Brand and Butter
The straight-talking branding podcast for leaders who refuse to settle.
Brand and Butter delivers no-BS advice on how psychology, strategy, and design create brands that work. Host Tara Ladd, founder of Your One & Only brand design studio, breaks down the real influence and power of branding – how understanding behaviour and cultural shifts can transform how people see, think, and choose.
Sometimes funny, always honest, never dull. This is the podcast that cuts through industry jargon to talk about what actually makes brands stick.
Tara Ladd is the founder of Your One and Only, who design brands that breathe with culture through psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
Cultural Intelligence with Dr. Anastasia K. Gabriel: Beyond Inclusive Marketing
In this episode I dive into the world of cultural intelligence with Dr. Anastasia Kalkalina-Gabriel, author of "Cultural Intelligence for Marketers: Building an Inclusive Marketing Strategy." Join us as we explore the impact of race, gender, and identity on marketing strategies and the importance of inclusive practices. Discover how cultural literacy can transform marketing campaigns and why it's crucial for brands to engage with diverse audiences authentically. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that challenges industry norms and inspires change.
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There is a really cool guest on today and her name is Dr Anastasia Karklina Gabriel, and she is a cultural critic and award-winning author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, which was released in 2024. She's known for her precision in exposing the hidden forces shaping culture and society. She's also a widely regarded commentator on media marketing, consumer behavior and social change. Her insights into culture have appeared in Forbes, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, teen Vogue, elle, australia Newsweek, yahoo News, campaign US, the Drum and more. Dr Gabriel earned her doctorate in cultural studies at Duke University, where she was classically trained as a critical theorist in the study of US society and identity, with a focus on race and gender, important Bridging theory and practice, most recently leading cultural and consumer insights at Reddit. She uses her academic training to advise organizations and contemporary issues and the evolution of societal trends, something we are very interested in here at you Want it Only, and me personally as Tara Ladd.
Speaker 1:So, without further ado, I welcome you to this week's podcast episode. You're listening to Brandon Butter, a straight talking, occasionally in your face. No BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, tara ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of Brandon Design Agency. Your one and only hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brandon Butter.
Speaker 1:I have a really cool guest here today. I've been just consuming her content on LinkedIn, and she just gives it to the audience that she has and really calls things out. As you know me very well, that is 100% what I love to do, but she's like a total step further than that, someone that I really admire, and so I have Dr Anastasia Karkalina Gabriel here with us today. She has an amazing book called Cultural Intelligence for Marketers Building an Inclusive Marketing Strategy, and I feel that in a time that we're in right now, she is a voice that we absolutely need on this podcast, so I'm going to pass the mic over to you, anastasia. Take it away.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me and for all of your kind words. It's truly a pleasure and a joy to be here. Yeah, I'm happy to just say a few words about me. I'm a little bit of a unicorn who landed in the world of cultural marketing. I come into this conversation and into this industry from an academic background.
Speaker 2:I spent all of my 20s in graduate school pursuing my doctorate in cultural media studies and specifically I've always been interested, both in my research and in my everyday work, in questions of race, gender identity and ways in which those factors not only influence our own lived experiences but also influence and shape the institutions and the structures within which we live. And that is what I do now. I for a while was working with agencies and spent some time in the insights division at Reddit, and now I'm really focused on building out my thought leadership and really trying to challenge some of the dogma in the industry through what I call public education. And so I'm happy to be here and kind of set some fires here and, you know, advance that conversation.
Speaker 1:Love that we're all up for fire setting in the right way. I think it's so needed. Obviously, I love everything that you've just said. The background is really important as well, for you know a lot of people that just get online and give opinions, but I think we need those academic backups because they're important for, I guess, what the nuance is of the conversation, how deep that conversation can go. But one thing that I noticed is well, obviously, over the past couple of weeks and you and I both know this was let's just go straight into it was the conversation on Sydney Sweeney's. You know what is it? American Eagle, that's the brand. Yeah, their jean ad.
Speaker 1:Now there was conversations about this, touching on eugenics and, look to be completely fair, when I first saw it, that was the first thing that came to my mind as well.
Speaker 1:This wasn't just a siloed opinion on what we can and can't do, but when you're featuring someone like that at a time, especially with the background that most people know that she has, I feel that was 100% politically motivated.
