Digital Marketing Transformation and Brand Intersectionality
Implementing technology to win across cultural moments
American businesswoman and marketing executive Bozoma Saint John once said, “Pop culture and entertainment can be dismissed as surface, but it's not. It's the language we all speak, and it's the connection point between people all over the world.”
Companies are tasked with defining their brand to remain relevant via moments. These moments are defined as experiences that occur within one’s culture. But how can a brand remain culturally relevant amid the noise?
The problem that most digital marketers face is sameness. The homogenization that is the result of chasing the current news, trends, and moments. Since the rise of social media, there has been a bombardment of similar content vying for the eyes of the public. Marketers must often choose between value and speed, with internal and external demands to produce a return on investment. Marketers are pressured to expedite campaigns, which can increase the likelihood of missing opportunities to be culturally aware within brand interactions. Many brands are feeling the velocity of cultural change and its ineptness to adapt. So how can brands combat this within the rapid pace of digital marketing transformation?
Fortunately, there are resources and tools that can help alleviate the dichotomy. Digital marketing is much more than marketing technologies and channels; it is a way to connect and engage with the public in a personalized way. To do so, culture must be an important consideration for brands. Honestly, culture should be in the forefront when creating any strategy. Long gone are the days of a “one size fits all” messaging. Consumers are savvier today than they once were, and they demand a connection with a brand rationally and emotionally. Culture is the conduit for connection. Evidently, most of today’s brand interactions are digital in nature. As a result, strategies need to resonate emotionally in the context of digital transformation. Consumers’ expectations of experiences and brand marketing is rapidly changing. The paradigm has shifted from monolithic strategies that were intended to reach everyone to a more personalized experience.
Leading with cultural strategies
NetBase, a provider of social analytics, defines “cultural moments” as emotional experiences for consumers. Focusing on emotional experiences is a great way to establish authenticity with a desired audience. Over the past two years, there have been some notable examples of brands connecting with the public via moments. For instance:
Nike and Colin Kaepernick’s protesting the mass, disproportionate incarceration of marginalized groups
Serena Williams and Bumble’s advocacy for equal pay and empowerment for women
Lyft and ACLU’s involvement in protesting the travel ban on Muslim immigrants coming to the US and advocating on other immigration issues.
These brands and their partnerships use digital marketing to differentiate themselves from the competition and focus on the tangible issues that are culturally relevant. To continually succeed, stand out, and gain significant consumer preference, marketers must understand how to shift their brand to create personal connections by prioritizing value messaging.
Conversely, there are moments when brands have fallen short to keep pace with consumers’ expectations. When brands target demographics without enough information, context, or data, they’re likely to miss the mark. The result is a clash between the brand’s identity and its cultural inspiration; in other words, cultural appropriation. So, what exactly is cultural appropriation? According to Dictionary.com, “Cultural appropriation is the act of adopting elements of an outside, often minority culture, including knowledge, practices, and symbols, without understanding or respecting the original culture and context.” For instance:
Pepsi and Kendall Jenner’s commercial making light of the violent and grotesque examples of police brutality at the time
Facebook’s livestreaming the hurricane damage in Puerto Rico to promote their VR initiatives
Alicia Keys and the Keep a Child Alive organization’s featuring white celebrities declaring themselves as "African"
Avoiding cultural appropriation requires a sustained brand commitment. To create a multicultural campaign that resonates across diverse targets, brands must listen to the minority voices that are shaping the world we live today.
Creating cultural moments for brands through social listening
Luckily, there are emerging technologies that can assist in listening to the escalating shift in cultural norms that fuels consumers’ expectations of experiences and interactions with brands. To get started, brands need to modernize their marketing stack, since automation is key to the success of social listening. Marketers must adopt the right strategy, operational best practices, and technology to win in this new environment. For instance, social media and predictive analytics can help marketers become more culturally fluent when communicating their brand to the public. Great marketers strive to understand the context of culture within technology and find methods to apply those insights in a digital world.
One way to understand where a brand lies in a cultural landscape is to first flush out the company’s values. Having a values-based approach focuses the brand on a commitment to a specific value or set of values that the company shares with its stakeholders. Then, a company can better move forward with building brand credibility while remaining culturally relevant. implementing social listening tools like NetBase, BrandWatch, or Sprout Social will assist in tracking mentions, keywords, and moments that a brand can monitor. Analyzing the data correctly can help gain further insights. Brands can then act on these opportunities and establish authenticity in the market.
As more opportunities arise from cultural moments on which brands can take a stand, it will always be important to make sure that the intersection between brands and culture are cohesive and respectful. The differentiation of the creative expression of a brand and the emotional benefit converge in the digital marketing experience. As marketers, the objective is to steer brands from the sea of sameness in order to move both culture and commerce.