Luxury After the Age of Hype with Jacob Brown

[00:00:00] The product is the influence now. In the luxury space, we're seeing the death of hype. Marketers can't really pull the wool over someone's eyes anymore. The gatekeepers are gone. Every artist in any medium has access to every cultural consumer in the world. Culture is not transactional. The way I define our product is that it's IRL, human connection.

[00:00:23] An LLM doesn't actually know what it's writing about. It's just next token. The human has come up with the idea in the first place. Every new medium starts with slop and ends with opera. Hello and welcome back to the Responsible Luxury podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Petrovic, founder of Laurenti. For decades, a small group of editors, magazines, and cultural institutions shaped what the world paid attention to.

[00:00:50] Today, the gatekeepers are gone. But what happens to culture when the gatekeepers disappear? Consumers have direct access to information, creators have direct access to audiences, and luxury brands are being forced to rethink how they build trust, relevance, and influence.

[00:01:08] To help us make sense of this shift, I'm joined by Jacob Brown, creative director of Maxwell Social and former creative leader at Vogue, The New York Times, Style Magazine, and Condé Nast. In this conversation, we discuss the death of gatekeepers, why the era of hype may be ending, the future of creativity in the age of AI, and why human connection may become luxury's most valuable asset.

[00:01:35] So please enjoy my very special conversation with my dear friend, Jacob Brown. Hi, I'm Jacob Brown, and welcome to the Responsible Luxury podcast. Jacob, it's such an honor, and I'm really excited to have you on the podcast because where our worlds collide between media and fashion and luxury and jewelry is quite fascinating.

[00:02:00] And I found, from the moment I've met you and Wendy introduced us, I found you to be just such, very few people I'll say this about, but there's a creative brilliance that few people have. And it's, not to put you on the spot, but I think that it's rare to have both the creative capacity, but then also the business acumen to blend and bring inside of an organization. But before I jump into you, you know, let's take a step back.

[00:02:28] You've had such an impressive career background starting at Times, you've worked at Condé Nast, you've done some incredible projects with Vogue, your own independent consulting company as well. So take us back to the beginning. How did you get started in media, and what got you where you are now? Yes, my first magazine job was actually, I started a magazine at Cornell while I was a physics major, and I changed to economics.

[00:02:56] But then, with my friends, Katie Liederman and Donald Montenegro Johnson. Donald's now the partner at Luring Augustine Gallery in New York, so he's also big in the art world. But yeah, we started a magazine at Cornell. And I don't know, I had gone to college for STEM, and I just at some point was like, actually, I want to be around, I guess I would, now I would say culture. But really, at the time, I just want to be around cool people who are like interesting.

[00:03:26] So I guess that's culture, but it was a little bit more just instinctual at the time. So I, you know, we did the magazine in college, and then I came to New York, and there's this thing called the Columbia Publishing Course, formerly the Radcliffe Publishing Course. I don't know how relevant it is today, but at the time, I was like the gatekeeper for getting publishing jobs. And then, it was really like a networking thing.

[00:03:50] So I came, and you know, it was very low-key, but it would be like every day, it would be an editor from a different magazine or a different book publishing house. And they would come give a little lecture, and then you'd have drinks with them afterwards. And, you know, it wasn't like a... Make connection. Yeah, it was very much a networking kind of little thing. And then I was briefly an assistant at Esquire. I was a terrible assistant. That didn't last long. And then I got hired at Paper Magazine. And I was there for like four years, and I was at V Magazine.

[00:04:18] So I did the indie small publishing. I eventually became the editor-in-chief of V Man, which is the men's magazine of V, working with Stephen Gann. And then Sally Singer hired me as her features director when she became the editor-in-chief of the T, the New York Times style magazine. And I think around that time, right? I think while I was at V, I had my first consultant client. I did a lot of work with Ben Gorham when he was starting Byredo, the fragrance, the Swedish fragrance company, which is, of course, huge now.

[00:04:48] But at the time, it was very small. And I was helping him name a bunch of the fragrances, actually. And I don't know if he still does this, but at the time, he included sort of little poems, like little bits of writing in each kind of to express, I guess, how he felt about each fragrance. I would interview him and get his kind of personal take on things and then construct a little narrative, kind of a, not really a poem, but a bit poetic in the language.

[00:05:15] So then I went to the New York Times, was there for 30-something issues. And then Sally went back to Vogue and basically started Vogue.com. And so I worked for her there for about 12 years in various capacities and did a lot more brand consulting at that point, did a lot of video work.

[00:05:38] And towards the end of my time there, I got really involved in the branded content for Vogue. At the time, that was really editorially directed. Like, again, Sally Singer was basically doing all of the branded content along with being the creative director of Vogue.com. And she needed help with that. And then when she left, I kind of just took over that. And through Reorg, I was basically working on Vogue, GQ, and all the other kind of fashion titles and fashion advertising clients.

[00:06:07] So that was, you know, people like Marc Jacobs or Swarovski or Cartier, but also like Adidas and eBay. Right. Who wanted to do something narrative or culturally driven that wasn't advertising to connect with the Condé Nast audience. And then I went in-house at Theory for a little while. And now I'm the creative director of a private club in Tribeca called Maxwell.

