The Why: always the golden question. If marketers could understand why kids liked Arcade Fire, they figured, they wouldn’t have to pay for the rights to an Arcade Fire song in their ads; they could commission their own knockoff version for similar effect. They wouldn’t have to buy up small-batch distilleries; they could capture the essence of Arcade Fire in a brand, slap the label on a bottle of generic rotgut, and stick it on the shelf next to Grey Goose. The Why was where the real money was.
