At the Forefront of Culture with Dr. Marcus Collins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Michigan

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I believe that I was put on this earth to serve. Like all of us put on this earth to serve in my lens, serve God and serve each other right. That's what I'm here to do. And I think that the way I do that is by helping people realize their highest fidelity possible.

To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Culture. Up today we have our first returning guest on the Speed of Culture podcast. So excited to have Dr. Marcus Collins back. An award winning marketer and cultural translator and marketing professor at the Roush School of Business. And most importantly, Marcus has a new book out called for the Culture that we're going to talk about today. Mark, it's so great to see you. Thanks so much for joining our first repeat guest on the Speed of Culture.

I feel so honored. I feel like this is like the Saturday Night Live return host sort of thing. I feel so honored. Look at me. That the first time happened to Speed of Culture. It's happening right now.

Well, I have to say the last time we were on the pod I really didn't want it to end. And when I said I wanted to have you back after the book was out, I meant it. And here we are. The book comes out May 2nd if I'm correct.

That's right. That's right May 2nd. What they say, promises made, promises kept. Here we go.

Your new book for the Culture. It's now out. Tell us about the book and what the impetus behind for the Culture was.

Yeah, so the book's out in the world and you know, the book has a very clear provocation. It's that there's no force, no external force more influential to human behavior than culture, full stop. And now when you hear that, people go, yeah, I buy that. They nod their head. But if you ask five people to define culture, you get 25 different answers. That's a problem. If we don't have clear language, a good Rosetta Stone to describe a thing, we can never operationalize it. So for a company, for a marketer, a leader, institution, organization, politician, activist, we can never really harness the power of culture without good language. So the book sort of unpacks what is culture and then why does it have this impact on us and how do we leverage it in our day to day lives or in our practice? And it was really brought to bear by two things. One is from a practical perspective and the other one is personal. Practically, I thought, oh man. As a marketer, our job is to influence behavior. And if culture is the most influential force on human behavior, then this is the biggest cheat code. Understanding culture, if we can find a better way to describe it and to harness its power, then we could be more powerful in using it. Awesome. From a personal level, I thought about this because I didn't have language to describe culture, but I was very much affected by it, by most of us. So I'm from Detroit, born and raised, did well in math and science. And in those days in the 90s, if you did well in math and science and you're a black, you're going to be an engineer, full stop, right? So that's why I studied. I studied engineering because that's what you were supposed to do. Those were the expectations of people like me. So I went to school to study engineering at the University of Michigan, studied material science, engineering, realized it wasn't for me, but kept doing it because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. I was getting social pressures from my family, from my parents, from my peers, even, that this is what people like us do. And I did it, begrudgingly, finished it and went into a career. I really wanted to do music and had to fight to make that happen too. And what I realized 20 some odd years later is that because I didn't know what was happening to me, that I was experiencing the Forces of culture telling me to be normal. I didn't have very much agency to navigate it. And having wrote this book or written this book, I think to myself, wow, like, not only does this help me as a better practitioner, but also help me as a better human.

Yeah.

To make better decisions. Because I have agency to identify what's happening to me. So I can now respond to it accordingly.

Absolutely. And writing a book about culture, as you mentioned, it's such a big topic and it really is the driving force of brand building. And so much of what happens in the business world. Where do you start in terms of. Because it's such a broad topic, culture. How do you. In terms of the process of writing a book which maybe will give our listeners a little idea in terms of what goes on inside your brain, how do you frame that topic into actually a form factor of a book?

It was pretty difficult, actually. So I knew I wanted to write about culture and the impact that it has on us as human beings, as consumers and the like. So when I started writing the book, I just kind of put everything on paper that I knew about culture and how I've leveraged it in my work. And I realized that I didn't have that much to say, you know, like 5,000 words, which a book is more like 75 to 90,000 words. I only had 5,000 words written about it. And I was like, oh, man, I've kind of tapped out here. And I thought to myself, well, I can write about this and I can write about that, but that's well worn territory. Like, people a thousand times smarter than me have already written that. What do I have to contribute uniquely? So I thought about, so how do I see the world? Like, who am I as an individual and how does that inform how I think about culture? And I thought about how culture was first studied by the social scientists in sociology, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, they observe religion to study culture. And I'm a church boy, for sure. I grew up in a church. And I was like, oh, that's a point of view that is uniquely mine. So I started looking at culture through that lens, but through a contemporary version of the things I listen to, the cultural product I take in. And it's that intersection of practice, academia, some sort of religion, if you will. And the cultural product I take in as far as, like, film, literature, music, et cetera, and finding the convergence to talk about culture through that lens. And the work that I've done, the research that I've done as an academic, as a scholar, kind of Created a new way for me to talk about it. And I started hearing from people like Doug Holt, who is a monster in my field studies culture and strategy for marketers. He was like, you created a new lane for this thing. And I was like, thank you, Lane Lord. So getting there, it was a challenge. But it's that introspection of who I am and how I see the world that allowed me to add something new to the discourse about culture and its impact on consumption.

Yeah. And culture is something that's really ever changing. Right. And as somebody who wrote a book 10 years ago, and I'm about to go in and actually write a post about some of the predictions I made 10 years later in terms of, like, what was right and wrong?