[00:06:32] And I have a consulting company called Guest Editor that I'm doing with Susan Kappa, who's the former head of luxury at Condé Nast. The Maxwell opportunity, finding herself in that position was also pretty serendipitous. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know if I should talk about this, but I'm just going to anyway because it's interesting. But a friend of mine who is the publicist of Neuhaus last summer had asked me, like, she needed a moderator for a panel that they were doing.

[00:07:01] And, like, I guess their moderator dropped out and she, like, kind of last minute asked if I could do it as a favor. I did. And, you know, it went really well. And so she's like, you know, we've been wanting to start a podcast here at Neuhaus. Would you want to do that for us? And I was like, yeah, of course. And I got really into it. And we were out to dinner, like, signing the deal. And she gets a call and it's, oh, we're going, like, going back, going, locking the deal. Neuhaus is gone. I mean, I guess it's sort of back now.

[00:07:26] But then I was like, you know, I wonder if I could find another private club that wants to engage culturally as a way to help define who they are and also communicate to a wider, the wider world. Like, a private club is weird because it's quite closed off and small and inaccessible. But for various reasons, you want people to know what you stand for.

[00:07:53] And it was appealing to me because I realized that I love making magazines, but it's not, it's the business model is very, I mean, there aren't really, like, the kind of magazines now like there were when I was in my 20s. So, you know, I'm doing a magazine called Cafe Society for Maxwell. Which we'll get into. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you more about that later.

[00:08:14] But essentially what's interesting from the business model point of view is that there's a lot less advertising pressure on the magazine or even chasing algorithm stuff. Like, I don't need to do a Kardashian story to get clicks because the purpose is just if we can create a really beautiful, interesting, editorial, independent magazine that it reflects the values of Maxwell, but it's not really an advertising product. That accomplishes what Maxwell wants. And it's also very creatively interesting to me.

[00:08:41] So that's a good place I want to dig deeper is looking at the culture of Maxwell. You take the communication strategy of the magazine launch is one thing, and you've had experience with more boutique independent brands, bigger institutional brand names. If I ask you a question, who controls culture today? And is it the consumers of the media that you're creating? Is it the creative director? Sure.

[00:09:12] Well, I think I'll get maybe get to an answer. But I think the thing kind of defining what's changed is helpful, I think, which is pre maybe like 15 years ago and earlier, pre social media, pre kind of democratization of information. You had sort of a monoculture. Most people accessed culture through media. Right. There was really that was all there was. There was, you know, mass magazines, radio, TV.

[00:09:42] There was independent media, but it was still pretty limited. There was still like a print magazine that you either subscribe to and got in the mail or went to the newsstand and bought. And just to give that a little bit more color. The first things I used to read, my earliest writing was about bands, about music. I was mostly interested in the way they looked and what they were wearing. But that's what I wrote about. Yeah.

[00:10:05] And if you wanted to know about a new band, the only way you would know about that is either it got played on the radio, which is like, you know, top 40. Or you read about it in a magazine. There's no really was no like discovering things online. Right.

[00:10:22] So as a writer or someone in, let's say, in umbrows as cultural curation, like I would go hear the music in a studio, like a Sony studio in Midtown. And like no one else in the whole world had heard it at that point. Or maybe like 15 people had. And that was like, that was a very different model. So you had, it was the kids would call it gate kept or gatekeepers.

[00:10:48] But I think what it also meant is there are all these subcultures and niche cultures and they're all trying to get attention. And they all were like really isolated because there was no way to access them unless a gatekeeper promoted them. And then occasionally one would get picked up and, you know, take off and the rest would die out.

[00:11:11] And so you would have a lot of like very, if you imagine kind of like a botanical metaphor here, you'd have a lot of very stunted plants that were like desperate for light. And then a few of them would get really tall. Now everything has access. Every artist in any medium has access to every like cultural consumer in the world immediately. So you not. So no one is really hurting for an audience, but also no one's getting that kind of super charge that they would have gotten from a gatekeeper.

[00:11:41] In the days of gatekeeping. It almost seems now there's so much opportunity for artists and people to get discovered, but it boils down to how can you decipher between mass attention and true influence? And culture is such a fragile, very challenging thing to build and the easiest thing to knock down with mistrust with consumers, your clients, your audience.

[00:12:03] So you look at where we are today with media and it's like, if we wanted to start, let's say we wanted to start a band or something tomorrow and we can access anyone we want all over the world. How do you balance between the mass attention and then influence as an emerging artists or a brand and culture today? Yeah, I mean, well, again, let's use this general comparison.

[00:12:31] I think the idea of influence used to really what that meant was like someone was influential because they controlled the flow of information. Right. That's what that used to mean. You were a journalist or you were the booker at a venue or you were a gallerist and you could just promote a put an artist on and like everyone would go to your gallery or any other kind of in these positions of power where essentially there was a pretty large imbalance in information.

[00:13:00] So curators, journalists, gatekeepers, they had all the information and the culture consuming public only had what they were shown. Now that power doesn't really exist. So the curator, the journalist, the venue book or whatever, whoever it is, they don't really know anything more than their audience who they're selling to. So I think that influence is maybe an outdated term, to be honest.

