Why “Damn, Daniel” May Significantly Alter the Fashion Industry

The power of social media as a marketing and branding tool is news to no one at this point, but it's a realm that's constantly transforming and revealing fresh opportunities in the process. Nowhere has this been more evident than with the now-famous "Damn, Daniel" Snapchat video, which went viral quickly after being posted to Twitter on February 15th by a high school kid named Joshua Holz.

The video splices together clips of Holz' friend Daniel walking around in cool outfits, always complimented by a pair of white (or, in a few cases, black) Vans. "Damn, Daniel!" Josh repeats in a hilariously exaggerated tone each time, "Back at it again with the white Vans!" It's been retweeted over 300,000 times, inspired hundreds of equally-funny memes, and landed the two boys guest-spots on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and in a Weezer music video. All of this, while great for sending two strangers into the spotlight, has been especially lucrative for Vans.

On an earnings call in late April, Steve Rendle, the president and COO of VF Corp (which owns Vans), joked, "Well done, Daniel, well done," in reference to the brand's great first quarter of 2016. Although Vans was by no means lacking in popularity or monetary success (they've seen double-digit growth in sales per quarter for the last 5 years) the video gave them an exciting boost: a 20% increase in direct-to-consumer sales and a 30% increase in e-commerce sales in the US market.

Given that Vans had nothing to do with the video's creation, it was an unexpected and all-the-more pleasant coup for the brand, and one that confirmed the serious potential of organic marketing in our digital age. While platforms like Instagram and Snapchat offer advertising opportunities for fashion and beauty brands, taken up by everyone from Bloomingdales to Burberry, and feature influencers who often partner with said-brands, it may be the candid, non-sponsored content that has the most power. After all, today's consumers are extremely savvy about how they're being marketed to, preferring ads and brand activations that privilege genuineness over anything too forced.

What could this mean for the fashion industry? Well, it's very likely that brands will now try to capture the essence of the "Damn, Daniel" video—authentic, consumer-driven, silly—for themselves. How they will achieve this without too heavy a hand remains to be seen, but getting their products in front of the right people will be crucial. What that could mean is seeking out potential influencers more than they might seek out "confirmed" influencers who are known for their sponsored content, privileging those digital stars on the rise in lieu of those who have #madeit. Another important goal will be ensuring their products just "show up" at the sweet spot of right place/right time, such as in Snapchat's Live Stories which are not direct marketing opportunities for brands but spotlight relevant events like fashion week.

Of course, it could also lead brands to explicitly manufacture their own viral content, an attempt which can be challenging given the off-the-cuff, randomized nature of such successes. Whether or not they'll find a way to do so without entering disingenuous territory remains to be seen, but you can bet that plenty of brands will try. 

Vows: One T.S.A. Line Worth the Wait

Five weeks after they had begun dating again, real drama emerged in their relationship. Ms. Dang received a diagnosis of breast cancer and she subsequently had a double mastectomy.

Mr. Mankiewicz insisted she recuperate in his two-bedroom Beverly Hills condominium (ultimately she would have eight operations) in spite of her protestations that she could stay at her own place and simply lie on her couch, have the pharmacy deliver medicine and order takeout food.

"She comes off as 10 feet tall and bulletproof," Mr. Mankiewicz said. "But she needed my help, and I wanted to help her. This told me things about myself and my relationship to her, namely that I was in love with her in a way I h adn't realized."

The operations forced Ms. Dang to acknowledge her vulnerabilities. "I was crying — this is hard," she said. "I wasn't expecting this to happen to me at 39."

And the recovery experience left her exposed to Mr. Mankiewicz in a way she hadn't planned. "I couldn't be Superwoman-hear-me-roar," she said. "I hadn't showered in days. My hair was a mess and I had tubes coming out of my body."

After she recovered, she moved back to her Santa Monica apartment, but this time he was not letting go, and she felt safe. "I could tell him anything, and he wouldn't judge me," she said. "He can see through me like a pane of glass and read me better than anybody else."

The couple could hardly have come from more different backgrounds. Mr. Mankiewicz's grandfather, the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, shared an Academy Award for writing "Citizen Kane." His father, Frank Mankiewicz, was press secretary for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, presidential campaign manager for George McGovern and president of National Public Radio.

