Branding in the Age of Social Media 2016 PDF

THE BIG IDEA 40 Harvard Business Review March 2016  HBR.ORG Douglas Holt is the founder and president of the Cultural Strategy Group and was formerly a...

THE BIG IDEA 40 Harvard Business Review March 2016  HBR.ORG Douglas Holt is the founder and president of the Cultural Strategy Group and was formerly a professor at Harvard Business School and the University of Oxford. He is the author of How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). Branding in the Age of Social Media BY DOUGLAS HOLT In the era of Facebook and YouTube, brand building has become a vexing challenge. This is not how things were supposed to turn out. A decade ago most companies were heralding the arrival of a new golden age of branding. They hired creative agencies and armies of technologists to insert brands throughout the digital universe. Viral, buzz, memes, stickiness, and form factor became the lingua franca of branding. But despite all the hoopla, such efforts have had very little payoff. March 2016 Harvard Business Review 41 THE BIG IDEA BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA As a central feature of their digital strategy, cinematic tricks, songs, and empathetic characters companies made huge bets on what is often called to win over audiences. Classic ads like Alka-Seltzer’s branded content. The thinking went like this: Social “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing,” Frito-Lay’s media would allow your company to leapfrog tra- “Frito Bandito,” and Farrah Fawcett “creaming” Joe ditional media and forge relationships directly Namath with Noxema all snuck into popular culture with customers. If you told them great stories by amusing audiences. and connected with them in real time, your brand This early form of branded content worked well would become a hub for a community of consum- because the entertainment media were oligopolies, ers. Businesses have invested billions pursuing this so cultural competition was limited. In the United vision. Yet few brands have generated meaning- States, three networks produced television program- ful consumer interest online. In fact, social media ming for 30 weeks or so every year and then went seems to have made brands less significant. What into reruns. Films were distributed only through has gone wrong? local movie theaters; similarly, magazine competi- tion was restricted to what fit on the shelves at drug- Once audiences stores. Consumer marketing companies could buy their way to fame by paying to place their brands in could opt out of ads, this tightly controlled cultural arena. Brands also infiltrated culture by sponsoring TV shows and events, attaching themselves to success- it became much ful content. Since fans had limited access to their favorite entertainers, brands could act as intermedi- harder for brands aries. For decades, we were accustomed to fast food chains’ sponsoring new blockbuster films, luxury to buy fame. autos’ bringing us golf and tennis competitions, and youth brands’ underwriting bands and festivals. The rise of new technologies that allowed audi- ences to opt out of ads—from cable networks to To solve this puzzle, we need to remember that DVRs and then the internet—made it much harder brands succeed when they break through in culture. for brands to buy fame. Now they had to compete di- And branding is a set of techniques designed to gen- rectly with real entertainment. So companies upped erate cultural relevance. Digital technologies have the ante. BMW pioneered the practice of creating not only created potent new social networks but short films for the internet. Soon corporations were also dramatically altered how culture works. Digital hiring top film directors (Michael Bay, Spike Jonze, crowds now serve as very effective and prolific inno- Michel Gondry, Wes Anderson, David Lynch) and vators of culture—a phenomenon I call crowdculture. pushing for ever-more-spectacular special effects Crowdculture changes the rules of branding—which and production values. techniques work and which do not. If we under- These early (pre-social-media) digital efforts stand crowdculture, then, we can figure out why led companies to believe that if they delivered branded-content strategies have fallen flat—and Hollywood-level creative at internet speed, they what alternative branding methods are empowered could gather huge engaged audiences around by social media. their brands. Thus was born the great push toward branded content. But its champions weren’t count- Why Branded Content and ing on new competition. And this time it came not Sponsorships Used to Work from big media companies but from the crowd. While promoters insist that branded content is a hot new thing, it’s actually a relic of the mass media The Rise of