The Advent of Brand Culture

Recognizing the Need for Reinvention

Whether you work with brands every day or want to develop your own brand, your success lies in a different place than most experts would have you look.

We have a tendency to travel the same road, again and again. We talk incessantly about the same problems: The trade, the economy, the licensor, the licensee, the deal. It's an endless, circuitous, chain of circumstances with little time or effort directed toward understanding the changing consumer.

Who is The New Consumer?

They are Millennials. They are your strongest advocates. We're not the first, nor the last to mention them. But, if you don't know who they are...the short answer is they're your future. Their values, attitudes and demographic characteristics are different than all previous generations. They are driving digital technologies that are changing media habits; enabling consumers to self-edit, while at the same time, by choice, become advocates of what is meaningful to them. It's causing brand-marketers and licensors to reconsider how they are reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message in the right place.

Like it or not, they are tethered to technology. Successful products offerings enable Millennials to participate in their own experiences. It is tribal; technology is the acoustic rhythm to their narrative. As a result, the convergence of technology (xbox 360 Kinetic, Apple iPad) and the interplay of mobile phones (apps), immersive retail experiences and location based (touch-screen) venues are the new brand media mix.

Millennials

Millennials, there are about 80 million of them born between 1980 and 1995. They are the prize. They are who you must embrace. They are not just consumers, they are the owners of your brand. They are advocates who dictate purchase patterns and are the voice of authority.

Millennials are setting the new social agenda, in a context called BrandCultureTM. We are just beginning to witness the nuances and shifts of their consumer behavior. The real ah-ha will arrive when we unlock the coding of this generation and the hardwiring of their brains. If you know a Cognitive Scientist, hire them; they'll be your most trusted resource when unraveling the mysteries of your new consumer and the behavior that is driving businesses, brands and culture in the 21st Century.

Consumer Attributes

1. They think in pictures: Images are the narrative of culture. 32,000 years ago the earliest of cave paintings served the same purpose. They're hard wired into our brain. They work like semeiotic messages. Meaning, the images are the language of story-telling. It's the earliest form of personal and cultural brand messaging. (Consider: Facebook, Flickr and the iPhone).
2. They remember stories; so, don't repeat facts: Brands are emotional stories. They are experiences, merging interest with intent by igniting curiosity and inviting consumption. "Your brain didn't retrieve a fact about an experience," says Douglas Merrill, former Chief Information Officer of Google, "....your brain retrieved the story."
3. Their brand is their message: Messages are everywhere. They work as reoccurring themes that bond culture. They establish a context and work like scaffolding in your brain. They function in a setting of story-telling and myth-making where symbols are language and images are text.
4. They embrace the "authentic" power of Social Media: Okay. I get it. We know Social Media is important. But, do you really know why? It's not because of its instantaneous reach or ubiquitous use. Social Media dominates all other media because of its relevance. It's your story, shared with others, that touches the same core emotions.
5. They use technology: "It's not just their gadgets, it's the way technology has been fused into their social lives." This is the new "collective -connective," a social dynamic requiring participation -- real, authentic participation. It's that simple.

Why We Believe In What We Create?

We remember things that are important when they are experienced as stories. Our brains take notice of them. We become conscious of them. They become relevant, take on a purpose and meaning and move to our memory. Cognitive scientists call this process encoding, which means something is being converted from one format into another.

Cultural Myth, Story Telling And Recurring Themes Bond Culture

It is based upon the uniquely human capacity to symbolically classify experiences, link and then to share them...the process through which an older generation induces and compels a younger generation to reproduce the established lifestyle, consequently a culture that is embedded in a person's way of life.

This multi-generational social condition is called the "Cultural Evolution Theory" which states, "that traits have a certain meaning in the context of evolutionary stages, and they look at relationships between material culture and social institutions and beliefs."

The importance of realism amid such heightened realities in worlds of fantasy make characters, specifically heroes and their powers, when stripped away, real to an audience that wants to believe they really exist. This transformation is a blurring of "reality's" fantasy.

Captured in symbols and an extremely evolved iconography, popular, recurring themes understood completely or not, become folklore...create a suspended disbelief: a new reality for a new generation... borrowing from the past and making them their own...a form of branded history, with its own images indelibly marked on the minds of a new global audience. The images they represent, from myth to folklore, become the legacy that defines a brand.

