Unleashing your brandemic … how culture drives what we buy, what we do, and who we want to be … insights from Beyonce’s digital strategy, and how the New Jersey Nets became the Brooklyn Nets

June 20, 2023

A brand strategy should should be a clear reflection of the ideologies and beliefs that the company, or product or person, wants to signify. And once we know who we are, we can then target people who see the world the way we do.

“Culture moves forward on the basis of a simple question: do people like me do something like this? If the answer is yes, we do it. If not, we don’t,” says Marcus Collins. “This sway is super powerful, which makes culture arguably the biggest cheat code in the business.”

In order to engage with its community, a company must understand who they are. “The company has to know what it believes, how it sees the world and how they show up in the world relative to these ideologies. Once we know who we are, we can then target people who see the world the way we do,” he says. “These people are your ‘collective of the willing’.”

“What does it mean to engage? If you want people to visit your website and watch a video, be more concrete with your language and put it that way,” Collins says. “That specificity will help teams focus their efforts on creating solutions that deliver against that ambition as opposed to the fuzzy language of getting people to engage.”

With 30 years experience in the marketing world, I’ve got to know some of the best marketers, brands and agencies. Wieden+Kennedy, the agency that grew on the coat tails of Nike, is one of the most creative.

Marcus Collins is their head of strategy, while also moonlighting as clinical assistant professor of marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. His deep understanding of brand strategy and consumer behavior has helped him bridge the academic-practitioner gap for blue-chip brands and startups alike.

He is the architect of some of the most famous ad campaigns of the last decade argues that culture is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behaviour, and shows readers how to harness culture to inspire other people to share their vision.

We all try to influence others in our daily lives. Whether you are a manager motivating your team, an employee making a big presentation, an activist staging a protest, or an artist promoting your music, you are in the business of getting people to take action. In his first book For the Culture, he argues true cultural engagement is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior. If you want to get people to move, you must first understand the underlying cultural forces that make them tick.

Collins uses stories from his own work as an award-winning marketer, from spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, to working on Apple and Nike collaborations, to the successful launch of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team, to break down the ways in which culture influences behaviour and how readers can do the same. With a deep perspective, and built on a century’s worth of data, For the Culture gives readers the tools they need to inspire collective change by leveraging the “cheat codes” used by some of the biggest brands in the world.

Jay Norman, Spotify’s Global Head of Music Marketing says of the book “Diving deeply into what moves real people, not personas and archetypes, Collins gives us a look into cultural nuances we can use to make meaningful connections and drive action. This book is insightful, enlightening, and sure to challenge any preconceived notions about communicating with the world. Talk the talk, walk the walk, and always do it for the culture.”

How did Collins end up as Chief Strategy Officer of Wieden+Kennedy?

“I started off as an engineer, surprisingly, because I thought material science and polymers were interesting. I realized, probably, it’s the best way to describe material science and engineering. Interesting, yes, but definitely not cool. When I graduated from undergrad, I went into the music business, did a startup. I was writing and recording music for a living, and realized the music industry sucks. After a little bit of success, then went to get my MBA, then went into marketing.

I found myself doing partner marketing at iTunes, and ended up meeting Matthew Knowles, who’s Beyonce’s father. He says, “Let me get this straight. You’re an engineer, you started a music company, you have an MBA, you worked at iTunes, and you’re Black. Dude, you don’t exist. You’re not real. You’re a unicorn.” I said, “No, I’m real.” Totally, he’s said, “Well, you should come run digital strategy for Beyonce.” I was like, “Yes, I should totally do that.”

I moved to New York, ran digital strategy for Beyonce before moving into the world of advertising, actually, with our mutual friend, Avi Savar of Big Fuel, really learned the ins and outs of social media. What does it mean to be a social marketer? It was like bootcamp for society in a lot of ways. While I was there, I ended up meeting Steve Stoute. Stoute is a once music guy turned agency guy, kind of a hybrid of the two. It felt like it was the perfect intersection of the things that I had always been excited about.

He offered the opportunity to build a social practice of translation. I went and did that, and during that time, launched the Made in America Music Festival for Budweiser, launched Chris Paul’s campaign for State Farm, moved the New Jersey Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn, and became the Brooklyn Nets, just like some really cultural work. I started to really understand what it meant to impact culture.

From there, I moved over to Doner and started working in the world of academia, while also working at Doner in Detroit, my hometown, ended up getting a PhD, really marrying academia and practice. This academic gap is trying to bridge, and now find myself here at Wieden, running strategy here in the New York office, and it’s been a blast.”

Some of the provocative ideas emerging from the book include

  • Identity is more important than value propositions. Launching the campaign that moved the Brooklyn Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn suggested that identity is more important than value propositions.
  • You don’t “build” community, you “facilitate” community. Working with Beyoncé taught him that you don’t “build” community, you “facilitate” community.
  • When people feel seen, they also feel heard. Launching the Real Tone technology for Google’s Pixel 6 taught him that when people feel seen, they also feel heard.
  • If you have an idea and it’s logical but people don’t get it, then you’re probably on to something even if people make you feel like you’re wrong. He talked about his own past as a songwriter, growing up listening to hip hop, and how that has inspired the phraseology he has used in marketing. In fact, “that’s a bar” is how he refers to a clear, evocative phrase that people can register quickly, like the “1,000 songs in your pocket” description of the iPod that Apple used during its launch.
  • The most powerful skill you can have is the ability to communicate—clearly and evocatively. He learned that the most powerful skill you can have is the ability to communicate – clearly and evocatively – during his time at Apple where Suwanjindar would question even his most basic statements to see if he could make them clearer.

“Culture is a meaning-making system. Culture is the way by which we make meaning. While the brand may intend to mean one thing, it doesn’t necessarily align to what it means in the minds of people. The brand may say, “We think we’re cool. We’re hip. We see the world this way.” People go, “No, we don’t see you that way,” and therefore, is a great incongruence. It’s not enough for us to have a desired meaning. We have to understand what we mean in the eyes of people, and then use our marketing communication to close the gap.”

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