Hitmakers, Season 2

A product’s life doesn’t end at the point of sale. In fashion, it may be just getting started. There’s a strong connection between people who buy a lot on resale… and people who buy a lot of new clothing, too. They shop more. They turn over items faster. They return more. They discard perfectly good pieces. Which means resale isn’t replacing the primary market. It’s amplifying it. That’s a new gam...

Oscar Wilde said a cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He might as well have been talking about luxury today. Because something is off. The industry spent years raising prices — and for a while, it worked. The higher price was the draw. But then consumers stopped buying it–literally and figuratively. The whole model crumbled like the house of cards. What replaced it is mo...

There are four basic tastes — sweet, salty, sour, bitter. There’s actually a fifth one. It’s called umami. It’s the flavor that lingers. The one chefs chase because it stays with you after everything else fades. A few years ago, cultural strategist Emily Segal borrowed that idea for her “Umami Theory of Value,” describing a certain kind of savory cultural work — the kind that feels familiar and su...

Dame Vivienne Westwood once said, “Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it’s popular, it’s not culture.” In the 1980s, we had Air Jordans and Back to the Future. In the 1990s, it was grunge, Pretty Woman, Britney Spears. Iconic things have always been products of their moment. When the media was mass, culture was mass. When distribution was centralized, symbols were shared. That’s no lo...

Is Millionaire Speedy a luxury bag or merch? What about the Balenciaga Maxi Pack? The term “merch” originally referred to items made for music fans, where items like t-shirts were sold on a band’s and musician’s tour. From music, merch spread to sports, film, gaming, art, fashion, design, travel, and entertainment. Merch’s original value has never been in the physical item itself–after all, a band...

Iconic brands are built on products people obsess over. Think Levi’s 501s. Ray-Ban sunglasses. Nike Air Force 1. The Big Mac. Each of these products is a creative expression first—a shape, a taste, a texture, a ritual. Their form and function don’t just sell units; they influence culture, spark subcultures, and create fandoms. This is where real brand creativity lives. Not in messaging—but in the...

How many people actually saw It Was Just an Accident, this year’s winner at the Cannes Film Festival? And how many people even heard of it? That gap tells you something important about culture today. Culture fragments faster than it consolidates. Mass attention is gone. Cultural currency no longer comes from scale—it comes from attention. And attention is scarce, fleeting, and brutally competitive...

Everyone knows what the Magic Kingdom is. And yet almost no brand in history has been able to replicate anything like it. Because world-building sounds simple. It isn’t. There are product worlds born from the thing itself. Merchandise worlds built through collections. Aesthetic worlds defined by a visual language. Fan worlds powered by community. And each one behaves differently. The mistake is tr...

Why does Louis Vuitton cycle through creative directors like fashion seasons—is that a weakness or a strategy? And how can Hermès go 42 years without launching a single new product yet be worth more than the entire LVMH group? Because one behaves like a trendmaker. The other behaves like a tastemaker. Is one better? That depends on what you believe creates value. In this episode, we’re exploring t...

Why do brands collaborate with each other? What differentiates a good collaboration from a bad one? Have we reached collaboration fatigue? And, what is next for collaborations? Today, we reveal how to elevate collaborations from tactics to strategies. We put collaborations in context of IP, world-building, fandoms, and a brand’s cultural expansion and market growth. Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spot...

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Why are AI brands opening cafés? Why does MiuMiu have a book club? Why does A24, a movie studio, have a membership club, a publishing arm, and now its own theater and bar? It’s not random. It’s a new operating model. And the best CMOs already know it. They’re not running marketing departments. They’re running production studios — orchestrating content, products, experiences, and collaborators like...

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In the first episode of the Season 2 of Hitmakers, my co-host Lee Maschmeyer, co-founder of a transformation consultancy Collins, and I look at moments where cultural capital turns into financial capital. We break down why Labubu is still printing money — long after most thought its hype had peaked; why Hailey Bieber’s Rhode became a $600 million brand almost overnight; and why bootleg Gucci is ho...

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