Join Sign Salad’s Emily and Isobel as they get beneath the surface of cultural phenomena, trends and brands. Covering a new topic in each episode, we’ll be revealing meanings and connections hidden in plain sight.

Eating caviar with your Pringles? Spooning Ottolenghi x Waitrose Miso Pesto onto your midweek pasta, or TikTok streaming your limited-edition Heinz x Absolut Vodka pasta sauce? Dressing your Minecraft buddy in the latest Burberry, or your Fortnite avatar in Balenciaga? If you are ever found doing any of these things, or have just read this list and thought: what do those words all mean together - then join Emily, Isobel and Freya this week as they make sense of the logic between some of the more weird and wonderful brand collaborations out there. We'll discuss what makes for potentially impactful collaborations, how they work, and why they continue to be so popular across categories.

We thank the good contributors to FreeSound for the following sounds used in this episode:

• Bit Forest Intro music by Bertsz -- https://freesound.org/s/545457/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join Sign Salad’s Emily and Isobel as they get beneath the surface of cultural phenomena, trends and brands. Covering a new topic in each episode, we’ll be revealing meanings and connections hidden in plain sight.

This week, Isobel and Emily are joined by their colleague at Sign Salad and fellow caffeine-enthusiast, Katrina Russell, to discuss one of the world’s most popular beverages: coffee. Coffee makes a powerful subject of cultural analysis – as a commodity with its own futures markets; as a specialist item produced with ever-evolving scientific and agricultural processes (we’re looking at you, thermoshock fermentation); and as a cultural artefact with an entangled history encompassing imperialism, colonialism, and global trade. For the sake of brevity, we focus specifically on specialty coffee in this episode, what it can teach us about emergent and emerging culture, and why it’s a useful subject for any brand, regardless of category, to look towards for inspiration.

Emily's Recipe for a McAffogato:

You will need:

• 1 medium vanilla milkshake (you can use large, but the flavour is less concentrated)
• 1 double espresso (you can use single if you want, but again, flavour)

Method:

Lift lid from vanilla milkshake, and pour espresso inside. Stir to taste, being careful not to allow the mixture to spill over the sides.

We thank the good contributors to FreeSound for the following sounds used in this episode:

• coffeeBeans_coffeeMachine.wav by Zabuhailo -- https://freesound.org/s/149466/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• grinding beans.wav by ToddBradley -- https://freesound.org/s/32913/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
• PLASTIC COFFEE BAG BEING HANDLED AND DROPPED, COFFEE BEANS DROPPING- CRACKLING SOUNDS AND DELICATE DROPPING SOUNDS OF COFFEE BEANS (OWI) .wav by Jessica190091 -- https://freesound.org/s/491306/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
• COFFEE espresso.wav by juskiddink -- https://freesound.org/s/67433/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• COFFEE pouring beans.wav by juskiddink -- https://freesound.org/s/67430/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• Bit Forest Intro music by Bertsz -- https://freesound.org/s/545457/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join Sign Salad’s Emily and Isobel as they get beneath the surface of cultural phenomena, trends and brands. Covering a new topic in each episode, we’ll be revealing meanings and connections hidden in plain sight.

Barbie has been discussed at length, but the fact that we can't stop talking about her (or the Barbie film) reveals so much about culture and brands. Following Barbie's 65th birthday, Emily and Isobel chart the changing cultural meanings of Barbie over time - from her original side-eye, to her increasingly diverse incarnations over time, and through multiple moral panics - arriving at what Barbie says about culture and brands now, and perhaps most importantly: what she reflects back at us about ourselves.

Read more of Isobel's thoughts on Barbie here: https://isobelgrad.com/thoughts-on-culture/2023/8/15/real-world-femininity-what-can-we-do-with-all-that-barbie-pink

Read about the upcoming major Barbie exhibition at London's Design Museum, 5 July 2024 — 23 February 2025: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/barbie-the-exhibition

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.