#11 TikTok House, News Addiction, and Semiotics in Advertising
Hi! It’s great to be back. I returned to London after a long break in Buenos Aires with family and friends, which gave me the sun and energy needed to face the next winter months. I started work on Monday with a new campaign that is due to go live in a few days, and just handed in an essay on global consumer culture for my Master’s degree in Cultural Studies. While doing my research, I came across this quote which I hope will guide my approach to work (and this newsletter) this year.
‘Advertising is essentially an ambivalent symbolic form: it can both reproduce the dominant socio-cultural differences and also, whilst far more rarely, support new cultural orientations and innovative social tendencies’ Roberta Sassatelli
2020 will be about doing the ‘far more rare’ work. Let’s dig into this week’s edition.
⚡️Fast culture (something popular/trendy this week)
Collab houses (mansions where popular content creators live and create content together) are back, and every single newspaper has written about The Hype House LA, which houses 19 of the most popular TikTokers of the moment. To respond to the demands of the creator ecosystem, the goal of Hype House is productivity - all its members are required to create content every single day. Read Taylor Lorenz’s piece to get a glimpse into it.
The TikTok stars that live together at The Hype House LA (they’ve been dubbed The White House LA)
Why this matters: This collective, and the press around it, signals the maturity of the platform. These kids are not doing dances “just for fun”, they are part of a movement, have created a new culture, and there is a lot of money to be made. Over the holidays I’ve already seen a huge change in my “For You” page with brands, publishers and channels joining the platform, but very few of them understand the platform orthodoxy. If the backlash from Facebook starts getting to Instagram, there could be an interesting reshuffle in the digital ecosystem.
🌎Slow culture (change in behaviours or values in society)
It would seem that the 2010s has been the decade of one continuous crisis, of one tragic event after the other with little action or resolve between them. When things we thought impossible happened, memes became our coping mechanism. Our addiction to the news is not helping:
For a certain segment of the population, the news has come to occupy centre stage in our subjective sense of reality, so that the world of national politics and international crises can feel more important, even more truly real, than the concrete immediacy of our families, neighbourhoods and workplaces. (The Guardian)
How can this evolve: If scrolling is the new smoking, it certainly doesn’t lead anywhere else but to clickbait headlines. The false sense of agency that we get when participating online in the news might want to become reality, giving way to a wave of local activism that focuses on those immediate environments we lost sight of.
🖌Unusual pattern (two unrelated things coming together)
I wanted to highlight one product from CES that is very relevant right now with the Australia bushfires taking place. This is a $350 air purification mask, designed to protect its wearer against air pollution and smoke.
This product opens the question of what shape will social stratification and inequality take in the future, and what other basic human rights we will see mediated by the market. In the meantime, consider donating to the Australian Red Cross.
🎯Cultural insight (the insight from culture behind an advert)
Boots Opticians really surprised me with this new ad by Ogilvy. It’s full of signs for rich semiotic analysis and clearly starts a new age for the brand.
It always surprises me how underused semiotics is in advertising. Semiotics helps reveal the cultural significance of different phenomena, and by understanding the nuance of meaning in signs, can help brand work immensely (I’m planning to write a specific piece with more details on this).
In this ad, the aesthetics, Italian music and tagline “They’re Boots, darling” convey a sophisticated style and tone of voice that Boots hadn’t explored before. Looking closer, the use of the country house, the dresses, the Peterbald cat, the textures and the truly diverse cast (including some really cool people over 50s! having fun!) are just a few signs that showcase new cultural norms. The ad feels very “now” because it reflects culture (by understanding its new dynamics) and pushes it a little bit to the edge with new meanings. A fabulous ad that shows that there are a myriad of ways for brands to be culturally relevant.
🕶 Bonus track
TikTok of the week: This song is a recap of some of the best memes and cultural moments of 2019 - including Ok Boomer, the finale of Game of Thrones, VSCO Girls, Lizzo and Rise & Shine by Kylie Jenner (I certainly missed a couple, but I recognised most of them).
Extra links:
The rise of the personal brand: how selling out became cool in the 2010s
A BBC documentary on some of the best Scottish advertisements
What does fashion’s top trend-spotter think we’ll be wearing in the 2020s?
Thanks so much for reading, and if you want to share any thoughts on this week’s edition, just hit reply to this email and I’ll get back to you, or connect with me on Twitter / Linkedin.
Cultural Patterns is a newsletter by Florencia Lujani about cultural insight, creativity and strategy. If you’ve enjoyed it, consider subscribing :)