[00:13:27] I don't think there's any switches or levers to be pulled. I don't think that's how it works. I think the two things are the product is the influence now. In the luxury space, I think increasingly we're seeing the death of hype.

[00:13:45] I think that was a ploy by an increasingly ineffective ploy to use high follower count personalities to drive sales of expensive things. I think that at the end of the day that it ends up all canceling out.

[00:14:04] And that's what's happening now is everyone's, you know, it was interesting to see whoever wearing whatever bag or shoe or slightly accessible element of a luxury house is offering. But now that doesn't really work as much anymore. And you see LVMH pulling back and shedding assets. And I think that most people agree that it's the consumer is always going to, at the end of the day, come back to the product.

[00:14:32] Marketers can't really pull the wool over someone's eyes anymore. It's just not. And particularly in the fashion space where really 20 years ago, it used to be about the image that got projected was everything. And I think now it's the piece of clothing is everything. And it's the fabric. And it's these things that you can communicate around them effectively and you can make sure people know about them. But you can't really. There's a level of trust, I feel like, that consumers today are becoming more evolved to be responsive to.

[00:15:01] And how do you build trust with the modern emerging consumer today? One thing that's very clear and obvious right now is the rise of founder-led brands. And you look at these more institutionalized household luxury brands. So why do you think founder-led brands feel more relevant than bigger household name brands? Yeah. I mean, I'll just be honest. I hate founder-led brands. Why is that?

[00:15:30] I mean, I don't like telling consulting clients who are founder-led that they have to get on TikTok every day, even though they do, to be effective. I think it's... I guess the reason I hate it is because... And I don't mean that I hate small brands led by their founder. I hate this idea that the face of a kind of oversharing founder who's on social media all the time. Although it's very effective and it works. Like, don't get me wrong. I think what I don't like about it is two things.

[00:15:58] One, it means that it's a strategy that only works for some founders. Like, not everyone can do that. And so I'm not sure that if we're talking about a company that makes jewelry, I'm not sure that every brilliant jewelry designer is going to be someone who can, like, go online. And, like, a lot of great creatives are not so good at speaking to the public. The other thing I don't like about it is I think it puts pressure...

[00:16:29] Well, then the founder has to have something interesting to say every single day. And I think it's borrowed from a non-luxury space. I think it's borrowed from brands that are making widgets that you actually, you know, it's like it's more technical and it's more like, oh, it's less poetic when you're making a soda or a, you know... T-shirt. A T-shirt or an app or a, I don't know, a tech, some tech thing or whatever.

[00:16:57] Then it's, yeah, there's, you know, plenty of weird technical stuff to talk about every day. But I think if you're, I don't know, if you're making velvet slippers in Italy and you just have one really great product, basically. Like, sure, you could talk about it every day. But it's almost like, it's like another one of these things like the kind of hype thing where I think it's a shortcut. And I don't know if it's appropriate, it's appropriate.

[00:17:25] But I hate this, this kind of like, I think a lot of people feel like that is the only way to go. And I just don't think it is. That's a really good insight. And it's important to recognize. It's like a self-awareness piece of knowing your industry and knowing your product and knowing your client. And it's, you have to know if you're in the luxury space and you're talking front-facing, it almost loses a sense of novelty and specialty. You want to focus on the craftsmanship. And like you said before, you want to focus on the product and the quality of the product.

[00:17:55] And from my experience, I've been testing out different content models too. And the highest type of content is the behind the scenes of the jewelers and the craftsmen working on the pieces behind the scenes. That stuff is interesting. When you say that's the most successful, what do you mean? Highest engagement post. And does that lead to a long-term customer or is this the highest engagement? Highest engagement in terms of, I look at that as top of funnel. And they get interested. And they look through maybe the Instagram page or go on the website and then make an inquiry.

[00:18:23] But it's an interesting insight. Yeah, I mean, that's the way I look at it too. I think it's important to be somewhat skeptical of the kind of like funnel paradigm with luxury particularly because I don't know that every luxury customer behaves that way. It's the funnel paradigm, I think, works really well for non-luxury goods.

[00:18:45] I mean, if you're selling, I don't know, Burger King, everyone can buy Burger King, every single person in the country. So if you can get as many eyeballs on Burger King, some percentage of them will then eventually go buy a Whopper. Right? And this is, I think, what the hype thing with luxury, the kind of rabbit hole that luxury houses fell down is it's like, yeah, you can get a celebrity or whatever it is and get that super high engagement content.

[00:19:15] Not all those customers are, that's not necessarily appealing to your final customer. Right. Like what percentage of the final customer saw that? I think that's like a really important metric because I'm thinking about this a lot with Maxwell right now is that we can certainly do things that get a huge top of funnel. So are those, first of all, do those people live in Tribeca? You know? Yeah.

[00:19:42] Do those people really, do they have the financial situation to join a Prime Members Club? I think it's important. The funnel model works, but I think it's important to constantly question it also. Yeah. So you've seen culture, again, from different angles inside major institutions, taking your lessons from New York Times, Condé Nast, Black Book Theory, Vogue, and now Maxwell.

