Every era has its vices. Crowd’s Olivia Anderson looks at how one cigarette brand is breaking tobacco’s taboo in a bid to bring cigarettes back to the masses… 

Cigarettes – one of the most heavily policed products in culture today. Until recently, the cigarette industry seemed to be ceding its ‘share of lung’ to a slew of newer tobacco-free products like vapes and ZYN pouches. But as indie sleaze creeps back into our cultural lexicon and the debauchery of the Roaring Twenties threatens to materialise, we’re seeing smoking in a new light. One brand in particular is cashing in on it. Hestia spotlights smoking’s cultural cachet by connecting smoking to respected tradition and cultural heritage, all with an irreverent twist.

Code 1: Time-Honoured Americanness

Hestia Tobacco positions smoking as an integral part of Americanness. Visuals call upon iconoclasts of American culture – Superman, Abraham Lincoln – which tether the brand to an established vision of Americanness, instantiating it as part of the nation’s ethos. The brand consistently foregrounds the phrase ‘American Farmer Grown’, which roots the product in the land itself. Hestia’s website features quotes from famed American figures from Lana Del Rey to Abe Lincoln – “so we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies / and we walked off to look for America”. The linguistic work quotes such as this one from Paul Simon does is to code smoking as intrinsic to the American spirit, conjuring a specific image of vintage Americana by recalling the language and imagery of storied eras of the nation’s history. This is similarly reinforced by visuals depicting blue jeans, symbolic of the American ideals of hard work and freedom.

By capitalizing on semiotic cues of classic American-ness, Hestia presents their product as a natural – if not integral part of their cultural identity.  

Code 2: Ancient Ritual

Hestia also draw on folklore and tradition to position themselves as the protectors of the true American legacy: “Tobacco is indigenous to the Americas, and has been a part of the history and culture of this land since the dawn of time”. Intertwining tobacco with America’s own origin story draws on ancient ritual and ideas of heritage to convey respect – even reverence – for Hestia’s product. The name Hestia derives from the Greek goddess of the hearth – this evokes the heart of the home, a site intimately connected to ideas of ritual, tradition, custom. The brand’s signature orange tones are earthy, warm and natural – a far cry from to the artificial, overbright shades we associate with vapes. They’re leaning into naturalness, ancient custom and the idea that tobacco is inextricable from the earth itself, attuned to nature’s seasons and processes. As Hestia themselves declare – “Hestia cigarettes are ritual and tradition in your hand”.

Foregrounding the tobacco plants and their raw, ‘naked’, ‘wild’ nature forges a primordial connection to the land itself, effectively doubling down on the ancestral practices underscoring Hestia’s product.  

Code 3: Irreverent Craft

Hestia positions itself as a scrappy challenger to Big Tobacco by doubling down on ideas of craft and artisanship. Paradoxically, one of the ways they do this is by using the visual language of a political campaign – a not-so-subtle nod to the politically charged cult of Big Tobacco. The brand’s visuals lean heavily on the imagery associated with political campaigns – badges and banners bear slogans like ‘Smoke Hestia 2024’ and ‘God Hates Vapes’. Hestia also foreground their deep understanding of the cultivation of tobacco, from crop to cig, ‘from seed to smoke’: “to have the knowledge to plant, prune, harvest and cure tobacco remains an art form passed down through generations”.

Constructing their product as an ‘art form’ invokes the idea of craft, positioning Hestia as artisanal, undeniably of nature, far from the mass-produced essence of Big Tobacco.

Conclusion

Hestia is breaking the mould of tobacco brands, evoking its cigarettes as natural, artisanal and intrinsic to American identity. Smoking Hestia tobacco is positioned as an ancient – almost sacrosanct – ritual, carefully crafted and infused with heritage. Hestia’s semiotics do important work in lessening the harmful, taboo aspects of smoking and grounding it in nature, tradition and – above all – storied Americanness.

If you’d like to learn more about how we use semiotics to reach real cultural insights, get in touch at: hello@crowdDNA.com 

Our editorial insight series, Club Free, meets people who don’t fit neatly into segmentation tick-boxes. Here Global Managing Director El Pigram gives some tactics for brands to meet them outside of these…  

Club Free Issue One, download it here. 

