The Cargo Cults of DTC
Disclosure: this post includes affiliate links for my cult
You are not your business. Your business is not your tech stack. Your business is not listening to podcasts, reading newsletters, or listening to 10% of an audible book about Shoe Dogs.
But it could be. It could even be lucrative.
You could start a regional DTC cargo cult chapter and broadcast your app stacks, favorite followers, and unboxing experiences while working your way through the sponsored dinner circuit. You could earn passive income. You could gain thousands of followers. They could share your affiliate links. You could quote tweet their threads with affiliate links at the end. They could sponsor your thing. You could speak at their thing. It could be good for you!
There's nothing wrong with it. It's not a cult cult. No one is getting hurt. There's no poison in the kool aid … just adaptogens and collagen from some cows that had it coming. It could be good for you?
Cargo cults are an evergreen internet article that makes people that benefited from colonialism feel smart. It's also this thing that happened on a few islands in the South Pacific after WW2. During the war cornfed Americans dropped out of the sky and set up airstrips while island hopping. The locals were impressed. The planes were shiny. The uniforms, while not Huge Boss, were still impressive. The canned food was not bad either. But then the Americans firebombed all of Japan, nuked it twice, and left.
The islanders were left behind. No more American cargo. No more planes. No more updates on the Brooklyn Dodgers. And as far as they know, professional sports are still racist. But they were hooked. Islanders would walk around saluting each other like troops. They would build war machines out of wood. And a few very charismatic locals created complete religious narratives around the future return of the white cornfed men. This was all basically done in the hopes that by acting like the Americans, the Americans would come back. Just like how white dads walk around Brooklyn with Brooklyn Dodgers hats. Or how people wear crosses to remind Jesus of the most painful experience of his life if/when he returns.
The US military never really returned. But some GIs went to college and had kids. And those kids went to college. And a few of them earned PhDs in anthropology and they returned as hippies with notebooks. That's how we know about them. The question is did they return because a couple generations of islanders built Gilligan's Island radios or was it because dudes on boats shared stories and the US spent the Cold War indexing the globe and using post-doc students and NGOs as fronts for intelligence gathering? No one knows.
We may never know. But the question is does the worshiping of tech stacks, apps, newsletters, podcasts, attribution models, mission statements, company values, reading lists, media events, dinner parties, panels, and swag from successful merchants create success for new merchants? No one knows. We may never know.
My 3 favs:
1.) App Stack Cult
This is a good one. You can't feel bad about joining this cult because it works? It's also the most lucrative. Everyone needs tech to run their store. And just like people: tech is fallible and lacks some very basic understanding of your needs. So you need apps. But what works for one org doesn't always work for the next. 80% of the known world is powered by Excel... but for some reason a 7 SKU store needs 40 apps. Always be careful of contracts, always protect your time when it comes to demos, and always understand that if someone is promoting an app... they're probably getting paid to do so. Again, this is lucrative!
2.) Yoga Stack Cult
You sell widgets. You need operations. You need marketing to get people pumped about those widgets. But does your business have a soul? Are you attracting employees with integrity? Do the grown adults on your Slack lack enough of a spiritual practice that they will adopt a dozen edicts that you and your business coach workshopped? This cult is much smaller than the App Stack Cult. It's a tough racket to break into without significant success. But that does not stop anybody. It's a mix of people who post on LinkedIn, books that live in airports, podcasts that never chart, and text that gets copy and pasted into job descriptions. It's also a great opportunity for lightly skilled leaders to do an artificial leadership performance. At some point your team might realize they joined a venture backed dropshipper. But … by bringing some tablets down from the mountain you can save them/your company/yourself from a future Business Insider hit piece.
3.) Substack ... Stack Cult
The greatest advantage any startup has is that their leadership is constrained by the same amount of time as every mature player in the field. Maybe. I have no idea how time works. But an Instagram post once said that just like you, Beyonce has 24 hours in the day. This cult eats those hours like free hors d’oeuvres at a post work panel. It will also ask you to like and subscribe to the other cults. This cult will send you an email in the middle of your team delivering feedback from the factory. This cult will ask you to guest on a pod when you don't have time for that new recruit. This cult will buy you free drinks with your own money. But if you're mentioned in this cult it will feel nice. It could be good for you. It could be good for your business. You could be in this cult right now and not even know it. How bad could it be? For example: very successful and good looking people read this newsletter, dine together, and travel every other week to the same conferences.
So yeah…
NASA and one rather scaly politician is famous for the phrase: there are known knowns ... and also unknown unknowns. The cargo cults exist in the middle. Where the what is known but the why is unknown. Maybe an app is transformative. Maybe the person tweeting about it has advisor shares. Maybe your business needs 14 “core” values. Maybe it needs one hit product.
One of my favorite personal experiences with a known unknown is a client that regularly spends a king's ransom on sponsorships and events. Their brand wraps every visible inch of some of the most fun events on earth. And from the outside, it would appear that their success is somewhat linked to this practice. And their data and sales teams have decks with footnotes to prove it. And it makes sense because you can see it. But the reality is they need to grease retailers and distributors to grow and maintain distribution. And those retailers and distributors have kids. And those kids want passes to cool events so they can make social media content. And sponsors get those passes.