December 10, 2024 • 50 mins
Marisa and Steven close out 2024 with the inimitable Dr. Marcus Collins, award-winning marketer, cultural translator, and bestselling author of “For The Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.” If you agree with Marcus’ thesis that “culture is the operating system of humanity,” what does that mean for how brands connect into culture - the right ways? Who does it well, and who is just “sucking the tailpipe?” Stay tuned for reflections on the year in an episode that will inspire you to think differently in the year ahead.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, and thanks for joining us on Brand New from
the iHeart Podcast Network and Brand New Labs. I'm Marissa Thalberg.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Steven Wolf. Fanta and Marissa. It is so
great to see you because we have not caught up
Jesus Thanksgiving, and you know, this past week in New
York and a little thing called Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
It's been a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's been a lot. I had a great Thanksgiving with
my family in New York, so I was feeling really
good about that. And I know you had a great
Thanksgiving to wish our paths could have crossed.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I know, but you know you're in New York and
then I follow you, and so again we just got
to figure out how do we be in the same
city at the same time.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I mean, I will say it's kind of fun to
be fun to be back in big retail this holiday season, because.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You know, I mean, what was that like. I mean,
this is your Christmas and bar mitzvahs and wedding and
keisanias and everything together.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
This is the real super Bowl time of year what
I love. And for those of you who are just
listening to me for the first time, I just joined
j C. Penny a few months ago as their consulting
chief random marketing officer, and it's been great. But what
was really fun? I mean, look, this is a brand
that needs some reinvigoration for sure, but I mean the
(01:28):
team just did such a great job on Black Friday.
And you know, listen, we're going to talk a lot
about culture in this episode, and culture to me ties
to also real insights and understanding. I think sometimes for
those of us who are executives that only live our
lives on like the Two Coasts, and that was me
for a long time of my life, we might not
(01:50):
realize certain things like that gamification of Black Friday that
some people have now put pood. You know, there's a
consumer that enjoys that. It's become sports and proof point,
we did just a really fun giveaways starting at five am,
nine am, and we had people lining up out the
doors at five am and not in that crazy How.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Is that still a thing? In twenty twenty four?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Behavior is nuanced and behavior has multiple dimensions. So on
the one hand, of course we all love to online shop,
and we had that too, but there's something really fun
about having these experiences and for a lot of people
waking up early on Friday morning. And you know, you
can criticize this to death, and I get it, you know,
crazy consumerism. But there's a fun part of it, which
(02:36):
is like make it a little sport. Get up early,
get your coffee, go with the friend or loved win
or family. And no, there were no knocking babies down
like Chloye used to see ten years ago. It was
all really fun for people, and we really made some
people's holidays. I mean they were people who you know,
are shopping within their means and are suddenly getting.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I mean the deals are real.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well not only that, but we were giving things away.
So just being able to see the impact that that
made on people was really a wonderful part of participating
in the consumerism, if you will, of this holiday season.
So I enjoyed it. And I was out in the
Jersey City j C. Penny with my two daughters, first
time I took them, and at least Hand is a convert.
(03:19):
I think we're working on Avery a little bit more.
She's now been showing off her haul to all of
our friends. So you know, one by one, my friend,
one by one.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I love it. So some stats, I mean I know
they had some of the official stats after Black Friday
and Cyber Monday, but the stat that was coming from
Bain was that approximately in the US seventy five billion
dollars would be spent between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Came out to be a little bit more than a
four percent increase year every year, and that's almost two
(03:50):
hundred million American shopping, right.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Which is just insane part of the culture.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
But it is now part of the culture. And again,
you know, this is a capitalist society, and you know,
the only color that people care about is green. So
I don't know, it's just fascinating. But you know, obviously
I love Cyber Monday into seeing all the deals that happened,
and obviously I stocked up on a bunch of stuff
for friends and family.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, and of course Cyber Monday isn't really just a
single day. I mean it all blurs now, all the
deals are online.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's now it's a whole acronym, right, it's BFCM. So
they've blended it all together, and that's now like a hashtag.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, So I like adding GT on the end there,
which is giving Tuesday. Absolutely that one has come and
gone but we made sure to do a little something
fun for Giving Tuesday too, because I mean, there's something
appropriate after that binge of consumerism to remind people that
it should be a season of giving and giving back.
And even if there's you know, some capitalizing on that
(04:47):
in a brand way, I still think it's a net
positive thing.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And while you were in New York, you know, for family,
I was just in New York, and you know, we
just had the annual AD Council Public Service Award, which
is obviously recognizing all the incredible work that the AD
Council does, and that is incredible purpose driven work. You know,
a lot of people like to call it as the
AD prom because everyone in the industry goes. It really
(05:14):
is about the work and the people that they have
showing the campaigns and the impact. And so you talk
about Giving Tuesday, you just think about the importance of giving.
And I just think that people underestimate the power of
storytelling and the way that stories can move people to
give and care and really change society. And so again
(05:35):
with this culture theme, it was just very heartening to
see the campaigns that continue to this day, like Love
Has No Labels, all the way to smoking the Bear,
and so shout out to Lisa Sherman and the whole
AD Council staff that put together this incredible, incredible.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Big shout out. It's one of my favorite events so
the year. It really really killed me to not be there.
We've talked a lot about FOMO. I felt a little
like cinder never what was at the ball. But that's okay.
I mean sometimes you just we all have to prioritize differently.
I was traveling so much that week and not New York.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I mean, again, you got this big new job, So
these are the trade offs. You know, you have to work,
you have to work. You know all these people so
you'll see them at the next event. But it was
a great event.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
But I think the point is it's an appropriate time
of year for an industry that does like to congratulate
itself a lot, an appropriate time to just look at
the good that we can do with our collective power
to shape hearts and minds. You know, we do it
in the service of many commercial businesses, but to do
it in service of positive change is I think gives
(06:43):
a lot of us a sense of extra meaning.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
The thing that is the only concept of change is
really culture. And I think this is just a great
segue because we have I think a real special treat
for all of our listeners. We have the one and
only doctor Marcus Collins as closing guests for Brand New
this year. And you know, Marcus is a friend of ours,
but he is just doing some incredible work. And if
(07:08):
you don't know Marcus, you know he is just an
award winning marketer and culture translator. But he's also the
best selling author of an incredible book. Please pick it up,
listen to it. It's called for the Culture, the power
behind why we buy, what we do, and who we
want to be, and it's incredibly powerful. It's grunted in
science everything from sociology, anthropology, behavioral economics. It's it's really
(07:32):
really well researched and done. But it really stems from
his work being on the agency side. He was at
you know, the story firm, Widen and Kennedy. He was
at Translation, which was started by Steve Stout, and he's
worked for brands like Apple and Nike and even Beyonce,
and now he's a professor at University of Michigan's Raw
School of Business. He's just an incredible thinker and he's
speaking so much about culture. So Marissa, I'm really pumped
(07:54):
to have Marcus here with us.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Cannot wait. And you know what I think is special
about him is oftentimes people are either academics or either practitioners,
and the fact that he really can genuinely and has
genuinely navigated both gives just a different level I think
of credibility and impacts. So when we come back, we're
going to have a great conversation with Marcus Collins. We're
(08:24):
back and we're here with the esteem Doctor Marcus Collins.
As Stephen said, he is an award winning Marketer, cultural
translator and the best selling author for the culture Marcus,
We are so happy to have you here. Welcome. Steph
and I were saying when we're thinking who would be
a great final guest for the year, you or someone
we've really had in our mind for a week. So
(08:46):
thank you so much for accommodating. And I think it's
what you are about that is just so personally and
professionally fascinating to both of us because of the way
you've really thought about the intersection of culture. And I think,
tell me if I'm quoting it correctly, but you said
culture is the operating system of humanity.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I mean, I just believe that so much as a marketer.
So let's get right into it. How do you think
brands can plug into that operating system authentically without coming
across as opportunistic or even potentially have a negative blowback
on how they do it?
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I think it starts with understanding the fact that brands,
by their very nature are cultural. By the very nature,
brands are vessels of meaning, right, They're identifiable signifiers that
contract thoughts and feelings in the hearts and minds of
people relative to a company, a product, a person, institution, organization.
And since they're vessels of meaning, they are thereby mediated
(09:51):
through our cultural lenses, because culture is the way by
which we make mean. So the question becomes what do
brands want to mean relative to people and their cultural subscription?
And that's done, to your point, authentically by first understanding
what does the brand believe. We may be a sell
razor blade, that's what we do, But how do we
(10:13):
see the world. What's our point of view, our conviction?
Because it's that ideological lens by which we translate the
world that ultimately gives the brand permission license the possibility
to engage people beyond the functional performance of its product
and more so the ideological lens by which it sees
the world. So the way it engages in the cultural
(10:35):
zeitgeist is by being driven by its point of view
on the world and engaging in the world accordingly with
people who see the world similarly.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It's so good to see you, and I just can't
thank you enough for all the work that you do
out really almost preaching about the importance of culture. But
I have to ask, what do you do when you
come up again the non disciples, the people that might
not subscribe to the power and faith of a brand.
(11:09):
And this is the shout out to either all of
my hedge fund listeners out there, all of my financial
listeners out there.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
We've had a theme all year, haven't.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
We, Stevens or Yes, and even you know on the
technology side, how do you really talk to someone that
doesn't put a lot of stock in a brand.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
I typically try to remove myself, try to diminish myself.
