Most of what passes for “content” these days is disposable. Made fast, optimized for whatever invisible math decides what people see today, and forgotten about five minutes later.
That never interested me much.
I’m Kennyatta, and what I care about are the stories that stick. The ones rooted in culture, in places, in the messy, contradictory reality of how people actually live, work, and make things.
So this is where I put those stories.
What You’ll Find Here
The Workshop — Interviews, Adventures, Observations.
Curiosity: What if how we’re taught to be an effective brand strategist makes us blind to what may be good business for a brand?
Category: Essay
“Always take a good look at what is happening, and map the motive behind it.” - Marcus Aurelius
I’m running into a nuanced challenge as I hone my skills. What I’m learning to make me better at branding, is coming into direct conflict with what I’m learning to become a better strategist. It’s strange because most of what we need to be great at our job today, especially as a brand strategist, involves mastering this chimera of the two disciplines.
I’ve thought about this a lot after watching Calvin Klein’s recent campaign featuring Tate McCrae. My immediate reaction was visceral. I sent it to my girlfriend, spoke at length about the disconnect I saw between Tate McCrae and Calvin, how the dancing felt strange from the brand, and how it felt far more GAP than Calvin Klein. Especially thinking back to the Youtube age restricted Dakota Johnson campaign that released earlier in the year which seemed to contain everything we’ve been trained to recognize as quintessentially Calvin: restraint, sexuality, provocation, confidence, performance through existence and not performance itself.
My default setting was to daignos the creative. And while that’s reasonable, it’s also ignoring the entire other half of the discipline of being a brand strategist.
What if my framework for examining this isn’t complete?
I didn’t even stop to consider what PVH may be trying to accomplish with this partnership or what Calvin Klein could be optimizing for right now. What if they’re looking to do a brand turnaround and focusing on different celebrity chapters in a playbook focused on attention was the point? The Bad Bunny reveal was monumental for the brand, generating more than $8 Million in earned media. CEO Stefan Larsson told investors fall needed “cut-through full funnel campaigns with a strong lineup of globally relevant talent,” on the earnings call in 2025, which makes the McRae move look far more sane.
It also looks more sane if we consider the “full funnel” to mean a roster of different celebrity talent hitting different audiences and speaking to different sub-cultures. The Jung Kook campaign did more than $13 Million in earned media within two days and the 2024 Jeremy Allen White campaign did over $74 Million. Wouldn’t it be pragmatic for the company to continue running the same play if they’re scoring every time?
And there lies the dissonance that comes with being a brand strategist today. We’re simultaneously expected to protect the meaning of “brand” and understand the machinery of businesses; those two things don’t always want the same outcome. Years of pattern recognition due to studying what a brand should sound like, look like, and never do; studying positioning, culture, and distinction in the market. Do it long enough, and we can smell something being “off-brand” before we can even tell you why. And once that instinct is sharpened it can create a blindspot because sometimes, what looks like an incoherent brand could be a perfectly coherent business.
What if a Good Campaign is a Shortly Lived One?
It didn’t make sense to me that the Dakota Johnson campaign didn’t see more follow up from Calvin Klein. It was a prime response to the viral Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle denim moment. It made a clear separation of sexy. Calvin Klein positioned itself as the grown-up, sophisticated, seductive, brand-equity rich answer to a controversy another brand was getting rightfully kicked in the back for. But taking a step back, what if it did exactly what it was supposed to do and had no reason to continue? It was a reactive, opportunisitc strike timed PERFECTLY to a window that was open for a few months. It earned a ton of media value. Job done. Thank you everyone. Let’s move on. My default response is to compound on the victory. But what if there’s nothing else to compound? or what if there are more plays to run and this was just a good play drawn up and there’s still a lot of game left?
It’s taken a while, but I’m learning disposability doesn’t necessarily mean bad brand building. Calvin Klein isn’t making a mistake by jumping from one celebrity to another inherently, especially if in this PVH turnaround-era, Calvin Klein is positioning itself as a repository of whichever captivating celebrity talent that can speak to which ever audience, and whichever specific product funnel job. Dakota Johnson was a sniper shot at a cultural moment. Bad Bunny was bomb that went off in the market. And Tate McRae is a recruitment officer for a broad, participatory, product selling denim line aimed at Gen Z.
A brand exists within multiple economies; an economy of meaning and an economy of attention.
An economy of meaning only understands long-term equity. You need consistency. You need memory, language, structure. You need rules of engagement.
An economy of attention is more ephmeral. It’s all talent, action, relevance, participation, and timing.
It’s not that one is more valid than the other, but the conditioning of the strategist today, whether brand, creative, or growth, drives you so far into one of the two that it creates blindspots to the activity and value of the other. Everything in me speaks to franchises, platforms, consistency, and the long game. So when someone does something just to go viral, it looks like a fumbled play to me instinctually. Again back to this idea of things being designed to be disposable. That feels like it violates a sacred law. But the ability to see a viral moment as a completed transaction rather than a squandered brand opportuniity is par for the course if you were a growth strategist or a media buyer.
As a barnd or creative strategist today, you have to walk this tight rope. Stray too far to the side of attention and the brand becomes a desperate whore. Go too far toward coherance and meaning, and you can build an extraordinary brand that nobody gives a shit about. Neither is useful. But it feels like that’s what what we’re conditioned for today, maxxing in one direction or the other. LinkedIn is filled with the people who outrage over the incoherance of brands. So many of us are feasting on low-hanging or fallen fruit.
Instead of just running with the initial thought that something is “wrong,” after looking at a campaign, maybe we should treat it like the beginning of an investigation instead of the conclusion of one. I’m working on building this reflex. To take a step back and ask “What is this for?” and taking a minute to dig into that before flying off with an emotional response, which good on them for triggering it.
I don’t think I missed the mark on the campaign because I analyzed it poorly, but because I was trying to understand it from the wrong vantage point. The answers aren’t always in the social posts, the fashion magazines, the takes from other “brand marketers” and strategists, or the press releases. Sometimes its in the boring documents, on the earnings calls, in the interviews from three years ago, in the pages of the money documents.
Wherever it is, the first step has to be to seek it out to better understand.