Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, we're back. We're black, weird, brown, but
Speaker 1: extra brown because Mandy's here. You know, Mandy's only half
Speaker 1: brown anyway. Ambition ambition and this should this should ambition.
Speaker 1: No shade to you, Mandy, but you now welcome back
Speaker 1: to brown ambition. I am cutting up, which means that
Speaker 1: Mandra is not here. She might be having her baby,
Speaker 1: she might not. Who knows, Mandy. Mandy might be changing
Speaker 1: the oil on her car. Y'all know how Mandy do?
Speaker 1: She don't see, she don't rest. But baby number two
Speaker 1: is on his way. And so that means Auntie Tiffany
Speaker 1: is in the stew, but not by herself. I'm in
Speaker 1: the stew with a guest today. Let me introduce this.
Speaker 1: I was looking at this guest like a little mini Bayer.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, day, I'm coming to the room.
Speaker 1: So our new guest today has a book called for
Speaker 1: the Culture. It's been endorsed by the CEO of McDonald's, Boom, Reddit, Boom,
Speaker 1: Delta Boom, Home Depot Boom, and many more major companies.
Speaker 1: But bigger than that, y'all. He's run social media strategy
Speaker 1: for the Bee of Yon of the say Okay for
Speaker 1: many years Queen Betal all the rest of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, CEOs, all these billion dollar corporations, we
Speaker 1: don't care about that. We care about beyonceave on these parts.
Speaker 1: It's like we care about it all. But how amazing
Speaker 1: is that his name is Marcus Collins and he's here
Speaker 1: to talk to us today about like culture and what
Speaker 1: we why do we do the way we what we do,
Speaker 1: why do we navigate the way we navigate? How does
Speaker 1: that affect our finances? And about his book? And so
Speaker 1: I'm super excited to welcome Marcus into the studio.
Speaker 2: Hey, Marcus, what's happening. I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming. So Marcus, first of all, let's
Speaker 1: get down to the nitty gritty. What was it like
Speaker 1: working for Beyonce?
Speaker 2: It was awesome. It was all me she you know,
Speaker 2: I worked at I worked with her at a time
Speaker 2: before she was Queen Bee. She was still you know,
Speaker 2: Beyonce though iconic, and I feel like in those moments
Speaker 2: you get to see a rare thing where someone elevates
Speaker 2: and transcends into something otherworldly. And to be able to
Speaker 2: work with her and she's just so lovely and so
Speaker 2: amazing beyond her talent, She's just a really good human being.
Speaker 2: I felt very fortunate to have a front row ticket
Speaker 2: to seeing her transcend to queendom.
Speaker 1: Now that's awesome. Honestly, Mandy and I we have tickets
Speaker 1: to go see her, you know, next moment. Okay, look
Speaker 1: at Mandy, She's just gonna drop the baby and just
Speaker 1: come on to the concert. But whatever, she knew what
Speaker 1: it was where she got them ticket priorities. So one,
Speaker 1: how did you like get into this line of work?
Speaker 1: So what would you say that you do if you
Speaker 1: had to, Like, I call myself a financial educator, Like,
Speaker 1: what would you call yourself?
Speaker 2: I think myself as a cultural translator, and I do
Speaker 2: so in an effort to help people realize the best
Speaker 2: version of themselves. Okay, whether I'm in the classroom as
Speaker 2: a professor, which I am at the Raw School of Business,
Speaker 2: University of Michigan, or an advertiser, which I am at
Speaker 2: the head of Strategy of Widen Kennedy, New York, or
Speaker 2: rather on stages. I mean, ultimately, I'm leveraging the power
Speaker 2: of culture, translating it from one entity to another and
Speaker 2: back and back again to help marketers be better versions
Speaker 2: of themselves, help students be better version of themselves, and
Speaker 2: help individuals be better versions of themselves.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, oh that's awesome. So I guess what does that?
Speaker 1: What does that?
Speaker 2: So? I know for.
Speaker 1: Beyonce, it look like, you know, you did her social
Speaker 1: media strategy, but what does that look like? So much
Speaker 1: so that the CEO of McDonald's and read it in Deubta, like,
Speaker 1: what does that look like? When you're working with those
Speaker 1: type of organizations.
Speaker 2: So, as a strategist working with these companies, I'm helping
Speaker 2: them see the world through cultural lenses, right, realizing that
Speaker 2: the world around us is not objective, it's subjective. That is,
Speaker 2: we see the world through the meaning frames that we have,
Speaker 2: the beliefs that we hold, the artifacts that are meaningful,
Speaker 2: the ideologies, stories we tell ourselves help us translate the world,
Speaker 2: which is why for some a Kyle's leather, for others
Speaker 2: it's the deity, and for some it's dinner. But which
Speaker 2: one is it? It's all of them based on their
Speaker 2: cultural subscription. So for brands, I helped them see the
Speaker 2: world through other people's lenses, help them understand how people
Speaker 2: make meaning of the world around them and how their
Speaker 2: brands are translated through these lenses so that when these
Speaker 2: brands are communicating to consumers, they get a better understanding
Speaker 2: of how people see the world and how they're translating
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: I understand. So, for example, I remember the first time
Speaker 1: that Ford, it was maybe like six seven years ago,
Speaker 1: they reached out to me to like partner with me
Speaker 1: because they were like, we're going to be at Essence
Speaker 1: Fest and I was like, Ford the essence fast because
Speaker 1: you know, that's the white boy card, you know, like
Speaker 1: and so my little spice As was like, oh, y'all
Speaker 1: do on soul to all the white boys. Already, ain't
Speaker 1: nobody left to buy this, so you need to bozyon
Speaker 1: over to see us. Syste's over here.
