So the challenge is to continue to maintain our equity but to create a sense of surprise around it as well.

My feeling is that there is an architecture of cultural meanings and social rules in place that governs whether our actions will be effective in any way. The more completely you understand those cultural meanings and social rules, the better you can craft a provocation, and the more likely that provocation is to have some kind of structural effect.

That then requires some curiosity and inquisitiveness on the part of the consumer, which leads them to explore. And that’s when the brand becomes really endearing to them.

the quest for fame has become as much of an obsession as the fame itself.

I think the only requirement of a symbol is that it have substance underneath: The first thing to do is to try to establish the substance. The style comes after the substance. Only then can the style help the substance, and vice versa. It’s a mutually reinforcing program.

A brand is something you have an unexplained, emotional connection to. A brand gives you a sense of familiarity.

We see these transactions as part of our own identity, but they’re really not tied into a deeper, more intimate group identity. A brand that does this successfully is Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson is a great brand because people actually connect with and through it. If

Culture is just so fantastically conducive to innovation.

different levels of social integration—in other words, the intimacy and scale of human organization and interaction—have different aesthetic values.