Nothing appoints first brand chief to position itself in popular culture

Consumer tech brand Nothing has tapped up Loewe’s Charlie Smith as its first chief brand officer, tasked with building its presence in popular culture and powering its next stage of growth.

Smith, who spent seven years as CMO at the luxury fashion house, building Loewe from a little-known challenger to a near billion-dollar business, sees comparisons between the two when it comes to untapped potential.

“As a modern cultural brand, it’s about really behaving like a publisher yourself,” he tells Marketing Week. “What I built at Loewe was this idea of a brand behaving like a magazine. To do two shoots a week, creating different content for Instagram versus TikTok, for the website and ecommerce. It wasn’t just offline advertising campaigns. It was building a brand world.”

For a luxury fashion house, this was something of an unusual approach, the old ways positioned luxury as something that should feel almost untouchable, a little out of reach, whereas Smith prioritised building a community that was “open” and something fans could “interact with” comfortably. He wants to do a similar job at Nothing when he joins the business in January.

“I feel like Nothing has the same opportunity,” he says. “Compare Apple’s stance, which is very closed and standoffish, whereas Nothing’s really letting that community in, which to me, feels inherently more modern and fun.”

It’s also about connecting to culture in an authentic way. Smith recalls how, historically, many luxury brands avoided doing much storytelling, preferring to speak a little around the origin of the brands and the “savoir faire” and that was “pretty much it”. But with Loewe, he saw the opportunity to connect with art, music and film and to become “part of that community” and tell interesting stories off the back of it.

“There’s huge potential with Nothing to connect to the world of music in an authentic way. But also to the world of fashion, film, art and design,” says Smith. “ Nothing should be positioning itself as the tech company for the next generation of creatives.”

Category challenges

The smartphone category, though, is notoriously hard to break into. Despite Nothing turning over $500m in annual revenue in its most recent results, this equates to just a 1% share in a market where major players like Apple and Samsung dominate. Smith, though, believes the time is right for a new challenger to appeal to a younger audience.

“Apple is almost inherently uncool now because it’s the brand that your parents have,” he says. “There’s a real opportunity to be this creative, rebellious upstart, where this new generation feel like Nothing is the brand for them, more than these legacy brands that have been around for ages.”

Certainly the brand stands out in a unique way. From its brand name to its stripped-back product names (Phone 1, Phone 2 etc.) to its unique design that bucks the trend of smartphones that look increasingly similar. Smith dubs it a “quirkiness” that helps it stand out and gives it some “personality” and will appeal to the “next generation of creatives”.

“I really believe in the concept of show don’t tell in marketing. Something that also plays on the simplicity of the brand,” says Smith. “The focus is on going to be getting across what Nothing stands for, which is this idea of challenging the status quo and becoming the most loved tech brand for the next generation of creatives.”

Meet the brand ripping up the tech marketing playbookThere’s a trump card for the brand, too, in the shape of CEO and co-founder Carl Pei who has already made his mark on the consumer tech world with OnePlus – and whose presence was a big sell in convincing Smith to join the company.

“He has a very clear vision for what he wants Nothing to be, and he’s also incredibly ambitious,” he explains. “Those two things combined really make him very exciting to work with.”

OnePlus eventually stalled in its quest to truly threaten the Apple and Samsung order of things, but there’s an expectation that Nothing can go one step further. Smith acknowledges that what Pei achieved in taking a Chinese company and “establishing it internationally” in such a competitive market was “really remarkable” but it undeniably was still strongest in Asia. Nothing has more global aspirations.

“Nothing is a British brand and it’s headquartered in London. So, there has to be a focus on building the brand in the UK and really establishing it as a British brand,” he says. “It also has a stronger point of view in terms of design and brand personality, which I think we can really harness in order to connect with this young generation around the world.”

The obligatory AI section

Then, of course, there’s the AI of it all. Few would deny that there has been somewhat of a performance plateau when it comes to most consumer tech in recent years.

Cameras have become much of a muchness, most UIs do a similar thing and there’s been little to differentiate one model from the next. AI – for all the hype and bluster – is as much as anything a product feature that many tech companies desperately needed and one that Smith is keen to leverage.

“Seeing all of the advances that are happening in AI, it’s really exciting to imagine what the future is going to look like for consumer tech,” explains Smith. “Phones, in particular, have been stuck in this app-based world since inception of the iPhone. With AI, though, there’s definitely going to be a move, I think, initially, towards app personalisation, and then even potentially to a post-app world where it’s like a digital assistant led device.”

Smith certainly doesn’t believe AI is going to be a fad, as with the Metaverse, or have limited reach and scope, like virtual reality and NFTs. He is adamant it will be as “transformative to society as electricity or the internet” and part of the reason for him joining Nothing was to be part of it.

Starling Bank’s first CMO on tapping into popular culture to become ‘people’s favourite bank’He also sees the potential for marketing – and far from being fearful of the changes it will bring – he sees it as an opportunity for creativity to become a true differentiator once more.

“I’m already seeing a massive shift back towards brand marketing. For a few years, everyone got really excited about data and perfecting the lower funnel and increasing efficiency, which is great, obviously, but you can’t do that at the expense of brand marketing,” he says. “If you want to build and grow a brand and connect it to people’s hearts, the only way to do that is through exciting, disruptive, entertaining creative content.”

That old adage that marketing is both art and science is starting to equalise back out after swinging too far in the data direction in the past decade, he believes, something he plans to exploit to build Nothing’s all-important brand awareness.

“Nothing’s big focus for the next couple of years is going to be on building brand awareness, obviously you need to have the bottom of the funnel in place to catch the fish, but the key thing has got to be getting that visibility out there in as imaginative a way as we possibly can,” he concludes.