That project started as just an email that a drunk co-worker sent when he was working late one night and he was a big deadhead he came across the website of Jerry Garcia, who is the lead singer of the Grateful Dead who has since passed and he was just really not happy with the memory and the legacy that lived online representing such an American icon in music and so, he wrote the webmaster, an email and little did he expect to get a response from Jerry's daughter. And that became a project that really turned into something that we never would have expected. It led to a feature in Rolling Stone and a South by Southwest panel. There's a lot to learn from the Grateful Dead and what they did in music and apply that into other aspects of branding and marketing.
Doug Logan (01:26)
Fantastic. You didn't send the original email. That was somebody else.
Amy (01:29)
That was not me, I actually was not a deadhead. I did get pulled in because he was a strategist and he needed a creative partner. And so we built kind of this small team and then we carved out a room, which we would typically call a war room. But of course, for Jerry, we decided that a peace room felt like the better name. And so we hung the tie dye tapestries, We just went through archives and archives of music. There were spreadsheets and we really kind of put ourselves in the mindset of the Deadhead community.
And, you know, I think the big lessons that I took away were the things that The Dead did. Like creating these shared rituals and language. Like if you needed a ticket to a show, you wouldn't have a sign that said, I need a ticket. You would say, I need a miracle. And everybody kind of knew what that meant. And they all shared in those rituals and in that belonging. So one of the big facets that cult brands do really well is that they make their customers feel like they're a part of something bigger than just the product or the brand itself.
Doug Logan (02:30)
Yeah. worked with a lot of other brands across a lot of different spaces. And this same logic, the same strategy can be applied there as Who are some of the brands today that you idolize doing some of this cult-like following?
Amy (02:44)
Yeah, I mean, some of the brands that like really are doing it well, I would say when I look at shared rituals and language, you see brands like Peloton where they're sort of creating that community. They have these micro tribes, whether they're following an instructor or certain type of class or they're a group of people gathering together. Of course, when you think about like world building or like building a belief system, that people really buy into. Disney is the most iconic. They've got everything down to a science. Like you are walking into another world. But there's a lot of brands that do that at a smaller scale. So, Lalabo and Anthropologie are two that really at their store level are doing that nice where you walk in and you feel like you're transformed. So cult brands really are real and authentic in doing what they say that they want to do.
Doug Logan (03:30)
We work with founder led brands. So we are really focused where like I'm the founder of the agency. I work dear and close with every client that we take on, for better or for worse, they're stuck with me. How does like a smaller brand leverage that? And does it start with the brand or does it start with listening to the customers? What are your thoughts on that?
Amy (03:39)
Yeah. So when you think about somebody walking into your store, your property, what kind of story is that customer walking into and how are you creating that world using all of the senses?
What is the narrative that they're going to follow? And so kind of thinking through that whole visual experience, but even some of the smaller details. When you think about shared rituals or language, this could be something where you take something really ordinary in your business, but you call it something really special, or it's a secret that only your customer knows how to do or ask for and it becomes part of the experience of interacting with your brand. And I think it's all those like little things that are uniquely you that you can only do at your place that customers remember.
Doug Logan (04:42)
Yeah, mean, as a father, an old father and a new father again, because I've got a 17 year old and a two year old. I I'm thinking about the holidays and we got, rituals as family that like we're establishing now. And so in a lot of ways, what you're talking about there, and of course, you know, my wife and her family, they've got a totally different way of celebrating the holidays and how they get together versus my family. And so we're constantly kind of creating those rituals.
I guess what's the process of coming up with that and creating those ideas? And how do you play a role in that? Or where do you even get started as a brand?
Amy (05:19)
Yeah, one of the things that I remember the most from the Jerry project that stood with me was the creative brief. So there was one, one single insight that was three words long. What I loved about this project was that the creative brief said,
create living nostalgia.And that to me really struck this emotion of a longing for the moment as you're in it. And so, you know, when you're sort of like living in those moments and you feel this overwhelming sense of just wanting to remember it and take it in and never forget what's happening right at that exact moment. That to me, is what you would ultimately be trying to capture. And how you get there, I think, is a little harder. One of the things that I learned during my time at Crate & Barrel was this idea of really, really getting… immersed in what you are trying to do and they would have these kind of big sessions where we would just listen to music and look at pictures that are sort of like setting the intention of what they wanted it to feel like.
This is what we're trying to emulate for your customers. And then really instilling that intention in your employees so that when they're interacting with the customer, they're trying to create that feeling.
Doug Logan (06:36)
It's interesting because as a fellow creative, I think I'm more, I'm maybe on the strategy and the digital side of things, less visual and branding and storytelling than you do, but, I constantly find myself kind of riding that line between like it being, you know, visually appealing and creative and then it being effective and meeting, you know, the goals the client has set out, right? Coming back to the brief in that case, what's the ROI, right? That's kind of the world that...
Amy (07:04)
Yeah.
Doug Logan (07:05)
You know, lot of the clients that we work with, the brands that we work with, and I think even, like you said, when you get into hospitality, I mean, they're, they're making sure that every inch of a property is revenue producing, which is a lot. It's a big, big challenge. Right. And so how How do you balance that or how do you have that ROI conversation without, you know, cannibalizing
creating nostalgiaas an example?