Speaker 1:And then we saw, as you know, a bunch of white dudes get on LinkedIn saying that everyone's overreacting, overthinking actually inspired my post this morning and I'm like but this isn't lived experience for you. This is the time for you to sit down and actually listen to the conversation and you have called this out multiple times you have shared and reposted, and which I've actually found a lot of really cool people from your repost, by the way. So, thank you. But just these conversations. So I want you to give your perspective on what you thought about that campaign, while it's still kind of, you know, in the media and then obviously gaps kind of counter to that today. But, yeah, tell us, tell us what you thought about that. You know, I guess the, the, the, the conversation that's happened online and why it's incorrect and how we can kind of address that differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And after I do, I would love to hear your perspective, because anecdotally, I was scrolling through LinkedIn and I would come, you know, see, they say they come up against these takes. That I was really resonating with and I was like, huh, I haven't seen this person before and it was just a pattern. All of them were strategy leaders from Australia. So I was like, oh, maybe folks you know have a little bit of a distance from some of the you know politics that are very particular to our moment here in the US, and so I'm also very interested in global perspective, just because a lot of times the conversations that we have in the industry can be very US centric. But, needless to say, I felt very passionate about this particular campaign, and less so about the campaign, but I think even more so about what we can learn from it and what it tells us about the state of the industry and how essentially different readings of this particular campaign, but also different responses to criticism, actually reveal to us how nothing is really neutral. And even as marketers, as we are debating these ads and campaigns, we are also projecting our own worldviews, our own discomfort with the topic of racial politics, with the issue of continued systemic racism in advertising and marketing industry and what I would call, you know, the crisis of critical thinking and media and cultural literacy in this profession.
Speaker 2:You know I wrote and spoke quiet liberally about what I felt was wrong with that particular ad and you know we can. I mean everyone already knows the argument right it is racially coded. It is an ad that recreates eugenics, coded tropes that really rely on that rhetoric and that logic of genetic supremacy that is very much tied to the history of white supremacy, specifically United States, but also of course Nazi Germany, and I've gotten so much flack from even mentioning that. You know people ridicule kind of any kind of connections to Nazism or any kind of connections to the rhetoric of supremacy. And I'm very passionate about helping us think through what media does and the power that media has.
Speaker 2:And even though a particular ad campaign might not be a form of Nazi propaganda and I personally refuse to go and debate that particular topic on one of the UK's right-wing channels because I find that kind of binary, polarizing framing to not be productive and be rather reductive but you know, when we think about what media can evoke and the kind of messaging and the kind of tropes it can really bring to the surface. To me that's a conversation worth having and the fact that there are so many people in our profession who actually outright refuse to engage opposite perspectives criticism is really troubling, like the number of times I was openly called an idiot on LinkedIn in a professional setting, you know, has been really concerning. All that is to say, it started for me as some concerns that I had about this ad and it really left me with serious and grave concerns about the state of discourse in this industry and in this professional space.
Speaker 1:That's a very interesting conversation and I think, personally, this whole thing, you could also tie it back to, dare I say it, palestine and Israel at the moment. And I think that whole conversation is that a lot of people didn't want to speak out in fear of the rebuttal of what is going to happen. It's the classic tipping point, isn't it? Like someone will talk about it, talk about it until it becomes almost popular conversation, until they're kind of strengthened by numbers and when they know that if they voice their opinion, that they know that they're going to be surrounded by enough people to kind of back up their stance on what they're talking about. But I think with you it's like you're in that state where you know what's going on but you're talking about it from such an early stage that it's still threatening to some people. And I think, when we're having these conversations for I guess, from my perspective and what I've known is that these conversations do start small right, like no one's just going to have an outlandish behavior. And I know, I don't know what you think of the book, but I, you know, the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell was something that really started to challenge my thinking back when I read that way back then and I was like, oh, and it was just things like the biases that we have and that we've grown up with and that we adhere to, and whether you want to challenge those biases or to just completely ignore them. And I think when we challenge those biases, it dives into our identity as people, our identity as brands, what we consume, who we hang around, and it really makes us question, well, our whole, how we sit in the world, right? So I think that that's a lot of people that it's a deflection, and we know like they will challenge you because it is a deflection.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, that's not I agree with this at all. Deep down. We know that they probably didn't have a problem with the ad. And then you really look into it and you're like, oh, hang on a second, that's because these tiny nuanced, you know, like a semantics you could say, are playing out here that you've otherwise just ignored. And now they're coming into full front and center people calling them out and it's actually challenging your own belief system and it's challenging who you are and where you stand in this world and it's going to make you make a decision that you have to make. That will be hard whether you continue with that or whether you don't continue with that, and essentially it comes down to people being good or bad people, doesn't it Like everyone wants to be a good person and they defend themselves to kind of justify their reasoning for lacking certain things. Right?
Speaker 1:So I think, when what you said about the ad is 100% on point and, ironically, as before we were having this conversation, I was listening to Kendrick Lamar's halftime show because it's just kind of playing in my head with all the symbolic references that he had at the, you know, with black history on on that center stage but it is these like little cultural, like tie-ins to these things that we are completely unaware of. Or if we haven't lived that life, you're not going to-ins to these things that we are completely unaware of. Or if we haven't lived that life, you're not going to be exposed to these conversations. So I guess, from your point of view, when we're looking, how do you think that we can address these things?