Crowdculture age that has been repackaged as a digital concept. Historically, cultural innovation flowed from the In the early days of that era, companies borrowed margins of society—from fringe groups, social approaches from popular entertainment to make movements, and artistic circles that challenged their brands famous, using short-form storytelling, mainstream norms and conventions. Companies 42 Harvard Business Review March 2016  HBR.ORG Idea in Brief CONTEXT WHAT WENT WRONG THE WAY FORWARD Companies have sunk billions Social media has transformed While crowdculture has of dollars into producing how culture works. Digital deflated conventional branding content on social media, crowds have become powerful models, it actually makes an hoping to build audiences cultural innovators—a alternative model—cultural around their brands. But new phenomenon called branding—even more powerful. consumers haven’t shown up. crowdculture. They’re now In this approach, brands so effective at producing collaborate with crowdcultures creative entertainment that and champion their ideologies it’s impossible for companies in the marketplace. to compete. and the mass media acted as intermediaries, diffus- together, learn from one another, play off ideas, ing these new ideas into the mass market. But social and push one another. The collective efforts of par- media has changed everything. ticipants in these “scenes” often generate major Social media binds together communities that creative breakthroughs. Before the rise of social once were geographically isolated, greatly increas- media, the mass-culture industries (film, televi- ing the pace and intensity of collaboration. Now that sion, print media, fashion) thrived by pilfering and these once-remote communities are densely net- repurposing their innovations. worked, their cultural influence has become direct Crowdculture has turbocharged art worlds, vastly and substantial. These new crowdcultures come in increasing the number of participants and the speed two flavors: subcultures, which incubate new ideol- and quality of their interactions. No longer do you ogies and practices, and art worlds, which break new need to be part of a local scene; no longer do you ground in entertainment need to work for a year to get funding and distribu- Amplified subcultures. Today you’ll find tion for your short film. Now millions of nimble cul- a flourishing crowdculture around almost any tural entrepreneurs come together online to hone topic: espresso, the demise of the American Dream, their craft, exchange ideas, fine-tune their content, Victorian novels, arts-and-crafts furniture, lib- and compete to produce hits. The net effect is a new ertarianism, new urbanism, 3-D printing, anime, mode of rapid cultural prototyping, in which you can bird-watching, homeschooling, barbecue. Back in get instant data on the market’s reception of ideas, the day, these subculturalists had to gather physi- have them critiqued, and then rework them so that cally and had very limited ways to communicate the most resonant content quickly surfaces. In the collectively: magazines and, later, primitive Usenet process, new talent emerges and new genres form. groups and meet-ups. Squeezing into every nook and cranny of pop cul- Social media has expanded and democratized ture, the new content is highly attuned to audiences these subcultures. With a few clicks, you can jump and produced on the cheap. These art-world crowd- into the center of any subculture, and participants’ cultures are the main reason why branded content intensive interactions move seamlessly among has failed. the web, physical spaces, and traditional media. Together members are pushing forward new ideas, Beyond Branded Content products, practices, and aesthetics—bypassing While companies have put their faith in branded mass-culture gatekeepers. With the rise of crowd- content for the past decade, brute empirical evi- culture, cultural innovators and their early adopter dence is now forcing them to reconsider. In YouTube markets have become one and the same. or Instagram rankings of channels by number of sub- Turbocharged art worlds. Producing innova- scribers, corporate brands barely appear. Only three tive popular entertainment requires a distinctive have cracked the YouTube Top 500. Instead you’ll mode of organization—what sociologists call an art find entertainers you’ve never heard of, appearing world. In art worlds, artists (musicians, filmmakers, as if from nowhere. writers, designers, cartoonists, and so on) gather YouTube’s greatest success by far is PewDiePie, in inspired collaborative competition: They work a Swede who posts barely edited films with snarky March 2016 Harvard Business Review 43 THE BIG IDEA BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA