Why asking what if is the ultimate brand strategy tool
Every great sci-fi story grows from a single question, and so do many of the most distinctive brands. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl walks through the what-if premises behind The Left Hand of Darkness, Oryx and Crake, Dune, Severance, and Gattaca, then shows how brands like Nike, Liquid Death, Warby Parker, and Lego built themselves on similar questions. He also shares his obsession with Hyperblast, a beverage brand built around the idea that jet skis are the coolest thing on Earth, and explains why what-if questions are so good at undercutting a category’s assumptions. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on sci-fi, What Sci-Fi Can Teach Us About Branding.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl argues that imagining new futures from one small change a brand adds to the world produces incredible ideas. Sci-fi does this constantly: The Left Hand of Darkness asks what if gender wasn’t fixed, Dune is essentially a fight over oil in space, Severance asks what if work and life could truly be separated, and Gattaca asks what if DNA could predict crime.
Brands do the same. Nike believes every person is an athlete. Liquid Death asked what if water looked like a metal band. Warby Parker asked what if you could try glasses on online, and Lego asked what if kids built the toy. Calvin’s current obsession, Hyperblast, asks what if jet skis were the coolest thing on Earth and builds an entire world around it.
The common thread, and what Calvin calls perhaps the biggest insight of the episode, is that what-if questions undercut everything we think we understand about a category and turn it upside down.
Highlights
Great sci-fi extrapolates a whole world from one question.
Nike’s belief that everyone is an athlete is a powerful brand premise.
Liquid Death made water look like a heavy metal band.
Hyperblast built its brand on the coolness of jet skis.
What-if questions upend category conventions.
Key insights
One premise can generate a world
In Dune, everything blows up from a single question. Brands can use the same technique to generate ideas from their own key difference.
Absurd questions can define a category
Lego’s pitch, that kids build the toys themselves, sounds insane on paper, which is exactly why it set the brand apart.
Commit to the premise everywhere
Hyperblast doubles down on its jet ski world at every touchpoint, including event activations with costumed jet ski racers.
Question what your category treats as standard
Water was supposed to look clean and pure until Liquid Death asked why it couldn’t look gnarly.
Detailed analysis
The clip turns a storytelling device into a strategy tool. By lining up sci-fi premises next to brand premises, Calvin shows they work the same way: a simple question with large consequences that shapes everything built on top of it.
The most useful part is the diagnosis. A good what-if question targets a convention the category takes for granted. That’s what makes the resulting brand feel different rather than merely clever.
Conclusion
If you want to stand apart, ask what if about the thing everyone in your category assumes. Calvin’s examples show how far a single question can take a brand.
Transcript
I think if you start imagining new futures based on this one small change that your brand is adding to the world, I think you get some incredible ideas. And I mean, all these things ask what if. I talked about The Left Hand of Darkness. It asks what if gender wasn’t fixed. Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. She also wrote a book series called Oryx and Crake that just asked, what if biotech companies were able to start engineering life? And it explodes. They take over governments, all kinds of things.
Dune. Sarah mentioned Dune in here. I mean, Dune is about a lot of things, but Dune is just like, what if we fought about oil in space? That is really all Dune is about. The whole setup is that spice is oil that’s also a psychedelic. That’s what Dune is. And so everything blows up from that one question. Severance, the TV show, asks, what if we could truly separate work from life? Severance is a great sci-fi setup. Just so sharp and simple. What else? Gattaca. I know Sarah here’s a big Gattaca fan. Gattaca just asks, what if DNA could predict crime? And you start extrapolating all of that out there, and it’s great.
But then how do brands take that? I mean, the one that we all really know, that I think they’ve maybe stepped away from a little bit lately but is still great, is Nike. Nike just asked, what if every person is an athlete? I think just believing that everyone is a champ and an athlete who can overcome anything is such a powerful idea for a brand. So I think it’s great. Liquid Death, we’ve talked about a lot on here. They ask, what if water looked like a metal band? Which I just love so much.
Oh, I realize I’ve just been on The Handmaid’s Tale this whole time. I’m too excited talking about all these things. Actually, another one that I’ve been obsessed with—this is my obsession. I know I’ve brought it up here. Let me throw up Hyperblast, the new caffeine-infused beverage. Let me see if I can find this somewhere. Here we go. This is the stuff.
So, I have become obsessed with this brand Hyperblast here, which is a new beverage created by the agency Tavern that’s basically like Four Loko. And their challenge is just, what if jet skis were the coolest thing on Earth? Which, not saying that they’re not. That’s literally what they’ve talked about in all of their branding for it: what if there was nothing cooler on Earth than a jet ski, and jet skis kind of ruled the world? And they just doubled down on it at their event activations. They’ve got guys in full racing gear, like their jet ski racers, and they created this whole other world of brands around it. Incredible.
So, there are a lot of other brands that do this. We could list them off forever. Oh, yeah. Jared said this is some vintage VHS packaging. Yeah, they really nailed that with the Hyperblast look. Somehow they made the 80s and early 90s look way better than it ever was. So, so pretty.
But other brands do some kind of absurd things that I love. Warby Parker asked, what if you could try glasses on online? That was the thing that made them different than everyone. It seems absurd. Lego even was like, what if you build the toy? That’s actually an insane idea when you think about it. The pitch for that is like, oh, it’s the kids’ job to build the toys. We just give them the pieces.
Oh, yeah. Fuel in the tank. Ryan: super fun branding. Yeah, the Hyperblast stuff. Dang, it’s so great. But anyway, I think the thing that works really great about all those different elements is that they ask these what-if questions that start undermining the things you think are standard within their category. Water always has to look clean and pure, and Liquid Death was like, no, it doesn’t. It can look like a heavy metal band, and it can be gnarly. All those what-if questions start leading you to undercut everything we think we understand about a category and actually upturn it. And so that’s honestly probably the biggest insight, if you want to call it that, from this whole thing. Maybe we’ll talk about that at the end.