This is not about me. Instead, I say, well, here's
what the literature says. That's sort of the benefit. We
would argue. The cheat code that I have is just
my proximity to the scholarship, and I can go, hey,
you know, listen, far be it for you to believe me?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
And can you just flex again? Given all of your
background and you've been in the industry and you've worked
with everyone from you know, agencies like translation to again
Beyonce to so many different brands. But when you talk
about the research and the literature, like what is that
research in literature for our listeners.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
My doctoral studies is in consumer culture theory, which is
the convergence of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and marketing theory. And
the idea is that people consume ritually and it's these
rituals that are culturally governed that therefore moves beyond our
(12:25):
affinity for a product and its performance to what the
expectations are for people like us who subscribe to the
culture and therefore adhere to the ritual. So my scholarly
work by academic repertoire sort of sits of sociology, but
my work lives at the convergence of these for different
research aims.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So they're like a fancy way that you understand humans
what we do. They're like a fancy way to say
that I.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Study human behavior and why we do what we do
when we come together. When I get pushed back from
people who are not indoctrinated in the world of brand
and culture and marketing, and they go, well, it's really
about the product, It's really about these things. And I go, well,
you have a point, for sure, But the literature would
tell us differently. And so when I'm combated with pushback,
(13:10):
I try to diminish myself say well, don't don't listen
to me, Farbi, listen to me, listen to Amil Diurkhin.
When the founding fathers of sociology, what is Max Weber
has to say on the matter. The scholarly work has
been telling us well over a century what is reality?
And this is what I love about theory. I love
this about theory because theory is the most accurate depiction
(13:33):
of reality. It is the most accurate depiction of what
is today right now, based on hundreds of years of
scholarly explorations. So when people say they have an opinion,
I go, that's great, Well, the literature has an opinion.
Here's the literature would say. Therefore we and then you
start pulling from case studies that make that thinking more tangible,
(13:56):
more contemporary, and more applicable. And the hope is, and
I suppose this is sort of the academic side of me,
the hope is to sort of walk people through how
to think about this, and what this really is is
just changing our perspective so that we see the world differently,
which ironically is what culture is all about, seeing the
world one way and operating in the world based on
(14:18):
the governing operating system of that reality.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
See what he just did there, Most like he brought
it back to culture, back to culture.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This is so heartening for me because I've said this
many times, including on our podcast. For me, when people
said why did you want to go into this field?
I said, I think I instinctively knew from a young
age that it was this intersection of business, psychology, and culture.
But I probably could have just had sociology, but it
was always culture for me as that tentpole. And it's
(14:50):
funny not everyone says that in terms of the motivational
factor for doing this. So it's just really nice to
know that there's real academia behind this and supporting it.
And I get like, in the geekiest way, why you've
DoD You've decided to dive in and make it your work.
(15:10):
But I want to pull it into now a little
bit of So how is it manifesting in the world
with brands. Let's take it a little out of the
theory and into the practice, because I think, especially since
the advent of social media, there's call it a pressure
or an expectation that everyone's going to play and so
we've seen as a result the good, the bad, and
the ugly. Fair to say so, I mean, I think
(15:33):
it is an interesting question as you're looking back and
analyzing it from your very unique lens. How can brands
tap into culture or subcultures even which we should talk about,
without diluting or exploiting them.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, perfect question. So I think that even just the nomenclature,
the phraseology of tapping into something, tapping into is almost
exploited by nature. It's sort of like a tree. You
put a tap in and you extract out of it.
And I say that with the reality that I've actually
used that language before. So to get to the heart
(16:08):
of the question, I have to borrow from my friend
Eric Holgrin, and I write about this in the book.
You know, he uses this metaphor. I think it's just
so perfect of how we engage in culture. He treats
it like a car. They say you can either drive it,
ride shotgun, or sucktail pipe. When we drive culture, we
are leading culture. How do we lead culture? We lead
(16:31):
culture by contributing new social facts as a milk. Dirkhim
referred to it as new cultural characteristics, new artifacts, new behaviors,
new language that becomes a part of the vernacular, that
becomes a part of the behaviors that becomes well, the
rituals that become the part of sort of how we
adorn ourselves. And you think about people who typically lead culture,
(16:53):
the typically creators. They're artists, they're musicians, their filmmakers, their
content creators. They are bringing new things than to the world,
providing is isodgen shocks to the system that we go,
oh wow, that's cool, and then we adopt it. They
lead culture. Now, that's ambitious for a brand for sure,
especially like a CpG like brand. Right, But then maybe
(17:13):
you don't lead culture, Maybe you don't drive culture, but
you ride shotgun. The idea of writing Shotgun is that
you're not contributing new artifacts or new behaviors, new language,
but you are engaging in the discourse based on the
cultural characteristics that exist today through your perspective, through your lens.
So you engage in the conversation because you have something
(17:35):
to contribute. I think about a brand like Beats by
Dre at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement
was hot in the cultural zeitgeist. Right, this is post
the public execution of George Floyd. Everyone's talking, everyone has
a hot take, but the people who were most affected
by a black community weren't terribly in the driver's seat.
(17:59):
And these conversations weren't happening in the headlines, they weren't
happening in talking heads in the media. Instead, they were
happening in people's text message change right in the group chat.
So Beats by Dre, identifying that this reality exists on
group of people came to the world with this point
of view about being bold about being heard. Said you
(18:19):
love the culture, but do you love me? And people
were like, oh my goodness, and the black community broadly speaking,
we're like, exactly, you said the thing that we've been
trying to say. They contributed to the current cultural zeitgeist,
not speaking to black people, but speaking on behalf of them,
(18:41):
based on the language that was of them, right, So
that's how we ride shotgun. Now, the worst thing you
can do is sucktail pipe. And sucking tail pipe is
when you just jump on a thing you don't have
a point of view.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
No one wants that, Marcus. No one wants to suck
tail No one.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I mean, like, we've seen this like all summer, you know, like,
you know, my pizza is brat. You're like, oh goodness,
like it was fun until you said that exactly exactly.
You don't have a point of view in the world,
so all you could do is jump in, you know,
and therefore you suck tailpipe. That's the worst thing you
can be. The best thing we can be is drive
culture is lead culture. Which I think is the frame
(19:18):
by which we should think about how we engage in culture.
Is that we have to see culture as a place
to give, not a place to take. We see culture
as a place to contribute, not a place to extract
or to exploit. When we see it that way.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So I'm never going to say tapping into again because
now I'm picturing a tree sucking this up and I'm like, oh, yeah,
you're right now.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
To be honest, like I've used that language. In fact,
I use that language in the book. Yeah, that's something
that I come to realize after, you know, having written
it and speaking it out in the world and sort
of interrogating this a little bit further. But we think
about it through the lens of contributing, leading, adding new things,
not extracting or exploiting. We get ourselves out of the crosscres,
(20:04):
or at least we minimize the cross cares of being
exploitative and also appropriating culture more broadly.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So I definitely feel like we have some real good
tweets coming out of that. Marcus, thank you. Now, I
just have this visual of tailpipe sucking, and you know,
we're just going to have to make sure that we
tell that to our friends in the brand world. But
I do want to come back to tech just, you know,
given you know, not just my background, not just the
dialogue that Mersa and I always have, But we're at
(20:32):
a moment in time where we're really at the dawn
of the intelligence age. And when you see that, you
are going to have all different types of AIS now
engaging with consumers. How does culture now get woven through this?
And are you were going to ever see AIS really
(20:53):
understand culture because of all of the nuances that human
beings have, along with all the biases that are now
being hardwired into AI. This is potentially going to take
the problem that we have today and just put this
on absolute, programmatic, global scale.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Yeah, I am optimistic about AI, but simultaneously very realistic
and to your points even you know, culture is unbelievably nuanced,
Like it's the nuances are so subtle in their hues,
their shades of gray, that the more people come to
(21:37):
understand it, the more secretive the handshakes become. Thirty years ago,
if I said those shoes are bad, you know, I
met Michael Jackson bad kind of on the nose, kind
of nose.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
I was just in in Sydney a few weeks ago
and I'm at the hotel and I talked to the
conciergs and I'm asking about, you know, what I should do,
and he's like, oh, you know, the hotel is great.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
We have a swim pool here. To make sure you
bring your thongs.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I was like, excuse me, sir, my thongs and he
was like, yeah, yeah, your thumbs like you And he's like, oh, oh,
my flip flops. I thought you meant like throng throngs, Right,
Those things seem very obvious because they're not terribly nuanced
once you're part of it. But as culture becomes flattened
in many ways because of the hypernnected world in which
(22:21):
we live in, the nuances become even more subtle. I
think that as the technology gets better as recognizing nuances,
we'll just get better at making more subtleties. I mean
AI at its core, it's a predictive machine.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It predicts today though today today it won't be that tomorrow.
I just try to remind everyone today is as shitty
as this technology will ever be. Right.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Predictions are good.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
I mean, our brain is a predictive machine, right, and
we've been using this since our subher in African days, right,
So it is an extension, as Marsha McClean say, of
our human behavior, right, and we get better at making predictions,
so will the technology. But I think that the rate
at which we find subtleties to distinguish us from everyone,
(23:12):
our people versus other people, I don't think the technology
would ever get there. It'll get better one million percent,
but I don't think it'll ever get there because it
just requires so much. It's almost like, you know, again
today we'll talk about today, like when we hear the
music come from AI, we go, wow, this sounds like
everything's out right now great, But culture is constantly moving,
(23:35):
so whatever's right now is actually behind what is to come.
So I'm optimistic about where the technology would take us.
I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm a little bearish
with regards to its ability to undercut the power of culture,
but who knows, it might be surprised.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I think your example about those shoes are bad is
so interesting because since really the dawn of social media
and we started monitoring for and really even all the
way today. Just the other day, I was talking to
my team about, Hey, how's our brand sentiment this week
on social and it was funny. They reminded me what
I'm always the one telling everyone else, which is it's
(24:15):
really really hard to get an accurate read on that
for exactly the example that you said, there's so many
words in the English language that have so much nuance
and slang in different subcultural ways of referencing them that
to really think today, I know, I have to caveat
this for Stephen, because he's right. I mean, it's just
changing so quickly. But I don't know. I guess I'm
(24:39):
still a little bit of a fan of hoping that
the nuance is what will always make us human, and
that's always going to be a particularly special part of
remaining human.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
I think we'll just be a little bit ahead, which
be a little bit ahead of it, which means that
the technology would get better at capturing sort of the
more broader themes, but the more i would say, subcultural
things that are bubbling, that are starting, that are being
reworked and contorted and bent. The technology you have to
learn that, and therefore it will always be a little
(25:11):
bit behind. I think your point about like looking out
into the social discourse, the dialogue that are happening across
social networking platforms, it requires moves beyond sentiment good bad, negative,
to making meaning. It's like, as we see people engage
in discourse, you know, we are negotiating constructing meaning, is
(25:34):
it cool? Is it acceptable? We're legitimating do people like
me do something like this? And it's based on that
question that ultimately obligates us to do what people like
us do. So this meaning making process by which we
are negotiating and constructing. That is the creation of culture.
