The technology that these social networking platforms provide gives us a much more sophisticated way of seeing our people, not as demographics, age, race, gender, household income, but instead by cultural actors who believe what you believe and do the things that you are surrounded in based on your belief system.

What's up? Welcome to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance, and I'm your host, Ross Mack. Look guys, no matter where you are on your financial journey, you can never stop learning. Each week I'm talking to some of the goats in their own respective field, and today is no different as I'm talking to the doctor. Marcus Collins, University of Michigan Ross School of Business professor and bestselling author.My dog, how youdoing?

I'm doing well, Ross, man. Thanks for having me with you. Well,

obviously you're a Michigan Detroit kind of native, and so you beat up on my bear, so I still feel a way about that, but I think we can move past that for the sake of thisinterview,

for the sake of the interview at the very least.

But look, I got a quick question, right? because you once said, right, that the, there's no external force more influential to human behavior.The culture, the C word culture. Let's break it down, right? Let's talk about culture. One, how do you even define culture?

I think about culture through a sociological lens. A gentleman named Amil Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, we talk about culture as a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern what people like us do. It's a system that carves out the place that we occupy.In the world and what people like us ought to do based on what we believe, how we see the world, the artifacts, behaviors, and language that are expected of people like us, and the cultural production that are expressions and reflections of us, music, film, television.Um, movies, food, poetry, pottery, and brands and branded products become ways by which we peacock ourselves to the world. The alchemy of these systems or systems and systems make up our culture, and because of who we are, how we self-identify, we abide by these these conventions that govern what people like.do, making culture this disproportionate influential external force on how we go about living our day to day lives. So what we wear, where we go, what we do, who we date, if we marry, where we vacation, what we eat, how we bury the dead. If we bury the dead, these things are all byproducts of our cultural subscription, not because of what they are, but because of who we are.

I love that, right? I mean, that that was a lot, right, to take in and I almost want to just kind of break it down more and I do know you've worked with, you know, the Steve Stouts of the world and when you think about kind of cultural marketing, you know, he, he was one of the kind of the pioneers when he bought in hip hop.Culture. But obviously, your definition of culture is a lot broader rather than just one particular genre. And so when it comes to marketing from a cultural lens standpoint, what would you say most businesses get it right and where do most businesses actually get itwrong?

Great question.The challenge we typically have when it comes to cultural marketing is that we think about culture as a shortcut for popularity. We think that when we say, let's get our idea out in the culture that we mean, let's be popular. What's going on in culture is like what are people doing? Where are they going? What is observably popular. But popularity and culture are two distinctively different things. Popularity is about pervasiveness, right? It's the extent to which something is known.Culture is the way by which we make meaning, right? Is a cow leather? Is it a deity or is it dinner? Depends on who you are and how you see the world, right?It's culture that allows us to interpret the phenomenal world around us. The things that are messy that by themselves don't have much meaning. We give it meaning based on who we are and how we see the world, right? And when it comes to brands, you know, you think about Sydney Sweeney and the American Eagle ad controversy that came out last month, you go, Well, is it a double entendre? Is it dog whistle for eugenics? Or is it objectification of women?It's all three, depending on who you are and how you see the world. And that's where marketers go wrong. That's where business leaders go wrong, is that we think about culture as popularity, but those two things are not the same. The ones who get it right, the ones who benefit the most from culture, realize that culture is the system by which we make meaning, which governs what people like us do.So brands who have meaning beyond their category, brands who are more than 25% more fluoride in the toothpaste, brands that are more than my car goes faster, my battery lasts longer, my shampoo gives you body, whatever that means, because clearly I have no clue.When they move beyond the value propositions in the category, they mean something greater than what they do. These are the brands that win in culture because people buy them, not because of what these products are, but because of who they are as cultural actors.

