When brands cosplay: the authenticity trap
Borrowing a subculture’s look without respecting it reads as a costume. Calvin Ross Carl on why audiences spot manufactured love right away.
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl names the big pitfall of subculture branding: if you don’t respect the subculture, it looks like you’re cosplaying. That’s when generalizations start to read as cynical and tone-deaf, and people can tell immediately when love for a space is manufactured. Whatever brand you work on or run, you have to truly believe in and respect the culture you exist within.
Highlights
- Without respect, subculture branding looks like cosplay.
- Generalizations start to read as cynical and tone-deaf.
- Audiences can tell manufactured love right away.
Key insights
Respect is the price of entry
A brand can’t borrow a subculture’s credibility without genuinely caring about it. The audience is the expert, and they notice.
Belief has to be real
The people building the brand have to believe in the culture they’re focused on. Performance without belief reads as a costume.
Detailed analysis
This is the flip side of building a subculture. The same insider knowledge that makes a community loyal makes it quick to spot outsiders, so a brand that only borrows the aesthetics loses the trust it was trying to earn.
Conclusion
If you want to belong to a subculture, respect it for real. Anything less looks like cosplay.
So the big pitfall here is, if you don’t respect the subculture, it looks like you’re cosplaying. And that’s when generalizations start to appear cynical, tone-deaf, all of those things. And people can read that immediately. They immediately know when your love for a space is not authentic and it is just manufactured.
So I think that is the one thing: whatever brand you’re working with on this stuff, and whatever brand you run, you have to actually truly believe and respect the thing that you are focusing on, the culture that you are existing within.