The language of pop music | Alain Sylvain, Sylvain Labs | OnBrand '18

[Music] hello hello I came from Brooklyn New York I'm excited to be here how are you guys today how are you today alright I'm here to talk about pop culture this is a a fun topic what a way to start your Thursday morning I'm here to talk about the savagery of pop culture how the future of culture is rendering brands impotence but by way of introduction just indulge me in a couple minutes of one second just to tell you who I am and why I'm on stage here my name is Alanna Sivan I'm the founder and CEO of Sylvain labs Sylvain labs is an innovation in brand design company were located in New York that's where we're headquartered we have an office here in Amsterdam as well in Richmond Virginia were about 35 people we help companies develop new products and brands new approaches to their products and brands we've been doing that for about nine years some of our clients companies you might know things that we've worked on in the past we worked on the brand strategy for Spotify recently we helped develop the Google assistant for Google home we worked on the brand strategy for Airbnb and we're in the midst right now we just finished the brand work four ways which is super cool and we're excited about that so thank you for indulging that but I'm here to talk about pop culture you know at pop culture pop culture is that thing that thing that just is in the air it's in that it's in the ether it's just this concept that floats around and it's sort of this thing that is often viewed as trivial or frivolous we don't we don't really look to pop culture as being important or a value it's just in the background and in fact if you're an artist or if you're someone who takes your life seriously you look at pop culture and you kind of roll your eyes and you're like this is this is silly it doesn't really serve serve any value but I'm here to argue that there's actually an inherent relationship between pop culture and culture at large and brands that this is a codependent relationship and I'm gonna talk today about how that relationship is again rendering brands impotent and it's important to pay attention to pop culture it's important as more than just an observer it's the context in which we do our work all of us no matter what you do so there's a question so is there a purpose to pop and if you look at the slide really quickly it looks like is there a purpose to poop and not very different than what I'm talking about pop pop culture there is a purpose and I'm gonna argue is a fundamental primal purpose for what pop culture provides in society I mean think about think about what the moments in pop culture that we've we've experienced there's a Gangnam style which travelled the world in a matter of days from east to west it was sort of this weirdly unifying human experience there's nothing there were more people listening a Gangnam style then there were people that practiced one religion or spoke one language it was really a unifying moment in culture or think about the the poundss that is harry potter a book series that's also movies and a theme park and it's just the whole world think about all the languages and the people that have united around the story of this magical boy or the queen bee you know and her hand gestures and how that in itself was a sort of language to sort of like pop culture in a way is a sort of language that we use to communicate with each other Spotify one of our clients they track the emojis that people use in the titles of playlists with the feature certain artists so you know Drake has you know 100 and fire and I don't know what the the drips mean or the drops mean but uh Adele Adele it's kind of you know heartbreaking it's sad some depressive but it's it's pretty interesting right like in some way pop culture serves as this linguistic tool to communicate to each other or you know the the what is it the the color of the dress is it black and blue or whatever white and gold that was a meme it's interesting to see how pop culture is evolving and playing a role digitally and again it's serving as a sort of as a sort of language this is America which was an amazing song and video a couple of months ago it was really interesting to see how that phenomenon got adopted in Dominican Republic and Nigeria and Iraq and you know this is this is Nigeria it was an incredibly powerful moment and so again the world is communicating is really being critical about nationhood and sovereignty and what government should should should provide through this song so I would argue that pop culture is sort of the means in which culture deliberates complex issues it's it's the place it's the place where we wrestle with the concepts of the day and I'll give you a few examples and I'll start with in the United States you know in the 70s and 80s you saw a rise of these really interesting TV shows that represented alternative families you know you had the Brady Bunch where two different families that came together and you had different strokes and there were many of these shows that shed a new lights of the new American family and that that only happened in television that didn't that didn't happen anywhere else you know they weren't talking about that in churches governments weren't talking about that it was pop culture that served as sort of the petri dish for the issues that people were really dealing with or you think about black upward mobility in the United