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Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands

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How do we explain the breakthrough market success of businesses like Nike, Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, and Jack Daniel's? Conventional models of strategy and innovation simply don't work. The most influential ideas on innovation are shaped by the worldview of engineers and economists - build a better mousetrap and the world will take notice. Holt and Cameron challenge this conventional wisdom and take an entirely different champion a better ideology and the world will take notice as well. Holt and Cameron build a powerful new theory of cultural innovation. Brands in mature categories get locked into a form of cultural mimicry, what the authors call a cultural orthodoxy. Historical changes in society create demand for new culture - ideological opportunities that upend this orthodoxy. Cultural innovations repurpose cultural content lurking in subcultures to respond to this emerging demand, leapfrogging entrenched incumbents.

Cultural Strategy guides managers and entrepreneurs on how to leverage ideological

- How managers can use culture to out-innovate their competitors
- How entrepreneurs can identify new market opportunities that big companies miss
- How underfunded challengers can win against category Goliaths
- How technology businesses can avoid commoditization
- How social entrepreneurs can develop businesses that appeal to more than just fellow activists
- How subcultural brands can break out of the 'cultural chasm' to mass market success
- How global brands can pursue cross-cultural strategies to succeed in local markets
- How organizations can maximize their innovation capabilities by avoiding the brand bureaucracy trap

Written by leading authorities on branding in the world today, along with one of the advertising industry's leading visionaries, Cultural Strategy transforms what has always been treated as the "intuitive" side of market innovation into a systematic strategic discipline.

387 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2010

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Douglas B. Holt

7 books12 followers

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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
Profile Image for Chantal .
345 reviews916 followers
February 22, 2019
A must-read for any marketing professional. Sometimes unnecessarily wordy but the concept behind the ideas presented in this book is a real gem.
Profile Image for Jonathan Cook.
31 reviews11 followers
October 28, 2015
Cultural Strategy, by Douglas Cameron and Douglas Holt, was a simultaneously exciting and frustrating read for me. It is an important book in that it provides a specific model for integrating the power of culture into marketing strategy. It's a milestone that the authors go beyond the generic advice to simply "pay attention to culture" that most business books provide. The authors clearly have working experience in this area, and are able to provide compelling narratives to justify the application of their cultural strategy model.

The weakness of this book, however, is a consequence of it being one of the first of its kind. The model of cultural strategy that it offers is better than what most marketers currently use, but it's much thinner than it could be.

For one thing, the authors' model of culture is rather sparse, in comparison to what most cultural anthropologists might describe. Holt and Cameron content themselves with understanding culture as mere ideology - as ideas that are shared and motivate. Culture is much more than that. It's especially important for people in business to work with culture as something embodied. Culture isn't just the communication of ideas. Culture is in physical objects we possess, and the behavior we engage in with those objects. These aspects of cultural strategy are largely missing from Holt and Cameron's model. The authors briefly mention ritual here and there, but they never explain what they mean by it, much less how to use ritual in business. This oversight leads to a rather narrow scope of recommende application. Holt and Cameron focus mostly on advertising as a tool of cultural strategy, but advertising holds a rapidly diminishing portion of the marketer's toolbox.

The book is thick with examples, perhaps a bit over thick, to compensate for the relatively sparse principles for cultural strategy that the authors provide. People who have read other work by Douglas Holt will recognize much that has been recycled for use here. The heavy reliance on examples gives the impression that cultural strategy mostly involves having a team of savvy and perceptive people who will notice cultural trends before the competition. Indeed, at the end of the book, the authors make an unfortunate descent into design thinking, suggesting that "cultural studios" can simply start off sloppy, and then go through iterative cycles of testing and refinement until they hit on a strategy that takes advantage of a cultural disruption.

Some broader principles of culture could improve this fumbling approach, but Holt and Cameron are resistant to such principles, viewing them as tools that stiff "brand bureaucracies" use to defend their falwed ideologies. There's some truth to that, but a smarter strategy could involve using principles of culture to establish more sustainable, less ideosyncratic processes of anti-bureaucratic innovation.

A final shortcoming of this book is that the authors don't seriously treat other methodologies that could be incorporated into a bigger, more effective system of cultural strategy in business. Holt and Cameron acknowledge only the most superficial versions of emotional mindshare strategy, for example, when there are in fact a growing number of research firms using extremely deep qualitative methodologies to illuminate complex and beautiful systems of emotional significance. When the authors of this book reduce such research to catchphrases, they accurately describe what corporate bureaucracies can do TO the results of such research, but the solution to this probem is to improve translation of research results into corporate action, not to abandon the research entirely.

I've focused on the gaps and flaws in Cultural Strategy in this review, but encourage people working to develop culturally-informed methods in business to read this book nonetheless. It is to be expected that any book seeking to introduce concepts of culture into business will be partial and problematic at this point. The serious treatment of culture as a source for management and marketing has barely begun, and Holt and Cameron are to be applauded for this effort to provide the qualitative side of commerce more of the attention that it deserves.
Profile Image for William.
73 reviews2 followers
August 22, 2021
This book is a significantly improved version of Dr. Holt’s previous book “How Brands Become Icons”. There are three pieces that I find particularly valuable:

1. The authors place their argument in the context of strategy literature. While classical strategy scholars place heavy emphasis on innovation on the product side (notably Clayton Christensen’s work on disruptive innovation, Kim and Mauborgne’s work on blue ocean), this book argues that radical marketing innovation (via cultural tension strategy) is an essential and often-overlooked part of business strategy.

2. The authors’ analysis of “brand bureaucracy” is fascinating. It argues that while bureaucracy is useful in bringing incremental marketing innovation, it hinders radical branding innovation for two reasons: (1) bureaucracy reduces “cultural understanding” to numbers and “tone-deaf” statements. (2) outsourcing branding to external agencies leads to “random creativity” that are often inconsistent with the company’s core value and cultural strategy.