voice-over commentary on the video games he plays. is lapped by dozens of crowdculture start-ups with By January 2016 he had racked up nearly 11 billion production budgets under $100,000. Indeed, Dude views, and his YouTube channel had more than Perfect (#81, 8 million subscribers), the brainchild 41 million subscribers. of five college jocks from Texas who make videos of How did this happen? The story begins with trick shots and goofy improvised athletic feats, does the youth subcultures that formed around video far better. games. When they landed on social media, they Coca-Cola offers another cautionary tale. In 2011 became a force. The once-oddball video-gaming- the company announced a new marketing strategy— as-entertainment subculture of South Korea went called Liquid & Linked—with great fanfare. Going all global, producing a massive spectator sport, now in, it shifted its emphasis from “creative excellence” known as E‑Sports, with a fan base approaching (the old mass-media approach) to “content excel- 100 million people. (Amazon recently bought the lence” (branded content in social media). Coke’s E‑Sports network Twitch for $970 million.) Jonathan Mildenhall claimed that Coke would In E‑Sports, broadcasters provide play-by- continually produce “the world’s most compelling play narration of video games. PewDiePie and his content,” which would capture “a disproportionate comrades riffed on this commentary, turning it share of popular culture,” doubling sales by 2020. into a potty-mouthed new form of sophomoric The following year, Coca-Cola launched its first comedy. Other gamers who film themselves, such big bet, transforming the static corporate website as VanossGaming (YouTube rank #19, 15.6 mil- into a digital magazine, Coca-Cola Journey. It runs lion subscribers), elrubiusOMG (#20, 15.6 million), stories on virtually every pop culture topic—from CaptainSparklez (#60, 9 million), and Ali-A (#94, sports and food to sustainability and travel. It’s the 7.4 million), are also influential members of this epitome of a branded-content strategy. tribe. The crowdculture was initially organized by specialized media platforms that disseminated this content and by insider fans who gathered around On social media, and critiqued it, hyping some efforts and dissing others. PewDiePie became the star of this digital art world—just as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Patti what works for Smith had done in urban art worlds back in the analog days. The main difference is that the power Shakira backfires of crowdculture propelled him to global fame and influence in record time. Gaming comedy is just one of hundreds of new for Crest and Clorox. genres that crowdculture has created. Those genres fill every imaginable entertainment gap in popu- Journey has now been live for over three years, lar culture, from girls’ fashion advice to gross-out and it barely registers views. It hasn’t cracked the top indulgent foods to fanboy sports criticism. Brands 10,000 sites in the United States or the top 20,000 can’t compete, despite their investments. Compare worldwide. Likewise, the company’s YouTube chan- PewDiePie, who cranks out inexpensive videos in nel (ranked #2,749) has only 676,000 subscribers. his house, to McDonald’s, one of the world’s big- It turns out that consumers have little interest in gest spenders on social media. The McDonald’s the content that brands churn out. Very few people channel (#9,414) has 204,000 YouTube subscribers. want it in their feed. Most view it as clutter—as brand PewDiePie is 200 times as popular, for a minuscule spam. When Facebook realized this, it began charg- fraction of the cost. ing companies to get “sponsored” content into the Or consider Red Bull, the most lauded branded- feeds of people who were supposed to be their fans. content success story. It has become a new-media The problem companies face is structural, not cre- hub producing extreme- and alternative-sports con- ative. Big companies organize their marketing efforts tent. While Red Bull spends much of its $2 billion as the antithesis of art worlds, in what I have termed annual marketing budget on branded content, its brand bureaucracies. They excel at coordinating YouTube channel (rank #184, 4.9 million subscribers) and executing complex marketing programs across 44 Harvard Business Review March 2016  HBR.ORG How One Brand Uses Celebrities to Break Through NOT WHAT YOU’D EXPECT Videos of Bündchen and Copeland challenged assumptions about women. Under Armour’s recent campaign “I Will What I Want” Armour broke the frame by placing her in shows how to combine celebrity sponsorships and cultural what was essentially an old Nike ad: branding to create content with impact. a backstage video of Gisele in an intense kickboxing workout. The