If you started a cult, I'd be in that. That would seem clear. Welcome to Talking Too Loud with Chris Savage, the show that's serving up the loudest takes on building businesses, top-notch products, and unforgettable brands. I'm here with Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, who's also leading design and emerging products at Adobe, author of Making Ideas Happen, The Messy Middle. He's an obsessive and a creative champion. The list goes on. Scott, thank you so much for being here. We're really excited to have you on the show today.
Thanks, Chris. Of course, as you know, the show is called Talking Too Loud because when I get excited, I cannot control the volume of my voice. We love to start the show by asking our guests what has them talking too loud. So, what has you talking too loud today?
Well, I'm obsessed not just with the technology that's happening and happening fast these days, but the implications of all of it. That's kind of my pastime, is thinking about the implications of what's happening. And I would say that I'm in the world where content creation and marketing are all being reimagined and refactored rapidly. And I guess the thing that I'm obsessed with these days is the implications of that, especially as it relates to what we're going to crave as people. And I'm increasingly thinking we're going to be craving more meaning in the content we engage with and the experiences that we seek and have and enjoy than ever before. When content becomes ubiquitous, meaning does not scale as easily, and I think that's what we're all going to want more of in our lives.
Let's go deeper there. So when you say meaning, what do you mean?
I mean things that trigger us emotionally, things that hit deep, stories that we can relate to. Storytelling is not just something that happens in the world of media and entertainment; it's also what compels us to take action in our business. It's what motivates people to take a risk and join us. It's what motivates investors to invest in us. And typically, the story that we tell through a deck or through content and collateral and everything else, if ChatGPT can spit stuff out, if decks can be made with templates, if all of the AI technology that's emerging helps that stuff happen more readily, then it just means that the bar goes up in the meaning behind the story that we tell and the way that it just kind of penetrates our brains and sits with us and resonates and triggers us. And I think that storytelling is a very human capability that will become more important in the years to come, in my opinion.
And do you think that also changes what's been important to what's going to be important? If everyone, as you're saying, obviously ChatGPT can write a story, but you can go use Firefly and you can generate B-roll, you can create a new world so much more easily. Are there things that people should be looking for, or stories they should be telling that they're not telling, emotions they should tap into? Or do you think we're going to see meaning show up in more places, maybe places where it didn't exist before?
Well, if we're coming out of this world of the creator economy, and the creator economy is people who have the skills to create content building a career off the backs of those skills, whether it be making podcasts or creating content and collateral for TikTok or Instagram, etc. But now, as you know, you can use Google's NotebookLM product and generate content and just have it automatically make a podcast. You can create variations of content as much as your heart's desire and put it up on social platforms. If you wanted me to create 1,000 original blog posts within the next hour for some piece of content I'm trying to sell, I could do that. And so the creator economy is now, in some ways, the tools are commoditizing it, and maybe that will become the meaning economy. Now, what's the meaning economy? The meaning economy is people creating experiences that are not as scalable but really over-index on meaning and impact, and stories that are just so transformative and incredible, or physical experiences, whether it be live events. Maybe we'll have fewer recorded podcasts and more live events with Q&A and moments where people can connect with each other and have that sort of pheromone-driven live experience that people are impacted by. So the meaning economy is interesting to me. I think that the tools that we're all getting excited about will contribute to it, but the human skill set suddenly becomes more important and less scalable in that world.
Yeah, I've been thinking about that too, just in terms of feeling like if you're seeing something, knowing that it came from somebody who you have a connection to in real life, or some way you can prove that the person's real. So live events, seeing people in person at conferences, and also the same thing in terms of the fact that things that don't scale are going to be where the value is. And so it's finding the things that don't scale, which is kind of the opposite of where we've been.
