Launching Billion Dollar Brands with Gin Lane (now Pattern)

Yaw Aning Headshot

Yaw Aning

Founder & CEO

Camille Baldwin

Camille Baldwin, Partner & Director of Brand Development at Pattern (formerly Gin Lane), details her amazing path to becoming one of the top brand strategists in DTC.

Twitter: @camillezig

Gin Lane --> Pattern

Read more about Pattern here

In the DTC space, there are certain brands that stand out. They capture your imagination through their unique marketing campaigns, their novel point of view, the effortless way they seem to connect with customers, and their unforgettable branding.

Brands like Warby Parker, Hims, Hers, Smile Direct Club, Harry's, Sweetgreen, Quip, Bonobos....

There's one thing these particular breakout brands have in common - they're all clients of an agency called Gin Lane.

Adweek has recognized Gin Lane as one of small group of powerhouse agencies because of its unique ability to create brands from scratch that seem to turn into household names seemingly overnight.

In this episode, we interview Camille Baldwin, the person responsible for many of these direct-to-consumer hits. Camille leads the brand practice at Gin Lane.

She reveals the playbook that Gin Lane uses to create brands that captivate consumers. Her lessons are simple, yet hard-hitting, and impactful.

Episode length: 39:44'

IN THEIR WORDS

We believe that the best brands feel personal and human, they don’t feel like a corporation

Camille Baldwin, Gin Lane Partner & Director of Brand Development

Podcast Transcript

Y: Yaw

C: Camille

Y: Before we start today’s episode, I wanted to share some exciting news. Gin Lane, the agency we profile in today’s episode, transitioned from an agency that launches consumer brands, to now Pattern, a family of brands designed to transform how you enjoy daily life.

We recorded this interview with Camille Baldwin, the director of brand strategy at Gin Lane. After 10 years of success as a creative agency, the Gin Lane team - led by Nick Ling, Emmett Shine and Camille - were inspired to start Pattern and build their own family of direct-to-consumer brands after realizing today’s culture of addiction to technology and productivity had taken a huge toll on their overall happiness and well-being.

Pattern is launching today, August 6. And we’re excited to launch this episode with the launch of their new direction. We recorded the episode a few months ago when Pattern was still under wraps, so on the episode, you’ll hear a lot about Gin Lane and their philosophy on launching brands.

We hope you enjoy it.

C: We believe that the best brands feel personal and human, they don’t feel like a corporation

Y: Welcome to Touchpoints. A show where we celebrate the stories of Direct to Consumer leaders, marketers, and operators that are creating breakout brands in the digital era.

I’m Yaw Aning. I’m the co-founder & CEO of Malomo, a post-purchase platform that believes in helping brands create relationships with their customers.

In this series, we typically hear from individuals working at direct to consumer brands to hear their story and find out ways they are creating unique experiences for their customers. But today, we are going to look at the direct to consumer world through a different lens.

(News story snippet highlighting various brands)

Ok, we’re not just highlighting the largest players in the direct to consumer space because they’re changing retail. I’m highlighting these brands because they all have one thing in common. They’ve all been a client of Gin Lanes..

If you don’t know Gin Lane, in their words - They’re an agency that focuses on building modern brands, communication systems, and interactive experiences that people really enjoy.

Behind great brands, are great people. And today we get to hear from the person leading the charge of creating these hugely successful brands from scratch. I’d like to introduce you to Camille Baldwin:

C: I’ll start where I am now. I am the director of brand development here at Gin Lane, which is a creative agency based here in Chinatown in New York City. We work with early stage startups to bring them to market and help them really define who they are, and help sort of develop their presence to consumers whether that's through a brand itself or through a website or an app. Been here gosh coming up on six years.

Y: Camille created this branding vertical within Gin Lane and developed its best-in-class process for building brands from the ground up. She’s helped launch over 40 brands to market with a combined valuation to-date of over $10 billion. Woah.

In this episode, we explore three major principles Camille uses to create challenger brands at Gin Lane.