(25:55):
That's how culture is established. It's established through the discourse.
The discourse that helps us decide are these issues in
or are they out? Are we wearing our hair like
this if you have it, of course, or are we not?
What car are we driving? Is Jaguar cool?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Like?
Speaker 4 (26:11):
We are negotiating what's acceptable, and those things are culturally mediated.
And since it is in our DNA, we are wired
to be cultural animals because that's how we create expectations
of what people like us ought to do. And therefore
I feel safe when I'm with my people. And I
don't know if technology will get to that level of
(26:34):
humanity because David, to your point, that technology is being
informed by encoded by humanity and therefore and humanity will
always be the antecedd which will give us a slight, slight,
slight advantage.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
So all I gotta do is I have to remind
everyone go watch the movie Her Yes, Spike Jones movie.
They came out in twenty thirteen, and again I was
literally just having this conversation. No what folks New York
this past week. It's hard for people to wrap their
head around this, right, because AI is not software, right,
you're talking about intelligence in nineteen ninety seven when you
(27:12):
had AOL messenger come out and everyone's like wow, like
this is it, this is the jam. And then you know,
fourteen years later something like Uber comes out, like you
could have never imagined that, and that was fourteen years.
But you now have this time cycle really collapsing because
(27:32):
this is now exponential. And once you understand that you're
dealing with IQ points and if chetchipt two day is
about one hundred and fifty IQ points and you picked
the multiple, is it doubling? So it's a two x,
a five x, ten x this time next year, it's
mastered human language. And so what my concern is to
(27:54):
your point is you are literally again you always do.
This is why I love listening to you. You're going
straight to the core, which is truly meaning, right, And
so when you understand that there's so much attachment that
humans put to meaning, whether it's with work, whether it's
with friends and family, or you know, your things, your belongs,
(28:15):
the way you bad yourself, a sports team like these
are all things that you're attaching to provide meaning. Once
you actually have in this, you know not just artificial,
this alien world where you are going to have AI influencers.
It's already today, right, is that tomorrow? And they are
going to create movie, you know, music and movies. I
tell all of our friends in Hollywood, and you know
(28:36):
they just have their head in the sand or in
their ass, Like you will have a billion dollar movie
at the box office that is one hundred percent made
by AI. That will happen.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I mean you aren't wrong, which is why I love
Steven so much as it's just the way you frame
this is right. I mean, like I think about this.
So here's a little factoid. When I was in high school,
I spent the summer at the University of Michigan, no surprise, Gobblue,
you guys right, that's right, working with a professor and
adaptive computation. This is in nineteen ninety nine, right, working
(29:07):
in adaptive computation and the idea the question he was
exploring in nineteen eighty nine is can computers learn? And
what we saw it's like generation generation, generation generation, it
got smarter, it got better, it got better, and like
these are like small sort of windows of time looking
at like it's rapid generative process to think and get better.
(29:28):
I think is wildly powerful, so unbelievably powerful. But then
we always saw that it was still limited by our
ability to code it, our ability to inform it. So
when we think about the future, I think that there
will always be that limitation, which for me is why
I think that, you know, job security will still be there,
(29:49):
because we still know this isn't like you said her
as the example, not terminator.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
You know, this is this is the machines taken.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Over and there's always a bit of us, But then
it requires us to continue to be generating ourselves.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, I'm going back into the humanity part of this conversation, okay,
because I'm not ready all the way, but you know,
Steven's getting me ready. Let's take it back to the
humanity part of culture, which is we're saying it's its cultures,
its operating system. You often talk about the power of
emotional connections, and here we are in the middle of
(30:24):
the holiday season, and I'm going to bring us back
to brands a little bit because the holiday season is
and I can speak to this as a marketer, especially
who's done retail quite a bit. You know, this is
like prime time for that kind of holiday you know,
and it seems like the perfect season to create that
emotional resonance and that emotional connection. But let's be honest,
(30:45):
a lot of it is just the same cliches, like
how many different heartwarming ways do you show, you know,
the sun coming home for Christmas and there are the packages,
or you know, pick your favorite trope. I will say,
it's hard. I really want to know from your standpoint,
when you think about moments of prime opportunity for emotional connection,
(31:08):
they often do sit at this slippery slope of devolving
into cliche. And I don't know what that means in
terms of shotgun suck in the tailpipe, probably not driving,
But how do you see that? Does anyone, like does
anyone stand out to you as like, oh, they've really
mastered it at a time where everyone's trying to do
the same thing.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
It's so interesting because I never thought about this to
you asked this question. So this is just straight off
my sort of gut reaction to It's perfect.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
That's how she rolls.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
It's interesting because I think that, like every year, there
is change, but for some reason, when it comes to
the holidays, we tend to kind of go back to
sort of a time of yesteryear, and maybe that's our
our natural inclination to want both being neophilic and neophobic,
that we want new things, which every year sort of
(31:57):
brings us. But then sometimes we want things that feel comfortable. Mean,
think about this way to that point, how many new
Christmas songs holiday songs have taken off, like we still go, it's.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
The most wonderful time of.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
The year decades ago, or let it know, voice it
in or all I want for Christmas is you?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Guess Mariah and she's not that new anymore, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
That's a song from the nineties, right, and that's still
like we like the iciest thawing Mariah, come on out,
bring it to us.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
But is it a nostalgia?
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I mean like like yes, I think we want that
nostalgic comfort in a time where things are moving.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
It's the end of the year.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
We're sort of being reflective about what has happened, what
has occurred. That having the comfort of what once was,
that that rings true that no matter what, you're going
to fill all the fields, we want a little bit
of that. But I think what brands do is that
they revisit that and give it just a little bit
of newness, just a little bit of newness, right, so
(32:57):
you sort of stick to where you are and you
to move it forward, not unlike the musical covers of
all the Christmas songs of old right what we already know,
but just a little bit of newness, that would be
my gut response.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So is it possible for brands in a saturated season
like this to actually ride shotgun if not drive the
culture car?
Speaker 4 (33:22):
This is the moment where you want to be Mariah
Carey and give us all I want for Christmas. Because
when you give us something that is so antithetical that
that just subverts everything else, you go, whoa what was that?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Now?
Speaker 3 (33:37):
That gets our attention?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
And we know this just as much as evoking emotion
is at the crux of impactful branding, distinctiveness not differentiation.
Distinctiveness gets our attention, right, we carve out new cognit
real estate for brands. So the ability to sort of
be a little familiar but feel really new at the
(33:59):
same time, the literal versus is maya most improved yet
acceptable right, so it feels new but still familiar, but
new enough that I go ooh, what was that? It
cuts through, it breaks through the saturation, it breaks through
everyone doing the same thing, and then it becomes the
new thing that people lean into. That's the driving culture
as opposed to sucking tail pipe or at the very
(34:20):
least engaging in it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I love man well, as we prep for a fun
game of core cringe, you know, before we get to that,
what like either emerging cultural trends do you think brands
really need to keep an eye on as we get
ready for twenty twenty five, you know, we got to
speaking of you know, prediction machines. You know, let's get
that Marcus prediction for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
You know I tend to kind of push against the
norm here that when we start thinking about predictions for
the next year, I always think about what stays true.
I mean to your point about tech. This is I
love this quote from Jeff Bezos. I'm a paraphrase. It
says when a time people he's on stage, someone asks
about the future, he goes, I don't think about the future.
I think about what doesn't change. And that's humanity, right.
(35:06):
We are humans by nature, we're social animals by nature.
So for me, the predictions are always what's going to
help facilitate socialization. That's what's going to win. Whatever's going
to bring us closer together, that's the thing that's going
to win. Now, whether that closer together means more divisiousness,
finding my people even in a divisive world like, those
are the things that are going to win. So for me,
(35:28):
I kind of go back to humanity. Like humanity, that's
the trend, and the trend requires much more empathy, which
I think is where we're the most anemic. It's not
the zeros and ones that we don't understand. It's not
the data that we can't compute or synthesize. It's the
partition between us and humanity.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Amen, always Well, on that beautiful note, we're going to
take a little break and when we come back, we're
going to play Cooler Cringe with Marcus. Okay, we're back
and we are ready to play our final game of
Cooler Cringe for the year with the incredible doctor Marcus Collins.
(36:12):
So Marcus, that to you. Yes, we are talking about you.
Are you ready to play?
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Let's see how a true academic does on this test.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
All right, step the first one, first one off the
game cool or Cringe let's tap into the empathy theme.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Cool or cringed Having a relationship with an AI.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
Today it feels cringe, but intellectually it feels kind of cool.
I think that we think about relationship as being sort
of romantic, so first thinking of it, but to the
earlier point about empathy, I feel like there's so many
opportunities to this, like relationships with like elderly care, like
my parents are aging, and the memory aids and what
(36:57):
it once was. So I get a repetition series of
questions and like mom be asked that already, Mom, I
answered that already, and my patients wears thin. But I
imagine if you know I was my best version of
myself thanks to the coding, I would be more empathetic
and more patient. That would be a really interesting technology
to provide, especially for elderly folks whose memories just aren't
(37:18):
as gray as they used to be, or need just
kind of an ongoing companionship.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Or think about a brand and you know you have
that customer that really wants to talk about X Y
Z feature and wax poetic about it. You don't have
to cut them off because it's too expensive. You could
actually have that conversation and make sure they feel heard
and seen and maybe now you get them to do
an upsell and they buy even more product.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
Me to that end, I've called an airline brand that
will remain anonymous, and I called them and I wanted
to like, you know, They're like, hey, how can I help?
