We are officially gorging on broadcasting. From comedy bantz to sex advice, crisis support to philosophy bites, the pandemic has seen everyone and their pet push into podcasting to maintain a connection (in the US alone 50%+ of people over 12 are now listening, 80% of whom are aurally addicted to the tune of 7+ hours a week); live streaming has soared and audio platforms from Discord to Clubhouse (more on the latter later) are raging globally – in China user audio platform numbers are predicted to reach 730m by 2023, a growth rate of 32.4%.

With retailers under increasing pressure to air a socially authentic voice, consumers craving personal fame as micropreneurial media moguls, and brands at pains to connect and reflect at the speed of pop culture – including within virtual brandscapes – brand broadcasting is ultra-fertile territory. From retail’s new radio stations (IRL and in-game) to recording studio flagships, XR broadcasts and those already dabbling in OnlyFans, here’s who, how and why:

Podcasts Still Take The Topical Pulse

Branded podcasts may seem like comparatively old news. Matches Fashion’s weekly session, The Collector’s House, where creatives discuss personal objects of significance, is already on its 82^nd episode while Harrods’ True Tales of Luxury is entering its third year. But their aforementioned pulling power, capacity for topical resonance (UK department store Liberty’s Discover series is as Panorama as PR, with topics ranging from modern slavery to queer excellence) and commercial sway (50% of Americans say they’re more likely to buy from a brand after hearing its ad on a podcast) reveals the genre still has legs.

Just last week, Selfridges, a department store with plenty of previous in terms of activist attitude, updated its Hot Air podcast with the launch of Good Nature. Offering an unusual tour of philanthropic, biophilia-based pleasure-seeking (designed to galvanize our eco-intentions as we’re hurled into the new normal) it will contribute to Selfridges 5-year Project Earth initiative. Even Drest, the interactive etail-meets-styling platform has a podcast, slated to be going in-game at some point.

Radio Retail: Cultural Constants & Virtual Fan-Tailing

A renaissance in radio concepts show there’s new life in old formats to an even greater degree. In February, skate behemoth Vans put another stick in the ground of its long-running strategy espoused to grassroots youth culture and local love by launching live broadcast platform, Channel 66. Traversing its signature nexus of music, art, sports and street culture, it transmits from broadcast hubs in its own physical spaces – the General in Brooklyn, House of Vans Chicago, Mexico City (Spanish speaking shows) and its DTLA flagship.

Early broadcasts have involved the Young Chicago Authors collective, while an all-ages session about LA life spot-lit the city via disparate professional voices (musicians, athletes, artists). Shows – performances, workshops and ‘curated conversations’ – run throughout the week, with Friday nights reserved for live music and DJs.

More ephemeral, in December 2020, ComplexLand – the five-day virtual version of Covid-19-curtailed streetwear mega-show ComplexCon – kicked the cultural verisimilitude up a notch by embedding a radio station into its digital fabric. Visitors (all 100k of them), who entered as avatars, bought from branded virtual shops and attended live gigs could also shop radio-related merch.

Both the station and store were created by US hip hop and Afrobeats publisher EMPIRE, sold exclusive items from Busta Rhymes, Rich The Kid and LUCKI, among others – building on the legacy of in-game airwaves pioneered by the granddaddy of gaming, Grand Theft Auto.

Fame-Seeker Studio Flagships

As Vans strategy infers, brand broadcasting has IRL merit too, including potentially throwing a lifeline to pandemic-ravaged flagships. While Samsung successfully re-engineered its London flagship into a live broadcast hub to fuel its online channels as the city flip-flopped between lockdown sanctions, the bigger opportunity is likely to come from nurturing the rampant consumer appetite for minor (on a modest day) online stardom; even as far back as 2019, 72% of US Gen Z aspired to be an online celeb, with 67% of American social media consumers currently keen to be an influencer themselves.

Beauty brands, arguably the captains of retail’s most ardent fandoms and obsessive consumer-creators, currently lead the way. Korean brand Mûrir offers a masterclass in the world of beauty ‘culting’, thanks to Seoul flagship Villa de Mûrir – ‘community-driven’ space for K-beauty mad teens and millennials whose pièce de résistance, aside the store and make-up salon, is a production studio for social media content. In Tokyo, Shiseido’s Beauty Square flagship plays direct to fans’ pride with a Go-Live Zone – a studio for live-streaming videos and a screen that displays them alongside brand adverts.

