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The Cult Brand Whisperer Behind Casper, Allbirds, And Birchbox

In a competitive startup environment, Brooklyn-based creative agency Red Antler helps founders hone their brands at the earliest stages.

The Cult Brand Whisperer Behind Casper, Allbirds, And Birchbox

Red Antler’s founders (from left: Simon Endres, Emily Heyward, and JB Osborne) help startups build their identities from the ground up. [Photo: Andy Ryan]

BY Fast Company6 minute read

In 2013, the patent for finasteride, the active ingredient in male-pattern-baldness medication Propecia, expired. This might seem an unlikely development to send ripples across the nimble, young world of startups, but within a couple of years, a handful of entrepreneurs were zeroing in on hair loss as a zone ripe for disruption. Among them were Steven Gutentag and Demetri Karagas, ex-Google employees who were losing their own hair.

Finasteride was there for the taking, but it had deeply entrenched associations with a host of unsexy things: emasculation, aging, infomercials, and even the president of the United States. (Sample headline from the past year: “Why I Would Never Take Propecia, President Trump’s Hair Growth Drug.”) As Gutentag and Karagas set about launching Keeps, a subscription service with finasteride- and minoxidil-based products, they knew they would have to reframe hair loss as a normal, preventable issue for young men, rather than a shameful inevitability for the middle aged. They needed, says Gutentag, a brand “that would resonate and be approachable to the average guy.”

If Keeps had launched a decade ago, its founders might have had to solve these problems in-house–or through a traditional advertising campaign. Instead, they tapped Red Antler, an 85-person company with a hyperfluid set of capabilities that all fall under the umbrella of “branding agency.” Founded by JB Osborne, Emily Heyward, and Simon Endres–former advertising professionals with experience at agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and J. Walter Thompson–Red Antler helps entrepreneurs build identities for their nascent companies.

Though this sort of brand-first approach is becoming commonplace today, even into the mid-aughts the notion of brand was often an afterthought, something to be developed as a company grew. But as supply chains and venture capital have become more accessible, entrepreneurs have flooded into consumer goods. More competition means more companies needing a point of differentiation. “There used to be a much higher barrier to entry,” Heyward says. “Now there are at least three businesses in any category launching at the same time.” (Keeps rival Hims, for example, debuted in November.) Meanwhile, the rise of social media has multiplied the ways that brands are expected to interact with consumers: One potent and expensive billboard ad or TV commercial will no longer suffice.

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