Finding the brand - zeitgeist fit (Part 1)

Estimated reading time 16 mins || How some brands take-off into a different orbit by aligning with the mood of the times and how you can do the same for your brand

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Rohit

zeitgeist: noun

the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

The art of branding has mostly focused on building salience and driving the purchase of your brand. While there are a variety of approaches to brand building, largely these techniques follow a similar pattern: Identify the attributes and benefits of the product, create cognitive associations (including brand positioning) in the minds of your TG and distill these to the TG through communication and product experience.

I am of course over-simplifying but as you can see, this is an inside-out way of creating a brand. Some companies adopt an outside-in way of building their brands, by identifying the larger trend or popular sentiment spanning across their target groups and then aligning their communication and product experience with this sentiment or trend.

This sentiment/trend is simply referred to as the zeitgeist and this strategy is called finding the brand-zeitgeist fit. By finding the right brand-zeitgeist fit, these brands have been able to create an almost iconic presence in their categories.

At the same time, it is surprising to see that a very small set of brands have taken this approach and the existing literature and grammar on the role of the zeitgeist in branding is almost non-existent.

This is the first article in a two-part series on brand-zeitgeist fit. In this article, we will explore what exactly is a zeitgeist, the characteristics of a zeitgeist, and how to identify one. In the next article, we will look at the frameworks to build a brand-zeitgeist fit.

What is a zeitgeist

As the definition from the Oxford dictionary mentions at the top of the article, a zeitgeist is a prevalent mood or cultural spirit, which is relevant to a period of time in history. It does not need to be the views or opinions of the entire population but the topics which are in the news or are being discussed by a sizable part of the population. A few examples below.

Open dialogue about relationships: Over the last 10 years, attitudes towards relationships have changed a lot in urban India. Urban boys and girls are now much more open in talking about their relationships. This is especially true for people born post-liberalization (post the early 90s), who are in their mid to early 20s today.

This is re-enforced by a simple Google Trends search of ‘Valentine’s day’ as shown in the image below. The peaks happen every year in February (obviously) but the intensity of the peaks has increased every year since 2004, reflecting a clear increase in interest and openness about relationships. There are brands such as Fastrack, which have built profitable businesses by finding a fit with this zeitgeist (more on it shortly).

My country strongest: There has been a growing sentiment across India (and perhaps the whole world) that my country is the strongest/best country in the world. The frequent forwards on WhatsApp about Jan Gan Man (Indian National Anthem) being declared the best National Anthem in the world by UNESCO or how to treat deadly diseases using cow dung are a testimony to this.

As the Google Trends chart below shows, the interest over time in Nationalism has increased consistently over the last 10 years. If you draw a trend line, it will point up with a slope of 30 degrees plus. Brands such as Patanjali have been able to ride this zeitgeist to capture market share from other CPG companies.

Student debt: As per some estimates, the outstanding student debt in the US is more than $ 1.5 Trillion, which is more than the GDP of many large countries. This has been a topic of national concern and outrage in the US. You can see how the interest over time on this topic has increased in the US.

Characteristics of a zeitgeist

A zeitgeist has one or more of the following characteristics.

Starts as anti-zeitgeist: A zeitgeist starts small, usually as part of the thinking or actions of a small set of people. These are usually the people who can be labeled as progressive or activists or early adopters. This set thinks or behaves differently from the rest of the population and hence its needs & worldview are hugely different.

The key point is that a new zeitgeist starts as a contrarian view to an existing zeitgeist. The trends start against the grain of popular or sometimes even acceptable norms/beliefs/technology prevailing during a period.

Triggered by a disruption: A zeitgeist is typically triggered when an event or series of events disrupt the status quo. The status quo is usually the prevailing zeitgeist at the time. The disruption can come from changes in the societal fabric, changes in demographic mix, political changes or even technological innovations.

For instance, the openness about relationships in India is a result of the changing demographics mix. The zeitgeist was triggered by the liberalization of the country in the early 1990s and people who were born post that era have seen a more open, accessible and consumerism-driven society than the people born earlier. This allowed them access to better communication, new types of entertainment, and a different lifestyle which enabled them to think more openly and independently. The economic changes triggered social changes that people had not foreseen.

A point to note here is that the ‘disruption’ is not always sudden or instantaneous. As the example above shows, the disruption usually happens over a period of time and should not be interpreted as a sudden event that changes everything overnight.

