think this is really important as we think about how to achieve engagement. You look at how many similarities there are between MSCHF and Liquid Death and how Liquid Death pretty much has no paid strategy. It's almost all in house original thought, and they're looking to see what sticks. How does that then, like, for a more traditional brand tie back to sort of what the hyper optimized demand marketing, almost data role that the Chief Marketing Officer has become?

Ana: [00:37:38] Well, I think that both of those things exist at the same time. And but the thing is, if you think about the company, we said, if it's organized like creative production. So imagine you have people who are in charge of product development. So for Liquid Death, it would be people who are deciding on flavors and who are deciding on the texture and so on. In fashion, there will be designers who are saying we are gonna use these materials, these fabrics, these shapes, silhouettes, colors, prints, patterns. You know? So they're product people. They're like merchandising people who are saying we're gonna buy x amount of each of these because that's the trends are showing us this is doing well. This did well last year, and these competitors are buying this, so we are gonna do the same thing. And then we have marketing people who say, "How are we going to promote that in different channels," and you have retail channel people who are business people who are like, "Okay. How many of these I'm gonna buy, sell on website, in stores, in wholesale, and so on?" So in traditional retail organizations, all those functions sit separately. So now imagine bringing them all in one room, which we did at Banana at Esprit, especially at Esprit later on because we built from scratch the entire US team is basically it allows you to address and to come up with a lot of creative ideas as you go. So the flavor can mirror the packaging, can mirror the activation, can mirror the channel, can mirror the price. So that you have that sort of fast moving creativity, that controlled chaos. But then, of course, the machine needs to keep running. You need to do the business. And that's why you have product pyramid. You have foundations and collections and hero product. So with foundational products, of course, you just want to keep that machine going, and you want to buy as many customers as you have, and you want to buy as many purchases as you can. But the thing is the demand is built at the top of that pyramid through that deep reorganization. And the reason I went and I took a step back is because, basically, the role of CMO is not just that. Yes. It's absolutely necessary to be the data driven, but also merchandising and product is very data driven as well. And channels are very data driven. So, basically, every part of retail is very... It has to be very data driven because you are in the business of selling things. You need to sell things. You need to make them desirable, and you need to make them easy to discover.

Phillip: [00:40:18] The death of the CMO has been widely over reported. Is that...? {laughter}

Ana: [00:40:26] {laughter} No. I know. But you know what? I feel like there's so many species and versions and variations, and almost anyone can these days become a CMO or Chief Brand Officer. But that's okay. You know? It's a big world and, you know, everyone should do their thing.

Phillip: [00:40:44] That's great. That's gonna be awesome on TikTok for two more days before it goes away. One of the things that gets shared around a lot in our industry is how bad Zara's site is for usability. It's like, "Oh, if they just fixed it they could convert a lot better. Conversion rate optimization on Zara could be so much better." However, Zara belongs to the world's largest retail brand. How much does optimization really matter at that scale?

Ana: [00:41:21] I think it matters a lot. But I don't think, like why do you say, like, I buy some, like I go to Zara app.

Phillip: [00:41:29] Right.

Ana: [00:41:30] So I don't necessarily... Yes. I understand what you're saying about Zara. But, honestly, if people want something, they want it no matter how it looks. And you can make the best, the most optimized site. Yes. You can make some sales, but very few people are gonna give up because they had to go to three extra steps to get something. So I think that maybe Zara has bigger fish to fry at this moment, although I can't really imagine. Because even in the US, their penetration of retail stores is unbelievably small. Regarding, like, US is their second market, and it's all online. So they must be doing something well.

Phillip: [00:42:13] In the ecommerce space, or let me say, in the ecommerce circle jerk, they like to take shots at Zara's ecommerce experience, and they talk about, you know, ways to improve it. People like to make mock ups of ways that it could convert better. I'm like, "I think they're doing just fine. They're doing well." I was surprised at the amount of time that you spent in analysis on Zara's business in the book. And actually I was educated as to how expansive the strategy the Zara employees at all ends of the spectrum, in collaborations. I've thought of Zara, to be honest with you, as the American mall brand, which is a very inexpensive,   brand. So my exposure to the brand is a is a very narrow, limited perspective. When we're looking at it and we're analyzing it from a cultural perspective, how does Zara see it, and how would you analyze their strategy as trying to be a hitmaker? Explain it in the way that you explain it in the book and how they've sort of intentionally positioned themselves to become a hitmaker in the world.

Ana: [00:43:46] I think I analyzed Zara in the book just to kind of illustrate the operational aspect of retail brands. In a sense, the business, the brand, and the product need to be in sync. You can't just revive a brand by changing campaigns or marketing. You have to really change the product, the quality, the desirability of the product, the design, the silhouette. And you need to really invest in your retail channels and understand what is the connection between those retail channels, what are your specific business goals for each, who you're attracting in each of them, and so on. So Zara was an example of someone who does that well, and Zara is a Spanish conglomerate. It happens to be in American malls, but it's also in so called high street in Europe, and it's a fast fashion brand. Although they recently peeled off from SHIEN, Temu, like those, by improving their quality somewhat, the similar strategy that Mango is doing. Collaborations elevate the quality just a bit, justify a little bit higher prices, and have a better aesthetic point of view. So I don't think that Zara is necessarily a hitmaker, but Zara amplifies hits. So when Miu Miu's crystal panties show up, they're gonna make the same thing. So by copying it, they literally amplifying a trend. If what they see on the runaway is green or sport or...

Phillip: [00:45:39] Or I see.

