Oceans, Circuses, American Idol and more: A Look at Culture, Remixed

From the article: Ad Age March 31, 2009, Rethinking 'Blue Ocean Strategy' in a Down Economy.

"Value innovation was defined as creating a leap in value for consumers while lowering costs and increasing revenue for the company. [...] A prime example was Cirque du Soleil, which took traditional circus acts and infused them with Broadway-style creative productions to increase customer value and ticket prices, while simultaneously cutting the largest cost item of the circus: the animals. Cirque du Soleil reinvented the circus and today maintains its dominance in a largely uncontested market space."

That article excerpt got me thinking a about remix culture. (My friends Ben Alter and Katie Fitz at Brandcenter also just recently wrote and published an article that touches on one aspect of the topic. View it here.) 

Cirque du Soleil is AMAZING but at the heart of their reinvention is taking something old, and remixing it with current culture to make it something fresh, exciting and new. To invent for them was to REinvent and that meant to remix, not start from scratch. Poof, a new relevant cultural obsession was born from an old concept given new meaning, execution and production.

Thinking about it that way, I concluded once and for all that Adam Lambert (the LA 26 year old) will win American Idol this season. I'm not a regular American Idol viewer at all. In fact, I've never watched any other season before but I started hearing so much buzz about this one contestant and his innovative ability with music. I started watching JUST to see what he'll do next. He blew my mind with his Middle Eastern version of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" (which I've obviously already downloaded from iTunes). He's taking old songs, remixing them and making them into something modern and amazing. Look him up on iTunes or watch here. He's reinventing the wheel through remix.

This got me thinking about brands of course. Right now, there's a lot of talk about creating culture as a way to build equity and engage consumers. It's so sexy to say, "let's create culture," but what does that really even mean? I'm not convinced any of us have it figured out exactly quite yet. Creating something cool works, yes, but it's pretty hard to predict what's will be cool and what consumers will latch onto. 

Perhaps brands could take a cue from Blue Ocean Strategy, Cirque du Soliel, and Adam Lambert. Maybe creating culture isn't pulling consumers completely away from the old (sounds a bit like shock therapy if you ask me). That tactic seems to lack a reference point and even an emotional pull. Maybe instead, one of the best practices in creating culture is taking what's familiar to consumers and giving it a new twist, easing them slowly, but safely into unchartered territory.