Rise of the cultural brand

Lately, we’ve been chatting with a few current and potential clients about the role and future of DTC in a world that’s increasingly omnichannel and, dare we say, not DTC-centric anymore.

It wasn’t that long ago that a wholesale partnership was a giant scarlet letter for retail brands, and everyone was fighting the big bad Middlemen. Nowadays, hardly a week goes by without a CEO or CMO reminding us that wholesale and marketplaces are must-have channels for anyone in retail—that is, provided you don’t hate yourself and would rather pursue profitable growth than vanity metrics that will plunge your company into oblivion.

Now, even though it might not be in our best interest to say so—we are a DTC agency, after all—there’s some truth in those Forbes interviews: while some brands are forced to sell direct-to-consumer, either because of their business model or product category, DTC is not necessarily the most efficient sales channel for most brands.

But by saying that selling direct-to-consumer is not an efficient acquisition channel, we’re missing the opportunity to dig deeper beneath the surface and think about the contribution it brings.

And since going deeper is what this newsletter is all about, that’s what we’re going to do. But before talking about DTC, we need to talk about the role of commerce—all forms of commerce—in our society.

Let’s start with the obvious: commerce is everywhere you look. It is the one, inescapable constant of modern society. We all participate in commerce, and the way we participate in commerce defines and is defined by who we are: our possessions are arguably the most honest and reliable manifestation of our personality, fears, and aspirations.

Whether we like it or not, that makes commerce the most accessible and democratic form of art. By buying things—and we’re using that word in the broadest possible sense—we are simultaneously participating in a communal experience and imprinting ourselves onto the world. And we’re all doing this, every week, many times a week.

So, how does DTC fit into this picture? 

For all its problems, DTC remains—pretty much by definition—the best channel to surface the cultural capital your brand is producing, connecting with consumers on a much deeper level than what other channels allow. This can take many different forms:

• Community: connect customers with your brand. But most importantly, connect customers with one another. If what we buy defines who we are, who’s better positioned than a brand to play matchmaker?
• Access: reward your raving fans by giving them early access to new or limited edition products, or by allowing them to provide feedback on and steer your brand’s roadmap.
• Curation: in the form of content, collabs, or third-party products. The modern brand is an expression of taste—deploying that taste to interpret the world is the best way to further your mission.
• Services: you can get your ears pierced in Studs stores. You can get your pet groomed at PetCo. By integrating products and services, brands can become verticalized destinations for their customers

Obviously, not all customers will want that level of connection with your brand. The casual consumer is perfectly fine grabbing your product from Amazon or their closest Walmart, and that’s okay.

But for those who can’t seem to get enough of you, providing them with a way to peel back the onion will create levels of engagement you’ve never seen before. And as fluffy and aspirational as that might sound, that kind of relationship can significantly impact repeat purchase rates, AOVs, brand equity, and organic customer acquisition.

Here’s the irony, and why most of the debate around “DTC vs. the world” is misguided: the original promise of DTC—that brands could increase their margins by removing the middleman—is the least relevant element of this conversation today.

Instead, we need to redefine our mental model for DTC and recognize the opportunity it creates: to turn your customers from mere recipients of your marketing campaigns into active participants in your brand’s ecosystem. Only then will we be able not just to take stock of its weaknesses, but also to fully capitalize on its potential.