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CPG History / Wall Street Journal: The investment, LVMH and Jay-Z said, is aimed at growing Armand de Brignac through LVMH’s global distribution networks while drawing upon the conglomerate’s resources within Champagne wine country. It comes at a difficult moment for Champagne: The pandemic caused the cancellation of weddings, soirees and other occasions to pop corks, cutting sales of the wine by about 20% last year.
Deep Dive: This all begin with “the Cristal incident,” which many hip-hop aficionados remember well. In 2006, the following quote made waves: “It has come to my attention that the managing director of Cristal, Frédéric Rouzaud, views the hip-hop culture as unwelcome attention,” said Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. “I view his comments as racist and will no longer support any of his products through any of my various brands, including the 40/40 Club, nor in my personal life.” And just like that, the zeitgeist changed.
A boycott followed and two brands changed their pop cultural trajectories. The incumbent was a popular, generational brand, affectionately referred to as “Crissy” in records by the Notorious B.I.G., Raekwon, Tupac, Sean Combs, and others. Within a year, the challenger, “Ace of Spades” or Armand de Brignac, had taken its place in songs, in clubs, and within black culture. The first product appearance on record was Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got", a widely popular music video that featured NASCAR racers Danica Patrick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and helmed by the future director of the Fast and Furious saga, F. Gary Gray. The line: "H-O, V-A, gold bottles of that Ace of Spades." What a launch platform, right? Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter began the brand with a 50% stake. He later acquired the rest in 2014 from Sovereign Brands after submitting an offer that the Sovereign spokeswoman said "we simply couldn’t refuse."
Today, the finest luxury holding company on earth acquired 50% of the brand. According to the WSJ report: "The deal arose from discussions started between Jay-Z and Alexandre Arnault, the 28-year-old son of French billionaire Bernard Arnault, LVMH’s chief executive and controlling shareholder. Jay-Z said he first met Alexandre a number of years ago in Paris on a trip with Kanye West. The deal advanced further after Bernard and Alexandre Arnault and Mr. Schaus met with Jay-Z several times at his home in Los Angeles, most recently this summer."
The brand sold more than 500,000 bottles in 2019. Between Jay-Z's "imagine how that's gon' look front row at the Grammys" verse and LVMH's history with Roc Nation affiliated artists Kanye West, Rihanna Fenty, and now Jay-Z - it appears that the Arnault family took note of the Brooklyn boy's rhymes.
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Social Media / Digiday: Wherever there are influencers, advertisers aren’t far behind. And Clubhouse is a hotbed of influencers right now. Every social network with big ambitions has their own take on influencers and the audio app is no different. In fact, Clubhouse is grooming more than 40 of its most popular influencers — or moderators as they are known on Clubhouse — for success.
2PM Summary: Even without adding an Android app, Clubhouse has become a global phenomenon, riding the buzz of high-profile speakers including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
The brands have followed. Despite Clubhouse still being in invite-only mode, some are seeing opportunity in working with influencers behind the scenes on chatrooms. As Digiday reported today, Pernod Ricard cognac brand Martell partnered with a Clubhouse creator on a series of discussions in connection with Black History Month. Brands that have expressed interest in Clubhouse are relying on creators to lead the way, acting as gateways to visibility and traction. Some brands have also started to launch their own profiles, including Vetements and Milk Bar, though there hasn’t been much official action on the brand front. It’s not clear yet what revenue is coming out of it, if any, either. Earlier this year, Clubhouse rolled out a creator program to incubate and support talent on the app. More is to come, including “verified”-style moderator badges for leading personalities. For now, Clubhouse has a massive runway in front of it, with plenty of opportunity to cash in on all of the attention. The next few steps – legitimizing creator and brand participation without sacrificing the user experience of the app, rolling out to more users – will be crucial.