You know that's interesting because I say it all the time, like if you close your eyes likeIt's very rare. You could tell the difference in you know similar products, right? Because you're not actually buying the end result, you're buying the brand, and you're buying the name. You're buying you know why they themselves are the cultural icon. And I find it interesting, especially in today's time with the prevalence of social media, right? And it's almost like a what comes first, the chicken or the egg. Do you want to have the following and then have the product, or do you want to have a good product? But now you're trying to build, you know, an audience and so Ithat through the lens of looking at the likes of, you know, obviously you said Sydney Sweeney, but like a Mr. Beast, right? Anytime he launches a product is going to go off the meters, right? And that's a function of one, him being a cultural icon, whether it's you know or not, if he launches a product. And so back in the day, it'd just be a, OK, a brand now, let's get a spokesperson, but now it's almost where brands are partnering.With these brands, you know, let's white label this product where you see even, you know, the Kelsey brothers, now you know he's engaged to the biggest pop star. So now, OK, we're gonna have a beer line, right? Uh, or the Jake Paul and his brother, they have, you know, like some type of their brand with prime. These are$100 million dollar brands now that literally came from a person that's marketing or better yet, an operation person and say, Hey, you be the face, I'm going to do all the back end. How are we seeing that prevalence change the way many businesses approach marketing?

Youare absolutely correct. Most products are parody.People really can't tell the difference, right? Uh, think about water, bottled water, right? Water is probably the most parity product in the Western Hemisphere. 2 hydrogen and oxygen, that's all it is, right? 2 hydrogens and oxygen. Or someone might say, no, no, no, Marcus, one has different pH balance and alkaline levels, and to that I go, you're an idiot. No, I'm joking. But the idea here is thatMost products are parodied. In fact, um, there's research that done that showed that people couldn't tell the difference between bottled water and tap water, let alone two different brands of of of bottled water. So because of this parody, to your point, we're only buying the branded product, not the product itself. There's a product with nothing on it, no brand, no, no labels, no iconography, that's just a performance based thing.To that there is no difference. But once you put a brand mark on it, a logo, it has all the difference in the world because I'm buying into its meaning and what it says about me to consume it. So to your point, partnering with people like Mr. Beast, Kayanna, the Kelsey Brothers, like all these folks here, what they are doing is applying more meaning to the brand.Like and you know, brands by definition, they're vessels of meaning. They're identifiable signifiers that make us think and feel things. So when it's just a pin.It's just the thing that writes, right, that takes dictation into some physical form. But when you put a Mr. Beast pin on it, it means something different. We put a big logo on it, it means something different. So what we're buying is the product itself and its functional value. What we're buying into are the social andAnd emotional components associations to the branded product. So what does this mean for brands, for leaders, for entrepreneurs that you think about what meaning do you want to conjure into the hearts and minds of people such that when you go to market with a partner, with a with a celebrity, with an influencer, with a creator, with any other entity next to you, what is this thing saying about me?And was a saying in the minds ofpeople.

That's powerful, right? And so like now I want to take your life's work, try to, you know, condense it and now apply it, right? So obviously, you work with massive brands.Massive brands from Nike to even icons like Beyonce. And my question is like, what are some of the top things that you take away that an everyday entrepreneur that's watching this right now can apply some of those lessons, no matter how big or small their business is.

I say the first thing is that the strongest brands are the brands with the strongest meaning, full stop.Right, it's the ones that have the most evocative meaning. Uh, Adele is a great singer, amazing singer. Her voice is killer. Beyonce is a great singer as well, but the Beyonce brand is bigger than the Adele brand, but why is that? Because Beyonce isn't just a good singer, but she represents women's empowerment.She signifies something more than just what she does. The same thing goes with companies, with brands, no matter how big or how small you are. The strongest brands are the brands that have the most meaning, right? You're not just a car, you meanSomething like the future of the possibilities of like of electric world, Tesla, right? You're not just sneakers, Nike, but you believe every human body is an athlete, right? This isn't about what you do, it's about why you do it. No matter where you are in your trajectory of your company, that is uh that is table stakes to how we build strong brands. The second is that you're targeting, because you know who you are, you know how you see the world, like, not what you do, why you do it.The question is, who sees the world the way you do?That's your ideal target. That's your collective of the willing because these people are going to buy, not because of your value propositions, which is parody to someone else, they're going to buy because they believe.And buying you becomes a way by which they signal their identity, a way by which they peacock themselves to the world. So because of who I am, I'm gonna target these people.And when I target these people, I'm going to activate them to go tell other people about me.Not because they love me so much, but because they love themselves and their people. Think about this, Ross. Think about the last movie you saw or the last show you binged. It wasn't because you saw an ad for it.You didn't see an ad, it was like, you know what, I'm gonna start watching the bear now. No, no, no, no. You started watching it because everybody was telling you to watch the bear, because everybody said you go see this movie. Everybody said you gotta go check this restaurant out. Everyone said you gotta try this new product.It's not the advertising that moves us. It's what people like us do because culture moves forward on the basis of one simple question. Do people like me do something like this? The answer is yes, we do it. The answer is no, we don't. Made that decision 100s, if not 1000 times a day. So for leaders, for entrepreneurs, whether you are a multi-billion dollar conglomerate or you're starting off today, you start withWhat do I believe? How do I see the world? What meanings do I want to conjure beyond the category of what I create? Who are the people who see the world the way I do, and how do I activate them by preaching the gospel such that they go preach the gospel on my behalf?

