In a lively session at Hemingway’s led by Leigh Lavery, general manager of The Growth Distillery at News Australia, strategist and creative minds gathered at to unpack what happens when brands stop selling products and start feeding passions?
Lavery was joined by a panel that included, Kim Anderson, who led marketing for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and now runs her own independent consultancy, Tully Walter, futurist, trend forecaster, and consumer expert and Mike Wilson, the chairman of Hatched Media.
“A lot of speakers have talked about attention this week, but attention is fleeting. Fandom is something that really has to be earned. The most successful brands out there right now are all brands that have created relevance and passion in entirely new audiences,” opened Anderson.
The session explored the intersection of growth mindset, creativity, and brand fandom, making the case that passion isn’t a soft metric but a serious growth driver. For individuals, passion builds resilience, mastery, and community. For brands the rewards are deeper attention, stronger loyalty, and lasting effectiveness.
“Twenty per cent of Australians have weekly face to face contact with friends or family outside of their own home, and that’s down by nearly 20 per cent from 2019. In less than a decade, we’re seeing each other less,” added Walter
“Sixty-one per cent of self-described fans feel connected to each other, compared to 37 per cent of non-fans. Shared passion is the driving force for social connection. To be a fan is actually to be part of a community.”
The conversation challenged the audience to rethink what connection actually looks like. It’s not enough to show up in the right channels, brands need to align with what people care about.
“If you understand why it works, then you can do it sincerely, not in a tokenistic way. Because I think a lot of brands activate passion tokenistically, they jump on it without understanding the mechanism underneath,” said Wilson.
The session made a persuasive argument: fandom, long dismissed as niche or unpredictable, is becoming one of the most potent forces in brand strategy. The brands that earn a place inside someone’s passion aren’t relevant but irreplaceable.
“This goes back to Damasio’s somatic marker theory. Damasio was a neuroscientist studying how and why people make decisions. A somatic marker in our language is what we’d call a gut feel, that instinctive feeling you get when you connect to something you care about. A fan putting on their team shirt. A Swiftie with merch. That creates a physical imprint,” added Wilson.
“And that imprint is something you can replicate through the leverage of passion. You cannot do that through product benefits. Talking about why a trainer has a thicker sole does not stay embedded in hearts and minds the same way passions do.”
For anyone navigating growth in a changing media landscape, the takeaway was clear. Chase the passion, not just the purchase.