[00:20:07] And creativity now, I feel, is such an asset in today's market. And creativity also takes a certain leader to be able to bring that into an organization. And there's an execution component there as well. So what does Maxwell understand about culture that most brands and institutions don't?

[00:20:31] You invited me to Maxwell a few months back and you walk in and there's just this, there's such a special energy to it. And you mentioned it's almost creating this modern salon, this intellectual environment for interesting people to come together. Yeah.

[00:20:50] Well, I think at Maxwell, the thing, just what I experienced when I'm hanging out there, I think there's something about the design and the space. And it's a very kind of maximalist, like velvet and curtains and hand-painted wallpaper murals. But there's, I'm not sure I could exactly break it down scientifically, but something about the way it's set up is very, this really lends itself to conversation.

[00:21:20] Like you kind of, I always feel like I'm at a, more like a dinner party at someone's really amazing house. Yeah. Like it has that kind of like, you just sit down and start talking either to someone, a friend or a stranger. I mean, oftentimes for me, it's someone I don't know that well, because I'm usually maybe there a couple nights a week and I'm talking to members who maybe I've talked to you once or twice before. But you end up having like a, like a two hour long conversation.

[00:21:43] So I think the way I was mentioning this before, but at Maxwell, I think the way I define our product is that it's, it's a luxury product and it's IRL human connection. Yeah. So it's, it's a space that like a physical space where your phone, you don't have to put it down, but most people, you know, you're not looking at your phone there and it's, it's luxurious. It's really high end food or drink, depending on what the night is really high end decor. Yeah.

[00:22:13] But all of that is crafted and curated together in a way to facilitate conversation. And so something that we're increasingly focusing in on is we know that our members enjoy that and we're trying to curate a lot more, whether it's a very small, like very member driven. There's now a classic literature book club. There's nonfiction and political debate dinners. Yeah.

[00:22:40] And it's kind of like, I don't know, it reminds me a little bit of like being in college and like going to dinner and you like debate on Bobaholics. I mean, I feel like people are scared to kind of, in most environments today, people are really scared to speak their point of view or speak their mind on things unless it's, they know everyone's going to agree with them in the first place. The intellectual friction can be really good for evolving conversations and perspectives. Yeah.

[00:23:02] It's, I think it's unusual to have kind of a luxury, I mean, at the end of the day, Maxwell's a, it's luxury hospitality, but I think it's, it's unusual to find oneself in a space like that. And also find oneself in a space where you can, in a friendly collegial way, be a bit heterodox and spout off and have someone think you're wrong, but it's okay. And have that kind of really free flowing intellectual stimulus and environment.

[00:23:29] And I mean, in fact, so Maxwell's named after Elsa Maxwell, who has sort of helped coin the term Cafe Society, but the magazine is called Cafe Society. And it's really based on that idea of free flowing ideas.

[00:23:42] So think about the Cafe Society era in Europe, and you've got, I don't know, you know, just wildly different intellectual currents getting crossing paths in these cafes in Vienna and Paris, Berlin, what have you. And for better or worse, it would like just germinate a million movements and a million great and terrible things. And I think it's fascinating. So that is our product.

[00:24:10] And there's a lot of ways to communicate that. But I think the best way to communicate is actually just to make the product really good. And then the communication is quite easy. I think usually when a brand or someone I'm working with or myself is banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out communication, it's because the product isn't right. And, you know, a lot of times that's been that's just where you are.

[00:24:37] Like that's sometimes that's just the reality of business. When you say the product isn't right, meaning you have a good grasp on your. Community, but you're saying the product doesn't fit your target. Well, it's just product market fit. So like, actually, if the product's not right, you also don't have a grasp on your market. Right. Maybe you have sales, but I think particularly now there's so much change occurring.

[00:25:03] So like in the fashion space, there's a lot of usually fashion brands have a lot of tension between retaining legacy customers, which might be a huge amount of revenue. But that is on a downward trajectory and then acquiring new customers. But what if what it takes to acquire the new customers turns off the old customers? So there's a tension there. Right.

[00:25:25] And that's that's something probably like the C-suite is often wrestling with, which is we know that our customer base is shrinking, but it's still a huge amount of revenue. And we know this is our new customer and it's growing, but it's a tiny amount of revenue. If we push the push down the gas pedal for that new customer, what if we do it the wrong way, we lose our old customers. And then then we're just out of business.

[00:25:49] It's like you think about a creative director and people who aren't working in the space or haven't worked with a like a tastemaker may not know exactly what it is. So from a very basic standpoint, what is the role of a creative director today and the responsibilities they have inside of a company? Yeah, I know. I'm like so I feel like I'm so argumentative. And difficult, but I like hate the term I like there's so many things I hate. I don't like the term creative director. Okay. I just think it why I don't know what it means. I don't think it's kind of bullshit.

[00:26:15] It's like suddenly fashion direct does like fashion designers started calling themselves creative directors. Bros in Brooklyn called themselves creative directors. Like I guess I'm the creative director of Maxwell. But like, what is that? I don't I think of myself as a writer. I've always thought of myself that way in the magazine world. You're a writer. You're an editor. You're at some point when you get close to editor in chief, then the art department of the magazine answers to you.

