My new gig, Victoria’s Secret's new show, and McDonald’s new emotions
A new zone for me, same Zone for Discomfort!
Each Discomfort Zone intro covers a topic of the hour or a big-picture concern. Well, not this week. Instead, I’m sharing some news about a subject dear to my heart: my newsletter!
You might have noticed that this edition has come out on a Friday morning instead of Thursday. Why? Well, I’ve been hired as Head of Creative Services for Canada’s National Film Board and I started work yesterday. This is an amazing opportunity to support one of the country’s most beloved and storied brands, and couldn’t be more proud. I’ll still be writing fiction, non-fiction, and my newsletter, but of course my new responsibilities will impact my writing output.
Overall, Discomfort Zone will stay the same. The one section that will suffer from my no longer being a freelance writer is the 1Qi interview. Researching, contacting, following up, interviewing, and photo editing is more time-consuming than it might appear. As of the next issue, this section will feature an insightful quote from an expert in their field, rebranded as 1Q. If I get help with researching and booking guests, the 1Qi might return in the future!
I love writing about culture, tech, and brands. Many popular newsletters are little more than bullet-point lists of links and I’ve always prided myself in providing meaty content. If something has to give, it will be quantity, not quality. I’m also fortunate to be helped with research and reporting by Diana Sia Yambaye and Silvia Todea, so a huge thank you to them.
The publishing schedule will also have to change if I’m going to set myself up for success in the new gig. So, starting with the next issue, Discomfort Zone will drop every second Monday morning.
As always, thank you for your ongoing readership and support. I’ve worked hard on Discomfort Zone over the last 15 months and intend to continue!
Victoria’s Secret? Fabric!
Victoria’s Secret paused its 24-year-old iconic fashion show in 2019, as sales and viewership dropped dramatically due to growing distaste for the brand’s narrow representation of body types, genders, and ethnicities. Following a rebranding overhaul that swapped out “Angels” for more diverse “Ambassadors”, VS released the poorly received TV movie Victoria’s Secret: The Tour ‘23 last year, a collection of mini-documentaries and music videos that featured Ambassadors in muted, avant-garde, and experimental outfits. While the models were more diverse, their costumes were criticized for implying that glamor, glitter, and luxury are still reserved for thin, white, 20-something Angels. Also, Gen Z basically hated it for a variety of reasons you can read in the trailer’s YouTube comments.
As sales continued to decline, Victoria’s Secret’s response to the critics is a return of the VS Fashion Show on October 15 with the promise of presenting “who we are today, plus everything you know and love – the glamor, runway, wings, musical entertainment, and more!” Rather than centering models’ bodies in the show’s advertisements, widely deemed “shaming” before the rebrand and “performative” after, VS is going glam.
A sparkling web page showcases a Fabric Storytelling article that spotlights the specialty foils, hand-placed gems, and ethereal feathers woven into this year’s costumes, with only scant amounts of scantily clad women. In an attempt to be inclusive but not showboaty (okay, there is going to be a performance by Cher), VS is reintroducing former Angels while not pointing out this fact (Tyra Banks will be the oldest VS show model at 50 years old and Gigi Hadid is now a mother).
Will the new Victoria’s Secret fashion show revive its vibrantly sexy esthetic while also maintaining its commitment to greater representation? The two goals shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but having misread the room so badly in 2023, the secret to finding the brand’s cultural sweet spot might not be so easy to recapture.
What’s the opposite of doomscrolling?
Cosmos is a small New York City software development firm that bills itself as a “Pinterest alternative for creatives”. Last month, Cosmos went above and beyond its mission by releasing Public Work, a beautifully simple website featuring over 100,000 public domain images from sources such as the archives of museums, including the MET, Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York Public Library.
If you need a vintage, maybe slightly pretentious image for your blog, advertisement, or the empty frame that’s been sitting in your room, head over to the site and get lost in their AI-powered, multidirectional infinite scroll.
As art directors see budgets reduced to Unsplash levels or find themselves tempted to produce images using AI, Public Work can be both a destination and a starting point for the creation of truly outstanding visuals or graphic elements. The only real problem is the sheer amount of material available, but spending some time on Public Work sure beats doomscrolling.
Delve into the rich tapestry of chatbot manifesting
Manifestation enthusiasts, à la The Secret (Rhonda’s, not Victoria’s!) have manifested a viral TikTok trend that instructs users to prompt ChatGPT to turn a list of their life goals, dreams, and values into a story detailing a future day in their dream lives. The positive emotions generated by this story are meant to “manifest” or actualize the user’s dream life if rehearsed often enough. Several gurus/coaches/influencers even recommend reading this self-story every night.
Not only does this approach take main character syndrome to a new level, but the positive thinking that manifestation endorses has been proven to make us more complacent and therefore less likely to achieve our dream lives.
« manifesting irony »When third graders were asked to meditate before a language assignment – either on the prize they would get for completing it or the potential obstacles to completing it –the latter group outperformed the first. Maybe a more effective viral trend, instead of asking ChatGPT to dream would be to ask a chatbot to WOOP.
Jennifer Simon, commercial semiotician and brand strategist
I remember finding semiotics fascinating when I first studied it way, waaaaaay back in 1983, so when I encountered Jennifer Simon online, I was interested in finding out from her how semiotics is used today in a brand and marketing context.
