For the Culture

March 6, 2023
“Anyone with an idea, product, or cause can leverage the influence of culture to inspire... people to act in concert,” contends Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, in his perceptive debut. He explains culture as a “meaning-making system” in which a person signals their ideology or community membership through symbols, and examines why it holds such sway and how marketers can use it to influence consumers. The author suggests that companies transform their brand into a symbol by pairing an ideological stance with their products, as exemplified by Patagonia’s calls for prospective customers to repair their current jackets rather than buy new ones, counterintuitively boosting sales from buyers drawn to the company’s promotion of ethical consumption. He encourages companies to advertise themselves to groups, based on characteristics, that are likely to share their main conviction (a brand built around the belief that “life is an adventure” might target adrenaline junkies) and to keep up on changes in the group’s culture by scrolling Twitter hashtags and Reddit pages. Collins has an unusually sophisticated outlook on what drives consumer behavior, as well as a knack for delivering his smart ideas in accessible prose. This is a superior program on how the business world can use the interplay between culture, consumption, and identity to their advantage.

March 15, 2023
An award-winning marketer explains brand strategy, consumer behavior, and the new generation of marketing. Collins has been involved in some of the most successful advertising campaigns of the past two decades (he has worked with Beyonc�, Apple, Google, the Brooklyn Nets, and others), and he also has solid academic credentials, holding a key position at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. This experience in both spheres informs this book, as the author examines why certain campaigns have been astonishingly successful while others have fallen painfully flat. The key, he argues, is not about a product itself; it's about connecting to a particular segment of society through shared values and experiences. Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, for example, was not noticeably different from other brews, but the brand was marketed as representing autonomy and self-expression, which spoke to the ideology of the burgeoning hipster community. With interesting case studies, Collins unpacks how cultural communities come into being and how marketing firms can track their development, with increasingly precise targeting to tribes and clans. Demographic information is crucial, although some marketers can miss crucial nuances in the data. The author notes that these sorts of marketing campaigns can be commercially successful while being socially damaging, such as the Marlboro Man campaign, which made smoking attractive. Collins could have delved further into the long-term impact of this cultural segmentation of society. When does targeted marketing become a contributor to social fragmentation? At what point does the idea of "my people" turn into us-vs.-them conflict? Collins veers away from this line of thinking, but he believes that marketers should think more carefully about the campaigns they design and the stories they tell. The author offers plenty of food for thought about how the social landscape is evolving. With personal stories and a dry wit, Collins bridges the gap between cultural theory and marketing practice.

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