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I'm not sure I agree with all of this, but it really calls 'one-to-one' marketing into question. In a good way.
I'm a member of many loyalty programs, but I've never earned a reward for a referral. Rather than introduce my friends to a brand, I want to connect with the other people who appreciate the brand. We all have diverse tastes, and I like meeting new people based on one specific shared interest, not because we share a bunch of interests.
LinkedIn: Why taste communities are the future of marketing, 2020-Jan-21 by Ana Andjelic
Thanks to the Internet and its numerous influence networks, products across categories are now more susceptible to trends than to individual preferences. A show becomes popular because a lot of people watch it, and it’s entirely possible that a big chunk of the show’s audience does it not because it reflects their interests or values, but because everyone else they know is watching a show and they do not want to be left out...
Think about your brand in plural. Just as my Netflix isn’t your Netflix, my pair of Off-White sneakers is not your pair of Off-White sneakers. It doesn’t matter that Netflix is a platform and Off-White sneakers are a physical product: when we apply tagging system and shopping data, each product is worn in a manner that reflect its user....
Target communities, not individuals. Every Netflix user belong to three or four taste communities. Members of modern societies belong to many more. No two persons are exactly alike, even those that buy the same products, chose the same brands, and like the same content. There are those who enjoy foreign movies and travel documentaries, horror and romantic comedies, Vineyard Vines and Everlane, sneakers and high jewelry. People are communities they belong to.
Creative Houston is a venture to support Houston’s creative economy by providing evidence and experiences that help creative professionals in their work and their lives. We publicize information about resources in Houston. We also foster a better understanding of how Houston offers a superior environment for making a living through one’s ideas.
Since I started reading the writings of Ana Andjelic, a marketing consultant and sociologist, I've come to see Creative Houston as a "modern brand." Our goal is to leverage culture, build relationships, and spread awareness of a unique experience. Our customer is someone who has the time and resources to think about improving the quality of life for their community.
The Sociology of Business: The modern brand OS, 2020-Jun-22 by Ana Andjelic
A “modern brand” is simultaneously a concept, a sector, and a business model.
As a concept, modern brands exploit things like culture, taste, creative identity, or one’s social standing. Modern brands gained prominence when the economy shifted from manufacturing to experiences, travel, luxury, and art and design. Modern brands remove nuisances of modern life for a privileged group of people. They invent products, like Thinx or Casper; services, like Uber or DoorDash; or experience like Airbnb or WeWork. They also feature cheeky OOH and social media ads. Modern brands’ hidden function is to create a social and economic distance between the culturally and tech savvy and the rest.
As a sector, modern brands capitalize on the shift from consumers’ accumulation of products to consumers’ desire to demonstrate appreciation for these products....
5 criteria for "modern brands," according to Ana Andjelic
A membership program helps your customers become brand ambassadors, proud to share their insider status with the larger community. If customers can learn from one another, they can build something together. Being a member is much more satisfying than being a customer.
The Sociology of Business: From Loyalty to Membership, 2020-Feb-11, by Ana Andjelic
In the modern aspiration economy, consumers are fans, influencers, hobbyists, environmentalists, and collectors. Membership programs are designed for them....
The keyword here is not necessarily prestige and exclusivity, but identity and belonging. There’s a pure pleasure in the intimacy of consuming together, along with enjoying status within a community. Thanks to a membership in a community, a hypebeast gets access to new product drops and events. This is the domain of intangibles that most loyalty programs fail to deliver, and that membership excels in....
Membership is mentorship... define the activity that members can learn from one another. This activity needs to stem from a brand’s role in culture, environment, or society.
I love the idea of being the lone dissenter so other people have an opportunity to dissent as well.
Psychologist Solomon Asch is famous for his 'conformity experiments,' but he also studied how dissenters influenced group behavior.... Having just one person who broke with the majority reduced conformity among the responses by about 80 percent. Perhaps the participants in those trials felt as though they and the dissenter could at least be weird together. Interestingly, they were less likely to conform even if the dissenter disagreed with the crowd but was still wrong. The dissenter appeared to give the participants permission to disagree. ...
In a small study, Rodica Damian, an assistant psychology professor at the University of Houston, and her colleagues had college students engage in a virtual-reality exercise in which the laws of physics didn’t apply. In this virtual world, things fell up instead of down. When compared with another group that performed an exercise in which the laws of physics functioned normally, those who had the physics-warping experience were able to come up with more creative answers to the question “What makes sound?”... Damian has a theory she’s researching: that all kinds of unusual experiences can boost creativity.