Tom Asacker’s question:
Grant. In your new book, Culture and Consumption II, you write "the consumer is an individual in a cultural context engaged in a cultural project. They are looking for small meanings, concepts of what it is to be a man or a woman, concepts of what it is to be middle aged, concepts of what it is to be a parent, concepts of what a child is and what a child is becoming, concepts of what it is to be a member of a community and a country."
You go on to say that "advertising is the preeminent meaning maker." Some would view that as a dated concept considering the level of consumer skepticism¾and perhaps cynicism¾towards advertising, the fragmentation of media, and the increasing importance of design and the customer experience on meaning-making in the marketplace. Can you speak to those trends as they relate to your premise?
Grant McCracken’s answer:
Tom, This is a great question. Advertising was once the paradigmatic meaning maker in our culture, and it’s a good idea to ask whether it remains so. Clearly, advertising did astonishing things in its time. As I show in the "cars" chapter in C&CII, it actually helped to create North American culture in the 1950s…not in that dumbed-down way preferred by intellectuals but in a way that was much substantial, genuine and, yes, authentic.
But clearly, things have changed. New media are upon us. Contemporary culture is swifter and more turbulent. Consumers have become newly participatory. They are smarter about how media works. They are more diverse internally. (There are more tastes and preferences within any given consumer.) They are more diverse externally. (There are more groups of consumers, distinguished by new principles.)
But, this just begins to tap the problem. The basic notions here, "consumer," "segment," "brand," "relationship," these are all up for grabs. Marketing academics and professionals now have to redefine, rework and reapply them.
This means the "big cannon" approach to marketing is in dispute. This said: take a simple message (aka, "the clown") and fire it at a large target (aka, "a bucket of water") as often and loudly as possible. As a guy who worked for P&G in the 1970s recently told me, "We could get 85% American householders with one week of advertising on the big three networks." USP (aka "unique selling proposition") really stood for "keep it simple, stupid." The marketer’s mantra, say it loud and say it proud, "we’re here, we’re mere, get used to it."
What we need is a "many cannons" approach: many, shifting targets and a constant, shifting cannonade. Or maybe it makes sense just to dispense with the metaphor altogether. (Military metaphors, with advertising "campaigns," approved by "captains" of industry, that make a "killing," these were always an odd way of thinking about what advertising was and now they seem particularly odd. My fellow "Coburn Change Fellow," Jerry Michalski, doesn’t even like to use the term "consumer." There’s a good chance that much of the vocabulary of marketing will change.)
The "many cannons" approach is already with us. Smart marketers are using new, more interesting messages, delivered by media that is multi and well mixed. But it’s not clear to me that the beast called advertising is dead. There is no meaning maker in the marketer’s tool kit as powerful as advertising. A TV spot can use 15 seconds to astonishing effect. It can make meanings, build relationships, construct brands at a stroke. When this is followed up by the smaller message and the more delicate interventions made possible by the new media, then we’ve really got something. But it seems to me too early to dismiss the mass media advertising instrument. I think it will be with us always.
But here’s what really bugs me. I don’t believe we have a persuasive model of how the new marketing and the new media are going to assume the "meaning management" abilities once so magnificently deployed by advertising proper. It’s a little as if we are now working with a "cheap, fast and out of control" model (Thank you, Earl Morris). There are lots of little devices at our disposal. But they are dubious, uncertain, and, most important, yet to be coordinated to big branding effects.
Everyone says the king is dead. But are we quite sure this is so? Have we got a monarch in waiting? Perhaps we should hold off on the regicide until we have a new plan for running the country.
References
The image above of Madison Avenue is from the Wikipedia entry on Manhattan and it was created by Lief Knutsen.
So the winds of change are blowing… I am very doubtful.. seems its just the same old wind blowing…. and I smell a rat. Even this current blog entry is a repeat of an interview about a book, which, according to its title, is a repeat performance as well. Thus, you have just taken away any reason I might have for ever reading your book… what kind of marketing is that? As a marketeer you are very keen on making the most of what is appears to be a lack of imagination. If I was your boss I’d begin by looking for a replacement, at least someone who’s willing to give me some actual content instead of refried taco bell.
