Articles on content

Bieber figured out that, as long as she has a Good Enough product (and a brand vaguely rotating around the idea of glaze) distribution is the most important part of her brand-building strategy. Distribution is not just a sales channel. It means every 
piece of content that helps the product spread (packaging worth showing off, dialogue-inspiring posts, iconic models, Instagrammable everything). 

It can be product copy on PDPs (Palace is the king of those, but so are Jo Malone, Mansur Gavriel, Mod Cloth), social media posts, videos, collages, reels, slideshows, stats, cartoons …, events, merch, collaborations, graphic design and brand codes. Limited editions and capsules and collections are also content, along with brand campaigns and e-commerce photography, marketing collateral and catalogs. So are wear stories, packaging, hangtags and shopping bags, intellectual property, archives, and exhibitions. 
Everything communicates. Everything is content. 
Content is how brands influence culture, and content can make or break a brand. The way brands’ products are going to be discovered, shared, talked about and bought is more important than a product itself. Rhode, Hailey Bieber’s brand, does a great job of making its products discoverable, and not only because of her own celebrity. The lip phone case, the recognizable monochrome, Claudia Schiffer, a limited-edition peptide treatment inspired by Krispy Kreme’s strawberry glazed donut, the same as Hailey’s Strawberry Glaze Skin Erewhon smoothie, the pop-ups (and the pop-up lines), limited product editions that are default, have all became content for not only Rhode’s actual customers and prospects, but for its 2M+ fans on Instagram, and for all of us in the audience. 

Human reaction builds cultural currency, which in turn builds scale, defensibility, and network effects. It differentiates a brand in the retail landscape dominated by aggregators, search engines, and social media algorithm. It is also a good defense mechanism against commodification.

These brands used content to create a community. They aggregated their audience instead of targeting their customers and prospects. At any given time, a brand’s audience is much broader than its customers. It includes cultural observers, commentators, critics, fans, and hangers-on. Content is a way to address all of them. Lego movies, innumerable brand podcasts or Red Bull’s extreme sports content do exactly that as does a number of brand-themed feature films (Air, The Founder, Blackberry, Flamin’ Hot, House of Gucci, The Social Network, Tetris, Barbie).