How brands become cool. | Willow & Blake

“Cool” is mercurial. It slips through fingers and drips down timelines. It materialises in a millisecond and curdles in an instant. Cool not only changes from person to person but from industry to industry, generation to generation, and moment to moment. And it’s this very elusiveness that makes it so desirable.

While it’s hard for a brand to catch, and even harder for a brand to hold onto, cool is a very valuable asset. It might be superficial, but it activates a deep emotional reaction in customers. We all want to be cool. We all want to hold the ineffable in our hands. And we’re willing to pay for the privilege.

While I can’t tell you what’s cool, I can tell you about the cosmetic interventions that might help your brand find it. Imagine me, marker in hand, circling your areas for...improvement. Whether you need a quick slick of a gloss or a full personality implant, consider this your free consultation. 

Let it begin:

A slick of gloss.

It’s possible to cultivate cool by re-contextualising your brand. Stay essentially the same, but offer people a new lens through which to view you. This is the easiest fix, though not always the cheapest.

In practical terms there are two main ways to do this. The first is through art direction and campaign. A great example of this is Telfar Clemens’ brand, which was catapulted back into the zeitgeist after it appointed Babak Radboy as Art Director. Radboy pumped up Telfar’s visuals to more explicitly communicate its boundary-pushing, unisex vision, directing campaign after campaign of culturally relevant, playful and genre-defining visuals. This was encapsulated in his new slogan for the brand “it’s not for you, it’s for everyone.” The brand always had an edge, but Radboy's art direction and campaigns sharpened it.

The second way to reframe is through endorsements and spokespeople. Crocs is masterful at this, carefully re-crafting their image through a succession of more and more fashion-forward collaborations. Beginning with their Drew Barrymore collaboration in 2016, followed by their Christopher Kane collection in 2018, culminating in the single most influential Crocs partnership, when Demna put giant platform Crocs on Balenciaga’s runway. The shoes were much the same, but this new context gave us an opportunity to view them through the lens of high-fashion irony.

Hiring a shit-hot art director for your next shoot or finagling a perfectly-pitched collaboration will invite new audiences and shake up your existing ones. However, if you don’t keep up these efforts with continual refreshes, your gloss will quickly turn tacky.

Onto more long term solutions…

Fillers & botox.

Gone are the days when a brand was just a logo, a TVC and a website. Now they're producers of all kinds of content; emails, video series, events, podcasts and more. When trying to gauge the vibe of a brand, how often will you pull up their Instagram page for an immediate impression? The content you make is key to perception. Revamping it is one of the fastest and most effective ways to alter the way you're seen. Think of it as filler or botox. Near immediate, but requiring intermittent touch ups.

In the US, NPR used to be seen as the sleepy, lefty radio station your parents listened to. But its reputation began to shift in 2008, with the publication to YouTube of their first ever Tiny Desk Concert. Inviting popular artists to perform in such a unique space—the literal desk of NPR host Bob Boilen—created a series of excitingly intimate semi-concerts. As the following for this series grew, so did the number of artists wanting to feature, each bringing with them their own audience. This content series has been hugely successful in converting younger listeners into loyal NPR subscribers, giving it an undeniable cool factor. Now the desk is an icon that artists of all kinds dream of performing behind.

A similar phenomenon has occurred with the New Yorker, known for its older, elitist readership. Instead of copy-pasting their editorial content into their social channels, The New Yorker has strategically targeted a younger audiences with wry, shareable cartoons, short video content featuring their staff writers, and bite-sized cultural commentary. This pivot to entertainment-first, channel-specific content has helped them cultivate a new audience and a sense of youthful relevance.

Bella Freud, the British designer, has seen a jump in her audience with the release of her podcast ‘Fashion Neurosis’. The podcast, which features the designer interviewing celebrities (many of them long-time customers), has been successful on YouTube in part due to its arresting visual conceit; Freud has her interviewees filmed from above while they recline on a chaise longue, like in traditional psychoanalysis (a reference to her great-grandfather, Sigmund Freud). The interviews are meandering and vulnerable, just like real analysis. The podcast has catapulted Bella and her clothing into the arms of new, adoring audiences. She’s always been cool, but this podcast has made sure we all know it.

These examples are testament to the power of a specific, targeted content strategy. Brands can cultivate a new, “cooler” audience by crafting series designed to hook them. Be warned that the content needs to be designed for its channel (no hour-long podcasts posted to Instagram Reels, please), and has to have a strong, relevant point of view. Don’t pander. They’ll smell it.

Deep plane facelift.

You want to be the water bottle for it girls, but instead you’re beloved by men’s middle-aged cycling groups. You want to be seen as a leader in affordable fashion, but you make polyester for tweens. You want to be the next Nigella Lawson, but you're giving Guy Fieri. There's an argument to be made for embracing who you are instead of constantly striving for what you're not—I won't make it.

Something is fundamentally wrong with the structure of your brand. You need the marketing equivalent of a deep plane face lift.