And I was like, let me lay this whole thing
out for you, and I'm how much time do you have?
Speaker 3 (37:54):
I am lived, and I'm like, let me.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
It started on this day and now I'm going through
the whole store and then like once I'm done, well,
I'm not even done yet.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
The agent goes all right.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Well, let's try this, and I'm like, no, no, no, no,
I need to acknowledge everything I just said. And she's like, well,
I just want to get to like solutions, and I
was like, I'm a human being on the other side
of this thing, and this isn't just about a transaction
of solving a thing, like I need you to feel me,
I need you to understand. I need you to see
me and hear me. And I think that her mind,
her cultural lens. It's like I'm customer service. Let me
(38:27):
try to service this problem as opposed to servicing me.
But imagine, you know, if the AI could tell the
heightened emotional state I was in, it was like, the
first thing we do is mitigate this, like make him
feel like we understand. I mean, our humanity can sometimes
stop us from being that empathetic.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
So I assume Stephen, for you that it's all cool anything.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I think it's very cool. We are going to think
about a world where you know, we really need to
have meaning and we need to have human connection, but
it will.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Be what's cool is relational. I think that what's Crane's relationship.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I don't know. I think this is all fine for
the next book.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Maybe we'll collapse. I'll put the woman that spin on
this because something I've talked a lot about is the
idea that female leadership traits have not been lionized or
prioritized in our culture, and those traits which both men
and women both possess. One of the core traits of
that is empathy. So if we can just move whether
(39:31):
it's AI people or people wiring the AI, the idea
that we're thinking of empathy as a possibility and optimistic
view of AI makes me feel a lot better. We'll
see it all right, here's a fun, cooler cringefeld to
keep this sort of very in the moment, and I'm
sure when people are listening to this in a few months,
we'll be like what. But you know, we kind of
(39:53):
had to take things that are happening right now. So
the Jaguar rebrand, everyone's talking about it, which maybe in
and of itself is what you could decide is cooler cringe,
but let's get your take cringe.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
And I say it with the Cadria cringe because I
felt like they led with the rebrand as is supposed to,
starting with the product. I think if we saw the
product first we were like, oh okay, Jaguar, and then
give us context for it, because what has always been
in my mind sort of the Achilles Hill for Jaguars
that even though the brand means to symbolize luxury and
(40:27):
symbolize prestige, the product has always failed it, which why
we thought about the product as being like a limon,
like it's always failed it even though it has this
sort of cognitive real estate around luxury that tint has
made a challenge. So if it started with the new
product and then said here's our new point of view,
I think people would have been like, okay, Jaguar, I see.
But instead of starting with the talk as opposed to
(40:49):
starting with the walk, I think it sent some unfortunate shockwaves.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I'll behalf with the brand.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Well, put all right, Stephen, next, well do you think cool?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Well?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I just love how you said that. I articulated. I
think what's been swirling in my head without the work.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
It's very the lead.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
They did the talk before the walk. Yeah, people are
generally and this goes back to our conversation about nostalgia,
familiar people generally resist rebrands very hard to execute and
I've done them so I know, and then they accept
over time. But it seemed like they were more into
the moment. Was the moment as well orchestrated for the
(41:28):
true health of the business versus just the talk value.
That's where maybe we put it back through the lens
of saying is it trying to is that a tailpipe
culture moved or really drive? I can't get that out
of my Yeah, that's going to right.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Coore cringed B to B brands.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
I think Superman cool. Superman cool because of its potential,
like B to be marketing. It sort of reminds me
of like those nineties ra where like it's a beautiful
woman who wears glasses and her hair is in a
bun and she has an overall and everyone goes, she's
so ugly, but still stick her glasses off and puts
(42:09):
her hair dout, like wow, she's so beautiful. That's B
to B marketing, Like take off the overalls B to
B marketing because the truth is that we treat B
to B like it's this separate thing, like it's so different,
but it's all about humanity and we are governed by
our humanity regardless of the context. And they get B
to B marketers understand that they were realized that the
(42:30):
same cultural forces that are pushing us to consume when
we're in the grocery store in the shopping malls, are
the same cultural forces that push us to consume we're
in our cubicles, right, you know, not saying no one's
ever got fired for hiring IBM, those are the vibes
that in the organization culturally, IBM is acceptable, it is
considered valuable, it's considered okay, and therefore it's easier for
(42:53):
you to sell through the idea internally to get all
the social added boys, and therefore we adopt the behavior
that's exactly why we do what we do outside the office.
The same thing goes culture as culture regardless of the context,
which means then if B to B marketers can understand
that these brands could be super effing cool, I love that.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
As a recovering B to B marketer, you speak, all right, Frigus.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Homer, all right, last one. We can't resist. So Marcus
Cooler cringe New Year's resolutions from brands.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Oh wow, wow, you know, I think New Year's in general,
it's just so it's like a rookie move at this point.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
It's like it's like, we know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
You're gonna make these big, audacious sort of plans for yourself,
and then you know it's going to fall through. And
that's because New Year's is an artificial moment that we
decide to press reset, and I say, if you really
want to change, if you really want to do something significant,
don't wait until January. First, start right now, start right
(44:00):
now today. And we know this intuitively because we do
this all the time. We go, Okay, I'm gonna have
a really bad meal tonight, and then Monday starting a
new Monday.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Everything's changed on Monday.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
I've never done that. Please hear my s through the mic.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
I would say, I would say cringe. I would say, brands.
If you want to make a new if you want
to make a new start, start right now today.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Well on that beautiful note again, Marcus, thank you so much.
We couldn't have asked for a better conversation or a
better guest round out our year artificial as a new
year might be. We're gonna call this one is a
very special way to wrap up our twenty twenty four.
So thank you so much for thank you so.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Much for having me. I'm super grateful.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Thank you, Mark, thank you, and thank you for all
that you do. And if you have not picked up
or listened to his incredible book for the culture, please do.
That is a great stocking stuffer. And now it's time
for what's on your mind and our question this we
Marissa is from Amy and Amy asks what has had
(45:04):
the biggest impact on each of you professionally and or
personally this year? Good question.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
You want to go first.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I want you to go first. Like there's been so
much this.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Year, such a good one. We were just saying with
Marcus like with our cooler cringe about New Year's resolutions,
like it's it's artificial, but you know there's something to
kind of force a moment or reflection. So I respect
this question. Okay, now I'm we're saying biggest impact on
each of you professionally or personally. Let's see, I'll combine
(45:40):
the two. I think my revelation which I brought to
words and put on LinkedIn about the power and being
brave enough to try it on in your life and
in your career, and I think it's something that I've
thought about, but I never really really appreciated both the
(46:01):
combination of courage and curiosity that takes and that there
is something to be said for that, and the way
that you know, sharing that story and also using is
explaining why I said yes on a consulting CMO basis
did JC penny to start and allowing myself to still
have other things going on like this podcast, it was
hard for me to do. Whenever you do things a
(46:22):
little differently than what you think the norm is, there's
i think always a little fear of what will people
think You've been good about trying to get me to
care less about what other people think, but it's still
a vulnerability of mine and just seeing that it really
helped people, and it helped me feel good about writing
my own path and continuing to feel strong about that.
(46:43):
I think is probably the thing that I reflect on
as the most important moment, if you will, or a
thing that happened to me this year, and I hope
it carries me forward with good energy into the new year.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Definitely good energy.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
So that's mine.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
That's real good. I feel so incredibly proud of everything
that you've done and all the work that you were
doing and that you continue to do, and just who
you are as a human. And so I feel that
this is a time for introspection and it's it's kind
of taken me a lot to really just come back
to my roots. And again, so many folks in the
(47:21):
industry of media and marketing know me as this, right,
but I had this whole other life before I came in,
as you know, and I think really embracing just the
moment that we're in that this is a true platform
shift everything that's happening with technology. I'm really proud that
I was able to kind of go back in and
(47:42):
really go back into tech in a meaningful way that
is able to connect it with the business side, you know,
working with boards again and you know, brands and really
connecting them to the technology side, which you know, it's
moving so fast and it's just I mean, you know,
the rate of change, it's only going to accelerate rate.
And I don't know, I feel a responsibility because if
(48:02):
I could be a translator connecting the business and the
tech side, I feel like that is something where it
is my happy place, but it's also incredibly needed in
this moment in time. And it's not easy to you know,
start something zero to one. I've done it before. It's
not for the faint of heart. But I really feel that,
you know, what a great time to be a builder,
(48:23):
right and you could be a builder inside of a
big company and you know, be the entrepreneur, or you
could really be the entrepreneur. And I think no matter
where you are in your career, you have to lean in.
And you know, this was you know, kind of from
conversations I was doing in New York this week. It
really is a star winning moment and I feel like
only the strong will survive was kind of like his adage.
(48:46):
I feel that you know you modify that for the
intelligence age, you know, only the smart are going to survive.
And what I mean by smart are the folks that
are using all these tools, all this incredible intelligence that's
becoming available the way electricity is. And if you plug
into that intelligence and make your work smarter, be smart
about the time, the task, the things that you do.
(49:07):
I feel like that is such an incredible moment. And
if you could go on the offense and use these tools,
use all of these things to make what you do
even better, you're going to be ahead of the game.
And it's it's a moment, so really excited for what
is to come.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Well, I'm watching you, my friend, and as your friend,
but as a colleague, I can tell you like, this
is it with you, this is what you're meant to do.
So here's too being builders yes into the next year.
Here's to that for all of us. And on that note,
that's it for this episode and for twenty twenty four
(49:46):
from Brand New. Thank you so much for joining us.
Wishing you happy holidays. If you haven't already, please subscribe.