But before we get to those principles, it’s important to understand Camille’s journey to uncovering these insights.

Camille’s path is anything but linear. Her career is filled with twists and turns that seem chaotic and unrelated, but in hindsight, really gave her the expertise that set her up perfectly for her breakout success at Gin Lane. For those of you that think to yourself… “what am I going to do with my life?” Camile’s story will give you some reassurance that a seemingly chaotic path makes sense in hindsight. From intern to Forbes 30 Under 30 Nominee, Camille has gained the skills to become a true brand whisperer.

We begin the story with how Camille started at Gin Lane as an intern, who quickly gained a pretty large responsibility... for one of the largest brands in the world.

C: So when I first started interning it was the summer of 2013 and we, at the time, were working on, our largest client was Adidas women. We were doing some awesome stuff for them at the time which was like this triangle. One was designing their website, where they would show product but also lifestyle editorial content. And so we designed the website and then also developed the editorial content. And then managed their social. So this was before the days of when social was as big of an activity as it is and it wasn't in house at the time. It was sort of nascent and still kind of this renegade thing of like “What is social? What do you do with a brand for social media?” And yeah so I came on to help with the community management piece of it. Ended up just sinking my teeth in and even within just two months Gin Lane had hired me full-time to come on as the community manager so I was running all of Adidas’ accounts. Their Instagram, their Twitter, their Facebook. We were creating all of the content, writing all the copy, managing all of the interactions. So yeah, I had their Instagram on my phone for a while. It was neat!

Y: That honestly sounds exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Controlling the creative output of a massive brand like Adidas required her to understand the pulse of their audience and create content that connected with them.

Today, it seems unheard of that an intern would be responsible for managing the public image of a global brand, but Gin Lane was a different kind of agency and Camille was a different kind of intern. Together, they meshed pretty well.

For Camille, Gin Lane was this magical place that seemed to be close to paradise for what she wanted to do with her career. She joined because it was the first place she saw that gave her the chance to combine her favorite things.

C: It was definitely the ability to marry strategy with creativity on a daily basis I just thought that was so fascinating. Gin Lane, at the time, we were working with a lot of fashion clients and so it was squarely in the camp of what I've been wanting to do and so it just felt like kids met with like “Yes! I finally found all of these weird disparate, or seemingly disparate, things that I like to do in one place!” Which was amazing but also I was really drawn to Gin Lanes brand. When I went to the website, just the design of it, the tone of it, everything just felt like this place, that it was too good to be true. Like I couldn't believe that this was a place that people worked. Like I worked in all wonderful places but - and sometimes very corporate environments where I had to wear a suit everyday - this place just...at the time when you went to the website, above the fold was a picture of our flashing neon sign, which is our logo and the 16 bit wave and it said Surf The Net, and it was just flashing neon like you were coming into a store and it just felt so unique, so different and so cool that I don't know who these people are but I have to talk to them...it was awesome!

Y: I mean talk about getting a sign! Literally!

C: Yeah it was crazy one other thing I remember too was like their tagline was - I don't know if you can call the tagline - but their description right under that sign was Ideas Art & Technology and I was like “What else do you need in life I mean?!”

Y: “Hahaha...ahh that’s great.”

Little did she know, Camille joined Gin Lane at a pretty formative time. Most of their clients when she started were big consumer brands, like Adidas. But as they started working with a few upstart direct-to-consumer businesses, she saw that these brands were doing something pretty unique in the consumer space.

C: It was a really interesting time to come on because there were a couple of different things happening with Gin Lane.

So one was, we were starting, we begun to kind of catch the DTC bug, if you will, by doing some work with Harry's & Sweetgreen and helping launch them to market. So we had done Harry's website and SweetGreens’s, we were working with them in varying capacities but one thing was designing and developing their ordering app. So we were doing more of the like design and dev on those types of things. But as a result, we had to start thinking about “Well what story are we telling for these platforms?” You know, you have to tell your brand story, the narrative and decide, you know, “What are the talking points and how do you want this to look?” And they had done some brand work, but it wasn't as in depth for digital. It was more traditional brand books that include, you know your logo lock up and your colors you know collateral, like a business card, or packaging or what have you. But we kind of had to start backing in some of the brand design.

