Greetings from the light at the end of the tunnel, where most of us are vaccinated and fresh from our in-person (!!) offsite at Beginnings, which coincidentally is owned by our multitalented VP of Client Services Heather Freiser and features literary themed cocktails (we recommend the Field of Dreams, complete with a crackerjack garnish).
In other news: New York is back! Which means many of our far-flung staff members have returned to the city ushering back the era of the LHC office just in time for summer. Watch this space, there are wall decals and non-working motorcycles in our future.
But it’s not all bars and office spaces. This week, Brooklyn says goodbye to our lead PM Nina Hazard, and her husband (and LHC co-founder) John, who will now be Zooming in from Austin and are so over NYC they didn’t even attend their own goodbye-party. At the risk of writing a “why we're leaving New York” essay on their behalf, we’ll keep it brief: Nina and John, you’ll be missed; Ollie and Ryan, you’ll be missed even more.
On the bright side, next company offsite at Torchy's Tacos? On to the #content:
We’re all in the dumpster fire together
A Brooklyn based creative agency was sued by Nike … and they’re happy about it?
MSCHF, creator of the infamous Jesus Shoes and the even more notorious Satan Shoes, have become synonymous with controversy (not to mention playing drinking games outside of their office in Williamsburg … hi neighbors.)
The Satan shoes were marketed as a commentary on “the perniciousness of intolerance;” Nike’s lawsuit both got them a lot of press and proved their point. You don’t have to squint too hard to see that the cease and desist was more than likely the purpose of the entire thing.
The Satan Shoes capitalized on the marketing power of pure chaos. The shoes themselves were conceptually outrageous (ICYMI: they contained human blood); more importantly they were affiliated with the rapper Lil Nas X, in the news for a music video in which he gave Satan a lap dance and conservative commentators a conniption.
The intentional provocation is an example of what we like to call “chaos marketing”, a contemporary offshoot of the age old adage: any press is good press.
Gone are the Don Draper days of aspirational ad campaigns — brands who are reading the room are more interested in letting us know that we’re all in this dumpster fire together. In part, this comes from the strangeness of our current moment; It’s also a sign of marketing skewing towards Gen Z, who shun sentimentality, and an acknowledgement that the best way to get people’s attention these days is to piss them off.
That said, one of the key lessons to take away from chaos marketing is that consumers are drawn to absurdity, as well as outrage. When we’re all targeted with algorithmically tailored content from all sides, just a little chaos, as a treat, can get us through the dumpster fire with a little less languishing.
What We're Listening To
Good luck getting this out of your head.