The Next Engine: Beyond Campaign Thinking

What really motivates consumers to form brand opinions and make certain purchase decisions? What really shapes their perception of a product? Why is a brand that’s perfectly acceptable in Miami Ohio shunned like the plague in Miami Florida and vice versa? Why aren’t we all the same?

These questions are worth asking because for 60 years we’ve been under siege from an economies-of-scale bombardment of sameness. And (to be fair) it’s made us the wealthiest, most successful country on earth. Still, it’s come with a hefty price tag.

We’ve been interrupted by endless national ad campaigns from behemoth restaurant chains and automotive brands, bought jeans and shampoo from the same ubiquitous fashion boutiques and big box megastores.

We’ve come to rely on unbelievably frustrating commoditized air travel to slog from NY to Chicago for a couple of meetings and be back home the same day (which in some ways counts as progress – I guess).

We live in bland suburbs and shop in faceless strip malls that look the same from Anchorage to Austin, we’ve grown up and old watching the same soaps and sit coms, listening to the same rock music, reading the same newspapers and magazines, eating, drinking, smoking and exfoliating with the same branded, packaged, homogenized stuff that everyone else is eating, drinking and exfoliating with (well maybe not the last one).

So why is it, after all this sameness, after all this time, after so many billions have been spent trying to make us indivisible from each other, why is it that Americans are actually still so different from one another?

Why do we still have different accents (kind of). Why do we have different interests and passions, do different things on Friday nights, dress different, think differently about our country, go different places on vacation, have different prejudices (although everyone seems to agree on the French), vote for different reasons and for different politicians, watch different sports and follow different teams? Why is that? Why is a brand socially desirable in Miami Ohio and social death in Miami Florida?

The answer of course is that there’s something at work that’s more powerful than mass media, more defining than personal wealth or job status.

It’s called culture. The context in which we live our daily lives. It’s real, vibrant and cacophonous. It makes us who we are and it’s different everywhere. Gloriously, diversively different.

Let me be clear. I’m not for one moment suggesting that mass media and marketing hasn’t left an imprint on the country. It has. There are many things we do and think the same. But the differences are even greater. Get off the freeway. Ignore the McDonalds and the Arbys. Instead drive two miles into a town you never heard of in a state you’ve never been in before and enjoy a real distinctively local breakfast cooked by real locals using real local produce and handed down by generations of locals. Live and learn. Americans are different.

We can see this cultural diversity clearly by monitoring online social networks, which after all are really just digital amplifications of local, culturally-driven, interests, contacts and contexts.

What they tell us is that people respond to brands differently depending in large part on where they live, on the cultural reality of their neighborhood, town and region - whatever their age, sex or ethnic background. There’s a local cultural context to brand engagement that cannot be ignored. And it absolutely can’t be addressed successfully by one-size fits all national advertising targeted at homogenous “target demographics”. The web might not have provided all the answers yet. But it’s certainly showing us the fallacy of the traditional top-down command and control approach.

We need to get local. Get into the markets we’re trying to influence. Understand them. Learn their culture. Don’t advertise, associate. Demonstrate the cultural relevance of a brand in the real world. The one we all live in. Then perhaps that brand will sell as well in Miami FL as well as it does in Miami OH – just maybe for different reasons.

Tags: culture, innovation, marketing