Follow the Muse

How do you listen to the customer and make decisions about the customer without making decisions for the customer? How do we talk to customers better? And how, in the midst of storytelling as a brand, do we remember that our customers are human?

Daniel Hoffman, Creative Director at Five Below, shares that sees his customer as a muse and how following the muse helps Five Below create new and better things in different channels. Of course, digital creation and digital creative direction today really depend a lot on creator partnerships. Given his background and time at other prestigious brands, Daniel has incredible insights to share. Listen now!

The Brand Conversation

• {00:10:25} - “When you have a healthy conversation about what's not being done and look elsewhere to what could be done then that's when companies can really innovate and hopefully stick out in the crowd and maybe solve problems for your customers, too.” - Daniel
• {00:15:06} - “When I was a young designer, my directors would say, "Here are your guardrails. Play within that space." And I try to do that for my team. That way I know what they're doing is on brand and also they get to express their voice. They get to try things out and learn and grow and make mistakes and learn from them and do new things.” - Daniel
• {00:21:51} - “The benefit of having a growing team is that there's always a new voice with a new perspective and life experience, and that's one of the benefits of having a diverse team as well. If you don't have a diversity of life experience, then you're going to miss something on the marketing side because your customers are likely a diverse group.” - Daniel
• {00:25:38} - “We started in the early 2000s. At that point, the audience was one thing, but now a lot of those customers, if we did our job right, are still with us, and that audience looks different today.” - Daniel
• {00:26:36} - “The way that brand becomes apparent is through a long-term relationship and established repeated opportunities to develop trust. That just takes time.” - Phillip
• {00:27:25} - “There's a popular term of "brand storytelling," and I really prefer "brand conversation" because that then implies that on the brand side, we're listening to the customer, we're in dialog with them.” - Daniel
• {00:32:45} “Does {AI} impact our customer? And if it's a positive impact, it's worth exploration. As a manager, I have to think about job satisfaction with my team. Is {implenting AI} a satisfying day-to-day for them? So I need to consider that.” - Daniel

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Daniel Hoffman and Five Below
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

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