22:15orenmeetsworld · Tutorial
How to Creative Direct a Personal Brand
A working creative director walks through the three eras of the job and hands over the exact toolkit for applying it to a person instead of a brand.
July 12thThe argument in one line.
Modern brands win by turning customers into characters inside a story world rather than selling them a product, and the brands that commit to that fiction at full intensity, from email copy to packaging to founder mythology, are the ones that actually stick.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A founder or brand marketer building a consumer product who wants the story and packaging to do more work than the spec sheet.
- A creative director or agency strategist looking for named frameworks (Hotel Test, Commit to the Bit) to bring into client brand work.
- Someone launching a DTC brand in a commodity category (skincare, food, apparel) who needs a wedge against an entrenched category leader.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for performance-marketing or paid-acquisition tactics; this is brand strategy and story craft, not media buying.
- You want a step-by-step execution checklist; the video is example-driven and conceptual, not a template.
The full version, fast.
Marketing has shifted from a simple buyer-seller transaction to selling identity: world-building brands treat customers as characters inside their story, complete with props, institutions, and lore borrowed from cinema. Oren and Scott Norton (Sir Kensington's founder) trace the mechanism through Vacation sunscreen's licensed 1980s family photos and fictional 'junior executive' email signup, Wes Anderson's invented institutions in Grand Budapest Hotel, and Sir Kensington's own fabricated 19th-century founder biography built against Heinz. They argue the brands that survive stay in the middle of the artist-hack spectrum, called craft, and offer two practical exercises: the Hotel Test (describe your brand as a hotel's every sensory detail) and the Brand Trip Test (who'd attend, what would they post) to force specificity before building a campaign.
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00:00 – 00:47
01 · Why World Building Matters
Cold open thesis: marketing shifted from a buyer-seller transaction to selling identity, where customers become characters in a brand's story.
00:47 – 05:00
02 · How Vacation Built a Brand World
Vacation's sunscreen world traced through the category's shift from fun-in-the-sun to clinical to beauty, the licensed Flickr family photos, the fake 'junior executive' email signup, and why committing to the bit only works at full intensity.
05:00 – 08:55
03 · Turning Customers Into Characters
Customers cast as 'citizens' of a brand's world start writing themselves into the fiction (in-character LinkedIn comments); Vacation's stiff corporate-in-the-80s voice as a deliberate contrast.
08:55 – 12:55
04 · Wes Anderson's World-Building Playbook
Grand Budapest Hotel's invented institutions (a fictional country, empire, bakery, secret police) as the model for going beyond setting into institutions and tight, detail-rich props.
12:55 – 14:24
05 · Storytelling and the Hero's Journey
Why humans process meaning through story, not data, and how brands sell a transformed version of the customer as the hero.
14:24 – 17:07
06 · Building Brand Landing Pages With Framer
Sponsored segment: Oren demos Framer Agents building a full landing page from a screenshot and photo, and walks through recommended landing-page and confirmation-page structure.
17:07 – 22:54
07 · Sir Kensington's: Building the World Before the Product
Scott's own founder story: building Sir Kensington's fictional 19th-century biography and English heritage against Heinz before making a single jar of ketchup, and living the fiction internally (mustaches, steel mission tablets).
22:54 – 26:31
08 · Artist vs. Hack and Standing Out on the Shelf
The artist-craft-hack spectrum, and why a product has to look different enough on a boring shelf to earn a second look ('to be seen is to be sold').
26:31 – 31:09
09 · Ralph Lauren's World of Worlds
How Ralph Lauren sustains multiple worlds, Ivy League prep and the American West, unified by a single fantasy of status and freedom, and why clothing works especially well as costume.
31:09 – 37:41
10 · Anduril, Japan, and District Vision: Borrowed Worlds
Anduril's video-game-inspired defense-tech aesthetic, the 'American imagination of Japan' in brands like Aesop and Snowpeak, and District Vision's mission built from genuine founder practice.
37:41 – 40:37
11 · The Hotel Test and the Brand Trip Test
Two closing exercises: imagining a brand as a hotel down to the sensory details, and extending that rigor to influencer trip planning.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Marketing shifted from a seller-buyer transaction over a single sale to identity-based world building, where the customer becomes a character inside the brand's story.
- Vacation rebuilt sunscreen's meaning by returning to a pre-clinical, pre-beauty era of 'fun in the sun,' licensing a stranger's real 1980s family vacation photos from Flickr instead of staging new shoots.
- A brand's email opt-in can double as lore: Vacation's signup made new subscribers 'junior executives' of a fictional corporation, complete with a randomly assigned title like 'head of nautical matters.'
- Committing to a bit only works at full intensity; half-measures like a normal font on the packing slip break the illusion a 'method actor' brand is trying to sustain.
- Wes Anderson's world building works by inventing institutions, a fictional country, a fictional bakery, a renamed secret police, that feel just real enough to believe, not just a distinct visual style.
- Zooming in on props like a matchbook or a menu is what makes a fictional world feel inhabited; brands should treat merch and packaging as artifacts of that same world, not afterthoughts.
- Humans organize meaning through stories, not facts, so brands that borrow the hero's journey structure sell customers a transformed version of themselves, not just a product.
- Sir Kensington's built an entire fictional 19th-century biography for its founder character before making a single jar of ketchup, positioning glass and scooped English 'heritage' against Heinz's plastic, squeeze-bottle Americana.
- The craft spectrum runs from artist (self-expression, no concern for sales) to hack (pure function, no story); the sustainable position is craft, which keeps the story legible while still solving the customer's job.
- 'To be seen is to be sold': on a crowded shelf, a product needs to look foreign enough to its category that a shopper does a double take before considering it.
- Ralph Lauren proves one brand can hold multiple distinct 'worlds' (Ivy League prep, American West) as long as a single emotional through-line, the fantasy of American status and freedom, ties them together.