[00:26:44] So you're, you know, maybe you're commissioning a profile on a actor and you want a portrait. And so you work with the art department and then at some point you're like doing fashion shoots and it's based on your ideas about what's going on. In fact, you've just been to the shows. And so you come up with the idea. And so in the magazine world, the great editors also work the creative director of the magazine essentially. But that wasn't their title.

[00:27:12] Their title was editor, editor in chief, whatever. I think that what does a creative director do? I guess it's I guess it's just what it says. It's not an art director. Like an art director has hard real skills in terms of they've probably studied graphic design and they know they can tell a, you know, a 10 point font from an 11 point font. And they'd probably call it a typeface, not a font or something. They have real technical skills.

[00:27:39] I think some creative directors have that, but I don't really think that's what's useful. I think it's for me what I think I'm good at. Maybe I'll answer it that way is kind of being the editor chief of whatever I'm working on. So it's like, what is the cultural element? What is the visual element? How do we want to word this? What does this mean? I think I always talk about. An architect in a way. Yeah. You've been called brand architect. Well, yeah. I don't know if someone's ever called me that. I think that's what I have on my LinkedIn, which is whatever.

[00:28:06] But I think something about write, when you write something, it doesn't be an article. It's anything. You have a blank piece of paper in front of you and you start putting the words together. A lot of times in your head, and everyone knows this, in your head, you think you kind of have to understand what you're, I don't know if you're, whether it's a pitch or a story or an email to your boss or whatever. When you start writing in your head, it all makes sense. And then you put the words down and you realize it made no sense at all. That's what's hard.

[00:28:34] The thing that's hard about writing isn't the craft of stylish word assembly, which that is important, but that's not what's hard about it. What's hard about writing is actually figuring out what you want to say and have it be logical. A lot of times you have a vibe, but then when you actually put the words together, you realize the logic doesn't all connect. There's huge leaps and gaps and white spaces.

[00:28:58] And so I think that kind of writerly, like I think a writerly approach to anything, whether it's visuals or social media strategies, really what that is, is like filling in the logical steps. Do you practice writing every morning? That doesn't intentionally is not supposed to go out, but just to help you refine it. Oh, like the writer's way or the artist's way? The artist's way, the morning pages. Have you done practice it? Yeah, I've dabbled in that. I started that a couple months ago.

[00:29:26] As a writer, what do you find helps you find inspiration to write well and write interesting things and also help refine your writing capabilities? I mean, if we're just talking about pure writing, the best way to refine your writing capabilities is to read, for sure. Taking in as much inspiration. Yeah, I think it's sort of, it's a bit like being a chat GBT. Like you need to train yourself on good material and you absorb the rhythms and the way constructions happen.

[00:29:55] I think like if you're a talented writer, like a great writer, then you've really internalized the art of putting. I mean, it's not just a assembling words. That's the thing is it's an idea and the idea has to be really great. And then if the idea is really great or the story is really great or the plot point is really great or you're really sticking the knife in your boss and that email or whatever it is you're writing. Like it's got to be really, you know, good, the good writing only happens when the idea is great.

[00:30:25] And then you know how to structure, structure a sentence or an analogy or whatever to elevate that. It's kind of an aside, but like a lot of times what people, when people reckon, like when they're like, oh, this, this is like AI writing. A lot of what it is though, AI is, I think the term is over indexing. I'm not sure, but it's basically looking at the greatest writers in the world and the way they construct a sentence. Right. And, and they might, the best sentence might, I don't know, let's say someone's writing about the brilliance of Barack Obama.

[00:30:55] Okay. And the best sentence about the brilliance of Barack Obama. And then you're writing in the email, a cover letter to apply for a job at about how good you are at Excel spreadsheets. And it takes that sentence about Barack Obama and that style of writing. So it's taking all of these flourishes and constructions and ways of making comparisons.

[00:31:16] And it just puts it on every single stupid piece of sentence that, that, and that's at its core, why AI, LLM writing is kind of over indexed. It's focused on the, on the structure of a great sentence without the content of the great. An LLM doesn't actually know what it's writing about.

[00:31:34] Right. It's just, it has no awareness. I mean, there's a, I think there's a similarity between the way a human writer's brain works and an LLM in that they've read and absorbed all this great writing. They have their own style and their own preferences, but they've absorbed all these structures and ways of constructing sentences.

[00:31:55] And so in that sense, there's something LLM like in next token prediction model, like about the act of writing where it is a human brain can remix all these past things. The difference, the biggest difference is that an LLM doesn't actually know what the content is. I guess it's just next token. Whereas a human is. Has a level of discernment. Well, it, the human is coming up with the idea in the first place.

[00:32:21] So it's, I'm probably, I, you know, I've had this argument with tech people, so probably some of them are going to disagree with me, but I think I'm a pretty solid backing with that or solid ground with that. You know, it's annoying because it's like for a while there was that whole M dash thing, which is like, you know, every magazine writer uses M dashes all the time. I love M dashes. And that's why, but that's why LLMs took it up, started using them because they're trained on all this M dash writing. But then they put it into every sentence that like doesn't need it. It's easy.