Speaker 2: What's so interesting is that even the way you translate
Speaker 2: that Ford is the white boy Trump before it, and
Speaker 2: it inherently isn't that We just give it that meaning
Speaker 2: because of how we see the brand, right, And it's
Speaker 2: helping brands navigate the meaning that people associate to them
Speaker 2: so that people like you who go to Essence that
Speaker 2: are like, oh, this brand is for me, right, So
Speaker 2: when I pull up in my forward, people aren't like, Tiffany,
Speaker 2: what are you doing driving a forward instead? They're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course you would drive a forward because of who
Speaker 2: you are. That congruence between what the brand wants to
Speaker 2: mean and actually mean the minds of people is extremely powerful.
Speaker 2: Especially we want people to buy the same thing goes.
Speaker 2: We want people to vote the same thing goes. We
Speaker 2: want people to subscribe the same thing goes. We want
Speaker 2: people to join our church. I mean, all of these things,
Speaker 2: which I argue in the book, they're all driven to
Speaker 2: get people to adopt behavior. Ultimately, that's behavioral adoption. And
Speaker 2: the truth is there's no force, no external force, more
Speaker 2: influential to human behavior than culture, and then more likely
Speaker 2: we are to tap into it, the more likely we
Speaker 2: are to get people to move.
Speaker 1: So is that why you wrote for the culture because
Speaker 1: you wanted to kind of like share that like nothing
Speaker 1: is happening coincidentally, that people are shifting and moving and
Speaker 1: adopting new ways and new behaviors based upon these external
Speaker 1: forces and internal desires, Like can we tap into those
Speaker 1: things intentionally? Like what's the intention of the book? What
Speaker 1: do you hope people get?
Speaker 2: That's spot on? I mean, essentially, as a marketer, it's
Speaker 2: the field that I work in. We often use words
Speaker 2: like let's get our idea out into culture, and let's
Speaker 2: make sure our idea is informed by culture, or what's
Speaker 2: going on in culture, culture, culture, culture, culture culture, and
Speaker 2: even people say things like I'm doing it for my culture.
Speaker 2: I'm doing it for the culture, right, which is why
Speaker 2: I call the book. I called it. But if you
Speaker 2: ask five people to define culture, you get thirty five
Speaker 2: different answers. And that's our problem, right, because we can't
Speaker 2: define anything concretely, how do we ever leverage fully leverage
Speaker 2: the sway the power that culture has. So I wrote
Speaker 2: the book to unpack this for practitioners, so you get
Speaker 2: a better understanding what culture is, have a better Rosetta
Speaker 2: stone to talk about it, and therefore be able to
Speaker 2: operationalize it. But then as I was writing the book,
Speaker 2: I started to identify that there are some personal reasons
Speaker 2: at play here as well. Right. So, I'm born and
Speaker 2: raised in Detroit, and I had it, that's right. What
Speaker 2: up though? And I had to pinchant for math and
Speaker 2: science as a kid, right, And in those days, if
Speaker 2: you did well math and science and you were black,
Speaker 2: oh you're going to be an engineer full stop. So
Speaker 2: that's what I went into study because I thought that
Speaker 2: that's how I was supposed to do. But once I
Speaker 2: got into school, I realized, I don't think I want
Speaker 2: to do this. My parents were like, well s, way
Speaker 2: to you finish your wait till you get through your
Speaker 2: get through your core courses. After your first year you
Speaker 2: love it. They go, okay, my mom's an academic, and
Speaker 2: I go, great, you know mom, Dad, I trust you.
Speaker 2: So I go into my second year and I go, oh,
Speaker 2: I definitely don't want to do this. I thought it
Speaker 2: was interesting, but I wasn't excited about it. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to do it for rest of my life. So
Speaker 2: I took some music theory courses to offset my terrible GPA,
Speaker 2: and I fell in love with major sevens. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to be a songwriter. And I went home
Speaker 2: that summer I said Mom and Dad, I know I
Speaker 2: want to do for rest of my life. I want
Speaker 2: to be a songwriter. They're like, oh, no, you don't.
Speaker 2: That is not happening, fam, No, no, you don't want
Speaker 2: to do that. So I finished my degree in engineering,
Speaker 2: but grudgingly, as soon as I graduated, went right into
Speaker 2: the music industry and what I realized some twenty years later,
Speaker 2: is that I didn't have the language to describe what
Speaker 2: I was experiencing. What I was experiencing were the cultural
Speaker 2: forces that dictate mandate in some ways, what's acceptable behavior
Speaker 2: for people like us, and for people like me and
Speaker 2: for many of us who look like us, Tiffany, is
Speaker 2: that if you want to be successful, you pursue certain
Speaker 2: career trajectories. If you do well in math and science,
Speaker 2: then you're either going to be an engineer or a doctor.
Speaker 2: Like that's just what you do. And anything outside of
Speaker 2: that is unacceptable. Anything outside of that is frowned upon.
