First Drop: The Brand Builder’s Shortcut?

It’s likely that by the time this hits your desk/inbox/birdcage floor I’ll have interviewed a woman named Emma Chamberlain about her Chamberlain Coffee brand during our NOSH Live show, along with Chris Gallant, her company’s CEO.

The interview will have been an attempt to understand this so-called “Creator Economy” – a fancy name for brands started by the social media stars your kids are watching on Youtube/Instagram/TikTok/Twitter (note I didn’t say LinkedIn, where I tend to hang out). In researching the interview, I’ve come to understand that a lot of entrepreneurs are fearful of the implications of the Creator Economy, as they are worried that they’ll get squeezed out by someone with strong bandwidth and a ready-made audience. Should they?

The always coffee-slurping Chamberlain has an audience and more: her team claims she has 35 million followers; she launched her company in 2019 and it pulled in more than $7 million in investment this year, not bad for a brand that so far consists of steeped coffee bags, beans, some flavor collaborations and a lot of fun accessories.

Chamberlain’s popularity comes through her sense of being “real.” Her early videos combined the angsty confessional style of a 17-year-old raised on reality shows with the silliness of a smart kid who has had too much caffeine. She doesn’t really rely on stunts, drugs, the latest dances or pure bodily objectification. She’s also a talented editor who is able to get a message and mood across through filters, the addition of quick-cut meta-commentary on her own monologues, and a willingness to never take Emma Chamberlain the character too seriously. It worked: she’s now got a podcast, has been on Jimmy Kimmel and to the Met Ball: fashion houses like Louis Vuitton have started dressing her up and sponsoring her, she’s making lots of money and has swanned from talkative teen into a model and fashion influencer.

So if she’s able to take these followers and turn them into coffee drinkers, that has to mean something, right? It’s an evolutionary moment – we’ve gone from hiring a celebrity to endorse a brand (think Miller Lite commercials), to having a celebrity invest time or money in a brand and support it (think Vitaminwater), to having a brand bring in a celebrity “co-creator” (think Zoa or Foodstirs). Now, the Creator gets top billing; the product is an extension of their popularity and audience devotion. The rest of the business is assembled behind them, and if it gets traction, it scales.

Here’s the great part about something like Chamberlain Coffee: it’s absolutely an inch wide and a mile deep. Her followers are late teens and early 20s: Gen Z for sure. But how long will they stay with her?

It’s in researching this point that I became a cool uncle, because I got to DM my nieces and tell them about my interview with Chamberlain, which they thought was much more interesting than parts of my job that involve getting yelled at by, say, the founder of BANG.

My 25-year-old niece Margot – a graduate student and former investment banker – was aware of Chamberlain, but on the outside of her sphere of influence (she was awed, nevertheless – I’m just that impressive). Younger, more fashion-focused friends of hers had much more developed opinions about Chamberlain, her style choices, and her coffee brand. They were all positive! Their texts about her had lots of “!!!!”

My younger niece Rebecca, a soccer-playing college junior, reached out to her cohort for an incredible trove of Emma treasures. At 21, both her college and high school friends had actual relationships Emma. They loved her podcast because she’s “super relatable but also is mature beyond her years and gives very good advice.” They love her style and think “she isn’t controversial and definitely sets a lot of fashion trends and such,” and that “she has a slay personality and is super funny.”

Asked about her coffee, there was agreement that it fit her brand. One fan admired the brand’s “great aesthetic – I have two totes and a Mason jar.”

Then I reached out to my sister, Andrea, who is the mother of these two amazing nieces. What follows is a direct quote from our text exchange:

Me: Your daughters have been very helpful in my research into an upcoming interview with Emma Chamberlain. So thank you for having them.

My Sister: Who is she?

Me: Exactly.

So there you go. What will it take to extend these brands to niches beyond their founders’ followers? What will it take for the founders themselves to keep their followers interested for life? And, of course, are the products any good?

In Chamberlain’s case, they seem to fit the moment for sure. They are customizable, she has great recipes, it looks cool. It’s a extension of her brand, it makes sense, it resonates with her image and her audience. But I worry. Not so much about the coffee, but about us.

I’m worried that we might be living in a society in which being famous means that you’re qualified to do all kinds of things that you probably shouldn’t, like be President. Still, as we saw in that last example, if people don’t like the brand, they’ll reject it once they get the chance. Meanwhile, enjoy your coffee.