The Best Advertising Is an Act of Cultural Production

Editor’s note: This is part of Marcus Collins’ Check the Rhyme series, in which he extracts marketing insights from rap lyrics and explores the influence of hip-hop on the marketing world. If my years of working in this industry have taught me anything, it’s this: The best advertising is not advertising. As eye roll-inducing as that may sound, hear me out. The word "advertising" is derived from the Latin word advertere, which means “to turn toward.” As marketing practitioners, we use advertising as a tool to get people’s attention. And indeed we have them turn toward our messaging, designed to inform them about our products, candidates, causes and the like, in hopes that doing so might influence people to buy, vote or subscribe. However, when I think of the most memorable and influential ads, my mind does not conjure the ones that simply got my attention or made me aware of a product offering. Instead, I recall the ads that fortified my worldview and gave me tools to interact with my people and the world around us. It goes beyond merely getting people’s attention to being adopted into their way of life. Tired of the Photoshop: Your Brand Needs a Sense of Self Cultural production is the creation of shared expression for a group of people. It consists of all the written, audio and visual media we consume. Cultural products are made by producers like artists, writers and creators. These works become integrated into our way of life because they simultaneously reflect and construct the way we see the world and how we show up in it. The best advertising does this, too, because its aim is far beyond merely getting people’s attention. Instead, it expresses a point of view that reflects and constructs the cultural practices of a group of people. Take beer for example. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Americans began to turn their attention toward independently-brewed craft beers by the drove, abandoning the longstanding corporate labels that historically dominated the industry. The rapid increase and subsequent threat by these smaller operators brought with it a new attitude about beer that consumers adopted to accompany their new consumption behavior. That attitude can simply be described as “beer pretentiousness.” What was once a debate about “great taste” and “less filling” among beer drinkers was now replaced with conversations about characteristics rivaling the sophistication of wine analysis among sommeliers. And heaven forbid you drank a mass-produced beer, the result of which would certainly invite downward looks from this new breed of connoisseurs. To call out the snobbery of all the practices associated with craft beer consumption, Bud Light produced an ad that borrowed the aesthetic of medieval-themed nobility and introduced the phrase, “Dilly Dilly.” Alone, “Dilly Dilly” had no meaning. It was a phrase made up by its agency, Wieden+Kennedy. But through the creation of this work, Bud Light gave people a cultural language that would become a part of their daily life and fuel the first increase in share for Bud Light’s parent company, AB InBev, in eight years. This was thanks in part to what Morgan Stanley analysts called “the Dilly Dilly effect.” Wieden+Kennedy’s Memorable Moments for Bud Light “Dilly Dilly” was used as an expression of celebration that transcended beer drinking and found its way into sports, memes, t-shirts and an array of other cultural contexts. Bud Light never called attention to the beer’s value propositions in the ad. Instead, it simply evoked a point of view about pretentiousness and invited people to use the language to express their shared worldview. As people adopted the language into their cultural practice, “Dilly Dilly” began to diffuse among the masses, which got people’s attention. We’ve seen similar occurrences with Nike’s “Just Do It,” State Farm’s “Magic Jingle,” Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” Dove’s “Real Beauty” and Apple’s “1984” and “Think Different.” These aren’t just ads. They’re cultural products that express a shared worldview, which people use to both project and construct who they are and how they see the world. That’s a core difference between the reach of advertising and the diffusion of cultural product: Advertising relies solely on media to fuel its ability to reach people, while cultural product relies on the diffusion of adoption to reach people. This brings us back to Rakim’s line. When a brand’s work is reworked into the cultural practices of a group of people, it is awarded a level of credence that increases the likelihood of its people adopting the work also. Our focus as marketers should be to leverage the platform of advertising to say something that evokes a point of view aligned with a population’s worldview and, as a result, becomes a contribution to their cultural practice. No doubt, the creation of a cultural product is the best advertising for any brand that seeks to benefit from the effects of culture. We know this intuitively because there is no agency on this green earth that has not uttered the phrase, “We want to get the brand into culture.” We know the powerful sway of culture and how far it can propel an idea or product adoption. But the only way to harness its power is to contribute to it. Vice Media Group’s Culture Report Aims to Keep Brands Tapped Into the Zeitgeist

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The Best Advertising Is an Act of Cultural Production

A Rakim lyric and a beer marketing case study highlight the importance of contributing to culture

Marcus Collins

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Marcus Collins