If you have a question, we're going to be right
back in it in twenty twenty five. So tell us
what's on your mind by emailing us at ideas at
brandshnew dot com and in the meantime, thanks again for
(50:06):
joining us. See you next time on brand New
Hi, and thanks for joining us on Brand New from
the iHeart Podcast Network and Brand New Labs. I'm Marissa Thalberg.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Steven Wolf. Fanta and Marissa. It is so
great to see you because we have not caught up
Jesus Thanksgiving, and you know, this past week in New
York and a little thing called Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
It's been a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
It's been a lot. I had a great Thanksgiving with
my family in New York, so I was feeling really
good about that. And I know you had a great
Thanksgiving to wish our paths could have crossed.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I know, but you know you're in New York and
then I follow you, and so again we just got
to figure out how do we be in the same
city at the same time.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I mean, I will say it's kind of fun to
be fun to be back in big retail this holiday season, because.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
You know, I mean, what was that like. I mean,
this is your Christmas and bar mitzvahs and wedding and
keisanias and everything together.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
This is the real super Bowl time of year what
I love. And for those of you who are just
listening to me for the first time, I just joined
j C. Penny a few months ago as their consulting
chief random marketing officer, and it's been great. But what
was really fun? I mean, look, this is a brand
that needs some reinvigoration for sure, but I mean the
(01:28):
team just did such a great job on Black Friday.
And you know, listen, we're going to talk a lot
about culture in this episode, and culture to me ties
to also real insights and understanding. I think sometimes for
those of us who are executives that only live our
lives on like the Two Coasts, and that was me
for a long time of my life, we might not
(01:50):
realize certain things like that gamification of Black Friday that
some people have now put pood. You know, there's a
consumer that enjoys that. It's become sports and proof point,
we did just a really fun giveaways starting at five am,
nine am, and we had people lining up out the
doors at five am and not in that crazy How.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Is that still a thing? In twenty twenty four?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Behavior is nuanced and behavior has multiple dimensions. So on
the one hand, of course we all love to online shop,
and we had that too, but there's something really fun
about having these experiences and for a lot of people
waking up early on Friday morning. And you know, you
can criticize this to death, and I get it, you know,
crazy consumerism. But there's a fun part of it, which
(02:36):
is like make it a little sport. Get up early,
get your coffee, go with the friend or loved win
or family. And no, there were no knocking babies down
like Chloye used to see ten years ago. It was
all really fun for people, and we really made some
people's holidays. I mean they were people who you know,
are shopping within their means and are suddenly getting.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I mean the deals are real.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well not only that, but we were giving things away.
So just being able to see the impact that that
made on people was really a wonderful part of participating
in the consumerism, if you will, of this holiday season.
So I enjoyed it. And I was out in the
Jersey City j C. Penny with my two daughters, first
time I took them, and at least Hand is a convert.
(03:19):
I think we're working on Avery a little bit more.
She's now been showing off her haul to all of
our friends. So you know, one by one, my friend,
one by one.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I love it. So some stats, I mean I know
they had some of the official stats after Black Friday
and Cyber Monday, but the stat that was coming from
Bain was that approximately in the US seventy five billion
dollars would be spent between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Came out to be a little bit more than a
four percent increase year every year, and that's almost two
(03:50):
hundred million American shopping, right.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Which is just insane part of the culture.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
But it is now part of the culture. And again,
you know, this is a capitalist society, and you know,
the only color that people care about is green. So
I don't know, it's just fascinating. But you know, obviously
I love Cyber Monday into seeing all the deals that happened,
and obviously I stocked up on a bunch of stuff
for friends and family.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, and of course Cyber Monday isn't really just a
single day. I mean it all blurs now, all the
deals are online.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's now it's a whole acronym, right, it's BFCM. So
they've blended it all together, and that's now like a hashtag.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, So I like adding GT on the end there,
which is giving Tuesday. Absolutely that one has come and
gone but we made sure to do a little something
fun for Giving Tuesday too, because I mean, there's something
appropriate after that binge of consumerism to remind people that
it should be a season of giving and giving back.
And even if there's you know, some capitalizing on that
(04:47):
in a brand way, I still think it's a net
positive thing.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
And while you were in New York, you know, for family,
I was just in New York, and you know, we
just had the annual AD Council Public Service Award, which
is obviously recognizing all the incredible work that the AD
Council does, and that is incredible purpose driven work. You know,
a lot of people like to call it as the
AD prom because everyone in the industry goes. It really
(05:14):
is about the work and the people that they have
showing the campaigns and the impact. And so you talk
about Giving Tuesday, you just think about the importance of giving.
And I just think that people underestimate the power of
storytelling and the way that stories can move people to
give and care and really change society. And so again
(05:35):
with this culture theme, it was just very heartening to
see the campaigns that continue to this day, like Love
Has No Labels, all the way to smoking the Bear,
and so shout out to Lisa Sherman and the whole
AD Council staff that put together this incredible, incredible.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Big shout out. It's one of my favorite events so
the year. It really really killed me to not be there.
We've talked a lot about FOMO. I felt a little
like cinder never what was at the ball. But that's okay.
I mean sometimes you just we all have to prioritize differently.
I was traveling so much that week and not New York.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I mean, again, you got this big new job, So
these are the trade offs. You know, you have to work,
you have to work. You know all these people so
you'll see them at the next event. But it was
a great event.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
But I think the point is it's an appropriate time
of year for an industry that does like to congratulate
itself a lot, an appropriate time to just look at
the good that we can do with our collective power
to shape hearts and minds. You know, we do it
in the service of many commercial businesses, but to do
it in service of positive change is I think gives
(06:43):
a lot of us a sense of extra meaning.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
The thing that is the only concept of change is
really culture. And I think this is just a great
segue because we have I think a real special treat
for all of our listeners. We have the one and
only doctor Marcus Collins as closing guests for Brand New
this year. And you know, Marcus is a friend of ours,
but he is just doing some incredible work. And if
(07:08):
you don't know Marcus, you know he is just an
award winning marketer and culture translator. But he's also the
best selling author of an incredible book. Please pick it up,
listen to it. It's called for the Culture, the power
behind why we buy, what we do, and who we
want to be, and it's incredibly powerful. It's grunted in
science everything from sociology, anthropology, behavioral economics. It's it's really
(07:32):
really well researched and done. But it really stems from
his work being on the agency side. He was at
you know, the story firm, Widen and Kennedy. He was
at Translation, which was started by Steve Stout, and he's
worked for brands like Apple and Nike and even Beyonce,
and now he's a professor at University of Michigan's Raw
School of Business. He's just an incredible thinker and he's
speaking so much about culture. So Marissa, I'm really pumped
(07:54):
to have Marcus here with us.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Cannot wait. And you know what I think is special
about him is oftentimes people are either academics or either practitioners,
and the fact that he really can genuinely and has
genuinely navigated both gives just a different level I think
of credibility and impacts. So when we come back, we're
going to have a great conversation with Marcus Collins. We're
(08:24):
back and we're here with the esteem Doctor Marcus Collins.
As Stephen said, he is an award winning Marketer, cultural
translator and the best selling author for the culture Marcus,
We are so happy to have you here. Welcome. Steph
and I were saying when we're thinking who would be
a great final guest for the year, you or someone
we've really had in our mind for a week. So
(08:46):
thank you so much for accommodating. And I think it's
what you are about that is just so personally and
professionally fascinating to both of us because of the way
you've really thought about the intersection of culture. And I think,
tell me if I'm quoting it correctly, but you said
culture is the operating system of humanity.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I mean, I just believe that so much as a marketer.
So let's get right into it. How do you think
brands can plug into that operating system authentically without coming
across as opportunistic or even potentially have a negative blowback
on how they do it?
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I think it starts with understanding the fact that brands,
by their very nature are cultural. By the very nature,
brands are vessels of meaning, right, They're identifiable signifiers that
contract thoughts and feelings in the hearts and minds of
people relative to a company, a product, a person, institution, organization.
And since they're vessels of meaning, they are thereby mediated
(09:51):
through our cultural lenses, because culture is the way by
which we make mean. So the question becomes what do
brands want to mean relative to people and their cultural subscription?
And that's done, to your point, authentically by first understanding
what does the brand believe. We may be a sell
razor blade, that's what we do, But how do we
(10:13):
see the world. What's our point of view, our conviction?
Because it's that ideological lens by which we translate the
world that ultimately gives the brand permission license the possibility
to engage people beyond the functional performance of its product
and more so the ideological lens by which it sees
the world. So the way it engages in the cultural
(10:35):
zeitgeist is by being driven by its point of view
on the world and engaging in the world accordingly with
people who see the world similarly.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It's so good to see you, and I just can't
thank you enough for all the work that you do
out really almost preaching about the importance of culture. But
I have to ask, what do you do when you
come up again the non disciples, the people that might
not subscribe to the power and faith of a brand.
(11:09):
And this is the shout out to either all of
my hedge fund listeners out there, all of my financial
listeners out there.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
We've had a theme all year, haven't.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
We, Stevens or Yes, and even you know on the
technology side, how do you really talk to someone that
doesn't put a lot of stock in a brand.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
I typically try to remove myself, try to diminish myself.
This is not about me. Instead, I say, well, here's
what the literature says. That's sort of the benefit. We
would argue. The cheat code that I have is just
my proximity to the scholarship, and I can go, hey,
you know, listen, far be it for you to believe me?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
And can you just flex again? Given all of your
background and you've been in the industry and you've worked
with everyone from you know, agencies like translation to again
Beyonce to so many different brands. But when you talk
about the research and the literature, like what is that
research in literature for our listeners.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
My doctoral studies is in consumer culture theory, which is
the convergence of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and marketing theory. And
the idea is that people consume ritually and it's these
rituals that are culturally governed that therefore moves beyond our
(12:25):
affinity for a product and its performance to what the
expectations are for people like us who subscribe to the
culture and therefore adhere to the ritual. So my scholarly
work by academic repertoire sort of sits of sociology, but
my work lives at the convergence of these for different
research aims.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So they're like a fancy way that you understand humans
what we do. They're like a fancy way to say
that I.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Study human behavior and why we do what we do
when we come together. When I get pushed back from
people who are not indoctrinated in the world of brand
and culture and marketing, and they go, well, it's really
about the product, It's really about these things. And I go, well,
you have a point, for sure, But the literature would
tell us differently. And so when I'm combated with pushback,
(13:10):
I try to diminish myself say well, don't don't listen
to me, Farbi, listen to me, listen to Amil Diurkhin.