Speaker 2: And this is really what culture is. Culture is this
Speaker 2: system of conventions and expectations that's acceptable behavior, acceptable trajectories
Speaker 2: for people like us, and as a result, we take
Speaker 2: on those behaviors, we do those things. And because I
Speaker 2: didn't have the language to describe what was happening to me,
Speaker 2: I didn't have a lot of agency to navigate through it.
Speaker 2: All I had was that my parents is tripping, right,
Speaker 2: But what was really happening is that my parents themselves
Speaker 2: were adhering to the cultural forces of what good parents
Speaker 2: are supposed to do. You're supposed to push your children
Speaker 2: towards things that are going to be potentially the most
Speaker 2: beneficial for them, even if it's not what they want. Right,
Speaker 2: And we're all being influenced by these forces that tells
Speaker 2: us what it means to be normal. And I thought
Speaker 2: that this book would help not only practitioners be better
Speaker 2: at their jobs and getting people to adopt behavior, but
Speaker 2: also help us individuals citizens navigating this cultural rule that
Speaker 2: we live in, navigate these forces that tells us what
Speaker 2: people like us ought to do.
Speaker 1: Well, what would you say as being I'm assuming you're
Speaker 1: a black man? I mean you never know. I mean
Speaker 1: you never know.
Speaker 2: I self identify, yes as a black man, and I
Speaker 2: do have melan in my skind I mean right?
Speaker 1: Because so what we like being in this industry and
Speaker 1: like we're just shifting gears towards like what you've seen culturally?
Speaker 1: What has become the norm for what you'd say for
Speaker 1: black Americans and the way we navigate our finances, like
Speaker 1: what has been the norm? And how can we start
Speaker 1: to and has that norm served us well? You know,
Speaker 1: so what's been the norm? Has that norm served as well?
Speaker 1: And if you wanted to shift that norm for yourself
Speaker 1: and say I actually don't want to adhere to that.
Speaker 1: What are some things that people can do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're right, then the norm has not served
Speaker 2: us well. One gentleman by the name of Kanye West,
Speaker 2: the old Kanye. By the way, don't judge old Kanye,
Speaker 2: the old Kanye. You know. He said it in a
Speaker 2: very very profound way, and he said, and I spend
Speaker 2: four hundred bucks on this just to be like, you
Speaker 2: ain't up on this. Yes, And the idea is that
Speaker 2: we consume as a way of signaling where we where
Speaker 2: we are in a social hierarchy. An interesting part about
Speaker 2: that is that that wasn't always the case, not for humanity.
Speaker 2: So I'm I'm a professor, so I can't help myself.
Speaker 2: If we go back in time for centuries the global
Speaker 2: GDP was zero, practically non existent, which means that people
Speaker 2: were not entering in exchange. We weren't buying and consuming things.
Speaker 2: If we were, it was very, very minimal. And we're
Speaker 2: doing it before utilitary utilitarian purposes, only right functionality, and
Speaker 2: that waseenth into the sixteenth century where Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth
Speaker 2: in England says, you know, I can use consumption as
Speaker 2: a means of egrandizement as a means of power. And
Speaker 2: here's how it worked in her mind was that royalty
Speaker 2: had everything. They had all the wealth, and the people
Speaker 2: closest to royalty, that was nobility, that they would have
Speaker 2: a little bit less, and the people way beneath them,
Speaker 2: the peasants had nothing. And the idea is that it
Speaker 2: would keep royalty in power because they had the most.
Speaker 2: It will force nobility to keep consuming so that they
Speaker 2: can stay close to royalty, and it will keep the
Speaker 2: people at the bottom of the peasants looking up, aspiring
Speaker 2: to be more by consuming more. Right, and then Queen
Speaker 2: Elizabeth could ration out commerce or ration out capital to
Speaker 2: people and they would love her for it because it
Speaker 2: would help them rise up the social hierarchy. You fast
Speaker 2: forward a couple centuries later, you start seeing a little
Speaker 2: bit of upticking economics in northern Europe, and they started
Speaker 2: businesses started to make more money, so they paid their
Speaker 2: employees more money. Their employees started to spend more money,
Speaker 2: so business made more money. Employees started making more money,
Speaker 2: so they spent more money. You started getting the cycle
Speaker 2: of consumption. It massively explodes during the Indestrial Revolution. The
Speaker 2: same thing goes today because the point is that people
Speaker 2: weren't buying way back in the sixteenth century. They weren't
Speaker 2: spending or consuming for functional needs. They were consuming for
Speaker 2: psychological and sociological needs as a way of signaling who
Speaker 2: they are and where they sit in the social hierarchy.
Speaker 2: The same thing goes today that we buy, we consume
Speaker 2: as a way of signaling who we are in the
Speaker 2: world and where we sit in a social hierarchy. And
Speaker 2: the further you were down the social totem pole, the
Speaker 2: more and the more motivated you were to consume as
Speaker 2: a way to signaling that you weren't at the bottom.
