Culture
Nostalgia Is One Hell Of A Drug
Nostalgia Is One Hell Of A Drug
Cambridge English Dictionary defines nostalgia as “a feeling of pleasure and sometimes slight sadness at the same time as you think about things that happened in the past”. I define nostalgia as a sensation or perception as it relates to culturally shared moments across age groups, ethnicities, race, profession and academic school of thought. Nostalgia as an element of social consciousness, is polarizing by nature. This means that two cultural groups will not remember the same event the same way, either one group has positive emotions, and the other group has negative emotions, or both groups hold varying degrees of positive and negative emotions.
Kareem “Biggs” Burke, an esteemed pop-culture philosopher once said “sometimes I miss the vibe, but then I remember the disrespect”, I hope I quoted that correctly. What this statement literally does is to further illustrate the polarizing nature of nostalgia even within the group or the individual. Think about it, have you ever reminisced about an old horror movie that you saw as a kid with your family, and in the same breath remembered the crippling fear you felt when the night came and the lights went out? Or a uni lover who did you dirty but in spite of that holds a warm place in your heart even though you still get PTSD from the heartbreak? – why would an experience that ended badly, continue to feel so good?
Well, we have our brains to thank for that. By design, the brain functions to elevate parts of the memory which are pleasurable, and represses the parts which are unpleasant. It is a complicated process of human evolution that has served the human race from time. Does this mean that our brain is broken? No, all it does is what it has been designed to do – plug, play, optimize. Part of optimization is memory decay, our conscious and subconscious memories are filed away in the unconscious – this is the deepest and darkest parts of our minds. Memories that get filed away in the unconscious cannot be actively recalled no matter how hard you try, what helps are retrieval cues, or in more extreme cases, hypnosis.
Retrieval cues are basically elements in the environment that triggers recall. Retrieval cues can be present in the external environment, such as sound, smell, touch, taste, and sights. Retrieval cues can also be internal to the person retrieving the memory, such as physical states or feelings. Retrieval cues are why Usher has a hit song titled “You Remind Me” – retrieval cues are why a familiar perfume scent can either make you smile ear to ear, or tear up a little in memory of the one that got away. Retrieval cues are so powerful, and it is why the design universe has informally decided to adopt certain colors as symbolic representation of actions. The red light means stop and so does your delete button, even if you’ve not read the words on the button, you automatically recognise what it could 90% mean.
Retrieval cues are all around us, it’s in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the billboards we see, the magazines we read, the market we patronize, the documentaries we learn from, the digital ads that bombard us, and the people we are drawn to interact with. These different social elements tap into a moment in the time of our lives that will form the relatability needed to buy into their agenda. Advertisers, movie/music directors, interaction designers, salesmen, PR consultants, image architects etc, are intentionally or unintentionally adept at using retrieval cues to sell a story through visuals and words, that will trigger the action needed to make a sale or change perception for good.
Polarizing in nature as it is, the powerful allure of nostalgia has clearly proven to be leaning favorably towards pleasant memories. For communicators, this means that in developing strategies, tactics, and eventual comms tool kits, it is important that you stay within cultural familiarity – do your research into the words, images, and storylines that helps your audience form stronger cultural associations with your products. For designers, who I refer to as the magicians who speak the language of the unconscious memory, the task is to use shapes, colors, layouts and typefaces as visual collaterals that introduces the brand personality and strengthens its positioning as a trusted friend and cultural ally.
As internet penetration spreads across the planet, more people are adopting the use of smart mobile phones, and the world continues in its move into digital-first platforms of interactions. This means that there will be an influx of culturally diverse pockets of people, and there’s a need for robust integrated communication strategies that incorporates and projects an authentic cultural salad bowl that not only taps into the culture, but represents moments in the culture. In designing products for finance, entertainment, health, wellbeing and sports, ask yourself – beyond the technicalities and business strategies, what’s the one thing the user will remember about my product? How do I immortalise the concept?
Human Beings Are Products Too
Human Beings Are Products Too
Product design and management are similar in concept and use cases in the areas of developmental and clinical psychology. A basic definition will be that developmental psychology finetunes the experience of a product/human, while clinical psychology uses that experience to meet user needs. In the case of a product, the users are external, but in the case of the human, the user(s) can both be external and internal, mostly internal.