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DTC Brands / Retail Dive: Forming partnerships with newer, more sought-after brands allows retailers to attract and build a relationship with a new set of consumers that may have not necessarily shopped with them otherwise. "It's a win for [traditional retailers] as well because they get a younger audience," Hilding said. For the retailers, it helps generate more foot traffic to stores, provide incremental revenue and help maintain cultural relevance among consumers.
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DTC Brands / WWD: Allbirds has added two high-profile beauty executives to its board. Emily Weiss, founder and chief executive officer of Glossier, and Mandy Fields, chief financial officer of E.l.f. Beauty, will expand the size of the board to eight members.
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This week's DTC Power List update expanded the database to include a number of brand revenue estimates and Instagram followings. Click below for the full list.
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New Media / Zine: When uncertainty hits, we crave the security and comfort of nostalgia — the grainy warmth of pre-pandemic times. But while Hipstamatic and Instagram’s filters have always offered a toasty film-stock tinge, Dispo’s warmth is unique to Millennials and Gen Z who grew up with Kodak disposable cameras, not Polaroid.
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Blockchain / The Hundreds: Cryptoart and NFTs are so new that history is being made every hour of every day. Most of the insightful editorial, podcasts, and YouTube think pieces on the subject matter have been recorded in the last month or so. Last night, a new marketplace called Foundation sprouted up. And this next week, The Hundreds will be the first clothing brand to mint NFTs against our Spring season’s collection of T-shirt graphics.
Here is the NFT Primer (🔐 2PM)
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Retail / Vogue Business: Chanel is always testing digital. In recent years, that has included a partnership with Farfetch, in which it took a minority stake in 2018, to develop digital initiatives to improve customer experiences in stores; a pop-up shop for fine jewellery line Coco Crush on Net-a-Porter in 2015; a digital Style Talk with Sofia Coppola for its top clients during the pandemic; a five-star concierge service offering home delivery; and an ongoing social media push that includes Chinese social media such as Little Red Book (Red), WeChat and Weibo.
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Social Media / Remains of the Day: TikTok, by virtue of its high bar to even produce a video that anyone will see (FYP algo is like "That's a no for me dawg" on almost every video), is upfront about what it is: a global talent show to entertain the masses. In a pandemic where much of the U.S. lives in eternal lockdown, TikTok is the 24/7 channel where the American Idle entertain each other from their bedrooms.
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Media / Quartz: One reason TikTok’s rise is notable is that it is happening during an especially precarious time for the music industry. Record labels, both major and indie, are still figuring out how to turn profits online. For TikTok to truly change the music industry, it must provide more than just exposure: It has to give artists opportunities to monetize their work.
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The Creator Economy / Packy McCormick: We’re on the precipice of a creative explosion, fueled by putting power, and the ability to generate wealth, in the hands of the people. Armed with powerful technical and financial tools, individuals will be able to launch and scale increasingly complex projects and businesses. Within two decades, we will have multiple trillion-plus dollar publicly traded entities with just one full-time employee, the founder.
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An Open Letter: On Community. Community building isn’t easy. This weekend, everything went wrong. It started with a weird bug that was causing us a few problems. Here and there, a paying customer would write to ask “Why am I receiving a rejection email?”, or something similar. We would explain it away and change a setting to prevent it, but it kept happening. And then on Saturday at 3:15 a.m. EST, a deluge of angry, confused or sad emails bombarded my inbox.
Behind the scenes, the 2PM Inc. organization is seven people large. I am the only full-time worker, like Sahil Lavingia’s lean strategy at Gumroad. That’s not to slight our team, however: four contractors and two paid interns are incentivized and capable of doing great things with the time that they share with the company. The 2PM team is so talented and consistently productive that the company would have to be venture-backed to afford each of them. I am working to get to the point where cash flows can support them. They are the best at what they do. We scrappily do the work of many, three days per week. If memberships are low for one week, I can at times feel like I disappointed them. This weekend, I disappointed far more than my team.
Continue Reading...
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