The Definition of Culture

Culture is one of those words that is overused, and most dictionaries will give you over ten different definitions of it. For our purposes, I am going to use the definition that applies to “the behaviors and beliefs characteristic to a particular group.” I’m referring to the definition of culture that people use when they talk about “the youth culture” or “the music culture” or “the coffee shop culture.”

Even that definition is very vague, so let me give you another example. Go to the magazine racks at a bookstore or library. You’ll see titles like Forbes, Ebony, Sunset, Rolling Stone, Redbook, Vogue, and many others. Take out a single issue and look at its ads and articles. Ask yourself what sort of audience this magazine is catering for. What makes a Cosmo girl? Who is a GQ man?

Chances are, the most successful magazines have been in the business for decades, and they have refined their target audiences over the years. Now their target audience is safely in the crosshairs. For long-time readers, the magazine has nothing to do with the information or products that it holds within their pages. What really sells is an idea—some belief that people want to make their own—that the glossy mag brings.

Think about why Facebook has made an impact. It has nothing to do with what it does. In fact, what it does has been done before. It wasn’t really about a software program, it was really about relationships. Friends can get together and freely share photos and beliefs, with “like” or “dislike.” Facebook is so much of a culture that it has become part of our mass culture. This particular culture states, as its fundamental idea, that all of our friends can be with us in one place, and we can all get along together.

All that from a simple online program. As you might have seen in the movie The Social Network, the creators themselves didn’t really see where this idea would take them.

Foursquare has a similar strategy. It knows that we can’t be with all of our friends all at once, but it at least allows us to keep track of them and find out what they are doing. Foursquare is an extremely popular application on Android and other platforms, and it definitely has a social aspect that has created its own culture.

I didn’t tackle this question of culture in the last chapter, as it is difficult to put into a sentence. The question involves finding your target audience, and figuring out how they can truly use their product until it becomes a part of their lives. I suppose that I could phrase that question like this: “What kind of culture does your application bring to users?”

What you need to do is think of your application from a Don Draper point of view. If you are not familiar with that name, then you might want to catch an episode of Mad Men. On that popular AMC TV series, Don Draper and his ad agency, Sterling Cooper, are presented with an idea that they must market. Many episodes consist of Don in front of his assistants, thinking out loud about what the idea of the product really means.

For example, there was an episode where Kodak was wanting Sterling Cooper to advertise its newest invention, the slide projector. After trying out the project, Don concludes that the purpose of the projector is to provide a way of traveling through memories like a child, which is why he calls the circular tray holder the Carousel.

History reveals that the Carousel didn’t get its name from Don Draper, but I hope you see the point that I am making: it’s usually not about what the product can do, but what the user believes it will do. This belief is what will determine the culture of your application.