3. The authors present the “6 stage cultural strategy” framework that forms the cultural strategy. A limitation is that though the authors give many case studies that utilize the 6 stages framework, they didn’t really explain how to come up with ideas for each stage and evaluate the quality of ideas.

Overall, this book is a worthwhile read and a warning toward the current “data-driven” marketing frenzy: analytics can bring out incremental improvement, but without a deep, cultural understanding of customers, analytics alone cannot lead to radical branding innovation.
Profile Image for Mark Nguyen.
13 reviews
March 12, 2018
Depends who is reading.

For marketers, this book is brilliant. As mentioned by Jonathan,most marketing literature oversimplifies the "pay attention to customers and culture" concept. The marketing view is that customers have simple, and inherently fixed characteristics, rather than being independent agents that create and consume local cultural ideologies.

Marketing: Amy is a vegan and millenial, who actively engages in social media. (Only answers the What?)

Cultural studies adds much more depth to any market research inquiry, and I'm really happy to find a book that finally combines the two disciplines.

Marketing + Cultural Studies: Amy is a vegan because of her exposure to high performing social ventures, which have managed to create a narrative of social responsibilty in the context of capitalism. This means that while she is more aware of her consumption patterns, she will only modify it according to how much her still inherently capitalistic environment can reward her for it. (Answers the question of Why? and How?)

However, for cultural anthropologists this book is not worth the read. The writing is sparse and the amount of total research is very limited. There isn't complete data on the context of the case studies.
Profile Image for Karen.
39 reviews
September 1, 2016
I really liked the case study format and found it really illuminating. As far as business/marketing strategy books go, this was a great read.
Profile Image for Josh.
10 reviews
February 24, 2019
I enjoyed this book mainly because it provided an opposing viewpoint on the “sciency” approach that most within the marketing industry have by now taken for granted - the investigative approach most deemed to deliver the “truths” that inform on all marketing decisions. I also like the sample of 6 cultural tactics illustrated through examples which provided excellent food for thought.

While there are certainly many other golden nuggets scattered across the pages in the book, I find that the social innovation theory stripped into a series of key steps is still too complex for clinical application as a marketer. Holt and Cameron seem to suggest for a great deal of ethnographical research done upfront to identify the ideological opportunities coupled with an iterative approach in trying and testing different ideas until you hit the gold mine.

Regardless, it’s a good wake up call for all marketers to acquire a deep sense of appreciation for and understanding of the cultural and sub-cultural dynamics that goes on in one’s industry.
Profile Image for Claudia Yahany.
192 reviews14 followers
May 22, 2017
Innovar no es solo hacer las cosas diferentes, sino CREAR valor. Es algo completamente subjetivo: ¿valor para quién? ¿cuánto valor? Si lo queremos simplificar aún más, busquemos simplemente productos (o marcas) comercialmente exitosas.

El capítulo que más atrajo mi atención, fue en el que se explica por qué cuando el marketing pretende ser ciencia pierde todo su valor creativo (y es una paradoja con la que los que se dedican a eso de forma responsable, sufren todos los días). Entonces querer resumir todo el estudio de casos con impacto en la cultura (que los autores describen como innovación cultural) en estrategias exclusivamente de marketing, no me hacen sentido. Aunque a veces es buen ejercicio estudiar otras marcas desde el espejo retrovisor.

Se pueden estudiar la cultura y las tendencias para crear productos relevantes. Corrección: se tienen que estudiar la cultura y las tendencias para crear productos relevantes. That's it.
Profile Image for Serene.
127 reviews
April 27, 2023
Okay, so I didn’t read this word for word but I am so done with this coursework. Don’t even talk to me.

Good theory though and definitely applicable for industry. It’s just a shame that most are firm driven and stuck in their ways.
4 reviews
March 8, 2022
In the end, it's still a commercial related book. For most successful companies, cultural creativeness is the key driver.
4 reviews2 followers
April 7, 2011
Holt and Cameron’s book is on brand innov­a­tion — a related, often over­lap­ping, but dis­tinct field from product design and innov­a­tion. Their exper­i­ence and case stud­ies are groun­ded in the likes of Ben & Jerry’s, Levi’s and MTV, and use advert­ising as their primary medium rather than the nuts and bolts of actual things that define our world.

In many ways, I would call this book the brand-centric corol­lary to Verganti’s design-driven innov­a­tion. In case study after case study, they make the argu­ment for how dis­rupt­ing cul­tural ideo­logy can provide growth and profits in cat­egor­ies that have long been aban­doned as crowded ‘red oceans’ of commoditisation.

Along the way, they write one of the most vivid, damning, and spe­cific indict­ments of mod­ern mar­ket­ing prac­tices I’ve ever read.
Profile Image for Lauren McFarland.
92 reviews1 follower
Read
August 26, 2015
I enjoyed the case studies outlined in this book--especially how they tied to myths. I believe Holt makes a strong point here about myths resonating with consumers and driving them to support certain brands. The only additional point I'd make is the myth needs to be part of an overall marketing strategy--it's simply not strong enough to stand on its own.
Profile Image for Ricardo.
1 review
April 4, 2013
If you work in Marketing or Advertising, this is a must read. It is a good reality-check.
Profile Image for Ruby Sudoyo.
20 reviews
September 27, 2013
Useful for work - on understanding the cultural tension among the nation/consumers in order to keep the brands relevant
Profile Image for Julie.
130 reviews
December 18, 2015
Very insightful and a strong holistic approach....tough, but worth the effort. The case study detail is excellent.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews

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