The Cost of Lacking Cultural Intelligence
“Don’t go to Paris.
Don’t tour Paris.
And. Please. Don’t. DO Paris.
Live in Paris.
When you Airbnb in Paris, you have your own home.
Make your bed.
Cook. You know, the stuff you normally do.
Don’t go to LA.
Don’t go to New York.
Don’t go to Tokyo.
Live there. Live in Malibu. Live in the East Village. Live in Shinagawa. Feel at home.
Anywhere. Do your regular routine.
Wherever you go, don’t go there. Live there. Even if it’s just for a night.”
Belong Anywhere
That’s a really great tagline. I’m a longtime advertising and marketing guy and I’d like to think I know a good tag line when I see it. It’s focused on the consumer. It’s wonderfully aspirational.
Except…
What if…
You don’t.
What if you don’t “belong anywhere”?
It is the intersection of #Airbnbwhileblack and their new tagline which speaks volumes because it is the perfect demonstration of what happens when companies have cultural blinders on.
The article endeavors to suggest the possibility of what might happen if computers become smarter than humans. This of course is not a new concept at all and could be a pillar of science fiction books and movies all its own.
I might have a particular bias when it comes to this subject because it in fact is one factor that helps support a rationale that is in part the basis of my work as well as the work of a handful of others. The handful of others might be people like Kate Crawford.
Kate Crawford is a principal researcher at Microsoft and co-chairwoman of a White House symposium on “Society and A.I.” It has brought this issue to light especially as it relates to the potential of very dangerous bias within the criminal justice system and others. What she is suggesting is that bias is effectively being baked in.
Ms. Crawford’s article is absolutely spot-on however, what I’m used to is that unjust institutional racism is already baked in to the system and is only further exacerbated should we seek to automate processes such as a predictive means better identifying the likelihood of recidivism.
That ship has already sailed and needs to be corrected but in the meantime, companies have proven themselves as woefully inept in fostering what the friends of mine who host “2 Dope Boys & a Podcast” called “cultural intelligence”.
The term cultural intelligence is by no means new. There is in fact an organization called the Cultural Intelligence Center and they have created what they call “CQ” which lets us know that the concept of cultural intelligence isn’t new but the context in this case is different. Let’s call the Cultural Intelligence Center’s version of CQ as “book smart” and our version of cultural intelligence as “street smart”.
Over the past several months there have been numerous issues that have come to light which are clear demonstrations of where cultural intelligence has been lacking.
On the “2 Dope Boys” podcast, they have a segment called “Eff Ups”. Most recently they called attention to Adidas and their sponsorship of the Colombian soccer team during the recent Copa Mundial. There was one slight problem. On a series of print ads, the country name was spelled “Columbia” not “Colombia”.
As Anna Marum from The Oregonian queried, “What’s in a vowel?” A lot. I’m not entirely sure of the magnitude of the actual mistake or the cost to replace whatever installations or publications where it appeared but the optics and subsequent backlash was considerable. What Michael Brooks and Phil McKenzie questioned during their podcast was exactly how on earth there wasn’t enough “cultural intelligence” within the organization for not one person to look and go, “Hmmm”?
It was however avoidable.
Just as the confluence of “Belong Anywhere” juxtaposed with #Airbnbwhileblack was wholly avoidable if not even somewhat predictable. If only there was the cultural intelligence in the room while the creative brief was being written or the tagline was being conceived of, tested (if it was) or being presented had someone simply asked the question, “but what if I (or we) don’t?” What if we don’t belong?
We can actually go back even further to the development of Airbnb’s booking processes and systems because it would seem to be very plausible for Airbnb to be able to technologically architect ways for people to not to be able to discriminate yet they didn’t although they have pledged to put those technological preventative measures in place. My guess is that it’s not that they couldn’t but rather in all likelihood it simply didn’t factor into anyone’s mindset that it was something that needed to be done. It was not a box to be checked. Not by intent mind you. I think Airbnb firmly has all the best intentions. And if you read Airbnb’s blog about how their image, positioning and logo came to be it’s quite glorious, idyllic and lovely in its intent. I don’t believe this of Uber but that’s a separate discussion altogether.
