YouGov just dropped a survey on coolness and I’ve been thinking about one particular stat.
Only 22% of Americans say being cool matters to them. But 42% say it matters to the people they know.
Nobody thinks they care. But everybody thinks everybody else does. That gap is doing a lot of work.
I’ve been guilty of this. I’ll catch myself doing something clearly motivated by wanting to feel a certain way and immediately reframe it as a practical decision. Bought those shoes because they’re versatile. Went to that show because I was genuinely curious. Sure.
The desire doesn’t go away just because you won’t cop to it. It just gets dressed up as something else.
Brands run into this constantly and most of them handle it badly. They either go full aspiration mode (which gets cringey fast), or they ignore it completely and wonder why nothing they make feels like it matters culturally.
The ones that figure it out don’t really sell cool. They just make something worth being part of. Something that feels like it was built for a specific person with a specific point of view. You show up, you feel something, and whatever that feeling is, it’s yours. They didn’t hand it to you.