Culture on The Findings Report

The Reality of Writing

Fri, 26 May 2023 07:52:00 -0700

Last Sunday I sat in a full house to enjoy an organ recital. It wasn’t at a quaint local church but at Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of Los Angeles’s most popular concert venues. The work was a new concertante by Essa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor Laureate of the LA Philharmonic. Based on the standing ovations that spontaneously commenced upon its completion, I’d say the audience was impressed. I know I was.

In a day and age when artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are filling arenas on highly successful tours, it seems counter-intuitive that there would be much of a market for classical music, let alone works featuring pipe organs. Yet, classical music is having a moment. Writing for The New York Times, Maureen Dowd reported last week that attendance at classical music venues around the country has been on the rise since restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic subsided. The demand has been so significant that Apple recently released a “brand-new standalone music streaming app designed to deliver the listening experience classical music lovers deserve.” It should also be noted that my concert experience was in the same venue where a recent attendee of a Tchaikovsky concert reportedly enjoyed a very-audible orgasm. To paraphrase an over-used Mark Twain quote, reports of classical music’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

Deactivation

Sun, 25 Mar 2018 19:33:00 -0700

I am neither a trendsetter nor a trend-follower, although I'm fascinated by trends because they are integral to what I do for a living. Trends, and their fickle cousins fads, are portals into the minds of consumer culture. They're worth analyzing; and they are sometimes fuel for innovation. But as a consumer, I'm skeptical and slow to respond to the alluring wave of the latest trend. That characterization might not jive with my latest action.

More Than a March

Sun, 21 Jan 2018 20:11:00 -0800

Yesterday, millions of women gathered in cities across America to march together for social change. The second annual Women’s March occurred after a year that shocked us and reminded us of the gender-based imbalance of power in our culture. If there is a silver lining, it may be that 2017 will go down in history as a cornerstone year for women—a year when the issues could no longer be ignored.

The Gender Quotient

Sun, 29 Oct 2017 08:29:00 -0700

The late David Ogilvy is credited with one of marketing’s most famous axioms. “The customer is not a moron; she is your wife.” The quotation reminds managers that we are all customers, but it is striking because of its decisive use of pronouns. The pivot from “customer” to “she” brings the message home. It is a prime example of the role gender can play in our communications.

Gender has become a challenging landscape for marketers. On the one hand, there are brands that are creating value by aligning themselves with gender-specific themes. One example is the femvertising trend, in which brands such as Dove, Always and GoldieBlox have tailored their messaging campaigns to feature stories of female empowerment. The approach is not exactly new. Although distasteful to today’s more enlightened audience, Virginia Slims wooed women to tobacco by celebrating the strength of the female sex.

Fyre Danger

Sun, 30 Apr 2017 15:01:00 -0700

The Fyre Festival was this week’s Twitter rabbit hole. The star-crossed event was planned as a “luxury music festival” on a private island in the Bahamas. With some tickets costing more than $12,000 for a four-person package, it lured Millennials to a “better Coachella” that promised live performances by Blink-182, Skepta and Rae Sremmurd, and an abundance of exclusive opportunities to mingle with celebrities and the social media elite.

Unfortunately, when ticket-holders arrived on the island Friday morning they received a good lesson in hucksterism. The luxury glamping accommodations promised in a stream of Instagram promotions turned out to be a sad tent city, a lack of water, and uncooked cheese sandwiches. Insult turned to injury when organizers cancelled the festival out of safety concerns.

Acts of Curation

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 13:29:00 -0800

His response was nearly instantaneous and a little off-putting. My friend knows art. He teaches it. He writes about it. And he occasionally curates it. So it was surprising when he burst into laughter when I asked what he thought about the growing brand curation trend?

After the snickering subsided he explained that much of the “curation” fodder was absurd. It was, in his mind, a marketer’s Frankenstein—a morph of an ancient word into a buzzword.

System Quo

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 17:53:00 -0800

Two weeks after Americans elected Donald Trump to be their 45th President, many are still wondering how the polls got it so wrong. They question the logic of the outcome. How could a man with the highest negative opinion rating in Presidential history win the ultimate contest? Why did almost half of voters cast a ballot for a candidate who made openly misogynistic and racially divisive statements? How did a billionaire become the hero of the poor?

Why trolls troll

Sat, 12 Nov 2016 11:06:00 -0800

Protests in major American cities. A nonstop tsunami of stories stacked at the top of every media outlet. The outcome of the 2016 presidential election refuses to be ignored. Nowhere more so than on social media. Both Twitter and Facebook posted record-breaking traffic gains. Use of the platforms may not have been the only surge. Many users are saying that they have experienced increased clashes with friends and family over the outcome of the election. A sizable number are confessing to blocking and unfriending people, or dropping off social media platforms altogether. A recent NPR story went so far as to claim that social media may have ruined the election because of the vitriol it created between “friends.”

Nomen-culture

Sun, 30 Oct 2016 21:03:00 +0000

In 1998, the world was enamored with two rising stars named Jennifer: one had the surname of Lopez and the other Aniston. Given the celebrity imprimatur, it’s somewhat odd that 1998 would also officially mark the end of the name Jennifer on the top 20 list of baby names in the US.

To be fair, Jennifer had a great 33-year run in American nurseries. The name was a true blockbuster. From 1970-1984, Jennifer was the number one most popular name for girls in each consecutive year … by a wide margin. For example, in 1974, 63,116 baby girls (about 4% of all girls born that year) shared the name. The next most popular: Amy, with about half as many babies to its credit. Fast forward 40 years to 2015 and only 1,275 girls started life as a Jennifer, a decline so staggering one might wonder if the name should be placed on the endangered identities list.

Lifestyles of the Rich

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:16:47 +0000

If you need more proof that consumers are demanding better values from their brands, consider this new data point from The Affluence Collaborative, a research project led by AgencySacks. 80% of affluent consumers said a brand’s promotion of its cause marketing enhances their perception of the brand, and 42% said they’d pay more for a brand based on what it gives back.

Add this to a growing stack of data. 71% of consumers say they make it a point to buy products from companies whose values match their own (Y&R, 2010). In the last year, 41% of American consumers said they bought a product because it was associated with a cause or an issue (Opinion Research, 2010).