Similarly, LA-based Morphe’s latest flagship has in-store studio where it shows it’s love to YouTubers, while subscription-box retailer Ipsy’s 2020 flagship reboot, Open Studios (also LA) exemplifies the blurred boundaries between amateur and pro, brand and fan. Like a masonic lodge for make-up wunderkinds, subscription-holding members must apply for access – determined on the frequency and quality of their social posts.

Prof. Jonathan A.J. Wilson, an expert in brand strategy & culture at Regent’s University, London, believes it’s a behavioral shift set to stay: “Our appetite for snackable, binge-able, mobile-ready content has been growing for some time, but the pandemic has brought us a crossing-the-Rubicon moment concerning the application of broadcasting anywhere, everywhere, by anyone. Even luxury brands have softened and are rubbing shoulders.”

QVC
QVCA
for Post-Covid Youth

Next-gen TV-app concepts are also swelling, with more distanced fans nudged to take a bite of the broadcast cherry. Aaron Levant, CEO and cofounder of NTWRK – the mobile-first, platform that famously billed itself as ‘QVC-meets-Comic-Con for Gen Z’ (it sells drops of products via bitesize broadcasts and episodic content helmed by anyone from cult hip hop stars to athletes) reveals that the late 2018-launched business grew 300% from 2019-20.

It now has 350 ‘creators’ (“brands, creators and entities of influence”) producing broadcasts, some on a regular (monthly/weekly) basis, others more sporadically. Some create from home, low-fi style. Others indulge in NTWRK’s content creation studies. 90% of all broadcasts are live. Content ranges from cause-based – last year it partnered with iconic artist Takashi Murakami on limited edition prints benefitting Black Lives Matter, Equal Justice Initiative and Color of Change – to the sublimely tongue-in-cheek pop cultural juice (it’s just launched a dating show).

Proving frenetic is still the brand’s heartbeat, last week it ran multimedia basketball special, the Off-Court Festival, 62 live episodes of 15 minute broadcasts – live shopping product drops, panel talks and music performances – across 2 days, non-stop.

How to keep up with the pop cultural pace, and avoid burning out your own fanbase? According to Levant: “What gets harder for everyone now is all the touchpoints – TikTok, podcasts, Instagram, physical retail, Twitter. We take the huge data dump and cut through the noise by pulling the people creating the core, interesting conversations into one space. We draw from what you eat, what you read, what stimulates you visually… and extract the most pertinent aspects.” The biggest change from 2018 to now? “We thought sneakers would be our biggest category, but it’s actually the smallest. Now, it’s art, collectibles, homewares – the ‘homewares hypebeast’ market is the biggest opportunity right now”.

New & Nascent: Audio Hangs, OnlyFans & XR Intimacy

What’s next on the multimedia menu for still-salivating brands and fans? In audio world, witness the frenzy surrounding drop-in audio app Clubhouse (invite only, but seemingly closed to no one). British fashion brand Ted Baker is the first to launch a content series on it, hosted by Abraxas Higgins, founder of the UK’s largest ‘club’ – 9AMINLONDON, a virtual chat room created ostensibly to start the week off right. A series of six hour-long talks will discuss the intersections of British culture and fashion, with a smattering of brand-sponsored guests.

Also look to UK-based OnlyFans, a subscriber-based site infamous for its sexual content where fans fund creators on a monthly or pay-per-view basis (think: Patreon with more kink and a swelling audience – it hit 50 million users in August 2020, up from 12 million eight months prior). Primed for a retail landscape in which marketing/communicating to niche fandoms, and the ability to sell in tiers (i.e. the more $$$, the more intimate the access) will be massive, it’s already whetted the appetite of American fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff. In February 2021 it streamed its A/W 21 show on the platform; $5-25 gave fans access exclusive to content and even the chance to talk to the lady herself.

XR broadcasts – holographic style visuals of broadcasters that deliver their wisdom in real-time – complete the current smorgasbord, taking the kind of interactive live stream broadcasts facilitated by companies likes Bambuser (used by brands like Cos and Monki) into another dimension. British technologist Beem’s app allows anyone using an iPhone camera and a green screen to be broadcast live into another person’s space (they appear on a device’s screen, scaled to fit the users’ surrounds) almost as though teleported, while US Holo2go recently upgraded a product launch by enabling British designer Tom Dixon to chat live to journalists in Sweden from his London HQ in the form of an eerie yet engaging talking head.

As Wilson says, “We are now entering an age of immediacy, intimacy, and more co-creational frugal native ‘brandvertising’ – which celebrates and elevates a wider spectrum of voices.”