Unseen Unknown
27 episodes - English - Latest episode: 8 months ago -Unseen Unknown is a brand and business strategy podcast about the hidden threads that connect even the most distant of cultural concepts. We look at the emerging trends and behaviors that may be pointing to a deeper truth and ask the bigger question, “Why is society moving in this direction, and how can we apply it to business?”
We believe if we can’t see it in our culture, then we can’t know it in the market. From retail and consumerism to politics, gender, identity and values, there are patterns everywhere that illuminate a path forward for brands.
Your hosts, Jasmine Bina and Jean-Louis Rawlence, are brand strategists and futurists that explore these questions every day in their work for companies around the world. We’ll be interviewing thought leaders and domain experts both within brand strategy and outside of it.
Expect to hear from people from all walks of life: artists, scientists, CEOs, journalists, professors, technologists and everyone in between.
If you’re a founder, leader, storyteller or creator, this podcast will compel you to think at a macro level you haven’t considered before.
We also write and publish videos on everything brand strategy. You can see all of that here: https://www.theconceptbureau.com/
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Episodes
26: How Consumers “Know” Things In Today’s World
November 20, 2023 14:00 - 26 minutes - 25.3 MBFrom the way we create our identities and manage our health, to the way we employ therapy-speak at work and vote in elections, it’s apparent that people are increasingly being guided by feelings and intuition in places where they may have once relied on reasoning or ideology. This noetic, direct-knowing way of moving through the world may sound familiar to you. Perhaps a colleague was “guided” to change careers, or a friend decided to “detox” their personal life. Maybe you, yourself, have d...
25: Bizarre, Strange and Highly Relatable
October 23, 2023 11:00 - 27 minutes - 25.8 MBIn this house episode, we speak with Concept Bureau strategist Rebecca Johnson about the concept of "weirdness" and brands. All humans are weird, and brands that are willing to venture into strange and bizarre territories have a chance to connect with their audiences in a deeply emotional way. From Puppy Monkey Baby to the Pet Rock, we analyze brand weirdness's impact on consumer engagement and differentiation. Weird is risky, but it’s also highly relatable when it’s done right. It can e...
24: How to Unlock Your Strategic Mind
October 09, 2023 12:00 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBWhat does it mean to be good at thinking? Or more importantly, thinking strategically? Most people answer this question by saying that in order to be good at thinking, you have to be knowledgeable. And while knowledge is certainly a critical input for good thinking, it’s just an input. It’s not the actual practice of being able to think well. Good strategic thinking is the culmination of mental processes that enable us to analyze, reason, solve problems, make decisions, and generate creati...
23: Pain, Sacrifice, and Our New Status Symbols
August 28, 2023 15:24 - 35 minutes - 33.3 MBBrands get lucky once, maybe twice every generation, when the rules of status change and social equity is suddenly up for grabs. Our Concept Bureau Senior Strategist Zach Lamb believes we are in the midst of one of those rare shifts right now, where we are moving from the self-indulgence of conspicuous consumption to the self-denial of what he calls “conspicuous commitment”. Public figures are devoting themselves to difficult new modalities, diets, spiritual quests, life practices and ideol...
22: Strong Ties vs. Weak Ties in the Next Era of Brand Innovation
May 24, 2022 21:17 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBWhat happens when the world suddenly reconfigures itself around a very different kind of relationship? The last 20 years of social innovation has leaned into weak ties: distant social relationships that allowed us to trust and extract value on platforms like Yelp, LinkedIn and Facebook. But the next 20 years are already shaping up to look very different. Strong social ties, our close-knit relationships with frequent interactions, are starting to emerge as the dominant threads of the social...
21: The Secret Language of Cult Brands
November 09, 2021 07:54 - 44 minutes - 41.3 MBCults make effective brands, and today, they’re all around us. We engage with them on some level every day, and cult experiences have come to define so much of who we are as a society that you have to ask, how did we get here? Perhaps the most insidious way cults have influenced the world around us is in everyday language that’s meant to control behaviors and change perspectives. It’s language we use with friends and colleagues, language in our media and content, and language we hear coming...
20: Ownership Anxiety, Brand Storytelling, and the Human Condition
June 14, 2021 20:45 - 49 minutes - 45.7 MBHave you ever stopped to think about what ownership means to us as a culture? Many of us see it as an artifact of the legal system or something that’s decided in courts. We believe it is a self-evident concept that lives outside of us and isn’t really part of who we are, but rather a set of rules that affects our mortgages and our car payments. But ownership is in fact very much a part of what makes us human. Today and throughout history, a mere six competing stories of ownership have dict...
19: Systems In Flux: Birth of the New Spiritual Consumer
May 18, 2021 04:59 - 44 minutes - 41.6 MBFor the fourth and final episode in our series on Systems In Flux, we’re talking about seemingly new emerging forms of spirituality, and how new spiritual brands are positioning themselves to take advantage of our collective movement towards wanting to be both categorized but at the same time free from conventional binary definitions. Everything is being catered more and more to us as individuals—and religion seems to be shifting in that direction, too. Part of that shift is the way we und...