Speaker 1:Because you know firsthand, you've had people calling you an idiot, like that's not, that's, that's emotional, that's not logic. And the irony is that people go think logical about this. It's like, well, actually you're thinking emotional about it first. Everyone thinks emotional before they think logically. So let's all get that out on the table. But when we're coming down to, I guess, discourse and addressing these conversations, which I'm sure you've got riddled through your book, what do you think is a really good way for people to start the conversation? Because obviously they may not have spoken about things like this in the past, but now they're starting to feel that bubbling of wanting to do something, wanting like I know it's taken me two years to figure out how to professionally say something on without you know. And then also it's that Dunning-Kruger effect of I know enough, but do I know enough to have this conversation? And I guess, from your point of view, how do people approach hard topics and what do you think that they can do about it?
Speaker 2:That's such an excellent question. What comes to mind is this idea that I talk about in my book, actually, when I talk about insights generation, but I think it's rather applicable to the question that you're asking, and it's the idea that multiple truths can coexist at once and that our own truth is not a universal truth and what we assume to be true is not necessarily true for everybody. So, in terms of discourse or in that context, it surprised quite a bit of people that when I went on Pierce Morgan show and he was shouting at me, my response to him was actually, I understand where see, why somebody like him, with his lived experience, with his positionality, with his material interests and with his psyche being threatened by progressive politics, could see it that way. And to me that is kind of the roadblock that we have, particularly in conversations. A lot of them these days happen online, where we only see one version of reality and, to your point, we react emotionally to anything that contradicts that reality. So as I have been part of these conversations, some of them have been very charged, I realized well, critics of this campaign, myself included, have been accused of being overly sensitive, right, and exaggerating being overly sensitive.
Speaker 2:And I have to pause and ask, well, who is being overly sensitive? Because I'm the one sitting here and calmly explaining my perspective on it that is rooted in knowledge. And you are the one you know losing your shit excuse my language and freaking out. And you are the one you know losing your shit excuse my language and freaking out and saying that the woke left is taking over. And you know you're just overreacting. Get a life. You know all of that and so I have to.
Speaker 2:I think we have to pause right and um kind of um lower the temperature in these conversations to say that they can be multiple realities and multiple truths that can coexist in the time. And I can enter this conversation and be highly critical of this ad and perhaps feel that it's politically motivated, but I can also understand why someone would call it a mistake or an accident and necessarily not want to go there. Now, how do we balance those perspectives and how do we meet in the middle where we might not agree necessarily, but we can learn from each other and that particular sort of message or belief is really core. Are quote unquote on my side might disagree with me and I might disagree with them.
Speaker 2:That is what it means to be in conversation and learn from one another, and that, to me, is productive. It has a generative energy. It opens up possibilities and creates new ideas. It creates new perspectives, new ways of looking at things, ideas. It creates new perspectives, new ways of looking at things. The other kind of more emotionally charged attitude is really about shutting things down and putting things aside, not wanting to talk about them in honesty. So that's a long answer to your question. I think we have to just step back and realize that everybody has their own truth and we can learn from each other.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent and I think it's really good points that you made is that it's that tie into us associating whatever it is that we believe in into who we are as a person. I think we can actually separate those two things, actually separate those two things. It's also like when people can understand that the truth can sometimes be skewed in depending on who's looking at it, from whatever perspective, right? So, as you said, two things can be true and it really depends on upbringing. So the conversation that I also think about often is the gun control in the US. So people like I don't really understand why they think that way and I'm like well, you've got to also think about these people that have grown up with guns. Right, and it's not that they've grown up with guns, it's the memories that they've had with these guns. So it might be that they've gone out hunting with their dad or there's like moments with their friends where they've shot things like cans off a fence or it. It's actually those emotional, like meaningful moments that they've had. The gun was just part of that narrative. It doesn't mean that they support you know what I mean. Like it kind of is like well, I can understand that. That's the emotional charge that is fueling this want for the gun. But it's not what they want. It's actually the memories that they have of that so like.
Speaker 1:But sometimes people just aren't ready to have that conversation. Like you, you would know this very well. It's and as you just said, not going on certain podcasts or not entering certain chats because you know that it's not going to be a discussion, it's not going to be progressive, it's going to be someone just shouting their opinion at you to try and prove you wrong in something, because it's about being right. Right, everyone has to be right, but it's not. It's really just about understanding that there may not be a right, it may just be a. How can we kind of come up with a better solution moving forward, which brings me to Gap's new ad. So counter to the American Eagles ad is the Cat's Eye girl group very diverse girl group, by the way. Who did the Gap ad? So what's your take on that? Because the minute that I saw it and I knew that you were having this discourse, I was like I wonder what she thinks. So tell me everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like many others, I love, love, love it. And you know, putting aside conversation about American Eagle and how that's sort of being framed as an alternative which I think it is, and it is an example I just felt excited watching it and I felt the thought came to mind is this is creativity? And you know, I just felt it on a visceral level, in a way that it felt it drew me in as a consumer. It actually made me go and check out Gap's website, even though I don't really shop there. It felt like it opened up, it drew me in, it connected me to something that felt, first of all, inclusive and obviously intentionally diverse, you know, and kind of global in its feel, but also in a way that it was beautifully executed. The choreography that really felt superb and to me, as I was watching this ad, I thought, yeah, this is what creativity is, and you know, creativity opens up, it connects, it inspires. It's supposed to make us feel something that makes us want to reach towards it rather than be like, oh, I don't know about this, this is not making me feel good, which I think that is the kind of reaction a lot of people had with the American Eagle Sydney Sweeney campaign, and so I think it's such an excellent example what it means to do advertising.