Central to this process is the concept and arch of the Brand...or as we will call it: BrandCulture

KKMBRANDS.COM

 

Comments

[TorrieD]

02:11 PM on 08/01/2010

Superb insight that hits Millennial­s directly between the eyes, Ken. You understand the origins of this new language, which is integral to speaking it well, and then having an actual conversati­on with this audience. Millennial­s don't consume anything unless it resonates with their core -- emotionall­y, intellectu­ally and practicall­y -- and you are, as usual, so right to tear the curtain away to expose the foundation­al elements of this complicate­d human architectu­re. Well done. Looking forward to the whole book!

[sunshine santa]

03:23 AM on 08/01/2010

Brilliant observatio­ns, fluid thinking and written with equal portions of wisdom, shrewd insight and high spirits.

[David Rapp]

03:51 PM on 07/30/2010

Excellent article. You've cut to the heart of the matter, not just for ways to improve branding, but for how people think, remember and connect. There's some very good advice in here for anyone trying to make a memorable impact, reagrdless of the market or vehicle.

[Ken Markman]

06:10 PM on 07/31/2010

Thanks you for your comments. Would you agree that: Thinking and brand messaging seemlessly and invisibly are creating our cultural identity? The Next Social agenda?

Ken Markman
kkmbrands.­com

[soulhangout]

03:42 PM on 07/30/2010

Finally somebody talking complete sense when it comes to millennial­s. They are our strongest advocates indeed. They are voicing the things we would have never imagined. They are the first generation ever that understand errors are opportunit­ies and judgment is fruitless because we are all in this together. Their right brain works simultaneo­usly with their left brain. They walk the middle line between the 50's. They are pioneering this cultural evolution and BrandCultu­re. What a gift for us! Thank you so much for a thoroughly historical and scientific analysis guys.

[Ken Markman]

06:03 PM on 07/31/2010

Thank you for your insightful response to The Advent of BrandCultu­re and for sharing it with your readers.

It's the first chapter in my book titled: BrandCultu­re...about how the collective voice in cutlure is setting the next cultural agenda...m­ore powerful than any media before or since the invention of moveable type.

Looking forward to remaining in touch.

Ken Markman
Ken.markma­n@kkmbrand­s.com

[Otterpuppet]

12:21 PM on 07/30/2010

Wonderful article, guys. Without getting too specific, you've boiled this down to some key points that anyone in branded entertainm­ent would be a fool not to take heed. Extremely insightful and awesome way to head into the weekend and recharge for the coming months.

[Josh Haber]

12:20 PM on 07/30/2010

So, tell a story with (not about) your brand and have the media culture (social and/or otherwise) be essential and integral to the telling of it.

[Jason Gale]

04:13 AM on 07/30/2010

Interestin­g post. I work in branding and at the moment I seem to be learning the most from my 16-year-ol­d son. His intrinsic grasp of brands is sooooooo much more complete than most of my clients. He and his mates have their own translatio­n of brands and, being the future consumers, these translatio­ns are really all that matters. As you say, they are the owners of the brand.

http://jas­ongale.net

[Ken Markman]

06:18 PM on 07/31/2010

Thank you for your comments..­.we have so much to learn about this consumer group. It will be intersting to participat­e with this generation and how they begin to shape the future cultural agenda.

Ken Markman
kkmbrands.­com

[Bruce Sanders]

10:57 PM on 07/29/2010

One way, JBenton, is to boost the use of stories in your advertisin­g and personal selling. A set of researcher­s at Ohio State University wanted to compare the effectiven­ess of narratives and statistics in influencin­g consumers' opinions. In one study, they asked participan­ts to estimate how likely it is that a refrigerat­or they might purchase would break down at some point. Before stating the estimate, each participan­t was told they'd be given informatio­n to help them with the task. For one group, the informatio­n consisted of stories told by consumers about the times they'd had to deal with a refrigerat­or breaking down. Participan­ts in the other group were given actual statistics about the frequency of appliance breakdowns­. Frequency estimates from the group who were told just the stories averaged about one-third higher than did the estimates from the group given just the statistics­. The stories of trouble led the consumers to overdramat­ize the actual frequency of trouble. Narratives are more influentia­l—and more memorable—­than numbers. Start gathering stories and using them.

[JBenton]

04:41 PM on 07/31/2010

thank you Bruce, really interestin­g example! Yes, I will take your advice and start gathering stories! In fact I've been thinking about this all day!

[JBenton]

09:02 PM on 07/29/2010

Very impressive thinking and concepts. Now I'm sitting here trying to figure out how I apply this forward brand strategy to my small company, grabbing the minds of those little millennial­s?!