Our editorial insight series, Club Free, meets people who don’t fit neatly into segmentation tick-boxes. Here Global Managing Director El Pigram gives some tactics for brands to meet them outside of these…
Club Free Issue One, download it here.
At Crowd, we believe that change presents opportunity.
Our latest editorial insights series, Club Free, is about groups seeking a new way of thinking about their individual liberty. It’s not freedom that’s unchecked or selfish: we talked to people who are providing each other with the support, empathy and community to exercise their freedom effectively.
In chapter two: The Financial Outsiders, we heard from a community-minded group living and giving outside of elitist money systems.
Here we dig a little deeper into this changing relationship with money and how it can inspire more emergent strategies for mass audiences.
The Financial Outsiders are a manifestation of a deeper cultural shift towards being free from wealth or economic systems that costs others. Looking at what this group gains from living and giving outside of elitist money systems can make us think differently about the way that we craft financial products and position them.
Subverting Status
As chasing down those traditional milestones of (ultra) wealth become less ‘shiny’, how do we think about new articulations of (and ways to cater to) age old social identity needs like ’status’, ‘reward’ and ‘discernment’? It’s not that this audience aren’t seeking all the good stuff that once came with splashing cash – self-gratification, community validation, recognition – but instead they’re more choiceful in how they fulfil these desires, with the act of giving (rather than receiving) hitting that sweet spot.
Values over value
You can’t put a price on happiness. Cliche, and a bit (to use a Gen Z word) ‘cringe’ – but for many this rings true more today than ever before. Rather than play by the rules of a game that’s rigged against them, young people are forging their own way of earning (figurative) wealth – by doubling down and focusing on their values, rather than their earning potential. It’s not that they don’t value work, they just don’t see work as a fair value exchange. Which poses an interesting question to us as marketers, strategists, employers – how do you define, create and communicate real ‘value’ to an audience who interprets it in a fundamentally different way?
(More) Radical Honesty
Radical honesty has been a thing for a while. Honest brands that ‘say it how it is’ connect with an iconically millennial sensibility (I’m looking at you, Ryanair, KFC & Pot Noodle ). Emerging audiences are however encouraging us to move a step further, from saying the unsaid – to doing the unexpected; supporting people and communities in ways that genuinely benefit them. What our Financial Outsiders are calling for isn’t about CSR, it’s about putting an end to gatekeeping that upholds the imbalance between the haves & have nots through creating spaces and cultivating (branded) communities that facilitate the greatest kind of wealth distribution – knowledge.
Learning about The Financial Outsiders is part of our commitment to look at (and be inspired by) groups of people who don’t fit neatly into tick-boxes, well trodden segmentations or traditional pathways.
We hope you find these stories interesting. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.
Club Free Issue One, download it here.