At the time, also just on the ADIDAS side, we had started to sort of wind down that work with them because they had begun to take all of it in house, which I think was a good thing for us from the standpoint of we, as an agency, we've always struggled with the agency moniker in the sense that, you know, we didn't want to feel like we were always just based on...doing work just based on a marketing budget, that was like you know temporal campaigns that come and go. I think you know, we as a group of people, are really entrepreneurs ourselves and builders and really wanted to sort of lift up the hood and started to go, you know, “Why are you doing all of these these things and how does that connect to your larger mission? And yes your marketing budget but also your operations and technology in this and that…?” So that provided this vacuum of, well we're going to need some more work, and Harry's & Sweetgreen provided us an opportunity the like, you know, we need some sort of definition around these brands.

Y: Working with Harry’s and Sweetgreen, Camille noticed that these companies were building their brand a bit different than how she would imagine. These brands were working with Gin Lane on executing digital campaigns, but Camille kept noticing that they needed to move up the value chain a little more to help better define the brand.

She thought there was a huge opportunity go after these upstart direct-to-consumer businesses.

Being the challenger that she is, she decided to turn that idea into reality.

C: And so I ended up kind of pitching Emmett our founder on “Hey, can I create a department for this? like I think there's sort of an upstream, if you will, you know, a type of activity that needs to take place before we even get to the website where we need to figure out, “What is their mission? What is the story we’re telling? How are they positioning themselves and how do we sort of create that identity and then put it on digital?”

Y: His response? (heart beating sound effect)

C: “Yeah, sounds good, go for it great let's try it out”

Y: And in one short, pivotal pitch, Gin Lane’s brand strategy practice was born. The same brand strategy that has built million, heck, billion dollar brands and have redefined retail. This is, to say it bluntly, insane.

Ok, so I know what you may be thinking. All of this talk about brand strategy, Camille’s ability to see the missed opportunity to develop brands in the first place through working with Harry’s and Sweetgreens, did she pick that up just from being an intern at Gin Lane? Developing a brand strategy is complex work. It’s not like you can just learn how to create brands in a short few months.

Camille took a pretty unconventional path to becoming one of the industry's best brand whisperers. While seemingly unconnected, and she’ll admit this, her experiences were the perfect proving ground to craft and hone her branding expertise.

So, if you’re out there wondering, “what am I going to be when I grow up?” you’ll be able to relate to Camille as she started her career.

C: I have a bit of a meandering path background that people tend to look at on LinkedIn and go like “how the heck did you end up where you are at now?” but I promise it makes sense in hindsight.

In college I studied political science and art history. I was super passionate about politics and had been a page in Congress, when that was still a thing in high school, and so I caught the politics bug and naturally went back to DC to study politics at American University and was doing a couple of internships in that area that were really awesome and helpful...from a working on a congressional race, to working at a communication strategy firm, and a lobbying firm, to working on the hill on the house floor, all of which were amazing experiences but towards the end of college, was kind of going, “I don't think this is totally for me.” I think my idealist nature was a little disappointed to see how things worked in reality and also was just itching for some new experiences. So kind of fell into a job working as a government contractor, at a company that has a technology product for government agencies to use for their procurement processes. So I was contractor at NASA and USAID and a couple of other agencies. Those were the two I spent most time at and kind of got my strategy chops there. It was really a nice mix of learning how the government runs as a business but also how are business functions and how technology product runs.