[00:32:49] Like it, it looks at a, this is a great thing. It looks at a magazine, piece of a magazine, great magazine, New Yorker article or something. And it's uses M dashes and it's a great sentence. But then you write a simple sentence and it changes it to an M dash construction when there was, it's better without it. But it doesn't know the difference. It just knows that great sentences have M dashes. Um, anyway, we're on a tangent right now. I want to get back into the creativity.

[00:33:16] And I think that creativity is often treated like a soft skill in business. Again, going back to the role of, you don't like this word, but creative director in a way, and you're dealing with the business side of the company. Why do you think creativity is misunderstood in business today? Well, there's a few things. I think a lot of non-creatives in the business world are looking for a lever to pull or a button to push.

[00:33:42] Like, okay, let's say you're looking at your quarterly results and you're planning your next quarter or whatever. And it's very, well, we, can we just increase sales of this category by 10% and we'll be great. That'll, so that'll make our quarter great. Okay. And if you're used to dealing with things like supply chain and cutting costs, like cutting costs is a very linear way of thinking. Like, okay, so that means we have to fire people or whatever, you know what I mean?

[00:34:11] Um, but if, if you're looking to grow a products market share or something, um, particularly in a kind of hard to quite grasp world of fashion, luxury arts, whatever, then you need to make it appealing and it's not linear. So I think that creates, um, that's a tension in the world of art and commerce. Right.

[00:34:36] That's an interesting point too, because to move culture, like move the needle of culture, even move influence of a brand today. I think that you do need that true, that raw creativity to be able to get attention. Cause there's so much people doing the same of everything. People copying, uh, the latest trends and doing things that necessarily don't fit their brand or their company.

[00:34:55] I was speaking to a jeweler named Martin Katz and he's like, you really want to find what you're good at and really create cause otherwise it'll turn into a commodity in any industry that you're in. So I think it's like creativity is, it's the rawest form of creation obviously, but it's something that AI technology can never take away. That is one thing that humans can, that's like a super skill of humans today. Um, and, and something that technology can never take away, the human creativity.

[00:35:25] What do you think taste itself has been, has become a competitive advantage? Finding a deep level of curation, deep level of discernment of looking at Maxwell today, knowing how to curate a room or curate the members or even this new magazine. Yeah. I mean, I'm a kind of two minds of it. My general knee jerk to the questions like that is just to be like, I think taste is bullshit. Like what does that even mean?

[00:35:54] Um, then on the other hand, like if, like if I'm tasked with hiring people to like help with something, sometimes the taste level just isn't there. And there's like no other way to like, I think it's, it's both not that impressive to have a good taste. You need it and it's essential and you either have it or you don't. I also just think people like pat themselves on the back about it way too much. Let's get into Cafe Society. You just launched a magazine, what is it two months ago? A month ago. A month ago.

[00:36:24] So what was, what is the vision behind Cafe Society? Yeah. Um, so, you know, the historical Cafe Society was basically 1900s, early 20th century. And you had artists, politicians, revolutionaries, academics. The coffee house was like a gathering point. Right. So that was Cafe Society. And then it kind of evolved a bit into be more socialite.

[00:36:53] And that's where Elsa Maxwell kind of got involved, namesake of Maxwell. But the thing I like about that era is it was socializing. It was very intellectual. Debate was almost like a mating ritual. What do you mean? So debate is almost like a mating ritual. Yeah. I mean, I'm being a bit facetious, but it was like, that was a, it was a way to relate

[00:37:18] to other humans was to like, sit down and play devil's advocate and challenge, be challenged ideas, be challenged. Like kind of this, what's the tech phrase? Strong opinions held lightly or something. What is that? Just tech, tech people like to talk about if you have an idea, like really advocating for it, you're in a meeting about your product launch and maybe Cupertino or something.

[00:37:46] And if you have an idea, just advocate for it fully. Don't, don't soft pedal. But then if someone else's idea is better and they also advocate strongly, then you just give, you just completely surrendering. You know what I mean? So don't try to form consensus by everyone soft pedaling, everyone fully advocate their idea. And then when you recognize that someone else is better, then you just like, you're like over your idea. Cause at the end of the day, it's like, you're trying to better the ecosystem, whether that's a company or an idea. So don't take it personally. Yeah.

[00:38:14] I mean, they do this in the security culture of like in the, I don't know which departments, but in Israel, they always have a designated devil's advocate basically. So no matter what one person has to disagree. But anyway, I just like, I enjoy debate and argument and disagreeing with people. I like to hang out with people who have like a really different views than I do in all directions. But I think most people, a lot of people don't enjoy that today or are scared of that today.

[00:38:44] I think, you know. I think it's such a flaw in our society. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, this is all wrapped up in the politics of the day and the people are really worried. There's a lot of like heavy consequence for misspeaking basically. And so intellectually, intellectual freedom is, I'm not talking about sort of censorship and the things that people talk about on, about campuses and stuff. I'm just talking about like with your friends. I think people are a little less, a little more guarded unless they're around people they know they agree with.