"I grew up with this front seat to national politics," Mr. Mankiewicz said. "Every conversation with my dad was like opening a history book. I met Robert Kennedy a few times. George Cuk or sat at our dinner table. I watched a lot of TV news, and Vietnam played out in my living room. I was interested in being a news reporter since I was 10 years old."

By contrast, when bombs were falling on Saigon in 1975 and Ms. Dang was 1½ years old, her mother, then eight months pregnant with Ms. Dang's brother, escaped to Guam by boat. The family, later joined by Ms. Dang's father, Khoi Van Dang, who was disabled when Ms. Dang was 13, settled in Orange County, Calif., where they became naturalized citizens.

"My family did not allow me to watch TV during the week unless it was something on PBS and probably about an elephant," Ms. Dang said. She was a shy, motivated student. By sixth grade she was reading at a 12th-grade level. "It was easy for me to go into my room, spend the day there reading and come out at 6 at night," she said.

Mr. Mankiewicz takes their cultural di fferences in stride. "My dad is from a successful Jewish family, and my mom, who had been raised a Mormon, was the first member of her family to attend college," he said. "The lesson my parents gave me was: You don't have to have a lot in common with someone to love them."

From her perspective, Ms. Dang believes the Vietnamese culture can be tough on daughters. "Subconsciously it is ingrained that you need to take care of your guy," she said. "Josh likes it that, for lack of a better word, I am not subservient."

Joey Dang, Ms. Dang's brother, saw another, possibly more lighthearted connection: They both love clothes and fashion. "Tee used to take pictures of her shoes and put them on the outside of the boxes," Mr. Dang said. "As soon as I saw his closet, I thought, This is a man who gets my sister." (Mr. Mankiewicz's closet is color coordinated, with his jackets evenly spaced.)

After one year of steady dating, Mr. Mankiewicz was not making a move t oward the altar. His father, who met Ms. Dang on his 90th birthday in 2014, told his son he should marry her. But his son balked: He wasn't interested in having children. He was afraid if he was a part of someone else, he wouldn't be himself anymore. And, he joked, "Dateline" was not the biggest commercial for matrimony.

The following year, Mr. Mankiewicz changed his mind about staying single, perhaps, as his brother Ben Mankiewicz, a host of Turner Classic Movies, suggested, because four events converged: Ben had a child; their father died; their aging mother had moved to Los Angeles; and his big brother had met the right woman. "It's a testament to his emotional maturity that it was O.K. to change his life at 60," Ben Mankiewicz said. "It took courage. It's hokey to say, but I'm proud of him."

Their mother, Holly Howell, said: "All I could say to myself was, it's about time. He was seeing her a lot and I thought, if he doesn't hurry up, she'd say to hell with it."

In November 2015, at the restaurant where they'd had their first date, Mr. Mankiewicz proposed to Ms. Dang. "She gasped like someone in the movies I grew up watching," he said. "We made a champagne toast and took a picture and then we sat there silently texting."

The wedding was set for what would have been the 92nd birthday of Mr. Mankiewicz's father. Eight weeks before, after the last of her operations, Ms. Dang moved in to Mr. Mankiewicz's condominium. He lamented having to give away 220 of his shirts to make room for her clothes in his closet.

On May 16, they were married before a small gathering of family and friends on the deck of the home of Mr. Thompson, the retired newscaster, who became a Universal Life minister to officiate.

"Sometimes the path to love is slow, sometimes — courtesy of T.S.A. — it is excruciatingly slow," Mr. Mankiewicz said. "But I suppose we should thank them. It gave us time to have that first talk."

His mother delighted in the two families' newfound connection.

"He finally came to his senses," Ms. Howell said. "I mean it. You have to work really hard not to like her. There's not an ounce of snobbishness in her. She doesn't think she's a big shot. She has views of her own."

Ms. Dang's mother, Ahn Thi Le, was sold on her new son-in-law at hello. "I'm a Buddhist. My house is a Bud dhist temple," she said. "The first time he came to visit me, he said, 'Thank you for creating your daughter.' He touched my heart right away. For her, I thought, you don't have to find another person. You found him. Eureka!"

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