Channel Marketing vs. Culture Marketing: How we click*

My last post created a lot of reactions and some people asked me to dig deeper on the topic of channel versus culture. So, what is more important? 

Well, obviously they are both important. Just look at the dating analogy above and you see that both aspect are quite helpful. But there are fundamental differences between both skillsets and it may be worthwhile to think about them!

The most important difference is this: Cultural expertise is a lot more robust than channel skills! It’s harder to learn, harder to copy and most importantly, it generally does not change over the course of time. 

Let’s take social media as an example. Using the right frames and understanding various platforms’ algorithms and their nature is of critical importance.

But even if you master all these things, you won't be safe.

Everything keeps changing and most of the time the platforms won’t tell you why.

Algorithms, preferred formats, embedding compatibility, APIs and also price structures in terms of CPMs (which is kind of funny because they force you to create great content for their platforms and then charge you on top of it). And above all, some platforms rise, some fall and for the most part, it seems like some come and go with the generations. 

I always use another analogy to describe the problem: Being a Social Media expert is like being a guy who is really good at building factories in foreign countries. You go there because you expect better wage structures, sourcing materials and maybe efficient distribution. Things go well for some time, but then the government may decide to increase your taxes, employees may want raises and your neighbor countries may have just decided to subsidize foreign investment. Maybe an economic crisis hits you or some crazy person puts a ban on your export products. 

In short: Everything is volatile and you are always at the mercy of someone else. Read that again: yes, you are always at the mercy of someone else. And you pay taxes. We all know that organic reach is more or less a thing of the past. It’s just a matter of time – so let’s all enjoy Linkedin as long as we can…

My students often ask me whether they should become social media experts. I’m not a black-and-white person and I understand the beauty of knowing Tik-Tok better than anyone else. But I usually go and say no, because “Being good a Social Media” does not seem desirable to me. Being good at “content”, ok! But putting “Social Media Expert” in your LinkedIn profile? Maybe not. Things have just changed too fast. There were certainly times when platforms were longing for content and inventory to keep their platforms interesting. But nowadays, we are faced with the opposite: too many irrelevant postings from too many brands and on too many platforms. 

So what about culture then? 

Well, one thing about culture is that you can’t learn it easily. There are thousands of books on digital marketing or social media when you go to amazon and probably a million blogs and articles on the internet. For culture marketing – not so much.

Culture marketing is a lot harder to cope with. You have to be socialized with it, it’s not just a discipline but more of a value system with all its own codes, references, symbols and anecdotes. It’s really about nuances, details, verbal- and even non-verbal communication. It’s deeply embedded in our consciousness, something that often lies under the surface.  And that’s what makes it so powerful! 

Nerd- and pop culture is one very specific segment – and believe it or not: it’s a very, very big one! A lot of the spark and fascination is the genuine socialization over many, many years. Just look at my vita and see how familiar it may feel to you: I’ve been a Ninja Turles Fan since I was 8. A Marvel and DC fan since I was 10. A Dragon Ball and Anime fanboy since I was 12. I started with a Sega Mega Drive, moved on to a Playstation 1, then the Playstation 2, switched to PC for games like Dungeon Keeper and Diablo and then moved back to a Playstation 3. I played Nintendo 64 at my friends’ places and was a bit jealous because they had James Bond Golden Eye and - of course - Super Smash Brothers. Some of my friends were playing counterstrike 1.6 at Lan Parties, some others (the minority) favoured Team Fortress. And we all watched Captain Tsubasa on our go-to afternoon TV channel. Typing “LOL”, “ROFL” or “^^” is a natural language for me. And I know it is for you too! Otherwise you would have not ended up here on my profile. 

And we have all grown up. Grown up to the new Stars Wars movies that we love to hate (but that we watched anyways). We have seen all the Game of Thrones episodes, but it’s good manners to still put Lord of The Rings high in our rankings. We now watch Counterstrike Tournaments, we collect Funko Pop Toys and we will all take vacation days to play Cyberpunk. It’s probably needless to say how we feel about John Wick. 

It’s nice to talk about engagement rates, segmentation and the scheduling of postings. 

But the last paragraph? That’s how we connect! 

So, yes. Channel expertise is important in today’s marketing reality. But maybe we have been too busy with all the side aspects and we have forgotten about the core. Don’t get me wrong, it does indeed help to understand channels. It may indeed increase your success rate when reaching your audiences. 

That all may lead to a click.

But it’s now how we click.