What is Tribe marketing

For a number of years, the economy and consumer tastes have been growing more and more tribal. By "tribal," I mean the tendency of the American social landscape to grow increasingly hard wired (or as sociologists call it, "ethnocentric") in the choices groups of people make to respect (and purchase) the preferences of their social peers and reject the preferences of those who are not their peers.

Fault lines that are evolving in American culture create embedded economic sub groups that are of special interest to marketers and media people. First, preference orderings that characterize tribes are becoming increasingly evident to members of the tribe. Second, distaste for the preferences, values and icons of one tribe are growing more antagonizing to other tribes. Our mild mannered, un self conscious segments of the past are emerging as self reflexive, self aware, interest defending tribes.

Consider the following question: If you had learned that Mitsubishi had put its cars in a hip hop/gangsta film celebrating midnight street racing, drive by shooting and gang rivalry, would you buy a Mitsubishi automobile? The answer to this question depends upon whether hip hop rivalry and its cultural trappings are icons for your tribe. Similarly, Jimmy Choo's illustrious shoes, Viking appliances, Mercedes Benz automobiles, heterosexual marriage, NASCAR racing, Seiko watches, Harvard University, Keepsake Jewelry, Mary Kay cosmetics, Heineken Beer, Tag Heuer watches, Best Buy appliances, Prescriptives, and even a product like Tide detergent help to define one's tribal identity.

What should interest mass (or even massive) marketers is that the choice a consumer makes not to purchase any one of these brands depends on a desire to not misinform people about the tribe one belongs to. People in tribes: are highly disciplined in their brand preferences; are ready to change as new brands, services and ideas gain currency within the tribe; are acutely aware of their affinity group; and selectively seek relationships with members of their tribe. At the same time, tribal members: discriminate against the icons of other tribes; avoid information that offers insight into the rationale behind the behavior of other tribes; and avoid creating relationships with tribal outsiders.

The tribes can be organized by at least three key social variables: value orientation, relative social class and age:

Value orientation will refer to a bundle of values political, religious and social that distinguish conservatives (CVs) from progressives (PVs).

Relative social class refers to a bundle of variables (income, occupational rank, investment portfolio, etc.) that distinguish individuals with a relatively high level of discretionary income (HDs) from those with little or virtually no discretionary income (LDs).

Age refers to the physical age and health age of the individual and his or her spouse for this article I am considering only adults and have conceptually divided the population between tending young (TYs, 22 45 or so) and tending mature (TMs, 46 90).

Each construct reflects potent forces for binding tribes and elaborates the differences among them. People who are conservative tend to govern their decision making and ethics by reference to principles of right versus wrong. Progressives tend to apply fairness as their ethical standard. More affluent people are apt to believe in reward for merit as a just basis for allocating resources. The less affluent tend to view entitlement as a just basis for allocation. With rare exceptions, media choice is tribal. Preferred media will respect tribal belief. Likewise, media will be rejected when its content challenges prevailing sentiment and belief. Denial inoculates the tribe against contrary points of view. The old reliables evening news, national magazines, family programming and radio no longer deliver the whole matrix of tribes.

The Search for the Silver Bullet

This is hard. Silver bullet brands are dearly won. It's not a pure question of advertising and promotional spend: Goldtoe dominates the men's hose market across the matrix because word of mouth associates them with professionalism in dress. This singular silver bullet brand construct this brand promise adds margin to products by delivering a universal sentiment or idea that is shared among all people and compelling at the deepest human level. In order to succeed at this game, you must build your business and corporate culture around being authentic in your delivery of your brand promise.

There are three critical analytic steps to constructing a brand promise and one rule.

1. Determine what is true of your business.

2. Determine what is meaningful to your consumers.

3. Determine what is distinctive within your category.

Where truth, meaning and distinction intersect, you will (may) find your brand promise your silver bullet. But the rule is: you may only choose a single virtue if you intend to sell across the whole matrix.