Coincidentally, the one thing both the product cycle and human cycle have in common is the need to achieve. No matter how banal and extraordinary, not achieving will make a product/human defective and useless – and therein lies the problem.
For every human being on earth, the singular most important thing is the need to achieve. Achievement is relative; it could mean anything from getting through your workout to getting a promotion at work. However, I think we’ve attached too much power to the word ‘achievement’ that it has now taken nuance away from the basic meaning of the word, which is to simply get things done on time and with a little discipline.
50 Cent was the first to put this in perspective for me in his book ‘Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter’ – in highlighting the timeline of his wins from a kid selling drugs in South Jamaica, Queens, to a TV mogul, he mentioned that at every point in his life, everything that he had wanted, no matter how reckless or unnecessary it seemed, had prepared and motivated him to get to the next level of his life.
But this is not an article about the greatness of 50 Cent, because as much as I am fascinated by the concept of greatness and its associated elements like discipline, style and oddity, I am probably more interested in the not so great people who have more authentic things to tell me about the average human nature. However, it was important to reference his much-documented life to explain my premise for this article because you can always go back to trace the dots.
This is also not an article about technology; it’s an article about human design and management. If we ignore the technicalities of the technological or psychological approaches for a minute, we can see that there are three major phases of human development that impacts achievement; Design, Product-Market Fit, and Ultimate Success. Using Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, I will attempt to break this down.
The Design phase covers infancy, early childhood, middle childhood and ends at adolescence (0 – 21 years). If you actually reflect on this period as far back as you can remember, and try to be objective about what worked and what didn’t, what hurt and what didn’t, what you liked and what you didn’t, personality types you vibed with and those you didn’t – you will unlock the answers to how you were designed and what you are either capable of and not capable of. Just like a product, the design phase holds all the clues to how you were built and what you were built for.
The Product-Market Fit phase covers early adulthood (21 – 39 years), a period that we all know is filled with great turmoil and dilemma. We struggle to fit in with friends, industries, workplaces or geographical locations. In a bid to understand themselves better, a lot of people seek out therapy during this period, and what a trained therapist will first establish is all the unique elements of your design phase that will help you navigate people, places and situations better. In my case, I could do that by myself because I understand how to use Psychology, and I am also extremely strong-willed and brutally honest with myself. I would not advise that you do this on your own because not only do you not possess the structured knowledge that will help you navigate this process, it is also a long and very painful process that requires discipline and accountability. Only a trained professional can help you get through this, but when you get through and become incredibly self-aware, you will become unstoppable, or as Nassim Taleb calls it, Antifragile.
The Ultimate Success phase covers middle adulthood and old age (40 – 65 years and older). This is a period where a lot of people commercialize and become successful. Success, in this case, is very subjective, in fact, the great philosopher, Damon Dash, posits that success is a feeling, not an actual accomplishment. What this means is that whether you are a C-Suite living in a penthouse apartment or you are a Professor, living in a modest home in the countryside, what really matters is how you feel about all that you’ve done and/or acquired when you are alone with your thoughts. This is why it is important to get the product-market fit phase right, because what you will eventually call success or accomplishments may really just be someone else’s design script.
How Social Media Is Impacting The Future Of Cultural Taste
How Social Media Is Impacting The Future Of Cultural Taste
I have always been fascinated with the internet and its components. My first interaction with the interface was back in 2005 when Yahoo! Messenger was all the rage. My mother could not afford a family computer at the time so I’d always beg her for N100 ($1 – adjusted for inflation), to buy about 1 hour of computer time at the neighborhood cyber-cafe. The 1 hour usually sped by because I’d just surf and surf, brimming with excitement as I stared at the screen wide-eyed. For me, the internet was not just a tool of communication, it was a medium of socialization.
Since MySpace made history as the first internet company to hit 1 million active users, social media has been a concept and a product that has been loved and hated with the same intensity. Often by opposing demographics but never by opposing psychographics. The reason for demographic disparities is rooted in developmental differences, however, psychographic factors ensure that everyone has a place on social media. Everyone is welcome. That’s why group chats and Twitter factions exist, and it’s why Facebook favors organic group page engagements over business page announcements.
I know the various tech companies have caught major flak for social engineering platform dependence and people’s attention. However, it is important to highlight some of the good social media has done and will continue to do, especially acting as the melting pot for national and subcultures across the world to synthesize informal language, fashion and style, design and aesthetics.
