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This weekend, while you’re relaxing with friends or family, ask a question and become an observer. Ask what brands people admire and use – not just use frequently, but use purposefully and with passion. Push them beyond function, form, price and the everyday. And sit back and listen to see if you can find the true origin of their bond.
 
Surely they won’t tell you they love the brand because they are its target audience. They won’t recite the brand’s USP. They may rave about attributes – great customer service, beautiful product design – and while those traits define exceptional brands, they don’t explain why some consumers who may look exactly like other consumers on paper, bond to a brand or product far more strongly than others do.
 
The adhesive is culture. We all view the world through unique cultural lenses that define us. We accumulate and enrich this vision as we grow and experience the world. Our cultural lenses are always on. They’re the first filter we use to judge everything and everyone. As acute as your sense of taste, this filter tells us whether an experience is “right” or not.
 
Peanut butter can prove this point quite simply. Seemingly innocuous peanut butter creates passionate camps of opinion almost instantly. To one person, it’s a throwback to the grab-and-go days of childhood softball. To another, it’s a decadent treat. And to still another, it’s a dangerous allergy. These associations bring us to the core of cultural opportunity. A brand or product’s association with ingrained places, familial roots, a historical inflection point or a visceral identity creates an instant advantage. Or rejection.
 
Every brand can leverage culture to drive more value – for itself and its customers. At Peter Mayer, we help brands discover the cultural opportunity that can throw open the doors to growth.