Brands are beginning to question whether knowing their consumer is enough to differentiate them in these tough times when consumers are bombarded with choice. And in a world of constant change, being culturally relevant and future-focussed is increasingly important, especially for unlocking growth.
Culturally-connected brands can be nimble and operate in real time. When your brand is part of culture, not sitting on the surface, you stand a better chance of being not just noticed and loved but also believed in enough to share with others.
But how exactly do you connect with something as amorphous as ‘culture’? And how do you know when you’re doing it right? For the last 4 years we’ve been measuring how successfully brands are connecting with the zeitgeist. We asked 62,950 people in 10 countries in our Cultural Traction™ 2013 Report. We measured each brand’s VIBE – that’s how Visionary, Inspiring, Bold and Exciting they are – to see how well they’re tapping into cultural trends. The change in a brand’s VIBE over time is its Cultural Traction™. If traction is decreasing, the brand is falling out of step and faces trouble, if it’s increasing the brand has its finger on the right pulse and may be destined for greater things. Whatever your score, being aware of your brand’s Cultural Traction will enable you to either hone, develop or create the right cultural strategy.
In this year’s Top 10 – somewhat unsurprisingly – tech titans Google and Apple dominate. Google seems more Inspiring and Exciting, Apple more Visionary and Bold. But is Apple losing its shine as smartphone rival Samsung swoops in? Apple leads in the US, Western Europe and Australia, but it’s a bumpier road in Asia, which suggests a narrowing of the gap between the brands. Currently, Apple ranks ahead of Samsung by market value. Samsung ranks ahead of Apple by sales. The findings in Cultural Traction™ 2013 suggest Samsung has the greater momentum moving forward. Meanwhile, Facebook, noticeable by its absence in the top 20, suffered the biggest fall in VIBE score out of all the brands surveyed – down 20% – partly as a result of its troubled flotation and concerns over privacy.
Leading the non-tech brands is IKEA. The big blue and yellow box has built an empathetic persona around the world by focusing its offer and marketing on delivering clever small space solutions that are in tune with the struggling economic climate. It’s enabling people to indulge their appetite for design and to refresh their homes by being practical, friendly and enterprising.
So what makes a winner? At the heart of our top 10 brands is the belief and opportunity to drive the human race forward. Google gives us access to endless potential and innovates constantly. Apple is the original brand to give us access to the future (although its traction has been slowing over the last 2 years). Ikea opens our minds to possibilities and approaches the future with real optimism and Coke, well they’re all about optimism. It seems that in tricky times we’re looking for direction, vision, confidence and hope.
And the losers? Lurking at the bottom are booze brands like Smirnoff, Budweiser who, despite their size, are losing cultural relevance. How we connect with people has fundamentally changed over the last decade, and alcohol brands need to work harder to keep up. Today whichever smart phone, tablet or even OS you use says far more about you than the drink you order at the bar. At the bottom are mainly FMCG brands, but Twitter and Yahoo are also languishing, failing to join other tech brands on the podium.
So, what do brands that are out-of-step with culture have in common?
Brands in the bottom 10 encourage us to live life to the full, but exist only in the moment. They want us to have fun, but are without direction – hedonists with nowhere to go after the party. Smirnoff wants us to unleash our playful side, Twitter wants us to get involved, Yahoo tells us what’s happening now. All good marketing strategies, just not as connected to where culture is at, and how people are feeling today. Brands that connect with culture are visionary, opinionated, give direction and create change. Brands in the bottom are fun without substance.
The world is changing faster than ever and it’s not going to stop. This is having an impact not only on the strategies that brand marketers have in place but also the ways in which they arrive at these strategies. What measures have you got in place to ensure your brand has its finger on the pulse of Cultural change? Do you understand the world your brand lives in today and the cultural role you want it to play? One thing seems certain – brands that ignore the world around them do so at their peril.
Izzy Pugh, insight director, Added Value