At Crowd, we believe that change presents opportunity.   

Our latest editorial insights series, Club Free, is about groups seeking a new way of thinking about their individual liberty. It’s not freedom that’s unchecked or selfish: we talked to people who are providing each other with the support, empathy and community to exercise their freedom effectively.   

In chapter two: The Financial Outsiders, we heard from a community-minded group living and giving outside of elitist money systems. 

Subverting Status.  
As chasing down those traditional milestones of (ultra) wealth become less ‘shiny’, how do we think about new articulations of (and ways to cater to) age old social identity needs like ’status’, ‘reward’ and ‘discernment’? It’s not that this audience aren’t seeking all the good stuff that once came with splashing cash – self-gratification, community validation, recognition – but instead they’re more choiceful in how they fulfil these desires, with the act of giving (rather than receiving) hitting that sweet spot. 

Values over value. 
You can’t put a price on happiness. Cliche, and a bit (to use a Gen Z word) ‘cringe’ – but for many this rings true more today than ever before. Rather than play by the rules of a game that’s rigged against them, young people are forging their own way of earning (figurative) wealth – by doubling down and focusing on their values, rather than their earning potential. It’s not that they don’t value work, they just don’t see work as a fair value exchange. Which poses an interesting question to us as marketers, strategists, employers – how do you define, create and communicate real ‘value’ to an audience who interprets it in a fundamentally different way? 

(More) Radical Honesty.
Radical honesty has been a thing for a while. Honest brands that ‘say it how it is’ connect with an iconically millennial sensibility (I’m looking at you, Ryanair, KFC & Pot Noodle ). Emerging audiences are however encouraging us to move a step further, from saying the unsaid – to doing the unexpected; supporting people and communities in ways that genuinely benefit them. What our Financial Outsiders are calling for isn’t about CSR, it’s about putting an end to gatekeeping that upholds the imbalance between the haves & have nots through creating spaces and cultivating (branded) communities that facilitate the greatest kind of wealth distribution – knowledge. 

Learning about The Financial Outsiders is part of our commitment to look at (and be inspired by) groups of people who don’t fit neatly into tick-boxes, well trodden segmentations or traditional pathways.      

We hope you find these stories interesting. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.   

Club Free Issue One, download it here. 

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, how amplifying tailoring is (finally) giving exclusive fashions for all…

Tell me more…  With actor/ seamstress now a popular hyphenate career (see Joe Ando, 2.5m followers), WWD declaring Tailoring as the Fall 2024 trend, and #SewingTikTok on 7.4 billion views to date, it’s clear that tailoring is getting even more attention than a disappointing Shien haul.  

Not surprising, it’s the perfect fit for our times… It’s bespoke, sustainable and the process of making it produces great online content. Tailors, dressmakers and designers gain countless followers by sharing the step-by-step processes behind their creations. When @er.embroidery (185.5K followers) embroidered a moon and stars over a mushroom on TikTok, it was viewed nine million times. Custom-fit clothes have gone from being just an option for the richest shopper to one available to all – whether that’s doing it yourself or finding a reasonably priced seamstress.  

So, it’s democratising fashion? Yes, by showing that fashion simply requires patience, and anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. It’s not as complicated as the couture runways make it look. 

Meanwhile, upcycling… is not a lifestyle, it’s a necessity, right. Of course, the statistics on waste and carbon emissions from textile production are horrifying – there’s no excuse not to take an alternative seriously. 

So big fast fashion brands are out, where is in? Made to measure fashion brands are booming online in Vietnam. Hashtags such as #Vietnamfashion and #Vietnamesefashion on Instagram and TikTok have amassed tens of thousands of gushing posts and millions of likes, in contrast to the growing disenchantment with Chinese fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu.  

And it’s gone corporate… The Singapore National Heritage Board recently launched Recustom, a fashion brand aiming to revive the country’s tailoring community with designs not available off-the-shelf. Instead, customers must visit local tailors to recreate the looks using provided design blueprints and their own pre-loved garments as raw material.  

But it’s also still punk… You only need to look at Melisa Minca’s upcycled suits emblazoned with sarcastic and disruptive motifs (definitely NSFW) to see this… 

TL; DR: Forget the disappointment of What I Ordered v What I Got and embrace the opportunity to instead get exactly what you want – tailoring offers fast fashion, done your way.   

