First Drop Influencers Find the Brand Building Shortcut

The Brand Builder’s Shortcut? on the outside of her sphere of infl uence (she was awed, nevertheless – I’m just that impressive). Younger, more It’s likely that by the time this hits your desk/inbox/birdcage fashion-focused friends of hers had much more developed fl oor I’ll have interviewed a woman named Emma Chamberlain opinions about Chamberlain, her style choices, and her coffee about her Chamberlain Coffee brand during our NOSH Live brand. They were all positive! Their texts about her had lots show, along with Chris Gallant, her company’s CEO. of “!!!!”

The interview will have been an attempt to understand this My younger niece Rebecca, a soccer-playing college junior, so-called “Creator Economy” – a fancy name for brands started reached out to her cohort for an incredible trove of Emma by the social media stars your kids are watching on Youtube/ treasures. At 21, both her college and high school friends had Instagram/TikTok/Twitter (note I didn’t say LinkedIn, where actual relationships Emma. They loved her podcast because I tend to hang out). In researching the interview, I’ve come she’s “super relatable but also is mature beyond her years and to understand that a lot of entrepreneurs are fearful of the gives very good advice.” They love her style and think “she implications of the Creator Economy, as they are worried that isn’t controversial and defi nitely sets a lot of fashion trends they’ll get squeezed out by someone with strong bandwidth and such,” and that “she has a slay personality and is super and a ready-made audience. Should they? The always coffee-slurping Chamberlain has an audience and more: her team claims she has 35 million followers; she launched her company in 2019 and it pulled in more than $7 million in investment this year, not bad for a brand that so far consists of steeped coffee bags, beans, some fl avor funny.” Asked about her coffee, there was agreement that it fi t her brand. One fan admired the brand’s “great aesthetic – I have two totes and a Mason jar.” Then I reached out to my sister, Andrea, who is the mother collaborations and a lot of fun accessories. of these two amazing nieces. What follows is a direct quote

Chamberlain’s popularity comes through her sense of being from our text exchange: “real.” Her early videos combined the angsty confessional style of a 17-year-old raised on reality shows with the silliness Me: Your daughters have been very helpful in my of a smart kid who has had too much caffeine. She doesn’t research into an upcoming interview with Emma really rely on stunts, drugs, the latest dances or pure bodily Chamberlain. So thank you for having them. objectifi cation. She’s also a talented editor who is able to get a message and mood across through fi lters, the addition of My Sister: Who is she? quick-cut meta-commentary on her own monologues, and a willingness to never take Emma Chamberlain the character Me: Exactly. too seriously. It worked: she’s now got a podcast, has been on Jimmy Kimmel and to the Met Ball: fashion houses like Louis So there you go. What will it take to extend these brands to Vuitton have started dressing her up and sponsoring her, she’s niches beyond their founders’ followers? What will it take for making lots of money and has swanned from talkative teen the founders themselves to keep their followers interested for into a model and fashion infl uencer. life? And, of course, are the products any good?

So if she’s able to take these followers and turn them into In Chamberlain’s case, they seem to fi t the moment for sure. coffee drinkers, that has to mean something, right? It’s an They are customizable, she has great recipes, it looks cool. It’s evolutionary moment – we’ve gone from hiring a celebrity to a extension of her brand, it makes sense, it resonates with her endorse a brand (think Miller Lite commercials), to having image and her audience. But I worry. Not so much about the a celebrity invest time or money in a brand and support it coffee, but about us. (think Vitaminwater), to having a brand bring in a celebrity I’m worried that we might be living in a society in which “co-creator” (think Zoa or Foodstirs). Now, the Creator gets being famous means that you’re qualifi ed to do all kinds of top billing; the product is an extension of their popularity things that you probably shouldn’t, like be President. Still, as and audience devotion. The rest of the business is assembled we saw in that last example, if people don’t like the brand, behind them, and if it gets traction, it scales. they’ll reject it once they get the chance. Meanwhile, enjoy

Here’s the great part about something like Chamberlain your coffee. Coffee: it’s absolutely an inch wide and a mile deep. Her followers are late teens and early 20s: Gen Z for sure. But how long will they stay with her?

It’s in researching this point that I became a cool uncle, because I got to DM my nieces and tell them about my interview with Chamberlain, which they thought was much more interesting than parts of my job that involve getting yelled at by, say, the founder of BANG.

My 25-year-old niece Margot – a graduate student and former investment banker – was aware of Chamberlain, but