It was rather omission by experience or really lack thereof. Again, an instance of bias effectively being baked-in, and again, albeit through no mal intent whatsoever but it’s there and makes one wonder what else companies aren’t seeing. “Belong Anywhere” was a wistful utopian tagline that would make perfect sense when trying to create differentiation among competitors. Hotels. When in reality, Airbnb was actually creating a tagline that really was a reflection of utopian post-racial society that can only be thought up among a very homogenous set of minds, experiences and life stages.
Below is a very well put together and thoughtful video called “Airbnb introduces the Bélo: the story of a symbol of belonging.” It asks the viewer to “imagine”. And that’s just it. For some, their vision is just impossible to imagine.
Utilizing culture as a lens to help guide business and branding decisions is by no means a new concept but it is complicated and requires unique and intuitive skillsets that are elusive.
Douglas Holt has been at this since probably well before one of his first books in 2004. He and Douglas Cameron revisited the matter in 2012. In their book, “Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands”, they identify in part why companies have such a hard time with incorporating culture into their business decision making.
In a passage from their book, Holt and Cameron suggest that…
“Ideological opportunities provide one of the most fertile grounds for market innovation. Yet, these opportunities have gone unrecognized because of the extraordinary influence of economics, engineering, and psychology on management thinking. These disciplines, as different as they are, share a common assumption — in order to simplify the world, they purposely ignore cultural context and historical change. They remove all the messy bits of human life in order to present a tidy view of consumption that allows for corporations to function in a streamlined fashion. But it is in these untidy parts that innovation opportunities lurk.”
The cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken lauds Airbnb for exploiting what he calls “dark value” when in fact they are actually missing opportunities to see it. Put another way, when the concept of the company was conceived, the founders intuitively understood that they were unearthing some sort of dark value. However, arguably, if they had more access to cultural intelligence or were more keen to be able to see it, they might have ensured that their company wouldn’t be upset by the realities that the brand proposition falsely promises. Michael Brooks would call this the ability to see the “elusive obvious”.
“Dark Value: How to Find Hidden Value in the Digital Economy” is the title of a new book by Mr. McCracken. It’s only about 60 pages long and my understanding is that it’s the first of what is to be a part of a series of five books essentially about culture’s role in business and society and how all of those things are interconnected in particular in how it relates to capitalism. In this case specifically, McCracken attempts to unearth how to positively exploit opportunity and perhaps avoid pitfalls through the use of cultural awareness and understanding.
Early in the book, McCracken writes…
“In the summer of 2015, Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, insisted, against all measures and most opinion that U.S. Productivity was actually up.
The trouble, he suggested, is that we can’t see these gains because we are using old measures. When the GDP measure was developed in the 1930s, Varian observed, it focused on things like steel and grain. The improvements that come from Silicon Valley are harder to see.
This was the beginning of the end of capitalism as a blunt object, as a search for mere utility. This was an opportunity to free ourselves from those people who see the world as a solution to a problem, the more pragmatic and practical the better.
But we can’t complete this heresy until we begin to make the certain value visible. We need to show how our enterprise will create a value of a social, cultural, human kind.”
Other examples that McCracken uses in “Dark Value” are the companies Uber, Netflix and Fitbit among others.
Uber, for instance, he suggests isn’t just another version of a taxicab but has fundamentally changed our experience with that method of transportation. I would suggest McCracken is instinctually right however has merely touched the surface as to why.
I have a good friend who owns a fairly successful global car service business. I asked him recently how much his business was affected by companies like Uber and Lyft. I came to learn that his business was all corporate accounts and that security was an important function of his business. As such, large companies with very senior executives relied heavily on his company’s service. He identified how things were potentially changing. He talked about how one of his client’s was a company that had gone from being publically held with a board comprised predominantly of older blue chip type executives to being privately held by a young private equity firm and the board was now had a completely different make-up of much younger hedge fund and technology entrepreneur types. The first group would exit their hotel and look for the man in the black suit holding the placard with their name and if not found within a few minutes of the scheduled time would call someone and make it known. The second group might not even pay attention to their scheduled pick-up time, would walk past the gentleman holding the placard with their name because their nose was buried in their iPhone while either reading emails and summoning an Uber or just walking to the curb of the hotel and just getting in a cab.
