How to Market to a Subculture Without Getting Torched
Do you understand the rules of the culture your brand is marketing into? Every culture & subculture has unique rules. Learning them doesn’t take long and is critical in a time when consumer trust is low and AI slop runs rampant. Why?
If you’re marketing into a singular audience, you’re lucky. But you probably have more than one target segment and they likely each have different “rules” whether explicit or implied. There are two primary categories of cultures and they can have bits of each. You need to know their rules.
A rule-bound, or tight audience, has low tolerance for ambiguity, they punish missteps quickly. This is usually more professional audiences like lawyers, healthcare, accountants, engineers. Playing by their rules is key to building brand trust.
Loose audiences have less strict norms, they’ll tolerate improvisation (even finding it amusing when done right), they’re more creative and flexible in their thinking. This tends to be younger audiences and those in more creative spaces. Whatever they do in life, it’s less work with structural rules.
So when you’re thinking about your next marketing campaign, do a quick scan of your audience and figure out if they’re tight or loose with their cultural and/or subcultural rules. You’ll have a greater sense of what’s risky. But keep in mind, some cultures are tight in some rules, looser in others. They’re not rigid. But this is where you can get a compass bearing for the strategy you develop.
How To Learn Cultural Rules for Brand Marketing
Reddit & Social Media: Don’t just look for signals for content harvesting. You’re looking for what rules they set out, plainly and through behaviours. Sort a subreddit by "controversial" and by "top, all time." Read the threads where moderators stepped in, where someone got pile-on downvoted, where a newcomer asked an innocent question and got torched.
Status, Currency and the Enemy: All subcultures have hierarchies, the leaders, followers, thought leaders, adjutants. Through language and regular posters, you can quickly figure out the hierarchy, which gives you insight into what messaging to use that will resonate and to whom. Map the binaries too: Groups define themselves as much by what they're against as by what they're for: real lifters vs. gym bros, film photographers vs. filter users, trail runners vs. road runners.
Mark The Shipwrecks: Look for where brands have run aground in your space. Look for words and phrases like “sellout”, “corporate” and “ruined” etc. Great for clues on what not to say or do. This can tell you what’s off limits and where you may end up trespassing.
Find a Pilot: When ships enter a harbour, they always take on a pilot for safe navigation. Find two or three respected insiders (not influencers, there’s a difference), pay them properly, and have them pressure-test your reading. They'll correct your chart in an afternoon.
Social media signals are useful, but that’s just surface culture and your competitors are reading the same signals. Do the deeper dive, this is qual research. Over time, you’ll build up data on the deeper cultural aspects of your target audiences. You’ll avoid cultural landmines and build deeper trust with your audience.
