02:10:19 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Vincent Weisser, Will Mayer
[02:10:19] S1: In in France, they have pictures of, I think cancer patients on the on the boxes of cigarettes and one of them looks exactly like Brian Johnson. [02:10:26] S0: Pulling this up. [02:10:27] S1: It's very funny. Yeah. We can share [02:10:28] S3: it with you and you [02:10:29] S1: can see. I I'm interested to know the the the five key, tenants of building a cult brand. But first, we'll show you the image of the Brian Johnson on the cigarette box. Can we zoom in there? It looks just like him to me. This one [02:10:46] S0: This would have been good guerrilla marketing. Yeah. You should have claimed credit. [02:10:49] S7: Yeah. I'm honestly surprised it's not, but yeah. Respect. [02:10:52] S1: But well, yeah. Walk us through the five tenants. How do they apply to Blueprint and beyond?
02:10:57 · Will Mayer
[02:10:57] S7: Yeah. I think it it comes down to, like, five core things. The first being doctrine. So having, like, identity before features Okay. Which is, like, what is the sacred text that everybody abides by? Most brands have a tagline, but what can actually be, like, truly enforced and felt by the community. Brian's done this incredibly well. Think of things like most, religions have commandments or tenets. Mhmm. Brands have, like, think different or Mhmm. Just do it. Mhmm. You have longer forms of doctrine, like the Technological Republic by Alex Karp Yeah. Or, like, zero to one. Brian used to write under the moniker zero all the time, so he's been primed for that. The second is ritual, which, like, again, Brian through the dinner series for Don't Die Dinners did such a beautiful job at. You guys have a ritual here every day, five days a week. Yeah. But, like, what are the initiations into your brand or into your community? Yeah. And it's basically forming, like, a ritual that becomes a habit that becomes identity over time. Like, you buy a pair of shoes, you join a run club, you are a runner. The third one is symbols and language. So, like, how can you take elements to create in groups versus out groups? What are the key features that signal people who are insiders versus outsiders to your brand? CrossFit has, like, it's not a workout, it's the WOD. With Equinox, we never said gyms, we would say clubs. Yeah. So elements like that are super important. The Catholic church used stained glass windows to educate an overwhelmingly illiterate population in the twelfth century to indoctrinate them into the church. Interesting. That's like another form of symbols for that. The fourth is a charismatic leader, which again, you have in Brian, you have in folks like Palmer Lucky Yeah. Where you almost icon yourself.
02:12:33 · John Coogan, Will Mayer, Rodrigo Liang, Jordi Hays, Tucker Brown
[02:12:33] S1: Mhmm. [02:12:33] S7: So like Palmer, goatee, Hawaiian shirts, flip flops, things like that are so incredibly important. And then the fifth one is an enemy. I think, like, every brand needs a nemesis. It a lot of people use, like, competitors. Apple started as IBM Yeah. With the, like, 1984 campaign. [02:12:49] S4: Yeah. [02:12:49] S7: But over time, it evolved to the concept of conformity. Because when you get bigger than your competition, that enemy loses power. But if it's, like, an overwhelming thought that can never truly be defeated, the enemy always keeps power. If you were [02:13:02] S0: doing a brand for the dog breed golden retriever and you needed to figure out an enemy for the golden retriever, what what would let's let's workshop some. [02:13:11] S1: The tennis ball. [02:13:13] S0: No. It's not the tennis ball. It's not [02:13:14] S1: the tennis ball. [02:13:15] S0: Because that's your friend. That's the thing that you wanna that's the thing that you wanna that you're desperately trying to find and get. [02:13:20] S1: It's hunger. I don't know. What do think? [02:13:22] S7: It could be hunger. For for my Australian Shepherd, it's like every single loud car, so [02:13:25] S6: I would say, like, the opposite of peace. [02:13:27] S7: And in defining your enemy, you define yourself. Yeah. So, like, I'd be interested who are who's your enemy? Who's, like, the nemesis of TPPN right now? [02:13:35] S0: Oh. We we've actually
02:13:35 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Alana Palmedo, Vincent Weisser
[02:13:35] S0: Oh. We we've actually [02:13:37] S1: mean, we've mapped this all out. We actually did this experience. And, yeah, I mean, it was, geopolitical near peer rivals, who you can guess. And then we had a bunch of, like, more satirical ones like Like our allies. People who block data centers. Like, we we love data centers, that whole thing. [02:13:52] S0: I mean, yeah. That that was that was early on. We would do things more like who were who were our allies. Like, if someone would mention private equity, we would just like, you know, clap. [02:14:02] S9: Yeah. Yeah. [02:14:02] S0: Yeah. Because that was like no one ever is like standing [02:14:04] S1: up for private equity. Short sellers. We hate short sellers. That type of thing, you know. [02:14:08] S3: Of course. [02:14:09] S1: Yeah. The yeah. We have a sheet, the terms and memes. [02:14:12] S0: How do you how do you think about scaling what you're doing, you know, in a in a craft business? It's it's exceeding it's been done. Scale's been done in in in the creative field with with with agencies, but oftentimes, it's at odds with great work. But how do you think about it?
