You might consider the products of Youtube stars like MrBeast and Logan Paul are thinking about Feastables snacks and Prime energy drinks, respectively. But venture capitalist billionaire Marc Andreessen takes another view: They represent the future of consumer-product relationships.
The reason why Coca-ColaKraft Mac & Cheese and their ilk exist, he recently argued, “because of the media of the era in which these brands were created.”
Andreessen explained his reasoning this week on The Ben & Marc showa podcast he hosts with Ben Horowitz, co-founder of venture capital firm a16z, aka Andreessen Horowitz.
He cited other notable brands run by non-YouTube celebrities, including George Clooney. Casamigos Tequila and Kim Kardashian’s Skims shapewear, which she wears transformed into a $4 billion company.
“The historical way of looking at it, I think, would be that these are gimmicks,” Andreessen said. “Someone’s fans are going to buy what they recommend for a while,” but “most consumer markets aren’t.”
These are conglomerates like UnileverKraft Foods and Procter & Gamble which provide the consumer products that shoppers typically encounter.
But a “more aggressive argument that could be made – and this is kind of where I’m at – is maybe the influencer/creator branding, the individual branding kind of thing, that could be the future of consumer products in general,” Andreessen said.
In the age of mass media, he continued, companies built their brands primarily through television commercials, in which “all it took was one shot to establish Coca-Cola, or whatever.” There were celebrities at the time, but they weren’t at the forefront of that effort because you were just trying to get the basic message of the product across, for the most part.
But that led to an “unnatural setup,” he said, in which individual consumers had a relationship with a brand or company rather than a person. “If that’s all I can have, then okay, fine, but really, is it my emotional affinity? Is this how I’m going to deal with things?
On the other hand, he said, his young son loves MrBeast, a role model for him and millions of other children. One could argue that it’s still not a real relationship since it’s not two-way, but “it’s a relationship with one person,” Andreessen noted.
“Maybe we are at the beginning of what is a monster wave,” he said, “and we will be sitting here in 20 years and it will turn out that this was basically the great transition, and at The future brands in fact will all be managed individually.
