25 | Leica's camera, Nothing's phone
and the value in building deep, not wide.
I’m working on a book with WeTransfer. It’s written in my voice —this voice, mostly — based on interviews I did with the people that helped build the brand. My co-author is the brand’s co-founder (and friend-of-the-letter) Damian Bradfield.
I’ll talk more about it in the coming months as the release gets closer. We might, actually. Damian has an excellent occasional newsletter. He thinks it’s too infrequent, but I like that it appears at its own leisure on a Sunday, like an unexpected guest.
I digress. The book. Of course.
As I dug into the Dutch file-sharing business cum patron of the arts, one of the core themes to emerge was how WeTransfer built deeper, not wider.
Instead of spreading into other categories quickly, trying to scoop up market share, getting quick VC money to use on large scale marketing campaigns, they kept their focus on the small “c” creatives — photographers, videographers, illustrators — that became (and continue to be) their loyal base. That strategy eventually led to impressive creative collaborations (Marina Abramović, Solange Knowles, FKA twigs) and a love and loyalty among its users that endures to this day.
In our many conversations slash interviews, Damian and I talked about the idea of “lower case b” brands. Rather than trying to dominate our attention spans, these are companies that take a step back, preferring to let their products speak for them or elevate their customers and fans. They’re profitable, but their decision-making focuses on how they can add value to the community they’ve built around their products and services, or the issues important to them.
Here are a few ways we thought about them:
They walk before they run
They bring their audience with them as they grow
And they believe that values are useless unless they lead to actions
So much discussion around the value that brand brings circles around conversion. Brands create demand. Marketing harvests it, and so on. But there’s not much emphasis on a brand creating a sense of belonging.
Yes, they build universes with different entry points, like Ralph Lauren. And we can applaud Dove for consistently hammering home the message of inclusion in their ads; not just in tag lines, but in concept and casting as well.
But how often do brands come along that not only stay unapologetically loyal to the customers that first flocked to them, but actually take actions that celebrate them and involve them in the building of the brand’s story? Below, two of them.
Leica 📷 In 2005, I wrote an article for the New York Times that covered the woes of heritage camera brands in the wake of the digital revolution. That year Leica reported a net loss of $19.5 million. They had cut staff, and banks had cut off some of their credit lines and they were on their second CEO in two years. That was the last time I paid attention to their financials until a report earlier this week that the 99-year-old company had brought in the biggest revenues in their history. Driving the success was the Q3, their innovative digital model that doesn’t require the same expert hands and knowledge of other Leica lines, like their storied M series. They’ve also shown growth in their digital business, where their LUX photography app aims to bring the Leica experience to the mobile phone (less was said of their digital projectors, and their six-year-old watch business). But rather than one standout product, the story of Leica’s endurance appears to be one rooted in the consistency and coherence of their brand story. Start with that gorgeous magnesium alloy camera body, the tactile leather or rubber, and the soft lines of its silhouette. Even if the technology inside was weak — which it never was — the object alone would be something you’d be proud to be seen toting around, or displaying on your shelves during a Zoom call. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Hermès was an investor at one point. Leica has always felt like luxury in the most traditional sense: an object of beauty, crafted with intention and skill. But unlike most luxury brands, Leica has made itself accessible. Along with its premium price tag comes membership to a global group of photography fanatics. Their Leica Akademie offers workshops in cities around the globe, where you can do everything from shoot street photography to learn how to print images for framing. You can even book journeys with Leica ambassadors, including this one to India’s largest camel and cattle event (in case you needed to cross that off the bucket list). Their influencer strategy is not trend-driven, but rooted in the values of craft and authenticity that guide their manufacturing: working photographers and rising directors and cinematographers. They continue to open galleries around the world (27 in all) that showcase the work of those photographers, and their annual Oskar Barnack Award recognizes those covering our world’s most pressing issues. But maybe the best way to introduce their brand to new customers are their stores. There are 120 of them now. They offer not just a chance for fans to interact with the brand, but can serve as a resource as traditional camera shops continue to shutter. It’s in the stores that Leica offers workshops, and tells the story of their transition from pioneering analog camera-maker to top-shelf digital brand. But it’s the community-focused storytelling of the Leica brand that compels those customers to walk into one in the first place.
Nothing 📱 Quite the opposite of Leica in at least one respect, Nothing has been making remarkable phones and earbuds since aaaall the way back in 2021. And they’ve punched well above their weight as a brand since then. The company believes two things: that clever design doesn’t need to have a high price point, and (similar in spirit to collaborator Teenage Engineering) they are in the business of “making tech fun again.” One example of this: their “glyph lights” along the backs of their phones that light up in patterns when a message or call comes in, the kind of eye-catching design work that signals differentiation in mere seconds. They make not just hardware, but have adapted Android mobile software to create a visual language that is warmer, more distinctive, and removed from the robotic design language of virtually every other piece of Google software (let’s not get started on Google Slides). They feel like Apple, even at the price point of a lower-end Android phone (the 2(a) starts at €279). But this past year they did something Apple would never do. They invited their community to help design a limited edition version of their latest model. “We see our community as team members,” Nothing wrote on their web site, “fellow visionaries equally driven to leave behind the herd and chase something meaningful.” They broke up the process over four months in four stages: the first asked their community to adjust colors, materials, and finish; the second, invited them to create new wallpapers to ship with the phone; the third asked them to create new packaging; and the fourth, a marketing campaign to promote it (image above). This wasn’t just an engaging way to drum up interest in a new product, but a signal of the kind of community Nothing has. The brand is beloved among creatives and entrepreneurs — for the way it tilts at the giants (their CEO estimates they’re 50-100x smaller than their competitors), but more so for their products’ intuitive design, playful features, and, well, humanity. A minnow in a marketplace where their competitors share their supply chain and the rapid innovation that defined the smart phone category has leveled off, strong brand differentiation has been their key. Their brand storytelling feels cohesive though balanced differently depending on the channels. Their low-key CEO Carl Pei, a normcore techie with a laconic delivery, is ever-present in the brand’s YouTube videos: providing regular updates on products, reviewing competitors’ phones and reacting to others’ reviews of his. This “open-source” approach to brand narrative is the opposite of luxury, and yet that’s what Nothing’s Instagram feels like: a place to show off the products’ stylized design, and — beginning last year — their apparel as well. No matter the platform, Nothing’s storytelling never feels too far away from its root values: design-driven, playful, accessible.