company Under Armour originally became an iconic brand by announced the partnership ahead of swiping Nike’s cultural strategy—then doing it one better. filming. It immediately stirred up the Nike’s approach, launched in the 1970s challenging conventions in arenas where crowdculture: Sports fans were cynical, and perfected in the 1990s, was to traditional ideals of femininity still reign. Gisele fans were curious, fashionistas tell stories of athletes who overcame Ballet star Misty Copeland—who grew were puzzled, and feminists simply loved societal barriers through sheer willpower. up in poverty with a single parent—is an it. Under Armour’s agency scraped all this But a decade ago Nike abandoned its athletic, muscular dancer in a profession commentary from the web and projected competitive-underdog ideology to go all in that celebrates waifish, reed-thin women. quotes from the digital discussion on on branded content, using famous athletes Under Armour made a video about how the walls behind her. The resulting video to make entertaining sports films. Under she rose above adversity (the voice-over is shows Gisele sweating and kicking the bag, Armour stepped into the void, producing from a rejection letter saying that her body ignoring the litany of digs surrounding her: arresting new ads, such as “Protect This was completely wrong for ballet), showing “Is posing now a sport?” “She’s not even House,” that championed the same her dancing in a formfitting sports bra and pretty.” “What’s her sport, smiling?” ideology and took off on social media. pants that reveal her curvier physique. “Stick to modeling, sweetie.” Under Armour also followed Nike in A Gisele Bündchen film followed the Under Armour succeeded because dramatizing how übercompetitiveness, same convention-breaking formula but it innovated with ideology—using traditionally associated with masculinity, mashed up incongruous crowdcultures female celebrities to provocatively push applied equally to women, broadcasting to provoke a social media response. The against gender norms. The company spots that showcased female athletes. former Victoria’s Secret star is usually aimed its communiqués directly at the The latest effort, “I Will What I Want,” portrayed within the glamorous world of crowdcultures that held those norms, pushed gender boundaries even further, runways and celebrity hobnobbing. Under which set off a firestorm of debate. multiple markets around the world. But this organi- gather around the tweets of sports stars Cristiano zational model leads to mediocrity when it comes to Ronaldo, LeBron James, Neymar, and Kaká, and cultural innovation. teams such as FC Barcelona and Real Madrid (which are far more popular than the two dominant sports Brand Sponsors Are Disintermediated brands, Nike and Adidas). On Instagram you’ll find Entertainment “properties”—performers, athletes, more of the same. sports teams, films, television programs, and video These celebrities are all garnering the super- games—are also hugely popular on social media. engaged community that pundits have long promised Across all the big platforms you’ll find the usual social media would deliver. But it’s not available A­list of celebrities dominating. On YouTube musi­ to companies and their branded goods and ser- cians Rihanna, One Direction, Katy Perry, Eminem, vices. In retrospect, that shouldn’t be surprising: Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift have built massive Interacting with a favored entertainer is different audiences. On Twitter you’ll find a similar cast of from interacting with a brand of rental car or orange singers, along with media stars like Ellen DeGeneres, juice. What works for Shakira backfires for Crest and Jimmy Fallon, Oprah, Bill Gates, and the pope. Fans Clorox. The idea that consumers could possibly want March 2016 Harvard Business Review 45 THE BIG IDEA BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA How Cultural Branding Builds Icons Iconic brands are cultural innovators: They leapfrog the conventions of their categories to champion new ideologies that are meaningful to customers. to talk about Corona or Coors in the same way that As a result, they enjoy intense customer loyalty and they debate the talents of Ronaldo and Messi is silly. superior sales and profits, and garner loads of free Social media allows fans to create rich communi- media coverage. In business, few achievements are ties around entertainers, who interact directly with more prized than creating an iconic brand. Yet the two them in a barrage of tweets, pins, and posts. Sports dominant branding models are not designed to do the job. teams now hire social media ambassadors to reach out The first model, mindshare branding, had dramatically affected Americans’ to fans in real