(007) on brand trips, internet speak, and "friends" of the house
Have we oversold the potential for our things to connect us? Do my purchases make me look demure or brat? And would Jonathan Anderson be my friend even if I didn't spend all my money at LOEWE?
Hi friends! I’ve just passed 100 subscribers (105 [at the time of writing] to be exact), and I’m feeling very grateful and very proud of myself. I think the ever looming prospect of overnight fame has skewed our collective sense of scale and reach; making it hard to appreciate an audience of 50 or 100. But I am deeply appreciative of the one hundred people who’ve opted into reading my newsletter. So if you’re reading this, thank you! I hope you enjoy this (early) installment.
I encountered the REFY beauty community trip to Mallorca at least 50 times last month. The general consensus (in both my Microsoft Teams chats at work and personal social feeds) was that the over the top brand trip (à la Dote Shopping [RIP] or Tarte Cosmetics) is, for the most part, out; REFY’s approach to a fully branded (and highly Instagrammable) travel experience is evidence of a new era.
Weeks later, as the internet embraced being ‘demure’ and ‘mindful’ (with a quickness I have never seen before might I add), my professional and social life was once again inundated with theories and debates — this time around big brands using trending language in a way that is, well… mindful.
Then, last week, I saw this Instagram post from SSENSE, promoting an editorial piece titled “Can Brands Have Friends?”
Have we taken the personification of and world building around brands too far? Are we so seduced by branding that we've mistaken logos for lifelines and marketing for meaningful connections?
The REFY trip in July, which was created for and attended by real (aka non-influencer) users of the brand, was being hailed as a best-in class-model for authentic community building — a strategy said to be the way to capture the sometime fickle, ever-critical Gen Z consumer in 2024. While the trip concept is undeniably refreshing, especially for a brand born in and elevated by aspirational influencer culture, I thought its resounding praise undersold the fact that there still is (and always will be) a transactional relationship between consumer brands, talent (whether traditional celebrity, athlete, influencer or otherwise), and customers.
Community can be a core tenet for some, but it is not the only key to commercial success. More importantly, even the most vibrant, authentic community of users cannot erase the inherent transactional nature of brand-talent-customer interactions.
The same goes for trendy language. Quick adoption of internet speak — ie. calling things delulu or demure — is similarly praised as a savvy step in the direction of community and cultural cache building. However, not every brand can, or should, speak to their customers like peers.
Simply put, neither community-building nor internet-speaking is foolproof; both demand a high level of discernment and honesty.
This is only magnified by our relentless desire to extract as much symbolic capital from brands and products as possible, and do so as quickly (and low effort) as we can. If we continue to assess what we consume from the perspective of how it reflects on our personalities, we will continue to gravitate towards brands that attract cool communities and say the funny thing at the right time — or to ones that preserve an air of coolness by avoiding outward community-building altogether and maintaining a tone of voice unaffected by buzzy slang.
Regardless of where we land on that spectrum, in ardently attaching ourselves to things (ie. buying different styles of sneakers or building aesthetic worlds around various types of exercise classes) to tell the world the kind of person we are — using possessions as direct proxies for personality traits — we’ve lost sight of the fact that brands are not people. That not all purchases are equipped to become gateways to a tribe of peers. That businesses want to make money, not friends.
I think this becomes muddier when we enter the realm of luxury — where the relationship between consumer perception and brand positioning is even more nuanced.
Luxury purchases can be more emotionally involved, with a more pronounced link to aspiration, due to their higher cost and sometimes lengthier decision-making process. This is especially true for the entry-level/aspirational shopper, who may be looking for a more profound connection to the brand out the gate. Here, the extras around the product can be as significant as the product itself.
According to Phoebe Philo, the cult-like following of Celine during her tenure as Creative Director —and of now for her eponymous label — was built on product merit rather than on brand personification or subliminal signaling.
“I don’t feel myself that I need a lot of [storytelling] from other fashion houses. I feel that it’s just not necessary. To a certain extent you either like it or you don’t. Someone telling me a story isn’t going to make me like it more. It is a coat. It’s a pair of trousers. I do appreciate a level of straightforwardness.”
(Phoebe Philo via New York Times, March 2024)
However, to ignore the allure of the world that Phoebe Philo has built outside of the clothes and accessories is to misunderstand both the consumer and conspicuous consumption entirely. Alek Rose said the same of Jonathan Anderson’s LOEWE in the SSENSE article I mentioned at the beginning, Can Brands Have Friends?
