Ravi Hampole
101 Great Minds on Music Brands and Behavior
Ravi Hampole, SVP, Global Brand Creative, lululemon
SVP, Global Brand Creative at lululemon, Ravi Hampole, believes that great storytelling creates great brands. A multidisciplinary brand and design leader, and a thoughtful creative with over 20 years of industry experience, he is also the CEO at Lyric™, where he defines and supports the company vision and end-to-end guest experience.
Prior to he is current roles, Ravi led the Global Brand Design Group for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, overseeing the positioning and creative development of all 10 of its lifestyle brands. Throughout his career, he has developed and reinvented other world-class brands, including W Hotels, Westin, Luxury Collection, Le Meridien, Aveeno, RoC, Cole Haan, and Jawbone.
Hampole holds a BFA in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University.
“The problem with this, in general, is that it's easy for the new generation to suss out when something's not real, so the framework has to be really good, really open, and authentic to the platform. That's a tough thing to do.”
— RAVI HAMPOLE, SVP, GLOBAL BRAND CREATIVE, LULULEMON
Uli Reese: What’s your background, and do you have any advice for others starting out?
Ravi Hampole: I grew up in Toronto. My father was the first East Indian plastic surgeon in Canada. That was in 1971. It's very odd for a person of my background to go into art, but I could draw at an early age. I went to Carnegie Mellon to study design. I realized there was a whole world of design called communications design. Things took off for me when I moved to New York. That's where I worked at Johnson & Johnson and then Starwood Hotels, where we crafted experiential brands. One piece of advice I would give is that there's never enough coffee you can have with other people. Even the job I have today came from a cup of coffee I had with David Rubin, who was then the CMO at Pinterest. That was in New York, and he was looking for someone to work with in San Francisco.
Reese: The world has changed; the industry has changed. What do you think about the creator economy?
Ravi: At Starwood, around 2015, we were already using creators to tell the story of the brand. There were ten brands and everyone, from the person taking the luggage to the person selling, had to know the elevator pitch of each, from the Westin to the W. That was critical because it could be passed off to creators. It was essential as we were handing over the reins to them. It’s the same thing with lululemon; we don't use Kim Kardashian or whoever to talk about the product; we’re a very local community. The stores feel a little bit different because there's a different group of people bringing that experience to life. Now what we're starting to understand is that people don't want to hear from the brand in terms of the brand telling you what to do; they want to hear from the community. This is a massive shift.
Reese: For Gen Z, standing next to the cool kid is not a one size fits all solution. Sonically, how do we show up authentically and in a way that is culturally flexible?
Ravi: This is the challenge. Every brief now is social first. A lot of the music and auditory work we do across our social channels is super difficult because I don't have a point of view on it, and it’s difficult to be consistent. Media is consumed in a different way on Instagram versus TikTok. Its purpose is completely different. Having something that's consistent doesn't actually make sense; it has to be appropriate to the medium, and finding ways to do that is challenging because the medium and the channel are in charge. It's almost overpowering. An example is trending sounds. How is the brand supposed to lead the charge in creating culture - which we've done in our communities, in the interaction and the experience that we have - when we're borrowing trends and just holding on to them and hoping we are being taken for the ride.
Reese: You’re borrowing credibility and hoping for a transfer from the trend to your brand, right?
Ravi: Right. It's difficult because you're trying to give creators the framework to build whatever they're building, but you also want to make it feel authentic.
The problem with this, in general, is that it's easy for the new generation to suss out when something's not real, so the framework has to be really good, really open, and authentic to the platform. That's a tough thing to do.
There are a lot of following trends, and what I'd rather be on top of is not following a trend but creating one - but that's a difficult thing to get to. Even when we talk about our campaigns, they should feel seamless and that it's all one consistent, powerful message but that it’s also appropriate for that channel and media. Right now, it's not. We still create the film that has an awesome track to it, but it doesn't translate over.
Reese: Exactly, there has to be that authenticity going into different experiences…
Ravi: BMW has something in the Metaverse, which is a meditation, which I thought was wild. It’s a completely 3D physical space that you can walk into and even purchase things, like an astronaut’s outfit. From a lululemon's standpoint, we're not there yet but what I do think is interesting is that you're creating a different world and using that channel appropriately so that everything is tied into that brand.
Reese: Lululemon is a definitive, iconic brand, but who are you sonically?
Ravi: This is a debate I constantly have. It happens in every campaign, every video, and every clip; what are we sonically? I don't know. When we look at ourselves from a visual standpoint, there are a few things that are true, and one is that we show humans they are in all of their joyous moments.
Reese: So, can you pinpoint your headache here, as this is common to all CMOs?
Ravi: I’ve tried to shift the soundscape, but it's a struggle because I'm not a musician. I don't have the words to describe the general beat, the melody, the tones, and all of those things. What I do know is that we're about the human experience, and when I heard the music in the beginning, I used to make fun of the team because I would call it the glitter gun. Every time we had a track, it was some awful techno. Nothing against techno, but I hated it there because we’re about the human experience, not fake joy. I wanted to hear real bands and real instruments. We got close when we did the 2021 FEEL campaign, which has a soundtrack composed by [Oscar -winner] Atticus Ross, and it got to a beautiful place. The story is about a giant who builds a wall around himself, who finally opens up to his emotions in the world, and the music carries you through that story. There's no glitter in it. It's very much lower-toned keys. From that, I started to see where we could go using real instruments. But could I tell you where to go tomorrow to recreate it? No, I couldn’t.
Reese: So if consistency is as key as the visual, how do you see the brand moving forward?
Ravi: When I was in hotels, it was fascinating because the first minute that you walk into a W or Westin, it’s highly crafted. In a Westin, there’s a white tea scent that hits immediately and has a calming effect. There’s a vertical garden, the lighting is set to a certain level, and they have a playlist, so you had this pass-through from the car to the hotel. If you do it consistently, there’s the same feeling but in different places. I have no idea what the sonic playground is for our stores, but the world of experiential brands is expanding, and it's so important to think about the brand from a full 360 experience. To me, that’s now a huge focus.
Note: The interview took place in Santa Monica, United States on the 5th of October 2022.
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