Speaker 2: And you take marginalized communities like people of color, people
Speaker 2: like us. We then say that I have to consume
Speaker 2: as a way to signal who I am, and I
Speaker 2: spend four hundred bucks on this just to be like
Speaker 2: you ain't right? So what does that mean for us
Speaker 2: that if we know this, if we are now aware
Speaker 2: that these are the forces that are motivating us to consume,
Speaker 2: that they're not with they're not they're not within us,
Speaker 2: they're without us. There is they're they're pushing on us,
Speaker 2: then we can subvert them by having much more discretion
Speaker 2: with what we consume or how much we consume of it,
Speaker 2: not to keep up with the Joneses, as it were, uh,
Speaker 2: but to signal our understanding of these forces and also
Speaker 2: create new communities around people who decide not to consume
Speaker 2: just for the sake of consumption.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's hard. I get it, because you know,
Speaker 1: you grow up not having and then you tell yourself
Speaker 1: one day, when I do have, I'm going to I
Speaker 1: want to wear it externally. I was watching this not
Speaker 1: that I usually get advice from Young Jock. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was shocked. I was like, oh, you know, well,
Speaker 1: even a clock is right twice a day, so you know.
Speaker 2: If we listen to Kanye, we takeing Kanye advice, we
Speaker 2: could take Young Jocke advice to me.
Speaker 1: I suppose so Young Jock surprise. It was like this
Speaker 1: YouTube clip. He said something that was like this is
Speaker 1: really profound and I'm glad he understood. He said that
Speaker 1: this community that he's in of hip hop artists and
Speaker 1: rappers and things like that, he was like it took
Speaker 1: him a while to realize that the things that he
Speaker 1: was wearing, the like the Lamborghini, the whatever, the things
Speaker 1: he's driving, that it really didn't indicate that he had wealth,
Speaker 1: that he has money. He said it indicated that he
Speaker 1: had money because he's now exchanged it for this thing.
Speaker 1: He was like, my lambo, my dress, my outfit, It's
Speaker 1: a receipt. That's right to show I once had hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of not millions of dollars and now I
Speaker 1: have stuff, right. And I just thought that was so like,
Speaker 1: those things are really a receipt of wealth once, not
Speaker 1: that you want to keep money and not doing anything
Speaker 1: with it. But I just thought that that was like,
Speaker 1: I was really shocked at his insight, you know.
Speaker 2: And he's right, He's spot on. I mean, I would argue,
Speaker 2: and I do in the book that brands are they're
Speaker 2: the most powerful. Brands are receipts of identity. They are
Speaker 2: ways of signaling to the world who we are, right,
Speaker 2: they're badges to say I am this because of the
Speaker 2: meaning associated to these brands and the economic associations that
Speaker 2: we have in our minds with those brands. So if
Speaker 2: you if I'm driving a land boaw, You're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that dude's doing it. That is I am higher up
Speaker 2: the social hierarchy thanks to Queen Elizabeth and the irony
Speaker 2: of this, I suppose, is that the people who have
Speaker 2: the most, who are most well off, they actually live
Speaker 2: more innocuous lives. I e. You don't see the labels,
Speaker 2: you don't see what they're, what they're what they have, right, Like,
Speaker 2: so somewhere's they don't wear a bag of a Louis
Speaker 2: Vuitton bag when they go into an event in New
Speaker 2: York City because they leave their bag in their driver's car. Right.
Speaker 2: So it's almost the ability to not to not explicitly
Speaker 2: show wealth is a sign of wealth. But when you don't,
Speaker 2: you don't explicit when you don't have wealth at least
Speaker 2: where you're trying to signal it, you use consumption as
Speaker 2: a way to do that very thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting because there's just been this I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen on social media. There's this huge debate
Speaker 1: right now between quiet luxury, you know, like that's what
Speaker 1: everyone's talking about. Like, oh, like quiet luxury is to
Speaker 1: your point, Like they're like, oh, look at Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: you know, like nondescript khakis and whatever sweater versus like
Speaker 1: Doug you down to the socks, you know, and so
Speaker 1: like there's been this push but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: colassiesm you know, like like looped into like quiet luxury
Speaker 1: versus I guess what you know, almost like being ghetto
Speaker 1: fabulous or whatever, Like what does that mean? So what's
Speaker 1: your take? I mean, have you heard of this quiet
Speaker 1: luxury movement? And what's your take on that? Like how
Speaker 1: that reflects on a person identity and brand and culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a there's an episode of Succession
Speaker 2: a week or so ago where a woman in the
Speaker 2: in the show in this in the scene, she has
Speaker 2: like a very flashy bag and one of the characters, uh,
Speaker 2: one of the main characters in the show, goes look
Speaker 2: at her, like what is she doing? Like come on, like,
Speaker 2: if you had wealth, you wouldn't need that bag. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of what what? What? What? This is the
Speaker 2: cycle of consumptions happening. This is the aggrandizement that Queen
Speaker 2: Elizabeth was after that. We consume as a way of
Speaker 2: signaling where we are in a social hierarchy, and we
Speaker 2: have these these social and psychological wants to feel like
Speaker 2: we're part of something, to feel like we're we're accepted, right,
Speaker 2: and therefore consumption helps us do that very thing, you know,
Speaker 2: go back to Kanye because that song is just so powerful.