No, I think that's right. And by the way, this is not a new idea. Throughout human history, anytime something has become commoditized, whether it be shoes or cars or anything else, what happens is that we end up craving brands of those things, and we pay more for versions of those things that have more, quote unquote, meaning. Nike has meaning to it. It's meaning infused by stories that the brand Nike has selected carefully to get behind, whether it be the rise of Michael Jordan or the solidarity that some athletes have and certain causes that Nike chooses to stand behind. In some ways, that's an example of meaning being injected into something that was commoditized and then drives a sense of scarcity and demand for it. So we'll spend 90 times the raw cost of the shoe because of the meaning infused in it. And so maybe we'll do the same thing for content and stories. Maybe that will also be what distinguishes us in the workplace. If I'm a knowledge worker in some company and a lot of the work that I once did can now be done by AI, then what drives the scarcity and value of me is more so the storytelling, the meaning, that extra value that I inject into the company or into me as the brand and that instance within a business as an employee.
That's very interesting. And I think that the Nike example resonates instantly. It's like we all know there's a feeling you have when you see a Nike ad or a Nike shoe or a Nike product, just do it. But it's also interesting because that's a brand that they've been doing that for a long time. They've built up a lot of brand equity. Do you think there's an advantage in this new world for companies that have built up brands over a longer time, or do you think that it can be disrupted by smaller groups, organizations, individuals who haven't done it before?
You know, it's really around authenticity and meaning. So you see new brands emerge all the time, but I think that synthetic brands, like someone who just tries to look like something else, people see through that pretty quickly. I go back to art. When you look at a piece of artwork by someone like Mark Rothko, one might say, 'Oh, it's just huge splotches on a canvas.' But it's the story behind his work and him, and the originality of the fact that he kind of did this first that drives the scarcity and value. It's the meaning. Now, of course, there are many other, quote unquote, artists that just did what Mark Rothko did, but no one wants those. Why? It's not a cosmetic thing. They may be similar, but it's the meaning that was infused into it that people crave. So I think that when you look at a lot of great brands that have evolved over the years, I mean, Hershey's was a saddle company. They had a story that they capitalized on. And any sort of brand, I think, typically has that. And so if you're a modern-day business builder, I think you should think about the source of the meaning that you are going to use to compete in this new world where anything can be created, especially digital. There's just anything can be created for nothing. Even software, that's why I'm interested in also the notion of luxury software.
I was just going to ask you about that because I feel like it's very related. We talk a lot about software on the show. I spend a lot of time, of course, obviously with Wistia as a SaaS company, so I spend a lot of time thinking about it. But let's go a little bit deeper there because that is very... the way you're describing it is kind of like, hey, in art, story has always mattered, and we know that. We know there are certain artists that did something first and it's exactly in the right moment in time that it changed our culture. And now what we're going to see is a pretty broad change, which makes sense because the AI is changing so much to a place where we're going to see more of that similar dynamic in more places. And so in more places, there's going to be artists like Rothko who are incredibly well-known, unbelievable storytellers, and their work continues to hold meaning, and that they were just an echelon different than other folks. Is that what you think is going to show up in software and also in other fields that are really directly touched by AI?
Yeah, I do. I do think in some ways that as humans, the experiences and the artifacts that we buy, digital and physical, that we are going to, as a result of being inundated by stuff as every brand floods the zone with content, that our reaction as humans will be to crave the more scarce and meaningful version of everything. And I do think that's going to drive consumer behavior in the things that we buy. Now, I definitely think that's going to be true consumer-wise. I also think that there's going to be some degree of that in an organization, quote unquote, enterprise. And the reason is because we're all trying to flex some aspect of ourselves every day, whether we would like to admit it or not. There's a cultural flex of something, there's a sophistication flex, there's a 'I value my time highly' flex. And we do it with what we wear, we do it with how we capitalize or don't capitalize. There's probably subconscious things that we always are doing to demonstrate and relay who we are, again, in this world where we're going to be competing against AI in some ways. And so I do think about that, where this notion of luxury software comes in, which I've been writing about in Implications, this newsletter. The idea is that I think that we're going to want to have software that also just has a bit more craft and meaning and scarcity and story behind it, much like we do our shoes. And it sounds crazy at first, but I look at some of the software that I use and why I use it. Superhuman just announced Gmail and Microsoft. It's a tuned experience for someone who really values their time. And there's a pride I have in having all the keystrokes down and being able to use this. It's great software, but there's an ethos behind it, the way that the team presents themselves publicly, the story they tell of why they do what they do and why they don't do what they don't do. There's a whole sense of meaning that is infused to the way that this software was built, and it does impact the software in practical ways, but it also hits the user in the sense of the meaning of the software. It feels different.