Again, this is difficult in a tribal world. You, too, are influenced by your tribe. You see what your peers value; you deny what is not valued. Despite this, silver bullets can be created. Wal Mart did it: value. Coca Cola did it: refreshment. Tiffany's did it: love. Dell did it: competence. Jeep did it: freedom. Frito Lay did it: taste. Volvo did it: safety. Disney World did it: fun. McDonald's did it: consistency.

Note how all these brands, and the ebb and flow of their value to consumers and investors ebbs and flows according to the consistency by which they cling to their central premise their brand promise. Second, in each of these cases, the authentic brand promise arose from a commitment the founder and his heirs made to the consumer. Third, the promise is validated by experience and the experience of seeing others use the product. Silver bullet brands are transitive with respect to the matrix of tribal boundaries precisely because they are unyielding in their association with a primal human virtue that trumps tribal prejudices.

Silver bullets can be found in a tribal world, often in strange places. Yellow Freight, now Yellow Roadway Transportation, recently found one. The company went from Fortune's list of the ten weakest companies to its ten best in just seven years by concentrating on the single virtue: certainty. The company's revenues, morale, customer depth and breadth, and stock price rose. Indeed, its capital value increased by 625% over the period 1997 2003.

If you pursue this strategy, you must be both confident and disciplined. Identify a core, primal emotional commitment that your consumers will use to communicate to themselves who they are and who they are not. To build a silver bullet, you will have to endure the pain of critics doing their worst, obsess on message, invest in public relations and spread your media around the tribal matrix.

In any case, succeeding in a tribal economy involves strategic choice. You can join the battle on behalf of your tribe, or you can steer clear by seeking universality. Tribal strategies are simpler, but they offer lower payoffs, especially in terms of volume and marketing cost per unit. Just ask the folks at BMW what it's like to be an icon brand across the board. Their marketing expense runs roughly $400 per sale. Lincolns, by contrast, cost more than $5000 per automobile to market. It's a definite Reaganista brand.

In a private conversation, Malcolm Gladwell characterized this choice as the strategic dilemma over whether one wishes to be catsup or mustard. If catsup is your game, you get to be Heinz and Heinz is what catsup tastes like. If mustard is your game, your product becomes a condiment icon standard fare for one tribe's sandwiches and appalling to the others.

As we ponder this choice, we will be in a country that grows increasingly fragmented by multilateral hostility. I am not sure how I feel about this, nor am I confident that events will push us toward a renewed sense of common purpose. It seems that sometimes hostility leads to a bridge at Antietam or the banks of the Volga, and other times, renaissance grows from social contradiction. I hope we are on the edge of the latter.What is Tribe marketing

For a number of years, the economy and consumer tastes have been growing more and more tribal. By "tribal," I mean the tendency of the American social landscape to grow increasingly hard wired (or as sociologists call it, "ethnocentric") in the choices groups of people make to respect (and purchase) the preferences of their social peers and reject the preferences of those who are not their peers.

Fault lines that are evolving in American culture create embedded economic sub groups that are of special interest to marketers and media people. First, preference orderings that characterize tribes are becoming increasingly evident to members of the tribe. Second, distaste for the preferences, values and icons of one tribe are growing more antagonizing to other tribes. Our mild mannered, un self conscious segments of the past are emerging as self reflexive, self aware, interest defending tribes.

Consider the following question: If you had learned that Mitsubishi had put its cars in a hip hop/gangsta film celebrating midnight street racing, drive by shooting and gang rivalry, would you buy a Mitsubishi automobile? The answer to this question depends upon whether hip hop rivalry and its cultural trappings are icons for your tribe. Similarly, Jimmy Choo's illustrious shoes, Viking appliances, Mercedes Benz automobiles, heterosexual marriage, NASCAR racing, Seiko watches, Harvard University, Keepsake Jewelry, Mary Kay cosmetics, Heineken Beer, Tag Heuer watches, Best Buy appliances, Prescriptives, and even a product like Tide detergent help to define one's tribal identity.

