“Making Sense of Culture: Finding Overlooked Patterns” Recap
As strtgsts, it’s part of our job to be in lockstep (and often steps ahead 🚶🏻♀️) with the latest in culture, to subscribe to multiple trend reports (feel free to drop your fave in the comments below 👇🏽), and to mine for insights that stand out even when we’re all looking at the same publications. In the age of information overload, how do we make sense of it all, cut through the noise, and find meaning in the overlooked?
Last week, we came together for our first gathering of 2021 (!!) to learn and practice frameworks that’ll help us make unexpected connections and add fresh perspective to our work. A huge thank you to our host Matt Klein, cultural theorist extraordinaire and Director of Cultural Strategy at sparks & honey, for sharing 6 Laws of Culture and 4 approaches to find the good stuff. Keep scrolling to get the gist 🕵️
Best bites
- “By studying culture, we can shape it. If we can understand the operating system that everything is built on top of, we can shape it for our preferred future.” As strtgsts, we have the power to influence the hearts and minds of the executives and clients we work with to create products, experiences, and work that can better society. To do this, we have a responsibility to understand culture first to know how we can truly impact it.
- “Cultural patterns can be visible to the trained eye. Much like an athlete can flex certain muscles, we can do the same exact thing when it comes to studying culture. It requires the same rigor and repetitive training.” One of the most important laws of culture is that studying culture is something that anyone can do, but it takes time. The more practice you dedicate, the deeper, subtler, and more nuanced patterns you can uncover.
- “It’s the things that no else is talking about that grows into the most fascinating things. And that’s what gives you and your clients the competitive advantage.” Virtual reality. NFTs. Olivia Rodrigo. However big these trends might be now, we can’t forget that they all started bubbling discreetly underneath the surface before they became big, splashy headlines. Look for the ripples before they become a swell.
- “We spend so much time thinking about the trend, the insight, and the piece of data itself, we have so little time to think about the implication of, What do I actually do about it? There’s so much opportunity and money in that latter half. How do you actually apply that learning back to that client’s business?” While immersing yourself in data and digging for insights, don’t forget the purpose behind it all: the downstream implications for your client. Whether that’s product development, market positioning, creative campaigns, or influencer strategies, the trends you propose need to translate into something actionable to have impact beyond conversation.
- “Paying attention is something we can do for one another. We’re all distracted and overwhelmed, and paying attention is care and empathy.” More than anything, analyzing culture is the act of paying attention. It makes us eager, refreshes us, and helps us understand the forces driving society and motivators pushing each other a little bit better.
Go deeper
This workshop focused on the methodologies of finding overlooked patterns and making unexpected connections. For more on the overlooked trends themselves, subscribe to Matt’s Substack, Zine.
And if you just can’t get enough, be on the lookout for his annual synthesis of trend reports, Meta Trending Trends, and check out his regular posts on Forbes!
Run with it
The moment you’ve all been waiting for — 4 tips and tricks to make sense of culture:
- Layer + triangulate: Using as many sources of intelligence as you can get your hands on, create constellations of insights to color your snapshot of culture, as you compare sources for support and contrast them for nuance.
- Connect dots: Identify the common denominator among disparate trends to understand the cultural forces at the heart of driving these signals and shifts. Pro tip: there can be more than one right answer!
- Create tensions: Let’s be real, culture can be ~messy~. Instead of shying away from data that contradicts, lean into the tension to create a more nuanced, valuable, and truthful view of the world.
- Over-analyze: Zoom in to find the richness, and zoom out to see the big picture, sharpening your perspective along the way. As a community that aims to help thinkers thrive, we hope y’all don’t shy away from this one ;)
Remember though that most importantly, these aren’t hard and fast rules. We’re all learning how to analyze culture better together. Try it out, mix and match, make it your own, and have fun with it.
The next time you’re scanning social media or reading the latest report from Mintel, we hope you’ll put these approaches to practice and bring the overlooked to the forefront, creating a better, more diverse, and more interesting world in the process.
With love and solidarity,
Team strtgst
the gst /gist/ is a publication of strtgst.co
