In my early teenage days, everyone seemed to belong to a ‘tribe.’ Just by looking at people – especially the way they dressed – you could almost instantly tell what they were into. You could tell that the guys in baggy jeans with odd coloured ‘bandanas’ tied around their heads, were into rap music; the sisters with pious looks and oversized skirts were dubbed SU while university students with questionable spending habits were classified as ‘yahoo yahoo boys’. It was a time when young people carried with them their subcultural identification tags.
By definition, subcultures consist of homogenous groups who share special bonds as a result of some shared ‘fandom’ or consumption pattern, ranging from books to games. Strong subcultures are a marketer’s dream because they tend to be very passionate about the traits that unify them. This makes it easy for brand managers to channel their brands to fuel their passion.
The concept of subculture, as an easily identifiable means of self-interest, is changing. In fact, subculture, as we know it, has been killed by the Internet.
It is evident that we now live in a world where millennials cherish virtual relationships almost as much as contacts made in ‘real life’. And they would rather invest in constructing an online personality than they would in physical personal interests. The effect of this is that marketers who are trying to identify millennial subcultures have a much-tougher task. This is because subcultures, although still much alive, are less visual.
When we dig deeper into why these subcultures have found it increasingly easy to reside almost exclusively online, we would find out that the task of maintaining an online identity is a full time job. This is one reason job titles like social media manager and personal brand specialist that didn’t exist, say a decade ago, are gaining popularity.
Interestingly, there are still a few subcultures that have been preserved over the years. The gaming subculture, for example, is still waxing strong. Just this quarter, snickers was able to strike a chord by extending its ‘you’re not you when you’re hungry’ campaign to the gaming community.
But it seems that subcultures nowadays have less to do with the traditional music, dance and gaming genres and more to do with how you are perceived by others. These subcultures are built on a ‘sharing economy’ and defined by a collaborative existence that is tied to the experience and interest of peers.
The philosophical debate of people who are trying to understand this generation is not about a tree falling in a forest. The question today is: ‘If millennials didn’t see something on their social feeds, did it really happen?’
Consider the Twitter subculture as an example. Twitter allows you to experience opinions and information in a fast-moving, news feed-like manner, create content in 140-characters and retweet or favourite content from other users. This sounds fairly basic, right?
The process itself is, in fact, easy to digest. But, it would be a mistake to explore the technology for its subculture. Twitter’s subculture is not in the tech but the talk.
‘Tweeps’ have a sense of humour; that is the end product of tons of shared experiences – an aggregation of phrases that have their roots in popular culture and have warmed their way into every day conversations. It’s handy to be updated on TV and movie content, popular memes, celebrity news, gossip and battles for musical relevance.
For instance, the hashtag – #IWasInMyHouse AndTrailerCameToJamMe – requires an understanding of highly emotional, and sometimes explosive, but altogether hilarious verves that have been the subject of Nigerian Twitter conversations for months. This hashtag has been retweeted about 20,000 times. That is an approximated 20,000 people who are in on the joke. And if you are not, well, ‘you can’t sit with us’.
Technology has dramatically changed the way we approach life as a generation that has grown into a plethora of tech evolution. It makes sense that this generation relies heavily on technology for entertainment, interaction and emotional validation – benefits that were traditionally derived from subcultures.
This idea that subcultures that are seemingly exclusively virtual play such a critical role in the lives of many millennials might be problematic to some. But it is important to catch up fast because the evolution of subculture is still on. Future subcultures would likely respond to an increasingly globalised world. And no brand wants to miss out on open markets.
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