What should interest mass (or even massive) marketers is that the choice a consumer makes not to purchase any one of these brands depends on a desire to not misinform people about the tribe one belongs to. People in tribes: are highly disciplined in their brand preferences; are ready to change as new brands, services and ideas gain currency within the tribe; are acutely aware of their affinity group; and selectively seek relationships with members of their tribe. At the same time, tribal members: discriminate against the icons of other tribes; avoid information that offers insight into the rationale behind the behavior of other tribes; and avoid creating relationships with tribal outsiders.

The tribes can be organized by at least three key social variables: value orientation, relative social class and age:

Value orientation will refer to a bundle of values political, religious and social that distinguish conservatives (CVs) from progressives (PVs).

Relative social class refers to a bundle of variables (income, occupational rank, investment portfolio, etc.) that distinguish individuals with a relatively high level of discretionary income (HDs) from those with little or virtually no discretionary income (LDs).

Age refers to the physical age and health age of the individual and his or her spouse for this article I am considering only adults and have conceptually divided the population between tending young (TYs, 22 45 or so) and tending mature (TMs, 46 90).

Each construct reflects potent forces for binding tribes and elaborates the differences among them. People who are conservative tend to govern their decision making and ethics by reference to principles of right versus wrong. Progressives tend to apply fairness as their ethical standard. More affluent people are apt to believe in reward for merit as a just basis for allocating resources. The less affluent tend to view entitlement as a just basis for allocation. With rare exceptions, media choice is tribal. Preferred media will respect tribal belief. Likewise, media will be rejected when its content challenges prevailing sentiment and belief. Denial inoculates the tribe against contrary points of view. The old reliables evening news, national magazines, family programming and radio no longer deliver the whole matrix of tribes.

The Search for the Silver Bullet

This is hard. Silver bullet brands are dearly won. It's not a pure question of advertising and promotional spend: Goldtoe dominates the men's hose market across the matrix because word of mouth associates them with professionalism in dress. This singular silver bullet brand construct this brand promise adds margin to products by delivering a universal sentiment or idea that is shared among all people and compelling at the deepest human level. In order to succeed at this game, you must build your business and corporate culture around being authentic in your delivery of your brand promise.

There are three critical analytic steps to constructing a brand promise and one rule.

1. Determine what is true of your business.

2. Determine what is meaningful to your consumers.

3. Determine what is distinctive within your category.

Where truth, meaning and distinction intersect, you will (may) find your brand promise your silver bullet. But the rule is: you may only choose a single virtue if you intend to sell across the whole matrix.

Again, this is difficult in a tribal world. You, too, are influenced by your tribe. You see what your peers value; you deny what is not valued. Despite this, silver bullets can be created. Wal Mart did it: value. Coca Cola did it: refreshment. Tiffany's did it: love. Dell did it: competence. Jeep did it: freedom. Frito Lay did it: taste. Volvo did it: safety. Disney World did it: fun. McDonald's did it: consistency.

Note how all these brands, and the ebb and flow of their value to consumers and investors ebbs and flows according to the consistency by which they cling to their central premise their brand promise. Second, in each of these cases, the authentic brand promise arose from a commitment the founder and his heirs made to the consumer. Third, the promise is validated by experience and the experience of seeing others use the product. Silver bullet brands are transitive with respect to the matrix of tribal boundaries precisely because they are unyielding in their association with a primal human virtue that trumps tribal prejudices.

Silver bullets can be found in a tribal world, often in strange places. Yellow Freight, now Yellow Roadway Transportation, recently found one. The company went from Fortune's list of the ten weakest companies to its ten best in just seven years by concentrating on the single virtue: certainty. The company's revenues, morale, customer depth and breadth, and stock price rose. Indeed, its capital value increased by 625% over the period 1997 2003.