- Defense-tech brand Anduril designs like a video game company (matte black, sans-serif fonts, a titanium Game Boy-style accessory) because its real audience, engineers and Pentagon staff who grew up gaming, responds to that aesthetic.
- The Hotel Test forces specificity: if you can't describe your brand's lobby smell, front-desk greeting, and parting gift, the brand's world isn't developed enough to build a campaign around.
- The Brand Trip Test extends the Hotel Test to influencer marketing: before booking a trip, define who would attend, what they'd post, and whether anyone would actually care.
The brand is a world, not a product.
WORLD-BUILDING METHOD
Every world-building brand in this video treats customers as characters, invents institutions and lore before scaling the product, and stress-tests the fiction with concrete exercises like the Hotel Test.
01Why World Building Matters
- Marketing shifted from a seller-buyer transaction over a single sale to identity-based world building, where the customer becomes a character inside the brand's story.
- If a brand can't say what its customers are 'acting as' inside its world, it's still selling a product, not building a world.
02How Vacation Built a Brand World
- Vacation rebuilt the psychology of an entire category by tracing how sunscreen moved from beach fun to clinical health-and-safety to slick beauty product, then deliberately reversed the last shift.
- They licensed a stranger's real family vacation photos from a Flickr account instead of staging new ones, because authentic period documentation reads as more real than a slick recreation.
- A brand's email opt-in can carry as much lore as its ad campaign: turning a subscribe form into a fake corporate job application with a randomly assigned title gives new subscribers a role to play immediately.
- Half-measures break the illusion. A world-building brand has to commit at full intensity across every touchpoint, down to the font on a packing slip, or the fiction collapses.
03Turning Customers Into Characters
- Customers cast as 'citizens' of a brand's fictional world start writing themselves into the story unprompted, such as commenting in character on LinkedIn.
- Vacation kept communicating as a stiff, formal 1980s corporation on purpose; the contrast between buttoned-up corporate language and a laid-back product is what makes it memorable.
- The exercise worth stealing isn't the finished vernacular, it's the process: list every word and role inside your world and define them deliberately, which does more work than a tone-of-voice page in a brand guide.
04Wes Anderson's World-Building Playbook
- What separates true world building from good art direction is inventing institutions, not just a visual style: Grand Budapest Hotel has a fictional country, a fictional empire, a storied bakery, and a renamed secret police.
- Fictional institutions work when they're a slight twist on something real, like Wes Anderson's Khaki Scouts instead of Boy Scouts, real enough to believe, fictional enough to be a world.
- Zooming in tight on props like a matchbook or a menu is what makes a fictional world feel lived-in; brand merch and packaging deserve the same attention as props in a film.
05Storytelling and the Hero's Journey
- Humans process morality, identity, and relationships through stories, not facts or data, which is the reason story-based branding outperforms feature lists.
- Every story is a character who hits a crisis and is transformed into a better version of themselves; brands that put the customer in that hero role are selling a transformation, not a product.
07Sir Kensington's: Building the World Before the Product
- Sir Kensington's built its brand and fictional founder biography before making a single jar of ketchup, treating the story as the actual go-to-market strategy rather than marketing applied after the fact.
- They picked every physical attribute in direct opposition to the category leader: glass instead of plastic, scooped instead of squeezed, English heritage instead of American diner culture.
- The founder mythology was invented specifically because the founders had no real heritage to draw on; a fabricated backstory can do real positioning work if it's built with enough detail.
- The team lived the fiction internally too, with steel mission tablets instead of laminated values cards and mustaches worn for years, because the internal culture has to commit as hard as the external marketing.
08Artist vs. Hack and Standing Out on the Shelf
- There's a spectrum from artist (self-expression, no concern for whether it sells) to hack (solves the job, no story); craft sits in the middle, self-expressed but still functional.
- Brands that only chase the artistic story can fail the customer's actual job to be done; brands that only chase the job to be done never build a story worth remembering.
- On a boring, crowded shelf, a product has to look different enough that a shopper does a double take before they'll even consider buying it.
09Ralph Lauren's World of Worlds
- One brand can sustain multiple, seemingly unrelated worlds as long as a single emotional through-line, here the fantasy of American status and belonging, connects them.
- Clothing works especially well for world building because it's literally a costume, the number one way people project identity to strangers before they say a word.
- The prep aesthetic sells the fantasy of unearned inclusion and status; the Western aesthetic sells the fantasy of freedom and rugged individualism, two different psychological needs served by the same brand.
10Anduril, Japan, and District Vision: Borrowed Worlds
- Anduril designs like a video game studio because its actual audience, engineers and Pentagon staff who grew up gaming, responds to that aesthetic more than traditional defense branding.
- The 'American imagination of Japan' works the same way the 'Japanese imagination of America' powered decades of denim and workwear brands: one culture borrowing another's aesthetic fantasy.
- A brand's mission holds up under scrutiny when it's built from a founder's genuine practice, not retrofitted onto an existing product line after the fact.
11The Hotel Test and the Brand Trip Test
- The Hotel Test forces specificity: describe your brand's lobby smell, front-desk greeting, and parting gift; if you can't, the world isn't developed enough to build a campaign around.
- A brand passes the test when a stranger can picture nearly the same hotel you're picturing; that convergence is the actual measure of whether the world building worked.
- The Brand Trip Test applies the same rigor to influencer campaigns: define who would attend, what they'd post, and whether anyone watching would actually care, before booking the trip.
Terms worth knowing.
- Worldbuilding
- Building a fictional (or fictionalized) universe around a brand so customers become participants in its story rather than passive viewers of an ad.
- Commit to the Bit
- Sustaining a brand's fiction at full intensity across every touchpoint, borrowed from method acting, where the performer never breaks character.
- Hotel Test
- An exercise that imagines a brand as a physical hotel, its lobby, front desk, room, and parting gift, to force concrete, sensory specificity about what the brand actually is.
