Influx

There are plenty of examples of brands clumsily borrowing content or ideas from cultural movements and phenomena and getting it all wrong. As a hip-hop loving kid, I remember thinking Fruity Pebbles seemed really corny when they featured Barney Rubble trying to rap (“My name is Barney and I’m here to say/I love Fruity Pebbles in a major way!”). While it’s likely Post Cereal‘s hamfisted hip-hop was solidly toungue-in-cheek and it’s target audience was for the most part young enough not to notice how completely retarded the concept was, many brands attempt to steal from subculture in much more problematic ways. Not only do they get it wrong in the execution but the actual thing they are “borrowing” is a poor fit in the first place.

Take for example, the recent experience of Secret Deodorant and the long-running participatory art project PostSecret.

PostSecret began a few years ago as a simple but powerful idea: a website was created to feature one-liner confessions submitted by the public on postcards. Spreading virally across the web, Postsecret quickly became an internet juggernaut, galvanizing peoples’ imaginations and their creativity. A visit to the site today reveals hundreds of submissions, many of the incredibly poignant confessions of depression, adultery, abuse and despair are not just heartwrenching in their candor, but beautiful in their presentation. The website has become so popular and the submissions so fascinating that the site’s creators have published PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives, a hardcover version of the website.

The true influence of PostSecret is evident in Share Your Secret, Secret Deodorant’s rank attempt to employ PostSecret’s confessional model to it’s commercial benefit. However, this is a textbook example of how cultural appropriation in advertising can go wrong. Not only are the secrets elicited by Proctor & Gamble‘s campaign banal and vain (“Sometimes, when I’m in public, I call my office on my cell phone just so people will know that I have a job.”), but the entire campaign is built on the spurious concept that there is some sort of relationship between antiperspirant and telling the world something personal.

Secret is an effective brand name that stands for protection from sweat and odor for the current generation of consumers thanks to it’s 80′s-era tagline “Strong enough for a man, pH balanced for a woman.” There was a winking recognition in that long-running campaign that concealing such strength in a powdery scented pastel package would be P&G’s little secret, acknowledged only by the women who wore the product under their ballgowns and powersuits. It’s a long way to travel to get to Secret Deodorant: “My ‘famous pecan pie’ is store bought.” What does a mother’s lie to her family around the holidays have to do with avoiding sweaty underarms?

So what brand’s borrow from subculture well? Typically it’s brands that are able to develop communications strategies that operate on a mass and niche level simultaneously. While I’m less than totally thrilled to ad to the chorus of appropbation for Apple Computer, their recent iPod spot featuring the music of Wolfmother was not simply appealing to the general public thanks to a powerful set of psychedelic visuals, the brand’s iconic style, and a catchy backing track reminiscent of the best of 70′s rock. It was speaking to fans of cutting-edge music to whom it gave a wink by choosing to feature “Love Train,” an album track on the debut record by one of Australia’s coolest exports since Midnight Oil. The fact that Apple had made this decision and began airing the spot before Wolfmother’s album was released was further proof that they had their finger on the appropriate pulse in the music scene and had the good sense to submerge their cool credentials so that those with the cultural competencies required would recognize them and everyone else would just hear groovy background music without recognizing the signifiers.

The lesson here is that if the idea behind borrowing from subcultural phenomena is to look cooler or smarter than you are, it’s critical to remember two things: 1)don’t stray too far afield from your brand’s comfort zone, and 2)nothing truly cool or smart tries to be that way. It’s a state of being, not a goal to strive towards.