If you pursue this strategy, you must be both confident and disciplined. Identify a core, primal emotional commitment that your consumers will use to communicate to themselves who they are and who they are not. To build a silver bullet, you will have to endure the pain of critics doing their worst, obsess on message, invest in public relations and spread your media around the tribal matrix.

In any case, succeeding in a tribal economy involves strategic choice. You can join the battle on behalf of your tribe, or you can steer clear by seeking universality. Tribal strategies are simpler, but they offer lower payoffs, especially in terms of volume and marketing cost per unit. Just ask the folks at BMW what it's like to be an icon brand across the board. Their marketing expense runs roughly $400 per sale. Lincolns, by contrast, cost more than $5000 per automobile to market. It's a definite Reaganista brand.

In a private conversation, Malcolm Gladwell characterized this choice as the strategic dilemma over whether one wishes to be catsup or mustard. If catsup is your game, you get to be Heinz and Heinz is what catsup tastes like. If mustard is your game, your product becomes a condiment icon standard fare for one tribe's sandwiches and appalling to the others.

As we ponder this choice, we will be in a country that grows increasingly fragmented by multilateral hostility. I am not sure how I feel about this, nor am I confident that events will push us toward a renewed sense of common purpose. It seems that sometimes hostility leads to a bridge at Antietam or the banks of the Volga, and other times, renaissance grows from social contradiction. I hope we are on the edge of the latter.What is Tribe marketing

For a number of years, the economy and consumer tastes have been growing more and more tribal. By "tribal," I mean the tendency of the American social landscape to grow increasingly hard wired (or as sociologists call it, "ethnocentric") in the choices groups of people make to respect (and purchase) the preferences of their social peers and reject the preferences of those who are not their peers.

Fault lines that are evolving in American culture create embedded economic sub groups that are of special interest to marketers and media people. First, preference orderings that characterize tribes are becoming increasingly evident to members of the tribe. Second, distaste for the preferences, values and icons of one tribe are growing more antagonizing to other tribes. Our mild mannered, un self conscious segments of the past are emerging as self reflexive, self aware, interest defending tribes.

Consider the following question: If you had learned that Mitsubishi had put its cars in a hip hop/gangsta film celebrating midnight street racing, drive by shooting and gang rivalry, would you buy a Mitsubishi automobile? The answer to this question depends upon whether hip hop rivalry and its cultural trappings are icons for your tribe. Similarly, Jimmy Choo's illustrious shoes, Viking appliances, Mercedes Benz automobiles, heterosexual marriage, NASCAR racing, Seiko watches, Harvard University, Keepsake Jewelry, Mary Kay cosmetics, Heineken Beer, Tag Heuer watches, Best Buy appliances, Prescriptives, and even a product like Tide detergent help to define one's tribal identity.

What should interest mass (or even massive) marketers is that the choice a consumer makes not to purchase any one of these brands depends on a desire to not misinform people about the tribe one belongs to. People in tribes: are highly disciplined in their brand preferences; are ready to change as new brands, services and ideas gain currency within the tribe; are acutely aware of their affinity group; and selectively seek relationships with members of their tribe. At the same time, tribal members: discriminate against the icons of other tribes; avoid information that offers insight into the rationale behind the behavior of other tribes; and avoid creating relationships with tribal outsiders.

The tribes can be organized by at least three key social variables: value orientation, relative social class and age:

Value orientation will refer to a bundle of values political, religious and social that distinguish conservatives (CVs) from progressives (PVs).

Relative social class refers to a bundle of variables (income, occupational rank, investment portfolio, etc.) that distinguish individuals with a relatively high level of discretionary income (HDs) from those with little or virtually no discretionary income (LDs).

Age refers to the physical age and health age of the individual and his or her spouse for this article I am considering only adults and have conceptually divided the population between tending young (TYs, 22 45 or so) and tending mature (TMs, 46 90).

