YOUR BRAND IN CULTURE

As an industry we overuse and abuse the word ‘culture’. Mostly it’s used to mean doing the earned bits of the media plan. If we want brands to have a more prominent presence in culture, we need to go deeper. 

We need to think of culture in both meanings of the word: 

1/ The intellectual product of a society - the music, the movies, the memes. 

2/ The ‘how we do things around here’ - the norms, biases, expectations, and social codes. 

Both of these things are connected of course: 

• Norms and biases are reflected in IP: You can track how a society views women, for example, through the movies and TV it has produced over decades. 

• IP has the power to shape our norms and biases: From Will & Grace in the ‘90s making people less homophobic, to The Day After Tomorrow influencing people’s views on climate change. 

To feel relevant and connected to today’s culture, brands need to have an eye on both.

Is your brand contributing to the intellectual product of a society? Is it creating content and experiences people enjoy, or is it just interrupting the stuff they actually want to engage with? 

Is your brand aligned with or, better still, driving our values, norms, biases and social codes?