It's also interesting because I think we've had a trend of basically in the enterprise or just B2B in general, people are getting much farther down the funnel before they talk to you. They're doing much more research, a much better understanding. They have to look at reviews, they want to talk to someone who's used the product before before they actually sign up and purchase or sign up and say, 'Hey, I want to talk to you.' And so brand just matters. It's already mattering more, and kind of what you're saying is there's going to be a supercharging effect, whereas if you do not have a brand that resonates with somebody because it has actual meaning, it actually stands for something, it's going to be very hard to stand out. And conversely, just like Superhuman, everyone is not going to pay for their email when you can get it for free. But the people who are... there's enough people out there in this world, the internet, that you can actually build an amazing business if you can have that great brand and focus on that specific slice of what people want.
Yeah, and which is where the luxury notion comes from, right? Because not many people want to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a luxury handbag, but there are enough people who want to pay that that there are luxury handbags that are, in some ways, cultural flexes for the people who wear them. And it is what it is. But that wouldn't exist if it weren't for the fact that anyone could have a handbag. I mean, handbags are commoditized. It has to be commoditized to have luxury.
That's right. So if you're a new company trying to develop your brand, develop a product, how do you invite those folks who are leading that company to stay close to story, to develop story? What do they do? What are the questions they should be asking themselves to find that meaning, to find that story?
Well, the cool thing is that if you're the one who's building a brand, story is just who you are. It's not like you have to look for it. You just have to express it and be authentic. And it sounds so cliché, but everyone does have a story. And whatever... I'm more of an introvert, but when I'm forced to go out to dinner with people that I don't know, I try to remind myself that if I do the work, everyone has an interesting story to learn and to learn from and to appreciate. Even the most dull person at first that you come across and judge and say, 'Oh my gosh, this is going to be the worst dinner conversation ever,' if you really do go deep and ignite your curiosity, you'll find it. So where it's hard to find story is when you're being engaged to just synthetically make something. So you see a lot of these examples of marketplaces that are basically making fake brands, house brands, to compete with the real brands that they also host. And you see this in all forms of industries for consumers. And these fake brands, it's funny, I actually think you can really... there's a void when you look at them. At first glance, you're like, 'Oh, cool typography, interesting color mix,' but it looks familiar and I've never heard of this before. And you just do a very little amount of digging and you realize that this is just a veneer of a hack. And I think that our sensitivity as consumers is going to go up a lot, because that's going to start happening more so.
Oh, I hope so. And that's part of what I'm trying to say about the meaning economy, right? Is that maybe we got fooled before because we didn't know better. We assumed that anything we saw in the grocery store came from a family business that had a long story. Now it's like, wait, everything... we're being fooled by these AI-generated blog posts, we're being fooled by these house brands that are being just generated by some agency that are really just blatantly copying some other one person with a story. And I think that our sensitivity is going to go up and that's going to change the game.
Oh, I'm crossing all my fingers and toes. Yeah, that feels very optimistic to me. But it's already starting to happen because people talk about being fooled by a fake brand. So if people weren't, then what I would be saying would be like optimistically, overly optimistic utopia. But I actually think that we care about this stuff. We want to engage ourselves in stories with meaning.
Well, you're also saying, I think, there's going to be luxury brands, there's also going to be commodity brands. And there are a lot of companies right now who don't know where they are. I think so. There is part of this, it's optimistic from a creative sense for sure and brand building sense. If you're one of those companies in the middle, if you can't figure out how to become luxury, you're going to have to be commodity. And so you're going to be commoditized. And so I think there is a lot in this that's like good and bad.
