The Real Gossip Girl
Brands are starting to launch personality-driven Substacks.
Good morning everyone.
On Sunday evening, I was sitting on the floor of my friend’s apartment in a room full of 20 people watching the Super Bowl. I was scrolling on the Substack app to check in on Feed Me’s chat, when I noticed a new newsletter on my feed called
. The first line of the letter reads, “You don’t know me, but I’m pretty sure I know you.”It took me a minute to figure out if it was an anonymous newsletter that someone was writing about luxury resale site The RealReal, or if it was a newsletter from The RealReal’s marketing team. It’s the latter.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this project. I think The RealReal is in the right place at the right time, mostly because their product is confusing to use! Between the awful mannequins, niche search terms, watchlists, and often-faulty filters, I don’t believe any two people have the same experience shopping on their site. Because of that, a service-y, “secret tricks” type of newsletter might be just what they need to boost perception and add new users — the product selection is unmatched once you find the right pieces. Plus, there’s a massive cohort of die-hard The RealReal fans (which you’ll see in the interview below are described as “power users,” a product manager term).
After thinking about it for a few days, I have two gut reactions I have to The RealReal joining Substack:
We will see more brands trying out Substack this year. If a marketing team thinks they can bring their Klaviyo strategy to Substack and see better results, I’m not sure they will be correct. There are a few brands who have done quite well on Substack (restaurant loyalty platform Blackbird comes to mind with over 10k readers), but clear, consistent strategy is so important. Here are some free ideas: Celsius should start a newsletter about the daily routines of busy people with normal jobs; Bravo should do a chat-focused newsletter where every week a different housewife hosts a conversation about a recent episode; Home Depot should have a hot, young farmer from the midwest host a weekly show about basic DIY skills. And whoever is running your Substack extension better be paid well.
A lot of people are thinking about shopping as a hobby. The way the interview below discusses shopping on The Real Real (“Like great gardeners and cooks, there are common wisdoms most (but not all) agree on, there are different schools of thought and there are crazy original hacks that transform your results when they are shared.”) is WILD. Yes, there is skill involved in navigating The Real Real and other second-hand sites, but at some point I need to wonder what your credit card statements look like.
I spoke to Kristen Naiman, The Real Real’s Chief Creative Officer about why they decided to join Substack, the strategy behind the Gossip Girl-esque author of their newsletter, and what role their community (power users) will play in The Real Girl.