Disruptive Brand Strategy: Virgil Abloh
Ideas on how to become a purple cow in your industry
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Today’s instalment is focused on thinking outside of the box.
Seth Godin is an author and businessman who wrote the book “Purple Cow”, Godin's purple cow theory states that people are bored of seeing the same brown cows over and over. Seeing a purple cow would be remarkable, therefore, standing out and being remembered.
Not everyone can come up with completely new industries or concepts, sometimes we like something and want to get involved but have to think of a way for it to be uniquely ours. I would suggest that’s the majority of people who want to start their own brand. I’m going to share with you a brand, and specifically, a person who I think has done a great job of this and hope that it can inspire you to think differently about your approach and how you can stand out.
Takeaways
1: Create your own lane by thinking outside of the box. For example, how can you take something that’s popular and make it distinctively your own?
2: Try to anticipate where things are heading, look to other industries that are modernizing, and see what you can take from them to benefit your brand.
3: At the speed at which the world is changing you should be looking at how you can lead the way into the next phase.
Every now and then a disrupter comes along, someone who is driven to create massive change, shake up an industry and leave a legacy. This has been done on many occasions, with Uber, Starbucks, and AirBnB being obvious modern-day examples.
But there’s one brand, and more so, the person behind a brand that I want to discuss as I find it more interesting to talk about. Off-White and its founder Virgil Abloh.
Sadly, Virgil passed away in November of 2021, but his legacy will live on forever.
Some of you may not be aware of Virgil, but those interested in fashion and popular culture will likely be aware of him, if not him, then definitely his brand Off-White.
A Quick Backstory
Virgil Abloh was the Chief Executive Officer of the high-end streetwear brand Off-White which is based in Milan. He was also the Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018 by Time magazine.
Only a decade ago he was interning for Fendi, another luxury fashion brand. Before that Virgil was studying architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology and worked in a T-shirt Print shop where he first connected with a guy called Kanye West.
Virgil took the internship in Italy working with Fendi and found himself in the same class as Kanye where their friendship and creative minds started to blossom together. Kanye would later hire Virgil to be the creative director of his creative agency Donda a year later, which included him being the artistic director for the collaborative album ‘Watch the Throne’ with Jay-Z.
Now that you have a bit of the back story, I want to talk about the reason I think Virgil is an important person to pay attention to for anyone who’s looking to create a strong brand and shake things up.
Making An Impact
In 2012, Abloh launched his first business called Pyrex Vision, this is where his creative mind began to think outside of the box. He would purchase deadstock apparel from Ralph Lauren for $40 apiece, and then screen-print his own designs on them. He would mark them up and sell them for around $550.
This was out-of-the-box thinking. Where most people spend a lot of time and energy trying to develop something completely new, Virgil used existing products and adapted them which saved him a lot of time and money.
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