Longevity: Unlike fads, zeitgeists last for a longer period. Zeitgeist also takes longer to reach the crescendo, compared to fads. For instance, the KiKi challenge where people used to jump out of their moving vehicles is a fad (refer to the image below), that lasted for not more than a few months.

Compared to it, Digital Marketing is a zeitgeist (refer to the image below). There are many brands such as Udacity, Upgrad, SimpliLearn, etc. which are now trying to ride this zeitgeist.

Collectively-owned: A zeitgeist is not owned by any particular person, company, brand, or political party. In the initial stags, it is owned by the set of early adopters/activists and then as the zeitgeist grows, the sense of ownership expands to cover a larger population. This collective ownership ensures that the zeitgeist remains authentic to the need of the population which is propelling it.

Examples of brands that found brand - zeitgeist fit

Let’s quickly look at 2 examples where brands have been able to find the brand - zeitgeist fit. One is from India and another global. Both the brands gained tremendously and have been able to sharply differentiate themselves from the competition, even though the base product is not highly differentiated.

Fastrack

Fastrack watches and sunglasses was launched in 1998 as sub-brand of Titan and in 2005 was spun-off as a separate unit. From the very beginning, Fastrack targeted urban youth with highly distinctive communication which drives the brand association of being irreverent and unpredictable. From Fastrack’s website:

If Fastrack was to be described in a single word, ‘Irreverent’ would be it. Not the insolent, sacrilegious or rude variety, but more the cheeky anti-authoritarian kind. This is evident in the brand’s edgy, provocative and tongue-in-cheek advertising. A brand that questions everything, pushes boundaries, constantly re-invents and never strays near the beaten path.

Fastrack found brand-zeitgeist fit with the emergence of the post-liberalization urban youth of India, a large & growing segment, which in the second half of the 2000s was between 15-20 years of age. As mentioned earlier, this segment is more self-expressive, independent, with more opinions and a need to demonstrate their preference than the demographics which came before it.

The launch of Fastrack and its communication aligned strongly with the emergence of this segment, which fueled Fastrack’s growth. I am not sure if Fastrack deliberately chose to ride this zeitgeist or it was happenstance, but if Fastrack was launched in say 1990, it would have struggled to find the brand-zeitgeist fit.

Here’s a look at their TV Spot from 2008.

And here’s a more recent one. As you will see, they have managed to remain consistent with the zeitgeist for over a decade now.

Red Bull

Red Bull is an international brand, which produces energy drinks, but has strong associations with extreme sports, extreme music, and extreme events. Red Bull was launched in Austria in 1987. It rose to prominence in the rest of Europe in the 1990s and was launched in the US in 1997.

The launch of Red Bull in Europe and the US coincided with a unique zeitgeist. The 1990s was the era when the internet had firmly exploded on the technological and cultural landscape. Companies, technologists, and start-ups were just experiencing the first wave of creating solutions to meet the demands of people connected for the first time through the internet.

Netscape browser was launched in 1994, Microsoft released Windows 95 the next year and any business which owned a dot-com domain was getting insane valuations from Venture Capitalists. The US economy was finally bouncing back from a lean period of the 80s (refer to the image below). This enabled the young urban professionals of the US to have highly aspirational desires such as better status and realizing their full potential.

This brings extreme sports into focus. Extreme sports have typically been pursued by a very small segment of people, typically adventure-seekers. However, with the changing aspirations of the US urban professionals, extreme sports became an outlet for people, who were looking at more than just their job to achieve their full potential.

Red Bull tapped into this zeitgeist by creating a strong association with ‘Extreme Sports’ such as cliff diving, BMX, skiing, flying, downhill, and free-ride mountain biking. It was already sponsoring marathons and diving events in Europe. These events also provided Red Bull with trial & sampling opportunities to create early adopters for its brand.

How to identify a zeitgeist

You may say that it is easier to retro-fit the brand’s activities with a zeitgeist looking back at history. Hence, I believe the real value of this article is in sharing with you an approach to identify a zeitgeist. This approach is based on the existing research on the topic and my own marketing experience. In the next article, we will look at how to connect the brand with the zeitgeist or how to find the brand - zeitgeist fit.

You will usually undertake this approach with your team, hence it is helpful if it’s a diverse team and free exchange of ideas/thoughts is promoted.

