Amazon’s First Creative Director Turned a Tokyo Ovation Into Brand Currency
“When someone walks into a home and sees a bookcase full of books, it says, I’ve invested in this piece of physical matter because it really matters.”
Steve Susi, author of Brand Currency
Steve Susi was the first executive creative director in Amazon’s history. He had three lifelong goals, live in London, become an executive creative director, and publish a book, and a standing ovation in Tokyo gave him the third. He wrote Brand Currency with Scribe in 2019, it found a second life when COVID hit weeks later, earned a Korean translation, and laid out the four-currencies framework that still anchors his work and his forthcoming second book.
The ovation that became a book
Part of Steve’s Amazon role was flying the world to teach brands how to tell stories. At Dentsu’s Tokyo headquarters, in front of a packed room working through dozens of translators, he got his answer about whether the idea traveled.
“There were probably 30 translators on hand [...] it was left with a rousing ovation. And I went, wow [...] there’s something universal here [...] money, information, loyalty, and time [...] So let me write a book.”
Steve Susi
The four currencies
Clip · Steve Susi on the four currencies · 20s
The framework came out of what he watched brands and customers actually trade at Amazon.
“Money, information, loyalty and time were what brands and customers traded in [...] whoever mastered all four of those currencies at once was like [...] four ancient stones [...] imbued the owner with unspeakable magic powers.”
Steve Susi
What the book produced
Clip · Steve Susi on a Korean translation · 14s
Steve published in 2019 and then the timing turned strange. The book arrived just before the world stopped.
“The book coming out right before COVID [...] the book actually sold pretty well. And I got a lot of fan interaction, which was unexpected.”
Steve Susi
It also crossed an ocean, which turned into one of the more moving parts of the whole experience.
“The book got picked up for Korean translation. And when I saw that other folks halfway around the world were dealing with the self-same issues that we were here [...] was really enlightening.”
Steve Susi
Why a human should write book two
Steve uses AI heavily as a thought partner, training it to challenge him rather than flatter him. What he will not do is let it write the next book, for one specific reason.
“Without [...] enterprise-level instruction, it does not come with encoded discernment, judgment, or taste. And so that’s the difference.”
Steve Susi
He put the same idea in an article that got wide pickup, Taste is the New Oil: when everyone has access to the same intelligence, the edge is the discernment you bring to it. Book two is already underway on exactly that theme.
Why the book still matters
Steve sees physical books becoming status symbols, proof of what a person chose to invest in and keep.
“I think it’s going to be hard to kill. We love touching things.”
Steve Susi
With book two in progress, his next goal is already picked: visiting every museum in Italy, a few hundred of them, over many years.
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