Yeah, it is an interesting... you're making an interesting point which I hadn't thought about it this way, which is basically like when you have commoditization, what that forces is making choices harder in a lot of cases. Where if there's one or two options in a market, easy to understand, but if you have a hundred, it instantly now is very hard. So if you actually care about quality at all, you're now in the mode where, okay, now I must compare these, I must look at reviews, I must look at... like all the big marketplaces you're talking about have reviews and comments and all this stuff for this reason. And so it's just interesting to think because I think it's like, I wonder if that's like... I don't know, I hadn't thought about that in this way with AI. And I think it is actually, it's very interesting because it just seems so basic and like we've seen this before. And it's like, okay, we got it, things are going to become commoditized and there's going to be luxury versions of things. And if you have the capacity to build that, fantastic. I think there's a lot of people going to hear this and think, 'Oh, this is my dream come true. This is what I've always wanted to do.'
It's funny, I was walking... I'm based in New York and I was walking this weekend around and Ralph Lauren, the brand, opened up Ralph's Coffee. It's a coffee shop in New York and there was a line literally around the block to get in to buy a cup of coffee. Now talk about commodities. I mean, coffee is the ultimate commodity now, right? And yet people are lining up to buy a minimum $5 cup of black coffee as a starting point and goes up from there, I'm sure. Why? Well, if you think about the brand of Ralph Lauren, it's just an incredibly crafted, curated story of an American family on the ranch and every image that comes to your mind with Ralph Lauren is a great example of a brand that is truly indoctrinated with meaning. And it's an example of a brand that has story and meaning having permission to basically do anything in a commoditized space. So it's just a really... I think we're going to see a lot more of that. I'm actually very interested in brands that have meaning leveraging their authenticity to have permission to do new things in different spaces. Like if, let's just be crazy for a minute, if Ralph Lauren came out tomorrow with a to-do software application, that's such a stretch, right? But yet people would probably try it because they're like, you know what would you expect? You'd expect fine stitching and really handcrafted details and I don't know what you would expect, but it's...
Wasn't this... I feel like this was attempted by some companies in like 2000. I feel like in the dot-com boom there was companies trying to do this, really.
I think so. And I mean, I definitely remember seeing software from companies that shouldn't... it felt like they shouldn't be making software. And but I had, as you were talking, I was having that exact thought, was like, what does this mean? What would this mean for what permission a brand has? And that's kind of what you're saying, is that if anyone can write software and also if anyone can make content, which are two things, the most scalable things out there basically, other than like commerce, money, software, and content, if anyone can do those things, then a lot more people are going to. And it's going to be back to like, what does your brand have permission to do? And that's the overall point I think I'm making, is that content wasn't always available to everyone. In fact, five years ago it was extremely hard to make a top-tier podcast, to make content that could be distributed on social that looked professional. I mean, all these things you needed a lot of money and team support and everything else. And that's changed. And so there are implications. And that's kind of where we started. That's why the implications are so interesting to me. It's like, let's not talk about the fact this technology exists, let's talk about what are the first, second, and third effect implications of this.
I was just wondering, you guys were talking about Ralph Lauren opening that coffee shop before and how more brands are going to kind of use their meaning to enter the commoditized space. Is that ultimately a good thing? Like, are we... because you have more permission to play, I'm for it because you can do outstanding things, or is it a dangerous thing? Like, what's the line there?
I think to answer that question, it kind of goes back to like what makes us happy. So, you know, I enjoy... I aspire to have a life that's as full of meaning as possible. And if I can have every artifact on my desk mean something to me and have a story behind it, I'd far prefer that than the most run-of-the-mill, just lowest cost possible everything that could save me money but wouldn't surround me with things, artifacts that I think have something behind them. So maybe that's just a personal preference, but I think a lot of people are similar. They care about their space, the objects that they use. I think it also all psychologically impacts us, right? What we see when we open our eyes in the morning and the things we feel, the sensations we get when we engage in our daily life, like, matter.
You as a SaaS entrepreneur, I always felt like the space that our team worked in really impacted the products that we made. Like the physical space.