Amy (07:30)
Yeah, I think. Everything is so measured and you are held accountable to every metric and the goal is to move from metric A to metric B. One way that you can stand out is by investing more in things that really do make you real, in creating these smaller rituals that people remember.
The real differentiator of a cult brand is some of the less measurable things that they're doing to make people feel like they belong. Is there a way to really invest in the promise and the values that we're saying we have and can we put our money against those things so that we're really being So you don't get too held back by measurement all the time. So it's a balance though, you've got to have a little bit of both.
Doug Logan (08:14)
Yeah. Well, I guess it just depends on the audience, who you're speaking to and what are the goals? I would argue also that measurement is getting harder and harder.
Amy (08:19)
Yeah, absolutely. Things are so focused around content now. It's not, we're not just building destinations anymore, right? It has to be this constant kind of influx of new things that are being created. And so what does that look like? I think that's creating a lot of new roles within organizations that are pretty cool. But at the same time, some of the roles that like traditionally where I would fill as a creative director really focused on e-commerce and web design and digital design, some of those creative decisions kind of move to the back burner in favor of performance.
Doug Logan (08:58)
Yeah, I... agree with you. Unfortunately. I think again that kind of comes down to like what we measure, right? And so what's important. But the reality is, it can only measure so much. I think we kind of get hooked on this idea that we saw this percentage increase here, here, here. And we get so focused in on those results sometimes that we miss what we're doing to the brand. We miss what we're doing to the overall customer experience in those cases.
And the problem is that we can't really see the damage that we're doing. Because by the time that pattern emerges, maybe it's already been covered up by the fact that we saw growth. So we started to pump even more money into campaigns and we saw more and more results. And we wouldn't have known because we've already kind of moved past that by 30 A-B tests later.
I miss the days of like flash websites. Always panicking to turn off the, you know, where's the mute button on this website?
Amy (09:58)
The spectrum of like art and science coming together… A website could look and feel like anything. And it's skewed very far onto the science side. So if you were going to A-B test a red flashing button, would more people click on it than a simple button? Probably. But when you have that button repeated in context of a site, know, visually that's just not a great decision, it's not a strong brand presence. What is the right mix of metrics and a little bit of that artistic integrity and instinct and emotion that can come in?
Doug Logan (10:31)
We're so focused on reaching like the new customer, who this new person is and what they look like and what they think and what they need. Nobody is making campaigns for the customers they already have. It's always about conquesting new and...
Amy (10:47)
That's true.
Doug Logan (10:47)
Part of me thinks, like back to your blinking red button comment, like just going after new customers. And are those the customers you even want? Right?
Amy (10:51)
Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, are they valuable customers to you?
Doug Logan (10:59)
Or you could even say like to me that would be, you know, to use an old dating world terminology, that'd be like a red flag, right? Somebody who clicks on red buttons, are they just gonna leave for the next red button that somebody else has?
Amy (11:06)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I will say that I've adopted some of the mentality of the deadhead. Like freedom has kind of become more important to me. I think as a creative person, when you move up through corporate America, I think when you sort of reach near the top, you kind of... you step so far away from the craft of design.
You start to have so many meetings and you're managing people and you're doing performance reviews. I found this desire to be free to express design in different ways. I still really love web projects. I love pure graphic design. I love typography, interior design. I actually didn't go to interior design school but there's so much overlap in the principles in the theories that I think can bring an interesting point of view.
Doug Logan (12:06)
Yeah, I love motion graphics. I still reminisce of the days where I carved out like probably way too much time, and just worked on creating a reel for the agency. After Effects, After Effects. You get so lost in it. But you're right. I've got too many meetings to even, feel creative. And meetings are, they're creative, problem solving like right on the fly. Most of my meetings, I'm leading the call. Then at the end of the day, you're just like, What did I get done? Hopefully somebody was taking notes so that somebody can actually do some work because all I did was talk for an hour.
Amy (12:47)
I've been really trying to like challenge myself to, you know, even just time block an hour where you just aren't looking at other tabs. You're not checking your phone and you're just trying to flow and it's. It's so rewarding and you feel like you want to come back. You have a really great project and you're like, I can't wait to like work on that today.
Doug Logan (13:10)
Yeah, I try to time block. I try to block out at least the first two, maybe three hours of the morning. Part of me is I should probably just get another computer that is... It doesn't have anything on it. I just do work on that computer, but...
Amy (13:20)
Doesn't have anything on it.
Doug Logan (13:27)
Yeah. And I leave my phone out of that room. like you're walking into the CIA, you zip your phone up and you go in and you got like, that's two hours in that room with fantastic loud music playing and you're just jamming to get some work done.
Amy (13:34)
Yeah. Yes! It's so rewarding and you kind of like remember why you got into it in the first place.
Doug Logan (13:47)
Is there a subject that you want to talk about here in the last couple of minutes?
Amy (13:49)
I think as you learn in your career, you learn to achieve success through the success of your team or your people versus like just personally getting your own success. You care less about you and you really want to mentor and see other people succeed. I think when you start out early, you think, I have to be good at everything. As you get more experience, you start to realize that it's better to know what you're good at and stick with that and to not try to do everything or to bring in people who are good at what they do on the things where you're not. And I think knowing your weaknesses is equally as powerful as knowing your strengths.
Doug Logan (14:29)
Hmm.