- Brand Trip Test
- An extension of the Hotel Test for influencer or experiential marketing: define who would attend a brand trip, what they'd post, and whether the audience would care, before planning it.
- World of Worlds
- A single brand sustaining several distinct fictional worlds (for example Ralph Lauren's prep and Western aesthetics) unified by one emotional through-line.
- Craft (vs. Artist and Hack)
- The middle position on a spectrum between pure self-expression (artist) and pure function (hack), where a brand expresses a real point of view while still solving the customer's actual need.
Things they pointed at.
00:47productVacation (sunscreen brand)
17:07productSir Kensington's
26:31productRalph Lauren
31:09productAnduril
32:34productMod Retro (Anduril Edition, titanium)
34:18productAesop
35:02productSnowpeak
36:18productDistrict Vision
Lines you could clip.
03:40
“Method actors, they don't break character when the director says cut. They keep it going and they commit to the bit.”
25:50
“To be seen is to be sold.”
38:00
“Take something and take it seriously.”
Word for word.
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metaphoranalogy
Worldbuilding is one of the most important concepts in modern marketing because the world of identity and media has radically changed over the last decade. Marketing used to assume a communication between the buyer and the seller, which made sense for a single transaction. But increasingly, products are sold on identity.
Worldbuilding treats everyone like they're a character in a brand's movie. And that's just not you viewing that brand's film. You're a participant in it.
We're all actors in their world. We're using their props. We're shaping what that story looks like.
It's fun. It's compelling. And it works.
But how do you actually do this? So in this video, Scott and I are going to go through brand examples, principles from both brand building and from film to share the process, share examples, share things that we've worked on. things we respect that can help you really understand world building.
Let's lock in. When we talk about world building as a brand that never ceases to come up and that brand is Vacation. And so I know you have a relationship there.
You understand the brand. Talk to me a bit about that. What's your history with them?
And let's dive into it. I'm very fortunate to be an advisor and investor in Vacation, which is how I got to know them. And even before then was a fan.
What struck me from the beginning is the setting. right? It's a world.
And I believe that that concept of setting is important to understand in context of world building. Yeah. What are your thoughts there?
What do you think of that setting they've built? To understand the setting of vacation, let's understand the psychology first of the category, right? So sunscreen, right?
That was one of their first products and that's what the brand is known for. And sunscreen has changed a lot over the last 50 years. It's true.
Yeah. So sunscreen used to be about fun in the sun. It used to be about play.
It used to be about the beach. It used to be about togetherness, kind of having a wild time. And then sunscreen became about health and safety and it became clinical.
It became about protection, UV radiation, the fear and the efficacy, right? That all took over the sunscreen category. And then, like so many categories, it was upgraded and brands traded up into beauty.
So how do you make the package smaller? How do you make the margins bigger? How do you sell it in more and more fancy doors?
And how do you put it in a really slick looking package that almost becomes part of your skincare routine versus going out into the wild and having fun in the sun? And Vacation asked, well, what would it look like to make sunscreen fun again? and represent that fun in the sun.
And so the world of vacation, the setting that they've built, is to transport you to the time when sunscreen was about having fun. And so they made a whole bunch of creative decisions to transport you to that setting. Visually, aesthetically, with photographs, it lives in this kind of dreamlike world from the late 70s to the late 80s, where there was Club med and digital cameras weren't something that everyone carried around.
Cameras were something you'd take on vacation and you'd shoot a lot of photos where you wanted to have memories. And so the brand world of vacation is very much rooted in vacation photography from middle class Americans that are going down to the Caribbean or down to the Gulf Coast, right? Or hanging out in San Diego.
One of my favorite thinkers, investors, Charlie Munger has this quote, take something and take it seriously. And world building is all about taking it really seriously. They took it extremely seriously.
So you could take something and say, okay, well, we're going to use a little bit of inspiration from packaging in the 70s or the 80s. But of course, like we're going to have a modern website and we're going to, you know, print the packing slip with a normal font or really just think through one element of it. But what vacation does is, no, no, no.
How do we take this to an 11 out of 10 in terms of transport of world building? And so, for instance, one of the ways they did that was they found someone's Flickr profile. A dad who had taken photos of his family on vacation through the 80s and 90s and happened to scan them and upload them to Flickr.
And they ended up licensing that material, that photography. So that they weren't just using AI or trying to recreate, you know, slick photo shoots. But the origin of the brand, they said, how do we actually take this family that had documented their vacations and make that part of our lore and build our visuals around that?
So they had this whole mosaic of visual material to work from and layer on. And I love that that idea of taking it seriously across everything is really important. I remember one of the most.
Interesting things I felt they did was when they launched in Target, you saw even the Target advertisements still lived 100 % within that world. Taking something that seriously, something so few brands are willing to participate in, I feel like that's what's required to build as we're talking about. Exactly.
Because in a movie, you have great actors who are character actors or method actors, right? Method actors, they don't break character when the director says cut. They keep it going and .
And world -building brands commit to the bit. Agreed. I like the example of pulling from that Flickr account is a good example of this idea of citizens of a brand's world.
We are, whether we're a consumer, whether it's an influencer, whether it's a founder or member of the brand, there are people that exist within that. I would love to hear your thoughts on that concept.
To use vacation as an example, again, they made a really important creative choice at the very beginning around their email list. Because when you sign up for a brand's email list, you get an email that says, are you sure you want to opt into what might be years and years of spam in the future? 50 % off.
Yeah, exactly. And so what vacation did was, you know, instead of subscribe to our email list, they said, well, do you want to be a junior executive in the vacation corporation? And if you want to be a junior executive in the vacation corporation, sign up for your summer job here.
You put your email in, put your name in, and not only do you get an email saying you're on the list, but you got a business card, an image, a JPEG of a business card that had a randomly determined title of your functional role as an executive in the vacation corporation. So I'm the head of nautical matters. Some people are shrimp boat captain architects.