Speaker 2:Well, of course, we are yet to see any data on food traffic or early sales, and that will come later but the initial response has been fantastic and I was just earlier today scrolling on Instagram and checking the metrics you know engagement metrics for that particular video on their socials doing really well. It was like 15 million views in 24 hours. You know it's probably much higher now. This is a few hours ago and you know I'm not usually so attentive to engagement metrics on social media, but I think that was one of the arguments that we heard with in defense of the American Eagle campaign that it was such a great PR campaign that it drove brand awareness and it was such a success on socials. Well, I think that the Gaps campaign is an example of what it means to execute a successful social campaign that actually brings people together and really taps into the power of fandom to bring about that excitement that we are meant to feel when we see creative work in action.
Speaker 1:I agree. I think that if you were to compare two of them, to me yeah, number like the cat's eye gap feels like there was thought behind it, there was intention, there was like they've reached out, they found the right person or people for that ad. They've got a whole bunch of different voices as creative thinking, like it's energetic, like everything about it screams like attention grabbing, whereas the other one to me feels just it's just a really easy, like let's chuck a celebrity in an ad and a really good looking celebrity in ad and get some quick vanity metrics Like that's, that's just kind of. It feels cheap and easy, regardless of whatever the message is that they were trying to get across, and I think that that's. That to me is what it's, and I don't know whether they were going for that Calvin Klein old school, but it is also that culturally adaptive. I guess conversation and narrative that we're having is that it might have worked 10 years ago but in this day and age it just doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as you compare the two, it also makes me think about this question of whether the ad is filmed through the male gaze, right, which is what we saw in the Sydney Sweeney campaign. Well, I would argue that the new gap campaign is also hot, like it's, you know, it does have that energy to it, but the, the people in it are not sexualized in the same way that we saw in a Sweeney ad. That was really made for middle aged men who are lusting over Sydney Sweeney and we saw them, you know, defend, defend, and so you know, we see that I'm particularly interested in kind of like what makes up an ad as a unit of media, right, you know, there is the narrative, the script, there's a tone, there's the way that the camera pans and where the camera brings our attention to and where we are, you know, led to what we are, led to pay attention. And if we really look at both and kind of really deconstruct them, tease apart those elements, we really see, I hope we start to see who it was made for, the lens through which it was made.
Speaker 2:And I mean, I think you're absolutely right, when we look at both, it's almost sad to me to compare them, if I'm being frank, because the Gap campaign reflects youthfulness, it reflects diversity and that is characteristic of global Gen Z and Gen A audiences. It is dynamic, it is creative to your earlier point, it inspires. Anyway, all it is to say. I'm a fan and I'm really glad. I'm sure that this campaign was in the making for a long time. As these things go, I'm really glad it dropped at this time so we can have that comparison and we can have that learning moment 100%.
Speaker 1:And so, coming to this, I also think there's a really have you seen, good question, k-pop demon hunters? Yet I have not. No, tell me about it. Oh, my goodness me, you have to watch this. So this is one thing that I want to do a case study on, and I would love for you to go and watch it Now. It seems like a kid's show because I watched it because it was ranking, you know, number one early July on Netflix. It's now the second highest watched movie on Netflix ever produced Original Netflix animation. Sony obviously did the animation for it.
Speaker 1:What's really cool about it is the cultural overlay. So the songs in it are phenomenal. They have been made with a mix of K-pop songwriters and producers and they're just outstanding, so much so that the song is number one on the Billboard charts and there's like seven of their songs within the top 100. The next one's coming in seven. What I find really interesting about it is that we all know that K-pop has its own cultural like fandom. It's been massive for years. Everyone that's been a K-pop fan forever and forever, you know understand that tired drawing to it. But now we're seeing this whole new audience coming into this K-pop era because of this movie and I'm finding it really interesting and and what we're also seeing within the movie.
Speaker 1:So it's like a girl band and a boy band where the girl band are demon hunters and the boy bands is demons and so they're trying to, you know, take over the world and the girls sing to keep their like it's called the horn moon so they keep like the shield to keep them out. It sounds so silly but when you watch it there's so many undertones of like. You know, for me as a neurodivergent, it's like talking about one of the girls is and sorry, spoiler alert for anyone that is wanting to watch it the main girl is a demon and so like she's half demon, half good, and so that's kind of her fighting her inner battles and masking. So it's got this like narrative that I think a lot of adults really resonate with. But the cool thing is the story, the animation, but also the tie-in of these fictional groups which are now genuinely tracking on the billboard charts. But they're tracking not as the soundtrack, they're tracking as the band, so they're tracking as the band, so they've got them as the individual and I find that really interesting.