Ana: [00:45:41] Zara is gonna amplify the hits. They're gonna make them the hits because a lot of people are gonna buy something that was on the runways and they have a hit then. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:45:56] Okay. So this this actually helps me recontextualize. This is the illusion to sort of the Henry Jenkins tie in that you make is the sort of participatory economy is that I want to be part of something that I otherwise couldn't be part of, so this is my elective way to participate is that they're giving me access, and this is my way to be part of that. That's so interesting.

Ana: [00:46:20] By giving access, they also make trends bigger because a lot of more people can afford that little crystal shorts from Zara then from...

Phillip: [00:46:32] It's the cerulean belt. It's the what have you. Right?

Ana: [00:46:36] However you want to basically call it, like, that cerulean belt is more like how considered trends are or differ, actually, because these days, it comes down really to the factories and the economies of scale, and they see that Prada is making something those under premium and mass. The factory is gonna say, hey. If you want to make this, we're gonna make give you a better deal, smaller. So, like, a less price put on it.

Phillip: [00:47:06] Got it.

Brian: [00:47:07] So really the hit makers need this ecosystem to amplify their story, to help bring the hits to be to the larger public. It's actually a healthy part of the process.

Ana: [00:47:21] Well, I don't think it's hit... I mean, yes. I would normally say yes, but I didn't think it's healthy because in capitalism, you want to make money. So Miu Miu want everyone to be the only provider of the crystal shorts. And if you can't have it, you don't have it, but you want it, you know? But based on what you're seeing, it actually works better for Miu Miu because some are gonna be like, I'm not gonna buy a Zara. I'm gonna buy the original. And I know I have original and so on, and you can never mistake the original for a dupe. Some dupe are, like, very similar. Some dupe are not. But it kind of it makes trends spread much faster, but it also makes trends attractive for sure. Because everyone is wearing the same thing, you kinda don't want to wear, you know, that's snob model. You know? I don't want to wear the same thing everyone else gets. You know?

Phillip: [00:48:19] Oh, no. I know exactly what you're talking about. I can be that way. Ana, this has just been such a lovely conversation, and it has been such a pleasure to meet you. We always sort of get to the bottom of, you know, the way a person thinks when we sort of ask them what you see ahead. You know, we typically say, you know, what is the future of commerce? What is the future according to Ana Andjelic? What do you see out there? You know, what do you think is next in 2025, and and what's out beyond that?

Ana: [00:48:50] I think I believe more in evolution than in radical breaks. So I would say, like, a lot more people buying from people because you see, first, the taste making, curation, discovery since 2020 when I sort of first observe it brewing and forming itself to '25, it became like a very strong shopping behavior and also discovery behavior to go to tastemakers, to go to gatekeepers, to go to South Fashion substack, to pay for curated affiliate lists and so on. So you went from one type of gatekeeper, which is editors to those maybe same editors who are now on substack and who basically offer the point of view and their taste and their filter aesthetic filters to the world. So I think that that's again under the people buying from people, Depop, Threadup, Fashion Pie, eBay. It's all about that. It's not about the vintage products people are buying, but it's also about the sellers and their style. So I think that's even accelerating further in a sense that we want human recommendations. We don't want an algorithmic recommendation that you see on Amazon, and this is sponsored, and it has this number of stars, and you just don't trust any of that anymore, really. You want someone to say, "Hey, Brian, or hey, Phillip. Go buy x y z because you're gonna like it, and it's good quality." So it's like strategist or wire cutter and so on. But imagine that going to micro subniches and areas of retail that were maybe for running, for this, for that, you know, for different parts, for CPG. I mean, there are services like that, but I think it becomes way more human.

Phillip: [00:50:50] Okay. I'm into that, especially for running. My coach used to recommend me some stuff, but I'm into, like, ultra running.

Ana: [00:50:58] You should talk to my husband because I don't do that to myself.

Phillip: [00:51:04] Yeah. I do some weird stuff. I'm into weird stuff, Ana. This has been just so lovely. What makes most sense? Where should people buy this book that benefits you the most?

Ana: [00:51:17] I think the fastest way that benefits them is really Amazon.

Phillip: [00:51:22] Yeah. For sure.

Ana: [00:51:23] They can buy it on a publisher's website, Rutledge, but I would recommend Amazon. Just go to Amazon. You're gonna get it the next day. Yeah. That's great. And then, obviously, The Sociology of Business always welcomes new subscribers.

Phillip: [00:51:38] Do it.

Ana: [00:51:38] Find me on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, you know, the usual.

Phillip: [00:51:42] Yeah. And become a premium subscriber over at Sociology of Business every Monday. Also, where's the next book event, Ana?

Ana: [00:51:52] It's gonna be in London, and it's hosted by Lyst on Friday, January 24th, but it's oversold. So they've been turning people off. However, however, it's gonna be recorded, and it's gonna be made available online in snippets and then a full recording via email to those who registered. And then we're gonna have a next one in New York in February.

Phillip: [00:52:21] Okay. Well, get us a list. We'll make sure to link all of that up. And also there's a Hitmakers podcast that's a companion here. We'll make sure all of that's in the show notes. Ana Andjelic, what an incredible sit down with us. We've gotta have you back. We'd love to have you at at one of our summits sometime too. We'll make it all happen. I'm sure we'll get you all into the Future Commerce community. Thank you so much, and thank you all for listening to Future Commerce. And we love to have you speaking back. If you have questions, comments, you want to speak back about the Hitmakers book, we'd love to have you drop us a line. Drop us a line at hello@futurecommerce.com. We want you to go grab a copy of Lore. That's our new journal from Future Commerce. Go get that. It's futurecommerce.com/lore. Preorders are shipping now. It should be out in the next week or so after you hear this, and they should be in your hands. Futurecommerce.com/lore. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Future Commerce podcast.

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