18: Systems In Flux: A Unified Theory of Culture, Branding, and Human Behavior
April 28, 2021 19:43 - 47 minutes - 43.7 MBEvery single culture and subculture - from states and governments to user segments and brand tribes - falls along the tight-loose continuum. A culture’s tightness or looseness affects people’s perceptions of threat, how they relate to each other, how they consume, and of course the narratives that shape the businesses and brands that form within that culture. In this third episode in our series on Systems In Flux, we’re talking about the invisible systems that make a culture relaxed or rigid...
17: Systems In Flux: Class, Taste and the Modern Aspiration Economy
October 29, 2020 07:18 - 48 minutes - 44.9 MBFor the second episode in our series on Systems In Flux, we’re talking about systems of class and taste. In the past 10 years, new brands have emerged, specifically in luxury and premium categories, that point to a divergence in our social systems around what class and taste are, and how they are achieved. Brand strategist and sociologist Ana Andjelic places brands like Telfar, Blenheim Forge, Fly By Jing and Brightland in the Modern Aspiration Economy. This emerging economy trades in taste...
16: Systems in flux: The hidden divergent forces shaping the next generation of brands, consumers, and capitalism
October 27, 2020 06:45 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBWhether it’s brand, behavior, or culture, the more you dig into the systems that affect our lives the closer you’ll come to a conversation about capitalism. In this house episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis dig into a curious pattern that's emerging across all kinds of markets, a divergent behavior that’s starting to change the rules of the game for brands and consumers. As part of a larger series exploring how divergent systems are shaping the business landscape, we dig into what divergent s...
16: Systems In Flux: The Hidden Divergent Forces Shaping The Next Generation of Brands, Consumers, and Capitalism
October 27, 2020 06:45 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBWhether it’s brand, behavior, or culture, the more you dig into the systems that affect our lives the closer you’ll come to a conversation about capitalism. In this house episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis dig into a curious pattern that's emerging across all kinds of markets, a divergent behavior that’s starting to change the rules of the game for brands and consumers. As part of a larger series exploring how divergent systems are shaping the business landscape, we dig into what divergent s...
15: The Profound Human Connection of Micro-Communities, Participatory Economies and Good Old Customer Service
August 13, 2020 16:31 - 1 hour - 77.4 MBFrom the gig economy to the passion economy, changing consumer values are inspiring new brands and business models for creators. Today we’re seeing the emergence of yet another model that’s challenging traditional work - something that VC and Level Ventures partner Sari Azout calls the participatory economy - where fans actually participate in a creator’s success. This model, along with the others, all boil down to customer happiness. Customer happiness may sound trite but it’s likely ...
14: The Radical History of Self-Care & the New World of Wellness Branding
July 16, 2020 06:32 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBSelf-care and wellness are everywhere around us. From cereal boxes to the makeup counter to furniture rental, CBD sticks, mobile apps and coffee - a new mindset about how to be… but also how to consume, has settled in. As second nature as this may all seem right now, the concept of self-care actually comes from a very radical and politically charged place in recent American history. In this episode of Unseen Unknown, we speak with New York Times journalist and editor Aisha Harris about t...
13: Race, Identity & Power In Our Online/ Offline Spaces
July 02, 2020 05:41 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBThere is no doubt that right now we are living through the most consequential time of our generation to-date. Today’s social and political climate begs the big question, ‘Who are we, really?’ As BLM, societal tensions and the added pressure of a pandemic force us to take a candid look at ourselves, the clues to answering that question lie in our online and offline spaces. Author and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom joins us for an intimate discussion on how the mechanics of the interne...
12: Celebrity Culture, Platform Brands and Parasocial Relationships
May 28, 2020 05:12 - 51 minutes - 47.4 MBWhen Steven Galanis and his cofounders launched Cameo in 2016, they noticed two things happening in the celebrity landscape: 1) fame itself has blown up, with more celebrities existing than in any other time in history, and 2) that these celebrities collectively enjoy more fame than their counterparts in the past. The overall mass of celebrity is increasing, and Cameo was built as a marketplace to give that celebrity mass more efficiency in reaching its fan base, and of course, monetizing it...
11: Who We Become When We’re Lonely & The Rituals That Will Save Us
April 30, 2020 07:55 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBBrands are facing the fact that loneliness has become a part of our identities, crisis or not. But you can’t talk about loneliness without talking about the meaning of rituals first. As society becomes more secularized and isolated, we struggle to find the self-defining connection that rituals once afforded us. The weekly gathering that separated work from rest, the rituals of birth and death, the seasonal rituals of growth and change - all of these have been fading from our identities, an...