Speaker 1:That crossed over between music and movie and then obviously you search for it on Instagram. There's this whole fandom that has now happened. So now there's like cosplay involved in it, so they've literally built this whole, you know this whole, like this whole, like a K-pop band does. So I find it like super intriguing and I also wonder if, like we said before, if timing is relevant, because 10 years ago we would have are people just now more responsive, more adaptive, more progressive in the way that they can take on different cultures? Because Westernized people looking at like, like you know, korean culture, like that we've seen the rise of squid games and the rise of, obviously now this movie. It's like this cross generation of now people just being able to access different cultures via, dare I say, social media that we're potentially breaking down these biases and stigmas that older generations have. I don't know, I know they haven't seen the movie, I just kind of wanted to get, yeah.
Speaker 2:I do have a few thoughts, actually, thanks for sharing. I would love to check it out, but as you're talking about it, I'm picking up on some things here. It does strike me as something that you know we talk about in terms of the changing landscape of social media. Right To your point, we can think about early years of social media, where, you know, those of us who are old enough remember being on Facebook and adding our friends, our classmates, our co-workers to our, you know, friend list. Now we are having a network of users who are connected, not just with people who live in their town, go to the same church or mosque or synagogue or go to the same office as them, right? Especially, young people are united across so many interests, you know gaming, music, beauty, fashion, right.
Speaker 2:We're seeing all of that rise up, and I was especially close to it when I worked at Reddit, which I do not any longer, but that was part of my work really understanding the rise of these communities.
Speaker 2:And what I particularly find interesting, you know finding communities, and I believe I remember it correctly, it's called r slash, kpop noir, which has a specific subreddit for Black fans of K-pop who had created their own community with the awareness of anti-Black racism that is part of certain fan circles.
Speaker 2:But it is interesting because it is collapsing all of the assumptions and I spoke about that, actually, in my talk at Cannes last year that those kind of communities are collapsing. Our understanding of audiences that have been historically understood as kind of these you know, demographic boxes oh, lucy is, you know, 35 years old. This isS generations are the most diverse in the history of this country are really collapsing. Those that power, that fandom that is not just, you know, k-pop speaking to Korean audiences, but the expansive global audiences of Gen Z and GIA consumers who are fans of different kind of genres that historically, marketers would not attribute to a particular demographic that looks this way and sounds this way. So I think it's an interesting time to be and I mean this is what I do. I think that's why cultural intelligence is so important and we just have to confront some of the dogma that has been so pervasive and so firmly rooted in how we think about audiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a system collapse essentially. Essentially, what's happening, isn't it? It's a bunch of different, I guess, beliefs and systems that are happening, that are changing and obviously people are not going to like that, but it really is. And, further to add, I did a conversation about the new consumer in a talk that I did earlier this year, where I spoke about, like these events that have happened over the last, you know, 10 years, like Me Too movement, the George Floyd murder, we've seen COVID happen, we're watching all of the wars happen, all of the wars happening everywhere and we're in. All of it kind of comes down to these belief systems and all of these systems breaking about.
Speaker 1:What's notoriously been accepted and what we're no longer accepting is kind of really coming out through social media. And when I have these conversations with some people, they're like it's almost like they think I'm a conspiracist, but I'm like no Like, if you look at mainstream media, like someone edits that, a person edits that, right, so that's their belief will then come in and edit that one piece of journalism, right, and where we're now looking at different lenses and different opinions from different tiktok videos, from different instagram stories, like, and you're seeing like this unedited, authentic approach from different perspectives and suddenly the neurodiverse community came out post-co COVID, obviously being trapped in a different environment, like that kind of came out and I, further to what you said it is, it really is. We're moving into that. I guess what I was saying micro niching but I don't know if that's the right word for it but we're seeing like subsets coming, subsets within subsets within subsets, and it's making everyone say it's really hard to market and I think it's really because we need to keep micro niching into finding who the new subset is, the more that you kind of get into that. You know we listen to music. Okay, rock music, great. What type of rock music? Is it punk? Is it hot? And then you're getting like further and further, in the moment that you get into that, really you specific audience, then you can tap into the right audience.
Speaker 1:The problem is everyone wants to capture up here and they're not talking to everyone because they're now so different in their thought process because of, I guess, the accessibility to all of these different narratives, which is a good thing. I do believe it's a good thing. Um, but another thing I guess we could touch on that does tie straight back into this is Taylor Swift and there's obviously people think very differently about her. But if we're going to and obviously her stance on topics that should she say something, should she say, and you know there's, there's that whole, let's shove that to the side for a second.
Speaker 1:But if we're going to talk about, I guess, that fandom of K-pop culture I think she's the only pop star from the Western I mean aside from, like, I guess, the Beatles era that has managed to really keep that fandom for such a long period of time where she really does have that Like she could release whatever product tomorrow and it would just sell because she's got that. I mean, given that she's a billionaire status, that's a whole issue in its own. But what's your take on the whole Taylor Swift movement?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I can't believe. I have to talk about it on record. I have complicated feelings. So you know, as you were talking, I think that's a true assessment. I also think that when a lot of times we have these conversations, beyonce doesn't necessarily come up in the same way when people talk about fandom, and that makes me pause as somebody who studies race and gender.
