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March 22, 2013 (3 weeks ago)

Culture Hacking: America’s next big industry?

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This is how I see it. And it isn’t roc­ket science:

1. If you want to change your busi­ness, you also have to change your cul­ture. If you want to change your cul­ture, you also have to change your art.

2. And that’s where gaping­void comes in– crea­ting art and ideas that express, reflect, arti­cu­late what the clients’ busi­ness needs to become.

3. You can call it “Inter­nal Adver­ti­sing” if you want; I pre­fer the term “Cul­ture Hac­king”- chan­ging your company’s for­tu­nes NOT by trying to directly change what the gene­ral public thinks of you, but by trying to change what YOU think of you.

SO WHAT COMES AFTER ADVERTISING?

The Gol­den Age of adver­ti­sing– the “Mad Men” era– star­ted about 50 years ago, with peo­ple like David Ogilvy, George Lois, Bill Bern­bach lea­ding the way, and shops like Wei­den & Ken­nedy, BBH, Fallon, BMP, GGT, CDP and Goodby follo­wing in their wake.

This gol­den age came to an abrupt end, when our friend the Inter­net came along, with a lot of peo­ple on Madi­son Ave­nue sud­denly star­ting to fear for their jobs.

So if tra­di­tio­nal adver­ti­sing is “dead”, what comes after it? That’s a ques­tion I’ve been asking myself for the last ten years, ever since I launched gaping­void back in 2001.

Though I wasn’t paying too much atten­tion at the time, the ans­wer kinda-sorta came to me back in 2004, in a line I wrote in The Hugh­train:

: The har­dest part of a CEO’s job is sha­ring his enthu­siasm with his collea­gues, espe­cially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the com­pany to the gene­ral public is a piece of cake com­pa­red to selling it to the actual peo­ple who work for it. The future of adver­ti­sing is internal.

You can call it “Inter­nal Adver­ti­sing” if you want; I pre­fer the term “Cul­ture Hac­king”- chan­ging your company’s for­tu­nes NOT by trying to directly change what the gene­ral public thinks of you, but by trying to change what YOU think of you.

Impro­ving the com­pany by impro­ving the cul­ture, by sub­ver­ting the cul­ture via coun­te­rin­tui­tive means. Exactly.

[Photo cour­tesy of Adbus­ters.]

And yes, Cul­ture Hac­king is also what drove the Occupy Wall Street move­ment and AdBus­ters. Same idea, dif­fe­rent aims (And if you read Greil Mar­cus’ “Lips­tick Tra­ces”, you’ll learn that the same riff goes back to 1970s punk rock, 1950s French Situa­tio­nism, early 20th-Century Dadaism, even back to the Middle Ages…].

The new busi­ness model will be the  inter­sec­tion of the three follo­wing things: Pur­pose, Com­pany Cul­ture and Media.

1. Purpose: It’s the “Why” of what you do, it is not the pro­duct, it is the Purpose-Idea, as expres­sed by Mark Earls, or “The Why” as expres­sed by Simon Sinek.

2. Company Cul­ture is infor­med by “Pur­pose”, it is that actions that a busi­ness takes each and every day to remind peo­ple of their pur­pose. Pur­pose is a set of beliefs, and Cul­ture is the expres­sion of those beliefs in busi­ness (Action).

3. Media: Adver­ti­sing, PR, ear­ned media, paid media, call it what you will. Once you have a “Pur­pose” and a com­pany “Cul­ture”, those two things inform all of your adver­ti­sing, PR, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, social inte­rac­tion and points of con­tact with the outside world. From your logo, to your ads, Social Media, How your pla­nes and trucks are pain­ted, etc. It all informs, rein­for­ces and feeds each other.

Cul­ture Hac­king is why “Deli­ve­ring Hap­pi­ness” became an inter­na­tio­nal best seller. Cul­ture Hac­king is why peo­ple flock to Nevada in dro­ves to take the Zap­pos tour. Cul­ture Hac­king is why peo­ple will one day pay Jenn Lim and Tony Hsieh millions of dollars for the ser­vi­ces of the “Deli­ve­ring Hap­pi­ness” company.

This is also why Racks­pace and Bab­son College hired gaping­void to draw car­toons for them. This is why we pro­duce Cube Gre­na­des. This is why big PR firms like Weber Shand­wick or Edel­man, if they get it right, will steal millions of dollars’ worth of busi­ness AWAY from tra­di­tio­nal Madi­son Ave­nue agencies.

Cul­ture Hac­king is all about crea­ting social objects. Exactly.

[One more time:] Stop was­ting your life in the tra­di­tio­nal advertising-era quick­sand. There’s a new game in town. Cul­ture Hac­king is a multi-billion dollar industry, still in its infancy. Get in early if you can…

[Further Rea­ding: The Clue­train Mani­festo, Deli­ve­ring Hap­pi­ness, Crea­tive Age, Tri­bes, The Hugh­train and Lips­tick Tra­ces. All must-reads to bet­ter unders­tand this brave new world of ours. Plus my friends at Laughing Squid and PSFK always seem to have their fin­gers on the pulse…]

Tags: Cultural Transformation, Culture Hacking, Internal Advertising, Mark Earls, Purpose Idea, Simon Sinek, social Objects, The Hughtrain, Transform Office Art, transforming the business place