What Do We Mean When We Talk About Culture?
The idea of culture is referenced a lot in the context of business – consumer culture, workplace culture, the cultural salience of messaging, or ponderings on the future of culture. Often though, these discussions only focus on a singular aspect of culture, maybe attitudes or behaviors or trends, but leave out the most important elements: the social forces behind these dynamics and the meaning ascribed to them.
I saw a post on LinkedIn recently that led with a tagline to the effect of “Cheat Sheet for Research on Cultural Insights.” I was intrigued enough to click see more. What followed was a solid set of recommendations for research and data from large survey organizations: Pew, Ipsos, Gallup. There was even a surprise appearance from the General Social Survey. These datasets and research products are great resources for gauging attitudes or sentiments, but none of them stray very far from their data points nor do they provide any contextual narrative or sense of meaning.
None of those resources are bad and none of those organizations claim to be in the business of cultural insights or analysis. But there is a pervasive notion that simply capturing this type of large-scale survey data enables an understanding of the cultural moment that just isn’t there. Narrating charts isn’t the same thing as generating insights. This type of data serves a function more akin to a photograph than a novel; it tells you what happened in a moment, but not why.
Similarly, there has been a trend of think pieces best described as a eulogy for culture - killed by the algorithm. Most of this discourse focuses on material culture. There’s a paradoxical concern that everything looks the same while consumers are simultaneously fragmented into individualized media environments. Monocultures and bubbles. Subway tile coffee shops and Edison lights were delightfully on trend until they were harbingers of gramability; apocalyptic signifiers that the algorithm has been here too.
Or, perhaps worse than dead, culture has become stagnant. A cultural environment built entirely of sequels and nostalgia, repackaged hits from the 80’s, recycled fashion from the 90’s. As though our entire cultural lives have turned into an extended PBS pledge-drive; peak mediocrity – don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Of course, mass culture has always been fairly homogenous and reasonably bland – that’s what makes it accessible. That’s also the point of capital-C Culture: shared ideas, symbols, and meanings. We don’t need Taylor Swift to be avant-garde to be a cultural touchstone, we need her to be catchy.
We are also at a moment in history where technology enables the rapid dissemination of cultural products – music, slang, style, etc. This means that corporate entities are in a race to capitalize on trends as quickly as possible before moving on to the next thing. Corporate culture is risk averse and profit driven, resulting in a rapid process of cooption and sanitation that renders yesterday’s cutting edge tomorrow’s dad joke.
None of this means that culture is dead, which is something of a silly concept to begin with. It does mean that in an interconnected and complex world, systems of meaning and interpretation are evolving rapidly. But they evolve beyond social media ecosystems, influenced by the social and physical realities that compose a person’s lived experience. Someone might visit a coffee shop once because it looks great on Instagram, but that isn’t why they go every Thursday.
Why is any of this important? Recently, within the span of a week, both Apple and Bumble found themselves issuing apologies for marketing campaigns that fell flat. The failures of these two campaigns have been thoroughly dissected online, but the main problem with each was essentially a poor understanding of the cultural environment of the audiences to whom they were speaking. And these are two highly capitalized and sophisticated corporations – they did the research, just not all of the research.
Understanding how your words and images will resonate goes beyond personas and demographics. It requires an understanding of the cultural moment. What are the tensions? What is the mood? It requires understanding the frameworks through which interpretations are being made and how those frameworks are shifting and evolving. It is equal parts art and science – feeling and measuring. But it can’t be ignored.
When we talk about culture, we often carve out a singular piece. It’s more manageable that way. But we do ourselves a disservice when the complexity of cultural dynamics are distilled into their component parts because each element loses context and meaning. If brands, companies, institutions, and organizations want to continue to remain relevant in people’s lives, they should move beyond “solving a problem.” Rather they should focus on demonstrating a keen awareness of the moment, how it is impacting their consumers’ lives, and how they fit into that experiential narrative.