They’re now so effective at producing creative entertainment that it’s impossible for companies to compete. Digital crowds have become powerful cultural innovators-a new phenomenon called crowdculture. Social media has transformed how culture works. But firms can’t identify the critical opportunities by relying on traditional segmentation and trend reports.Ĭompanies have sunk billions of dollars into producing content on social media, hoping to build audiences around their brands. Dove championed the other side of the divide, with campaigns that spoke to crowdculture concerns about unhealthy beauty standards for women.īrands succeed when they break through in culture, and crowdcultures are a great vehicle for doing that. Axe revived its brand by becoming an over-the-top cheerleader for the “lad” crowd that arose as a response to politically correct gender politics. Other good examples come from personal care. Chipotle did this successfully when it made two short films critiquing industrial food, tapping into a movement that began in the organic-farming subculture and blew up into a mainstream concern on social media. In it, a brand sets itself apart by promoting a new ideology that springs from the crowd. While they diminish the impact of branded content, crowdcultures grease the wheels for an alternative approach, cultural branding. Consider that people making videos in their living rooms top the charts on YouTube, which few companies have managed to crack. Their members produce their own content-so well that companies simply can’t compete. Crowdcultures are very prolific cultural innovators. It has united once-isolated communities into influential crowdcultures. What happened? The issue is, social media has transformed how culture works, in a way that weakens certain branding techniques. In fact, social media seems to have made brands less significant. Hoping to attract huge audiences to their brands, they spent billions producing their own creative content.

Marketers originally thought that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would let them bypass mainstream media and connect directly with customers. Social media was supposed to usher in a golden age of branding.

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