time during games, and once the game is one that companies have long perceptions of masculinity. In the face is over, the players send along insider photos and hold relied on. It treats a brand as a set of of a nuclear threat, the corporate locker-room chats. Beyond the major platforms, new psychological associations (benefits, executive seemed too sedentary. media sites like Vevo, SoundCloud, and Apple Music emotions, personality). The second Instead, the public was drawn to what are spurring even more direct digital connections. model, purpose branding, has become had only recently been viewed as an Of course, entertainers are still more than happy popular in the past decade. In it, a anachronism: the gunslinging rugged brand espouses values or ideals its individualist of the Old West, who, to take sponsors’ money, but the cultural value that’s customers share. Over the past 15 in the American mythos, had helped supposed to rub off on the brand is fading. years I’ve developed an alternative forge the country’s success. The approach—cultural branding—to enormous popularity of Western films Cultural Branding turn what was once serendipity into was one indication of this shift. This While the rise of crowdculture diminishes the im- a rigorous discipline. Let me illustrate massive cultural opportunity, which pact of branded content and sponsorships, it has how it works, using the transformation Marlboro and Levi’s leveraged as well, greased the wheels for an alternative approach that I of Jack Daniel’s from a near-bankrupt is obvious when analyzed through call cultural branding. (See the sidebar “How Cultural regional distiller to the maker of the a cultural-branding framework— Branding Builds Icons.”) The dramatic breakthrough leading premium American whiskey. but invisible without one. of the fast-casual Mexican food chain Chipotle from Whiskies compete to be perceived The Jack Daniel’s distillery was in 2011 to 2013 (before recent outbreaks of foodborne as upscale and masculine. In the a rural region of Tennessee that the 1950s the major brands sought to postwar mass media portrayed as an illness) demonstrates the power of this approach. align themselves with the male ideal impoverished land of hillbillies. Yet in Chipotle took advantage of an enormous cultural of the day: the sophisticated modern the American imagination, the area was opportunity created when the once-marginal move- corporate executive. Jack Daniel’s, also one of the last authentic pockets ments that had challenged America’s dominant in- a small whiskey targeted to upper- of the frontier, where Davy Crockett and dustrial food culture became a force to be reckoned middle-class men, was being trounced Daniel Boone had gotten their start. So with on social media. The chain jumped into the by the national competitors. How could when American men yearned to revive fray as a champion of this crowdculture’s ideology. it break through? the ideology of the frontier, the whiskey By applying cultural branding, Chipotle became Mindshare-branding experts offered great potential as a symbol. one of America’s most compelling and talked-about would advise the company to convey, This theme was first hit upon by men’s brands (though recent food-safety difficulties have very consistently, the key brand magazines (Fortune, True), which dented its image). Specifically, Chipotle succeeded associations: masculine, sophisticated, published stories romanticizing the smooth-tasting, classic. But that distillery as a place run by frontiersmen, by following these five principles: was precisely what Jack Daniel’s was little changed since the 19th century. 1. Map the cultural orthodoxy. In cultural doing—its ads mimicked the national The company’s print-ad campaign branding, the brand promotes an innovative ideol- brands’, showing alpha executives simply emulated those stories, ogy that breaks with category conventions. To do drinking smooth whiskey. And they adding some folksy copy. that, it first needs to identify which conventions didn’t work. Purpose-branding experts Jack Daniel’s quickly became the to leapfrog—what I call the cultural orthodoxy. would encourage the firm to champion aspirational whiskey among urban America’s industrial food ideology was invented in its core values. With that approach, upper-middle-class men; the branding the early 20th century by food-marketing compa- the focus wouldn’t be much different: converted its once-stigmatized location nies. Americans had come to believe that, through Those values had to do with producing into a place where men were really dazzling scientific discoveries (margarine, instant classic charcoal-filtered whiskey for a men. Conventional models would coffee, Tang) and standardized production pro- sophisticated drinker. never build a