States if not for shows like The Cosby Show and Fresh Prince of bel-air society wouldn't really understand that that was actually a real thing happening I'm sorry to put Bill Cosby in front of you right now or or the story of intrepid women rising in business that happened in pop culture before it happened anywhere else and thank God for pop culture to put those images forward or you think about in the 80s how Madonna talked about you know a material girl in a material world are you think about movies like Wall Street pop culture was holding up a mirror to what was happening in Reagan United States in the 1980s and it was really the way that society at large understood the economically driven government that we were we were living in or even think about you know Vietnam and you think about how there was a rising tide of tension and disappointments about why were we at war why can't we find peace and through artists like Marvin Gaye and John Lennon there were these songs that really asking the question what's going on and so again it was pop culture that was serving as sort of the mouthpiece for what people were feeling deep down so that gives you a little context and I want to tell you a story I want to tell you about my man with the eyebrows this dude Richard Dupree Richard Dupree was the president of Procter & Gamble he took the company through the Great Depression in the 1930s and had a real imperative to get the company to survive that really tumultuous time and he he saw this fledgling technology called Radio and he felt about that was that was an interesting place because men of the day were at work women were at home kids were at school and so he found it as a really interesting vehicle to communicate to to women at home to moms and so he developed a show it was called ma Perkins and it it featured it uh it was sponsored by one of their brands oxydol and it was about this woman this widowed mill worker and how she took care of her kids and it was really dramatic story and it was day-in day-out these women at home were listening to my Perkins and developing a relationship with my Perkins and the sales of oxydol shot through the roof and it was really the first example of a branded content what we talked about today is branded content but it was an amazing example of how culture and brands had a connection that they actually almost needed each other and other brands followed there was the Colgate Comedy Hour for Iran from 1950 to 1955 again it was sort of the way that that brands deliver their message and for the next 50 years really you saw brands being the key purveyors of content the key purveyors of pop culture went on for decades and in fact it this blows my mind when you see Procter & Gamble productions as a concept you know I know Procter & Gamble right now as a as a product company is a CPG company but to think of them as an entertainment company is pretty pretty profound so the relationship with culture and brands was forged and we saw more and more of that the modern conception of Santa Claus is in thanks to coca-cola and and in the in the 50s really creating this icon that we now use to celebrate and organize our family events it's it's a it's a corporate invention if I'm being honest or you think about jingles and music you know there was a day where pop songs were were used purely to sell cereal you know I don't know if you remember this I doubt it but in the 80s there was this thing which I which I remember was was McDonald's put like real records in the newspaper like these vinyl records and it was a song about does anybody remember this does anybody remember this no it was like two all-beef patties special sauce it was about or you can hear it it was it was a pop song it was a pop song they made 80 million of them and when in the newspaper it was it was a recipe for the Big Mac and people loved it I mean you you sang it like it was a Beyonce song but it was a McDonald's song it was the McDonald's song about a sandwich about a sandwich anyway this is what this is where the relationship between culture and brands was created and it was a codependent relationship it was a symbiotic relationship and if I can you use that word and think about science there's a great example of the Acacia ants on and their relationship with trees the the trees provide nutrients to the ants and the ants in a way provides security for the trees because when herbivores come and eat the trees the ants turn them away science science but it's pretty interesting this idea of the codependent relationship how two species need each other and that's how I think about culture and Brants culture provides relevance for brands brands provide reach for culture and this relationship is deep and we've seen we've seen it at work really sophisticated ways again I'm sorry but Cosby and the jhen jell-o pudding pops was it was a really interesting moment where a pure pop culture icon that I was always over here and I indulgent food products was over here but they became inextricably linked and it was actually the fuel for that for that product or Virginia Slims the cigarettes in the 70s which took a stand and this this notion of a female president the 70s was almost it was super super it was superficial no one took it seriously but Virginia Slims was one of these first brands I really began to speak critically and openly about that concept of course it's cigarettes so you know what does that mean I don't know or MTV this idea of I want