Stefan Krogh-Hansens blog

I normally operate with marketing on the Nordic market consisting of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. People outside often see this market as one, whereas people living in on of these five countries all know there is a lot of differences amongst them. We can even break this further down in each country, e.g. in Denmark people will definitely say that there is a difference between Copenhagen and the people living in ”Jutland” and people in Copenhagen will also say there is a difference in mentality whether you are living north, south, east or west. Tons of articles and papers have been written on culture.

So I believe it is fair to say that if different cultures (tribes) exist everywhere then they will also exist in online communities.

So what kind of implications can this have?

1/ When you drive new consumers into the pool of your online community (e.g. fanbook fan page), you should consider what the new recruits would give to the community.

So if you for example own a facebook fan group that is normally very active and seldom super negative to your updates, your consideration might be that it would be very nice to double the size of that community. The impact of doubling your fanbase can be quite significant on the culture. The comments can be more harsh (or more positive), the comments can increase, the quality of the comments can degrade or increase. It all comes down to what the new opt-ins carry in their luggage in terms of online culture.

2/Sub cultures can emerge

If we continue with our example of doubling the size our Facebook fan page, then I believe that  emerging subcultures is something to consider. Lets say that the values of the existing culture are something that is really established in the community. What happens if you bring another group into the fan-site of almost equal size but with a different view on some of the existing assumptions?

I could foresee some potential conflicts – these could be resolved quietly amongst themselves but it could also go the other way and result in conflict handling that requires heavy moderation, bans, warnings etc.

At least this is something that arguably should be considered when you want to grow your opt-ins.

3/ Damn it is complex

Culture is very complex and difficult to harness. The culture of your community is not only influenced by your inputs but also the users and not least all the other tribes and communities that they engage in. This makes it almost impossible to control, but this is also what I think is the beauty of online communities. None the less I still think one should consider how to grow the communities in a prober way. It is not fair for the existing community that has been loyal for years to bring in some new opt-ins with a completely different view and need for information. In this case I think that the purpose of the formum will fall between two chairs and eventually everyone will leave the community. If you really want to bring in a larger consumer group with a completely different culture you might want to consider making a sub-community and letting them co-exist.

Remember it is people and they cannot be manipulated on a longer term and why would you? It is the consumers’ honest opinion that makes your product/service/whatever better.

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Years and years ago when humanoids decided to finally use their feet for standing and hands for cocktails we organized us into groups and social contexts. At a later point in time humanoids started to communicate through words. Suddenly man could pass on knowledge to generations. This knowledge was accumulated in the tribes – if one tribe invented the wheel (or nuclear weapon) then you were much stronger if you belonged to that tribe. In other words humans are only strong in the social groups they belong to. Think of your everyday life today! Who will fix your leg when it is broken? Who produce your food? Who is producing the car you drive in? Who is teaching you to read? That’s right – the community!

The social group feeling is deep inside us and it is a very strong human instinct. Think of wars. All of them are started in order to protect the unity of the group as e.g. the crusaders.

What I find interesting is the non-logic decisions and attitudes that occur in these social groups. It seems like you as a human are willing to accept a lot of bulls… rules and norms just to belong to the groups. I.e. look at different cults etc. that are willing to commit common suicide because of some obscure thought of doom day.

So what does all of this have to do with marketing?

I don’t know – you tell me. That is what I am trying to figure out. My thought is that for too long “we” (OK, admittedly I have) have been focusing on the consumer behaviour of the individual and I don’t think that this is right.

In example; Smoking is bad for you, everyone knows that. When you try the product it tastes like shit and you puke and feel sick. So why are so many people trying to smoke a whole package of cigarettes in order to be able to smoke without being green in their faces? Because they want to fit in their group! I don’t smoke – in my class in high school we were all jocks. For us it was not cool to smoke and no one did, why? Because we wanted to fit in the group!

Think of iPOD. When they started to pop up they had the cool design and the white ear plugs. It was cool to own one and it was kind of exclusive as well. You showed your belonging to the community by having the ear plugs in. Everyone knew that when someone was sitting in the train with white ear plugs – he/she was an iPOD owner, cool hur? So can we conclude that it is important to also show that you are a part of a particular group? I think so. I e.g. fans of national soccer teams or club teams. They all wear the correct jersey they put stickers on their cars etc. Another example is all the facebook groups that people are a part of. They want to show the world that they are fans, owners, members or whatever.

I used to think everything was about the product. As long as the product was better than good then step 1 in the marketing bible was fulfilled. But the ”no-logic” in social groups have started to make me think a bit different. What about high heel shoes for women? What about drinking snaps? What about smoking? What about boybands?

Whenever there is community, there is an anti-community! When things get too popular and too many people are members of the tribe then others go against it. We see that with a lot of sub-cultures. People want to fit in, but also be different. If not we were all members of one big community and no new communities would arise. Take music as an example. When the artist is underground, then they have a certain fan base but as soon as they go mass market then the original fan base thinks they have “sold out”. Some people like to be a part of a small secluded group of people and go against the established social groups whereas others wants to feel safe in the bigger social networks.

So what is the conclusion?

There are loads of models describing what kind of decision processes the individual consumer goes through. Some of them have been been focusing on information searching models. Some later models are built on research on brains and emotions. I think that the social part has to fitted in somewhere in the equation. This is interesting to dig deeper into and there is a lot of reading to be done here, so I am going to dig deep into this in the coming months (feel free to throw me links to research).

What do you think?

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