02:14:12 · Jordi Hays, Will Mayer, John Coogan, Ben Thompson
[02:14:12] S0: How do you how do you think about scaling what you're doing, you know, in a in a craft business? It's it's exceeding it's been done. Scale's been done in in in the creative field with with with agencies, but oftentimes, it's at odds with great work. But how do you think about it? [02:14:34] S7: I think the the point of view, the way we work is different than most agencies. Like, I I have no desire to scale the agency much larger than it is today. The way in which we work was, like, you can either grow an agency really large, try to sell for a pretty shit multiple down the road, or what we started doing, like, five years ago was incubating startups. So only a third of our clients pay us in cash. The other two thirds pay us in some form of equity. We helped create a credit card company that is called Built Rewards, which you might have heard of. Yeah. Skye Uncle Jane. And I've done a bunch of stuff like that. So we're working on a ton of those with firms like Index and other venture firms. [02:15:08] S1: I found I found our actual [02:15:10] S0: our actual list of enemies. [02:15:11] S8: Did [02:15:11] S1: you? HVAC repairman. I don't know why they're on there. DJI drones, TikTok, Xi Jinping, under monetized podcasts, podcasts that don't have enough advertising. [02:15:22] S0: Which we solved. [02:15:23] S1: Leaf blowers. Yep. Fantasy football. Why did we put that on there? What's wrong with fantasy football?
02:15:23 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Will Mayer, Ben Thompson
[02:15:23] S1: Leaf blowers. Yep. Fantasy football. Why did we put that on there? What's wrong with fantasy football? [02:15:28] S0: This is from the original printout of Yeah. The TPN. So we we when we were doing the show early on, we would have these bits. Yeah. And if we had a good bit, we would write it down and we would have the sheet that we would update, I would just keep it here. And it would just remind me of, like, the kind of the core tenants as we were establishing the In in [02:15:44] S1: in allies, we had, job creators and bubbles. Very good. Very good. Yeah. Was a lot it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Good exercise for any brand. But, of course, everyone should call you first because you're clearly much better than most people. But fantastic progress. Thank you so much for coming on the show, breaking down for us. Jordy, anything else? [02:16:05] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Next time you're next time one of your Yeah. Founders is coming on flag it to us. Yeah. Be great. Excited to meet them. [02:16:11] S1: Yeah. We'll talk to them soon. [02:16:12] S0: Awesome. Sounds good. Have a [02:16:13] S7: good one, guys. Cheers. [02:16:14] S8: Have a [02:16:14] S1: good one. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Ugh. The old term sheet, the size gong timeline, some personnel news. We haven't done one of those in a while. We don't really do the trade deals. The the the trading cards really took the place of the trade deals. But speaking of advertising, I want to watch this SK Hynix advertisement that Tyler dug up. Let's play this because I want your reaction, Jordy.