10: The Power of Perception, Permission and Choice in Society and Government
April 23, 2020 06:39 - 55 minutes - 51.3 MBA lot has been said about branding and behavior at the individual or tribal level, but perhaps even more interesting is how these concepts work at the government level. How can government bodies use different psychological and branding techniques to change behaviors around work, life, and crisis situations like the one we’re living in now with COVID-19? Even more importantly, how can choice, perception and permission be leveraged for a more fruitful society after a crisis has passed? Ror...
9: What should brands be doing in the time of COVID-19?
April 09, 2020 05:39 - 56 minutes - 52.2 MBThe big question: how is a brand supposed to act during a pandemic? How can CEOs and brand owners serve their users in a meaningful way while still struggling to survive themselves? It’s a difficult situation that requires sensitivity, listening and an open mind. In this house episode, Jean-Louis and Jasmine survey the current brand landscape for examples of companies that are doing it right. From Marriott’s open display of vulnerability to Parsley Health’s implicit giving of permission an...
8: How We Consume Fear in a Time of Crisis, and the Brands That Change the Story
March 19, 2020 07:48 - 1 hour - 68.5 MBTimes of uncertainty have a way of revealing the mindset of a society, and today’s imminent threats - from COVID-19 to political instability and global warming - are revealing a mental shift that emotion-led brands are responding to. A new league of brands has created businesses around beautifully designed, high style, premium disaster kits and products that are suddenly relevant in a space that’s gotten very little attention in the past. Meanwhile, the world’s elite have invested in luxur...
7: Cultural Constructs Are The Real Brand Opportunity
February 27, 2020 07:15 - 50 minutes - 46.7 MBBrands like Ring and Billie leverage the uncertainty of our changing value systems to create new interest in old paradigms. In other words, they play with cultural constructs: arbitrary systems determined by our culture or our community, rather than a truth that stems from an immovable aspect of human nature. They prove that when constructs start to change, real brand opportunities start to emerge. In this house episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis talk about some of the biggest constructs defi...
6: Burnout Brands and the Burden of Potential
February 13, 2020 06:42 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBThe undercurrent of burnout in American society and has opened the doors to a whole new breed of D2C branding that promises to heal us from the ills of the modern world. From analyses to antidotes, our obsession with burnout is changing the way we consider products and consider ourselves. In this episode, we speak with Emmett Shine, cofounder of Pattern Brands, and previous cofounder of the lauded branding agency Gin Lane. Emmett and his team have created some of the most powerful D2C brand...
5: The Emerging Languages and Symbols of Social Media
January 16, 2020 06:27 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBWe’re leaving the current age of social media and entering a new one where our symbols and our languages are changing. Any time a new age is born, the rules get harder, the audience becomes more discerning, and all of us - people, brands, identities - are separated into those that move ahead and those that are left behind. The question now is, what is this new age that we’re walking into? In this episode we speak with two experts on opposite sides of the spectrum in order to answer this qu...
4: Look To The Future To Understand The Present
January 02, 2020 18:18 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBWe’re used to looking at history in order to understand the present, but what happens when we look to the future? In this house episode we conduct ‘100 Year Thought Experiments’ - a simple mental device for brand strategists - to better understand the current cultural mechanics of health, careers, environmentalism and food. “When the definition of something changes, the stigma around it changes, too.“ In all of these areas, definitions are starting to change. Our words and language, our pe...
3: Women, Beauty, Money and Motherhood
December 07, 2019 02:49 - 46 minutes - 43.6 MBInfluencer-led beauty veteran Ria Muljadi gets deep with us about the current role of a women’s brand, what it means to have a realization about yourself through a brand experience, the personal impact of reconsidering your national identity, and how burnout is the new cause. “When this conversation started, it was almost like a floodgate. People felt it but never knew what it was until somebody said it.“ Ria is the CFO of Em Cosmetics, and formerly Head of Finance for Ipsy. She has the un...
2: Where Identity Meets Behavior
December 07, 2019 02:47 - 52 minutes - 49.2 MBWe speak with luxury branding expert Ana Andjelic about the imagined communities that form around identity brands, the importance of hacking subculture over hacking growth, and the gendered stories that tap into our collective psyche. “Brands now create a sense of belonging to a specific community which is imagined, because we don’t know those people, we just know we like similar things and we share the same values.” Ana is the former Chief Brand Officer for Rebecca Minkoff, former SVP and...
1: The New Rules of Brand Strategy
December 07, 2019 02:43 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBIt’s the edge cases that hint at what’s to come in the next 5-10 years of brand strategy: the coming wave of new consumerism, reaching peak complexity as a society, and the fallacy of the D2C model. In this launch episode, Jasmine and Jean-Louis talk about how to create brand strategy frameworks that expand and contract so that you arrive at a defensible position, and explore current movements in especially noisy verticals like CPG, politics and education. “So much of brand strategy is cre...