Social influence

How brands can strategically use it

Each of the three models of social influence has its own organizing principle, dynamic and aesthetic. Knowing the strengths and the benefits of each layer helps brands create a coherent cultural strategy and a considered media investment:

In the past several decades, society moved from “we” to “I,” as reflected in The Avengers film series, Silicon Valley visionaries and cult personalities of self-actualization. We all became focused on getting, not giving. “We get one life, so why not milk the shit out of it?” asked Gwyneth Paltrow in the trailer for her show, “The Goop Lab”, on Netflix.

Our worldly successes outbid the desires each of us have to be good people, resulting in the fraying of the social fabric of our communities and the demise of traditional institutions, like the church, libraries or local newspapers that held them together. The religiously unaffiliated share of the population is up to 26 percent from 17 percent in 2009, per Pew Research. We put radical individualism ahead of society and ignored the secondary effects of our choices. This was not hard to do for quite a long time: climate change always seemed to be something that happened in the…