Reality Cheques
When you move offline, annoying brand behavior follows
A collective dream for a better, happier, sexier future has been bubbling up for a while now, and it doesn’t include our phones. It’s the one where instead of leaning into the internet and frivolous consumption as a form of self-medication, entertainment, and a crutch for social connections, we have the time, money, and confidence to go to therapy, travel overseas, befriend strangers, and disconnect our identities from the way we shop.
I call it a “dream” because largely, that’s still what it is. We are joining running clubs, collecting print magazines, and repping merch that physically embodies our more abstract interests. But we are also still fawning over pretty girls on the internet and shopping our way into looking and living like them. And even as this dream for a more balanced life becomes more people’s reality, I am afraid that brands and commerce are going to ruin it. After a decade of great business powered by e-commerce, cheap targeted ads, and low-effort social media posts, lots of them have the money and ambition to follow where our attention goes next but not the patience and expertise to create meaningful experiences or at the very least, engage with people in the real world in a way that doesn’t cross their boundaries.
I am afraid of the future where I put down my phone and go for a walk just to stumble into ten “cheeky” tear-off ads taped to traffic lights and street signs by skincare brands and app founders. One day you may be desperate enough to join a running club just to find out that it’s sponsored by a “good for your gut” supplement. A trip may make it out of the group chat just to route to a celebrity fragrance popup in New York. I am afraid that the things that overwhelm us online will spill into the real world and shutting them out won’t be as easy as putting down your phone. And maybe the city is supposed to be this way - loud, obnoxious, and commercial. Or maybe there is a way for people to draw better boundaries and for brands to grow and sell without getting on their customers’ nerves.
Personally, I am dying to take Busy Corner on the road but not to a brand dinner or a tropical brand trip but to production facilities, creative studios, the lively corners of the world where people get inspired, and the quiet, boring offices where they do unsexy work. I want to meet the people I admire, tell their stories, make something together, and keep my dinners and vacations phone-free and private. Tarte’s trip to Turks and Caicos never really did it for me but seeing
’s No. 29 trip to the South of France with Baserange made me curious: a fabric dyeing masterclass at Bleu Pastel D'Occitanie, a tour of a weaving workshop, and a visit to a hemp farm. I have a huge crush on No. 29 and the brands they represent - they move with style and confidence, and I feel good about the world they are so thoughtfully working to create.
Seeing young boys and girls line up outside of huge brand activations and pop ups sends shivers down my spine. It’s hard not to give into an exaggerated moral panic when you see a swarm of teenagers standing in line for hours just to swatch a couple of blushes and snap a couple of pictures that will make their school friends jealous. And yet, isn’t lining up to buy stuff from the brands and people you idolize in an unhealthy amount a core teenage experience, at least in America? The things you see and overhear as you walk past those lines are hilarious, and there is something cheeky and endearing about Miu Miu using its playful brand and popsicles to distribute a large quantity of classic feminist literature.
Still, the pop-ups that strike a chord with me the most are the ones that feel human and scrappy, like Raazi Tea’s popup chai stand in Brooklyn, Cake Picnic’s potlucks, giant shared plates of peas and Caesar salad by Oficina for the opening of Flos’s Amsterdam showroom, and Baby Zhu’s pastry popups all over Manhattan. I won’t get out of my house for Matilda Djerf or the LVMH family but I will go far for the people I know, if only in passing - scrappy founders who pack orders and work the retail floor, a friend of a friend who DJs afterparties on the weekends, and my favorite artists who do commissioned pieces to pay the bills. The past couple of years have been defined by startups that grew way too fast and tried to wrangle the industry’s giants on their expensive brand marketing turf instead of making the most out of being small and personable, getting customer face time, and moving with the speed and creativity that corporations can’t afford.
The larger the brand, the more money they throw around – crazy talent checks, flashy beach club takeovers, and national sports team sponsorships. And yet, my favorite thing is coming across an indie artist or an artisan based in a small town in Italy and seeing that they are “followed by” just two people I know: an industry nerd and a creative director of a big fashion brand who’s commenting heart emojis under every post and gets them involved in all kind of projects rather than mining their creativity for ideas. It’s fair game that Emma Chamberlain’s IG posts are how lots of young girls learned about Miu Miu as long as this Miu Miu campaign is what sent me into an Ethel Cain deep dive. Someone on that team must have fought to make it happen.
I vividly remember Maryellis Bunn, the founder of the Museum of Ice Cream, telling Sophia Amoruso in 2019 that what she set out to do when the museum opened in 2016 was to create highly immersive real life experiences that people can touch, smell, and taste. Ironically, since then the museum has become the poster child for a whole era of experiences, retail stores, cafes, and products that people photograph and rave about on social media but rarely enjoy in real life. From lavish trips and dinners to crazy outfits and makeup looks, lots of empty moments and products that captivated our attention in the past decade were strategically created to look good online. Breaking this pattern certainly won’t be easy, yet the recipe for it seems quite simple — make good shit, work with genuine people, prioritize relationships and great stories over conversions, and perhaps most importantly, have fun.
IN THE MARGINS
Instead of dwelling on a long list of things I don’t like, I curated an even longer list of things I love for a Busy Corner Guide to IRL with resources and examples of how throw the best parties, save money on pop ups, and create experiences people want to come back to.
Fashion’s and beauty’s ambition to meet us at the basketball courts, soccer fields, and the Olympics is impossible to ignore this year. My only question was why now, and here is what I found:
According to these Future Commerce and BoF breakdowns, women’s sports are getting unprecedented mainstream coverage, 2021 Supreme Court ruling allowed college athletes to monetize their image before going pro, and female athletes have more holistic and interesting stories which engage their fans both on and off the court. Female athlete partnerships are cheaper, convert better, and are about to skyrocket as more brands understand it.
I am a little wary of Alexis Ohanian’s investment portfolio but this clip about sports being an extremely human, collective, and emotional form of entertainment that more people are likely to flock to as they try to lead a more balanced life, rings true. His investments in female athletes back in 2020 sounded like a charity side project to many which couldn’t have been more wrong.
Just because fashion and beauty have the money and ambition to move into sports doesn’t mean they are doing it well though. Global Advisory curated a special edition of their discovery page for the Paris Olympics full of fun analysis and friendly criticism.
This is fantastic analysis (as always)! You so accurately portray a phenomenon and shift that’s happening all around us, but is really hard to articulate. When I’ve found indie artists who I assume have millions of followers but only have a handful, I feel like I’ve discovered treasure. Surprise > sponsors.
Totally agree with the mass produced sentiment - rhode just did a popup in London and it looked like madness! This also made me wish Curbed would bring back their eavesdropping column!