Speaker 2: All falls down. He say, you make us hate ourselves
Speaker 2: and love your wealth. That's why Charity's asking what a
Speaker 2: ball is that? I mean, the idea there is that
Speaker 2: consumption becomes a way by which we ingratiate ourselves into
Speaker 2: society and try to find means to raise our social
Speaker 2: status so that we get more access to things. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, when you have it, you don't
Speaker 2: need to show it, so you find you know, Warren
Speaker 2: Buffett drives like the same Oldsmobile from forever long ago,
Speaker 2: because he's like, why would you need multiple cars? Plus,
Speaker 2: as soon as you buy a car, it decreases in value, right,
Speaker 2: most cars, So you drive off the lot, it's it
Speaker 2: costs lest it depreciates as soon as you drive it
Speaker 2: off the lot.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So all of these things require certain savviness that comes
Speaker 2: with privilege, And when you don't come from a privileged place,
Speaker 2: you just say, I just want access to it, right,
Speaker 2: So you can't fault people. You can't mean, got the
Speaker 2: young jack. Young Jock got to that realization, But you
Speaker 2: can't fault people who are trying to navigate it. Because
Speaker 2: I want to be on one of six apart pushing
Speaker 2: the bins. I mean you go right back to to
Speaker 2: all falls down. Right, such a such a profound statement
Speaker 2: that that song is. And this is the power by
Speaker 2: the way of cultural production, right, the way that we
Speaker 2: express who we are and where our identity is subscribed.
Speaker 2: I mean you stick on the Kanye piece. My wife
Speaker 2: and I had our eldest daughter. We were driving a
Speaker 2: small little hatchback car living in New York City, so
Speaker 2: we had like a little bit of car and my
Speaker 2: wife was like, you know, I think we need to
Speaker 2: get to I think we probably need to get an
Speaker 2: suv Nan Greed. And we had a list of SUVs
Speaker 2: that we were considering, but there was one SUV that
Speaker 2: we would not buy, not even and it was even
Speaker 2: on the consideration set, even though empirically it performed well.
Speaker 2: And that was a Toyota raft for why because Kanye
Speaker 2: told us, what do you think I rapped for to
Speaker 2: push an fing raft for? I mean, that's the power
Speaker 2: of cultural like it signals to us what we ought
Speaker 2: to have. And look at the dominant cultural production of
Speaker 2: the predominant Black culture is hip hop music. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: hip hop tells us what to wear, what's exactly, and
Speaker 2: consumption becomes a way of signaling that. Now, I don't
Speaker 2: want to think. I don't want to be sort of
Speaker 2: the wet blanket on consumption, because consumption also signals or
Speaker 2: helps us make our culture material. Right. If you're a Muslim, right,
Speaker 2: you would wear a hijab as a way of a
Speaker 2: signaling not only it's an outward expression of an inward belief,
Speaker 2: signaling who you are and what you believe. That that's
Speaker 2: super powerful. And her jobs can either be created by
Speaker 2: hand or you can consume it by someone who made
Speaker 2: it by hand. Consumption in that matter or in that
Speaker 2: way makes one's culture material, and that's super powerful. Right,
Speaker 2: Like I grew up watching Spike Lee movies as a kid.
Speaker 2: Consume those Spike Lee movies. But those Spike Lee movies
Speaker 2: help give me an understanding of race relations in this country. Right,
Speaker 2: So consumption isn't all bad. But as they say, all
Speaker 2: you know, anything in access can be problematic.
Speaker 1: So in your book, do you offer up solutions of
Speaker 1: what people could do like one, I know there's probably
Speaker 1: solutions for brands of how they can connect to culture
Speaker 1: more effectively, But do you offer up solutions for individuals
Speaker 1: about what they can do to help self define culture
Speaker 1: for themselves.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean the idea in the book is, let's
Speaker 2: get some language that we all can describe this thing
Speaker 2: that that we're experiencing, whether we know it or not.
Speaker 2: And if we have some language, then we probably understand
Speaker 2: the mechanisms that are a part of it. And that
Speaker 2: with the ability to pinpoint these mechanisms, we are now
Speaker 2: empowered to do something about it, to leverage them in
Speaker 2: powerful ways, whether you're a practitioner or individual. Navigating this
Speaker 2: cultural landscape that we live in and particularly thinking about
Speaker 2: the stories that we are told, the stories that we
Speaker 2: tell ourselves, and then how we use those stories to
Speaker 2: make sense of the world around us. I do this
Speaker 2: exercise with my students here at the University of Michigan,
Speaker 2: you know. I have them do a media diet inventory, right.
Speaker 2: I tell them to think about all the shows, all
Speaker 2: the movies you've watched in the last three months. They
Speaker 2: write them down and then identify who is the main character,
Speaker 2: what's their age, their race, their gender, their their origins,
Speaker 2: who are they right? And then look at the antagonists,
Speaker 2: the villain, their rage, their race, their gender, their origins,
Speaker 2: their ethnicities right, and then what are the stories that
Speaker 2: are told about each one of them? And then do
Speaker 2: the same for the stories that you tell, what you post,
Speaker 2: what you don't post, what you post about, and who
Speaker 2: is the main character in those posts? Right? And as
Speaker 2: you with those two things together, you start to ask yourself,
Speaker 2: oh man, the stories that I tell about myself, about
Speaker 2: who I am and how I fit in this world
Speaker 2: is oftentimes informed by and shaped by the stories that
Speaker 2: I ingest, the media, diet that I consume. And if
Speaker 2: those things be the case, if those things seem to
Speaker 2: be incongruence, which they mostly are, at least in my
Speaker 2: with my students, then you tell yourself, Okay, I need
Speaker 2: to start taking in different media, listen to different stories,
Speaker 2: watching different things, listen to different things, so that my
Speaker 2: worldview might be shaped differently because of what I ingest.