Then I had an existential crisis like many people do in their mid-20s and thought, “Ok, all this analytical and strategy work has been great for my left brain, but my right brain was feeling a little atrophied and I always knew I wanted to do some type of creative work but because I wasn't an artist, or illustrator, painter etcetera, I wasn't going to be a designer persay. I was really kind of struggling with what could that could be. So I found this program at Parsons here in New York that is really focused on the business of fashion and I thought it was really fascinating because it was like the business side of the things I liked but it was creative subject matter. So instead of hanging out in Excel sheets all day, I could do a lot more with visuals and merchandising and all that good stuff. So went back to school there for two years and interned at a couple places that were just incredible experiences. Again, one was at Prada and one was at Warby Parker, which sort of bit me with the DTC bug and that's how I found Gin Lane.

Towards the end of that program I really realized I really still liked strategy as a practice that I wanted to do everyday and that wasn't as easy to do when you're working in house at a brand. So one of my professors told me about Gin Lane and the rest is history. I applied cold and they took me on as an intern since I had been coming out of school. I kind of worked my way up here.

Y: Talk about a shift.

You’re probably wondering exactly what I was wondering. How does politics have anything to do with branding? They couldn’t seem further from one another.

C: Yeah it's funny because I think the subject matter or the content of it seems different because you know politics versus building brands but it's actually the exact same practice at its core. To use a sort of academic term it's really about semiotics, which is like the sign and symbolism of things and I'm just always really been interested in semiotics and, sort of, the science of identity building, if you will.

I think working on the Congressional race and a communication strategy firm in DC - those were the two experiences that I would say were most formative when I think about brand building from the Congressional race perspective, it was thinking about “how do you communicate the identity of this candidate and varying ways, shapes, and forms? From the signs that you put in people's yard, to the way that you try to raise money and talk to people, cold calls, you know asking for donations, to the script that you use when you're knocking on the door?” You know you have to develop talking points about what does candidate believes in and what their larger mission is and what they want to accomplish and all of that is branding.

And then the communication strategy firm was interesting because it was doing that but on in macroscale, more for several politicians to the point where it sort of did it for the major parties and developing essentially what is the party line. How do we talk about things like what is this tax policy or that bill that came across the house floor?” It was really thinking about how to shape things in way that consumers or voters rather will understand them and attach emotionally to them. I think all of it is about finding that nugget that people make decisions based off of - which is emotions - and it's how you do you take really complex information like a public policy but digest it and synthesize it into something that someone can make a split-second gut feeling decision about.

I wish I would have been nicer to myself at the time because I was like, “Who do I want to be? What is all this?” But now it makes sense I love the connective tissue.

Y: Camille hit on something big here...Let me rewind it for you:

C: I think all of it is about finding that nugget that people make decisions based off of - which is emotions.

Y: Emotions drive decisions. Bear with me, but I want to do a very quick exercise that we’ll come back to later on in the episode:

Ok, think of the last online purchase you made from a DTC Brand - no, not Amazon. But a direct to consumer brand.

Now think about why you bought that thing?... If you really want to get into it, write down the top 2-3 things that come to mind.

See, I told you it was quick..we’ll come back to those in a minute.

So, we’ve discovered Camille’s first exposure to the power of brand. But that’s only half the story.

One of the most formative experiences for Camille was interning at the OG of DTC, Warby Parker. It’s obvious the impact Warby has had on the DTC space and Camille was in the heart of it all. She saw first hand the characteristics of what a challenger brand was, what it takes to build one, and it’s power.

C: Warby was still my first experience in that I had been a super early customer of theirs and I don't even remember how I found them but I think it was just being into fashion, as well. I was sort of trying to be always on the cusp of what's hot, what's new, what's coming out, and they just struck me as this incredible brand from day one and I fell in love with them. I thought I was just fascinated by the visuals, the way they talked, the way they had a social mission and so I was just dying to work there. So, yes when I worked there, that was definitely the first experience of working in it.

Y: It is this experience that Camille held as her North Star as she formulated Gin Lane’s process for creating challenger brands.