What? Hold up.

Yeah, exactly. I think I did okay. But, you know, ultimately, since culture is changing so quickly and a book is a static form factor, did that drive your thought in terms of, hmm, if I put this in the book, is it gonna be irrelevant in a year or so? And in that regard, what in the book do you think will be true 10 years from now and what do you worry might be. Or even five years from now and what do you worry might be Dated?

Yeah, I think so. When it comes to, like, the temporality, the femorality of the things that are written in the book, I used examples that were from my work and that those things for are evergreen because it's my work.

So let's unpack those. What is evergreen?

Right. So human behavior. Right. Technology changes really, really, really, really, really, really fast culture can change quickly. At least fast culture can change very quickly.

Trends, things like that.

Exactly. But people change very, very, very, very, very slowly. Very slowly. Like, we're still using the same hardware from our sub Saharan African days. Right. Like, the software may update, but the hardware is still very much the same. So if people change slowly, quickly, then let's focus on people. So when I talk about the impact of culture, I look at the underlying physics that govern us as humanity, and then use these examples from work that I've done, work before me, as well as context of how these things play out to actually say, hey, the things that work back with like World of War Worlds, same thing that worked with Blair Witch Project, the same thing that worked today with like the Chris Paul campaign, the Clif Paul campaign for State Farm, that these things are evergreen because humanity doesn't change that quickly. And if we understand humanity, then we can leverage those things. So what does the future bring? Or what is the future? If I were to be A clairvoyant, which I'm not. I would say that, like, it's what Marshall McLuhan said, that technology will always extend human behavior, but it's gonna be bound by human behavior. So while will TikTok be a thing 10 years from now? Who knows? Twitter doesn't look. Does it look good? But people will still be people. And if we understand people, the things that are happening beneath the surface, not just things that we observe, then we can leverage those understandings to inform and impact what happens on the surface. This is why I talk to students and clients about the idea of trendspotting. Trendspotting can be powerful. We're looking at how people consume, where they're doing, what are they taking on, what are their perceptions and attitudes about a particular thing today? But those things change quickly.

It's ephemeral, right?

Yeah. What I'm more concerned about is what are the underlying things that are informing that. What are the implicit meanings that don't change as quickly, that informs why they want to demonstrate themselves as such? It's like flying over New York City. I can see the patterns. I can see this is Central park. Here's Times Square, here's Meatpacking, here's Murray Hill. I don't know why I thought of Murray Hill, but here are these different places. But you don't know the city until you walk the streets, until you talk to people. And you really don't know the city until you know how it moves, the subway system. And what is the system for humanity? It's culture, the things that happen beneath the surface. So I think that for the future, prayerfully, the book holds up because it's about people, right?

What is an example are sort of the evergreen human behavioral aspects that drive culture.

That is probably the most salient thing in all of us, is that we, as Aristotle says, we are by nature social animals. We want to connect. Anthropologists would argue that the reason why we were able to evolve as a species was our ability to cooperate, to socialize, to come together. It's deep in our brainstem to be connected. And all we want to do is to connect, to belong, to find people like ourselves, to find community. It's in our DNA to be communal, to belong. That thing will never, never change. And interestingly, as you and your friend walked down the street and saw this happening, they were like, what's going on here? And like, oh, they're celebrating. That's to observe what's happening beneath the surface. They want to belong. But also, for a Knicks fan, it's been a long time since you've been there.

That's a struggle. That's a struggle.

Exactly. This is the victory that we've all been waiting for. We haven't had that kind of celebration since Lynn Sanity, like 10 years ago. So these things have meaning beneath the surface. And that's the other part. We want to be in tribes, in communal, in community. And the way we do that is by the way we collectively make meaning. The way we see the world, the way we translate the world. Because everything that we see around us is inherently meaningless, means nothing. Like everything that we're looking at right now has no meaning inherently to it. We give it meaning. For instance, red. What is red? One would say it's a color. One may say it's a wavelength that activates your eyes to see a color. But if you're driving down the street and you approach a red light. Red means stop.

Yeah.

Does red inherently mean stop? No. But we have negotiated and constructed that red means stop just like green means go and yellow means hurry up. These things don't inherently mean these things. We give it that meaning. Red means passionate, it means hot, it means sexy, it means angry.

But some things are, I guess, espoused onto you and other things, you know right away. For example, we both have small children. That's right when we ask, you know, our two and three year olds what color, and they say red. They're probably just looking at it in terms of the definition of red. But over time, as we get older, through our experiences, and we know that red means stop or red means makes you feel young or whatever the, you know, that whatever emotion the color brings out within you. But that changed over time. And I would imagine culture has a big impact on that definition over time.

So we interpolate on our children what meaning is right through folklore, through stories that we tell, through music that we hear. This is all cultural product to socialize what people like us do. Like, you know, you go back to religion. If you're anywhere, any monochromatic religion you've had, you learn it by stories, right? So we tell stories through folklore to our young so they know how to be good citizens, how to be like us. And what happens is that we get introduced to new ideas and we start to develop new meaning. And we go, I don't know if I see it like that anymore. And then we say, I don't like hanging out with my family because we don't make meaning the same way. Or we have a different cultural lens by which we see the world Right. So we want to belong. And how we belong is by having a shared point of view, a shared way of seeing the world. So if you think about culture as this system of conventions and expectations, it's anchored in our identity.