Speaker 1: So it's like you are what you eat to literally that's.
Speaker 2: Right, literally, literally one thousand percent. And as a result,
Speaker 2: that gives us agency. It gives lots of agency to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to take that in. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to take this in, right, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 2: protect my space and protect my peace, and by doing
Speaker 2: so that means getting rid of things that could potentially
Speaker 2: be harmful for me.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I I am Nigerian. Both of my
Speaker 1: parents were born and raised in Nigeria. I was born
Speaker 1: in Newark, New Jersey, Brick City Standard. But I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I went to Nigeria. I think I
Speaker 1: was twenty one, right after college, and I was so
Speaker 1: shocked at what my cousins in Nigeria thought what America
Speaker 1: was like. It was a caricature. And I remember thinking like,
Speaker 1: this can't be what you guys think. And then you
Speaker 1: see what that. My mom was like, well, of course
Speaker 1: they think this because how else would they know. They're
Speaker 1: watching and consuming the media that's pushed out about black Americans.
Speaker 1: And I was like it just never because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm living here, so I'm like I can see what
Speaker 1: the reality is that there is a you know, we're
Speaker 1: not a monolith. There's so many different types of people.
Speaker 1: But if all you ever watch are like the Robber,
Speaker 1: the Gangster, the you know, it is black and the thing.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe because I'm like but because in
Speaker 1: my mind, I'm like, we all look alike, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but in America it seems like everybody is so terrible,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, wow, that's what That was the
Speaker 1: first time that it hit me that it's not just
Speaker 1: it's just a movie. It's not because this is what
Speaker 1: we're showing the world what to believe about us. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, it was just like really like mind blowing.
Speaker 2: The literature refers to what you just experiences of public pedagogy.
Speaker 2: It's how we learn about other people without experiencing them
Speaker 2: for ourselves, and we learn about them through the media
Speaker 2: that we consume, and as a result, we create these
Speaker 2: frames around who those people are. That's how you get stereotypes,
Speaker 2: like you get these frames around who these people are.
Speaker 2: For instance, I went to Austria for the first time
Speaker 2: last year, and when I got there, I was really
Speaker 2: uncomfortable because the whole time I was thinking about, Yo,
Speaker 2: Nazis were up and down this place, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, yeah, yeah, they resistant for sure, but like,
Speaker 2: Nazis were up and down this place, and I just
Speaker 2: felt so uncomfortable, And in that split second, I realized, oh, man,
Speaker 2: if I were coming to the United States, I would
Speaker 2: be super uncomfortable too. It's like, y'all enslaved people y'all
Speaker 2: were hanging people from these not that long ago. By
Speaker 2: the way, it's like, this is what y'all was doing.
Speaker 2: It was a part of your normal cultural practice. It
Speaker 2: was acceptable, right, And as a result, I go, man,
Speaker 2: I'm over here, you know, feeling uncomfortable and a certain
Speaker 2: way about Austrians when they come to States, they probably
Speaker 2: feel a certain way about us. And that's the things
Speaker 2: that you know, we are all a villain in someone's story,
Speaker 2: depending on the stories that are told about us. And
Speaker 2: the idea is that if we want the world to
Speaker 2: take different shape, then we have to change the way
Speaker 2: that we see the world, and oftentimes that requires us
Speaker 2: hearing new stories and telling ourselves new stories, because as
Speaker 2: a result, the world change.
Speaker 1: Accordingly, my therapist calls that corrective experiences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: She was just like, you know, you believe, you know,
Speaker 1: the experience has told you when you were ten years old,
Speaker 1: when I go here, this happens. When I go here,
Speaker 1: this happens. And it's like, yeah, that actually wasn't true.
Speaker 1: They weren't really related. You know, maybe like every time
Speaker 1: you wake up, you know, you sneeze and you think, oh,
Speaker 1: I must be allergic to waking up, But that's not
Speaker 1: really true until you get older and you're not sneezing
Speaker 1: when you wake up. Maybe you had an hamster when
Speaker 1: you were a kid, and it was sneezing because there
Speaker 1: were actually was an animal in the room. But a
Speaker 1: corrective experience will show you like I wake up and
Speaker 1: I didn't sneeze. I wake up and I didn't sneeze.
Speaker 1: So then the new experiences teach you that this is
Speaker 1: the new this is the new norm, this is the
Speaker 1: new belief. And so so I just wanted to pivot
Speaker 1: and talk about like because I have my own business,
Speaker 1: I have several businesses, and I'm curious as to you know,
Speaker 1: with your lens, what brands are getting it right when
Speaker 1: it comes to like connecting to culture across the board,
Speaker 1: Like what brands do you see that you're like, this
Speaker 1: is what they're getting it right? And I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know how comfortable you feel what brands are not
Speaker 1: getting it right?
