THIS I BELIEVE

Humans live in “worlds”, the most meaningful of which operating three-dimensionally, blending complex information structures, crafted design, and rich interactivity.

As the old bastions of fandom (TV, print, radio) continue to be subsumed by Web3-adjacent platforms (Substack, Discord, Reddit, Patreon, TikTok), capital “C” culture is blown apart into infinite subcultures, bubbles, spheres, and scenes, each with their own emergent properties that defy the norms of the newsfeed. Now, fans can bypass “lowest-common-denominator” aggregators and interact directly with the creators of their favorite music, apps, books and more, along with the communities they create.

“Nerd culture" increasingly charts the future and predicts the path of mainstream attention. Video-games explored virtualizing aspects of reality before the term "meta-verse" existed. Comic books have been going wild with the idea of a "multiverse" for decades. Subcultures operate as a safe-haven for “marginalized” (i.e. emergent) peoples to discover, develop, and express new ideas.

The ideas, IPs, brands, and platforms that dominate culture are the ones that behave like “worlds” — they constantly create endlessly discoverable universes, ever-deepening lore and in-group language, countless ways to identify your role with them, and trans-media storytelling that fluidly blends information, design, and interactivity.

“Whatever else we’ve been told or inherited, imagination - the ability to see things that do not yet exist, that could exist, or might exist and work out in our minds how they might work - is central to the practice of strategy." — Martin Weigel

BRAND WORK

PROJECTS

THIS I BELIEVE

"Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump" — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

The antidote to social turmoil is empathy. The degree to which you are able to see yourself in other people’s lives determines your likelihood to see the collective benefit of making decisions that help others as well as yourself. We abstract things that are (or feel) far away.

Empathy is transmitted through ideas… and no industry is better at embedding the mundane aspects of life with ideas than brand-builders. Marketing strategies that associate private corporations with positive social change attract conscious consumers, drive differentiation, and increase employee engagement.

70% of Americans believe its important for companies to make the world a better place (HBR)—90% of Genders think they have an obligation to (McKinsey True Gen Report). 75% of global citizens say CEOs should take the lead on change, not governments. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals will open up over $12T in business opportunity by 2030 (Net Positive). 70% of the workforce say they won’t work for a company without a strong purpose (Porter Novelli).

"We simply won't be here if we don't take care of the very things that allow us to exist" — Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart

IMPACT WORK

THINKING