After noting the allure of Anderson’s world, Rose goes on to say, “as skilled at creating “It”-guys as he is at designing clothes, Anderson has effectively constructed a friendship group that you want to be part of. The catch? They all wear LOEWE and JW Anderson, and you can’t come in without it.” This social circle is, therefore, a marketing tool just as much as it may be a legitimate group of friends.
Rose also quotes Christopher Morency, who says fashion in 2024 “isn’t just about the clothes; it’s about the lifestyle, the values, and the culture that the brand represents… By cultivating a universe, brands can engage their audience on multiple levels—through visual storytelling, collaborations, and even friendships—creating a loyal community that feels personally invested in the brand’s world.”
This is not quite the same thing as REFY’s community-building model. REFY tapped into a community of actual users. Rose and Morency are talking about friends of the house — celebrities like Greta Lee or Taylor Russell, who are as much a part of the brand's world as they are of the designer’s.
** This is not to say friends of the house have to be high impact celebs — we’ve seen “regular” people get the all-star treatment and be welcomed into the fold by nature of their relationship (aka purchase history) with a luxury brand. I say “regular” in quotes because VICs (very important clients) that spend enough to sit front row or walk in a show can’t really be called regular people with no caveats. **
To be clear, this is neither an indictment of any involved parties nor is it a new phenomenon. Luxury brand connections have always been aspirational. “Rarely—if ever—do we see a creative director dressing and platforming their childhood friend who works in public education… [because] part of the job of the creative director at a major brand is to create a social ecosystem, a network of famous friends and faces.” (Jeremy Lewis via SSENSE). These ecosystems are both explicit endorsements (often through paid ambassadorships) and implicit social scaffolding. And so Rose asks, “as brands become increasingly autonomous—personified, even—have they developed the capacity for legitimate friendships?”
My answer for him is simple: no.
Once again, brands are not people — so they do not have the capacity for legitimate friendship. What they do have the capacity for is the creation of aspiration and intrigue through affiliation, contribution (aka purchase), and loyalty.
And yet, in my view, there is little difference between assembling a group of celebrities affiliated with a brand and its people and inviting a group of lifestyle influencers to an exotic island to hang out, promote the brand, and create content. Both strategies use relationships that seem to go beyond the shared use of product to entice us into engaging with the same product in hopes of replicating that depth. Both understand the modern consumer's desire to use possessions as proxies for personality traits and things to connect with others; ultimately using that desire against them to keep them engaging and buying.
This is a byproduct of a rampant and ongoing over categorization of the self, that occasionally (and perhaps somewhat clumsily) stumbles into legitimate subcultures and foundations for friendship — but that doesn’t mean its motives are noncommercial.
All this to say, as we celebrate new models of community-building or question whether we've blurred the lines of brand personification beyond repair, we must be careful not to conflate transactional brand-talent-customer relationships with friendship. It’s important to see it for what it is: a real and intentional strategy to motivate us to buy. The girls on the REFY trip were REFY shoppers first. The famous friends and faces orbiting Jonathan Anderson wear LOEWE & JW Anderson. So if anything, “friend” is just a code name — “friends” that aren’t customers or endorsers are just fans. Understanding that is, in fact, very demure, and very mindful.
REFERENCE BANK. quotes, screenshots, and open tabs that helped me piece my thoughts together…
Very demure, very mindful: How brands should navigate ‘internet speak’ (Madeleine Schulz via Vogue Business, August 2024)
“Shopping is no longer fun though when every single product, down to water bottles and toothpaste, has some sort of status points attached to it. Instead of simply spending money on the stuff you like, you start thinking about what every purchase says about you.” (
via Vik’s Busy Corner, March 2024)SPECIAL REPORT: BRANDS AREN’T COMPANIES, THEY’RE UNIVERSES (Christopher Morency via Highsnobiety, July 2020)
“Brands that are cool with a capital C don’t want your unboxing or a tag… they want to appear organically in your feed.” (Brenda Weischer, aka @brendahashtag via Vogue Business, April 2024)
See you on the 13th!
-Becca 💋
Loved this and love the Refy approach. I feel like they’re doing building a community best and I am super fascinated by their techniques as a business owner (I have a piece on this in my drafts).
very demure (non-transactional)