The nature of social media is to promote exhibition, either for your thoughts or for your appearance, and the reward for exhibition is validation and replication. One person’s opinions turn to the belief of another person across the world, usually beyond propaganda, but focused around self-awareness, personal space and self-esteem. The personal style of a London babe is replicated experimentally by another babe in Lagos, Nigeria. When she is complimented by everyone for her unique sense of style, it reinforces her decision, and completes the process of behavioural change.
The amalgamation of cultural elements across the world is evident in the emergence of the positively rebellious nature of the Generation Z. They are not bound by the developmental parameters of the older generations simply because the process of social learning, which is a key learning principle in the development of conscious beings, is not limited to their immediate environmental mores and norms.
They can choose their tribe and instinctively absorb the different parts of diverse cultures that appeal to them; music, fashion, social beliefs, and well being are being subconsciously re-engineered for good. Ultimately, the coming generations can perceive adaptive sensations beyond the parameters of their physical environment – it now literally takes a global village to raise a child.
With the emergence of mainstream immersive technological products and platforms such as AI, VR and the Metaverse into the mainstream market place, the simulation of social interactions across cultures will become more real time and synthesized. I wonder what this eventual global cultural personality will mean for marketers, product and brand managers, PR and digital marketing people as regards segmentation and targeting. One thing is clear though, the internet has established itself as one of the forces of societal socialization
Why Thinking Outside The Box Is NOT What You Think It Is
Why Thinking Outside The Box Is NOT What You Think It Is
I remember sitting in my first brainstorming session as a Communications Intern 8 years ago, when the account handler encouraged us to think outside the box and present a big idea to communicate the client’s business objectives. Like Professor X, I went deep into my mental faculties, I thought long and hard, I read Comms case studies, I thought some more, and came up with nothing. It really baffled me, how did I come up with nothing? Does this mean I’m dumb?
I have since developed as a Senior Consultant in my current profession and I have been part of several brainstorming sessions. I have also worked with some of the biggest brands in Nigeria and delivered several high level campaigns. The singular summation of my experience in delivering campaign strategies has been this – the most obvious solutions are the ones hardest to come by because of the self-imposed cultural constraints we work within.
‘Thinking outside the box’ what does that even mean? What is the box? How do you think outside of it? Simply put, the ‘box’ is the subculture we exist in as individuals in the society, and thinking outside of it means intentionally experiencing other subcultures that helps us see our challenges from a different perspective and help us get it. For the layman, subcultures are anything with a process or unique way of doing things – could mean industries, religion, professions, ethnic groups, social class, schools, fashion houses, animal groups, or even mechanical things like cars, blenders, hair dryers and so on. It’s basically anything that has an influence on our perspective.
The most important thing to understand about this statement of innovation heuristic is that ‘thinking outside the box’ is not really so much about your intelligent quotient (IQ), but your emotional quotient (EQ). ‘Thinking outside the box’ is also not about how much time you dedicate to thinking about it. Think about the statement ‘outside the box’ as a Venn diagram – your solution lies at the center of your experiences, and two other unique experiences. Now, depending on the challenge you are trying to solve or the sector you play in, your EQ will help determine what differing experiences are worth simulating or which unique experts to sit with in order to crack the case.
If you’ve seen Mad Men, you’d recall that the opening scene of the legendary advertising series illustrates exactly what I outlined in the preceding paragraph. Don Draper, creative director of the fictional Manhattan advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, is trying to solve an advertising challenge for Lucky Strike – a cigarette company, one of his agency’s top accounts. He is shown asking the busboy attending to him why he smokes a competition’s cigarette brand and the waiter provided a simple answer that refocused Don’s perception and helped him solve his challenge. Mind you, this scene was set in 1960 America when segregation was at its peak. Don is a young and accomplished white man, talking to an older black man who has nothing in common with the people he is trying to sell to, yet uttered the words that were key to a major insight for Sterling Cooper.
To illustrate further, if as a non-smoking Product Manager, I have been commissioned to lead a product development process for a smoking app, the mental model I am working with is limited because I do not possess knowledge of a smoker’s motivation, behavioural processes and incentives of the smoking experience. The reasonable thing to do in that case will be to covertly study the smoker by living their subcultural experience – get familiar with smokers at different stages of the habit, hangout where smokers hangout, talk to the sales people for cigarette brands, and talk to researchers of cigarette brands. By the time you are done, you would have a holistic perspective to the product user that will inform the interaction and brand design strategies that will make your product successful. This is why method acting exists, but that’s an aside.