my MTV that somehow MTV became you know was it a pop culture brand or was it a political brand or was it a culture brand or was it just a product that was selling advertising and and it was really in another great moment of the merger of culture and and brand so brands were we had the benefit of a few things one was mass broadcasts it was really easy you want to target a ton of people you just would go on television and you can have 20 million people and in fact the the season finale of the show called mash in 1980 three hundred and six million people watched that show at one time in the u.s. 106 million people that's that's more people than voted for any particular candidate in the election that's that's almost as many people that that voted in general in the American election in 2016 think about it and it was so profound actually that in the few minutes after the show ended everyone went to the bathroom and the water pressure in New York dropped that's how massively important that moment of pop culture was to our lives so that it was mass broadcast the second was this idea the lowest common denominator it was really easy to develop pop culture content at the time for brands cuz they would just find the the thing that everyone loved like the the super easy jingle that you couldn't get out of your head nothing controversial it was just something that washed over you and you know here's a word cloud if you took all the lyrics of the pop songs in 1965 and you dropped them into this word cloud you'd see this is what you'd see you see the these concepts like love and now in heartbeats it was really kind of OneNote you know there's an it this has been done in in recent times and they're much more complex ideas that that come about so that that's the second one that was about the lowest common denominator the third is top-down control in the world of music for the past 60 years it's it's some ridiculous statistic like the top hundred songs were developed by twenty people or something like that over the Pat it was it was a completely monopolistic industry in that it was a very few people that decided what should be hot and what shouldn't be and there's this dude norman lear in the 70s that really roat's television culture in the u.s. he developed tons of shows that really held up a merits a culture at large whether it was on the family or the Jeffersons and and this one dude this one dude decided and created and wrote the narrative for for the lives of Americans in during that time which is pretty profound top top-down and so it was quite easy for brands it was it was like a it was like a manufacturing line like they were just pumping our culture it was like easy okay yeah we get mass broadcast lowest-common-denominator you know and we get one person to decide the whole thing and it's done and you know their brand said that completely completely positioned themselves as pop culture brands PepsiCo used to always say we are about being timely and being of the moments but Coke was no different and creating content that also captured our imagination and again also stayed with the time brands use all sorts of trickery well sorts of trickery to get us they use pithy lines that that somehow spoke to our inner needs you know I'm loving it I think differently just do it or even kind of mnemonic ideas like snap crackle and pop that you stay in your head and it was profound it was profound the impact of brands and culture they they changed our way of thinking they created myths myths like it's gotta be the shoes this idea that I'll play ball better if I wore certain shoes is complete fiction but it's to this day you know people believe they'll run faster people will believe they'll do Fitness differently if they wear the right shoes and that's something that the that the fitness of the food I'm sorry the foot industry foot industry that's that's not smart that's not smart that was the first not smart thing I said no no no the the sneaker wear industry that they created this idea that but you needed certain certain shoes to perform or this idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day lie it's a lie it's a lie created by the man no I'm just kidding it's created by the industry so we created by corporate industry it's not true or or the idea that a diamond is a symbol of love and truly the catalysts for a you know eternal bliss with another person a fiction not true or the Kodak moment that the idea that certain moments need to be recorded so you can look back at them in the in the in the path in the future this idea of memories need to be captured it's is of course there's power to that but does it need to be attached to a certain brand does it need to be attached to a certain type of film I mean it's this it kind of got wrangled brands wrangle themselves into that bigger concept or that all the holidays happy grandfather day happy left-handed day or whatever like these are things that these are hallmark holidays used to drive people to buy greeting cards so you see where I'm going there was a lot going on it was it was set up for brands to succeed but there was there was what I would call the Big Bang the Big Bang of culture where there was a significant shift that happened and I would say this happened within the past 15 or 20 years that could completely throw all this shit up the window completely different worlds it's completely different world for brands it's hard out there for a brand there are a few different