Other ones are inflatable pool toy mechanics. And so everyone has this kind of mad lib title of what they exist in the vacation story. And so that gives people now permission to play the role even further.
So you'll find people commenting on their LinkedIn posts about, well, As the junior executive responsible for my Thai concoctions, I, for one, am really happy with this new product introduction. And on the other hand, in terms of committing to the bit, Vacation, they don't just communicate like a brand in the normal world.
They very much tongue -in -cheek, on a 10 out of 10 basis, communicate as the, quote, world -famous Vacation Corporation. And they existed a time in the 80s when corporate was cool, right? The Patrick Bateman.
uh calling card and the the rise and the ascent of the yuppie Since then, corporate isn't cool anymore. People don't want to work in offices.
They don't want to work in cubicles, right? It's all counterculture. Everyone's got their side hustle.
Vacation, again, transport you back to a world where the HR department wasn't trying to be cool and hip. And they're communicating in very technical corporate language that becomes high -tensity. It becomes funny because at the end of the day, you have these two polar opposites.
A very serious, buttoned -up, formal corporation that is all about fun in the sun. I think when brands often look at something like vacation, they go, there's no way we could build that. We couldn't go all in.
They've already taken that 80s idea. And I think one of the first exercises is just looking at that vernacular, right? What that exercise, the first email does, is it points you into all the words that build a brand.
Shrimp boat captain, pool toys, et cetera. I feel like almost any niche can be in that. I look at...
My friends at Air did something similar, like a generator. You could put your picture in and it would give you a meme, but it was in their language, all the language of creative direction and people that are like overly online or have that ambiguous income job, et cetera, because that's a lot of their actual like consumer base is in these sort of ambiguous creative jobs.
I do think that like one of those exercises just going through. every one of these like ideas and concepts and words behind it and defining those words for a brand is like so much more important than whatever's in the brand guide right the quote unquote it's like what do we really think about that how do we really look at that and you know to segue this a bit when people go okay well how do i find inspiration how do i actually hunt that down how do i begin to have it from from a brand all this is really just taking these principles from film right like the movie uh analogy is a good one because it's so accurate it's also where we draw a lot from i'd be curious um like to talk about a bit about where those rootings and world building come from when it comes to movies film and action yeah well world building comes from cinema and cinema is this beautiful rich visual auditory kind of social construct that's all around story and we'll talk about story but i think one of the best world builders in cinema not the first but i think one of the most beloved and one of the most current is wes anderson of course yeah he's really famous for his world building
and so as an example here my favorite wes anderson film is grand budapest hotel uh grand budapest hotel is a masterwork in so many different ways and so the question for us today is well what separates simply good art direction right like you'll see in a film like the substance from true world building and what what wes anderson does is borrow a lot from children's literature and different mechanisms where he goes beyond simply the idea of setting to think about institutions okay so he shows institutions in his films in the case of uh moonrise kingdom it's the khaki scouts not the boy scouts and that that little kind of concession there of taking something from the normal world, right?
The world that we all live in, like the Boy Scouts, and just tweaking it a little bit and making a slightly fictionalized version of it makes it just enough real, but also just enough kind of fantasy to really work in a world building setting. So if we take Grand Budapest Hotel, for example, there's a fictional country called Zabrovka.
And Zabrovka is like this amalgamation of an Alpine Central European country. it's part of the austro -hungarian empire it's a little bit of the czech republic it's a little bit of austria it's a little bit of hungary uh and it's an imagined institution right this idea of that part of europe at the time and then you take the grand budapest hotel itself there are these imperial hotels that were built in kind of spa towns in that empire and you know as soon as you see it that this institution existed for the film.
It's going to exist after the film. And then institutions within that, like Mendel's Bakery, right? The storied bakery that takes place in it.
Or instead of the SS, it's the zigzag, the ZZ, right? Sort of just mirroring that little icon that goes on the soldier's gilet. So these are things that build story for Wes Anderson, these films.
The other thing that he does is The ability to go really, really tight on props. So every object is a representation of this world.
When you zoom in on it really quickly, whether it's a matchbook, whether it's a menu item, it has all the details of that world that allow you to place yourself in it. And I think that's an important kind of item for brand building. Because when you are a brand building or when you're a world building brand, you create essentially props in this movie that you're creating.
And you've got to pay attention to those little details. And they often don't take them seriously enough, right? There's this, oh, it's the average.
It's your koozie. It's your holder. People talk about merch.
But there's a real conversation around that. I mean, Palantir, for better or for worse, has gotten a significant amount of conversation around releasing a French chore coat. a street wear drop, but they're building artifacts, right?
And I like that idea of artifacts from a film as the same as artifacts of a brand, but they're almost more important because you have so few actual touch. If you're going to spend the $2 or have the website like Vacation does, it's important. Yeah, the artifacts and the totems, right?
The design to the extent that every single object, every detail of it, right? Like this kind of baroque, ornate 80s down to the... gold foil reflectivity which is is is gauche right and over the top but that's the point because it fits into that world and you even see that even you go into the sephora merchandising and you'll see the same thing or you know their alta wherever they are you'll see like every one of those displays is an extension i love that a lot about what vacation's done extrapolating this to any company right like product companies consumers companies work great but really any type of company is you've got to remember that human beings make meaning and organize everything through stories we are the only species do this is understand and have the logic that defines our life is through stories not facts not evidence or data but stories because stories is how we make sense of things like morality and identity and challenge and relationships and so what brands do is they with stories and translate it into what they're trying to achieve with their brand and their growth and what a story is in the most fundamental level is a character a hero who encounters a crisis or a challenge and through that challenge becomes transformed
to become a better version of themselves hero's journey the hero's journey and what brands do is they sell a better version of yourself a better version of the hero and so the question is how are you transformed through this journey and what world building brands do is they put you as most of the time the hero in that journey and they show an incredible level of cinematic detail that is highly evocative and plays on your imagination of what do I look and feel like when I'm transformed by this product.