That'spowerful. Listen guys, we got to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll have more from the Dr. Marcus Colas.All right guys, welcome back to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance. And look, we're literally getting real intimate right now with the Dr. Collins, and I think it's important that one, we look at this through the lens of these entrepreneurs, right? If you're an entrepreneur right now, lean in and take notes because he's given his game, right? He's worked with the biggest stars and brands in the world. And so now I want to even take it further, right? You said brands need to be evocative, right? And so my question is, if you're an entrepreneur at home or an inspiring entrepreneur,And you're now writing your business plan. What's the first question they should ask themselves in order to put them in the right direction?

The first question you should ask yourself is, what do I believe? Why am I doing this? Not just because of the transactional benefit to make money, but what do I believe about the world? How do I see the world? When you identify that.The world gets really, really clear. We talked about water before the break. You know, most water companies communicate themselves based on the pH balance, the alkaline levels, where the water is sourced, these different value propositions. And it's hard to tell one water from the other, even when it's right on the shelf beyond the label. But take a brand like Liquid Death. Liquid Death, which is a startup, by the way. Liquid Death believes in death to plastics.Just so happens to sell water, but it believes in death plastics. And because of this belief system, instead of selling water in plastic bottles, they sell them in tall boy cans. Right? That tall bowls tall boy cans are just as provocative and evocative as their point of view on the world, right? And which one sounds more exciting?We believe in death to plastics. That's why we sell water in a tall boy can. Come get some, as opposed to, we have a pH balance of filling the blank. Ours tastes really good. Give us a try when you can't tell the difference between one and the other, right? It's, it's our ability to emote, to activate the emotional part of the brain, which we know biologically is the part of the brain associated with behavior.And our job as marketers, as business folks, is to get people to adopt behavior. Instead, we try to appeal to the rational.Because we think that people are rational beings. The truth of the matter is, we're just not. We're rationalizing human beings that we know what we're going to do based on what we feel, we call it intuition or our gut, and then we find data to help justify or rationalize the decisions we are already going to make. If that be the case, the best chance for us is to activate the emotional. Which one's more emotional? My rays are sharper.My Razr, my car goes faster, my battery lasts longer, or a point of view in the world that's in align with the way people see the world as well.

Finding that emotional connectivity, right? Death to plastic is something that it's something that has the ability to be ingrained in the back of my mind when I see this on the shelf first, any other normal water brand. So now, let's put it into practice, right? And so I'm sure in your world you've seen the evolution of different marketing mediums, right? Now we have social media, now we have AI prevalence to a person that now has their business.They have their idea, you know, they found ways to mote some connectivity emotionally, etc.How should they approach marketing? Is there a balance from social media to other mediums, as well as now the integration of AI? How should a person approach this?

Think about marketing less as marketing communications and think about marketing as a wider aperture. If the act of marketing is going to market, we should ask ourselves, well, what's the product that we're going to bring to market? That is a reflection of the way we see the world, our belief, our ideology.What's the pricing that we're associating to this that's aligned with the way that we see the world.The pipeline, or which Vroll McCarthy would call the place to which we're going to get it to people, and then the last P of the four P's is a promotion, how I'm going to communicate this to the world. One of the challenges we have, we think about markings, we think about marketing just as the advertising. That's only one quarter of the levers that are at our disposal to bring our products to market. So we think about that 4th, that promotion, that communication, that marketing communication, the advertising part of this.We should think about where are our people and how do we give them the right message at the right time within the right context, such that not only do they see it, but they go, oh man, totally. Then they use your advertising to communicate their own identity.The communicate themselves. The best part about this is that social networking platforms provide a more democratized way for us to find our people and engage our people, removing the hurdle that once was, if I can't get it on television, if I can't get it in Billboard, if I can't get it in New York Times, then I'm toast.Well, you have an outlet to be right or right in front of your people, and the technology that these social networking platforms provide gives us a much more sophisticated way of seeing our people, not as demographics, age, race, gender, household income, but instead by cultural actors who believe what you believe and do the things that you are surrounded in based on your belief system. Right? SoWe should look at the Instagrams, the TikToks of the world as a vehicle for us to preach the gospel. And I always tell my clients, instead of starting with the value propositions, start with the soul and end with the cell.

