Monoculture in the Modern Age: How a Fragmented Media Landscape Co-Creates Moments that Matter

07/10/24 • 37 min

In this episode, we explore the dynamic interplay between traditional and new media with insights from retail analyst Heetha Herzog and culture writer Kate Lindsay live from VISIONS Summit: NYC. Moderated by Phillip, this conversation covers how media consumption shapes our reality, the influence of monocultural events, and the generational shifts in media platforms. We examine the evolving roles of traditional and new media, the impact of AI on marketing, and the rising significance of authenticity and community in consumer behavior. Listen now!

“Media Matters”

Key takeaways:

[03:03] Kate Lindsay: "The barometer for when something has hit monoculture is when Twitter is just unusable if it's something you don't want to talk about."
[05:00] Heetha Herzog: "There's a whole part of the population that still watches nightly news. They might be older, but they still consume that and watch it."
[11:08] Phillip: "You also don't need someone's permission to post a TikTok, but there's still some prestige around the permission-gate kept media."
[19:55] Kate Lindsay: "With tools like TikTok and Substack and Twitter, where you're seeing everyone talking at once, trends are really more what these gatekeepers pick up on and decide to elevate."
Events like the Trump trial and Taylor Swift's album release dominate media, creating unavoidable online conversations.
Younger generations gravitate towards platforms like TikTok, while older generations remain loyal to traditional media, indicating a shift in how content is consumed and trusted.
The desire for luxury items and the rise of "dupe culture" reflect deeper psychological needs for identity and community, influencing consumer behavior.
The prestige of traditional media is challenged by the authenticity of new media influencers, reshaping how trust is built and maintained in the digital age.

Associated Links:

Links & Resources:

Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

“Media Matters”

Key takeaways:

[03:03] Kate Lindsay: "The barometer for when something has hit monoculture is when Twitter is just unusable if it's something you don't want to talk about."
[05:00] Heetha Herzog: "There's a whole part of the population that still watches nightly news. They might be older, but they still consume that and watch it."
[11:08] Phillip: "You also don't need someone's permission to post a TikTok, but there's still some prestige around the permission-gate kept media."
[19:55] Kate Lindsay: "With tools like TikTok and Substack and Twitter, where you're seeing everyone talking at once, trends are really more what these gatekeepers pick up on and decide to elevate."
Events like the Trump trial and Taylor Swift's album release dominate media, creating unavoidable online conversations.
Younger generations gravitate towards platforms like TikTok, while older generations remain loyal to traditional media, indicating a shift in how content is consumed and trusted.
The desire for luxury items and the rise of "dupe culture" reflect deeper psychological needs for identity and community, influencing consumer behavior.
The prestige of traditional media is challenged by the authenticity of new media influencers, reshaping how trust is built and maintained in the digital age.

Associated Links:

Links & Resources:

Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Previous Episode

How Liquid Death is Murdering Marketing

Live from the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo, feat. Dan Murphy, SVP of Marketing at Liquid Death

In this episode, Phillip has a conversation with Dan Murphy, SVP of Marketing at Liquid Death, at the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo back in June about how the Liquid Death team does more with less by infusing comedy and incredible creative and employing nontraditional marketers and nontraditional marketing techniques to get earned media in their business. Dan shares how this allows them to have massive impact with very little spend. He says any brand can do this. Listen now and let us know if you think he’s right...

More Science in the Art and Science Mix

Key takeaways:

{00:04:46} - “if you're idling. You're inefficient. You're in the red line, you're burning the engine up, but actually that proper torque curve is somewhere a lot closer to red line than you think. And I think most organizations are kind of chugging along close to idle. So there's a bit of the, dare I say, chaos or intensity is probably the better word, that really helps us. It helps us go that extra 10% from the 90% idea to the thing that, like, "Oh, yeah. They're going to write about this.’" - Dan Murphy
{00:13:16} - “Our litmus test for it to go out, again, our lane is comedy, did it make us laugh? If it makes us laugh, if it holds true to our brand values, our weird comedy, SNL world, we push it out...” - Dan Murphy
{00:19:46} - “I've had a marketing career with a lot of major brands, and it's, "We'll just hire so and so celebrity," who is probably super saturated that does 100 deals. Pay a ton of money, expensive director, do all this stuff, it goes out, and the reality is it probably didn't move the needle with those millions of dollars. Meanwhile, 30 grand divided by a million equals a lot of different small bets.” - Dan Murphy
{00:30:00} - “We view the people that are part of this brand and their time as precious. We don't waste it for a minute. Every email we send should be funny, laugh-out-loud funny. - Dan Murphy

Associated Links:

Learn more about Dan Murphy and Liquid Death
Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Next Episode

Rewind: AI, Classism, and the Digital Divide - Revisiting Episode 51

These show notes were written at a time before LLMs were available to the public, if that's any indication of

In this episode from 2017, we covered:

WILL WALMART BE COOL AGAIN?

Lord and Taylor started selling on walmart.com with their own special homepage.
Also, remember how Walmart acquired Bonobos and Modcloth? The world has changed, people.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE:

Walmart's upmarket aspirations clashed with the working-class market. Perhaps this is still true?
Brian's unfailing optimism about the future of technology and the working class, with technology enabling efficiency and providing better products and better services.
Robby Berman posits that AI will serve and make life better for humans, but only the top 1% of humans.
A Princeton study on bias in bots explores how AI has the problematic ability to target people for committing potential crimes based off the bias and prejudice of the bot creators.

AI ENABLING JOB ELIMINATION?

Chris Gardner from Forrester predicts that automation will eliminate 9% of jobs in 2018.
"These jobs are not low-end jobs, they're white-collar jobs being replaced."
Brian is again optimistic: a whole new host of jobs will be created for creating and servicing AI.
Reuters reported that a son used data to recreate his dad as a chatbot.