Speaker 2:I do think that there is a very well-earned credit that is given to Taylor Swift and the kind of community she has been able to create, and also in a ways that, particularly within the US entertainment environment, we see somebody like Beyonce, a Black woman who is always iterating, experimenting, now breaking into the country genre, kind of not be part of the conversation. And so I am always curious why do we focus so much on Taylor Swift as this example of a female artist that is able to create that community? Now, again, I think it's well-earned, but I'm just always curious about that kind of grace, appreciation and celebration to black women in our culture, and so that's I I think would be my perspective. You know, let's, let's give uh taylor swift her flowers and acknowledge. You know, especially now I believe she's coming uh with a new album again.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm when I'm. When I'm seeing the, the, the Swifty news, I'm like, oh, I feel a little bit like out of the club. But you know, I know that's a big moment and there's a lot of buzz, you know immediately. Well, actually, in fact, I was just looking at some podcasts trying to get back into podcasts and I saw that her episode was like the top ranking episode on Apple podcast. So I immediately clocked that and noticed that. But I do want to have us to have, just in general as a culture, more criticality around why we raise certain people as idols and what it would mean to raise other women to that status alongside them.
Speaker 1:I agree, I think I watched Beyonce's documentary of her halftime Super Bowl show and it was just insane. And it was another one. She did the drumming, she just had a baby and it was just yeah. But the hate that she got for entering the country space was just insane to me, how people didn't take her seriously. And is it because she looked different to what people had in their mind of what a country artist should look like? I would say so. And if you also look at the I guess the large majority of country music listeners and I guess that fan base, you could.
Speaker 1:And what happened to the Dixie Chicks and whatever they're called now, you know it does make sense that that would happen. But also like it's kind of like our own internal beliefs too. Like have they, as we push out, you know, coming back to Sydney Sweeney and they're making out as though that's good genes. It's like we've also taught, you know, black little girls that the person to look up to is potentially a white woman. And you know that's kind of gone through the narratives, as it has been for gender norms, of the models and the role models of who we see on TV as sport icons. And you know big, big. You know. Businessmen have been businessmen. There we go, said it like it's, it's men. So you see those people in those places. It's just it's like hardwired into us, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and I think about that all the time and I talk about that all the time, about the power of media representation. And advertising is a form of mass media. I mean, especially now in the age of social media, where you drop a video on Instagram as a brand and it's seen by 15 million people like, only on Instagram, on your page, not even counting other channels, other ways for people to engage with your campaign. And I think that kind of awareness is missing, because in marketing circles we still have the same kind of mentality Well, did it achieve its commercial goals? Well, did it raise awareness? Did it drive sales? All of that and you know, with total appreciation for the importance of commercial outcomes, there seems to be a lack of responsibility when it comes to understanding the power that brands and marketers who run them have when it comes to putting out that imagery at scale, especially in front of young people.
Speaker 2:And you know, it makes me think even as this scandal was unraveling around Sydney, sweeney Levi's put out a campaign with Beyonce, and I was actually quite closely following the comment section and it, you know, always kind of surprises me that we argue so hard that things are not about race. And you know race is being brought in when it shouldn't be. You know relevant. And yet, in that juxtaposition between Sidney Sweeney's campaign and Lee West's campaign with Beyonce, you could scroll through the comments under Beyonce's post launching the campaign with hundreds, if not more comments. You know, if not more comments. You know saying Sydney Sweeney did it better.
Speaker 2:You know accusations that Beyonce is appropriating. You know blonde hair, etc. So you know we are caught up in these conversations because they're part of our social fabric, part of our reality. They are impossible to get out of because identity shapes so much of who we are, how we see each other, how we relate to each other, and I only wish that marketing and media professionals treated their own power with a lot more responsibility when it came, when it comes, to issues of representation in media, which I find is just so impactful and so immensely powerful.
Speaker 1:I love that you've said that, because I've literally just repositioned my brand studio to focus on progressive brands for that exact reason. I always talk to our clients and I say that we have a responsibility, not only just as, I guess, the agency working with the client, but also as the client producing products and to speak to the consumer, contributing to capitalism. It is what message are we sending? Who are we talking to? Who are we leaving out of the conversation? Who are the underserved markets that we're not touching on? And, like I will have conversations with people.
Speaker 1:I think I put one out last night was talking about are you inclusive, was a little meme that I did and it was like, yes, and I said who said that? And it's like us, and it's like our self-serving bias. It's the conversations of, like you know, we appeal to everyone or we cater to disability. It's like, well, how do you cater to disability? And it's like, oh, we've got this one autistic guy. And it's like, no, no, no. It's like it's like really just having these ongoing conversations and and really like understanding, from a cultural perspective which is also a huge bread alliance as well of what type of culture you're leading, what type of message that you're sending internally, that gets you know, extended externally. But who we're putting in our ads, who we're actually leaving out of our ads, or the even the products that we're putting out, who? Who are these for and how are we making them accessible?