[00:39:13] They need, they want to feel that social acceptance. And I think that when you, if you say something that may be triggering or say something that might be a bit polarizing. Yeah. It's almost like you have to be courageous to say something. Yeah. Or it's just not polite anymore. There's less room for that sort of like kook at the dinner party who offends everyone. And, but everyone's still like, there's just that, there's a lot of that kind of, there's a lot of homogeneity. Yeah.

[00:39:39] I think the intellectual stimulation point is, we've talked about this before, is certainly missing. And that's such an important gap that you're filling at Maxwell is like getting that creative intellectual hub together all in one. You're bringing back what was such a successful model back in the late, early 19th century and 20th century. And I think I'm excited for that because I think that we're also at a point of, you know, if like models are changing, businesses are changing.

[00:40:09] I think people are evolving and waking up in so many different ways. And the more we can get interesting people and interesting discussions together, I think the further along we can push together as a society. I mean, what I do know is that at the scale of a private social club, there's a huge appetite for what Maxwell offers. And I do know that at the scale of a independently published magazine, which is the scale of Cafe

[00:40:36] Society, there's a huge appetite to read that. And so, I mean, the other thing with the magazine that I should say is that's the inspiration is the Cafe Society era. Sort of the editorial lens is I cover everything in the magazine pretty much, but I want it to be fodder for the best dinner party or cocktail conversation you've ever had. So there's always a point of view or an opinion. Like we don't just write about cultural happenings.

[00:41:08] It's not just reporting you're saying. In other words, it's not just reporting. It's like taking strong view. Yeah, it's very op-ed. And sometimes that's more pointed. Sometimes that is verging into politics. Sometimes it's much more personal. We had a cover, the cover story was about Joachim Trier, who just won the Academy Award for his film Sentimental Value with Stellan Skarsgård.

[00:41:36] And Maya Singer wrote the cover story and she had, he just has like a really personal relationship to Joachim Trier's full oeuvre of films. And so she touches on why they resonate in society right now. But it's also like really just her personal opinion on what his films mean. And I think you could probably read her article and not have seen his films, but be at a cocktail

[00:42:05] party and kind of score a point by borrowing what she had to say. You know, she talks a lot about how watching cinema is connected to memory and the films of Joachim Trier are all about memory, particularly Sentimental Value. Sentimental Value takes place kind of in this family home over a few generations. I had a writer rewatch all of Mad Men. And I did that because I knew it, you know, Mad Men just went on HBO for the first time. So it's in 4K, you can rewatch all of it.

[00:42:33] And so I was like excited to watch it. It just so happened pretty much the entire world had the same idea at the same time. Jon Hamm rewatched it. So when that came out, everyone was like, how did you know? You know, I didn't really know. It was just instinct. But why re-binge a show? Because you watch something 20 years later and suddenly everything has a different kind of cast or color to it. I love the idea of like, and we'll do this in every issue, but like re-watching one of the, like the classic prestige.

[00:43:01] First of all, prestige television as a category is brand new, right? It's only 15 years or so. So going back and re-watching prestige TV is like a new idea. It's kind of like watching old arthouse cinema over, like from like watching new wave films. Like it's that kind of vibe, but TV is so typically so connected to critique of what's happening in society. It's really interesting. Like re-watching Mad Men, you can be like, oh, holy shit. Like I love Betty Draper now and I hated her the first time around.

[00:43:30] Or like now I have a totally different take on why Joan decided to sleep with the Jaguar dealer or, you know, there's just all of these things where the color on it, it's the same. And knowing the ending, living in a different world than when the show came out, you can really just completely have a new perspective on it. And so that's a fascinating thing. It's fascinating to have a writer's perspective on that. And I love the idea that someone reads that and then maybe watches it and maybe barres

[00:43:59] some of the ideas and takes, goes to a cocktail party or dinner and gets into an argument with someone about Mad Men and can maybe get into a little like intellectual jostle with someone. So I have an old friend named Gigi Burris who's a milliner and she, like if you've ever seen a hat on the cover of Vogue, she probably made it. I mean, her hats are incredible and everyone should check it out.

[00:44:25] But Susan Kappa is my business partner that we were talking to Gigi about how we might be able to help her. And she was kind of talking about how, you know, basically talking about market share in the hat world. And I had this insight, which I was like, Gigi, if you can increase your share of the hat market some percent, that's great, but that's a tiny market. And so a small increase in a small market is like, really, what if you could just increase the market size a little bit?

[00:44:54] Not necessarily for yourself, but if you could actually grow, you really, you're competing against people who don't wear hats, you're not competing against other milliners. Right. So we came up with this kind of man on the street, TikTok, Instagram reel series, where she has a, she has kind of a talent who just goes out on the street and tells people basically they kind of, they look great except for because you don't have a hat, you look terrible. She basically nags people. Like she's like, you're almost, you're almost there, but your look kind of sucks, but I can fix it for you.

[00:45:23] I mean, she's, it's much more polite than that, but that's kind of the, uh, the gist of it. And she was, you know, a little unsure about it, but decided to go with it. And it's been a huge success for her. I mean, 300 increases in engagement level stats. Like she's released a video where it was like the people, the random person she stopped. She said the thing about, started talking about hats and they were like, oh, you're that we know you, we've seen your videos before.

