What do we talk about when we talk about culture? Dive into this deck from the Virtue Strategy team to understand the true value of cultural relevance.
3. 32018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
Index
I. A little about VIRTUE
II. What is Cultural Fluency and Why it Matters
III. The Three Habits of Culturally Fluent Brands
IV. Recap and Questions
5. Virtue
2018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
Full-service creative agency
born out of VICE.
6. WHAT VICE DID TO MEDIA, WE’RE
DOING TO MARKETING
6
Why Another Advertising Agency?
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7. MAKE IDEAS OF
IMPORTANCE.Because cultural value delivers commercial success.
7
Our Ambition
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Our Ambition
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WITH STYLE.Because style alone can define your brand.
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II.
Cultural Fluency
10. 10
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN
WE TALK ABOUT CULTURE.
This isn’t about corporate culture.
This is about culture happening ‘out there’.
The culture people take part in, that shapes
how we live, the decisions we make, and the
brands we buy.
2018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
11. (WITH OR WITHOUT YOU)
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THE CULTURE OF THE
DAY WILL SHAPE YOUR
BUSINESS.
12. AND FLUENCY IN
CULTURE GIVES YOU
MORE CONTROL.
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13. ALL IN THE NAME OF
PROTECTING OR
CREATING VALUE.
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15. PUT CULTURE IN
THE BRAND.
Preemption
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16. PLACE THE BRAND
IN CULTURE.
Contribution
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• Avoiding un-empathetic business decisions or cultural topics
• Making statements after people have spoken out, but before they’re fed up
• Making changes before consumers count you out as old fashioned
• Finding new groups of consumers to connect with
• Broadcasting communications that feel tethered to contemporary reality
• Giving consumers something they didn’t know they wanted or needed
Two Ways Cultural Fluency Can Create (or Protect) Value
PREEMPTION CONTRIBUTION
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III.
The Three Habits
of Culturally Fluent Brands
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Empathy is the core of cultural fluency;
understanding and sharing
Culture moves fast and has an expiration date Culture can change the answer, but sometimes it
also changes the questions themselves
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The Three Habits
EMPATHY SPEED FLEXIBILITY
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A real problem, and an important idea Unexpected, but not out of bounds Presented in a distinctly collegiate
visual vernacular
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Why This Worked
25. 26
Natural Light turned a shopper marketing
tactic into an empathetic (if not
sympathetic) piece of marketing
communications that shows off some
unexpected fluency in the culture of sub-
premium beer drinkers.
2018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
• 36-packs have a sales rate double that of other large
packs from the brand
• Twitter sentiment around the promotion has been judged
as +90% positive
• YTD performance is +0.03 versus –0.06 in full year 2017
with this as the lead promotion starting during The
Super Bowl
Natural Light College Loan Pay Down The campaign is running, but so far…
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WHO ELSE HAS
DONE EMPATHY WELL?
(OR NOT SO WELL)
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FACEBOOK PRIVACY CRISIS
Empathy (Or Lack Thereof)
• Failed to make the changes users wanted
• Waited until it was too late
• Put their interests over that of the user-base and then forced to admit it
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Empathy
• A lower price-point ($359), and a more mobile design, Dot helps solve what
it calls “discrimination by technology,” leaving BV&I individuals outside the
things we take for granted each day
• DOT’s Braille smartwatch connects B&VI individuals to the wider web at a
much smaller footprint
• An open API allows anyone to develop apps and services for DOT
• Innovation in Blind & Visually Impaired technology has been slow for two decades
• Mobile internet devices for the blind and visually impaired are clunky, over-priced
(as much as $5,000) and not user-friendly
• Mostly based off closed operating systems that didn’t allow for open app
development
FROM THIS TO THIS
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Recognized an inflection point and
mainstream acceptance of weed culture
Reacted quickly through a physical
experience whose scale came through
earned media
Social listening allowed us to recognize
correlation between netflix binge
watching and marijuana use
2018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
Why It Worked
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With medicinal and legal marijuana making
strides nationally, we identified an actionable
cultural insight that, when put directly into
market, reinforced Netflix’s place in culture and
rang very true with press and consumers.
2018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
Netflix “Disjointed” Strains
And with little paid media, the activation was featured in:
Results:
Disjointed made Netflix’s coveted Top Ten Most Binged Shows of 2017 list.
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• Launched 500 new products in 2017; not all end up as “keepers”
• Fresh experiments included Coca-Cola with fiber and a canned mixed drink
• Small bets and gambits help them have “energy” in the market
COCA-COLA INNOVATION IN JAPAN
Speed
• Nokia pounced on an opportunity to use nostalgia (and smartphone
addiction) to announce their return
• The Nokia 3310 was re-launched to nostalgic fanfare in late 2017, selling out
in days
• The made speedy brand noise before launching a new business strategy of
offering low price Android smartphones
• In Q4 2017, Nokia sat third behind Apple and Samsung in shipped rates
THE NOKIA 3310 REVIVAL
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The practice of yoga (and the lululemon
brand) had been white washed and
strayed from it's origins
A yoga campaign without a single
downward facing dog or pair of stretchy
pants gave journalists a 'reason to talk'
Lululemon needed to excite shareholders
to show breadth of offering and new
audience segments
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Why It Worked
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“This Is Yoga” was a bold and completely
necessary departure for Lululemon. Without
signaling a new “category entry point” the brand
would be stuck in one category and even worse,
stuck in time as a brand that never evolved.
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Lululemon “This is Yoga” Global Campaign Reach
• 61 global press stories (185M+ impressions)
• 1B+ global impressions (within 2 months)
• 26MM video views (within first 3 weeks)
Impact
• $2.3M in direct measurable .com revenue
• 10.1% point increase in brand awareness (2x our
goal)
• 20% increase in share price
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Stock price up 20%
since launch of campaign
CAMPAIGN
START
CAMPAIGN
WRAP
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• Shifts in tech and consumer preference diminish GM’s role in transportation
• Launched Maven to compete in the peer-to-peer car space of today
• Broadens scope from “manufacturing” to “mobility” company
GENERAL MOTORS
Flexibility
GENERAL ELECTRIC
• Identified their perception lie more in the past than the present (or future)
• Moved quickly with a sharp, memorable message of perception shift; GE
isn’t just planes and trains, they’re software that keeps the world running
• Campaign drove significant increase in recruiting site visits
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Recap
CULTURE MOVES
PRETTY FAST. IF YOU
DON’T STOP AND
LOOK AROUND ONCE
IN A WHILE, YOU
COULD MISS IT.
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Listen to the culture of the consumer to find ways
to bring something to the table. It doesn’t have to
be profound but it does have to be something
worth appreciating.
EMPATHY
Knowing what’s going on culture isn’t valuable for
brands unless they can put it to work. With culture
moving faster than ever, speed of observation and
articulation is critical to keeping brands relevant
and remembered.
SPEED
Dogmatic brands and marketers will have to face
the results of rigidity in some way, at some point.
The most masterful marketers know that where
they start is unlikely to be exactly where they end.
FLEXIBILITY
2018 Private & Confidential VIRTUE Worldwide
The Three Habits of of Culturally Fluent Brands