Yeah.

Like I'm a Collins, or we're New Yorkers. Right. For those who live in New York. So I'm a Collins. We have a set of or political affiliation. Or I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Wyden Kennedier, I'm a Michigan Wolverine. Whatever our identity sets in, I am this. And because I self identify by this collective right, especially when I subscribe, my identity, not ascribe. Like our children are ascribed their identity. They're Collins because they were born in the Collins family. But our subscriptions are. I choose to join this company. I choose to join this fraternity. I choose to go to this school.

I choose to purchase this brand.

Exactly. And I ascribe my identity to it. So because I am this thing, there are a set of beliefs and ideologies that are expected of people like us so to be a good standing citizen in this community that we so desperately in our DNA, want to be a part of. I adhere to the beliefs and ideologies, the truths and the stories I tell myself about being a part of this community. And because I see the world a certain way, I show up in the world a certain way, I dress a certain way. Like New Yorkers wear black. We're all wearing black in this room. New Yorkers wear black. I behave a certain way. There's certain norms or expectations. There's language that we use, vernacular that we use. Like we have a shared way of living. So I know that you're one of us. Right? I know how you talk that you're one of us by what you wear. I go, oh, you must be X, Y and Z.

People walk fast. They don't always hold open the door for you. It's a little different than this in different parts.

Exactly. Like if I'm talking to someone and they're like, oh, what's happening, son? I'm like, you're from New York, Totally. But if I meet someone, they go, what up, dove? It's like, oh, you're from Detroit. Or if someone goes, man, that John. Oh, you're from Philly. Right. That language signals where you're from. And people subscribe their identity to where they're from. Or they say, I'm from this little town in X, Y and Z, but that's not who I am. My identity is now here. I subscribe my identity elsewhere. And because of our identity, we share our same way of seeing the world, a same way of life. And then we have a shared expression of being that the music we listen to, the art we take in, the literature that we read, the music that, the movies that we watch, the television that we watch, and the brands and branded products that we consume.

But here's the thing I struggle with. With that is like Nike. Sure, Adida, sure. They are brands that fit so well in the culture. Feminine care products, you know, bottled water. Where do they fit in within culture? And how do brands that aren't the cool brands approach culture as a driver for their business?

So what makes a brand cool, makes a brand cool is that it's something I aspire to or something that is aligned with who I am.

Sure.

I mean, talk about Nike like they're sneakers. Like there's a commodity, but they still look cool.

They still have the swoosh. Like a feminine care product is not something that people would aspire to.

But what makes something look cool. For instance, when I first saw the Yeezys, I was like, these shoes are terrible. They just look ugly as all get out. People are like, they're so comfortable. Like they look like moths on your feet. They're not cool. I own four pair of them. Why? Because people like me do something like this. We collectively make meaning. Why is this kind of music good versus that? Why is that style cool and that not like we collectively legitimate it through the discourse that we take in the conversations that we have. So a commodity that is meaningless has been.

But what about a low embodiment category? What about toothpaste? What about shampoo?

So let's go to something a little less sexy in nature, right? Or less conspicuous, right? Like, let's talk water. I don't think anything can be more commoditized than water, at least in the Western world, right? We have access, tremendous access to clean water, depending on where you are. There's Aquafina, there's Dasani, there's Fiji. Vaas.

Vaas.

Yep. It's all water. H2. Okay. But we pay a premium because of what it means in our minds. What's a cool water brand? Liquid Death. Liquid Death has a point of view about the world, right? That they want to kill plastic and they want to murder your thirst. Instead of being in a plastic bottle, it's in a tall boy can. And having a tall boy can say something about me, that I am distinctive, that I am ironic. I go to the gym and I got a tall boy. People like, what are you doing? Right. I think the VP of marketing once said that like we want to be the SNL of marketing. Like that we're like, we're bringing in these sort of these pokes and prods that really kind of takes the piss out of what we consider to be the status quo. And As a result, H2O in this can from this brand has different meaning. And if I rock a shirt that says liquid death, it says something about who I am. Just like back in the day, if you rocked a shirt that said Red Bull, it says something about who you are. Dove sells hand soap, conditioner, body wash, these inconspicuous things. But we share things from Dove because what Dove believes, how it sees the world, its ideology and its cultural characteristics are aligned with us. We believe in encouraging empowering self esteem. Right? And so to share a video from Dove is like, I agree with this thing. Not because of what Dove is, but because of who I am. And we use these brands as identity marks. And as we use them as identity marks, we go, Matt, I was thinking the exact same thing when I saw that. Oh my goodness. And it brings us together. So us sharing these cultural products, these, whether it's product, good product services from brands or marketing communications, there are ways by which we communicate who we are to go find people like us. Always. Feminine hygiene, right? Very inconspicuous in its usage. And traditional feminine hygiene products have communicate themselves as such. Here's ours, here's the competitor. Here's red water in ours, here's blue water in theirs. Ours absorb more by ours, right?

Unique value proposition. Yep.

