By Julia Smaldone, Director, Cultural Strategy ,Strat7 Crowd DNA
Culture is messy. And it’s getting messier by the day. But this can be a good thing if brands step up to be culturally aware, culturally competent, and above all culturally relevant…
Brands live in culture. They have no say in it, they just do. And all brands can be culturally aware, culturally competent, and above all culturally relevant.
By focusing on the forces shaping the way that people think, feel and act, we can future proof brands in a way that is powerful, and holds deeper meaning in people’s lives.
That word – people – is important here
Brands come to us constantly, asking about how to connect with “consumers” through culture. They look at it from the outside-in. They look at culture as a product, to be consumed passively by their audiences. But culture is created by people – and people are so much more than the sum of what they consume. People are messy. Culture is messy. And it’s getting messier by the day through forces like: Polarization – being pitted against each other, Atomization – we’re living in echo chambers of one and Fragmentation – when no “single truth” exists for anything anymore, even in the causes we agree on.
So how do you work with culture in a world where culture is messier than ever? By sharing four principles of working with culture. We use these in our work at Crowd DNA daily, to help create cultural advantage for the brands we work with across the world.
Decoding culture
We start with stories. We immerse deeply with people from all walks of life, and follow them about their everyday lives, pin-pointing the human tensions so we can ask how to help them with that.
Challenging culture
A common mistake brands make when thinking about culture is taking trends at face-value. By challenging them instead, we can unlock new ways for brands to play in cultural trends in a way that is more meaningful. Through exploring topics to push new ideas to the fringe and expand our thinking. In the US, we’ve seen a rise in nostalgia culture – from a return to Y2K fashion trends to a spike in the resale market for technology from the early aughts. However, there’s more to this trend than meets the eye. This isn’t just about the sense of wanting what’s old to feel new again – nostalgia is an indication of a society that is seeking escapism among uncertainty as they lack a connection to the present day. For brands, there’s just as much opportunity to provide touchpoints that help celebrate and reshape a sense of community around our present day as there is in providing connections to the past.
Reframing culture
Here, we zero in and question common assumptions, myths and insights. In this past year, we’ve explored the world of tech and particularly the myth that Gen Z is a tech-first generation. What we found is that notion is far from the whole story. Gen Z may have been born into a tech-first world, but that doesn’t mean they have a tech dominant attitude or approach to the world. Most of Gen Z have a very nuanced opinion of technology, with strict guardrails about how and when it shows up in their lives as they seek a more holistic life offline.
Creating culture
This is where we ultimately want to get to – as brands, creators, marketers,strategists. Driving meaningful connection with consumers is key to building culture from the ground up. We can learn about this by seeing it in action with the ironed-down mechanics of fandoms across the US – where creating a reciprocal connection with fans is at the center of the cultural strategy rather than leveraging it. Life is made difficult by mess. We get it. But messiness ought to be celebrated. Brands that understand, reframe, challenge and ultimately create within this messy culture are the ones that manage to stand out. The ones that are memorable. The ones that are an essential choice in a noisy, saturated market.