What my friend is recognizing about his company is the role that culture is playing in his business. It is this that more and more companies are needing to discover. I would give Adidas a pass but would suggest that they seriously revisit their interdepartmental make-up. Culture matters more than you know especially when you can’t see it.
As McCracken says, “The world is a big lagoon in which dark values swim.”
Let us please not confuse this for companies recognizing various business opportunities to create logical (and often lazy) brand extensions, say Taco Bell making a Dorito’s flavored taco shell or BK’s Cheetos Mac and Cheese (yes that’s an actual thing). I’m talking about the role and importance that culture plays in business to not only recognize the “Dark Value” but also and sometimes an even more important role to tell companies how to avoid costly traps.
An example of a trap might be found in a recent Fast Company article. The author, Sarah Kessler, calls attention to a study by the Pew Center about the sharing economy and specifically services such as Airbnb.
She states…
“The study, which surveyed 4,787 American adults about their use of sharing and on-demand services, found that 13% of white people have used a home-sharing service, compared with just 5% of black people. A persistent and widening racial wealth gap likely contributes in part to the disparity in home-sharing usage. Tourism can be prohibitively expensive for lower-income families, and blacks are more likely to have lower incomes.”
The article then goes on to talk about whether or not the recent hashtag #Airbnbwhile black also plays a role into whether or not this affects blacks participation in the sharing economy.
Very little is right about the Fast Company piece. It’s a short observational piece with weak assertions. This isn’t investigative reporting with an exposé that will win a Pulitzer, it’s actually a piece that will do notable damage if it is to be believed as accurate if taken at face value. There are probably far more cultural reasons for blacks not participating as heavily in the sharing economy but the assumption is that it’s income-based without having actually asked the question is short sighted. Having previously had Marriott as a client I am well aware of how much of a financial investment is being made to court various lifestyle and affinity groups of frequent business travelers.
And herein lies the problem.
The cost of having cultural blinders is arguably very significant and the companies that have removed them have traditionally yielded great financial success but it’s still usually highly reactive or something that has been stumbled upon. Subaru might be a good example when they recognized how beloved their cars were to the LGBTQ community.
The most senior people within various companies are generally intuitive enough to know that there is something either afoot within their organization or there are opportunities being missed or an initiative (marketing or otherwise) just doesn’t feel right.
I once worked with a footwear company when they were in the midst of re-launching their brand. I was actually brought into the company by the head of sales, not the head of marketing. I’ve maintained a friendship with him for some years and have learned that he’s a very adept intuitive business guy and he sees culture very well. The re-launch of the brand didn’t sit well with him but he couldn’t just say, “Well, it just doesn’t feel right.” He brought me in to affirm what he already felt but couldn’t discern how he knew. It was that the company was a lifestyle/fashion brand but the brand advertising was showing people using the product in a performance context through action sports. At the time, that was an industry/category that was blowing up and all of the product was heavily performance oriented. It a disconnect in which the brand was then viewed as being inauthentic and the consumers were calling BS. What my client knew, he didn’t have a means of putting his finger on but I was able to identify, prove and articulate through an in-depth competitive analysis in which the cultural observations were the foundation which accurately enabled them to make a better business decision.
Finding dark value is not as elusive as one thinks. Yet it’s imperative to have people who can also understand what happens when you unearth a dark value to other aspects of a business. The undersea exploration of finding dark value shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. It’s likely that the Starbucks smartphone app has unearthed some sort of dark value but then where does Starbucks then fit on the fidelity/convenience spectrum, a concept explored by Kevin Maney in the book, “Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don’t”? At the very least you then have a person who can know to ask which questions. And those questions are usually in your periphery, not directly in front of you.
The new Pokemon craziness is ripe to exploit dark values. The question is who are the people best suited to unearth all of the possibilities while avoiding all the traps and pitfalls along the way?
There are countless other discoveries that are often viewed in hindsight but it’s folks like Grant McCracken and Douglas Holt and Douglas Cameron who are tenacious in their belief that shouldn’t be the case. It shouldn’t be hindsight and only now perhaps have we started to organically see types of individuals who have a culmination of the skillsets to make their visions a reality and provide a significant value to the companies with the vision to wade into the lagoon.