[00:45:48] So suddenly she like that realization that like, what, I mean, it's kind of goes back to that top of funnel thing. I was, we were talking about where it's not always just for her to just do content that's going to increase her top of funnel isn't necessarily the most effective thing. But if she can do top of funnel content that grows the size of the New York woman who wants to wear a hat every day, like if a small percentage of people start wanting to wear hats every day,

[00:46:17] that can have a huge impact on her business. It's a trickle effect. It makes a cultural impact. I mean, people are going to recognize on people on the street who get stopped now kind of sometimes know what's coming because they've seen these videos that have gone viral. So that's cultural, but also it changes the, it changes the shape of the marketplace for her. And something that I want to pull practically for founders listening today is for founders who want to shape culture intentionally.

[00:46:42] What's a piece of advice that you would give them just like one of your clients with that? Yeah. I mean, I think. You know, Gigi is an artist, so I didn't have to over-explain, but I think for non-artist founders, the first thing I try to impress is that culture is not transactional. So it's really, you've got to kind of go into it wanting to actually just make something cultural with the kind of goodwill and self-assurance that it'll come back to you.

[00:47:11] The second you try to lock it down and make it contractual and then it kind of takes the air out of the tire, so to speak. So tie everything back together here for us, thinking about culture and where you see it going. And I want to tie it back into the philosophy of responsible luxury. From a high level, I think about people ask me, what does responsible luxury mean? And I tell them responsible luxury today, I think humans' tastes are evolving, people's desires are evolving.

[00:47:40] I think two of the largest pillars is trust and human connection. And I think those two pillars are very important for building culture inside of a home, inside of an organization, inside of a brand. So I want to turn it back to you and ask, if we're looking back in like five or 10 years from now, where would you like to see our culture be evolving towards? Towards a more like responsible way of leading their lives, a more responsible way of leading businesses.

[00:48:09] And where would you, you know, where would you like to see us living in five or 10 years from now as like a cultural legacy? I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I think there's a few things there. Like I think luxury, the luxury business is generally by nature somewhat responsible. I think that it's easy to be like, if we're talking about real luxury, it's a very small scale.

[00:48:30] It tends to be focused on like cashmere or linen that's very carefully farmed. There's no industrial scale anything. I think it's the accessible luxury that is, tends to be really problematic in terms of ethics or what have you. The scaling of luxury creates issues because then you're trying to, you're trying to get margin where it doesn't exist.

[00:49:00] But if you're a small time leather crafter or sweater weaver, then the years, luxury should be small scale. So there shouldn't, the second it's an issue for ethics, I think you're probably not really luxury in terms of where culture is going. I think we don't know that. I think that the clock never gets turned back. So we don't know where AI is leading. We don't know if, you know, I interviewed a futurist recently named Daniel Keller, who

[00:49:29] used to be a fine artist. Now he's in VCAI. And he, you know, he made this point to me that every new medium starts with slop. When the movie camera was invented, they just sat the camera in front of a play and filmed it. We don't know if AI just leads to slop forever or if some new genre is going to come out of it that we're, I think the way Daniel said it was that it starts with slop and ends with opera. I think it's a beautiful way of looking at it. And we don't know. So will the new, will AI start with slop and lead to opera? We don't know.

[00:49:59] In a broader sense with culture, the gatekeepers are gone. Everyone thought that things like Substack and podcasting would step in, but actually on creators who have no guidance and no editorial, like no editors telling them what to do, end up just making boring same crap again. So we really haven't solved it. We don't know where, what replaces gatekeeping yet. In general, all of this stuff figures itself out.

[00:50:27] Like, you know, people were really worried when the printing press happened because no one memorized long poems anymore. You know what I mean? Like, so when Daniel was saying slop and then you get, you start with slop and end up at opera. That's, that is historically true. And it's impossible in the moment to see where it's going. Yeah. It's such a universal principle that people can take away from today's episode. Um, and I just wanted to thank you, Jacob, so much for joining me this morning. And we must plan another episode because we did not have enough time to cover everything today.

[00:50:57] Yeah. And for viewers and listeners today, are they able to access Cafe Society? Yeah. Cafe Society mag.com. Amazing. And subscribe and get the next issue in the mail. And where's the best place for people to find and connect with you after the show today? Uh, I guess LinkedIn would be best. You can search me on LinkedIn. Yeah. Brilliant. Or Instagram, I guess. Amazing. LinkedIn. Let's keep it business. LinkedIn. Very good. Jacob, you're amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you.

[00:51:26] Thank you for joining me for this conversation with Jacob Brown. One idea that stayed with me throughout this discussion is that culture cannot be manufactured through attention alone. It is built through trust, creativity, meaningful products, and genuine human connection. As luxury media and technology continue to evolve, perhaps the most valuable skill isn't simply reaching more people, but building and creating spaces, experiences, and ideas

[00:51:54] that people genuinely want to be a part of. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who is interested in the future of culture, creativity, and luxury. You can learn more about Jacob's work through Maxwell Social and Cafe Society Magazine. And as always, you can find Responsible Luxury wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And check us out on Instagram. Until next time, I'm Lauren Petrovic, and thank you for listening.