So today we're going to add a real skill to your toolkit in 120 seconds brought to you by Framer. Every time a consumer clicks on an ad or goes to download your ebook or to book a call on your website, they're hitting a funnel, landing page and pages after that. And most suck.
They're not building your brand's world. One of the highest value skills you can do as a creative is be able to improve this funnel to build it.
because that drives more sales, more email subs, and when you can quantify the work, you get paid more for it. Framer is a complete website platform, and I love it for quickly being able to spin up brand assets like this, especially for software services and personal brand sites. And today I want to talk about the new Framer Agents and the workflow to create new sites and sections of sites.
So here, this entire site that you see was generated by Framer Agents. I gave it a reference Bento style layout like this, some of my links and imagery and a picture of myself to create, and it made this for me. I did not design anything.
I was able to go in and edit those call to actions. And what I just asked for, you can see here on the right, was for it to give me a placeholder section for testimonials and for FAQ.
And it gives it to me in mobile and on desktop. I can preview it right here. I've asked for special effects for the rollovers.
You can adjust. I'm doing all of this. Everything you see here was created in chat with Framer agents.
And all this matches the design style of my website overall. So if you're building this, you want to start with a landing page. The sections you want to call out to have are an aggressive title with a subtitle.
Anchor that in your customer pain point, your core section, the header you saw there. We can put the value propositions of what you're trying to get. Ideally, a video about the product offer if you have one.
And the ability to sign up or act on the offer right there, the way you saw with my form. And ideally, all that is above the fold. They see that right when they land on the website.
And then below it, you can get into testimonials and proof points. Dive into the top features. more video or graphic examples, UGC testimonials, big call to action to act now, and then a frequently asked questions section to really get to any reason they might have an objection.
That's a great landing page structure to use. But then if you're booking a call or even someone buys something from there, the confirmation page they get is ultra important because it can radically increase the chance of conversion on a call or even upsell another product. I've been putting a personal video from the CEO or a freelancer there, along with a personal message and what they can expect next.
It doesn't have to be high -rise, it can just be a yap. But literally take that outline for this page, drop it into frame, with the agents and ask it to make those sections with placeholder copy you can update or ask it to generate initial copy or bring in copy that you've already done have it make the complete site it can polish your drafts refine your design i started that whole bento layout just from a screenshot of a similar site and ask for little world building elements they go a long way photos are designed to tie to your social media video embeds stickers with your logo elements websites are extensions of your brand story and you can just ask for them in chat with framer ship your sites faster with framer today and use code oren for 30 off of framer pro -annual plan link is in the description this is actually a good time to bring up your background my world building resume starts with sir kensington's which is the company that i founded and what sir kensington's was was reimagining condiments so we actually started the brand and the world before we even made the first product and the way it started was the idea that there are so many different types of mustards out there and there's only one type of ketchup
And the type of ketchup that's out there is obviously dominated by Heinz. And then every other brand is in the same package with the same product inside and the same texture. And it's ubiquitous, but it's not really saying anything interesting.
But at the same time, ketchup has an absolute stranglehold on the American refrigerator, right? It's in like 98 % of American refrigerators. And Heinz is a call brand, right?
That everyone knows, almost like a Kleenex. So we realized that if we were to just simply make a better product, we would fail because it wouldn't capture anyone's attention. So we said, let's do the exact opposite of Heinz, right?
If Heinz is going to be in plastic, we're going to start in glass. If Heinz is indiscriminately squeezed, we are going to be scooped like a high -end European. I love that dichotomy.
Look at what's happening in the market. Okay, how do we elevate or do the opposite? It's a great way to look at things.
Do the opposite. And if Heinz is Americana. and synonymous with the roadside diner and fast food and like really central to america what's the opposite of that let's be english right and how do we be english well we needed to create a a lore that basically was drafting off of heritage that we were inventing because we didn't have heritage.
The product was brand new. We were kids in college at the time. You guys weren't in the youth.
We weren't like Michelin star chefs or anything like that. And so we committed to the bit and we built a brand of 11 out of 10 intensity on that method acting. So we created this elaborate story before we even made our first jar of ketchup.
Sir Kensington himself went to Cambridge for undergrad and Oxford for graduate school. And he did a treatise for the queen in Constantinople on Ionian chutneys and spice sauces and worked among the spice traders of the Bosphorus. He returns to England knowing that he cannot alone make sauces as a way to make his fortune.
And so he has the brilliant idea, who is insuring the insurance companies? I'm going to start the first reinsurance company to insure insurance companies in this sort of loop. He does very financially well on that.
And of course, he doesn't just retire and kick back. He says, I'm going to gather the greatest creative minds in Europe, create a salon series. He hosts salons at his country estate.
In one of these salons, Catherine the Great of Russia is in attendance. The emperor of Japan has also made the trip across the ocean and has brought a cut of Kobe hitherto never tasted in United Kingdom.
And of course, Catherine the Great of Russia says, well, I would like to try this Kobe beef. Do you have any ketchup to pair it with? Sir Kensington thinking to himself, I can't serve a Zaris high fructose corn syrup and something that I just bought at the local supermarket.
I need to make something better. So he goes in the kitchen. pulls the tomatoes together, pulls the raw sugar, finds a malt vinegar, and concocts on the spot Sir Kensington's ketchup for her to try.
I love that the lore is just off the top of the head. Let's go. And it changes every time I tell it.
I think that what's really important here is what you're hearing is play. This was not, we need to turn the business around. This was not, we need to get in a whiteboard and figure out what Q2 is going to look like.
We had no idea that this would actually ever be a business. We were in play because storytelling and world building is play. And you've got to be able to get yourself in that mental space.
And I think I'm curious how that permeated to the culture of the company. To start with that culture, we did create this lore and almost these artifacts, if you will. And so, for instance, when we launched.