strategy centered on such Instead, the firm (tacitly) pursued a a downscale version of masculinity. cesses, big companies, overseen by the Food and cultural-branding approach. Because But in cultural branding, inverting Drug Administration, would ensure bountiful, masculine ideals are shaped by society, marginal ideologies is one of the healthful, and tasty food. Those assumptions have they change over time. The Cold War tricks of the trade. undergirded the fast food category since McDonald’s took off in the 1960s. 46 Harvard Business Review March 2016  HBR.ORG 2. Locate the cultural opportunity. As time preindustrial foods. Chipotle succeeded because it passes, disruptions in society cause an orthodoxy jumped into this crowdculture and took on its cause. to lose traction. Consumers begin searching for al- 4. Diffuse the new ideology. Chipotle pro- ternatives, which opens up an opportunity for in- moted preindustrial food ideology with two films. novative brands to push forward a new ideology In 2011 the company launched Back to the Start, an in their categories. animated film with simple wooden figures. In it, an For industrial food, the tipping point came in old-fashioned farm is transformed into a parody of 2001, when Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation a hyper-rationalized industrial farm: The pigs are powerfully challenged it. This was followed in stuffed together inside a concrete barn, then enter an 2004 by Morgan Spurlock’s film Super Size Me and assembly line where they are injected with chemicals in 2006 by Michael Pollan’s influential book The that fatten them into blimps, and then are pressed Omnivore’s Dilemma. These critiques dramatically into cubes and deposited in a fleet of semis. The affected the upper middle class, quickly spreading farmer is haunted by this transformation and decides concerns about industrial food and providing huge to convert his farm back to its original pastoral version. momentum to Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s, and a host of other upmarket food purveyors. The same transformation is unfolding in other countries Crowdculture dominated by industrial food ideology. For instance, in the United Kingdom the celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have played converted an a similar role. Before social media, the influence of these works elite concern would have remained locked within this small frac- tion of society. Instead, crowdcultures grabbed the into a national critiques and blew them up, pushing industrial food anxiety into the mainstream. News about every ma- jor problem linked to industrial food production— social trauma. processed foods loaded with sugar, carcinogenic pre- servatives, rBGH in milk, bisphenol A leaching from The second film, The Scarecrow, parodied an in- plastics, GMOs, and so on—began to circulate at in- dustrial food company that branded its products us- ternet speed. Videos of the meatlike substance “pink ing natural farm imagery. The company is actually slime” went viral. Parents worried endlessly about a factory in which animals are injected with drugs what they were feeding their kids. Crowdculture and treated inhumanely. It cranks out premade converted an elite concern into a national social meals stamped “100% beef-ish” that kids, oblivious trauma that galvanized a broad public challenge. to the real process, eagerly gobble up. A scarecrow 3. Target the crowdculture. Challengers to the who works at the factory is depressed by what he industrial food ideology had lurked at the margins witnesses until he gets an idea. He picks a bunch for more than 40 years but had been easily pushed of produce from his garden, takes it to the city, and aside as crazy Luddites. Small subcultures had opens up a little taqueria—a facsimile of a Chipotle. evolved around organic farming and pastured live- The films were launched with tiny media buys stock, eking out a living at the fringes of the market and then seeded out on social media platforms. Both in community-supported agriculture and farmers’ were extremely influential, were watched by tens markets. But as social media took off, an influen- of millions, generated huge media hits, and helped tial and diverse cluster of overlapping subcultures drive impressive sales and profit gains. Each won the pushed hard for food innovations. They included Grand Prix at the Cannes advertising festival. advocates of evolutionary nutrition and paleo di- Chipotle’s films are wrongly understood simply ets, sustainable ranchers, a new generation of envi- as great examples of branded content. They worked ronmental activists, urban gardeners, and farm-to- because they went beyond mere entertainment. table restaurants. In short order, a massive cultural The films were artful, but so are