O.A. Book Club – Building Digitally Enabled Modern Brands with Dan Frommer of The New Consumer

“That's the lesson here: the businesses that figure out how to use technology to the best of their abilities are the ones that are going to be stronger and more resilient, no matter what happens.” – Dan Frommer

Dan Frommer (@fromedome) is Founder and Editor in Chief of The New Consumer, a publication about how and why people spend their money. Dan has written for Forbes, The Atlantic and Recode from Vox Media, and he helped create Business Insider as its second team member. Dan’s Consumer Trends Report in collaboration with Coefficient Capital is a fascinating look into recent spending trends.

To listen to Dan’s bonus interview and learn more about his daily habits and routines, click here.

For more, explore the transcript of this episode.

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Chapters in Part 1 of this interview:

Dan’s background in journalism and technology, and how it led to The New Consumer
What technology can unlock for brands
Who is the modern consumer?
How legacy brands fail to serve the consumer, and authenticity at scale
How Target and other big brands have kept up with the modern consumer
How small and direct-to-consumer brands can grow in today’s market
On sweetgreen’s success and branding
Why brands must embrace digital experiences to move forward
The Consumer Trends Report with Coefficient Capital

Links from Part 1

Key Takeaway

Dan’s research has shown that in order to woo and appease the modern consumer, brands must be digitally-enabled and keep up with tech trends.

It's not that every company has to create a new technology in order to be technology-enabled, but basically every business—especially as we learned over the last year and a half with the pandemic—every business should be technology-enabled to some degree, and it unlocks so many different opportunities, whether it's growth, speed, breadth of growth, or just a deeper connection with your customer. All of these things are possible because of technology.

There used to be this idea that the oldest brand was the most trustworthy because they've existed for this long. Their product must work. It must be good. But to me, that doesn't really fly anymore, because developments in science and tech say the company that has been formed most recently should actually be the one using the newest and best stuff. I think consumers are much more interested in and willing to trust new brands than they ever were before.

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