We worked with a wonderful artist in New York named Eric Adolphson to sketch and draw all of the various vessels that Sir Kensington's attempted before, you know, stabilizing on this ketchup jar and all of the different circumstances that you could use the condiment in, right? This really deep level of detail. And for the company culture, we really thought about the mission to bring integrity and charm to ordinary and overlooked.
And you'll see here, we gave everyone this steel tablet. right again the sort of lore almost like a set of commandments not not a four by six card you know yeah still tap something that has real physicality to it and the language that had this internal voice and consistency so integrity and charm right these are words that have a kind of a subtle english almost aristocratic feel to them like they fat sound like they came out of eton and one of the other great rules of branding is humanize Always humanize.
And so in the character of Sir Kensington, you have the personification of integrity and charm. And you have integrity and charm as the watchwords in our mission. And then beyond that, culturally, we as the team members were the acolytes and the students of Sir Kensington.
And so when we would go to a trade show or when we would go on a sales call, I had a mustache for seven years of my life, just as Sir Kensington did. And we would wear suits, dark suits. with ties because take something and take it seriously right and i think if i have one regret it's i didn't take it too seriously we didn't take it seriously for long enough yeah i think that's what's interesting is like how do you grow with that you know someone like vacation is just embodied for so long as you begin to get a company and you have outside sales reps and oh we now we're in australia and they're like how do you kind of keep that going i think is uh is yeah interesting challenge yeah and i think that's the challenge of the artist right that's the challenge of the artist i like to use this model that you know an artist is known for expressing themselves and telling their story with no definition of success beyond that it's not about how much you sell right it's not about how you change the world it's really about self -expression and then on the very very end of that you have a hack right yeah someone who is only doing something as a job someone who's doing something simply to solve a problem and in the middle
You have craft. A craft person is expressing themselves and they're putting in the care of an artist, but they're delivering the function of a job to be done. And so that's the question is how do you find the right balance of craft?
Because you've seen, and we've all seen so many brands that are these beautiful artistic expressions that are dedicated to these things, but the commercial element, the job they're doing for the customer isn't satisfied. And their story isn't legible, right? And then we also see.
Lots of products that are there to make a buck, right, and check all the boxes, and those don't last either. And so the question is, how do you figure out, what do you listen to? Because it is important, right, to talk about your organic bona fides.
It is important to make sure that you put the right features and benefits on your Amazon page for all the different kind of practical matters of someone buying ketchup online, right? I think if anything, we were pushed a little bit more towards the blender side of things. If I were to go back in time, we would have committed to the bed a little bit harder.
And I love that it was rooted in the shelf, right? I think that's a great thing for anyone working on something like this to look at is like what actually happens on the shelf in your category. So even with sunscreen, like you look at people that are thriving in sunscreen, look at someone like Kosas who took, okay, it's skincare and sunscreen at the same time.
It's sun bum, they're living inside a surf. It's super goop, they've gone all in on the ingredients. It's vacation, they've gone in the lifestyle.
brands are disruptors in their space because they looked at a boring shelf and said we have an angle same thing with what you talked about in food and a shelf can mean a physical shelf if you are actually in retail but also if it's look if it's ap software it's just you know how do you have a perspective inside what those other ones are are looking at is more tech enabled what world can you build and i think that rooting whatever world you build inside a position saying, hey, we're going to be the opposite of the diner.
Ketchup is an important way to actually tie it to that. The job and the value and the list on the Amazon. Yes.
And I think one way to do that and what we did was recognize that because no one knew who we were, we needed something that was so weird and different on shelf that someone would have to do a double take. It was impactful. I remember that was my initial experience with this.
You're like, wait, you got what? And it cost how much? And that's a great...
There's very little conversations you have around ketchup. Yes. And .
And so similarly, whether it is... you know vacation sunscreen or sir kensington's going back to the wes anderson aesthetic of the matchbook right and the dedication to detail it's when you are creating a product that is going to sit on shelf how do you make it abundantly clear that this is a prop that belongs in A different world and the world that you've built.
And then when you use the prop, what I love most about this is like, I've pulled this out of a beach bag and people comment on it. Whether they know the brand, someone knows the brand, like, oh, is that Vacation? If they don't know the brand, you're like, oh, is that like some Aloha, like back in the day, like Hawaii?
And then it's immediately, you are the... owner of the artifact you're in that brand film like we talked about before and it comes and it's just simple as a package you are you are initiated and you are now a junior executive in the hajian corporation so the prop the prop attitude is really important and i think what's interesting is when you see this go even farther right and so i want to talk about ralph lauren because They've built now many walls, right?
You see a brand that has gone from, they stand for so many things to the American West. They stand for the Ivy League. They're the Olympic representative of America.
There's purple label sub -brands. And so the brands actually build this out so much into, and you see it in everything from cafes to clothing. That's where it takes on almost a new life of its own.
I just have a great appreciation for those brands. And I guess I'm curious, what are like, how do you feel about that brand? How do you feel about actually extending that world beyond, you know, you built a brand in a category.
You had to build greater than that. What's the ideas and playbook there? Yeah.
Well, clothing and apparel and fashion is such rich territory for this because clothing is, is our costume, right? It's the number one way where we can immediately express our identity to friends and strangers and how people see us. And it gives us the confidence or the attitude for what we.
want to project right and so costume is like quite literally part of the cinematic experience and I think especially call it like in an urban setting right in a city when you walk out of your apartment no matter what your apartment looks like if you're in new york city you know how small it is how grungy it is when you go outside you become part of the city right and you become characters in that city with this costume and this i think goes back to you know the late 19th century france and kind of the um the the the development of this cosmopolitan culture and urban culture right through the 20s and beyond And so Ralph Lauren is, of course, it's a storied and beautiful example that isn't just one world, but it's because Ralph Lauren has the New England prep and it also has the rugged Wild West.