When the founding fathers of sociology, what is Max Weber
has to say on the matter. The scholarly work has
been telling us well over a century what is reality?
And this is what I love about theory. I love
this about theory because theory is the most accurate depiction
(13:33):
of reality. It is the most accurate depiction of what
is today right now, based on hundreds of years of
scholarly explorations. So when people say they have an opinion,
I go, that's great, Well, the literature has an opinion.
Here's the literature would say. Therefore we and then you
start pulling from case studies that make that thinking more tangible,
(13:56):
more contemporary, and more applicable. And the hope is, and
I suppose this is sort of the academic side of me,
the hope is to sort of walk people through how
to think about this, and what this really is is
just changing our perspective so that we see the world differently,
which ironically is what culture is all about, seeing the
world one way and operating in the world based on
(14:18):
the governing operating system of that reality.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
See what he just did there, Most like he brought
it back to culture, back to culture.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This is so heartening for me because I've said this
many times, including on our podcast. For me, when people
said why did you want to go into this field?
I said, I think I instinctively knew from a young
age that it was this intersection of business, psychology, and culture.
But I probably could have just had sociology, but it
was always culture for me as that tentpole. And it's
(14:50):
funny not everyone says that in terms of the motivational
factor for doing this. So it's just really nice to
know that there's real academia behind this and supporting it.
And I get like, in the geekiest way, why you've
DoD You've decided to dive in and make it your work.
(15:10):
But I want to pull it into now a little
bit of So how is it manifesting in the world
with brands. Let's take it a little out of the
theory and into the practice, because I think, especially since
the advent of social media, there's call it a pressure
or an expectation that everyone's going to play and so
we've seen as a result the good, the bad, and
the ugly. Fair to say so, I mean, I think
(15:33):
it is an interesting question as you're looking back and
analyzing it from your very unique lens. How can brands
tap into culture or subcultures even which we should talk about,
without diluting or exploiting them.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, perfect question. So I think that even just the nomenclature,
the phraseology of tapping into something, tapping into is almost
exploited by nature. It's sort of like a tree. You
put a tap in and you extract out of it.
And I say that with the reality that I've actually
used that language before. So to get to the heart
(16:08):
of the question, I have to borrow from my friend
Eric Holgrin, and I write about this in the book.
You know, he uses this metaphor. I think it's just
so perfect of how we engage in culture. He treats
it like a car. They say you can either drive it,
ride shotgun, or sucktail pipe. When we drive culture, we
are leading culture. How do we lead culture? We lead
(16:31):
culture by contributing new social facts as a milk. Dirkhim
referred to it as new cultural characteristics, new artifacts, new behaviors,
new language that becomes a part of the vernacular, that
becomes a part of the behaviors that becomes well, the
rituals that become the part of sort of how we
adorn ourselves. And you think about people who typically lead culture,
(16:53):
the typically creators. They're artists, they're musicians, their filmmakers, their
content creators. They are bringing new things than to the world,
providing is isodgen shocks to the system that we go,
oh wow, that's cool, and then we adopt it. They
lead culture. Now, that's ambitious for a brand for sure,
especially like a CpG like brand. Right, But then maybe
(17:13):
you don't lead culture, Maybe you don't drive culture, but
you ride shotgun. The idea of writing Shotgun is that
you're not contributing new artifacts or new behaviors, new language,
but you are engaging in the discourse based on the
cultural characteristics that exist today through your perspective, through your lens.
So you engage in the conversation because you have something
(17:35):
to contribute. I think about a brand like Beats by
Dre at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement
was hot in the cultural zeitgeist. Right, this is post
the public execution of George Floyd. Everyone's talking, everyone has
a hot take, but the people who were most affected
by a black community weren't terribly in the driver's seat.
(17:59):
And these conversations weren't happening in the headlines, they weren't
happening in talking heads in the media. Instead, they were
happening in people's text message change right in the group chat.
So Beats by Dre, identifying that this reality exists on
group of people came to the world with this point
of view about being bold about being heard. Said you
(18:19):
love the culture, but do you love me? And people
were like, oh my goodness, and the black community broadly speaking,
we're like, exactly, you said the thing that we've been
trying to say. They contributed to the current cultural zeitgeist,
not speaking to black people, but speaking on behalf of them,
(18:41):
based on the language that was of them, right, So
that's how we ride shotgun. Now, the worst thing you
can do is sucktail pipe. And sucking tail pipe is
when you just jump on a thing you don't have
a point of view.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
No one wants that, Marcus. No one wants to suck
tail No one.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I mean, like, we've seen this like all summer, you know, like,
you know, my pizza is brat. You're like, oh goodness,
like it was fun until you said that exactly exactly.
You don't have a point of view in the world,
so all you could do is jump in, you know,
and therefore you suck tailpipe. That's the worst thing you
can be. The best thing we can be is drive
culture is lead culture. Which I think is the frame
(19:18):
by which we should think about how we engage in culture.
Is that we have to see culture as a place
to give, not a place to take. We see culture
as a place to contribute, not a place to extract
or to exploit. When we see it that way.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So I'm never going to say tapping into again because
now I'm picturing a tree sucking this up and I'm like, oh, yeah,
you're right now.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
To be honest, like I've used that language. In fact,
I use that language in the book. Yeah, that's something
that I come to realize after, you know, having written
it and speaking it out in the world and sort
of interrogating this a little bit further. But we think
about it through the lens of contributing, leading, adding new things,
not extracting or exploiting. We get ourselves out of the crosscres,
(20:04):
or at least we minimize the cross cares of being
exploitative and also appropriating culture more broadly.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So I definitely feel like we have some real good
tweets coming out of that. Marcus, thank you. Now, I
just have this visual of tailpipe sucking, and you know,
we're just going to have to make sure that we
tell that to our friends in the brand world. But
I do want to come back to tech just, you know,
given you know, not just my background, not just the
dialogue that Mersa and I always have, But we're at
(20:32):
a moment in time where we're really at the dawn
of the intelligence age. And when you see that, you
are going to have all different types of AIS now
engaging with consumers. How does culture now get woven through this?
And are you were going to ever see AIS really
(20:53):
understand culture because of all of the nuances that human
beings have, along with all the biases that are now
being hardwired into AI. This is potentially going to take
the problem that we have today and just put this
on absolute, programmatic, global scale.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Yeah, I am optimistic about AI, but simultaneously very realistic
and to your points even you know, culture is unbelievably nuanced,
Like it's the nuances are so subtle in their hues,
their shades of gray, that the more people come to
(21:37):
understand it, the more secretive the handshakes become. Thirty years ago,
if I said those shoes are bad, you know, I
met Michael Jackson bad kind of on the nose, kind
of nose.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
I was just in in Sydney a few weeks ago
and I'm at the hotel and I talked to the
conciergs and I'm asking about, you know, what I should do,
and he's like, oh, you know, the hotel is great.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
We have a swim pool here. To make sure you
bring your thongs.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I was like, excuse me, sir, my thongs and he
was like, yeah, yeah, your thumbs like you And he's like, oh, oh,
my flip flops. I thought you meant like throng throngs, Right,
Those things seem very obvious because they're not terribly nuanced
once you're part of it. But as culture becomes flattened
in many ways because of the hypernnected world in which
(22:21):
we live in, the nuances become even more subtle. I
think that as the technology gets better as recognizing nuances,
we'll just get better at making more subtleties. I mean
AI at its core, it's a predictive machine.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It predicts today though today today it won't be that tomorrow.
I just try to remind everyone today is as shitty
as this technology will ever be. Right.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Predictions are good.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
I mean, our brain is a predictive machine, right, and
we've been using this since our subher in African days, right,
So it is an extension, as Marsha McClean say, of
our human behavior, right, and we get better at making predictions,
so will the technology. But I think that the rate
at which we find subtleties to distinguish us from everyone,
(23:12):
our people versus other people, I don't think the technology
would ever get there. It'll get better one million percent,
but I don't think it'll ever get there because it
just requires so much. It's almost like, you know, again
today we'll talk about today, like when we hear the
music come from AI, we go, wow, this sounds like
everything's out right now great, But culture is constantly moving,
(23:35):
so whatever's right now is actually behind what is to come.
So I'm optimistic about where the technology would take us.
I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm a little bearish
with regards to its ability to undercut the power of culture,
but who knows, it might be surprised.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I think your example about those shoes are bad is
so interesting because since really the dawn of social media
and we started monitoring for and really even all the
way today. Just the other day, I was talking to
my team about, Hey, how's our brand sentiment this week
on social and it was funny. They reminded me what
I'm always the one telling everyone else, which is it's
(24:15):
really really hard to get an accurate read on that
for exactly the example that you said, there's so many
words in the English language that have so much nuance
and slang in different subcultural ways of referencing them that
to really think today, I know, I have to caveat
this for Stephen, because he's right. I mean, it's just
changing so quickly. But I don't know. I guess I'm
(24:39):
still a little bit of a fan of hoping that
the nuance is what will always make us human, and
that's always going to be a particularly special part of
remaining human.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
I think we'll just be a little bit ahead, which
be a little bit ahead of it, which means that
the technology would get better at capturing sort of the
more broader themes, but the more i would say, subcultural
things that are bubbling, that are starting, that are being
reworked and contorted and bent. The technology you have to
learn that, and therefore it will always be a little
(25:11):
bit behind. I think your point about like looking out
into the social discourse, the dialogue that are happening across
social networking platforms, it requires moves beyond sentiment good bad, negative,
to making meaning. It's like, as we see people engage
in discourse, you know, we are negotiating constructing meaning, is
(25:34):
it cool? Is it acceptable? We're legitimating do people like
me do something like this? And it's based on that
question that ultimately obligates us to do what people like
us do. So this meaning making process by which we
are negotiating and constructing. That is the creation of culture.
