We’re leaving the current age of social media and entering a new one where our symbols and our languages are changing.

Any time a new age is born, the rules get harder, the audience becomes more discerning, and all of us - people, brands, identities - are separated into those that move ahead and those that are left behind.

The question now is, what is this new age that we’re walking into?

What lies ahead is a far more nuanced and layered playing field for brands. 

And as the landscape matures to be more demanding, it also carries more reward for those that know the code.

In this week's podcast, I speak with two experts - a media exec and a psychologist - about the coming renaissance of deep storytelling in social media that's already starting to emerge in our languages and our symbols online.

Erin Weinger is the Vice President, Social Editorial, at Sony Pictures Television who has also worked with some of the biggest influencers and publishers in the game.  

She sees trends that will force brands to stop seeing their social audiences as users, and instead start to treat them as 'communities of interest' - groups searching for a certain kind of intelligence that can go unnoticed to those on the outside.

We also speak with Dr. Therese Mascardo, a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of the wellness community Exploring Therapy. Dr. Mascardo is in a unique position to talk about the cultural shifts happening in social because she’s both in the practice of mental health, where much of social media can be more clearly understood, and in the practice of building a social media brand… as an influencer herself.

She sees how social is rewiring us to hear and communicate differently. And as someone who has used social media to break out of the narrow confines of the therapy industry, she translates her learnings for other brands that want to build identities that give them freedom to change over time.

There's a big change happening in social.

Let's explore.

You can also listen and subscribe on Google Play , Spotify and Stitcher.

This feels like home.

Here's what we've been consuming.

America Loves Its Unregulated Wellness Chemicals (The Atlantic): "Cannabinoids, and particularly CBD, are marketed to fit into the deepening cracks in the American health-care system. The things their purveyors claim they address—from pain, anxiety, and nausea, to inflammatory diseases, multiple sclerosis, and cancer—are chronic problems with few accessible, safe treatments, and often no cure."

Inside the $2,000-a-Month, Invite-Only Fitness Clubs (Elemental): "Wellness was already battling a perception as the new luxury signifier, but it’s escalated to a new echelon. It’s no longer about where you work out but also about with whom you work out. You need to know the right people, be in the right shape, and offer something in return — social cache — for application approval. It’s the next step for those who see fitness as being intertwined with their personal brand."

E-boys are the new teen heartthrobs — and they’re poised to make serious money (Vox): "E-boyhood, it seems, is now a viable career path. When the term became a meme in the fall of 2018, it mostly referred to an aesthetic... Now, however, “e-boy” is perhaps a lacking term for an increasingly visible brand of influencer: the teen creator collective."

Who Killed the Knapp Family? (New York Times): "We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making, under both political parties, and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of “deaths of despair.”"

How the Definition of an American Family Has Changed (Wall Street Journal): "The transformation of the American family deepened over the past decade, as an increasingly diverse array of arrangements replaced the married-with-children paradigm. Marriage is playing a smaller role within families, as more people delay tying the knot, live together without marrying or divorce."

(Take the back door.)

The Most Searched Words Of 2019 - Dictionary.com

“It’s more than a shoe, it’s a sisterhood”: inside the Rothy’s fandom - Vox

These Are the Products, Brands & Creative Directors That Defined the Last Decade - Highsnobiety

Amazon Is a Brand Disaster Waiting to Happen - Inc.

The positioning of the three most valuable B2B brands in the world - BrandStruck

Strategy Thought Of The Day

"The best choices are the ones that have more pros than cons, not those that don't have any cons at all."

- Ray Dalio

Jasmine Bina
Founder & CEO
Concept Bureau, Inc.