Speaker 2: Why the brands that get it right are the brands
Speaker 2: who have a point of view about the world. Okay, right,
Speaker 2: if we think about me, You've just nailed it when
Speaker 2: you talked about the idea of perspective, right, like a
Speaker 2: nice stamp says it this way, that things aren't the
Speaker 2: way they are, they are the way that we are.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That is, the world manifests based on how you see
Speaker 2: the world. So if you change your worldview, the world
Speaker 2: will change. Right. And it's no surprise that culture is
Speaker 2: anchored in our identity. And the foundation of culture is
Speaker 2: our beliefs, our ideologies. Right, And because of our beliefs
Speaker 2: and ideologies, we show up in the world a certain way.
Speaker 2: We dress a certain way, we act a certain way,
Speaker 2: we talk a certain way, and we express our cultural
Speaker 2: subscription through the cultural production that we take in which
Speaker 2: I talk in great, great length in the book. So
Speaker 2: which brands fare the best? The brands that fear the
Speaker 2: best are the ones that are congruent with the beliefs
Speaker 2: that people have. That is, I wear this brand. I
Speaker 2: use this brand not only because of what it is functionally,
Speaker 2: but what it says about who I am, that it
Speaker 2: becomes a shortcut to my identity.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the most powerful brands are the brands with the
Speaker 2: point of view about the world. Okay, right, they become
Speaker 2: those identity marks. But about earlier does identity mark that
Speaker 2: signal luxury? And those things are fluid based on what
Speaker 2: is considered luxurious. Right, Like five years ago, Supreme was
Speaker 2: the thing. Now not so much, right, Supreme isn't is
Speaker 2: it considered luxury streetwear as much as it once was.
Speaker 2: You have the long standing ones like you know, Louis
Speaker 2: Vauton Gucci to stick around quite longer, But the ones
Speaker 2: that are most powerful are the ones that become extensions
Speaker 2: of my identity. Take Nike for instance. Nike believes that
Speaker 2: every human body is an athlete. That's what it believes
Speaker 2: at its core, that we're all athletes, big, small, short, tall,
Speaker 2: were all athletes, and as a brand, Nike helps people
Speaker 2: realize their best athletic self. So when I'm tying up
Speaker 2: my Nikes before my run, even though I am not
Speaker 2: a good athlete, I was a swimmer, not a runner, right,
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like I could do this thing
Speaker 2: right because of the thoughts in the thoughts and feelings
Speaker 2: are evoked when I engage the brand Nike, right. Even
Speaker 2: we see this with human beings. Beyonce. Beyonce is an artist.
Speaker 2: She's a singer, a dancer, performer, and actress, entrepreneurial mobile.
Speaker 2: She has all these different hyphens, that's what she does.
Speaker 2: What does Beyonce believe in women's empowerment? Yes, and she's
Speaker 2: been about that since day one. Beyonce has transcended her
Speaker 2: category as being an artist as being an entertainer, and
Speaker 2: she operates at the ideological level of being about women's empowerment,
Speaker 2: which opens her up to do whatever she wants to do.
Speaker 2: She's not bound by the confines of being a musical artist.
Speaker 2: She is liberated by her point of view of the world.
Speaker 2: And the people who support Beyonce is is because her
Speaker 2: music is good and it is right. It's because they
Speaker 2: see the world the way she does.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, I love that.
Speaker 2: And being a Beyonce fan becomes a way of signaling
Speaker 2: who I am.
Speaker 1: It's true the first constant I want to I can't
Speaker 1: remember if it was like her Lemonade tour or whatever.
Speaker 1: I remember being like, this feels like a women in
Speaker 1: Paaramids conference. Yes, right, literally, I remember thinking like it's
Speaker 1: just me. I felt. I left feeling like I went
Speaker 1: to a conference and I could do anything, and I
Speaker 1: could accomplish anything, and I'm like this woman is just
Speaker 1: singing and dancing, but I didn't. I literally felt like, yo,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take over the world's right. So no,
Speaker 1: I love that, and I I know those are great
Speaker 1: examples of like brands that get it right.
Speaker 2: And she's been doing that since like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: pay my bills, survivor irreplaceable to the left, who runs
Speaker 2: the world? Girls, all the single ladies who all the
Speaker 2: way to young to break my soul? I mean, she
Speaker 2: has been on that since day one. You talk about
Speaker 2: brand authenticity and consistency, my goodness been she's been there.
Speaker 2: So it means for brands, then for brands who want
Speaker 2: to be the best version of themselves, it means identifying
Speaker 2: what do I believe, how do I see the world,
Speaker 2: and then how do I manifest that in the way
Speaker 2: that I show up in the world, whether it's my
Speaker 2: products or my messaging as well.
Speaker 1: No, I love that. So the brands that don't get
Speaker 1: it right, these are the ones who've kind of lost
Speaker 1: their way and don't and forgotten what they why they started,
Speaker 1: and what they believed in, you know, because I wonder,
Speaker 1: like why the brands go from like the highest of
Speaker 1: high and then they're like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, so these are the brands that focus on value propositions.
Speaker 2: They focus on my razor sharper, my battery last longer,
Speaker 2: my car goes faster, and you could be at the top.
Speaker 2: So long as you got the fastest, the fastest car,
Speaker 2: your battery lasts the longest. But as soon as there
Speaker 2: is a longer lasting battery, boom, you shot dead. Right.
Speaker 2: That's how we go from being massive highs to dramatic lows.
Speaker 1: I think about like even now now with like this
Speaker 1: fast fashion. Before Sheen, there was oh what was that
Speaker 1: company name, I can't even remember, but they were huge.