I will end this article with the ancient story of a group of blind men who had never come across an elephant before. They learned and imagined what the elephant was like by touching it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk described it as a snake, another described its ear as a kind of fan, another described its leg as a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
Each blind man failed in their description as a result of limited experiences. As process managers, business men, builders, and consultants, we are all blind men. Ultimately, whoever succeeds in solving innovative challenges is the person who has experienced the full picture. You should strive to be the blind man who touches all parts of the elephant. It takes time, but you will win, eventually, and the win is usually long-term.
How Music Is Rebuilding Trust In The Nigerian Personality, Internationally
How Music Is Rebuilding Trust In The Nigerian Personality, Internationally
When Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie, gave her famous TED Talk – ‘The Danger of A Single Story’ – a lot of people could relate because of the context she spoke to. I’d first listened to the speech as a first year undergrad studying Psychology, and it completely blew my mind how she was able to fit the essence of my Social Psychology textbook into a less than 20-minute speech.
See, what the majority of people who listened to that TED Talk would not have fully grasped – understandably so – was that her talk was based on a concept known to the layman as a stereotype, which the Oxford dictionary describes as ‘a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing’.
Stereotypes in themselves are not due to evil or wicked intentions, in fact, stereotypes are as much a physiological fault as it is as a cultural fault – and the culprit to blame physiologically is something Psychologists call the Schema. A schema is ‘a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information’ – basically a mental shortcut that human beings use to form urgent perceptions about people, things or situations.
Humans by nature are not built to think hard, simply because it’s not very adaptive. Imagine having to think long and hard about every tiny decision you make, such as, should you wipe your bum with your left or right hand? Should you turn the door handle up or down to open a door? – do you know how unproductive we’d all be if schemas didn’t exist? We’d all be standing around THINKING about tiny things that are necessary yet unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Think of the schema as your wardrobe, there’s just so much clothes (information) it can take – so you put only the absolutely important and personalized things in there, then use a shortcut (schema) for everything else. Pictures, colors, shapes, smell, sounds, and tactile feedback are all the ways we make decisions about the world. This is where art, culture, and design directs our individual and/or group unconscious perceptions about the social world.
Which brings us to the point of this article – a point that will not take me very long to make if you understand everything I’ve tried to explain so far in this article.
The perception of the Nigerian personality has been scarred from the early days of credit card fraud, when broke Nigerian students in the United Kingdom were jailed and then deported. Since then, all kinds of scam or dubious ways of making money or gaining access have been associated with the Nigerian personality. Two familiar examples are; the extreme immigration experiences that are tied to our National passport, another less severe situation is the blocking of our regional IP addresses from accessing certain areas of the internet.
Now, I’m not saying scamming was the singular cause of prejudice against Nigerians internationally, however, it’s the singular most talked about keyword that has been sensationalized by the media – so much so that the ‘Nigerian Prince’ unconsciously became a part of pop-culture.
In recent times however, we can sense a shift in the breaking down of the barriers of entry across different industries; music, tech, and the design eco-system. Now, Nigerians are being hired en masse for remote tech and consulting positions. Nigerian artistes are being featured as headliners in international music festivals, and as part of cultural projects.
When Burna Boy won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album, I remember telling a friend how happy I was, because this was not only a win for Burna, it was also a win for the individual Nigerian who is pitching business projects in Europe, the individual Nigerian who goes to an all white school in Germany, the individual Nigerian who imports goods from China, and also the individual Nigerian creative voice.
Suddenly, these individuals are not being looked at sideways anymore. Music as a language of the soul has permeated the unconscious, and the ‘scammer’ and ‘untrustworthy’ schematic tags have now been replaced with ‘cool’ ‘entertaining’ ‘funny’ and ‘charismatic’ – a phenomenon that can be explained best by a concept Psychologists call the Halo Effect, which is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one’s opinion or feelings in other areas.
We like to think of Humans as complicated or mysterious, but the truth is human interaction can be boiled down to whether they simply like you or not, and this in part is being rectified by the Nigerian narrative that is being pushed by the works of Tems and her team, Wizkid and his team, Davido and his team, and every other creative voice representing the Nigerian personality across the world.