April 2003
MARKETING ANGEL ™
Pay attention to the cultural creatives
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
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A hot book in marketing circles, "The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World," was authored by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson. The authors assert that fifty million Americans share great commonality in their views on the environment, social issues, and the race to be considered successful. Using survey research studies, interviews and focus groups, Ray and Anderson fashioned a name for this newly-unearthed market segment–the cultural creatives.
To understand how marketers can use the information about cultural creatives to better position products and services, I asked Glenn Rudberg, co-founder of Ethos Marketing & Design, a marketing, branding, and creative services company based in Portland, for a crash course on the book and its findings.
Marketing Angel: Your company's marketing strategies embrace concepts from the book "The Cultural Creatives." According to the authors, the United States is broken into three distinct demographic groups: traditionals, moderns and cultural creatives. Can you explain a little about each group, and how marketers can sell to the cultural creatives segment?
Glenn Rudberg: Classic segmentation breaks consumers into "demographic" segments. Paul Ray’s extensive research and analysis goes a different way and breaks consumers into three "attitudinal" segments — traditionals, moderns, and cultural creatives.
- Moderns are the largest group. They are the norm of American culture and accept the social norms of U.S. culture. Traits of moderns:
- Goal and success oriented
- Work hard to fit into today’s society–appearance is important
- Appreciate dual income opportunities, generally believe bigger is better, pay attention to perceived experts like physicians. Moderns will generally buy what’s considered appropriate for the day.
- Traditionals represent about a quarter of the population and their segment size is shrinking. Traditionals:
- See the world as going the wrong way and don’t like it. They yearn for how things used to be
- Find the modern world complex and sometimes difficult to understand
- Are distrustful of large institutions, government and things that are complex and large
- Believe in classic male/female roles--perceive feminism as a swear word
- Are mystified by their health and body--they follow the advice of their physician without any questions
- Buy what they know and what’s safe
- Cultural Creatives are the fastest-growing group. They look at life as a positive journey to find a better way. They don’t embrace today’s goal-oriented social norms. Instead, they seek out new and more sustainable solutions. Constantly faced with the modern culture, most cultural creatives feel isolated — not realizing how many others feel the same way. Cultural creatives:
- Have a strong need to understand the big picture
- Want to know the story behind the story and have b.s. detectors unlike any other group
- Want to discover brands that align with their personal values. Because of this desire for authenticity, they're distrustful of most advertising and mass media.
- Will vigorously work to understand before they buy. They're the consumers in supermarkets who are diligently reading the back of the label, the side of the label, and maybe what’s underneath the label.
- Are very interested in sustainable solutions and answers. Community, environment, and social justice are very important to them. They will support brands that align with these authentic values and shun those that do not.
- Are strong supporters of quality, and prefer to buy from a small producer vs. the established larger norm (i.e. Fresh Samantha before Kraft; Coffee by Design before Folgers).
- See their bodies as temples and accordingly seek out more holistic health solutions. They see a physician as an advisor, not an expert, and will research all solutions before following the advice of a physician.
- May seek out hybrid cars and are the first to get involved in community issues.
- Tell the truth and be authentic
- Share stories vs. slick ad slogans - allow cultural creatives to experience your journey. Cultural creatives don’t like to be manipulated. Avoid shallow bullet "feature copy."
- Speak to them in the first person
- Allow them to learn about you vs. you telling them - cultural creatives love to drill down on the web for example to learn the story behind the story. They like to follow their own path to discovery.
- Provide sustainable solutions that reflect their values--look at your product mix and communication strategies.
Tips for communicating with cultural creatives:
Marketing Angel: Many consumers are hard to categorize. For example, how would you market to a woman who is a regular church-goer (traditional), cares about saving the environment for her kids (cultural creative), and also enjoys all the latest fashions (modern)?
Rudberg:
The cool thing about cultural creatives is they aren’t a nice simple "demographic" segment or shallow "psychographic" cluster. They are a group of individuals. They simply share a way of thinking. I might argue the person you described is more cultural creative than you might think.
Cultural creatives are old and young, Democrats and Republicans (although more socially liberal), and geographically dispersed. They are tough to pin down demographically. About 60 percent are female.
Cultural creatives are very into their community. They are strong believers of faith and spirituality and attend places of worship. Because cultural creatives are unknowingly growing in economic value, many of the latest design trends are eclectic and honor the individual. It’s amazing how you can customize your shoes, guitars online.
Marketing Angel: Ethos specializes in creating campaigns for companies that position themselves as socially responsible. How is a campaign for this type of company different from that of another company?
Rudberg: We create holistic marketing solutions that are authentic vs. manipulative. At Ethos, we believe the most compelling message is the truth. We start with the core passion and truth of our client and then work to understand where these values align with customers. It’s a different paradigm than the classic "matrix analysis" that says we need to change like a chameleon to take advantage of this market. Cause marketing (defined as aligning a for-profit with a non-profit cause to benefit the community/environment as well as the company) is a good tactic if done right. Start with the truth and the programs come. Companies that are strategic about their social giving win.
Marketing Angel: And now, for the really important question: Red Sox. October. Discuss.
Rudberg: This is the year! Enough said!
Kimberly L. McCall (a.k.a. Marketing Angel™), is president of McCall Media & Marketing, Inc., a business communications and writing company in Freeport, Maine. McCall writes the monthly Sales Force column for Entrepreneur magazine and contributes to inc.com and The Wall Street Journal’s StartupJournal.com. Sign up for her free weekly bulletin at www.MarketingAngel.com or contact McCall at 207-865-0055.