Value proposition base, totally. But always goes well, what do we believe as a company, as a brand? Right? We believe that women are awesome, right? And what they saw in the literature is that by adolescence, both boys and girls, their self sustain plummets. But then boys self esteem jumps right back up and girls just kind of peter up over time and always says that's ridiculous. Why is that a thing so? Well, because of the rhetoric that we use when we talk about girls doing things like a girl. You run like a girl, you fight like a girl, you hit like a girl. As if being a girl is something to be diminished, as if that's something that's not to be celebrated. So what did it always do? They did a campaign that kind of poked at these cultural norms, this rhetoric, this language that we use in our society that's actually taking a punch, giving a black eye to women. This is ridiculous. So they make this film. People shared it massively, not because of its products, but because what the brand believes is aligned with what they believe. And sales went up for a product that is commoditized, right?

And we talked about this during the last pod. But like the Toyota Camry would be looked as a technological marvel 20 years ago. It can get you from New York to California comfortably, safely, et cetera. So we're at the point in so many categories where the unique selling propositions are almost at parody, right? So what's going to differentiate you? It's brand. What drives brand culture.

Think of like water. Water is H2O. We'll say it has electrolytes. Fam. It's water. You know what I'm saying?

Or.

Or like salt. Salt has the therapeutic index of sodium chloride. It's NaCl. That's all. That's what salt is. But then. But there's coconut water.

There's a lot of products that are just that. It is what.

So product wise, side by side, they're often parity, right? But what allows it to transcend the value propositions of the product and charge.

A premium in many instances.

Because Louis Vuitton, I see myself in it, right? It is an identity project for me. It's a strategy by which I signal to the world who I am so I can find people who are just like me. There's nothing more satisfying for me than when I travel and I see someone with the Michigan paraphernalia on and I go, go blue. And they go, go blue. And I feel like I'm connected even when I'm overseas and I see someone rocking Michigan gear and they say, go blue. And I go, go blue. Man, I got someone everywhere. It. In my brain, it triggers that you are safe because there's people in this world to which you are connected to, even if you don't know it. Yeah.

I walk by people with an Eagles hat or shirt and I'm like, go birds. He's like, go birds. I give him a fist bump.

Exactly.

No idea who they are.

Strangers. Now, here's the interesting part. When I'm on Michigan's campus where I teach, I don't say go blue to advisors wearing the gear even though we're all wearing Michigan paraphernalia on the campus. We don't do that when we're there. We do that when we're away.

Right.

These signals are a way that we tell people in this world where everyone's.

Different outside of that one community, this. We belong in this big world. There's Something that we have in common.

And that's all we really want.

What's interesting is that brands, when you talk about unique selling proposition, you know, 30% more absorbent, 350 horsepower, whatever it may be.

That's right.

That was in a world where brands marketed by cookie cutter. Demographics, 18 to 24, you know, 34 to 49. Because they thought that people of a certain maybe gender or income level or age. Right. Actually were all the same. And what I'm hearing from you, when you talk about go blue, that's psychographics, that's not demographics. So is that how it's all one way? It's all.

I would take it one step higher. It's identity.

Yeah.

Which is the anchor of culture.

People don't identify by their age, though. They identify by their passions.

Listen, if some. We look at demography and we use that all the time to describe people, and it is efficient, but terribly inaccurate.

Yeah.

So take my demography at the time of this recording. I'm 44 years old, I'm black from Detroit, born and raised and went to public schools my entire life. If a marketer saw that on a brief, they'll go, oh, he must walk like this, talk like this, hang out with those kind of people. Because that's just what those kind of people do.

Right.

And that sounds crazy and racist for me to say out loud, but that's what we do.

It's the easy thing.

All the time.

Cookie cutter. It's easy.

We put people in boxes. Not because it's real, but because it's easy. Deborah drives a minivan. Does Deborah have kids? Yep. Does Deborah. Do her kids play sport? Yep. What sport do they play? Soccer. Where does she live? The suburbs. One data point about Deborah, we map out our entire life. We do this all the time. Not because it's real, but because it's easy. While I am 44, I am black, I am from Detroit, I did go to public schools my entire life. I also played jazz growing up and I swam competitively and I studied engineering and I love the monkeys as much as I love A Tribe Called Quest. These things shape how I see the world, my truths and ideologies about the world. And therefore I show up in the world a certain way, and therefore I consume a certain way. So when we think about it from that perspective, we go, oh, demography is trash. Trash. But when we look at people based on their cultural subscription, not only is it a more accurate way to describe them because they self identify by it, but also there's probably Some predictive outcomes that happen because of what people like us do. I mean, it's interesting. I tell my students this all the time. It's like we say, all women love to shop. That's not true, right? Or I hear MBA students go, all guys are dogs. I go, no, your boyfriend's a dog. All guys aren't dogs. Right? It's like all black people do something. Fill in the blank. Racist. Ridiculous. But we say just because you were born in a 20 year period, you're the same. That is nonsensical. But we do it all the time and we bet the farm on it. Not because it's real, but because it's easy.