The notion that advertizing has ever offered anything new or even meaningful to the public is a flight of fantasy. You paint a picture of the ’50s that does not include anything except chevrolet ads, where were you during the Korean War? Do you know that for some people meaning is actually meaningful? Do you know the difference between the consumer and the public? The terms are being blurred only because most marketeers don’t know squat about anybody’s psychology except their own…
Q:What is meaning to the meaning-maker? A: dollars…
seems to me that the psychology of the marketeer is identical to the psychology of the consumer… what a funny box to be in.
on a bad day its called cannibalism, on a good day its an incestious love-in…. (slim pickins) The way I see it, its the marketeer’s job in this boxed-up relationship to socilit fresh meat. And you know… THAT is the worlds oldest profession. As for those folks outside the box, those who are not so-called consumers, but actually real people who try to make real meaning in this world, they are getting marginalized by your big bad box. As time goes on, and as events in this world loose meaning (thx dubya) these regular folks have two choices, either join the cannibalistic love-in or flush that trex box down the drain….. see ya later alligator!
So the winds of change are blowing… I am very doubtful.. seems its just the same old wind blowing…. and I smell a rat. Even this current blog entry is a repeat of an interview about a book, which, according to its title, is a repeat performance as well. Thus, you have just taken away any reason I might have for ever reading your book… what kind of marketing is that? As a marketeer you are very keen on making the most of what is appears to be a lack of imagination. If I was your boss I’d begin by looking for a replacement, at least someone who’s willing to give me some actual content instead of refried taco bell.
The notion that advertizing has ever offered anything new or even meaningful to the public is a flight of fantasy. You paint a picture of the ’50s that does not include anything except chevrolet ads, where were you during the Korean War? Do you know that for some people meaning is actually meaningful? Do you know the difference between the consumer and the public? The terms are being blurred only because most marketeers don’t know squat about anybody’s psychology except their own…
Q:What is meaning to the meaning-maker? A: dollars…
seems to me that the psychology of the marketeer is identical to the psychology of the consumer… what a funny box to be in.
on a bad day its called cannibalism, on a good day its an incestious love-in…. (slim pickins) The way I see it, its the marketeer’s job in this boxed-up relationship to socilit fresh meat. And you know… THAT is the worlds oldest profession. As for those folks outside the box, those who are not so-called consumers, but actually real people who try to make real meaning in this world, they are getting marginalized by your big bad box. As time goes on, and as events in this world loose meaning (thx dubya) these regular folks have two choices, either join the cannibalistic love-in or flush that t-rex box down the drain….. see ya later alligator!
Joseph, for the record, Culture and Consumption II is not a repeat, it’s a sequel, you’ve heard of a sequel?, thank you for this delectable nonsense. Best, Grant
grant – something about your post has me wondering: is the consumer the new monarch? is meaning making moving beyond the reach of the marketer? is meaning making becoming the province of individual’s culturally embedded identity projects (e.g., http://www2.onu.edu/%7Er-kleine/research/pubs/ACR_2000_KK_ACR.pdf)? Rather than viewing meaning as flowing down, is the new monarch found in understanding how meaning flows up from individual indentity projects -> subcultures -> culture?
(apologies for the intermission, i had to step outside to savor the serenade of two owls hoo-hoo-hooing wone another across the distance).
Is it time to expand our for understandings complex-adaptive/emergent meaning systems? Indeed, from a complex-adaptive systems perspective, is managing meaning even a relevant concept?
Hi Grant, long time since I left a thought here – lots of questions this post has raised in my mind. one of them is what I generally wonder about – how far is it true that advertising *creates* meaning – to me, advertising is more about *reflection* than *cultivation* – I believe that advertising mirrors meanings and values that are prevalent in society at that time – and not actually creates it… not quite a meaning-maker as you say, but a meaning-projector…
(gotta run now, will be back later)
The problem with delaying the regicide until there’s a plan for the succession is that the people who wish to kill the king don’t especially care about the succession. (Which is not to cast aspersions, in this case…I don’t especially care about the fate of mass media either.)
Great post, Grant. Can I say, as someone who has put in the hours developing and executing marketing plans, that I disagree profoundly with Joseph Davies’ post. To say that advertising is not meaningful, or does not contribute to people’s creation of meaning in their lives, is to belittle those people; that sort of condescension is simply unacceptable.
Grant,
Excellent post, (and it reminds me of some of the issues you raised in your recent celebrity post).
Likewise, admitting to the meaning making that so much mass advertising has contributed to also interferes with our “self love, our sense of our seriousness, our belief in our own authenticity”?
No one wants to hear that.