Why does CP+B use the research of on-staff social anthropologists to guide its campaigns?
This business has been founded on consumer research, trend analysis, and focus groups, so that advertisers can find a way to piggyback on a trend. Unfortunately, you often have to be dishonest about your product to fit in with a particular movement. What we’ve tried to do is realize that advertising has a different sort of power and perhaps even a responsibility. In true marketing, you can change pop culture to create a world that’s more aligned with your brand. Our fundamental premise is, let’s use social anthropologists to get in and try at a basic level to understand human beings. Once we understand the culture we try to figure out how to play within it and hopefully shape it into something that’s better suited for our client. Here’s an example. We just launched the GTI for Volkswagen. The car culture of 25- to 35-year-old males is one based on a lot of accessories like tricked-out exhausts and spoilers, and it’s dominated by Japanese imports. We could lie about the GTI and try to m