Each construct reflects potent forces for binding tribes and elaborates the differences among them. People who are conservative tend to govern their decision making and ethics by reference to principles of right versus wrong. Progressives tend to apply fairness as their ethical standard. More affluent people are apt to believe in reward for merit as a just basis for allocating resources. The less affluent tend to view entitlement as a just basis for allocation. With rare exceptions, media choice is tribal. Preferred media will respect tribal belief. Likewise, media will be rejected when its content challenges prevailing sentiment and belief. Denial inoculates the tribe against contrary points of view. The old reliables evening news, national magazines, family programming and radio no longer deliver the whole matrix of tribes.

The Search for the Silver Bullet

This is hard. Silver bullet brands are dearly won. It's not a pure question of advertising and promotional spend: Goldtoe dominates the men's hose market across the matrix because word of mouth associates them with professionalism in dress. This singular silver bullet brand construct this brand promise adds margin to products by delivering a universal sentiment or idea that is shared among all people and compelling at the deepest human level. In order to succeed at this game, you must build your business and corporate culture around being authentic in your delivery of your brand promise.

There are three critical analytic steps to constructing a brand promise and one rule.

1. Determine what is true of your business.

2. Determine what is meaningful to your consumers.

3. Determine what is distinctive within your category.

Where truth, meaning and distinction intersect, you will (may) find your brand promise your silver bullet. But the rule is: you may only choose a single virtue if you intend to sell across the whole matrix.

Again, this is difficult in a tribal world. You, too, are influenced by your tribe. You see what your peers value; you deny what is not valued. Despite this, silver bullets can be created. Wal Mart did it: value. Coca Cola did it: refreshment. Tiffany's did it: love. Dell did it: competence. Jeep did it: freedom. Frito Lay did it: taste. Volvo did it: safety. Disney World did it: fun. McDonald's did it: consistency.

Note how all these brands, and the ebb and flow of their value to consumers and investors ebbs and flows according to the consistency by which they cling to their central premise their brand promise. Second, in each of these cases, the authentic brand promise arose from a commitment the founder and his heirs made to the consumer. Third, the promise is validated by experience and the experience of seeing others use the product. Silver bullet brands are transitive with respect to the matrix of tribal boundaries precisely because they are unyielding in their association with a primal human virtue that trumps tribal prejudices.

Silver bullets can be found in a tribal world, often in strange places. Yellow Freight, now Yellow Roadway Transportation, recently found one. The company went from Fortune's list of the ten weakest companies to its ten best in just seven years by concentrating on the single virtue: certainty. The company's revenues, morale, customer depth and breadth, and stock price rose. Indeed, its capital value increased by 625% over the period 1997 2003.

If you pursue this strategy, you must be both confident and disciplined. Identify a core, primal emotional commitment that your consumers will use to communicate to themselves who they are and who they are not. To build a silver bullet, you will have to endure the pain of critics doing their worst, obsess on message, invest in public relations and spread your media around the tribal matrix.

In any case, succeeding in a tribal economy involves strategic choice. You can join the battle on behalf of your tribe, or you can steer clear by seeking universality. Tribal strategies are simpler, but they offer lower payoffs, especially in terms of volume and marketing cost per unit. Just ask the folks at BMW what it's like to be an icon brand across the board. Their marketing expense runs roughly $400 per sale. Lincolns, by contrast, cost more than $5000 per automobile to market. It's a definite Reaganista brand.

In a private conversation, Malcolm Gladwell characterized this choice as the strategic dilemma over whether one wishes to be catsup or mustard. If catsup is your game, you get to be Heinz and Heinz is what catsup tastes like. If mustard is your game, your product becomes a condiment icon standard fare for one tribe's sandwiches and appalling to the others.

As we ponder this choice, we will be in a country that grows increasingly fragmented by multilateral hostility. I am not sure how I feel about this, nor am I confident that events will push us toward a renewed sense of common purpose. It seems that sometimes hostility leads to a bridge at Antietam or the banks of the Volga, and other times, renaissance grows from social contradiction. I hope we are on the edge of the latter.