Commentary

Is Pop Culture Fragmenting?

I was told once that if you want to be great in advertising, you must be an expert in popular culture. It's where the masses are influenced by the vocal minority. If you can understand how people are influenced by other people, than you can understand what's at the core of advertising. After all, advertising is simply one group of people trying to influence the behaviors of another group of people.

What I find interesting right now is that popular culture is fragmenting in the same way that the media landscape is. We all know about clutter and how there are a myriad of media choices; more so now than ever before.

This wealth of choices is affecting popular culture and we're seeing that fads and trends now have a shorter shelf life. The audience is smarter, more well informed, and as a result, more cynical. By the time a trend reaches critical mass, much of the influential audience is already on to something bigger and better. By the time it reaches the masses, it is already "out of style" with the folks who started it.

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As recently as 10 to 12 years ago, it was possible to influence popular culture through one or two major media outlets. MTV was the easiest, as it had a monopoly on the younger 12- to 18-year-old demographic, and network television had the reach into the older demographic of 18- to 35-year-olds.

These two demographic breakdowns traditionally have the greatest impact on pop culture because they are the vocal ones. They are the ones that influence the world around them through their social activities and their aggressive word-of-mouth behavior. What Madonna wore on the Video Music Awards, or in her videos, influenced hundreds of thousands of teens to do the same. What fashions were in style and were worn on the hit TV show "Friends" influenced hundreds of thousands and drove trends and fads for years. Nowadays, you can't reach the same audience via one to two media vehicles, so the audience you do reach has to evangelize on your behalf.

The Internet has also had a strong effect on popular culture. The Internet makes it easier to find information and share information. If something is considered cool by a group of people, they easily share this information with the group around them. They visit MySpace and Friendster and they chat with one another to spread the word, but the word only spreads to people who think or act like them.

This creates a rather insular situation where a trend runs rampant within one group, but may not be picked up by another ancillary group. As these groups silo themselves and explore their interests, other groups do the same; thereby popular culture becomes fragmented. At some point these groups clash and they witness one another, possibly adopting some of the traits of the other, but by the time this happens the early adopters of those trends have already moved on. It's an interesting predicament and one that I find fascinating.

Popular culture is the behavior of the majority. As the majority begins to dwindle and the playing field levels out, it's inevitable that popular culture will reflect this. Think about what's hot right now: "Desperate Housewives," power pop (influenced by Green Day and Blink 182), Dave Chappelle, etc. All of these are here today, gone tomorrow. In 10 years, "Desperate Housewives" will be history (unless they do a movie version that pokes fun at the original show). Dave Chappelle will go the way of Carrot Top and Andrew Dice Clay. And power pop will be replaced by techno hip-hop (you heard it here first). Advertising and marketing will try to adopt all of these elements in one form or another and will probably miss the boat because it took them too long to get the concepts through the approval process.

Don't you agree?

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