Speaker 1:Uh, the podcast that I actually recorded last night that went live this morning was speaking to I guess I was speaking to my mental load when cause my son had a liver transplant at eight months old and it was talking about that hospital experience of seeing everyone with these conversations that just didn't matter, and where people are at in their lives. Obviously, not everyone's going to go through that circumstance, but at the time it was also COVID and so it's like that's why we saw a whole bunch of marketing campaigns go, oh, we're in it together, like it became an actual joke. But it was kind of like we really have to shift and navigate to the markets and the world and the cultural alignment that we're living in in order to, and so culture is so like deeply, you know, aligned with that. But when we're talking about the consumer, it's like how is the consumer feeling at the moment? And I think we really need to look at different. That's where we kind of look at these micro communities, like are you accessible to I don't know, the black community? Are you speaking to them? If you are, and you say you are, how are you doing that? For instance, I definitely want to bring up the black community. I have friends in the black community that I work with, but I also buy from them. So it's not just about you know sharing their stuff, like I've used them for my marketing, I use them for my systems, I use them to kind of talk about things. So I'm bringing them actively into how I'm funding my own business and how I'm growing my own business to get different perspectives and opinions and the same thing and it's an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1:I know I'm a white woman, I know that I'm privileged in many circumstances, but it's also when I started the business I worked in the city. So, like I'm like Western Sydney and in Sydney CBD, obviously you've got the Sydney CBD folk Noticing the difference in the conversations that would come up based on locality. So if you lived in a city and you know you kind of came from those posts, there was a very different status and I didn't see the status, but they felt that they were superior based on the areas that they came from, and so it was like a really young age that I started to identify just watching these people act differently from like a financial status, and I found that super interesting, and that's what's also driven home a lot of I guess the way that I run my business is to just let's just keep everyone here Like no one's better than anyone else, and and to really just be able to identify those biases and the privileges that we have in what we say. It's even being able to call out my clients when they go to do something. I'm like do you think that that content is acceptable? They'll be like this is how I feel.
Speaker 1:I'm like great, but how do you think that that's going to come across? Can I read this in a different way to you so that you can understand how that comes across to people that are in this circumstance and even talking about? You know, I guess, the differences in how people took COVID, based on their lived experiences. So, yeah, I guess that's kind of it's a responsibility for all marketers, which I do call out, to be able to address the new world that we're living in, but also to identify how we have these conversations, and I think that this is. I think that what you're doing is really important.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, and the responsibility to listen, because, as I think about, you know, these campaigns that have been launched and obviously you know, caused such backlash, we have to think how many people had their hands on the campaign. And we know how often there are people in the room who might raise their hand to say something isn't right here. And how often we have seen, you know, being in corporate environments, those same people who bring new ideas, challenge, you know, perspectives. They're silenced, they're sidelined. You know they're told not to rock the boat, and so that's why I commend what you are doing.
Speaker 2:You know, to me, somebody who comes from an activist background, change is really slow. It happens in these small moments. Right, are we able to open up a space and hold that discomfort and be challenged? Right, and receive it. And again to my earlier point, are we able to acknowledge that there are more truths than one and that my truth is not the universal truth?
Speaker 2:Right, so many angles here, you know, in terms of how we run organizations, how we run businesses, how we exercise leadership, what leadership even is. You know, I often find myself thinking about the way that the leaders are positioned as kind of this, you know, sole figure that is leading the organization forward, where good leaders often actually bring others along them into the rooms, into the conversations, open up the space. And so I'm really interested in thinking about how we can recreate and model and curate that kind of space, even on LinkedIn right and I usually try to make an intentional effort to engage somebody who might disagree with me but is otherwise respectful in a conversation through that disagreement, through those differences, as a way to model another way for us to communicate with one another and, to you know, get comfortable with the uncomfortable differences that we have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that what you do is really well done. I was watching someone come back about the Sydney Sweeney in the cat's eye having more of a I guess, a fan base, which ended up being completely opposite on Instagram for what he was saying. But it really is that. I guess it's just people want to be acknowledged. I think when I've had conversations I think I had a conversation with many guys about the gender pay gap and why it's not actually about wage, it's about mental versus physical labor and the differences there but it really did come down to just going I hear what you're saying and then giving a reason. I think too many people are quick to jump into. No, you're wrong. Instead of I acknowledge what you've said, here's what I'm saying to you from that and I think that that's. It's almost like a mansplaining, isn't it?
Speaker 2:someone comes back at you with a counter argument, not listening well, yeah, I guess, now that I think about it, that's exactly what I didn't thread, because I know which one you're referring to, right like.
Speaker 1:I did.