It's so true. I mean, you know, I spent 20 years in the advertising industry. I can't tell you how many times a CMO would say our ICP ideal customer profile is Jane. Jane is 34 years old. She lives in Minneapolis. Her, you know, her household income is blank. And this is what Jane likes. Jane watches this stuff. So we're going to put these ads on, et cetera and right? It's like that is not differentiating, right? Is that where brands go wrong in terms of trying to ingratiate in the culture and build a brand in this new era?

Brands go wrong because we don't understand people. And the paradox is that we have more data than ever before, but we don't know who people truly are because we mistake information for intimacy.

Right?

We have to understand people. Wed Dubois puts it this way, that herein lies the tragedy of the age. Not that men are poor, because we all know something about poverty. Not that men are wicked, because what is good? Not that men are liars, because what is truth, nay, that we know so little of mankind, we don't know people outside ourselves. So it requires us to be much more empathetic, taken off our lens or how we make meaning through our cultural meaning making system. That is the way we see the world and see the world through other people's eyes. Not to agree, but to understand, right? Like I'm not a Republican, but I'll look at Fox News and I go, I get why they feel the way they feel. I don't agree. I don't think it's right, but I get it right? And I manage a team of people and I'll hear someone complain about a thing and I go, well, that's not what I said, but I understand why they feel that way. Right? It's just about understanding. And the better we understand people, the more likely we are to activate them, the more likely we are to connect with them in meaningful ways that not only get them to move, but also get them to evangelize on our behalf with people who are just like them. And people trust people more than any form of marketing communications. Like, I watch shows because someone was like, yo, there's a show on Paramount you've got to watch, Marcus. I go, oh, what is it? Oh, it's called Yellowstone. And I'm like, oh, I saw that commercial. It's like country, like western.

I try to put it in the box.

That's not me. I don't do that. And they go, no, no, dude, let me tell you. Like it this, that and the third. And it's this thing. Oh, sweet. I watched it not cause of the ad, because someone told me. Right. And like you said, I put it in the box like I'm not that person. There are more people who watch Game of Thrones than people who subscribe as Sci Fi fans. Why? Because those people who are hardcore Game of Thrones fans went to go preach the gospel. That's what we gotta do as marketers. Find people who see the world the way we do and they tell people about us not because of what it is, but because of who they are.

Yeah.

The brand becomes an identity. Mark a receipt of their identity and they share with people within their subculture. And people within that community act not because of what it is, but because of who they are.

Absolutely.

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Interesting because I'm thinking as you talk about the ad world and just the go to market strategy being a little bit of a barbell. Because what you're talking about is essentially brand building, you know, and at the same time there's a lot of performance marketing which is you have to get, you know, customer acquisition costs a certain number and it's like the math behind business. When you're looking at the math behind business, you sometimes it's easy to throw all that out the window and say, I'm just gonna focus on discounts, deals, offers. So where does that fit in? Cause it is a completely different approach.

It's a false binary that we create. It's like I either have to think about right now or the future.

Right.

And why do those things have to be at odds? Like that's a false bifurcation, Right. What we know from the literature, look at Banay and Field's IPA work, is that strong brands build. When we think about the sales activation today, the short term, and the brand building for tomorrow. Like Professor Bass and Professor Rock said, it takes two to make a thing go right. Right. Rob Bass, DJ EG Rock like, it takes two to make a thing go right. You need the short term and the long term. And I think that we as brand stewards, we don't think in that way. We. There's some perverse incentives for us to think about right now. I have to make my numbers by the end of the quarter or I'll lose my job or whatever. We're chasing our stock price as a way of a metric of how we're performing. But ultimately we're in the business of getting people to move. And when we think about our activations, they should all perform. The brand should perform, the brand work should perform. Just like the quote unquote performance marketing should perform. They just happen at different time horizon, right? Like, you know, if I meet someone, say I meet a girl on the street and I say, hey, you know, I'd love to take you for coffee, right? I'm not like, I'm paying for coffee right now so that this happens next. Like, no, I'm making an investment for what might be the future. And this is what we do with brand building. We are establishing relationships, we are trying to construct meaning in the minds of people so that they move over time. When we're doing discounts, we are activating the prefrontal cortex, the dopamine shots, to help people move right now, today. But doing the two together gets us both the long term view and a short term view. That's better for the business.

Unless people act with confidence. They might act instantly, but they're acting with confidence because they have a preconceived notion or feeling about the brand.

That's right.

That they have an emotional connection to.

I mean, a brand by definition is a signifier. It means something. It's identifiable signifier that conjures up thoughts and feelings in the minds or hearts of people relative to a product, a company, institution, organization, or a person. Exactly. Or a person. Like that's what a brand is. It means something. So when I see the brand mark, I'm flooded with cognitions and affects, right? Like, my mind is flooded with thoughts and my emotions are overflowing when it's a strong brand, but when I see it, I go, oh, that's just 25% more fluoride in my toothpaste. Not a strong brand.

It's so interesting because I, in many instances of my career, struggle with having to evolve what my company was known for. For example, I first started my company as Mr. Youth, and we did College choice.

Oh, Yeah, I know, Mr. Youth. Exactly.