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, Crowd’s Olivia Anderson on how literature is taking luxury by storm… 

Tell me more. Picture the scene: you’re bored of performatively reading Sylvia Plath at Jolene cafe. You want to take your carefully cultivated Reader Aesthetic to the next level, but you aren’t sure how. Enter luxury fashion houses. 

Word on the street is ‘book girl summer’ … It’s so much more than that. Literature is becoming a lifestyle, and one that is distinctly aspirational. Valentino really got the ball rolling with their SS24 collection using Hanya Yanagihara’s acclaimed novel A Little Life as a conduit to explore new meanings and expressions of masculinity. And Thom Browne’s NYFW show in February of this year drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, because goths are important too. 

So it’s the luxury version of dressing up for World Book Day? It goes a little deeper than that. Miu Miu’s Summer Reads initiative sees the brand gifting copies of seminal novels – all written by women – to visitors at pop-up locations around the world. Maison Valentino even sponsored the Man Booker Prize this year. Chanel’s 7L bookstore in Paris is now host to an arts programme designed to cultivate creativity and foster appreciation of the arts. While Aesop is getting in on the action too with its Women’s Libraries, using A Tale of Two Cities as the theme of its Women’s Day activations in China and dedicating its stores to novels written by or foregrounding women. Brands are using literature as a vehicle for something deeper than dress-up.  

It’s all very Dead Poets Society. It’s not just for the Dark Academics amongst us – Audi recently released Handbook Novels, where they partnered with up-and-coming authors in Spain to write novellas featuring key words from the cars’ instruction manuals in a bid to get people to actually read their instruction manuals. 

Rise up, English teachers. Pretty much. In the same way that luxury brands like Burberry and LVMH started producing PPE and hand sanitiser during COVID, we’re seeing this reverence of literature bubble up at a time when creativity is under threat, when “truth” is no longer an absolute, when the maelstrom of the online world makes it hard to distinguish signals from noise. It makes sense that brands are turning back to what feels time-honoured, certain and lasting – what culture writer Nadja Sayej calls “the timeless wisdom that can be sought if we put down our phones”. And fashion and literature are natural bedfellows – it’s all about cultural commentary and storytelling, be it pen and paper or needle and thread. 

Wicked smart. The message is clear: literature is a still point in a turning world, and one that is being called on now more than ever. Close enough to describe our realities, far enough removed to allow us to examine them through the trusted lens of cultural artefacts that have stood the test of time. 

TL;DR: literature is hot vital. Brands looking to cultivate credibility and foster ideas should lean on literature – particularly the certainty that the classics offer – as a north star and a source of inspiration in a world freighted with opposing cultural forces. 

Tech can feel like it’s replacing us. Crowd’s Zoe Papakonstantino looks at how one phone brand signals wanting to enhance humanity instead… 

From AI chatbots that can simulate meaningful relationships, to algorithms that know our taste better than we do, technology is fast reshaping roles previously reserved for humans.  But not all technology aims to replicate what’s human…  

Instead, emergently in consumer tech there are products that aim to redefine the relationship between human and tech; to assail fears of being replaced through signalling that they can give us more agency to enhance our abilities and experiences. In short? To make tech less out-source, more resource.  

One such brand is Nothing, confidently taking an elusive and non-descript name, cueing a lack of form or emptiness. It requires us (the humans) to give it meaning. Here we look at semiotic queues – how Nothing looks, what it says – to analyse how Nothing takes up a position in this shift to a more collaborative and empathetic relationship between humans and their technology. 

Code 1: Extraordinary Transparency  

Cutting-edge tech is an exciting part of Nothings’ product proposition, but by establishing transparency and humanity in its branding, its users feel familiarity (not fear or intimidation) towards it. 

We see images of animals holding up Nothing products, and this suggests worship and positions it as a powerful resource yet still part of nature. On an even friendlier note, technical diagrams – like blueprints or instruction manuals – suggests the brand wants you to develop an in-depth understanding of its products. Meanwhile, revealing people (and animals) beneath translucent packaging symbolises transparency, signalling that consumers’ participation is key to unlocking the power of Nothing’s tech. This provides a sense of reassurance or comfort, coding Nothing again as tech that should be familiar to its user. 

