THE FIRST C

As brand strategists and marketers, we’re all used to looking for insights from each of the 4Cs: culture, consumer, category and company.

Over the last 10 years or so - drowned out by the deluge of consumer data - that first one, culture, has lost focus.

The lure of consumer data is understandable: it can feel more concrete, more tangible, more real-time.

I have two beefs with that:

1/ Consumer research is often more noise than signal.

To take an example from this week’s news: 43% of people surveyed by KPMG said they have been buying about the same amount as they did in 2021. In isolation, that doesn’t tell you much. But what might you find if you went digging into the cultural context shaping that number?

• Looking at the cultural pressure of media narratives around over-consumption.

• The growing volume of social content about saving, using less, fixing things.

• A growing number of self-help books on money management.

• A few lessons on how values, beliefs and norms have shifted in previous recessions.

• Increasing cultural distaste for wealth, privilege and the cult of the billionaire.

• The emerging anti-work movement.

And so on. By looking at the cultural context, you’d understand the forces shaping our spending, our beliefs about spending, our worries about spending and so on. You’d get the WHY of it all.

2/ Consumer research tells you what is or was.

Research respondents can only report what they are aware of. Cultural analysis lets you spot the forces shaping people’s beliefs, behaviours, preferences and norms long before those enter people’s awareness, and long before they show up in a research group. You get to see WHERE NEXT?

The magic is in the layering:

If you start by looking at culture - with the eye of a journalist, anthropologist or historian - you will come up with hypotheses to test in consumer research, making your questions and methodologies more interesting and your insights more original. You will be able to pan back and see WHY people feel the way they do, and make predictions about how that might start to shift and change as the context develops around them. You will be able to find a valued and visible role for your brand in today’s and tomorrow’s culture.