(25:55):
That's how culture is established. It's established through the discourse.
The discourse that helps us decide are these issues in
or are they out? Are we wearing our hair like
this if you have it, of course, or are we not?
What car are we driving? Is Jaguar cool?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Like?
Speaker 4 (26:11):
We are negotiating what's acceptable, and those things are culturally mediated.
And since it is in our DNA, we are wired
to be cultural animals because that's how we create expectations
of what people like us ought to do. And therefore
I feel safe when I'm with my people. And I
don't know if technology will get to that level of
(26:34):
humanity because David, to your point, that technology is being
informed by encoded by humanity and therefore and humanity will
always be the antecedd which will give us a slight, slight,
slight advantage.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
So all I gotta do is I have to remind
everyone go watch the movie Her Yes, Spike Jones movie.
They came out in twenty thirteen, and again I was
literally just having this conversation. No what folks New York
this past week. It's hard for people to wrap their
head around this, right, because AI is not software, right,
you're talking about intelligence in nineteen ninety seven when you
(27:12):
had AOL messenger come out and everyone's like wow, like
this is it, this is the jam. And then you know,
fourteen years later something like Uber comes out, like you
could have never imagined that, and that was fourteen years.
But you now have this time cycle really collapsing because
(27:32):
this is now exponential. And once you understand that you're
dealing with IQ points and if chetchipt two day is
about one hundred and fifty IQ points and you picked
the multiple, is it doubling? So it's a two x,
a five x, ten x this time next year, it's
mastered human language. And so what my concern is to
(27:54):
your point is you are literally again you always do.
This is why I love listening to you. You're going
straight to the core, which is truly meaning, right, And
so when you understand that there's so much attachment that
humans put to meaning, whether it's with work, whether it's
with friends and family, or you know, your things, your belongs,
(28:15):
the way you bad yourself, a sports team like these
are all things that you're attaching to provide meaning. Once
you actually have in this, you know not just artificial,
this alien world where you are going to have AI influencers.
It's already today, right, is that tomorrow? And they are
going to create movie, you know, music and movies. I
tell all of our friends in Hollywood, and you know
(28:36):
they just have their head in the sand or in
their ass, Like you will have a billion dollar movie
at the box office that is one hundred percent made
by AI. That will happen.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I mean you aren't wrong, which is why I love
Steven so much as it's just the way you frame
this is right. I mean, like I think about this.
So here's a little factoid. When I was in high school,
I spent the summer at the University of Michigan, no surprise, Gobblue,
you guys right, that's right, working with a professor and
adaptive computation. This is in nineteen ninety nine, right, working
(29:07):
in adaptive computation and the idea the question he was
exploring in nineteen eighty nine is can computers learn? And
what we saw it's like generation generation, generation generation, it
got smarter, it got better, it got better, and like
these are like small sort of windows of time looking
at like it's rapid generative process to think and get better.
(29:28):
I think is wildly powerful, so unbelievably powerful. But then
we always saw that it was still limited by our
ability to code it, our ability to inform it. So
when we think about the future, I think that there
will always be that limitation, which for me is why
I think that, you know, job security will still be there,
(29:49):
because we still know this isn't like you said her
as the example, not terminator.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
You know, this is this is the machines taken.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Over and there's always a bit of us, But then
it requires us to continue to be generating ourselves.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Well, I'm going back into the humanity part of this conversation, okay,
because I'm not ready all the way, but you know,
Steven's getting me ready. Let's take it back to the
humanity part of culture, which is we're saying it's its cultures,
its operating system. You often talk about the power of
emotional connections, and here we are in the middle of
(30:24):
the holiday season, and I'm going to bring us back
to brands a little bit because the holiday season is
and I can speak to this as a marketer, especially
who's done retail quite a bit. You know, this is
like prime time for that kind of holiday you know,
and it seems like the perfect season to create that
emotional resonance and that emotional connection. But let's be honest,
(30:45):
a lot of it is just the same cliches, like
how many different heartwarming ways do you show, you know,
the sun coming home for Christmas and there are the packages,
or you know, pick your favorite trope. I will say,
it's hard. I really want to know from your standpoint,
when you think about moments of prime opportunity for emotional connection,
(31:08):
they often do sit at this slippery slope of devolving
into cliche. And I don't know what that means in
terms of shotgun suck in the tailpipe, probably not driving,
But how do you see that? Does anyone, like does
anyone stand out to you as like, oh, they've really
mastered it at a time where everyone's trying to do
the same thing.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
It's so interesting because I never thought about this to
you asked this question. So this is just straight off
my sort of gut reaction to It's perfect.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
That's how she rolls.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
It's interesting because I think that, like every year, there
is change, but for some reason, when it comes to
the holidays, we tend to kind of go back to
sort of a time of yesteryear, and maybe that's our
our natural inclination to want both being neophilic and neophobic,
that we want new things, which every year sort of
(31:57):
brings us. But then sometimes we want things that feel comfortable. Mean,
think about this way to that point, how many new
Christmas songs holiday songs have taken off, like we still go, it's.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
The most wonderful time of.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
The year decades ago, or let it know, voice it
in or all I want for Christmas is you?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
I mean, I.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Guess Mariah and she's not that new anymore, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
That's a song from the nineties, right, and that's still
like we like the iciest thawing Mariah, come on out,
bring it to us.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
But is it a nostalgia?
Speaker 4 (32:31):
I mean like like yes, I think we want that
nostalgic comfort in a time where things are moving.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
It's the end of the year.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
We're sort of being reflective about what has happened, what
has occurred. That having the comfort of what once was,
that that rings true that no matter what, you're going
to fill all the fields, we want a little bit
of that. But I think what brands do is that
they revisit that and give it just a little bit
of newness, just a little bit of newness, right, so
(32:57):
you sort of stick to where you are and you
to move it forward, not unlike the musical covers of
all the Christmas songs of old right what we already know,
but just a little bit of newness, that would be
my gut response.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So is it possible for brands in a saturated season
like this to actually ride shotgun if not drive the
culture car?
Speaker 4 (33:22):
This is the moment where you want to be Mariah
Carey and give us all I want for Christmas. Because
when you give us something that is so antithetical that
that just subverts everything else, you go, whoa what was that?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Now?
Speaker 3 (33:37):
That gets our attention?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
And we know this just as much as evoking emotion
is at the crux of impactful branding, distinctiveness not differentiation.
Distinctiveness gets our attention, right, we carve out new cognit
real estate for brands. So the ability to sort of
be a little familiar but feel really new at the
(33:59):
same time, the literal versus is maya most improved yet
acceptable right, so it feels new but still familiar, but
new enough that I go ooh, what was that? It
cuts through, it breaks through the saturation, it breaks through
everyone doing the same thing, and then it becomes the
new thing that people lean into. That's the driving culture
as opposed to sucking tail pipe or at the very
(34:20):
least engaging in it.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I love man well, as we prep for a fun
game of core cringe, you know, before we get to that,
what like either emerging cultural trends do you think brands
really need to keep an eye on as we get
ready for twenty twenty five, you know, we got to
speaking of you know, prediction machines. You know, let's get
that Marcus prediction for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
You know I tend to kind of push against the
norm here that when we start thinking about predictions for
the next year, I always think about what stays true.
I mean to your point about tech. This is I
love this quote from Jeff Bezos. I'm a paraphrase. It
says when a time people he's on stage, someone asks
about the future, he goes, I don't think about the future.
I think about what doesn't change. And that's humanity, right.
(35:06):
We are humans by nature, we're social animals by nature.
So for me, the predictions are always what's going to
help facilitate socialization. That's what's going to win. Whatever's going
to bring us closer together, that's the thing that's going
to win. Now, whether that closer together means more divisiousness,
finding my people even in a divisive world like, those
are the things that are going to win. So for me,
(35:28):
I kind of go back to humanity. Like humanity, that's
the trend, and the trend requires much more empathy, which
I think is where we're the most anemic. It's not
the zeros and ones that we don't understand. It's not
the data that we can't compute or synthesize. It's the
partition between us and humanity.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Amen, always Well, on that beautiful note, we're going to
take a little break and when we come back, we're
going to play Cooler Cringe with Marcus. Okay, we're back
and we are ready to play our final game of
Cooler Cringe for the year with the incredible doctor Marcus Collins.
(36:12):
So Marcus, that to you. Yes, we are talking about you.
Are you ready to play?
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Let's see how a true academic does on this test.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
All right, step the first one, first one off the
game cool or Cringe let's tap into the empathy theme.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Cool or cringed Having a relationship with an AI.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
Today it feels cringe, but intellectually it feels kind of cool.
I think that we think about relationship as being sort
of romantic, so first thinking of it, but to the
earlier point about empathy, I feel like there's so many
opportunities to this, like relationships with like elderly care, like
my parents are aging, and the memory aids and what
(36:57):
it once was. So I get a repetition series of
questions and like mom be asked that already, Mom, I
answered that already, and my patients wears thin. But I
imagine if you know I was my best version of
myself thanks to the coding, I would be more empathetic
and more patient. That would be a really interesting technology
to provide, especially for elderly folks whose memories just aren't
(37:18):
as gray as they used to be, or need just
kind of an ongoing companionship.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Or think about a brand and you know you have
that customer that really wants to talk about X Y
Z feature and wax poetic about it. You don't have
to cut them off because it's too expensive. You could
actually have that conversation and make sure they feel heard
and seen and maybe now you get them to do
an upsell and they buy even more product.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
Me to that end, I've called an airline brand that
will remain anonymous, and I called them and I wanted
to like, you know, They're like, hey, how can I help?
