Tyra Banks may have made an entrance in style at SXSW, but this was most certainly no catwalk appearance. Rolling onto the stage in a child-sized Mercedes-Benz, she declared an outright war on boring.
Speaking candidly with Uber’s head of advertising, Michael Levine, the global supermodel turned CEO turned ice cream mogul unpacked the business of being different, the art of emotional storytelling and why she’s completely okay with looking a little “crazy” to break through the clutter.
“Limitless Creativity Fuels Me”
Banks’ secret weapon has always been differentiation, from her modelling days to her latest venture, SMiZE & DREAM, an ice cream brand, with its flagship store in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, that fuses nostalgia with innovation.
“It’s about differentiation, not being like everyone else,” she said, explaining that her mission is to create products that feel both familiar and unexpected. Every tub of ice cream hides a “SMiZE surprise” – a truffle buried beneath the surface – a metaphor for digging deeper to find joy.
But Banks’ creative rebellion isn’t limited to flavours and hidden surprises. She’s obsessed with experience, transforming her stores into theatrical spaces where staff audition instead of interview and customers are drawn into mini-performances.
“I’m okay to look crazy, to break through the clutter,” she laughed.
“Different is better than better,” she explained, is a mantra she teaches her business students at Stanford and one she lives by, even when it lands her in headlines like “Has Tyra Lost Her Mind?” after debuting hot ice cream.
The viral launch, she admitted, raised eyebrows, and even DMs from The New York Times. But that, she said, is exactly the point. “If you try to sell to everybody, you sell to no one,” Banks said. “I love to tell stories. I love to be wacky. I love to be weird. Limitless creativity fuels me.”
For Banks, embracing risk is essential in the attention economy. It’s about making people feel something, whether awe, confusion, or curiosity, as long as it’s not indifference. “Some people are going to have a problem,” she said. “But they are not the people we are talking to”.
“Ice Cream Is My Mumma & Her Dreams”
At the emotional centre of SMiZE & DREAM is someone incredibly close to Bank’s heart, her mother – a single parent who worked three jobs to give Banks and her older brother the best life she could.
Banks recalled late nights bonding over ice cream in a white Honda Accord after her mother’s long shifts. “Ice cream for me is my mumma and her dreams,” she said tearfully.
That memory inspired the brand, but Banks didn’t realise quite how deep that connection ran until her fans responded to a viral clip of her mum crying in-store.
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“Your business is not what you say it is, it’s what the world says it is,” she said.
As the social media manager of the brand’s page, she admitted that sometimes the comments are hard to read – especially when you’ve put everything into a flavour, logo or store design but, she admitted that “when it hurts you a little bit, that’s when you have to listen. That’s where the change happens”.
With fans insisting that her Mum become more central to the business’s branding, she didn’t hesitate to pivot. “The world told me my business was my mum, so we’re changing the logo to her face”.
Proving Women Can Be Smart & Sexy: “Sit Down & Watch Me”
For all her fame, Banks didn’t sugarcoat what it’s like to walk into rooms where people still underestimate her. “There’s still going to be the assumption that it’s luck, that there’s a man behind this, that it just can’t be me,” she admitted. “That makes me push harder. I say, watch me. Sit down and watch me.”
As a woman who’s spent her whole life pushing against people who told her she can’t, the dismissal lit a fire underneath her. Banks spoke candidly about the gendered double standards that follow women, particularly women in business and entertainment.
“When I was transitioning from modelling to television hosting and then into being a business person, I was like, this whole sexy thing, this whole like, swimsuit girl and lingerie, she’s got to go, because y’all ain’t gonna take me seriously if I’m walking to my drawers on a runway”.
Eventually, she let that antiquated belief system go and is now leaning unapologetically into all areas of who she is. “The long hair is out and the boobs are up. You can be multi-dimensional, I don’t feel like I have to let that go anymore,” she said.
That conviction deepened when she enrolled at Harvard Business School. There, in her Owner/President Management program, surrounded by 180 students and just seven other women, she found herself once again the minority voice in a room full of powerful men. “We were eight women,” she recalled. “Eight. And we just looked around like, what is going on here?”
But rather than being discouraged, she turned that imbalance into motivation, with the instincts from her mother and the theory from Harvard, she became unstoppable.
Now based in Australia, Banks has made Sydney the flagship home of SMiZE & DREAM. Next stop? Perhaps a Melbourne expansion, or perhaps not – she half-joked that the thought “terrifies” her. Playing on Melbournian’s belief that everything down south is better, she joked, “When we get to Melbourne, it’s going to be perfect. And if no one likes it, it’s just because they’re haters”.
In true Banks fashion, she’s not slowing down. Next Wednesday, SMiZE & DREAM launches delivery exclusively with Uber Eats, complete with a special flavour and hidden green “SMiZE surprises” inside a handful of tubs for lucky fans.
