02 | What's the Purpose?

It's a good question to ask.

February 02, 2024

Many moons ago I lived in London, and my friend Nick Dryden — life-liver, warehouse party-thrower, restless entrepreneur — asked me to take part in a 5D storytelling project. It was the first I’d heard of the concept. But in short, it boiled down to telling a story in real time, using all digital comms tools popular at the time. The plot would follow you on your devices. Skype call between two characters? You’d get a notification to tune in, and join the call. That project made me realize I couldn’t write dramatic dialogue. And Nick took the technology and created something quite different out of it.

In 2017, Julie Andem actually pulled the concept off with the wildly successful Skam, a Norwegian teen drama series that focused on the hopes, dreams, and dilemmas of a (largely unknown) cast of characters at an Oslo high school. It was told in real time in short bites across social platforms at irregular intervals. Fight in the playground after school? Tune in to the show’s FB account at 3:15 pm (and so on). If the characters talked about an upcoming party on Friday night, you knew what you’d be doing too. I watched bootlegged translations on YouTube a year or so after they ran.

Sana is not having it.

When I returned to the series recently, it was through an interview in Variety with Andem, who licensed the show to France, the U.S., and beyond. She talked about the mission statement behind Skam, something I didn’t know TV shows had. And it read: “[Skam] aims to help 16-year-old girls and strengthen their self-esteem through dismantling taboos, making them aware of interpersonal mechanisms, and showing them the benefits of confronting their fears.”

“Wow. Impressive,” she added, laughing.

What a lovely thing a mission statement can be. Stoic, pragmatic, shy. Rarely does it live out in public, splashed across home pages or adorning billboards like a campaign slogan. Scroll past all the nice photos of product and services and it’s hidden below, in the About Us, or Our Story section. That’s fine. Its purpose is fostering internal agreement on why the brand shows up and what for. The how comes later, and in different forms.

That’s why it needs to be clear enough to provide a direction, but broad enough to allow for creative and strategic interpretation. Red Bull gave wings to people and ideas. Patagonia wants to protect our home planet. Apple empowered creativity. The content (Red Bull Stratos, Patagonia’s outdoor films, iPhone billboard photography) revealed itself in different guises and formats, but cascaded down and out as if propelled.

Much like Skam, which pushed and prodded its characters in different directions, but never felt like it jumped the shark. I’m sure the statement helped.

👇🏼 some nice examples

OUT OF LOVE AND NECESSITY by Patta 📰 The first newsletter you receive from the Dutch streetwear brand after signing up gives you a grounding in the (short-ish) history of the company. Founded by two Dutch-Surinamese friends who shared a love of hip-hop and sneaker culture, Patta’s limited edition collabs adorn hypebeasts across Europe (likely beyond). Their mission — “Out of love and necessity, rather than profit and novelty” — is about finding and celebrating the bonds of a subculture rooted in the immigrant experience (Suriname being a former Dutch colony). Their hefty quarterly magazine commissions writers and photographers from the Patta community to document similar experiences across Africa and Europe. And they remix not just sneakers and clothes, but content as well: Boiler Room-like DJ sets from artists on their record label, short docs, Surinamese film presentations with Amsterdam’s Eye Film Museum, and a music blog. Authentic mission statement and clever move to first ground anyone who registers their email in where you come from and what you stand for.

CREATIVITY POWERED BY COMMUNITY by Patreon 🎹 You could not group words together that would make me want to click less than “Meet the world’s first synth-nerd supergroup.” And yet click I did and what was most illuminating about the 11 minutes I spent on this short doc from Patreon Presents, was the realization that the idea of a creator — shorthand these days for anyone plugging away on socials — actually spans a group of artists and makers that reflect the wonderful weirdness of humanity itself. The synth pop nerds in question — quirky musician types who make their own instruments and band together for a show in Spain — showcase the very best of the community that Patreon makes its mission to reach: idiosyncratic, resourceful, committed. There is other creator-celebrating content on their socials and YouTube channel (in addition to granular service pieces around filing taxes, and how to incorporate) but it’s content like this (and take a stroll through the comments) that shines a light on the Why behind their mission.

⚓️Flotsam & Jetsam 🛳️
Random links from this week’s haul

📱This made the rounds a bit but, if you haven’t yet, I can recommend this piece on the Mexican immigrant who used a clever math equation to break his stable of musical creators on TikTok (“Influence the algorithm, not the audience”). It will leave you equal parts inspired and aching for the vanishing emphasis on craft and anonymous toil that has marked so many great works. (Or maybe that’s just me)

☕️ If you think all coffee shops around the world look the same, well … you’re not, not right. This intriguing book excerpt breaks down The Algorithm’s effects on design, small businesses, and our intensifying, creeping sense of sameness.

🎧 To clear your palate after that last link … thanks to friend-of-the-letter Damian Bradfield, I got to spend an evening peppering all-world music curator Gilles Peterson with questions in a DTLA restaurant a few years ago. The voracious appetite and analog + digital approach that enables him to stay ahead of the cultural curve is shared perhaps only by ... Questlove, who conducted an excellent interview with him on his podcast.

Hey, what is this?
BRAND NEW STORY highlights smart strategies and good stories told by brands and humans. It’s penned by me, Andreas Tzortzis (or, simply, Dre) and draws on insights from my career at Red Bull, Apple, and in my own brand consultancy Hella. Every week or so I write on a theme and curate links of brands doing it well, along with just great stories from the worlds of culture, tech, and, um.. humanity. Sign up here.

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