Tom Asacker: Wednesday with Grant McCracken

Wednesday with Grant McCracken

Here's Grant's bio from his 10 year old nephew, Andrew, entitled "My Favorite Relative:"

My favorite relative is my uncle, Grant McCracken. He married my Mom’s sister, Pam, last November. He is my favorite relative because he decided to have the wedding in Montreal, Canada. The wedding was on Saturday so I had to miss a day of school. He is funny because whenever we see him, he says “shake a paw”. I like him because he also likes Star Wars. He is a good listener and he always listens to what we have to say. My uncle is a writer, so he wants us to write well, and do well in school. He has published quite a few books about cultural anthropology. Some people hire him, so he travels around the country to interview people. I don’t know why, but he likes to shave his head. Grant also likes to read. Grant likes to take walks and jump in the pool with his clothes on. In conclusion, these are the reasons why my Uncle Grant is my favorite relative.

Grant holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in cultural anthropology. He has been the director of the Institute of Contemporary Culture and a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School and is now a visiting scholar at McGill University and a member of the MIT Laboratory for Branding Cultures. He has authored several books, including his most recent, Culture and Consumption II.

I had intended for this to be a more in-depth interview, but like many of us I suppose that life got in the way. If you have questions for Grant, please post them in the comments and I'll post his responses in a follow up. Also, if you regularly read Grant's insightful blog, you've probably already read this post. Sorry.

Tom Asacker asks . . .

Grant. In your new book, Culture and Consumption II, you write "the consumer is an individual in a cultural context engaged in a cultural project. They are looking for small meanings, concepts of what it is to be a man or a woman, concepts of what it is to be middle aged, concepts of what it is to be a parent, concepts of what a child is and what a child is becoming, concepts of what it is to be a member of a community and a country."

You go on to say that "advertising is the preeminent meaning maker." Some would view that as a dated concept considering the level of consumer skepticism - and perhaps cynicism - towards advertising, the fragmentation of media, and the increasing importance of design and the customer experience on meaning-making in the marketplace. Can you speak to those trends as they relate to your premise?

GM: Tom, This is a great question. Advertising was once the paradigmatic meaning maker in our culture, and it's a good idea to ask whether it remains so. Clearly, advertising did astonishing things in its time. As I show in the "cars" chapter in C&CII, it actually helped to create North American culture in the 1950s…not in that dumbed-down way preferred by intellectuals but in a way that was much substantial, genuine and, yes, authentic.

But clearly, things have changed. New media are upon us. Contemporary culture is swifter and more turbulent. Consumers have become newly participatory. They are smarter about how media works. They are more diverse internally. (There are more tastes and preferences within any given consumer.) They are more diverse externally. (There are more groups of consumers, distinguished by new principles.)

But, this just begins to tap the problem. The basic notions here, "consumer," "segment," "brand," "relationship," these are all up for grabs. Marketing academics and professionals now have to redefine, rework and reapply them.

This means the "big cannon" approach to marketing is in dispute. This said: take a simple message (aka, "the clown") and fire it at a large target (aka, "a bucket of water") as often and loudly as possible. As a guy who worked for P&G in the 1970s recently told me, "We could get 85% American householders with one week of advertising on the big three networks." USP (aka "unique selling proposition") really stood for "keep it simple, stupid." The marketer's mantra, say it loud and say it proud, "we're here, we're mere, get used to it."

What we need is a "many cannons" approach: many, shifting targets and a constant, shifting cannonade. Or maybe it makes sense just to dispense with the metaphor altogether. (Military metaphors, with advertising "campaigns," approved by "captains" of industry, that make a "killing," these were always an odd way of thinking about what advertising was and now they seem particularly odd. My fellow "Coburn Change Fellow," Jerry Michalski, doesn't even like to use the term "consumer." There's a good chance that much of the vocabulary of marketing will change.)

The "many cannons" approach is already with us. Smart marketers are using new, more interesting messages, delivered by media that is multi and well mixed. But it's not clear to me that the beast called advertising is dead. There is no meaning maker in the marketer's tool kit as powerful as advertising. A TV spot can use 15 seconds to astonishing effect. It can make meanings, build relationships, construct brands at a stroke. When this is followed up by the smaller message and the more delicate interventions made possible by the new media, then we've really got something. But it seems to me too early to dismiss the mass media advertising instrument. I think it will be with us always.

But here's what really bugs me. I don't believe we have a persuasive model of how the new marketing and the new media are going to assume the "meaning management" abilities once so magnificently deployed by advertising proper. It's a little as if we are now working with a "cheap, fast and out of control" model (Thank you, Earl Morris). There are lots of little devices at our disposal. But they are dubious, uncertain, and, most important, yet to be coordinated to big branding effects.

Everyone says the king is dead. But are we quite sure this is so? Have we got a monarch in waiting? Perhaps we should hold off on the regicide until we have a new plan for running the country.