Hi Merchies,

I went to your startup networking event the other day and left Haunted by your AI companies ill-fitting and generic branded tank top. Your patagonia vest with a small company logo on the other side that looks like everyone else’s? Death warmed up. The drink bottle you gifted me also with a tote bag destined to live in *the drawer*? Grave mistake.

Don’t Ghost on people when it comes to having some truly memorable merch. Creep into their brain space, and rent-free Possess them. 👻

Yours in Great Merch 🙏

Gaz & Kayla

We’ve spoken a little bit about evil companies doing great merch (does anyone really need a missile manufacturer’s merch?) and it’s come back into the zeitgeist so I dug out my copy of Real Review 17 which I spent aproximately $60 Australian dollary doos on (exchange rate and shipping RIP) just to read The Office of Applied Strategy’s contribution article, Corporate Merchandise as Market Indicator.

OAS has also done staff uniforms as merch with a choice of hoodie, blazer, overcoat, or bomber jacket:

Here’s some choice quotes from their article:

This month, Palantir announced a merch pop up store in Seoul, South Korea. In SK, AI has largely been culturally embraced quite quickly and strongly. This is their second pop up in SK, and the first was so popular they’re asking people to register their attendance for a timed slot, not just show up.

Not only that, the theme of the pop up is “soverign AI” and they have matching merch:

See some more of the designs in this Reel.

Without getting too much into the ethics and scandals of Palantir, the oddity in this for me is that this is a B2B and B2government organisation that sells data analytics, so why and how has it become so popular amongst regular consumers in SK?

One potential answer is that buying stocks (including US tech stocks) is also very common and popular in SK, and consumers are buying the merch because they associate Palantir with personal wealth gains rather than whatever else the company is doing.

When a questionable company is trying to buy cultural currency we really need to ask why. Other merch we highlight is used to welcome employees, attract customers, or build brand affinity.

Arguably, the Palantir merch has the same goals: Attract retail investors (customers), build positive brand sentiment, and show government customers that they’re a reputable brand to sign a contract with.

Yet when these tactics are applied to industries like oil and gas, surveilance tech, weapons manufacturers, and other undesireable companies, the larger aim is to reduce scruitiny on those companies’ unsavourable practises. “Well, I like them, and I’m a good person, so they can’t be that bad” — they’re buying our cognitive dissonance.

Would you be willing to sell your moral compass for a $170 windbreaker with a company logo on it?

Maybe don’t, on this one.

We’ve been having this sort of ongoing discourse weaving through DRIP DROP of appreciating great company merch…but not necessarily of advocating for loud and in-your-face. Often, the most genius ones are for products that can be relatively subtle, with effective utility and deliciously boring simplicity.

Past DD contributor Steph Clarke DM’d me this genius blade-less box cutter posted by Rachel Ruggieri on LinkedIn, which also set off a quite intense discussion in the thread about whether you can take scissors on the plane, yet I’m more in the “how do I get this made for myself” frame of mind.

Which of course brings us to one of the more renowned merch items globally - the Granola Spoon - produced by a company named after a cereal, who do AI notetaking and invade your IG ads if you dare click on their site, but who’ve come up with a very simple, very obvious, but much cherished merch item that proves that often the simplest ideas and execution can be the absolute best.

I actually also assumed we had already written about the Granola Spoon, but we hadn’t, so publishing that finally before a few lazy days ahead of holidays for Australians feels apt. I’m posting it, because it feels right to do so if you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re in a minimal frame of mind.

Embrace minimalism. Embrace utility. Embrace not making merch that people are going to throw in a drawer or a bin. Embrace great design. Embrace something that might be a physical product that sits on the desk and is used every once in a while, but is used nonetheless. Did you know that up to $1.9 billion a year is wasted on unused gift cards? Now ya do.