And then what I realized is, oh, we're just a vendor. We need to get more upstream. We need to get the cmo. And over time, I had to shed people's consist preconceived notions about what my business did and it could be strategic. And over time, we ended up renaming his mri. We had to shift positioning. And now, even with Susie, when we first started, we were like an on demand, quick research tool. But then we want to be more sophisticated, so we hired more people in. But there are still some people that looked this as who we were.

That's right.

Not who we are. So it's hard to change in terms of, like, first impressions of people. How do brands go about evolving their identity if, you know, if it's such a process to get there?

So let's take you, for instance. So from your time at Mr. Youth all the way to today at Suzy, I would say those things that you have done, that's what you've done in these different incarnations. And it's presented itself differently. But why you've done it has always remained the same. In my mind. This is me outside looking in. When I think about the meaning of who Matt is that you've always been curious about people, observing people, and understanding the things that make them tick. And as Mr. Youth, you created campaigns that activated them because you were so close to them in proximity. And now you have a platform that gets close to people through market research.

Right.

You are activating at the same ideological level, just different executions. Take a person, a different person. Beyonce. She's an artist. The way Beyonce sang and the music she made with Destiny's Child is different than the way she sings and the music she makes today. But Beyonce believes in women's empowerment, and she's been that way since she told us. No, no, no, no, pay my bills survivor to the left who runs the world Girls get in formation you ain't gonna break my soul like she has been consistent in her ideology. She's just manifested differently over time. Nike, at least to today's wide kidney. That's All I know is that Nike believed that every human body is an athlete. It believes that every human body is an athlete. Big, small, short, tall, you're an athlete. The sneakers that they made have changed over time. The way it communicated itself has changed over time. The context changes, but the ideology, the belief remains the same. And I think that's why we have to transcend the value propositions of what we do to think about why we do it. In the words of Simon Sinek, it's our ideology that allows us to connect. When people see the world the way we do, we go, oh, that's my people. Yeah, I trust them. They have meaning in my mind beyond what they do.

That's right.

And because of why they exist, why they show up in the world, their ideology, their conviction, they can do whatever they want to do. They're not confined by a category. As long as they are demonstrating their conviction, their ideology.

Right. You said something earlier in this conversation about how the world around people is changing quicker than humanity itself. And that, you know, sometimes even though you see things differently externally, people are still people. And I guess what I would challenge on that is that that is generally true. But we've had these huge waves throughout society of technological innovation, whether it be the printing press, aviation, you know, the telephone, the Internet, new media, and now artificial intelligence.

Right.

To me, I see this as the next big technological wave totally. When those waves happen from where I sit, I actually have seen human change. Because if you look at the Arab Spring or you look at the insurrection happened, those things that happen would not have happened without social media. So they by nature have changed the way people have act. So how do you kind of reckon that? And how do you see this new change of AI impacting the way humans change in a lot of the things that we're talking about?

It goes Back to Marshall McLuhan. Technology merely extends human behavior. It's the extension of what we've always done. And that extension has different or accelerates too, right? Exactly, exactly. I went to my two year high school reunion a few years back. And when I went to the reunion, I thought this was gonna be like everything I've seen on television. I'm gonna go to my reunion. People be like, marcus, oh my goodness, I haven't seen you since forever. What have you been up to? Blah, blah, blah, Fill me in. Because every show, every movie I've watched, when people went back to their high school reunion, that's what it was like. I'm gonna go impress everybody. Cause I haven't Seen everybody in forever. That's not how my reunion was because we had Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. So when I showed up to my high school reunion with my wife, you and I was in Florida.

Right. Like, you know, exactly.

They were like, tell me about your vacation. I just saw the pictures. It looked amazing. Oh my goodness, Georgia, you look just like you look on the photos. It extends human behavior. Years ago, we wouldn't be that connected because there'll be a decay. There's a natural decay in relationships where you're not physically close to each other or constantly in contact. But these technologies extend that, so therefore our behavior is different. So technologies do that. Just like the wheel extensions of the foot allow us to go further. And because of that we were able to make bikes which turned into vehicles, which gave us highways that got us big box retail and suburbs. Like there are implications because of this extension, but it's all based on a fundal human thing. Glasses are extensions of the eyes. Clothes are extensions of the skin. Cameras are extensions of the memory. Computers are extensions of the brain. In the same way social networking platforms are extensions of our real life social networks.

Yeah.

So these technologies, they move us forward, but they're still grounded in the humanity that is us.

What about AI, which is creating, and some people believe it's a new version of humanity? How do you think AI is going to impact society? And if we're talking a year from now, which I think you'll probably be our first three time guest during the podcast, what do you think we'll be saying about it a year from now in terms of AI's impact on culture specifically?

So I'm not clairvoyant, I don't have a crystal ball, but I do think that we may be inflating AI just a little bit. Right. And we tend to do this right. We can hype up things more blockchain.

We had it happen last year.

Oh, goodness. Yeah. I mean, like we just destroyed NFTs. NFTs could actually have been a cool thing, but we destroyed it by inflating what it was as opposed to just kind of appreciating what it is right now. I mean, AI has some promise that could be helpful. Me, it's helpful right now, right. If I want to write something, I don't want to stare at a blank page. AI kind of gives me a little bit of chatgpt, gives me a little bit of inspiration. I don't do that, but I could see one doing that very thing. If I want to get quickly studied on a topic ChatGPT. AI can give you a good understanding of that, but AI isn't great right now. I mean, I don't know if you've seen photos of people, it's cool. They can make those photos of people who are not real. But when you look closer, they got like 85 teeth, seven fingers. Like, it's not great right now, but.

