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Twitter Hashtag #QUAL360
November 20-21, 2013 | Singapore
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Cultural Insight and Strategy: A Sociological Agenda
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Culture defines us: it is the sum total of all our implicit assumptions and expectations But people are not determined by culture The strategies people adopt are framed by the tools available, but people use the tools in unique ways
Culture is a toolkit
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By analysing phenomena in contexts
We can begin to understand the underlying culture
Cultural analysis Takes surface level phenomena as expressive of underlying cultural structures and processes and interrogates these for their meaning
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Not manufacturer-centric
Regards the consumer as product user Aims to isolate and freeze cognitive meanings of product / brand ‘How does my customer use/ feel about my brand?’
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Not consumer-centric
Aspirations, purposes, problems, emotions – this is still an individual psychological focus There is much that consumers cannot articulate How does my company-provided resource fit within this consumers’ mindset / lifestyle?
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A different perspective
SOCIETY, HISTORY, POLITICS, ECONOMY - IDEOLOGY,
INSTITUTIONS, GOVERNMENTS,
MARKETS
NARRATIVE DETAILS OF EVERYDAY LIFE –
WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO, GO THROUGH, HOW
THEY INTERACT AND SPEAK TO ONE ANOTHER
Consumer is cultural product
Brand / product meaning generated in dynamic interface of practices with broader social discourses and ideologies
“How is the meaning of consumption shaped by the situated practices & forces of everyday life?”
TENSIONS DRIVING FORCES
OF CHANGE
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Consumer ethnography
Listening & asking; seeing & hearing
Observes practices in natural settings & distinguishes between what people do & what people say (representations)
Looks to explain disconnections between these in terms of the constraints organizing people's worlds – since this is often where the communication opportunity lies
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Semiotic analysis
What signs organize communication? What codes are communicated in their combination?
Logos, symbols; protagonists; names, strap lines, keywords; non-verbal communication; temporal context; technique; juxtaposition; narrative.
CHIVALRY (Royal Imperial court and Arthurian knights translated into contemporary modernity)
• Partnership: trust, reciprocity
• Class / prestige: horses = well-bred person, family, background
• Prosperity: dynamism, vitality
• Romance + respect for women (in the China context)
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Discourse analysis
We search magazines, news media, blog forums, TV, movies etc for product category trends, relevant popular culture trends, and broader target market trends
Cultural tensions
New attitudes
and discourses
New forms of practice
Further cultural tensions
Social / economic
shifts
DISRUPTION: THE DRIVING FORCE
OF CHANGE
Identify discourses influencing the situation
Look for codes evolving within each of these discourses: How are similar themes being communicated
across contexts?
Search for correspondences and/or discords between discourses Which are often evidence of cultural tensions &
imminent cultural change
Generate hypotheses from these findings
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Metaphor Analysis - Procedure
Finding metaphors
Identification of linguistic metaphors
Discourse structure
How parts of text or talk contribute to the whole
Metaphor clusters and absences
analyse distribution of metaphors
across talk or text
Discourse topics or
themes
Local discourse action
analyse talk or text
Metaphor scenarios
infer narratives around metaphors
Building metaphor groups
aggregation into semantically-
connected groups
systematic metaphors
Answer research questions
Pose research questions
Building insight = strategy
Adapted from MetNet meeting Milton
Keynes, 2006
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We look first to contradictions
In the Chinese cultural context, there exist many contradictions:
Pre-reform vs. Post-reform
Planned economy vs. Market economy
Communist blocs vs. Skyscrapers
Rural migrant vs. Urban resident
Working masses vs. Emergent middle class
Myths are created as a fallout
Myths resolve cultural contradictions
An example
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“Romantic” rural tourism
Social shift: boom in car ownership Urbanites explore countryside New cultural representations
New attitudes and practices: - Rural tourism - Farming as leisure
New forms of consumption
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Nostalgia for the “rural” in the city
‘Hometown’ style restaurants – drawing on the same symbolic codes
Repurposing of derogatory terms for rural folks – as cute / folksy ‘Chilled out’ /
‘Modern’ versions of Cultural Revolution
imagery
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The same emergent code everywhere…
Repurposing of derogatory term on snack brand
‘Ethnic’-style clothing in fashionable markets
Rural / nature codes on water bottle
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Self/Other - Basic oppositions (Adapted from: Griffiths et al. 2010)
Self : Other Rule : Disrule (absence of rule) Order : Disorder Human : Animal Culture : Nature Controlled : Uncontrolled Lawful : Lawless Clean : Dirty
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Self/Other –Romantic Reappraisal (Adapted from: Griffiths et al. 2010)
Self : Other Constraint (rule) : Freedom (disrule, absence of rule) Predictable (order) : Unpredictable (disorder) Artificial (human) : Natural (animal) Urban (culture) : Rural (nature) Reserved (controlled): Impulsive (uncontrolled) Conventional (lawful) : Creative (lawless) Formal Sterile (clean): Fertile (dirty)
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Ideological innovation
Rural
Undesirable
Desirable
Urban
New rural purity
Pollution Corruption Impurity
Poverty Ugliness Disease
Materialism Consumption
Hedonism
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Strategic implications: • Consumer trends • Marketing and communications • Environmental management • China’s future
Real-world results: • Two award-winning campaigns • Sales +46% vs. +25% for the
category • Brand as the #2 market player
versus #5
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Creative / political strategy – rural heroes
Poor rural boy Real-life migrant story Discovered by director Cast as hardworking bumbling
country-bumpkin In show about military unit Which valorizes effort &
overcoming Becomes accidental hero Adopted by media as national
champion / icon = redrawing of urban / rural boundary = new lines of inclusion & exclusion = new form of social engineering*
*Source: Griffiths & Zeuthen (2014) ‘Bittersweet: Chiku Civilization’ - forthcoming
Implications for brands: - Emphasize struggle not just
aspiration - Equity vs. inequity - Social conscience - Poetic justice
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(1) A brand advances an ideology
(2) Expressed by myth + cultural codes
(3) That resolves a cultural tension
(4) Caused by a social disruption
(5) Via source materials repurposed from subcultures, movements and media myths
Cultural strategy
Not just functional benefits + emotional territories but grounded in society and culture
Source: Holt, D. and Cameron, D. (2010),
‘Cultural Strategy’, Oxford
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Conduct research with a broader focus - on culture and society, rather than on narrow pre-defined markets
Brand strategy not just trade-offs over functional benefits + emotional territories but grounded in society and culture
Rethink client-agency interactions so that the holistic ambitions of cultural analysis have primacy
Shift the emphasis towards method + strategic insight (i.e. thinking, concepts, and the application of tools)
Different priorities for sampling – because focus is on meaning not marketing objectives: flexible, constantly reformulate frames, deliberately sample outliers, oppositional examples.
Ethnography should be reclaimed as a mode of cultural analysis – not abused as a term for on-site interviews
Conclusions / Implications
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Twitter Hashtag #QUAL360
November 20-21, 2013 | Singapore