And where and why I think this works, going back to the idea of the transformed individual, right? And what you become through the transformation of participating and enrolling in a brand is about fantasy. And Ralph Lauren, in their world of the prep aesthetic it sells a fantasy of unearned privilege and elegance and being able to be included in any room right and when you think about Going back to storytelling, fundamental human psychology and neurocircuitry, the most important thing that we can do every day is make sure that we are not severed from society and that we are not mocked, that we are included, that we are participating, that we will find a mate, that we will procreate, that we will be respected in the community.
And when you draft off of waspy American culture that was at the top of society at that time and all the tropes of that aesthetic, you can live into the fantasy. of being high status and included and of having this unearned privilege that people fantasize about similarly in the american west right is the other side of the country it's a different fantasy but it's a fantasy about freedom it's a fantasy about being able to self -express in nature to some extent but still connected and respected in society in kind of a maverick rugged way an individualist way where the prep aesthetic is all about a cohesive community and kind of a societal acceptance way so there's these different psychologies going on but they all kind of fundamentally go back to the fantasy of identity and of social inclusion and what's interesting is you would put those if you're in a vacuum and we're talking about the american west we're talking about the ivy league prep it wouldn't make sense that they would live in one category one world of worlds under a brand
But that through line of Americana, of that ideal, is so excellently executed throughout that brand. What I find interesting, I want to dive into some of these worlds in particular, is... is like their appeal.
So for instance, like the Western world, the idea of the Wild West, the idea of freedom, that's as big in Japan. Japan has co -opted so much of, I mean, they make better kind of Americana Western wear than America does at this point. It's equally as fascinating from Australia to Europe, the concept of Texas.
There's these ideas that are just so much bigger than the brand itself you can jump into. I feel oddly it's the same way. We saw with, whether it was Sporty and Rich immediately took that into a, you know, like a modern female at the point in time when they were at their peak.
There's all these little ways to kind of co -opt it. What other worlds are there out there? What are those other things that people can tap into?
You did that a bit with aristocracy. We've seen it with kind of 80s and nostalgia. I think Kula basically puts some ideas out there for people that they could tap in.
Yeah, I mean, I would say like it's kind of whatever you fantasize about and whatever has the depth of a world. I mean, let's take sort of a left turn here and talk about the brand Andral. Yeah.
A brand, it's a company, right? And Andral is a... a defense tech company right it's a new defense tech company started by the founder of oculus and most defense tech companies right they don't actually want to be seen by the outside world like united technologies what do they make bombs right like and but and what andrell does is andrell has realized that wait a minute there is a fantasy of american technological superiority that wasn't really being told and when you have the rank and file members of the pentagon and the government that now grew up on first person shooter video games and the world of video games and the the internet then how do you build an aesthetic world for them right and so the choices that andrew has made about how they design their products with like the matte black the sans serif fonts the art direction that they that they put in they are selling a fantasy of american technological superiority that goes beyond the messy elements of the battlefield and the the the difficult procurement process of of government contracting
into this very pure world that people can fantasize about and that relates to American pride. And even the artifacts, you can buy the metallic alloy, the same thing they use to make whatever space grade inside a Game Boy. Exactly.
You can see these together. The mod retro in, I think it's Titanium, the Andral Edition mod retro is exactly that, is we are going to pair this idea of... of a video game with ballistic missiles, right?
And with this intelligent technology. And that's perfect for an era where we are now in point and click warfare, right? With the drones and the technology that we have right now in the Gulf, it is point and click warfare that is directly related to that lore of video games.
Well, it's also, it's continuing a lore. People always look at, oh, well, you have your United Industries or someone who can't talk about anything, but there's also a lot of lore inside. infrastructure, science, government, propaganda.
You look at NASA and like the craziest brand guide ever and the most licensing possibly done. That's done to get. It's HR.
We're recruiting by getting people excited about science, by putting these things out there that you can then treat as, you know, again, artifacts. And I think even with defense, we look at skunk works and these things that kind of happened in the past, they were more tongue -in -cheek, and they've just adapted that to the modern age.
But I do encourage, you know, whether you are a fan of the industrial world complex or not, the idea of looking at any single niche you look at, there is that way to attract people's excitement about it by finding a world that, you know, you're targeting this. art loves those people are had you had some moments with like a game boy is a connection point to a uh like a defense company is really about the kind of people that are who have had that childhood chose to pursue that into engineering want to connect all those dots together it's built a world for them i got another one for you let's go i've been thinking about so a lot of a lot of ink has been spilled about the japanese imagination of america and workwear and denim and rockabilly, right?
And what we're seeing now, especially recently, is the American imagination of Japan. Interesting. And so if you think about, obviously it's an Australian brand, but an Aesop store, the interior of an Aesop store is minimalist, but with organic materials and textures.
It's a Western interpretation of Japan and all that. Or District Vision, who just opened a shop a few blocks from here, that is... very much inspired by Japanese minimalist design and with materials and plant life and lighting.
And then again, this is a Japanese brand, but it has taken hold in the West as Snowpeak, right? Snowpeak is a brand that represents not performance in nature or domination over nature, but a Japanese concept of coexistence with nature. snow peak has the materials they have a what they call i think a a campsite or a a camp land up in you know washington state that that you can go to and visit as a physical place they have stores and all of these these little artifacts that they make are beautifully milled and machined in that level of japanese craft detail for the outdoors and they play into the western fantasy of a simpler minimalistic life that has more that has less stuff, but better stuff, which is in the world of Washington and Amazon and Walmart, we have like too much stuff and we need to go back to those minimalist roots.
I think I... I think there's a lot of conversation around running brands like Satisfye, etc. And not nearly enough around District Vision.
Because I think District Vision is a fascinating brand. And I was a big early consumer of it. Because they really have that mission and methodology kind of walk to this.
It's for mindful athletes. It's based in meditation practice at the beginning. And you look at a lot of brands try to find, how can I attach this to something bigger, has more meaning in life?