many thousands of movement had organized around the revival of films that don’t cut through. Their stories weren’t March 2016 Harvard Business Review 47 THE BIG IDEA BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA HBR.ORG particularly original; they had been repeated over industrial-scale processes, not a small farm-to-table and over with creative vigor for the previous de- taqueria. Delivering perishable fresh food, which cade or so. But they exploded on social media be- the company is committed to as a preindustrial cause they were myths that passionately captured food champion, is a huge operational challenge. the ideology of the burgeoning preindustrial food Chipotle’s reputation has taken a painful hit with crowdculture. Chipotle painted an inspired vision of highly publicized outbreaks of E. coli and norovirus America returning to bucolic agricultural and food contamination. Chipotle won’t win back consumer production traditions and reversing many problems trust through ads or public relations efforts. Rather, in the dominant food system. the company has to convince the crowdculture that The bête noire of the preindustrial food movement it’s doubling down on its commitment to get prein- is fast food, so the idea that a major fast food company dustrial food right, and then the crowd will advocate would promote that story was particularly potent for its brand once again. with the crowd. Chipotle was taking on pink slime! Moreover, boutique locavore food was expensive, but Competing for Crowdcultures at Chipotle people could now assuage their worries To brand effectively with social media, companies with a $7 burrito. Because they tapped into anxiet- should target crowdcultures. Today, in pursuit of ies percolating in the crowdculture, Chipotle’s films relevance, most brands chase after trends. But this never had to compete as great entertainment. is a commodity approach to branding: Hundreds 5. Innovate continually, using cultural flash- of companies are doing exactly the same thing points. A brand can sustain its cultural relevance with the same generic list of trends. It’s no wonder by playing off particularly intriguing or contentious consumers don’t pay attention. By targeting novel issues that dominate the media discourse related to ideologies flowing out of crowdcultures, brands can an ideology. That’s what Ben & Jerry’s did so well in assert a point of view that stands out in the over- championing its sustainable business philosophy. stuffed media environment. The company used new-product introductions to playfully spar with the Reagan administration on timely issues such as nuclear weapons, the destruc- By targeting novel tion of the rain forests, and the war on drugs. To thrive, Chipotle must continue to lead on flashpoint issues with products and communiqués. ideologies from The company has been less successful in this re- spect: It followed up with a Hulu series that had little crowdcultures, social media impact because it simply mimicked the prior films rather than staking out new flashpoints. brands can find a Then Chipotle moved on to a new issue, champion- ing food without GMOs. Aside from the fact that this claim challenged its credibility (after all, Chipotle way to stand out. still sold meat fed by GMO grain and soft drinks made with GMO sweeteners), GMO was a relatively Take the personal care category. Three brands— weak flashpoint, a contentious issue only among the Dove, Axe, and Old Spice—have generated tre- most activist consumers and already touted by many mendous consumer interest and identification in hundreds of products. These efforts failed to rally a historically low-involvement category, one you the crowdculture. A number of other flashpoints, would never expect to get attention on social media. such as sugary drinks and industrial vegetable oils, They succeeded by championing distinctive gender generate far more controversy and have yet to be ideologies around which crowdcultures had formed. tackled by a major food business. Axe mines the lad crowd. In the 1990s feminist Of course, leading with ideology in the mass critiques of patriarchal culture were promulgated market can be a double-edged sword. The brand by academics in American universities. These at- has to walk the walk or it will be called out. tacks whipped up a conservative backlash mocking Chipotle is a large and growing business with many “politically correct” gender politics. It held that men 48 Harvard Business Review March 2016 THE BIG IDEA BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA HBR.ORG were under siege and needed to rekindle their tra- ugly Salvation Army sweaters) and facial hair (waxed ditional masculinity. In the UK and then the United handlebar mustaches, bushy beards) became per- States, this