I made my first trip to Las Vegas last week and there was tons to observe from a cultural perspective. This picture below I think encapsulates the culture of Las Vegas.
It’s striking to see how the unauthentic is so openly accepted in Vegas, while everywhere else, we are constantly struggling to prove that we’re the real authentic!
Interesting to note what effect such a culture would have on advertising in the city.
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Here’s a link to a great article by Andrew Mcafee from HBR Voices.
This article really got me excited, and I have a lot of things to say about it. Hopefully I can cram it all in here.
I completely agree with Andrew that content is no longer limited to that produced by a company. Consumers have found an easy way to express themselves through the means of social media. Hence, Andrew’s argument about it being an illusion to control conversations about your brand holds good. While I don’t disagree with Andrew, I do think there are other ways to control brand conversations in the web 2.0 era. So I’m going to take a crack at explaining how one could actually not only control what people say about a brand but also influence it, in a positive way!
1. Understand your consumers’ subculture – their behaviour, identify key influencers and study them. Remember in school when you always looked up to the kid who was awesome at sports and always had the cutest girl in class as his girlfriend (I did!). Your brand needs to be him! (Apologies for a very male driven analogy…but school was hard!)
2. Once you’ve nailed down your brand’s essence, stay true to it….no matter what! When your consumers see you acting a certain way, using a certain vocabulary and behaving a certain way – they will choose to follow you, thereby becoming brand ambassadors.
3. Finally, be a brand asshole!
Think that your brand is the best in the world and that you know more about it than anyone else on this planet. This confidence will help ensure that only you (or your company’s key spokesperson) are taken seriously when it comes to news about the brand/product.
Think Steve Jobs (man, I was trying to avoid Apple’s example for once…but it always catches up to you!).
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Community Vehicular Reclamation Project
The ‘remix’ is still around and it propagates itself in various shapes and forms around us. This (see picture) is yet another example of the counter-culture making its way onto the streets – The Community Vehicular Reclamation Project. Who are the people behind these forms of art today? What sort of a subculture do they live and operate in? What makes them unique and gives them an identity in society?
These are just some of the important questions that I am asking as a marketer looking to understand consumer culture.
So, how is knowing about and understanding this subculture useful to the marketing industry?
1. You could take inspiration from such art in designing your own campaigns (there have been many such in the past and have proven to be an effective way to generate buzz, or get arrested…)
2. These artists could be your “influencers” – so understanding their culture would help you better target them.
3. Even if they’re not part of your target market, the issues they take up could have a direct negative impact on the sales of your product/service – especially given the cultural conditioning of people today.
While many such counter-cultures may appear small and disjointed, history has shown us that it only takes a few small but critical events before one such culture attains critical mass. We need to pay attention.
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Virgin Mobile is lauching a brand new marketing campaign with the tagline “Screw you recession”. I just visited www.screwyourecession.com and saw the following message….
Virgin Mobile's new marketing campaign
and I must say, I’m excited! Finally, a marketer is looking to understand its target consumers’ culture and utilize it in its marketing mix. There’s no better way to make an affective connetion with your target audience than by showing them (the target audience) that you understand their situation and emphathize with them.
Additionally, the campaign positions the brand as an under-dog and even counter-cultural, signifying almost an anti-establishment image.
A great way to bring the “cool” to Virgin Mobile, eh?!
In this case more importantly, the campaign fits well with Virgin’s overall brand essence/identity – Funny, creative, underdog etc. Conceptually, I think this campaign has HUGE potential for success! What remains to be seen is how well it gets executed.
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The IFPI in its 2009 report on the music industry indicated that 95% of all downloads in 2008 were still through illegal channels. It is therefore not surprising that Apple continues to struggle with getting its new iPod buyers to consume music through iTunes. But is this really a reasonable expectation I ask? Just imagine having to fill an iPod that holds 30,000 songs with music through iTunes. It would cost you almost $30,000! Now this is by no means acceptable – which brings us back to the decade long debate between the ideals of possessive individualism Vs- social utilitarianism in the music business.
The ‘downloader’ culture today is very different from what it was a decade ago. Consumers are looking for possible solutions that arrive at a balance between allowing music to be shared and protecting its rights to distribution. If Apple thinks that by removing DRM on its songs and implementing a variable pricing model, it has finally cracked the code, I am sorry to say that Apple is WRONG!
Apparently, we are now expected to take solace in the fact that instead of having to spend $30,000 to fill our iPods, we can now do so for just $28,999!
But the problem is not just with Apple. The root of the problem inherently lies in the inability of record labels to truly understand their consumers. It’s high time the big four (in the music industry) start understanding consumer subculture and the role music plays in the creation of social bonds. Without an understanding of why their consumers continue to behave the way they do (illegally sharing music), record labels will have to continue taking shots in the dark and those of us who are actively seeking a solution to this problem will have to continue being guinea pigs.
Additional reading on the subject matter:
1. Markus Giesler (2008). Conflict and Compromise: Drama in Marketplace Evolution. JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH , 15.
2. Ian Condry (2004). Cultures of music piracy: An ethnographic comparison of the US and Japan. INTERNATIONAL journal of CULTURAL studies.
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May 10
21
Why you’d want the Cyberpunks to care!
Cyberpunk who?
The term ‘cyberpunk’ was born quite a while ago and came to be primarily used to describe computer geeks who were (and still are) typically characterized by a distrust in government, a libertarian attitude and a belief that the internet and information must remain open and free (amongst other things).
Cyberpunks rose to cultural prominence in the 90s with the breakout of punk, when the term took on the construct of teenage rebellion and over-night transformed the nerdy computer geek into a rock star.
While many believe that Cyberpunk culture died in 1994 thanks to excessive media exposure, I belong to the clan that believes that the Cyberpunk has evolved over the last 15 years and is still highly influential in swaying market adoption of technology products. Cyberpunks have however dissipated into a number of subcultural groups, although the overarching theme and vision remains the same.
Here’re some examples of the role Cyberpunks have played in the proliferation of products/services:
1. Illegal music downloaders – Adopted Napster and the first and second generation iPods. This played a big role in the widespread proliferation of both these products/services.
2. I.T geeks in universities trying to save the world from Y2K; Sitting in basements, staying up all night coding – Drank Red Bull. The rest is history.
3. Anarchists, situationists and burners took to Tribe.net in its early days. Tribe proliferated initially until it ran into some serious trouble due to excessive commercialization! Today, it continues to exist as a niche social networking site that caters to specific subcultures and has a very loyal user base.
So why bother about Cyberpunks?
It’s pretty simple. Cyberpunks have in the past been instrumental in the success of many products and services. As consumers, we are still influenced by Cyberpunks. Think of the last time you asked for a product recommendation from a buddy who you consider a tech-geek. Which brings me to the reason I decided to write this post.
Conclusion: From a market research standpoint, brands, specially technology brands, are not paying enough attention to the study of digital cultures. Unfortunately, Cyberpunks don’t walk around with labeled T-shirts. Finding and influencing them requires some critical skills in ethnography, intuition and common sense.
References
1. VirtualCampfire.org
2. The evolution of Cyberpunk, NY Times By NICK RAVO and ERIC NASH; Published: August 8, 1993
3. Image source: Flickr User: Extra Ketchup
Posted in Marketing Commentary by Ujwal Arkalgud. No Comments