How do I make a mission statement mean something people actually care about? And they're a great example of a brand that really rooted it in that. Because not only is it just saying this is for mindful athletes.
Hey, here's the meditation thing. you can purchase from us. Here's the program you can buy into.
When you go on our brand trip, you're going to a center for establishing whatever it is about your inner journey. There are very few examples of people who really have that mission that's actually rooted in anything serious. I think they're a good one.
Yeah. And where that comes from, and people talk about authenticity, a word that gets bandied about, right? Well, what does that mean?
And art and craft is a self -expression, right? And some of my favorite brands are... self -expressions of founders and artists.
And so, yeah, when we talk about how to practically apply these, it's not really going to work if it's not kind of deeply inside of you, right? So I am an Anglophile. I love to perform.
So for me, the Sir Kensington character and the world was like living out a personal fantasy and a personal belief. Similarly, like the two founders of District Vision, this is not something that they're like, putting on a spreadsheet and saying, what do we do next?
It's, this is an intuitive feel for them, right? And it is in some ways like the gift that they have to give. Similar with a vacation, right?
It's about, it is about community and is about taking kind of a world that the fun has been drained out of and figuring out like, how do we inject fun back into this world and take it really seriously? If you want to get practical with this, you had this idea called a hotel test. What is the hotel test?
Well, the hotel test is. if you could imagine your brand whatever brand you're working on as a hotel first of all is it easy to imagine or is it hard to imagine right like if i want to imagine hyundai as a hotel i don't get a lot of detail zoho yeah but if i want to imagine ferrari as a hotel i know exactly what that hotel looks and feels like right great world building brands pass the hotel test as a great exercise i'd say what is the hotel for your brand when you walk into the lobby what does it smell like what does it look and feel like when you're greeted at the front desk how is the the attendant dressed how do they greet you what's the language that they use when you go up to your room what's the music that's playing in the elevator what's waiting for you on your pillow when you go into the bathroom what type of soap is there right and when you leave what type of little trinket do they give you on the way out You know, what does the key card look like?
If you can build the details in the hotel test, then that's a great entree into world building. And even if it's not for like rebranding your entire company and rebranding your brand, treat it as a, we're going to do a campaign around this. We're going to take this hotel test and we're going to funnel it into a campaign, which is just exactly the same way that what artists do with album releases, right?
Think about each Kanye album. It has a different structure and look and feel. And sometimes it's transparent.
And sometimes it uses photography. And sometimes it uses bright colors. And sometimes it uses handwritten scrolls.
It signals an era. It signals an era, right? And so campaigns can be the exact same way.
I like what the hotel test is. Okay, first you need to define it yourself. You need to understand what the brand stands for.
And then it's how do you get your customer. to be able to say that same answer back to you or them to be able to picture in the mind the way you and I were both able to picture a very similar Ferrari. And I like to think of too, in the influence world, the idea of like the brand trip test, I think is an interesting extension of that too.
Because you want to define, okay, if you have all these experiences, but now who are the people? If they were on this trip, who would they be? What activities would they be doing?
Like, what would they be posting? Who would be viewing it? And would people care?
And begin to build that out. And I could see. People use Ramp as an example a lot because obviously they're one of the few companies in a boring industry that's done some real world building.
But there's the ordinary. There's a few that have kind of built outside of their niche. And you can do this in anything, whether you are doing that as a hedge fund, whether you are doing that as venture capital, whether you're doing it as a microphone company.
I think there is the ability to conduct both of those tests and think about what they say is a powerful vehicle. And any parting thoughts that you want to leave anyone with? Take something and take it seriously.
Commit to the bit and have fun with it. Absolutely. I appreciate you coming and talking through it.
And we will link more information about Scott in the description. We'll cover all the world building below. I appreciate you guys sitting with us and walking through it.
Thank you.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Marketing used to be a transaction between buyer and seller. Oren and Sir Kensington's founder Scott Norton argue it's now a movie, and the customer is a character in it. They spend forty minutes showing exactly how brands like Vacation, Ralph Lauren, and Anduril build that world.
Named ideas worth stealing.
03:33concept
Commit to the Bit
Borrowed from method acting: a world-building brand never breaks character, applying its fiction at full intensity to every touchpoint rather than half-measures.
Steal forAuditing whether a brand's own packing slip, email footer, or support copy breaks the world it's trying to build.
22:54model
Artist / Craft / Hack Spectrum
- Artist
- Craft
- Hack
A spectrum from pure self-expression with no concern for sales (artist) to pure function with no story (hack); craft sits in the middle, expressing a real point of view while still doing the customer's job.
Steal forDiagnosing whether a brand's creative work is failing because it's too precious (artist) or too generic (hack).
26:31concept
World of Worlds
A single brand can sustain several distinct fictional worlds as long as one emotional through-line connects them, as with Ralph Lauren's prep and Western aesthetics both selling American status and freedom.
Steal forBrand architecture work for a company with multiple sub-lines or audiences that risk feeling disconnected.
37:41model
The Hotel Test
- Lobby smell
- Front-desk greeting and attendant dress
- Elevator music
- What's on the pillow
- Bathroom soap
- Parting trinket / key card design
Imagine the brand as a hotel and answer every sensory detail; if a stranger pictures roughly the same hotel, the brand's world is specific enough.
Steal forA quick workshop exercise to pressure-test whether a brand identity is concrete or still just a mood board.
39:40concept
The Brand Trip Test
An extension of the Hotel Test for influencer or experiential marketing: define who would attend, what they'd post, who would view it, and whether anyone would actually care.
Steal forVetting an influencer trip or brand activation before committing budget to it.
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
14:24product
“Ship your sites faster with Framer today, and use code OREN for 30% off Framer Pro annual plan, link in the description.”
Well-integrated mid-roll ad: demonstrates the actual product (Framer Agents building a full site from a screenshot and photo) rather than just reading copy, and ties the pitch back to the video's own thesis that landing pages need 'world building elements' too.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