Speaker 2:I actually did response saying I agree, and the person actually made a really good point that when I was quickly typing my post, in all honesty, I didn't consider so. When they came back and said well, why are you exclusively attributing the success of this campaign to inclusivity? Wasn't it also about the fan base of this K-pop group? You know, I said oh yeah, that's right, I agree with you and I also think that inclusivity matters. And I think I responded them saying that I don't really believe in either, or thinking you know it's very reductive. We can kind of multiple truths can exist at once. I think that's exactly what I said. So it's good that I'm taking my own advice, but I truly believe in it, and I think that's where you know, that's where that conversation can happen and we can open things up instead of shutting them down.
Speaker 1:Love that. Okay, so let's wrap it up, because I know I can't keep you here all day, even though I really want to. What would be your advice to those that are really wanting to? I know that I have a large neurodivergent following, obviously, and I know that there are a lot of neurodivergent entrepreneurs, which obviously means that that wraps in that justice. They have that social justice sense of wanting to do something but not really sure on what they can do. What would be your advice to, I guess, the entrepreneurs or the people that are in positions of power or an area to put things out, to change the narrative? How would you tell them that they could approach that in a way that would, I guess, lead them into a higher way of doing it?
Speaker 2:What would I advise them to do? Well, I think I come back to the question, which I think touches all aspects of marketing, and there's this question about how do people create meaning, how do we make sense of the world around us right, how we interpret things through the lenses that we have adopted, through whatever experience that we've had in life, and I think that really touches on leadership things that I've mentioned around how to run spaces that are inclusive of critical thinking and are not hostile to it. It comes down to how we understand our audiences, the way that our customers create meaning, make meaning, understand and interpret the messages that they receive. It really is also wrapped in how we present the brand to the world, ways in which the brand creates meaning of its own as an entity that stands for something that has associations, and those associations develop in the minds of consumers, in the minds of marketers. How do we bridge that? So I don't know.
Speaker 2:As you were asking me the question, the concept of meaning came up because, really, when we talk about culture, we are talking about a system of meaning making, which, in more simpler terms, mean how we interpret the world, and so I think, once we start being more attentive to perception, to associations that can improve our creative work, our messaging, the way that we understand consumers and the way that we understand cultural relevance and what it means to be an entrepreneur, a founder and put something new into the world. And I know we don't have time to talk about it, but I'm particularly passionate about startup brands and smaller businesses that are really disrupting categories and seeing, well, you know, the category is moving in this direction, but actually people are yearning for different kind of meaning and they're not being met where they are. So I'm going to put out a product that really understands and communicates and connects with what's meaningful to people. So hopefully that's helpful, but that's what came up in this moment.
Speaker 1:It was very helpful. What's your biggest bugbear at the moment? What do you think people are doing wrong that you'd like to see changed?
Speaker 2:Oh God, can I get my diary?
Speaker 1:out on my list, oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't want to repeat myself because we already talked about, you know, kind of the way that we close ourselves and each other to conversation, into openness. But I think, if I were to think of something else, I really would love more people to be more brave and to be more outspoken in these conversations. And I know the burden of having a corporate role or being in a position where you feel like speaking your truth might compromise your position, right your livelihood. But I do think that too many people play it safe. Too many of us shrink and play small because we're afraid of being judged, whether that's by our colleagues, whether that's by our manager or even by ourselves.
Speaker 2:You know, and I'm really passionate about encouraging folks to be part of these conversations, to really ask tough questions and to trust that what you know, you have to say, matters and we need more people speaking up about cultural intelligence, about media literacy, about inclusive marketing, particularly at a time when D&I and critical humanities more broadly are under attack and are being literally erased. You know from the boardroom, you know from our institutions, from educational institutions, from social institutions, and again I'm speaking from my home base, which is the United States. So I try to frame it in a positive way. A negative framing would be that I think too many of us are a little bit cowardly in this industry. But I would love us to tap into the innate bravery that I know anyone who cares about justice, equity, social responsibility have already in them, and all we have to do is tap into that passion and let it flow.
Speaker 1:I think they said that it was 80% follow and 20% lead. So if you have that ability to lead, people are looking for someone to follow. There's probably 80 of people that may agree with you and what you're saying, but not enough people are stepping into that space to take that leadership. People need guidance. That's why sometimes they fall victim to the wrong leader, I believe. But thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. But I would love everyone to know where they can find you, where they can follow you, because you're saying some awesome things I think everyone should be watching and listening to. So can you let everyone know where they can find you?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. I am active on LinkedIn and I imagine my name will be part of the episode title or somewhere there, so you'll be able to find me that way, and then across all socials I am at at Anastasia K Gabriel, so looking forward to connecting and, as I always say, my DMs are open. I'm very much open to feedback, questions, provocations and any kind of comments that folks might have.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being on.
Speaker 2:It was just a blast, and I always enjoy it when it's a fun conversation.
Speaker 1:Completely so. That's today's episode. Please go and follow Anastasia across all of her channels. She's releasing the good stuff in the show notes and I will chat to you next week. Did you like that episode? I hope so, because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at youwantanonly underscore au on Instagram.