The approach has 4 steps:

1. Conducting an in-depth environment scan

2. Identifying the universal truths of your category

3. Pushing the universal truths to the extreme to arrive at boundary conditions

4. Overlapping the result of environment scan with the boundary conditions to identify the list of relevant zeitgeists

This is shown in the image below.

1. Environment scan

An environment scan typically requires an analyst to scan through online and offline sources of information to identify key events, popular headline news, industry trends, etc. These information pieces are then collated under various broad themes that reflect the existing thinking of the time.

The scan can broadly be divided into 4 sections - Social, Technological, Economic and Political. The analyst(s) need to identify information points and themes under each of these sections. Some pointers to enable a better search are shared below:

Social:

• Do not classify the entire environment as one mass. Look at the nuances between tier 1, 2, and 3 towns, different age groups (pre and post-liberalization), genders, etc

• Movies, web series, music, TV, etc. are good places to identify the social constructs at any point in time

Technological:

• To make your life easy, you can create ‘hub’s for your search and then extend a variety of nodes out of it. Hubs are usually big, dense pieces of technology that are highly pervasive. For instance, smartphones is a hub and so is faster internet connectivity. Distributed ledger can be a hub and so can be sensors. Each of these is fueling many other technological changes

Economic:

• Economic trends vary a lot based on the population being studied. Economic trends for tier 3 towns or villages are very different from urban centers

• Circulars of central banks, investment thesis by leading VC, research reports by think tanks, etc. are usually fertile grounds to identify prevailing trends

Political:

• For political trends, make sure to look at regional trends along with the national level discourse

2. Category Truths

Each product category can be defined by 3 constructs - Attributes, benefits, and attitudes. Each category has certain truths that are defined for these constructs which define the category.

For instance, let’s see the category truths for a bank:

• Attributes: A brick & mortar building, different investment products, in-person interactions, etc.

• Benefits: Safety of money, income from interest, expert advice on growing wealth, etc.

• Attitudes: Beaurauecratic, slow, old, not for young people, etc.

Similarly, let’s see the category truths for gyms:

• Attributes: Brick & mortar, trainer, gym equipment,

• Benefits: Better health, body-shaping, becoming attractive, etc.

• Attitudes: Difficult to sustain, good for improving health, competitive, etc.

To arrive at category truths, you and your team should lock yourself in a conference room, diligently note all the points which come to your mind across these three constructs and then knock-off all but the top 5 points for each construct. These are the truths you want to focus on.

3. Boundary conditions

Once the category truths have been identified, you and your team need to push these to extremes to come up with boundary conditions. It is critical to get the right articulation of boundary conditions to ensure once these are overlapped with the environment scan, it gives you the right definition of a zeitgeist.

Guiding principles:

• The boundary condition should sound as far removed from the current reality of category truths as possible

• It should pass the “gasp” test- When you read it out to someone, she should gasp and say that it doesn’t look possible

Let’s look at a few examples of the bank category.

Category truth: Brick and mortar building

Boundary condition: A bank which has no building, not even a corporate headquarter

Category truth: tellers and bankers in the bank

Boundary condition: All bank employees work remotely and there are no in-person interactions with any customer

Category truth: Income from interest on deposits

Boundary condition: No income from interest on deposits

You and your team should come up with boundary condition statements for each of the top 5 category truths for each of the three constructs.

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4. Overlap and map

In this step, you and your team overlap the environmental scan with the boundary conditions. This should lead to a table that looks something like the one below.

Next, ideate with your team to identify trends, which support specific boundary conditions to become true. For instance, a social trend of aging population will support a boundary condition of no footfalls in bank branches. Similarly, a technological trend of rapid 5G deployment will support a boundary condition that all banking operations are done only through bank’s app. You should aim to have not more than one trend + boundary condition in each of these boxes. This will give you the table below.

As the last step, you and your team need to create a pecking order for this list. The guiding principle for this step is to identify if the trend will enable the boundary condition to come true in the next 24 months. Please highlight such cells in green. In case you believe that the trend can enable the boundary condition in less than 6 months, highlight such cells in a deeper shade of green. Your table will look something like this.

The boundary condition in each of the green cells is one of the potential zeitgeist for your brand. The ones in a deep shade of green are the ones that are much stronger than the other boundary conditions.

In the next article, we will look at how to find the zeitgeist which is true to your brand and how to distill it into communication and experience.

Hope you enjoyed this article.

Rohit

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