What brands need to understand about modern culture
What do Clubhouse, NFT’s and the Documentary ’Seaspiracy’ have in common?
At first glance, it may look like a bunch of random modern cultural events put together, but all of them are actually indicators of current and emerging consumer behaviour.
This means that your business might eventually — whether you like it or not — have to adapt to either the three events discussed in this article, or maybe any of the other modern cultural events that are constantly emerging around us.
This article aims to explain how brands can leverage modern cultural insights in their daily work and how they can be valuable for building your brand and business.
Modern culture: Hidden gems
Modern culture can be described as a set of practices, behaviours and beliefs that are experienced, expressed or shared by groups in contemporary society. They are small hidden gems, telling us something about the immediate context in which people are currently living, influencing the decisions they make.
Collecting, analysing and leveraging modern cultural insights is a skill. To successfully do it, you need to be genuinely curious about what is going on in the world. And even more specific; what’s going on in the world outside of your personal, biased comfort zone. As you do that, your intuitive perception of its value tends to become less obvious…which means you need to spend more time making sense out of it. But monitoring modern culture as a general practice is worth it. As you invest in it and recognise it as a part of the research phase, you’ll discover those hidden gems of information about the real life people are living. And sometimes that small advantage is all you need to get ahead of your competition.
Proof of concept: Lessons to be learned from an emerging social media, blockchain technology and commercial fishing
To put modern cultural insights to the test, let’s investigate 3 semi-current (but still relevant) modern cultural tendencies and reflect on what can be learned from them.
- Clubhouse: Social audio 2.0 and truly immersive and engaging brand experiences
The live podcast format has rapidly gained popularity, with 10 million downloads and 2 million active weekly users. Social media giants like Facebook, Slack and Linkedin have announced that they are working on versions of their own.
This tells us that Social audio is here to stay. Podcasts have been around for a while but platforms like Clubhouse open up for a two-way conversation and a different way for brands to create immersive and engaging brand experiences.
The pandemic accelerated peoples tendency to turn to social audio for interaction and inspiration, making it an increasingly important media for brands to consider and the rise of Clubhouse proves just that. Brands need to leverage social audio, to get closer to their audience and to truly build a two-way interaction and relationship with them, and to do that, they need to ask themselves: How does our brand live and behave in an auditory context?
2. NFT’s: rethinking how we perceive value in the digital age
Non-fungible-tokens are unique pieces of digital content, where the rights are purchased, registered and protected through the blockchain. It’s emerging within the art scene, where we saw artist Beeble sold his NFT art piece for $69 million, through the established auction house Christie’s. Although the phenomenon leaves people speechless, the concept of NFT’s is not as foreign as you might think. It speaks to the feeling of scarcity- in the same way as art or luxury limited-edition goods have done for centuries.
It’s an emerging technology that has boomed over the last few months. Brands and creators are currently playing around with how to leverage it on a tactical level. But many experts mean that we have only scratched the surface of the potential value of NFT’s.
Short term, brands need to evaluate how/ if they can leverage the technology on a tactical level, and long term brands and content creators could benefit from considering how they engage with their consumers through this ’new’ technology, and how they implement and work with it internally.
3. Seaspiracy: What the commercial fishing industry can teach you about responsibility
Seaspiracy: the heavily debated documentary revealing the hidden side of the commercial fishing industry. It quickly became the top-ten most watched on Netflix globally. Although being criticised for its fact-checking, the discussion it has raised goes beyond just the documentary’s immediate message to eat less fish.
The overall message of the documentary — to consume and use the world's resources responsibly — speaks well to consumers growing demand for transparency and increased interest in sustainability, and the expectation that brands act as a responsible force in society.
Seaspiracy alone might not drive brands towards acting more sustainably, but the noise it created tells us that all brands could benefit from evaluating their value chain, adopt a consumer-centric mindset on how to make business decisions, and expect consumers to demand answers to what impact brands have on environment and society.
How do you leverage modern culture in your work?
First of all; Be realistic! Modern culture is not science — it’s an indication of what the future could look like. They are not meant to be used as universal truths, but more as stepping stones to make more informed business decisions. Although many organisations could benefit from incorporating modern culture insights, any tool is useless if used the wrong way, so be realistic and let them inspire and guide your organisation forward.
Secondly, although these singular events are in their own right they become much more relevant once combined. Because that’s when you are forced to actively analyse and interpret what behaviour(s) are driving them. It’s in these interesting intersections, where your creativity as a marketeer is tested and innovation (and possibly frustration) is born.
A third consideration is to hold those insights up against larger megatrends. For example, ask yourself, if you in any way can connect the hype about NFT’s with a more established and well-defined megatrend. By doing that, the modern cultural insight and the megatrend enhance each other; the modern cultural insight appears more credible and the megatrend appears more relevant.
Do you have what it takes to leverage modern cultural insights?
Modern cultural insights are more than just buzz words. Although some of them might disappear as fast as they appeared, they have real value and meaning for people and in the greater scheme of things, they’re also shaping the trends that your brand may have to adapt to in the future. Your job as a marketeer is to identify, evaluate and implement them accordingly, to tell the story of your brand in the best way possible.
Studying modern culture needs to become a more accepted part of the research phase, but requires that business’s dare to take a step out from their comfort zone and to be curious about real people. And that’s the first step to truly harvest the power of modern cultural insights.
Linnéa Svensson, Junior Strategist
Bold Copenhagen, April 2021