reasons the quote unquote multiculturalism the idea that more and more people are living together getting news they're stimulating by different ideas they're open to new ways of living the world is changing the quote unquote graying of America in the 50s and 60s as I was showing you it was really a homogeneous world it was it was one family duplicated over across one country or across the world and there's the idea of urbanization over the past few decades we've been more and more living in cities so people are finding new and different influences next door which is changing our appetite and changing what it is that we're consuming and appreciating or valuing mobile revolution the idea that we have we have a computer in our pocket again giving us access to new ideas or even the social web the idea that other people can influence us and that media the quotient idea of media is actually in our hands and not in that of companies and that all results in kind of the Big Bang so some of the things I talked about like from the idea of mass broadcast is out the window I don't need to tell you that now it's about niche engagement where you have splinters of culture infinite splinters of culture that all have their own values their own codes their own beliefs it's not a homogenous thing you know you look at the top two shows at 93 times Cosby three times who's counting okay three times you have the top two shows in the United States in 1988 were shows that reflected relatable American families the Huxtables and the Connors that was the story in 2018 think about how splintered and bizarre and weird it is these two shows Game of Thrones and stranger things dystopian stories you know really complicated nuanced narratives it's a it's a very different picture you know if you think about it in the 80s it was like looking to identify with a homogeneous kind of communal story here it's about story and it's it's about the you know fantasy and taking you in different places so digital media has created a long tail of cultural identity we're niche weird and one-off identities are the new drivers of the mainstream and I'm gonna show you some some examples of niche weird stuff have you guys seen this have you guys seen this thing here has anybody seen us this is this is a legit Instagram account of a woman who who like pounds her face in loaves of bread over and over and over again and it's it's really entrancing and and some say erotic but it's a thing that exists or or you know these these memes that are taking traditional arts and putting them in the language of social media of the day or this this this account which you may have seen which is like a surrealistic 3d animated thing that you can't take your eyes off and it's it's a again the sort of thing that wouldn't that wouldn't work with the Colgate our that wouldn't that wouldn't play right that that wouldn't play so that was mass broadcast Anish lowest common denominator it's a greatest thought provocateur you know before it was about being generic now it's about challenging things you think about concept albums a lot of black American artists are doing this now these greater albums that are greater than just a single song they're poignant cultural critiques that are that are you know delivered through the form of music when Beyonce performed at the Super Bowl she wasn't even the headliner Coldplay was the headliner and she did the formation you know she did her first song of the lemonade political song about formation if you looked at the search results the day after him Beyonce was bigger than the two teams that played that day as well as Coldplay that headlined the event so it was again speaking to provocation versus the lowest common denominator that was a provocative moment or you think about all the the content that's being created lately that's these complex stories that are about identity and sexuality and mental illness this is the new sort of language and this is the the idea of challenging the way we think is what what content pop culture's become top-down control that's the third one it's not so much about top-down control as it is about bottom-up control you see and I don't need to tell you this you see the influence of people on the ground up whether it's Instagram stars designing clothes at four years old or grandmas influencing people to interact with their computers differently or you look at you know all you need to do is be someone like online on Twitter and say Wendy's how many retweets retweets will it take for me to get chicken nuggets for life and I'll give you a number and he'll actually get the retweets and he'll actually get them chicken nuggets um this this is a new sense of power that's coming from the unheard power the political structure as we know it is completely changed and we saw this within the past couple of weeks that that people can come out of the shadows and really hold power and we're now at this point the reason this was so contentious was it was this point worthy unheard and the ignored met the powerful it was it was the moment and and I asked you you know how many how many years we'll take how many decades before that balance completely tips and we lost it this time but how many times will take for us to lose it pop culture savage its savage for brands whether you're PepsiCo you guys remember this gem or your brands that trying to be cool that's the worst you know meow-meow makes trying to play like their jingle with the EDM track