Culture is a dialogue, not a monologue

A phrase my very talented colleague Andrew Rozas wrote in a deck we worked on a couple of years back. A statement that isn’t necessarily new, yet a lot of brands are still not adapting to this insight. However, it’s certainly a phrase that will never get blasé.

During 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, and it’s predicted to be 4,41 billion people by 2025. Now, think about the fact that this is half of the population on this planet. Certainly, a pandemic such as this one has probably fast-forwarded this growth by a number of years.

We use social media because we want to connect with others, we want to get involved in conversations, and feel like we are a part of a group, a community. We want to engage, participate, talk, save and share. To fulfill these needs, we now have a pool of various platforms offering different formats that helps us to do all of this.

So, what’s a better way for brands to get culturally relevant than starting dialogues on Social Media?

Over 3,000 early adopter young millennials and Gen-Zers worldwide are saying that they only want to work and get associated with brands that are reflecting their own personal value, according to the Relatable Trend report 2021. In a report by McKinsey, Gen-Zers are saying that they want to work with brands that serve as catalysts for their unique self-expression

The next generation will dismiss your brand if you don’t speak up and start participating in important, global conversations, not dictating a product message.

Business of Fashion wrote this week about Ted Baker launching a Clubhouse six-part weekly series called Conversations in Culture featuring conversations around fashion and British culture hosted by one of the UK’s most notable Clubhouse content creators, Abraxas.

Three things that make this a brilliant move:

1) They let a creator host the weekly session — People listen to people, not brands. This will open up multiple perspectives as it’s someone from the community hosting the session, which will lead to an authentic conversation and increased brand trust for Ted Baker.

2) “Conversations in Culture” — the name indicates that they want to start conversations, and become a part of conversations. That they as a brand want to learn, talk, interact with you. They start a dialogue, they don’t dictate!

3) Frequency — they don’t just do this as a one-off activation, they’re inventing a new format on a new platform that is not only brave, it also signals value over time, and that this initiative is here to stay.

With all of this said — it’s time for brands to start thinking like people think, not as brands. It’s time for brands to communicate like you and me when we’re talking to each other and with our friends. Brands have to talk with, not to their consumers.

We’ve had enough of dictation, it’s time for conversations.