Feed Me's Emily Sundberg on How Fashion Underestimates Its Customers

Summary

About this episode

<p>Every weekday morning, a certain slice of New York opens the same e-mail. Lawyers, bankers, editors, restaurateurs: some of the city's most plugged-in people read Feed Me, the daily newsletter written by Emily Sundberg.</p><br /><p>In a few short years, Sundberg has turned a newsletter she started at her desk into one of the most talked-about new media publications in New York. She has built it herself, with a paywall from day one and no outside investors. Feed Me now includes contributing columnists, reader events, merchandise and a podcast.</p><br /><p>Her readers are exactly the people fashion brands are trying hardest to reach: smart, sceptical and very aware of how they are being marketed to. That makes Sundberg one of the sharpest outside observers of the industry today.</p><br /><p>&quot;I just never underestimate how clued in and informed my audience is, and I never want to speak down to them.&quot;</p><br /><p>Sundberg joins Amed to talk about building a media business on instinct, and capturing the attention of fashion's most sought after customers.</p><br /><p><strong>Key Insights:</strong></p><p><br /></p><ul><li><strong>Fashion's customers know exactly how they are being sold to: </strong>Sundberg notes that when a strong campaign lands on Instagram, the compliment is increasingly about the marketing itself. &quot;They're in on the bit. They know that they're being sold to,&quot; she says. She tells brands to stop recycling the same models and copy, and to assume every campaign will be &quot;dissected, potentially dunked on, on X or Substack or Instagram.&quot;</li></ul><p><br /></p><ul><li><strong>Pushing a single product can backfire: </strong>Sundberg has noticed brands putting all their marketing behind one hero item, such as J.Crew's pink shrunken sweater or a Free People coat she saw 20 women promoting on her feed. &quot;Why would I want to buy that coat if you're pushing it so hard?&quot; she says.<strong> </strong>Sundberg cites shoppers booking flights to buy Chanel's new collection as &quot;the best case scenario.&quot;</li></ul><p><br /></p><ul><li><strong>Menswear is how fashion reaches readers who don't work in it: </strong>&quot;Almost half my readers are men,&quot; Sundberg says, and many of them &quot;actually geek out a lot about how they get dressed every day.&quot; Her male readers follow how their favourite clothing companies have changed through bankruptcies, investments and new creative directors. &quot;There's a way to talk about fashion and style to non-fashion people,&quot; she says. &quot;And that has become really important.&quot;</li></ul><p><br /></p><ul><li><strong>Fashion media lacks the independent, authoritative voices that other fields have: </strong>Sundberg has trusted experts for restaurants, tech and books, but says: &quot;I don't feel like I have as many of those voices right now in fashion.&quot; She worries that people starting Substacks and podcasts aren't being edited. When Amed says fashion media sits too close to the brands it covers, she agrees that too much of it runs on the &quot;same press releases&quot; and is &quot;scared of advertisers.&quot;</li></ul><p><br /></p><p><strong>Three Books Emily Sundberg Recommends:</strong></p><ul><li>Scribble Scribble: Notes on the Media, by Nora Ephron</li><li><u><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Official_Preppy_Handbook" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Official Preppy Handbook</a></u>, by Lisa Birnbach</li><li><u><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/713027/the-shards-by-bret-easton-ellis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Shards</a></u>, by Bret Easton Ellis</li></ul><hr /><p style="color: grey; font-size: 0.75em;"> Hosted on Acast. See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: grey;" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

Key Insights

• Emily Sundberg built Feed Me by identifying a gap for workplace-adjacent stories that were too small for major publications but actively discussed among informed professionals across industries.
• Feed Me was launched with a paywall from day one, which created an early loyal audience and first-mover advantage on Substack during the platform's growth phase.
• The newsletter's success stems from treating readers as highly informed people who understand marketing mechanisms, can recognize when brands are manufactured consensus, and will dissect campaigns with peers.
• Emily's approach to finding stories involves analyzing public information creatively—job board postings reveal company expansion plans, hotel bookings indicate business activity, and Instagram posts about construction blueprints can signal market expansion.
• Fashion brands are making a strategic error by pushing single items to multiple influencers simultaneously, which signals artificial scarcity to consumers who recognize the tactic and consequently lose interest in the product.
• Emily only partners with advertisers whose products she authentically uses (Mercury, Uber, Resi, Instacart) and rejects approximately 50% of advertising requests that don't align with content or reader experience.
• The interview with Mark Zuckerberg was conducted without compensation and followed Feed Me's standard guest lecture format where paid subscribers submit questions and subjects choose which to answer.
• Emily attributes much of Feed Me's success to leading with instinct and pattern-matching rather than data-driven decision making, though she acknowledges this requires years of experience to develop effectively.
• Fashion media has become too similar across publications—removing mastheads makes publications indistinguishable—due to shared reliance on press releases and advertiser relationships creating fear of critical coverage.
• Emily writes about fashion by connecting it to non-fashion audiences through menswear trends and the economics of how brands market themselves, rather than traditional fashion reporting.
• The most important career decision Emily made was choosing FIT for its business program flexibility, allowing her to work paid internships during the day while attending night classes, which minimized student debt.
• Feed Me's multi-revenue model includes subscription ($80/year), advertising partnerships, merchandise, and paid subscriber events/parties, with the business employing several staff members beyond Emily herself.

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