A Crash Course on Culture Flows

What does it take for a brand to stay on top of current events, narrative trends, and shifting sentiments?

The answer? …A lot.

Now more than ever, it’s essential for social brands to listen to their communities and to stand for something. But how do you listen? And what do you listen to? With so much being talked about at any given moment in any given community, how can a brand successfully identify a relevant “pulse”? How can you pay attention to and react to what matters most?

In order to help companies tackle this problem, Kalil Vicioso of Tiny Hat Consulting and Matt Madden, the Director of the Lab, worked together to develop “Culture Flows.”

Culture Flows is a service offered to consolidate the most relevant findings from the web and from surveys into actionable insights. It provides organizations with the right language and positioning for their brand to navigate emerging trends, from “putting up guardrails” to illuminating aspirational themes, enabling them to go above and beyond what customers expect from a brand.

This unique approach pairs the qualitative art of social listening with the quantitative validation of primary research and survey methods. What are people talking about? What do they search for when they aren’t talking to their friends? What overall social trends appear when answering these questions over time or within a specific geographic area? Culture Flows analyzes both social and search data to discover what is resonating in the minds of consumers, both publicly (through social data), and privately (via search data).

The information gathered can then be organized into both narrative trends and sentiment maps.

Narrative Trends

Narrative trends inform strategic vision by exploring phases of cultural shifts to identify, track, and predict the near-term future. These insights help your brand tap into emerging trends in sentiment and identify shifts in aesthetic aspects of culture.

In a recent Culture Flows project, we uncovered some of what matters most to the people of Boston. Over the last few years, fewer people were talking about “the American Dream,” but more people were thinking about social justice, gender equality, unity, and togetherness in a time oversaturated with social distancing and divisions.

We also observed an increased interest in attention to health—blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes specifically. Bostonians are also consistently looking for kid-friendly things to do and places to satisfy their sweet tooth. Farmers markets, baked goods, food trucks, and ice cream were all “commended” searches. If your hotel or restaurant in Boston isn’t offering healthy, sugar-free desserts yet, now would be the time.

Sentiment Mapping

This approach maps out how different segments feel about key conversations and themes in the broader culture and their community.

For another project based in St. Louis, a brand wanted to know what a local community would think about developing an apartment complex in a particular area of their downtown. Would the local residents look down on the company as “gentrifying” an area? What could they do to instead “fit in” and build community support for the project? We looked into the local area’s perception of everything from “fair housing” to “green spaces” to see what else was searched alongside these terms—both positive and negative. We were then able to make recommendations about using community-minded messaging, emphasizing minimalist design, and promoting customer perceptions of sustainability. These insights were simple and immediately actionable, giving our client confidence that their marketing approach would be met more favorably by the people of St. Louis.

Why Culture Flows?

In short, Culture Flows is a great option for understanding the market in a wider and a deeper context, especially in specific geographic areas. There is a lot to be learned from the things people talk about, both in online public forums with friends and in their private conversations with the Google search bar.

When aggregated across a community, these shared attitudes can make or break any brand. Used right, they can uncover needs and opportunities; without tapping into these insights, brands risk their ability to resonate with customers and communities.    

Interested in learning more about Culture Flows? Reach out to us today to see if it might be a good fit.