It could be great in three months.

The rate of change, it totally could be. So overextend its possibilities, I think is unfair to what it could be. So I'd say, like right now, it's an interesting technology.

Yeah.

And I think that what we should do, like we do with all things that are exogenous shocks to the system. Let's engage it, let's see what it does, let's kick the tires. And it's gonna suck today and it's gonna be better tomorrow and better a year, a year out. Will it be all that it could be? Maybe not. I mean, the Internet wasn't that. When the Internet first came out in the 90s, people were like, what is this thing?

And then we had. This is ridiculous with pets.com and all that.

Why would I ever need to go online and just go to my own. To the store, blah, blah, blah. It didn't make any sense. Then people rushed to it. Big balloon, it bursts. And then people are like, see, I told you this was a dude. Now here we are 30 years later.

The Internet is a classic kind of innovation cycle where everybody jumps on it, the press talks about it, it's on the front page of the USA lay. And then all of a sudden there becomes a, you know, a. A bust cycle and then the real work begins.

Exactly.

Ultimately it becomes. Because you need consumer behavior to catch up. You need the applications to really be something that consumers want to adopt.

Exactly.

And then when society's finally ready.

Exactly.

Then it becomes.

I mean, this goes back to the idea of culture that, that it's the meaning that we ascribe to it. When it first came out, the people who were in the press, the journalists who were writing about it, they were giving meaning to it because we didn't know what it was.

Yeah.

And the meaning they gave to it was somewhat superficial. It was. It was somewhat.

Well, the meaning they gave to it helped them sell papers.

Exactly, Exactly.

That's why, that's why you see a lot of fear. AI is going to take over the world because it drives fear and that fear will make people. It's clickbait, basically.

I said it better than I ever could. 1, 1000%. Like when the meaning is owned by someone who is not the original sort of creators of it, the meaning begins to shift away. I mean, this is what we would call cultural appropriation in a lot of ways that we take the meaning from the makers of the thing, the people who create these markers of their cultural subscription and give it new meaning.

Well, we've seen that happen with like Black Lives Matter, right?

It was wokeness, the idea of woke up. It goes far back as like Marcus Garvey, right, he wrote a paper about like, you know, wake up, Jamaica, right? This is about returning black people to our homeland, to Africa. He was very, very much a proponent of that. And wokeness had been a part of the dominant black culture for years. Spike Lee told us, wake up. And you know, a couple years back, Childish Gambino said, now stay woke. Like everything's about wake up. That was a part of our lexicon. But then the Fox News of the world conquested that language and gave it new meaning. And now it's like, oh, wokeness. Oh, wokeness. But that's not what it was. So when meaning gets co opted and gets perverted, right? That is a form of cultural appropriation in many, many ways.

Especially when it's done by those with a megaphone that can shift the popular.

Opinion of something or said differently when it's come by with people who have power. Cultural appropriation is not about race. It's about people with power. Takes the cultural markers from a community, a marginalized community mostly, and then give it new.

It's so interesting because before there was Spotify or YouTube that happened with music where they would take, you know, a young female singer and they would say, you know what, we're gonna sell sex through this. So we're gonna basically take your look and actually morph it for a way where we can get you on heavy rotation, top 40, clear channel. We're gonna take away your real meaning behind music. And the artists didn't have a choice. Cause it was the only way to get out there. But now with Spotify, YouTube, all these tools, SoundCloud, people can be more real and authentic.

That's. And there's the technology extending human behavior. We want to be ourselves, right? We want like we connect with people when we are authentic.

It unlocked our true selves. It allows people to be authentic.

I mean, this is actually the power of social networking platforms. So my research on the academic side, I study cultural contagion. How things spread within a cultural context and how we make meaning. So meaning making Cultural contagion is where I spend a lot of my time studying. And for the large part of my research, I use social listening. I observe people in their cultural contexts, practicing their cultural subscription.

Where do you do Reddit?

I can't think of a place online.

It's interesting because Reddit's just notoriously anonymous.

But that's the power. Is that because people can act in anonymity, they're more likely to be sort of themselves.

Yeah.

And the most.

The beautiful fired for their job or something.

The beautiful part about Reddit is that Reddit is a community of communities. Yeah, right. And it's this huge front door made up many, many communities. And as a researcher, it's the perfect place because you have moderators cleaning the data for you. If you post things that are outside of the cultural characteristics, the conventions and expectations of that subreddit, it gets taken off. Or you as a member of that subreddit, you get kicked out. So someone's cleaning the data for you. So as a researcher, I go in and I'm looking at the discourse that's happening between people who subscribe their identity to a cultural community. And so I'm observing people's cultural practice in action, much like I were of our ethnographer going in the field, going to Comic Con to watch people who do cosplay. It's unbelievably powerful. So I'm watching people make meaning, how they construct and negotiate meaning, when these exogenous shocks to the system happen. New technologies, new products, new music, new headlines. So when it happens out in the world, they go to these platforms, they talk to people like themselves and go, what do you think about this? And this is how we decide what is acceptable. The literature refers to this as legitimation, the social process by which we decide what products, what behaviors, what ideas are acceptable for people like us. It happens through the discourse. So observing the discourse, you can see how people are constructing meaning. You could see a mile away that NFTs are going to have a problem because of how people were talking about NFTs sparked by what was happening in.