C: They are world-class at a consistent brand experience and as someone who geeks out about this stuff, I think that flows not just through the consumer experience but through the internal experience as well. From all the departments that they run, to the culture, to the events that they do and the way that they treat their employees. Everything just felt like just one unified brand & mission and it was really exciting to see that, you know, all of the sort of quirkiness and joy that they put into their brand and customer experience absolutely carried over internally and it was incredible and it was one of the best places I've worked.

They have extremely strong founders with a point of view on how things should be done and they just do an incredible job at carrying it out and, I don’t know, I think of it I think of a brand as in ways like the beating heart of the organization and a lot of times that does come from the founders and if they're really dynamic individuals, that just naturally permeates through everyone else. And they do a great job of hiring and creating a culture that totally manifests all of their mission, their values, all of the things that you read about in the textbooks, they did it on a day-to-day basis.

They had taken such a new approach to brand and showing that brand wasn't just your logo or wasn't just your visual identity. It was sort of the root of everything that you do, the root mission and that mission means to infuse every single thing that you do. They just, you know, executed beautifully on that and so I think having that example to point of, of how they thought about it was always helpful because I was like “No, that!”

Y: Through politics and Warby Parker, she developed the chops that allowed her to even see that branding was a thing in the first place.

Sometimes you have to follow your instincts and go after opportunities when you see them, like Camille did when she pitched Emmett about building a brand strategy practice.

Ok, so you remember that exercise we did a few minutes ago about your last purchase? Let’s go back to those answers really quick.

I’ll start with mine.

The last thing I bought was a watch. When people approach me and ask “that’s a nice watch, why’d you buy it?” I say things like “I never know what time it is and I’m late everywhere I go” or “it was a really great deal for the quality” ...which are very rational and logical reasons why you buy a watch, but to tell you the truth, anytime I want to look at the time - I just pull out my phone. And to be honest, the battery has been dead for like 3 months, but I still wear it everyday!

The logical answers I give people are not the reason I got the watch. I got the watch because I created this image in my head of this person I would look like with this new watch & I wanted people to think of me as a trendsetter.

This is just one example of what Camille was talking about when she mentioned finding those nuggets that evoke emotion in people to get them to make decisions. But she’s not the only one preaching this. There’s actually been a lot of research around this, as well.

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, through extensive research, showed that without emotions, individuals can’t make decisions. Damasio concluded that as humans, “we are not thinking machines that feel. We are feeling machines that think.”

So why did you purchase that last thing? If you wrote down 2-3 things, what were they? Odds are they’re things like “price” or “saving time” or something rational.

What Camille is so great at is aligning brands with emotions and creating identities that first evoke emotion in people, not just sell great products that people can rationally buy into. But how does she do it?

From her experiences, there are 3 foundational elements that Camille thinks set the tone for a breakout challenger brand. The first, you should have a strong point of view. Second, You should be disciplined and maintain a sharp focus around this point of view. And then lastly, you should create an emotional reaction by personifying your brand.

We’ll start with having a point of view.

C: It's almost like the periscope on the ship steering the ship in the direction of the mission. Because DTC companies are coming of age in the time of the internet you could have any company in every company within your space be your competition. You have to deal with everyone. So I think it's so much more important these days to have a really clear mission that your customers can emotionally attach to. That mission has to drive everything from, the way you're running your operations to the customer service, excetera.

If you start a company strictly based on like a market opportunity, people can’t sell it. That doesn’t mean it’s not ok, it doesn’t mean that that’s the wrong way to start a business, it’s just that it’s not the type that’s going to deeply align with someone on an emotional basis.

I think it’s more important to ask, “what is authenticity?” what does that even mean, and what it means is you can relate to that brand and there’s sort of something powerful thats tugging you towards it and making you want to be a part of it and making you want it to be a part of your brand as a person and that comes from people who I think are really mission driven and passionate and have really strong points of views, not just on a business opportunity, but also culture and the consumer and why their lives should be better after they buy what you’re selling.

Y: Once you’ve established that point of view, it’s important to market test it. In Camille’s words, it’s much easier to establish your brand if you’ve achieved product market fit. Product market fit tells you that the product you’re selling and the point of view you’re using to position and sell it resonates with the audience you’re going after.

