The 60s had it all wrong. Life is not about “doing your own thing” and asserting your individuality.
Human beings are fundamentally pack animals. Like dogs only two things really matter.
1. Am I a member of a pack? Do I belong?
2. What is my status in that pack?
Virtually all our decisions are governed by those needs.
Take fashion. I was conducting a focus group with teenage girls a few years ago. They said that their clothes choice was a reflection of them as individuals. But as I pointed out they were all wearing Doc Martens boots. Their response – “Mine are brown”. We don’t choose our clothes to express our individuality. We choose items that identify us as members of a particular tribe – Goths, skateboarders, cool dads, businesspeople, Joe Sixpack. And then we depart from the uniform to state our position within the group – the alpha, the jester, the challenger, the runt.
Or cars. Most people feel their car says something about them. But the top selling vehicle in Canada is regularly the Honda Civic, and the best selling car in the world is the Toyota Corolla. The truth is many people find comfort in belonging to the mass. The most expressive vehicles the Beetle, PT Cruiser, Mini, TJ Cruiser– only sell in small numbers. For example the PT Cruiser at its peak in 2007 had one fourteenth of the sales of the more expensive Honda Civic.
Or beer. Particularly when you first start drinking the choice of beer is a largely communal one – bringing the wrong two-four, or asking for the wrong beer when rounds are being ordered is a major social gaff. But once you have been accepted in the group some leeway is allowed and can define you within the group – a Guinness drinker, for example.
Other people are also starting to notice that individuality is myth. Seth Godin talks about the importance of marketing to tribes and Mark Earls talks about man as a herd animal (1, 2).
Recognising this myth has major implications on how we do our marketing. Stay tuned.
1. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/tribal-manageme.html
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOqCHe355p4