horrible it's horrible this is Google's lit report it's the report of what Millennials think is cool it's called the lit report and for me the key finding is that Google's not cool that's like trying really hard or this idea of product placement this ariana grande video for focus is a joke you know it's because it's it's a it's a complete commercial so brands still need culture culture no longer needs brands brands need culture culture no longer needs brands the power dynamic has shifted and I was talking about science before they're actually examples in nature where two species that were once codependent because they were they didn't have enough nutrients to survive they found a codependency that changes when species actually become stimulated independently they know then they don't need each other and so that's that's actually what's happening brands are going extinct I believe this is deeply I believe that the concept of brand this idea of this aspirational ideal that represented a better version of ourselves this greater community that we want it to be a part of that had these really powerful promises that's no longer the the thing that's no longer what's value brands are shifting their role is shifting from a passive stage for culture to an active Challenger of culture it's an active player in culture and I don't need to tell you that that those that are active those that do challenge culture actually succeed in business industry after industry after industry we could week the slide can have many other examples so I'm going to quickly go through then what we would consider the new cultural code for brands so the things that brands should do when they in this in this new era act on values don't just preach them Spotify as a client of ours as I mentioned when Donald Trump came out and and did the the Muslim ban for the Muslim countries Spotify really forged use that as a kind of a key part of their their work and they developed playlists and activities for the band and it was a it was really a great example of acting out values versus just having having a making a promise talk to the ignored don't pander to the majority it's very easy to pander to the majority very easy to just buy into things you think about Fancy Beauty Rihanna Rihanna's a beauty line and just how huge that that's become the the key dominant player in the beauty industry within the past couple of years and it's because of the openness and the acceptance of marginal people in fact her darkest shade sold out within hours and that's because there was an unheard voice there and a voice I felt unrepresented or crazy rich Asians this is the story that seeming outside our culture and world's was entertaining for the mass culture third lean into the backlash don't run from it we heard about the Colin Kaepernick thing you stole my thunder Colin Kaepernick Colin Kaepernick that story is amazing I agree it's a it's a truly profound story where Nike made the decision to align with something highly controversial and then reap the benefits Phil Knight famously says you talk to the people that love you and they knew they knew who loved them they knew who loved them they made that decision and and and it's actually rape them a lot of benefits being native don't be a tourist you know social media it's really funny brands have kind of developed personalities in social media you know they've developed ways of talking to really be a sort of organic in culture at large Taco Bell a lot of people view the Taco Bell's social media presence is almost a product in and of itself because it has a sort of cheeky snark that people really people really like and so it's interesting as well but it's really interesting when you're when you're of the culture it's easier it's easier to buy into chant challenge cultural convention don't blindly accept it I mean could you imagine REI is a Brandon in the states that came out and the said opt-out side and and you know Patagonia is has come out against Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving when you're supposed to buy stuff brands coming out saying buy stuff brands going out saying don't buy stuff Brad sayings I'm sorry brands collect go out and say don't buy stuff and brands that say go outside and do something more important than buying stuff that's a pretty brave thing to do in this day and age and so use your media dollars to do that build culture around your products don't force culture into your product or don't force your product into culture you know Red Bull is famous for this famous for really creating culture around their product where again are you consuming the product or you're consuming culture this jumped to me was one of the greatest moments in marketing in the past 10 or 15 years because it created a language and a culture when CNN picked it up it was like well CNN's picking up a live commercial that redbull created for an hour like what that's amazing it's amazing that to me is the cultural code for brands the new cultural code for brands act on your values don't just preach them talk to the nor ignored don't pander to the majority lean into the backlash don't run from it being native don't be a tourist challenge cultural convention don't blindly accept it build culture around your product don't force your product into culture my name is Ellen I'm the founder and CEO of sylvain labs check us out sylvain labs comm check me out thank you so much enjoy the rest of the conference [Applause] [Music]