Lolz OMG. Suxxors. Reading the internet can be like reading esperanto.
When we started this company, we viewed the internet as a population, a culture unto itself. We added value for our clients not just through our awesome production, creative and development skillz, but because we understood this internet culture. Because we were part of it. Because we lived it. As the internet usage has expanded in the last 6 years, the mainstream population has moved onto the internet. We’ve got a wider audience. There are “normal” people on this thing now. But that doesn’t mean the internet culture has disappeared. Think on this: the creators of the
Lolcat,
I Can Has Cheezburger employs nine people and still, to this day, gets millions of page views a month
1. Seriously. Think about that. People have made a serious web business consisting of little more than pictures of cats with captions.
IT MAKES NO SENSE. Except on the internet, it does.
Our psyche is comprised of several overlapping subcultures, really. We know this. We have our class identification, our race, our religion, and several others. Our hobbies. Our passions. Our obscure interests. Those forums we frequent. We market based on class, we market based on race. We often think of the Barbarian Group through this prism as a multicultural marketing agency for Internet Culture. The Subservient Chicken was a perfect example of this. It was marketing to a segment of BK’s consumers – the ones who get the munchies, let’s say.
This has interesting ramifications against brands and branding. Branding has always been about speaking to everyone in the same voice. We often reject this at The Barbarian Group. Benjamin often points out that he speaks to his mother differently than he speaks to a client, and he may speak to two friends differently and that this is all totally right and good. it is counterintuitive – though obviously less effort – to speak to everyone in one voice. We recognize this in multicultural marketing, and it should be recognized with the internet culture. As an aside, the internet culture is generally a high-value audience: young, educated and upwardly mobile. In searching to be respectful and understanding of our customers, we almost have a duty to speak their language. And if that means we need to shoot beer out of a cannon for no good or apparent reason, well, that’s not such a terrible thing, is it?
1 http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1157418/i_can_has_cheezburger_founder_and_ceo/
on October 02, 2008 at 12:46 PM