Just like a real face lift, this process can be painful. And it takes a looooong time to see the results. Oh, and it’s usually expensive. Unless you want to wake up in Turkey looking like Monstro ElisaSue. 

That being said, Kris Jenner looks great, and so could you.

In 20216, Teen Vogue pulled off one of history’s most successful rebrands. When Amy Astley, its founding editor, stepped down in 2016 a choice had to be made. The magazine had been losing relevance for years, print journalism was “dying”, and the political climate in the US was steadily heating up. Should they hedge their bets and keep making content about boys and lipgloss for suburban white girls? Or should they abandon what they’d built, pivot, and meet the moment?

They decided to appoint Elaine Welteroth as Editor in Chief. She was 29 years old, and only the second African-American woman in Condé Nast’s history to hold such a role. Under her guidance, the publication shifted from infantilising to empowering. The magazine began encouraging its readers to take an interest in the 2016 election and covering more complex fashion-related topics like cultural appropriation. Teen Vogue expanded meaningfully into the digital space, with a YouTube channel and dedicated content. They broke the internet with an article titled ‘Donald Trump is Gaslighting America’, and officially cemented their new position: a serious journalistic force, held in the hands of teenage girls.

In the fashion space, Camper has also completely reinvented itself. Previously a comfort-shoe brand based in Spain, they've cultivated their design expertise by investing in cutting-edge collaborations (Issey Miyake, most recently), launching their experimental, high-end sub brand CamperLab and opening brick-and-mortar stores, each designed by a different, lauded architect. They refined their visual language while retaining the white and red logomark, finding interest in more surreal and playful photographic concepts. Their tone of voice walks the line between dry and quirky, creating a personality that supports their unique designs. And their product portfolio has continued to confidently assert a sense of taste that is sophisticated in its construction and materials, but irreverent in form. They’re not afraid of a school shoe or a clownishly-round toe. They’ve defined cool on their own terms—all without changing their name or logo.

Teen Vogue is an example of a hard and fast repositioning, while Camper has taken a slower approach (fitting, given their tagline is ‘walk, don’t run’). Both exemplify the depth that needs to accompany this level of rebrand. It’s not about making nips and tucks to your logo and capturing Gen Z with a campaign about sustainability. Realigning your business practices and your offering, adjusting your target audiences, reprioritising your channels, and reinvigorating your creative direction…this is no small feat. Lucky we can help you.

The natural ageing process.

Culture operates on a cycle. What’s old will become new again, what’s cringe will become cool. This is reassuring if you’ve lost favour: just stay patient, it will eventually come back. But only if you play it right.

Patagonia has become more and more relevant in recent years. Not because of any fundamental rebrand, but because they align with the cultural moment. The climate crisis is one of our century’s defining issues, and our consumer and fashion choices have been shaped by it. The gorpcore trend emerged as a response to the desire to feel more connected to nature, and the demand on brands to craft sustainably has become louder and more insistent. 

Back in the 1970s, Patagonia was founded on environmentalist principles. Its initial purpose was to create mountaineering gear that wouldn’t damage rock faces. For years, the brand has bought advertising space to protest the lack of protections for national parks, donated 1% of sales to environmental orgs, used recycled polyester and offered free repairs. Of course, this could all be an effort to wash money for tax purposes. Nevertheless, environmentalism has consistently been the strongest element of Patagonia’s brand. When this collided with our political moment, it created unprecedented brand obsession.

Von Dutch has experienced a similar phenomenon. As our economic outlook becomes harsher, we look to the idealised abundance of the early noughties for a sense of escapism. As a result of this cultural nostalgia, Von Dutch, one of the most recognisable brands of 2000s logomania, has been hauled out of the bargain bins and onto the sparse racks of your local “curated vintage” store. Add to this phenomenon the release of ‘Von Dutch’ by Charli xcx, and they were cemented as a cult classic.

The brand cottoned onto the cultural moment, releasing distinctly 2000s-esque designs and pushing attainable, branded objects like hats and bags. Noughties excess for the cost of living crisis. Von Dutch didn’t create the Y2K craze, but they met the moment.

Neither of these brands has rested on its laurels. Culture has swung in their favour and they’ve stood poised, ready to ride. 

A review of your consultation.

For a slick of gloss: Hire an on-the-pulse art director for your next shoot, or collab with someone high profile whose essence you want to leech off.

For fillers & botox: Create a targeted, channel-specific content strategy to help you reach a new audience. Consider podcasts, social series, or Substacks (though I don’t always love those).

For a deep plane face lift: Go back to the structure of your brand and start from there, moving your way slowly outward. Identify your new brand positioning and slowly reconstruct your brand, layer by layer, through creative direction, product, store experience, art direction and more. 

Or go au naturel: Wait for the culture to come back to you, but be ready to pounce when it does. In the meantime, cleave closely to your values and don’t be afraid to reference your heritage.