C: Ideal is having product-market fit - knowing that people are going to use your product, in that there is already a demand for it, which can be tough when you're totally new category or a totally new type of product or service because if human behavior hasn't yet adapted towards your thing then there's no telling if people are going to actually pay for it and that's a way bigger problem then how you communicate what it is.

You definitely need to know “what is your business?” Like, What are you selling? How are you selling it? What is the economic model? How are you making money? All of those things, you can do them in tandem with building a brand from the perspective of the brand at that nascent stage - it can be your WHY and your intention for what you want to do with those things and how you want to bring them to life - but in terms of actually doing them, you got to have those things nailed down first because we're sort of pulling what those things are out of a founder and then helping to shape how we frame them or we bring them to the consumer. And so it's really really important to have at least product-market fit nailed down to make sure you know consumers are actually going to use this thing.

If you don't have a good product or service, nobody's going to use it, there is nothing a brand can do about that. It's crucial to make sure you're executing correctly on all those pieces, that bring the company to life and bring it to the consumer. brand can be driving the perceptions of how those things go certainly, but if those are screwed up then yeah, you're in a tough spot.

Y: Next, you have to develop a strong focus around this point of view. Most founders struggle with this. When they create their product, there might be a dozen benefits that make it unique and they have a tendency to want to communicate all of those benefits at once.

But the art of brand building is having a single North Star. Every decision you make should be guided by that North Star.

C: It gives you a direction strategically. I think without it you're sort of flapping in the wind and you’re opportunistic from, from the standpoint of whatever comes your way you'll take it. But a North Star provides you principles and guardrails around which you can steer your ship of a company, you know. If you don't have that then the first person that comes your way that's like, “Hey well I want to buy your company and change it ” then if you don't have a North Star that may seem really appealing but that means that you may lose your customers because they thought you were one thing, and then your actions just showed them that you're something totally different.

If you say you're one thing but then your actions say another, people can't trust you. There's no reason to trust that you are going to do what you say and I think that in this era where you can have any product and service at any price from any brand because the Internet...nobody wants a fake, nobody wants someone who they can't trust, especially when they're putting money towards it. So you’ve really got to make sure that your actions are in line with what you're promising that you will deliver.

It's making sure that the touch points that you do choose ladder up to the values that you have and the goal that you're trying to achieve in the brand. Because many brands can try to do, you know, a crazy activation or partner with some influencer with a million followers but unless those are really in line with the goals of the company then again there's ...it's a slippery slope that you can continue to try every touch point under the sun or every partnership under the sun and when you're everywhere it gives the feeling trying to be everything to everyone and you lack a strong core and I think again people can smell that from miles away they don't want to be a part.

Y: With a strong point of view that’s been market tested, the final piece is figuring out how to bring the brand to life by thinking about the emotions you want your customers to feel when they interact with your brand.

The question you want to ask is – if this brand were a person in our customers lives, who would that person be?

C: We believe that the best brands feel personal and human. They don't feel like a corporation. So it doesn't feel like, “Oh, this is this inanimate weird type of thing that doesn't have any people behind it.” We want as much as possible to convey, you know, the values & spirit of the founders when possible and it's not always lining up one-to-one from who the founders are to what the brand should be but it's certainly a nice starting place.

We have a framework where we try to choose three to four personality traits and characteristics traits based on the strategic principles and values of the company and those are good ways to start to wrap, you know, symbolism around that brand. So if education is something that's really important to the brand than maybe the brand personality has a wise feel to it. You know it feels trusting and secure and wise and you can go to them for knowledge. So you kind of start to map those words and then those words sort of form the basis of the tone and the visuals that the brand can take and it's really a nice just strategic framework to come back to because a brand can't be everything to everybody. It can't be all types of personalities. You know people can sniff out of fake in a second. So if you are sort of having contradicting traits that you wouldn't find in a person, then people are not going to want to engage with you because they do not want to feel like it's an authentic experience.

