Decoding
the social mind—using culture as evidence
Why would it be important for
business to study culture? This question is just what the Center for
Cultural Studies & Analysis has been probing for the past 25 years, and
there is in fact a great reason: because culture is where the consumer
lives.
Culture is the software of the mind.
Operating below our conscious horizon, it shapes everything we think, say, and
do - from what we buy to our entire social network. It is the outward material expression of the
inward values that drive our thinking and behavior.
Over time we’ve been decoding the
cultural mindset to see what it has to tell us about ourselves, the culture we
live in, and why we buy. Although the college-educated think of culture as
synonymous with the high cultural expressions of architecture, literature,
music, drama, and the fine arts, this is just the elite aspect.
If we
widen the cultural lens, however, we take in a panoramic landscape that
includes all of culture. This view
includes everything people have ever produced over time, including the thinking
and behavior behind both the highly creative and the habitual mundane, from
opera to soap. In the wide-angle format, popular culture is the
evidence file containing everything needed to tell where we are, where we have
been, and where we are going. Including
the ability to extract the major values behind any single culture, like our
specialty, the American model.
This finding is arresting in itself
because Americans don’t really think we share a “reality by common
consent,” the software that drives our collective thinking. We think of
ourselves as individuals, descendants of immigrants from many countries. We
confuse heritage or race with culture. We focus on our differences precisely
because our shared cultural imperatives operate below the conscious horizon.
We know that a shared set of cultural
algorithms exist because their effects show up in our everyday behavior.
Behavior is how culture is truly expressed. Without some means of relating to
each other within a greater social mindset, there would be no way to talk to
each other, no basis for negotiating agreements or governance, and no mass
market for anything. There is indeed such a shared reality, to be
discovered across two and a half centuries of national history.
Cultural
Studies & Analysis has isolated the basic values that inform and motivate
Americans. We’ve shared this short list with our clients—most of whom
thought they understood their customers quite well. Most often that
belief turns out not to be reliable. Our job as cultural analysts is to
conduct a reality check on what companies think they know, in order to target
our laser vision on exactly what’s behind customer buying. We have plenty
of information—but until that information is subjected to analysis, we don’t
assume we know the answers it contains.
That is why there is no more
important research question than the one we ask: “Why do people buy [x or y,
your industry product], and what are the deep cultural needs driving both its
sale and use?” Two decades ago we posed this question to the world’s largest entertainment company, The Walt Disney Company. First, we made the distinction between entertainment and amusement—rooted in the difference between theme versus amusement parks. It turns out that these terms are not interchangeable, but actually channel opposing values.
To entertain is to engage the mind, as in entertaining an
idea, whereas to amuse is to distract, as in the magician’s diverting our
attention by misdirection. This raised the question: if to entertain means
engaging focus and attention, what subjects exert the heaviest gravity for any
group of buyers?
Through
the theme park, arguably the most successful artform in the experience economy,
this question can be explored to answer the next one: What is this
artform’s secret to success - the force behind its incredible repeat visitation
record? Surprisingly, it isn’t the rides, games, food, thrill-seeking, or
merchandising, because these are also the stock of the amusement park and
carnival.
What Walt Disney did, because he
identified so closely and positively with American people and their past, was
to create an iconic cultural landscape that distills what we like best about
ourselves—our favorite venues, values, and communal memories, starting with
Main Street, USA as the entryway, and culminating in Tomorrowland – a
three-dimensional positive view of the future.
Unconsciously and not by design, but by natural affinity
with his guests (as he preferred to call his customers), Disney’s genius was to
build Disneyland on the way park patrons already thought and felt, without the
least need—as companies so often assume—to “educate the consumer” about what he
was trying to communicate or how he wanted them to respond.
This is exactly the way The Center works, in a consciously focused way, to discern and define the natural fit between products, ideas, services, and experiences, and the mind of the consumer. We use a suite of original tools, models, and definitions worked out against thousands of cultural cases using cultural intelligence. Cultural Intelligence is our method based on the inductive logic of mining culture in order to reveal the rulebook of human thinking and decision making in groups over time. This is decoding the social brain, the longest-running challenge in social psychology and consumer research.
By drawing on the four principal dimensions of culture--community, context, age, and gender--our studies have derived high-value meaning from consumer issues presented by top businesses, agencies, nonprofits, educational and government groups. Our laser compass is the secret weapon that gives our clients an extraordinary edge in understanding and strategic planning centered around the world of the consumer rather than based on their business or industry conventions.
This is exactly the way The Center works, in a consciously focused way, to discern and define the natural fit between products, ideas, services, and experiences, and the mind of the consumer. We use a suite of original tools, models, and definitions worked out against thousands of cultural cases using cultural intelligence. Cultural Intelligence is our method based on the inductive logic of mining culture in order to reveal the rulebook of human thinking and decision making in groups over time. This is decoding the social brain, the longest-running challenge in social psychology and consumer research.
By drawing on the four principal dimensions of culture--community, context, age, and gender--our studies have derived high-value meaning from consumer issues presented by top businesses, agencies, nonprofits, educational and government groups. Our laser compass is the secret weapon that gives our clients an extraordinary edge in understanding and strategic planning centered around the world of the consumer rather than based on their business or industry conventions.
Contact:
Margaret J. King, Ph.D., Director
1123 Montrose Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
(215) 592-8544
mjking9@comcast.net