I find it interesting where you know you go on social media and now everybody's a millionaire.Everybody's, you know, an expert in some field, but to your point, right? I always, I often leave with the emotional, largely because I'm a father, right? I'm a father of 3. The ages right now of 432. We had 3 under 3. But to your point, there's an emotional connection. It's like, listen, this is what I'm doing.As a new parent. This is how I'm investing, this is how my kids' investment accounts look. And so that that kind of resonated with me. Start with the emotion, then end with the actual the benefits of it. And so now I want to segue into your book, right? Bestselling author for the culture. Help the people one understand what the book is about and what they would gather, or better yet learn from your book.

The book unlocks the mystery of culture. It unlocks the abstractions and the the the the loose terminology we use to describe culture that prevents us from fully engaging in all the benefits that culture provides us. Provides a Rosetta Stone for us to talk about a theme that we know intuitively, but haven't had the right language to talk about it.Because what I believe and what I've realized is that the better we can describe a thing, the more we can operationalize it. The book sort of unlocks this mystery for not just marketers, but anyone with a penchant or a desire to get other people to move, leveraging the disproportional influence that culture has on humanity.And I take the reader through the theory, the scholarship that sort of underscores the underlying physics that actually drive culture's influence on humanity, and I walk up through case studies of work that I've done, the work that I've celebrated, that celebrate in the world, work that they've probably seen in the world that are demonstrate representations of how brands have done this. And then I break it down to, here's how you can do it, whether youHave a McDonald's budget or only a budget for McDonald's, that no matter where you are on the spectrum of your trajectory for your business, that these concepts and these these dare I say, these laws of humanity can be leveraged to such a degree that they have predictable outcomes. The book unpacks this and provides some really clearUh, steps for leaders to take to drive behavioral

adoption. That is interesting and it's powerful, right? And so clearly you have a section in your book where we're talking about digital marketing and we're thinking about it from the lens of culture, we're in a culture of instant gratification. We're in a culture where you effectively have to capture an audience within 2 seconds or they're going to keep swiping. And so last question, what's the number one takeaway you learned from working with Beyonce?

You know, part of my, my job was to take her offline fan club and bring it online, right? And I launched this thing with the team and it was an object failure relative to Beyonce's celebrity, and we're like, Yo, what's going on? Why isn't this working? So the team starts to scour the internet to see if people are talking about this thing we created, and no one was talking about it. However, the team foundThis little community often recesses of the internet that call themselves the Beehive. They weren't just fans of Beyonce, but they believed what Beyonce believed. They believe in women's empowerment and the music was just cultural production that were expressions of their belief. So just seeing the teams had to cut bait on the nonsense we created.And they partnered with the Beehive to be the official fan club of Beyonce. And it's through that partnership that you got the release of her Beyonce album with no fanfare beyond just the fans. And it became sort of the biggest learning for me is that you don't create communities, you facilitate them. You find the people who already believe and you use your resources to help them connect and help them propagate the gospel that you already preach.

Now that's powerful people, literally, real game from one of the goats in the industry. Don't try to build the audience, just facilitate it, cultivate it. So that's powerful. Powerful learnings from the Beyonce. Dr. Collins, I just want to thank you for being on here, man. I know you could be anywhere in the world, but you're here, so I want to say thank you.

My absolute pleasure, my brother. Glad to be here.

And that's it for this episode, ladies and gentlemen. Make sure you like, subscribe, tell your auntie, your cousins, your, your childhood class bully. It don't matter. Make sure that they like and watch this episode and I'll see you here each and every week on Yahoo Finance. This is Financial Freestyle.

This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.