Y: These principles may seem pretty straightforward, but don’t mistake their simplicity with ease.

What I find interesting is that all of these principles and Camille’s outlook on building a brand really comes down to understanding people and focusing on them.

We wanted to see Camille’s branding skills in action, so we asked her to apply these principles to something she’s passionate about.

She’s a big fan of rice krispy treats and recently got into a kick of making them with all kinds of cereals. We asked her how she would approach creating the brand for a cereal bar business if she was launching it today.

C: I would say we really need to think about what's the larger mission behind the cereal bar company. Is it taste and flavor? Is it health and nutrition? Is it function like protein? and it's not to say that none of those things can’t exist together because they certainly can but it's really important to decide which of those things is your North Star. So I would think about you know, “Us as a group of people, what do we want to be our North Star and how does that line up with how people are already receiving us in market? So if we really want to be about health and nutrition but we have an ingredient that people perceive as - let's say it's some sort of fruit jam and people are just seeing it as more of a taste and flavor kind of play- then they've already categorized it in their mind as maybe that's not such a healthy option in the morning but more of a treat so we have to figure out, “Okay well do we want to keep those customers? Or do we want to go after different ones? Do we want to think about changing our ingredients or how can we just better communicate that this seemingly tasty treat is also wildly healthy for you? So is our packaging doing that? Is our website communicating that?”

Figuring out those types of things and then making sure that you feel good about that North Star. Then looking at, “Okay is everything we're doing consistently laddering up to that story and by everything I don't just mean the bar itself but but I mean all of those different ways that a consumer engages with you. So are we telling some sort of sustainability story, too, or in terms of how these are made or sourced. Is it gluten-free? I don't know, but how do we make sure that everything from the way we're sourcing ingredients, to the way we're packaging, to the way we're displaying them, to if we're partnering with retailers or wholesale, to the partners we use you know making sure all of those things fit in line with that North Star.

Y: Working with brands that are on the bleeding edge of direct to consumer, I was very curious where Camille saw things going. Brands are popping up everywhere and everyone is trying to finds way to create the next best brand in their respective category. Camille has some food for thought that I found very reassuring.

C: I think we're going through a moment where because of the rapid dissemination of all information that is existing, we're just completely overwhelmed with content and information and our generation has grown up with brands promising them things and promising aspirations in X and Y flavors and I think people are tired of it.

I think people are so tired of it and so I think if authenticity was the word of the last five years - this is going to sound similar but I mean it quite differently - is that realness is the word of the next 5 years. Which I think is where authenticity is going, it’s like feeling like you know, there's real people who care and really want to make an impact. But I think realness speaks to “quit marketing to people in a way that tells them you know you can jump higher ,run faster, do X Y and Z, if you have this drink or food or makeup or whatever” How do you just tell people you're okay as it is you don't have to be perfect, perfect doesn't exist! We just want to help you be who you are and help you enjoy who that person is, and maybe do a little bit better, and a little bit faster!” But I think people are starting to tire of this sort of picturesque lifestyle that we see on Instagram. It's like how do you…. you can only keep that up for so long. I think people are getting exhausted, I think they're getting lonely, they're feeling fomo, they're feeling like they aren't living up to expectations, and at least I hope that there's a movement but I think it's coming because we're definitely part of it in the brand's we've been working on it's just “You're okay the way that you are.”

Y: This is Yaw Aning, thanks for listening.

END

I really hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as we enjoyed creating it!

Huge thanks to Camille for sharing her story. You can find out more about Gin Lane at GinLane.com or following Camille on Twitter @CamileZig.

The Touchpoints series is brought to you by Malomo. A shipment tracking platform that lets retailers create magical moments that drive engagement with customers after they buy.

To learn more about Malomo, go to www.gomalomo.com.

To listen to other episodes in this series, search for other Touchpoints Podcasts on your favorite podcasting app, or visit www.gomalomo.com.

The music was created by the amazing James Kennedy.

Supported Carriers

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