Grant McCracken explains how experimentation breeds viral success, however fleeting
Anthropologist, author and culture guru Grant McCracken defines the term “culturematic” (the title of his recently published book) as a “small experiment designed to make culture out of culture to create innovation out of culture.”
Confused?
Simply put: it’s one way of creating a meme.
“You are working with some sort of cultural materials and combining them or experimenting with them so you get something new—you get an innovation that you send out into the world and see if you get a reaction,” explains McCracken.
A good example of a culturematic, says McCracken, the keynote speaker at Pro Create in Toronto on Oct. 30, is Bud Caddell, a real-life advertising executive from L.A. who took to Twitter to masquerade as Bud Melman, a mailroom clerk at Mad Men’s Sterling Cooper Advertising.
“Now he’s broadcasting a set of tweets that give us a privileged access… and kind of an insider’s view of what’s happening at the agency,” says McCracken. “So for the price of a twitter account, which is zero, he made himself a part of this larger cultural project.” It’s far more engaging and interesting than LOLcat or “David After the Dentist.”
So why aren’t more marketers and advertisers using culturematic when they’re already so keenly aware of trends that at the very least appeal to their own target audience?
“The old rulebook of marketing said you communicated with as much clarity as you could manage through repetition,” says McCracken. Today’s marketers need to experiment more, monitor closely and bootstrap as they go.
“There’s huge advantage to be had from just trying stuff and in a sense we’re kind of prospecting. It’s very hard to know what’s going to work,” he says. “It’s very hard to know what will become a meme…. So I think there’s a huge benefit now to keep trying new stuff.”
But can brands, driven by a bottom line and the chase for social media love, have the same success as the average Joe? Can they create a meme that is authentic and capable of more than pushing product? McCracken thinks so.
“Brands have really been getting in on the action in a big way and creating some fantastic culturematic,” he says, providing two examples:
Oreo
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of its Oreo cookie brand, Kraft launched cute and timely graphics made from the cookie itself (and sometimes a splash of milk). Oreo put tread marks through the red cream filling in recognition of the Mars Rover landing, and created the profile of “the King” to celebrate Elvis Week. The brand has recently taken on the image of the Liberty Bell and the Dark Knight, and the Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower. “The first is classically American, the second is (was) absolutely of the moment, and the last gloriously obscure,” wrote McCracken in an essay for the Harvard Business Review.
Virgin Mobile
Rather than hire celebrities to endorse its brand (a feat that is often costly and not always effective), Virgin Mobile in the U.S. decided to create its own celebrity couple. The discount wireless brand hired actors to play the characters, Spencer Falls and Sarah Carroll, who are referred to as “Sparah.” As Sparah.com states: “Perfect strangers who have been pulled from obscurity, they’ll be given all the trappings of the celebrity lifestyle and inserted into the Hollywood scene.” The two appear in webisodes on the site. Sparah has worked so well that the couple are now a fixture of the celebrity scene and paparazzi, says McCracken.
For more information on Pro Create, including the full agenda and ticket information, visit the event’s website. Pro Create is co-presented by Marketing, the Canadian Media Director’s Council and the Institute of Communication Agencies.