rebellion gave rise to a tongue-in-cheek vasive. Brooklyn was chock-full of lumberjacks. form of sexism called “lad culture.” New magazines Amplified by crowdculture, this sensibility rapidly like Maxim, FHM, and Loaded harked back to the spread across the country. Playboy era, featuring lewd stories with soft-porn Old Spice branding piggybacked on hipster so- photos. This ideology struck a chord with many phistication with a parody of Axe and masculine young men. By the early 2000s lad culture was clichés. The campaign featured a chiseled, bare- migrating onto the web as a vital crowdculture. chested former football player, Isaiah Mustafa, as a Axe (sold as Lynx in the UK and Ireland) had huckster for Old Spice—“the man your man could been marketed in Europe and Latin America since smell like.” The films hit the hipster bull’s-eye, serv- the 1980s but had become a dated, also-ran brand. ing up an extremely “hot” guy whose shtick is to That is, until the company jumped onto the lad make fun of the conventions of male attractiveness. bandwagon with “The Axe Effect,” a campaign that You too can be hot if you offer your woman amaz- pushed to bombastic extremes politically incorrect ing adventures, diamonds and gold, and studly body sexual fantasies. It spread like wildfire on the inter- poses, all with aggressive spraying of Old Spice. net and instantly established Axe as the over-the-top These three brands broke through in social media cheerleader for the lad crowd. because they used cultural branding—a strategy that Dove leads the body-positive crowd. Axe’s aggres- works differently from the conventional branded- sive stand set up a perfect opportunity for another content model. Each engaged a cultural discourse brand to champion the feminist side of this “gender about gender and sexuality in wide circulation in war.” Dove was a mundane, old-fashioned brand in social media—a crowdculture—which espoused a a category in which marketing usually rode the coat- distinctive ideology. Each acted as a proselytizer, tails of the beauty trends set by fashion houses and promoting this ideology to a mass audience. Such op- media. By the 2000s the ideal of the woman’s body portunities come into view only if we use the prism of had been pushed to ridiculous extremes. Feminist cultural branding—doing research to identify ideolo- critiques of the use of starved size 0 models began gies that are relevant to the category and gaining trac- to circulate in traditional and social media. Instead tion in crowdcultures. Companies that rely on tradi- of presenting an aspiration, beauty marketing had tional segmentation models and trend reports will become inaccessible and alienating to many women. always have trouble identifying those opportunities. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” tapped into this emerging crowdculture by celebrating real A DECADE IN, companies are still struggling to come women’s physiques in all their normal diversity—old, up with a branding model that works in the cha- young, curvy, skinny, short, tall, wrinkled, smooth. otic world of social media. The big platforms—the Women all over the world pitched in to produce, Facebooks and YouTubes and Instagrams—seem circulate, and cheer for images of bodies that didn’t to call the shots, while the vast majority of brands conform to the beauty myth. Throughout the past are cultural mutes, despite investing billions. decade, Dove has continued to target cultural flash­ Companies need to shift their focus away from the points—such as the use of heavily Photoshopped im­ platforms themselves and toward the real locus of ages in fashion magazines—to keep the brand at the digital power—crowdcultures. They are creating center of this gender discourse. more opportunities than ever for brands. Old Spice Old Spice taps the hipster crowd. The ideological succeeded not with a Facebook strategy but with a battle between the laddish view and body­positive strategy that leveraged the ironic hipster aesthetic. feminism left untouched one other cultural oppor­ Chipotle succeeded not with a YouTube strategy but tunity in the personal care market. In the 2000s, a with products and communications that spoke to new “hipster” ideology arose in urban subcultures the preindustrial food movement. Companies can to define sophistication among young cosmopoli­ once again win the battle for cultural relevance with tan adults. They embraced the historical bohemian cultural branding, which will allow them to tap into ideal with gusto but also with self­referential irony. the power of the crowd. Ironic white­trash wardrobes (foam trucker hats, HBR Reprint R1603B 50 Harvard Business Review March 2016 Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. 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