Welcome to 28 new brand founders, investors and operators who subscribed to The Repeat Saturday email since last Saturday. We’re glad to have you. If this was shared with you, consider subscribing.
When Bottega Veneta deleted its social presence at the beginning of the year, plenty of people got caught up in the news: “Why would a brand leave Instagram?”
The question seemed to ring with a hint of judgment.
Count us among the few who weren’t necessarily puzzled—from where we sit, there’s been a steady decentralization of a brand’s image for some time. Some just manage it better than others.
Most of this has been hidden by the force of Instagram and an associated aesthetic that’s been overused by influencers of all scale and reach. But below that surface, and, more notably, elsewhere, brands have been shaped by their customers in all sorts of ways.
(You could argue they always have been.)
Today, more platforms are emerging to let that play out on a larger scale—and more audiences are interested in watching that happen, because they’re fundamentally different than the clout-fueled feed of Instagram.
Newer social networks—TikTok, Clubhouse, Dispo—are putting more value on the content as opposed to the creator in a way that’s uniquely different.
As Andrea Hernandez put it on Clubhouse recently, they’re democratizing clout.
With Clubhouse growing at a breakneck pace and Dispo pushing its beta to the max, a good deal of smart people have talked about what all this means for the creator economy. That’s certainly an interesting question, and the potential for us appropriately valuing new creative voices is exciting.
For brands, though, the biggest change isn’t going to be working with new influencers to fit new channels; it’s going to be releasing grips on a carefully curated image.
Because new social is about the content over the creator, their algorithms are tuned to that difference.
What we’re getting fed, then, is a mixture of content types, not creator profiles. It’s as common on TikTok to see something weird from an influencer with 1M followers as it is to see something endearing from a mom with 100–yet both videos feature the same brand.
This shift has opened the door for everyone to contribute to shaping brands at a scale that’s never been considered before.
Frightening? Not for brands that are confident in themselves and send the right cues to consumers.
When that Bottega news broke last month, we were reminded of another brand that doesn’t have a social presence: RH.
The brand formerly known as Restoration Hardware has flown under the radar when it comes to its rejection of social.
“Our focus is on doing great work and letting the world talk about us,” its CEO Gary Friedman has said. “We believe it’s not what we say, it’s what we do that defines us.”
In case you’re wondering how that’s been working out: Since Instagram launched in 2010, RH has nearly tripled in revenue from $950M to $2.7B in 2020.
No brand-owned social needed.