Rank and being informed
Stock rightly points to social rank being the “last bastion of conspicuous consumption”. As luxury evolves, however, paying a lot for something isn’t enough. You have to be in on the secret, part of the story, a holder of the flame…![](https://brilliantnoise.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ZZ20EAAD95.jpeg)
Cultural taxonomies
The other theme that got us a little exercised was Stock’s idea of of “cultural taxonomies”, that is finding the real language that connects brands to their communities of interest.“We are exhausting language,” one of the slides cries out.I couldn’t agree more. This morning I read an interview with a departing executive from Google who said he had become “fairly passionate” about the company, remind me of how “passion” has been spent, as it were, through over-use. And when it comes to the once majestic word “awesome” – well it couldn’t denote less awe these days if we replaced it with “nice”, which is often what we mean by it…In our own industry words like “social”, “engage” and “content” are almost meaningless, squeezed dry. Some brands seem to have no shame in forcing this jargon on their audiences – just last night a Virgin Media ad came on while I was browsing the achingly slow EPG declaring that I was lucky to have access to multiple “channels of great content”. Yuk.But I digress, Stock’s point is brands need to understand “…language from the culture to the brand… not packing the latest buzzwords and hoping for the best.”Developing brand taxonomies – not just for luxury brands – is a vital part of the work we do at Brilliant Noise developing of brands’ Earned Media systems. It’s an incredibly powerful way to organise content, and indeed the thinking around content, social media and SEO efforts.More on that in another post, coming soon…![](https://brilliantnoise.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ZZ2E7EFAF7.jpeg)
Via Ross Dawson’s excellent Trends in the Living Networks blog. Thanks, Ross…