Q. Many marketers are probably unfamiliar with semiotics, and how a semiotician like yourself might be able to help them. How would you explain the benefit of leveraging cultural insights and crafting a brand strategy using semiotics to navigate fast-changing market conditions or to reach new audiences?
A. Firstly, let me explain what commercial semiotics is. Semiotics is a tool we use in market research to uncover the often hidden, but shared cultural meanings and narratives that consumers absorb every day. These meanings are what unconsciously influence consumers’ everyday beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and purchasing decisions. It reveals why consumers think and feel the way they do and predicts where culture and consumer behavior are heading next.
By understanding how meaning-making works, we help brands create clear, powerful, and culturally relevant stories that make their products more meaningful and impactful to their audiences.
As marketplaces become more saturated and as consumers are increasingly more savvy, it's getting harder for brands to remain distinctive and culturally relevant. Think about the dizzying amount of cultural changes that we lived through even in the last six years with events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the BLM movement, the Me Too movement, the growing importance of climate awareness and sustainability, and the cost of living crisis. Understandably, these shifts have reshaped the cultural landscape, influencing how consumers make decisions and what they expect from brands.
However, consumers can’t be expected to know how and why these changes are impacting their choices when we analyze these effects. And this is where traditional qualitative market research methods often fall short.
Here, semiotics provides a critical advantage – helping to bridge the gap between what consumers say and the reasons behind their feelings, thoughts and actions by understanding the cultural forces that impact consumers and brands. This focus is more important than ever to get ahead of cultural change and create a winning strategy.
By decoding cultural meaning and predicting cultural change, semiotics provides a solid strategic foundation for brands by doing the following:
Mapping the cultural landscape to identify white space opportunities to consider leaning into and ones to avoid due to an overcrowded marketplace.
Providing key executional guidelines on how brands can credibly and relevantly communicate to their consumer base now and even reach new audiences in the future.
For instance, a US potato chip brand expanding into the Brazilian market may need to understand the changing snacking trends there. This is where semiotics helps. We analyze not only what their chip competitors are doing, but also how snacks in adjacent categories like chocolate and nuts, are communicating to their audiences – allowing us to map the cultural shifts in the snacking landscape and identify new opportunities for growth in this market. By doing this, we help the brand evolve its messaging in a way that’s fresh and culturally relevant to Brazilians and sets them apart in the market.
By leveraging the power of semiotics, brands can stay culturally relevant, create meaningful connections with their consumers, and thrive in an ever-changing cultural landscape.
Dr Jennifer Simon is an Associate Director at Crowd DNA, where she specializes in commercial semiotics, cultural insight and brand strategy. As Semiotics lead, she has integrated semiotic approaches with AI technology to provide robust solutions for clients’ brand and communication strategies. She has delivered semiotic insights for a wide range of brands spanning multiple markets and sectors, including tech, media, luxury, alcohol, and FMCG. She has both written for and presented at AQR and guest lectures on Semiotics in Consumer Research at UAL. Her background also includes academic research and teaching at Rice and Georgia State University in the US. Jennifer relishes the opportunity to help clients craft powerful narratives that resonate with their consumers.
Eating your emotions
Earlier this summer McDonald’s leveraged a British mental health awareness initiative to explore how children should explore a healthy range of emotions. The key concept was to remove the famous smiley graphic device from Happy Meal boxes across the country and instead provide kids with different expressive stickers so they could choose the emotion displayed on the iconic container.
It’s a brilliant piece of communication because, whatever you think of McDonald’s as a corporation, it does spark conversation around societal pressures to be pathologically positive.
On the other hand, a recent Harvard study found that individuals who consumed more ultra-processed foods (UPFs) such as fast food had a significantly higher risk of developing depression, aside from their disastrous impacts on physical health.
The promotional video is very well made. I love it when one little girl calls a range of emotions a “mood salad”, although she missed the opportunity to bring up a more spectacular emotional menu item: the “freak-out burger”.
As we enter a new era of AI-driven companionship, romance, and even therapy, how should we feel about a global corporation like McDonald’s teaching us about expressing emotions? McHappy or McSad?
Trust yourself or trust the machine?
The Cautionary Tales podcast by Financial Times columnist and author Tim Harford is a treasure trove of brilliantly told audio stories about things that went wrong when they didn’t have to.
This recent episode recounts the tragic fate of Air France Flight 447 which plunged into the Atlantic in June, 2009, killing everyone on board.
Which lesson does Harford draw from the crash? “In the age of artificial intelligence, we often compare humans and computers, asking ourselves which is ‘better’. But is this even the right question? The case of Air France Flight 447 suggests it isn’t – and that the consequences of asking the wrong question are disastrous.”
The Garden of Digital Delights
One of the most famous paintings in history is The Garden of Earthly Delights, a surreal tableau of religion-infused imagery by Dutch artist Heironymous Bosch, dating from around the year 1500. You can see a picture of the triptych and read all about its origins and cultural interpretation right here on Wikipedia. But as 404 Media reports, if you google the painting you might be served up some AI slop instead.
This of course begs the question: Is this what a garden of digital delights looks like?
Did you enjoy this issue of Discomfort Zone? You can comment directly in the Substack app or drop me a line by emailing me at john@johnbdutton.com.
And why not connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already?
Additional research and reporting by Silvia Todea and Diana Sia Yambaye.
Legal disclaimer: All images in this newsletter that are not the property of the author are used with permission or reproduced under the fair use provisions of the Canadian Copyright Act while giving appropriate credit.