In the first issue of MILK I wrote a piece about Making Culture, the idea that brands will become culture factories producing content and ideas to connect consumers around an idea.

Since then I think it’s fair to say that the notion of a brand’s preference and performance being driven by the capital it has in cultural relevance has continued to grow in popularity. Likewise my theories on cultural relevance and the practices a brand should follow have continued to evolve.

Shortly I’ll be publishing a new paper which aims to identify how the long-term cultural paradigm has shifted, how global context and hyper-niche and real time relevance will continue to fragment culture and indeed how lifestyles and changed lifestages have led us from a post industrial, post digital age into a new ‘Cultural Age’.

With this in mind, the success of brands will be less audience centric and more culture centric, bringing about a change in the way we measure brand equity, and anchoring brand relevance against it’s measure in culture.

Marketing in the cultural age demands a change in marketing practices and organizations will work with agencies to follow initiatives which focus more heavily on the cultural equity or ‘Cultural Capital’ of a brand.

Needless to say some brands intuitively perform in this way already. Nike consistently harnesses culture led initiatives like the above ‘Republica Popular do Corinthians’ in Brazil which bring capture the cultural passions of groups of people and bring their brand into centre of focus by providing the inspiration and experience for people to engage with.

Likewise brands I’ve worked with including Red Bull and Pepsi have been successful in leveraging cultural relevance by creating innovative ways to inspire groups with initiatives like Red Bull House of Media and Pepsi Refresh Project.

The key challenge is that while these brands mentioned are used time and time again as case studies of innovators or outliers, most companies are failing to understand how to operationalize their behaviors and change their brand management model.

However, this will change, because for brands to succeed in the Cultural Age it has to!

CM

This current campaign for Fage yogurt by Mullen is running with the line Plain Extraordinary. It’s high production values are nice and have clearly aimed to position it more in the guise of a natural beauty product rather than a yogurt which is certainly a cool category jamming idea, but then there’s a few bugs in the system!

The voice over script is so bad that it feels like the ad is a spoof on indulgence. Now that is fun, see the old Boddington’s ad from the UK which parodied the Calvin Klein and luxury sector to mock its superficiality and bring the tone of the brand to life.

So I was pretty much in hysterics thinking this was a really fun ad, especially when it cuts to the shot of the cow covered in yogurt. I was waiting for the clever twist which made the brand really cool, but it didn’t come.

Judging by some of the inspired viewers comments for the spot on YouTube it’s a hit with a some people who actually buy into the faux sincerity of the script, butI’ll leave it to you to decide. It feels like this really could have been something fun and smart which it has failed miserably to do, in favor of believing its own cliche.

It will be really interesting to see how Doritos latest crowd sourcing campaign to create their next ad plays out.

They’ve really gone to town creating a decent digital experience for their King of Ads introduction hosted by T4′s Miquita Oliver no less.

Promising a purse of £200k for the winning ad submission which will be judged by a celeb panel and aired on national telly.

Not only are they pushing the consumer entries, but they’ve also placed a DPS in Campaign Magazine to engage with the pros! Though it has to be said the Campaign ad falls well short of the rest of the campaign.

It is without doubt one of the better constructed crowd sourcing campaigns and provides an interesting question not only as to how effective sourcing your commercials is, but also how effective the engagement process of crowd sourcing can be. Ultimately it begs the question of when is it right to use brand communications spend to engage in this way. Would the money have been better spent with a creative shop in the first place.

Ultimately does asking your consumer to create your ad gain you the respect of your consumers, or look like a cheap stunt with lack of imagination?

I guess, only the end results will answer that one!