Cultural power: Cool or consequential?
James Collier, chief data officer at M&C Saatchi Group, dives into why cultural power is a big deal for brands today, and looks at how resonance and momentum can really set them apart.
Culture. It’s what makes us human. It’s what we wear, eat, listen to, watch, and believe. It’s how we behave, who we trust, and what influences us. It permeates every aspect of our lives, shaping the decisions we make and the brands we buy.
Yet, despite its omnipresence, culture often gets mistaken for ‘popularity’ – reduced to a hashtag or headline. But popularity is fleeting, a symptom rather than the cause. It’s like trying to understand a symphony by only listening to the horns – you miss the depth, the emotion, and the resonance. True cultural power runs deeper – it taps into the systematic, personal, and profound ways people make sense of their world.
For brands, this isn’t just semantics. It’s the difference between being a passing distraction and a lasting influence.
Nice one Jimbo!
The problem with measuring, and relying upon, cultural power is compounded by the wild variance in the landscape. Immediately prior cultural powerhouses such as DEI and ESG are today’s shareholder cannon fodder. There may be a great upside, but leveraging cultural power within a commercial context is fraught and promising it as a marketer is wildly ambitious. I hope you charge a premium, if you can deliver.