Your Brand Is Not Cool
Somewhere over the last three or four months, we’ve collectively lurched from a Brat summer to a Demure one. Maybe? It doesn’t matter, because a seemingly endless parade of brands, with no sense of shame or embarrassment, really want you to know that they know that they are most certainly Brat. Or Demure. Definitely Mindful. These brands need you to know that they are really amazingly together.
But they are not cool.
Perhaps they aren’t trying to be cool, but simply relevant, or top-of-mind, or effectively positioned to fully exploit the algorithm. Yet the constant mining of social media for the latest trend belies a sense that cultural relevance is fleeting. That someone else, somewhere else, and most definitely younger, is in on the secret and one step ahead. And if you don’t keep up – your brand, your team – you’ll be Skibidi Ohio.
Recently the Wall Street Journal – long renowned for having its skeletal finger on the pulse of popular culture - published something of a primer on Gen Alpha slang. C-suites everywhere now abuzz with rizz. The article captured the essence of the language, in a very WSJ way, as “nonsensical words and mindless videos that spread quickly on social media despite offering little mental stimulation.”
But maybe that’s what is actually happening. In an attempt to stay current, brands find themselves repeating meaningless words. Moving at the speed of social – a phrase as loathsome as it is stupid – perfectly captures this phenomenon in both spirit and practice. Not to be a part of something or to communicate any real idea other than that they can say the words too. We’re all Danny Tanner in a world full of just out of reach Uncle Jesses.
Which brings us back to cool. Why bother? There are plenty of channels to reach consumers, none of which hinge on social media or appropriating the language of teenagers. But those approaches aren’t new and shiny, they don’t make the olds shake their heads, they don’t require explainers. They are not cool.
Here’s the problem: At best, for brands, cool can only be borrowed. Because cool has to cost something along the way. It has to be rejected or mocked. It has to be alienating. It has to piss people off. It has to do all these things and simply not care. These are things, by the way, that brands desperately try to avoid. No consumer left behind. And there is nothing inherently cool about your shoes or car or app or RTD beverage.
The relationship between Sprite and Hip Hop is well documented. In the early 90s, the collaboration between the brand and actual artists was seen as authentic with commercials featuring legends like A Tribe Called Quest, KRS One, and Nas. As Hip Hop was in a moment of cultural ascendancy, particularly as it was reaching white audiences, America’s more conservative voices warned of its threat to the moral fabric of the country. There’s always a cost. Sprite wasn’t cool but Hip Hop was and by forging a real relationship, Sprite gets to borrow some of that cool. Otherwise it’s just Starry.
Does any of this matter? Clearly it does or we wouldn’t spend so much energy constantly searching for the next cultural fragment to co-opt and leverage into views or, should we be so lucky, brand awareness. However, to be trending isn’t to be a trend and latching on to each ephemeral moment doesn’t create a foundation to build upon. But you do get those sweet, sweet clicks.
Your brand isn’t cool. But it should want to be. Cool is why Levi’s were being smuggled into the Soviet Union. Cool is why everyone wanted a pair of Dr. Martens in the 90s. Cool is why people will buy a vinyl record, even if they don’t have the equipment to play it.
A final caveat - maybe I’m wrong. Maybe nothing is cool anymore. Maybe nothing ever was. Maybe everything is content to be consumed and forgotten. Maybe we’re all just stunted 12-year-olds shouting “Demure Brat Ohio” at anyone who will listen, full of sound and fury, signifying skibidi.