“We create future-proof brands.”
Matt Kandela is the Co-Founder & CEO of Dear Future. Matt talks with Anthony about keys to success, innovation, and shaping company culture.
Passionate Purpose
Matt: “We believe that the role of business is changing. We’ve seen it even over the last 12 months where the very definition of business has evolved. You recognize that it’s more important to deliver stakeholder value, have a vision, and a mission for the business that ultimately leaves the lives of people in a better place. So we think that passionate purpose is really important to construct for a new business, especially with younger consumers.”
Culture Shaping
Matt: “Culture is such an important part of what drives commerce. We believe that you always have to be thinking about what’s happening in culture as you shape your brand, there needs to be a cultural connection. It’s about looking at what’s happening in social media and talking to people in real life. Then there comes a point where you need to take a leap of faith and use your experience to predict where the world is going.”
Category Innovation
Matt: “Category innovation is something that didn’t exist before, but laddering up to a passionate purpose. So what we love is when you start being able to demonstrate that you have all of these different components, that’s when you can be truly future-proof.”
Being People-Powered
Matt: “This is all about creating brand advocates. Creating loyalty beyond reason, creating evangelists. We’ve seen with the rise of social media over the last 15 years, just how important it is to engage people. Community building, which we’ve seen a lot of, especially with direct to consumer brands and actively fostering that sense of being part of something bigger.”
Distinctiveness
Matt: “One of the things that so many people have come to us in the past and said ‘we really want to be differentiated.’ Somewhere along the road, in the past five, six, seven years, there’s become this identikit formula for branding. You’ve seen it on Subway ads, especially with direct-to-consumer brands where everything looks the same. It feels the same. There’s nothing distinctive about it. One of the things that we’re pushing now is to say, break out of that sea of sameness, get away from that blandness and start creating brands that are truly reflective of your core brand values.”
