For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be

“Anyone with an idea, product, or cause can leverage the influence of culture to inspire... people to act in concert,” contends Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, in his perceptive debut. He explains culture as a “meaning-making system” in which a person signals their ideology or community membership through symbols, and examines why it holds such sway and how marketers can use it to influence consumers. The author suggests that companies transform their brand into a symbol by pairing an ideological stance with their products, as exemplified by Patagonia’s calls for prospective customers to repair their current jackets rather than buy new ones, counterintuitively boosting sales from buyers drawn to the company’s promotion of ethical consumption. He encourages companies to advertise themselves to groups, based on characteristics, that are likely to share their main conviction (a brand built around the belief that “life is an adventure” might target adrenaline junkies) and to keep up on changes in the group’s culture by scrolling Twitter hashtags and Reddit pages. Collins has an unusually sophisticated outlook on what drives consumer behavior, as well as a knack for delivering his smart ideas in accessible prose. This is a superior program on how the business world can use the interplay between culture, consumption, and identity to their advantage. (May)