Speaker 1: It was Fashion Nova, no Fashion Over. Remember, they were huge.
Speaker 1: But it was because we sell the cheapest closed that's right,
Speaker 1: you know, for a like decent value closed for really inexpensive,
Speaker 1: you know, like for the for the lowest price, and
Speaker 1: then here comes Sheen. We're even lower. And even now
Speaker 1: I just was reading this article that Sheen. There's this
Speaker 1: new one called Tamu that is overtaking Sheen, and it's
Speaker 1: it's the fastest downloading app right now in the Apple Store.
Speaker 1: And so to your point, there's no point of view there.
Speaker 1: They're just we sell the cheapest closed, and someone's like, well,
Speaker 1: then we can sell even cheaper.
Speaker 2: That's right. I talk about this in the book I
Speaker 2: call it the razor blade conundrum. It's that should I
Speaker 2: sell a shaver that has two blades, and someone goes, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I shall sell, say, a shaver that has three blades,
Speaker 2: so the shave is closer. Someone goes, oh, I want
Speaker 2: to closer shave somebody three blades. Then I go, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, well mine has four blades and it vibrates.
Speaker 2: And someone says, well, mine has five blades, and it
Speaker 2: vibrates and excreets alivir lotion, and before long there are
Speaker 2: eighty five blades on the shaver. There's nothing left that
Speaker 2: we can add to to continuing innovation. So what do
Speaker 2: we have to do? Drop the price? Now we're in
Speaker 2: commodity land, like this is what happens. I mean, I
Speaker 2: remember growing up there was no pizza chain better than
Speaker 2: Pizza Hut. Growing up, Pizza Hut was like the pinnacle.
Speaker 2: We get Pizza Hut. Okay, Mom, okay, Dad, you're really
Speaker 2: excited about that, right, Little Caesar says, oh, all pizza
Speaker 2: is five dollars.
Speaker 1: Boom.
Speaker 2: You cut the entire you cut the legs off of
Speaker 2: the entire industry, and prices just drop. Now it's a
Speaker 2: complete commodity right, Like, it's just like whatever is the
Speaker 2: cheapest within you know, a certain consideration set of of
Speaker 2: you know, similar tastes or similar preceived value. But otherwise, man,
Speaker 2: like we were just competing on how many pepperoni you
Speaker 2: could put on the pizza, where you know how much
Speaker 2: cheese you can have on it and what the price is.
Speaker 2: Like that is bad news, Bears. These brands don't stand
Speaker 2: for anything. And we know this intuitively because we go
Speaker 2: the brand stands for something, but what really means the
Speaker 2: brands stands in for something, something meaningful, some ideology beyond
Speaker 2: what they do.
Speaker 1: I love this, This is awesome. So Marcus, where can
Speaker 1: people get your book for the culture? Where is it available?
Speaker 1: Where can they get it? What side?
Speaker 2: What places it's available? Where all books are sold? So
Speaker 2: online you can go to the Amazons of the world,
Speaker 2: the Bards and Nobles of the world, or you go
Speaker 2: to my website mark to the C M A R C,
Speaker 2: T O T H e C dot com and it
Speaker 2: can direct you to stores there as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, and no, I just want to thank you. Is
Speaker 1: there anything that we didn't care? We'll we'll we'll put
Speaker 1: your roll for you. Guys listening we'll put the link
Speaker 1: to his book in the show notes, so you guys
Speaker 1: can go ahead and grab yourself a copy. I suggested,
Speaker 1: especially if you so many of our listeners you know,
Speaker 1: are interested in business or starting a business, but also
Speaker 1: too if you're looking to shift the way you think
Speaker 1: about money and how you and your family navigate, so
Speaker 1: you can see like, oh, I actually don't have to
Speaker 1: behave in this way as it relates to my personal
Speaker 1: finances or my business. So anything I didn't say, anything
Speaker 1: you want to share with the people as a last
Speaker 1: parting gift for us.
Speaker 2: I mean, you hit on so many, so much richness,
Speaker 2: and the last will be this is that the world
Speaker 2: is not objective. It's subjective. Right, Things aren't the way
Speaker 2: they are, they are the way that we are. And
Speaker 2: if we want to change our world, and we want
Speaker 2: to change the world around us, then we got to
Speaker 2: see the world differently and it starts with changing our perspective.
Speaker 1: And I love that. Just let you know that, like
Speaker 1: you get to decide. So yay, thanks, So we had
Speaker 1: awesome guests, see Mandy, I mean we get outre because
Speaker 1: Mandy's journalist, you know, so she's usually like you know,
Speaker 1: the lead or whatever, but you know, without Mandy, I'm
Speaker 1: still here. So I just want to say thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming. All the links are going to
Speaker 1: be in the show notes to everybody, and just like
Speaker 1: I hope you stay connected. Marcus, we want to hear
Speaker 1: more about your book.
Speaker 2: My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, heyba FAM. We could not do this show
Speaker 1: without your support or the support of our team behind this.
Speaker 2: The Brown Ambition Podcast is produced by Imani Crosby and
Speaker 2: Dennis Stanplinsky is our in house tech guru. I am
Speaker 2: your co host Mandy Woodrif Santos, and we will see
Speaker 2: y'all next week, BA Fam.