Fake Outrage, Branding Fumbles and Real Money: The Business of Pretending Online

Fake Outrage, Branding Fumbles and Real Money: The Business of Pretending Online

From The Art of the Brand by Third Eye Insights

August 27, 2026 · 34 min

About this episode

The episode explores the blurred lines between real and manufactured experiences in branding and consumer culture.

This week's episode comes to you from Pacifico in Costa Rica, where we traded the studio for 30-degree weather, the Pacific Ocean, and a community that gave us a very different perspective on what makes an experience feel real. And fittingly, that's the thread running through this week's conversation: what's real, what's manufactured, and can consumers still tell the difference? We get into the Nantucket store that declared war on influencers, Nara Smith rejecting the "trad wife" label that helped define her online world, ChatGPT introducing advertising after positioning itself as an alternative to ad-driven search, and the Buffalo Bills risking one of the most authentic fan cultures in professional sports by trying to regulate it. On the episode: ● Why a Nantucket store put up a "No Influencers" sign, and what the backlash says about where influencer culture is heading. ● How Paige Lorenze and Dairy Boy turned Nantucket into a physical extension of an online brand world. ● Why Nara Smith saying "I'm not a trad wife" created such a reaction, and why sometimes the audience decides what your brand represents. ● Why ChatGPT introducing ads could change…

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Pacifico, Nantucket, ChatGPT, Buffalo Bills, Paige Lorenze, Dairy Boy

Places: Costa Rica

More episodes of The Art of the Brand

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Art of the Brand podcast page.