Volume 12: Data ethics with IKEA, be more like Eilish, anonymity kills.
1. IKEA thinks we should assemble our data as well as its furniture.
Tl;dr: IKEA sets the pace in data ethics.
IKEA is undergoing a massive and wide-reaching business transformation. As the world urbanizes there are more households for it to supply, but they’re smaller, in more densely packed metropolitan areas, and much less likely to have a car. This requires a major change to its current out-of-town retail model and a significant commitment to innovation in their digital retail experience.
As data is the currency of digital, the easy path would’ve been to do what everyone else does - gather as much as possible and then figure out how to extract value from it later. Instead, Ikea is bringing its principles of democracy to the fore with plans to put the customer in control of the data they share and the value they’ll get back from sharing it.
This is an important topic, and it will only become more important as legislation like GDPR, CCPA, and beyond comes onstream. What’s particularly important here is that when a massive business like IKEA decides to take a leadership stance, it has the potential to set a new baseline of expectations across the board.
2. Be more Eilish, less Sheeran.
Tl;dr: Billie Eilish is a brilliantly, spectacularly well observed brand.
You literally can’t move for Billie Eilish right now. Grammys, Oscars, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Ellen. The world is literally at her feet.
At only 18 years old, it would be easy to view Billie as an overnight sensation, but a little digging reveals that she’s had a team of experts paving her way to stardom since her early teens, including Apple and Spotify. And boy what a great job she and they have done. At a time of such bland anonymity within the world of mainstream pop, she absolutely stands out for her style, breaking down of barriers with her fans, and the way her fandom has been built. Ironically, the only thing that isn’t particularly stand-out is the music itself, but that doesn’t really matter when the image, the aesthetics, the difference, is so damn good.
If there’s one thing for brands to learn here, avoid anonymity (see 3 and 4 below, cough, cough). Eilish is on top of the world because she’s different, not in spite of her differences. Her green hair and baggy clothing aren’t a risk, they mitigate risk. In a world where everyone else has become so utterly bland and boring, being memorable matters.
Does any of this sound familiar? Yeah, I feel like describing pretty much every category in business right now. Which means standing out is an opportunity for you too.
3. Anonymous Brandless closes, nobody likely to notice.
Tl;dr: Couldn’t scale its losses fast enough to survive.
Following on from Billie Eilish, Brandless, the boringly non-branded brand that claimed it really was a brand, closed its doors this week. While I very much feel for the people who no longer have a job and the suppliers who almost certainly didn’t get paid, this never-viable business was the poster child for unachievable DTC hubris. While they may be the first, don’t expect them to be the last. There will be plenty more anonymous DTC closures soon.
But back to Brandless. It was literally wrong in every direction. The steeply discounted business model made no sense, the oh-so-self-reverential brand strategy made no sense, and the brand's presentation to the world was so anonymous that they didn’t build equity in anything. The fact that it simply closed the doors means hundreds of millions in VC funding didn’t even result in an asset someone was willing to pick up for even a nominal sum. Wow.
Of course, a terrible business model, brand strategy, and predilection for brand anonymity isn’t usually a problem for Softbank-backed businesses. Unfortunately for Brandless, they were no WeWork. They simply couldn’t scale their losses fast enough for Softbank to bail them out rather than let them implode.
4. McDonald’s late to the anonymity party. Vows to catch up.
Tl;dr: McDonald’s willfully ignores assets it spent billions building.
On the theme of anonymity, folks over in the alternate universe of ad-world have been going gaga over anonymous ads created for McDonald’s in the UK. Based on “type sandwiches” by designer David Schwen back in 2011, they’re a list of ingredients in pleasing colors and nicely kerned type. They’re lovely art pieces and terrible ads.
The thing about code-play with brands (which I wrote about last week), is that you actually have to have a code to play with for it to work. The code McDonald’s has spent billions building is simple: The golden arches, red & gold, the creepy clown, and Mc in front of everything. If they’d played with any of these, it might’ve worked, but instead all they did was lazily resurrect Schwen’s non-McDonald’s design language.
Just to put into perspective how daft this is from a seemingly sophisticated marketer like McDonald’s, here’s my version for BMW:
Hood
Wheels
Engine
Steering wheel
Body
Seats
Trunk
There. Didn’t make you want to buy a BMW did it? Nope, me neither.