Brand subcultures: why it matters
A subculture tells you who your audience isn’t, too. Calvin Ross Carl argues that naming heroes and enemies gives a brand permission to leave some people out.
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl points to a less obvious benefit of subculture thinking: it tells you who not to include. Using a mezcal brand as the example, the heroes are the insiders and the enemies are skeptics who find mezcal too smoky and don’t get it. Naming them gives the brand permission to leave them out. Calvin argues a little gatekeeping isn’t always bad.
Highlights
- Subcultures define who isn’t your audience.
- Heroes and enemies make the boundary clear.
- Some gatekeeping is healthy for a brand.
Key insights
Exclusion is a feature
Knowing who you’re not for keeps a brand from diluting itself to please skeptics.
Enemies sharpen the picture
Pairing the insider hero with a clear skeptic makes the target easier to see and speak to.
Detailed analysis
This connects audience definition to the heroes-and-enemies idea that runs through the show. In the mezcal example, the people who think the spirit is too smoky aren’t a problem to solve. They’re simply outside the subculture, and the brand can stop spending energy on them.
Conclusion
Decide who your brand isn’t for. It frees you to fully serve the people who are.
The other thing that subcultures then do really well is they give you a person to not include as well. We’ll talk more about this later, I think, but subcultures also tell you who is not your audience. This is part of the heroes and enemies part of this.
So in this case, our heroes are that insider, and our enemies are skeptics of mezcal who think it’s too smoky, who just kind of don’t get it. So that gives us permission to say they aren’t included. They aren’t a part of our subculture, and that’s okay. It’s not always bad to be a gatekeeper. That’s going to come back to bite me someday.