These semiotic cues of power and transparency combine to present Nothing as a powerful tool with beyond-human capabilities. 

Code 2: Curious Discovery 

In redirecting its innovation away from power and dominance, to one of curious discovery, Nothing communicates that its powerful products are built to enhance, rather than replace human experience. 

Nothing signals this by blurring the lines between human and mechanical. We see this in the suggestions of a cyborg-like relationship between the tech and human: a person in white and turquoise dress, calling doctors to mind, while stark white lighting feels sterile and scientific. Phone cameras held over the eye position the device as an extension of the senses – and resembles looking through a magnifying glass, evoking curiosity or discovery.  

Words and images codes this product as fun and intuitive: “play date”; “bringing joy back into the everyday”; and the fish-eye lens and exaggerated expressions adds a self-aware silliness to editorial visuals. Nothing establishes a co-creative bond between living things and its technology by coding its products as tools for curious discovery. 

Code 3: Inclusive Nostalgia 

Tech as superior and exclusive (whether Tesla or the Tech Titans and their rockets) isn’t a good look right now, and Nothing clearly sets itself apart from this by coding its products as familiar, authentic, and inclusive.  

We see saturated, grainy visuals reminiscent of old film photographs and they evoke warm feelings of nostalgia, while thin serif fonts are quiet, unfussy and easy to read. This makes Nothing relatable, inclusive and accessible, especially when the campaigns feature diverse models. The Nothing products are intended for all.  

Meanwhile, there’s another clear line drawn between Nothing and dominant tech brands, who rely on conventionally masculine, dark, and impersonal visuals to create distance and establish power over the viewer. Instead, here are people with their backs turned to the camera or looking away, and with candid and unthreatening expressions. While images of doe-eyed individuals captured from above evoke a sense of innocence. Showing this vulnerability humanises the brand and shifts the power from brand to consumer. 

Conclusion 

All together, these semiotic signals of vulnerability, inclusivity, and authenticity code Nothing’s tech as human-first – and dare we say, even taking us back to a time when we felt optimistic about what tech can do for us (rather than fearful).  

Through visuals and language, Nothing portrays itself as a brand that is here to enhance the human experiences and bring us joy and fulfilment. They encourage us to form a new, human-centred relationship with tech by prioritising our needs for accessibility, collaboration, and curiosity. 

If you’d like to learn more about how we use semiotics to reach real cultural insights, get in touch at: hello@crowdDNA.com 

Our editorial insight series, Club Free, meets people who don’t fit neatly into segmentation tick-boxes. Here Global Managing Director El Pigram gives some tactics for brands to meet them outside of these… 

Club Free Issue One, download it here.

At Crowd, we believe that change presents opportunity.  

Our latest editorial insights series, Club Free, is about groups seeking a new way of thinking about their individual liberty. It’s not freedom that’s unchecked or selfish: we talked to people who are providing each other with the support, empathy and community to exercise their freedom effectively.  

In chapter one: The Poly-Normals, we heard from married couples, young daters, content creators and community spokespeople in the US and UK who by choosing to engage in multiple romantic relationships make room for more creativity, more sharing and more openness. 

1. Purposeful Pleasure.  

At the core of polyamory is a celebration of meaningful release; the idea that ‘letting go’ (of stereotype or expectation) doesn’t need to be a reckless act that compromises our values or the things we hold important.  

How can we create moments or new messages that lean into conscious, deliberate joy without the underbelly of guilt, shame or judgement that often comes hand in hand with prioritising our own enjoyment. 

2. Breaking the stalemate. 

Increased understanding of intersectionality, greater social recognition of non-binary identities and a growing community of people reimagining sex and relationships. These movements don’t exist in isolation – and all point to a need for less dualistic thinking. Culture is messy, people are messy and adopting a ‘this or that’ view on how people go about life is increasingly inaccurate (and unproductive).  

How can we reframe how we understand our audience, and how we craft our strategies to connect with people in ways that are less monolithic? 

3. Unzipping our assumptions 

Of course, not all relationships down the track will look like this. But it does suggest that there’s a growing schism between old and new ways of thinking. How can we help to challenge how we think about (and cater to) family and community? 

