Authenticity and Brand Investment: The Key to Cultural Relevance

In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes welcome Mike Evans, a strategist who spent years at Red Bull Music figuring out which artists the brand should work with and how to stay connected to culture while scaling globally. Now he consults brands trying to navigate that same challenge—and he's been watching one particular phenomenon closely.

We're talking about On running shoes, the Swiss brand that somehow managed to go from zero to genuinely threatening Nike's cultural dominance by doing something radical: actually focusing on the fundamentals. The result is a fantastic product, smart distribution, and an authentic connection to their core community. It sounds simple, but as Mike reveals, it's incredibly difficult to execute—especially when you start growing and the pressure mounts to optimize everything through data rather than intuition.

What We Explore
We explore how some challenger brands are achieving success by reverting to the fundamentals instead of reinventing the playbook. Through the lens of On's rise, we examine

• The product-culture connection: How technical innovation becomes cultural storytelling when the story lives in the product itself
• Distribution as strategy: Why On's focus on specialist running stores created credibility that rippled outward
• The flattening effect: How social media allows running shoe technology to jump from ultra-marathoners to city sidewalks
• Cultural relevance at scale: The delicate balance between serving your core community and appealing to the masses
• The Red Bull model: Mike's insights from inside one of the most culturally connected brands and what happened when they shifted focus

We dive into the cycles that seem to govern brand culture—from bundling to unbundling, from product-first to marketing-first and back again. Through examples ranging from Nike's cultural positioning to UVU's brand-first approach, we explore what happens when your 64-year-old mom starts wearing the same shoes as the coolest kids at your local run club.

The Bigger Picture
This conversation reveals something important about our current cultural moment. As Igor notes, we're witnessing the death of monoculture and the rise of what he calls “permanent niche as mainstream.” The brands winning today aren't trying to be everything to everyone—they're becoming everything to someone, then letting that authentic investment ripple outward.

Mike's perspective from Red Bull Music provides a fascinating case study. He describes how the brand's credibility came from genuinely investing in underground culture through initiatives like the Red Bull Music Academy—investments that didn't always make sense on spreadsheets but created the cultural foundation that made everything else possible. It serves as a reminder that in our data-driven world, we cannot measure some of the most important brand assets.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction & The Gibson Quote
03:16 - Meet Mike Evans: From Red Bull to Brand Strategy
05:17 - The On Phenomenon: Product-First Success
11:31 - Brand Agnosticism and Technical Pursuits
14:47 - The Story Lives in the Product
19:21 - Cultural Flattening and Authentic Connections
25:38 - Collaborations That Calibrate
28:58 - Scaling Cultural Relevance: The Core Audience Question
34:07 - Community-First vs. Brand-First Approaches
36:24 - Cycles of Culture: From Products to Marketing and Back
40:28 - Practical Advice: Data, Community, and Authentic Investment
47:20 - Closing Thoughts

Links:

• Mike Evans on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwcevans/
• Mike's text about product-first brands: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mwcevans_its-not-surprising-to-see-both-on-and-birkenstock-activity-7330879497514233857-x6pf

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You can also watch this episode on Youtube⁠

Follow the Rabbit is hosted by Igor Schwarzmann & Johannes Kleske

Find out more about ⁠⁠Igor Schwarzmann⁠⁠ 

Find out moire about ⁠⁠Johannes Kleske⁠⁠