A Quote by Bozoma Saint John

I do think brands are like people. — © Bozoma Saint John
I do think brands are like people.
I know some brands second-guess working with me because I'm a boy that likes makeup. I think brands shouldn't just appreciate boys that wear makeup, but they should embrace it. And I feel like some brands forget they need personality. I have plenty of it.
Brands are in your face 24/7; I'm sure you've consumed a couple brands today. So it's fun working with them. People recognize brands, and people are starting to recognize my brand.
Building a more compassionate society is going to be a bilateral exercise between individuals and the brands that represent their aspirations, their values and their truths. People make brands. If people are compassionate, brands will be compassionate in return.
If you look at the brands that I like, there are brands I like because of the clothes; then, there are brands I like because of their attitude and mentality.
There was a shop in Birmingham called Autographs, where I'm from in Birmingham. My uncles and dad used to shop there. They played professionally, too. When I started, I went to Autograph, and they had brands like Rick Owens. There are loads of brands, like my go-to brands that I will go to if I want to buy jeans, like DSquared or Balmain.
I think that the strategy around FYI is really a corporate strategy, and that's that every one of our brands that we invest in have to matter and that we need to commit to building brands and investing in those brands, or we need to get out of that business.
I don't think so, in that Virgin is already a global brand. Brands like Amazon have had to spend hundreds of millions of pounds you know, building their brands, whereas Virgin is already well-known around the world.
I'm a massive believer in brands. Silicon Valley has tried to reprogram everybody to think brands aren't valuable. Or theirs are, but yours aren't.
I don't follow brands religiously, but there are certain brands I feel comfortable wearing, like H&M and Zara.
I do endorse brands: brands that I believe in individually, brands that I use, brands that I am proud to sell. But I wouldn't do that for my films because that's something I do separately. What I do with my films is something I am extremely passionate about.
I would like to work with brands I personally love, like Haider Ackermann, Chanel, or Off-White, to even newer brands like Rhude and A-Cold-Wall. It's easier and more organic when you know and love the brand already.
When I was growing up, the brands that were most powerful were people brands, like Michael Jackson or Madonna. They stood for something that, perhaps, wasn't wholly who they were, which then became an image that they sold. That's still a brand to me.
Styling is such a small part of what I do. I have, like, 10 jobs. People don't know that I work so much on the back end of things. They think I'm just dressing people. My business is with brands.
I see "demand creation" as a 20th-century construct that's bound up with advertising. It's an outmoded view of marketing that says, "First, we build a product or service, then we advertise it into people's lives." Embedded this view is the belief that companies control brands. This is a myth. My message all along has been that brands are actually created by customers, not companies. Companies only provide the raw materials - the products, messaging, behaviors - that people use these to create brands.
I see a lot of people dressing very similarly, and I see brands being cool because of their name and because of who wears the brands, but that's always been the case. That's kind of the history of fashion. You know, celebrities wear their clothes and people think these celebrities are cool, and then the clothes become valuable. It gives clothes a commodity factor once a certain individual starts wearing that brand. But do I think there's something wrong? I think what's wrong with the fashion world, particularly men's fashion, is the lack of creativity behind it.
I think it's come to a point in society where brands are changing and they like people and public figures and athletes who have something to say and take a stance on issues.
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