And I was like, let me lay this whole thing
out for you, and I'm how much time do you have?
Speaker 3 (37:54):
I am lived, and I'm like, let me.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
It started on this day and now I'm going through
the whole store and then like once I'm done, well,
I'm not even done yet.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
The agent goes all right.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Well, let's try this, and I'm like, no, no, no, no,
I need to acknowledge everything I just said. And she's like, well,
I just want to get to like solutions, and I
was like, I'm a human being on the other side
of this thing, and this isn't just about a transaction
of solving a thing, like I need you to feel me,
I need you to understand. I need you to see
me and hear me. And I think that her mind,
her cultural lens. It's like I'm customer service. Let me
(38:27):
try to service this problem as opposed to servicing me.
But imagine, you know, if the AI could tell the
heightened emotional state I was in, it was like, the
first thing we do is mitigate this, like make him
feel like we understand. I mean, our humanity can sometimes
stop us from being that empathetic.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
So I assume Stephen, for you that it's all cool anything.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I think it's very cool. We are going to think
about a world where you know, we really need to
have meaning and we need to have human connection, but
it will.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Be what's cool is relational. I think that what's Crane's relationship.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I don't know. I think this is all fine for
the next book.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Maybe we'll collapse. I'll put the woman that spin on
this because something I've talked a lot about is the
idea that female leadership traits have not been lionized or
prioritized in our culture, and those traits which both men
and women both possess. One of the core traits of
that is empathy. So if we can just move whether
(39:31):
it's AI people or people wiring the AI, the idea
that we're thinking of empathy as a possibility and optimistic
view of AI makes me feel a lot better. We'll
see it all right, here's a fun, cooler cringefeld to
keep this sort of very in the moment, and I'm
sure when people are listening to this in a few months,
we'll be like what. But you know, we kind of
(39:53):
had to take things that are happening right now. So
the Jaguar rebrand, everyone's talking about it, which maybe in
and of itself is what you could decide is cooler cringe,
but let's get your take cringe.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
And I say it with the Cadria cringe because I
felt like they led with the rebrand as is supposed to,
starting with the product. I think if we saw the
product first we were like, oh okay, Jaguar, and then
give us context for it, because what has always been
in my mind sort of the Achilles Hill for Jaguars
that even though the brand means to symbolize luxury and
(40:27):
symbolize prestige, the product has always failed it, which why
we thought about the product as being like a limon,
like it's always failed it even though it has this
sort of cognitive real estate around luxury that tint has
made a challenge. So if it started with the new
product and then said here's our new point of view,
I think people would have been like, okay, Jaguar, I see.
But instead of starting with the talk as opposed to
(40:49):
starting with the walk, I think it sent some unfortunate shockwaves.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
I'll behalf with the brand.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Well, put all right, Stephen, next, well do you think cool?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Well?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I just love how you said that. I articulated. I
think what's been swirling in my head without the work.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
It's very the lead.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
They did the talk before the walk. Yeah, people are
generally and this goes back to our conversation about nostalgia,
familiar people generally resist rebrands very hard to execute and
I've done them so I know, and then they accept
over time. But it seemed like they were more into
the moment. Was the moment as well orchestrated for the
(41:28):
true health of the business versus just the talk value.
That's where maybe we put it back through the lens
of saying is it trying to is that a tailpipe
culture moved or really drive? I can't get that out
of my Yeah, that's going to right.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Coore cringed B to B brands.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
I think Superman cool. Superman cool because of its potential,
like B to be marketing. It sort of reminds me
of like those nineties ra where like it's a beautiful
woman who wears glasses and her hair is in a
bun and she has an overall and everyone goes, she's
so ugly, but still stick her glasses off and puts
(42:09):
her hair dout, like wow, she's so beautiful. That's B
to B marketing, Like take off the overalls B to
B marketing because the truth is that we treat B
to B like it's this separate thing, like it's so different,
but it's all about humanity and we are governed by
our humanity regardless of the context. And they get B
to B marketers understand that they were realized that the
(42:30):
same cultural forces that are pushing us to consume when
we're in the grocery store in the shopping malls, are
the same cultural forces that push us to consume we're
in our cubicles, right, you know, not saying no one's
ever got fired for hiring IBM, those are the vibes
that in the organization culturally, IBM is acceptable, it is
considered valuable, it's considered okay, and therefore it's easier for
(42:53):
you to sell through the idea internally to get all
the social added boys, and therefore we adopt the behavior
that's exactly why we do what we do outside the office.
The same thing goes culture as culture regardless of the context,
which means then if B to B marketers can understand
that these brands could be super effing cool, I love that.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
As a recovering B to B marketer, you speak, all right, Frigus.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Homer, all right, last one. We can't resist. So Marcus
Cooler cringe New Year's resolutions from brands.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Oh wow, wow, you know, I think New Year's in general,
it's just so it's like a rookie move at this point.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
It's like it's like, we know what's going to happen.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
You're gonna make these big, audacious sort of plans for yourself,
and then you know it's going to fall through. And
that's because New Year's is an artificial moment that we
decide to press reset, and I say, if you really
want to change, if you really want to do something significant,
don't wait until January. First, start right now, start right
(44:00):
now today. And we know this intuitively because we do
this all the time. We go, Okay, I'm gonna have
a really bad meal tonight, and then Monday starting a
new Monday.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Everything's changed on Monday.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
I've never done that. Please hear my s through the mic.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
I would say, I would say cringe. I would say, brands.
If you want to make a new if you want
to make a new start, start right now today.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Well on that beautiful note again, Marcus, thank you so much.
We couldn't have asked for a better conversation or a
better guest round out our year artificial as a new
year might be. We're gonna call this one is a
very special way to wrap up our twenty twenty four.
So thank you so much for thank you so.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Much for having me. I'm super grateful.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Thank you, Mark, thank you, and thank you for all
that you do. And if you have not picked up
or listened to his incredible book for the culture, please do.
That is a great stocking stuffer. And now it's time
for what's on your mind and our question this we
Marissa is from Amy and Amy asks what has had
(45:04):
the biggest impact on each of you professionally and or
personally this year? Good question.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
You want to go first.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I want you to go first. Like there's been so
much this.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Year, such a good one. We were just saying with
Marcus like with our cooler cringe about New Year's resolutions,
like it's it's artificial, but you know there's something to
kind of force a moment or reflection. So I respect
this question. Okay, now I'm we're saying biggest impact on
each of you professionally or personally. Let's see, I'll combine
(45:40):
the two. I think my revelation which I brought to
words and put on LinkedIn about the power and being
brave enough to try it on in your life and
in your career, and I think it's something that I've
thought about, but I never really really appreciated both the
(46:01):
combination of courage and curiosity that takes and that there
is something to be said for that, and the way
that you know, sharing that story and also using is
explaining why I said yes on a consulting CMO basis
did JC penny to start and allowing myself to still
have other things going on like this podcast, it was
hard for me to do. Whenever you do things a
(46:22):
little differently than what you think the norm is, there's
i think always a little fear of what will people
think You've been good about trying to get me to
care less about what other people think, but it's still
a vulnerability of mine and just seeing that it really
helped people, and it helped me feel good about writing
my own path and continuing to feel strong about that.
(46:43):
I think is probably the thing that I reflect on
as the most important moment, if you will, or a
thing that happened to me this year, and I hope
it carries me forward with good energy into the new year.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
Definitely good energy.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
So that's mine.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
That's real good. I feel so incredibly proud of everything
that you've done and all the work that you were
doing and that you continue to do, and just who
you are as a human. And so I feel that
this is a time for introspection and it's it's kind
of taken me a lot to really just come back
to my roots. And again, so many folks in the
(47:21):
industry of media and marketing know me as this, right,
but I had this whole other life before I came in,
as you know, and I think really embracing just the
moment that we're in that this is a true platform
shift everything that's happening with technology. I'm really proud that
I was able to kind of go back in and
(47:42):
really go back into tech in a meaningful way that
is able to connect it with the business side, you know,
working with boards again and you know, brands and really
connecting them to the technology side, which you know, it's
moving so fast and it's just I mean, you know,
the rate of change, it's only going to accelerate rate.
And I don't know, I feel a responsibility because if
(48:02):
I could be a translator connecting the business and the
tech side, I feel like that is something where it
is my happy place, but it's also incredibly needed in
this moment in time. And it's not easy to you know,
start something zero to one. I've done it before. It's
not for the faint of heart. But I really feel that,
you know, what a great time to be a builder,
(48:23):
right and you could be a builder inside of a
big company and you know, be the entrepreneur, or you
could really be the entrepreneur. And I think no matter
where you are in your career, you have to lean in.
And you know, this was you know, kind of from
conversations I was doing in New York this week. It
really is a star winning moment and I feel like
only the strong will survive was kind of like his adage.
(48:46):
I feel that you know you modify that for the
intelligence age, you know, only the smart are going to survive.
And what I mean by smart are the folks that
are using all these tools, all this incredible intelligence that's
becoming available the way electricity is. And if you plug
into that intelligence and make your work smarter, be smart
about the time, the task, the things that you do.
(49:07):
I feel like that is such an incredible moment. And
if you could go on the offense and use these tools,
use all of these things to make what you do
even better, you're going to be ahead of the game.
And it's it's a moment, so really excited for what
is to come.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Well, I'm watching you, my friend, and as your friend,
but as a colleague, I can tell you like, this
is it with you, this is what you're meant to do.
So here's too being builders yes into the next year.
Here's to that for all of us. And on that note,
that's it for this episode and for twenty twenty four
(49:46):
from Brand New. Thank you so much for joining us.
Wishing you happy holidays. If you haven't already, please subscribe.
If you have a question, we're going to be right
back in it in twenty twenty five. So tell us
what's on your mind by emailing us at ideas at
brandshnew dot com and in the meantime, thanks again for
(50:06):
joining us. See you next time on brand New
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