Learning about The Poly-Normals is part of our commitment to look at (and be inspired by) groups of people who don’t fit neatly into tick-boxes, well trodden segmentations or traditional pathways.     

We hope you find these stories interesting. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.  

Club Free Issue One, download it here.

Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, Crowd’s Olivia Anderson is looking at how Big Tech is wanting to stake a claim to our subconscious…

What’s all this then? Thanks to new technologies, we may soon be able to unlock the inner workings of our minds, and capitalise on our subconscious. We’re arriving at a new horizon, one that lights up the dimly-lit corners of our brains. And this will mean that cognitive liberty, ie the freedom to control our own thoughts, is set to become one of the most important topics of the next decade.

Sounds dystopian. That’s only because it is. 

Not sure if I like the sound of that. Big Tech doesn’t care. This is the final frontier for brands to stake a claim on. Did you know Apple quietly filed a patent for AirPods that monitor and track biosignals and brain activity last summer and start-up NextSense aims to sell earbuds that can collect heaps of neural data — and uncover the mysteries of grey matter for health benefits. Writing about Apple’s patent, tech expert Gautam Hazari described it as a big step in the so-called ‘Internet of Thoughts’, explaining: “The bio-sensing electrodes as on-ear EEG sensors built into the AirPods fit the generic, multipurpose device, opens the door for the IoTh to become a mainstream reality…”

But does anyone really care outside of Silicon Valley? Funny you should say that. You might have noticed that Ariana Grande’s new album and music video riffs off of the cult movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – a movie about memory-hacking – 20 years almost to the day after it first hit cinemas. And while brain-hacking, and memory-altering tech has often been part of our creative inspiration, the key difference now is that this technology may well have caught up with our imaginations.

That’s pretty meta. So I’ll be able to erase memories of my ex? Not exactly. But we could, for example, be able to induce lucid dreams. One product in development is The Halo, an AI headband that will use a combination of ultrasound and machine learning models to allow users to control their own dreams. “Together we will pursue the answers to life’s biggest questions,” it teases. If we can hack our subconscious, we could access a whole new level of human understanding. Already the practice of using lucid dreaming as therapy is becoming more accepted, with more patients open to learning how to disrupt their dreams to process debilitating symptoms.

What’s the down side? Well, this scenario pretty much is an advertiser’s dream (pun intended). Think of all that untapped real estate in your brain. Forget DTC – we’d be going DTS (direct-to-source). In fact, A24’s recent movie Dream Scenario shows us a world where this can happen. And you can imagine how that pans out. Not to mention the implications for productivity – why rest when you can be on 24/7, conscious or not? – and our ability to exercise autonomy over our own thoughts. 

Seems like a dodgy threshold to be crossing. It’s a double-edged sword, a Faustian dilemma of the modern world: would you trade understanding – and access to a higher level of consciousness – for your own cognitive liberty? 

TL;DR: Brands and Big Tech are starting to reckon with the potential of our subconscious and our dreams in a way that might be equal parts enlightening and sinister, and we’re seeing these ideas trickle down into mainstream culture. Sweet dreams™. 

Introducing Club Free – our new series to share the stories of people who in many ways represent freedom coming back on track…

Club Free Issue One, download it here.

A bold claim, but we’re going with it. We’re taking Freedom back – celebrating manifestations of it that are about community and shared responsibility rather than purely self-interest.

This editorial insights series will share the many positive and motivating stories emerging from people getting to live their lives just how they want to live them (and therefore more brands needing to move on from squeezing people into old fashioned little boxes).

Chapter One, The Poly-Normals & Chapter Two, The Financial Outsiders

First up in Club Free, issue one, The Poly-Normals and The Financial Outsiders. The former: a set of people changing sexual relationships for the better, for all; the latter: an equally community-minded group living and giving outside of elitist money systems. Brought together: clear signals of just how far and wide our Club Free adventures can take us.

We hope you find these stories interesting and inspiring. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges. 

Club Free Issue One, download it here.

Though this is issue one, we in fact trialled some freedom material in a rather good webinar last summer – you can download our Reframing Ageing APAC and Un-Dependents reports here and here.