You know, what a great example is. So marijuana is legalized in New York City now, and that is a change in behavior. It used to be illegal. People used to go to jail for it. Now it's legal. So you have very few legally, you know, regulated marijuana shots. But then you see all these other places popping up. You see some people say, you know what? I'm going to smoke a joint in the middle of the street.

That's Right.

Other people are like, no, there's still a taboo to it.

Yes.

So seeing kind of that dissonance with the public in terms of how they evolved towards this new legal standard, it's fascinating.

I write about this in the book Take the Oscars last year. So Will Smith slaps Chris Rock, and we as a society, as a country go, whoa, what did we just see? Because that is not a normal thing for us.

And the media appropriate that right away, talking about clickbait.

So we observe it and we go, wow. I mean, some of us were like, that didn't even happen. It wasn't even really. It was such a. It was such a foreign thing to what is normal that we had to, like, actually get our minds around what just happened. So then the media starts to replay the thing for us, replay the evidence of what just took place. And then producers, writers start to write think pieces about it. And then we. People start to jump into the discourse through social networking platforms, Twitter, Reddit, the like, discussing what it meant. Does it. Some people said, look, it was just a joke. Will Smith needs to learn how to take a joke. People said, like, you should never hit anybody. Violence is never okay. Some people were like, look, my husband better protect me if someone talks about me that way. And as a researcher, I'm watching this saying, this is amazing because I'm watching the country make meaning. And ultimately, what we were doing as we were weighing in our two cents, whether it was a joke via a meme or a very serious statement, like, that's happened to me before, whatever the case may be, we were weighing in to decide, is this acceptable for us? Because culture moves forward on the basis of one simple question. Do people like me do something like this? The answer is, yes, I do it. The answer is, no, I don't. And we make the decision hundreds, if not thousands of times a day, whether we're conscious of it or not. So these platforms, we observe people doing this thing. The discourse and the rhetoric in which they enter the discourse. We're getting an understanding of, like. Like, how they see the world and collectively how they'll choose to navigate through the world. And as a marketer, unbelievably powerful because they do the same thing with your products. Hey, I saw this ad for X, Y, and Z. What's it mean? Is this cool? Is this hip? Do we do this? Are we still listening to R. Kelly? Do we listen to Dababy still? Like, is he canceled? Like, these things are being negotiated through the discourse that we have. And observing that for A marketer. There's nothing more powerful than that. That's how we get to the intimacy that we need.

So fascinating. Well, we're running out of time here. I mean, I cannot wait to dig deeper into the book just to wrap up here. So what's next for you? So you wrote a book. I mean, what strikes me is that many people write a book because they want to be opportunistic in the moment. This seems like it's the thesis of everything you've been working on for so long. And I just so happy for you that you've been able to get it out in such a permanent form, because a something that's gonna be there, that your kids are gonna be able to show their kids one day. And that's the great thing about a book. What's next for you? What are you focused on next? And what do you hope people take away from the book that they can really get value from?

Ultimately, this is just about scaling the impact. You know, I believe my why, why I exist, my ideology. I believe that I was put on this earth to serve, like all of us put on this earth to serve. In my lens, serve God and serve each other. That's what I'm here to do. And I think that the way I do that is by helping people realize their highest fidelity possible. And this book helps me scale that. So maybe you're not at the University of Michigan. You can't be in my classroom. Maybe you're not a client at Wayan Kennedy, or maybe you're not at a conference where I'm giving a talk, but you can buy a book. And the hope is that the things I've learned, the mistakes that I've made, the provocations that I have struggled with and the epiphanies that I've had will help you make better decisions than I did. So you'd be far better ahead, far better at this than I've been. And if I could do that, I feel like then my living has not been in vain.

Absolutely. And for those of you who are still listening, which I hope you are, to this amazing podcast, if you go to susie.com fortheculture, the first hundred people that register there will get a free copy of Marcus's new book, compliments of Susie. So please be sure to do that as well. The first hundred people. So I want to wrap it with that. Marcus, this has been amazing. I love having you on. I learned something new every single time and hope to have you back again. And best of luck with the book. I'm sure it'll be a tremendous success.

Thank you so much my friend.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So on behalf of Susie and Adwee team, thanks again to Dr. Marcus Collins, author of the book for the Culture available Anywhere books are sold. Be sure to check it out and grab a copy. And again, the first hundred people that go to susie.comfortheculture will get a free copy. Compliments of Suzy. So thanks again for joining. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform platform. Till next time. See you soon everyone. Take care. Speed of Culture is brought to you by Susie as part of the Ad Week Podcast Network and a Guest Creator Network. You can listen subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcasts to find out more about Susie, head to Suzy.com and make sure to search for the Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Suzy, thanks for listening.

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