INTRODUCTION
The
largest obstacle humanity faces is diversity. The overall concept of diversity
encompasses acceptance and respect, yet, we wish that more for our own
individual ties to culture than we care about the establishment of others.
Meaning, we will support acceptance and respect of another’s culture just as
long as it doesn’t infringe on our own. Contemporary Western society plays a
big role in this example by embracing their own culture by and while
marginalizing others. To everyone, their world is all they know; this form of
thought is theorized as social constructionism. “Social constructionism is
concerned with how people account for their world” (Hansen-Horn & Neff,
2008, p. 104) indicating that concepts such as reality or everyday life itself
is circumstantial at best. While this theory has ties to public relations, it
is also a product of psychology. Therefore, the largest obstacle that
organizations and their public relations department face exists within the
concept of cultural diversity. Through a careful integration of both fields of
psychology and public relations we theorize that by appealing to a system of
primitive needs we can combat social constructionism in public relations
campaigns. In short, it is possible to analyze a situation using the circuit of
culture and build a strategy around a hierarchy of needs to bypass cultural
belief patterns and attitudes to forge powerful campaigns.
THEORY
First,
we must understand and establish the fact that each individual, while having a
reality all their own, possesses a mind that exists as a brute fact in and of
itself. This makes every individual the same at the base, regardless of
whatever their culture has built on top of it. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs precedes social constructionism; “According to
this hierarchy, people are motivated to satisfy their need for food first and
to satisfy their need for safety before their need for love…If we think our needs
as calls for action, hunger and safety shout loudly, while the need for
self-actualization beckons with a whisper” (King, 2013, p. 340). Maslow
believed that people are motivated to achieve certain needs, that our most
basic need is survival, and that those needs precede the behavior that comes
with cultural attachment. For example, Westerners rely heavily on fast food
because it immediately satisfies their most fundamental mental need of
survival. We do not necessarily require fast food to survive, but the concept
of immediately satiating a hunger, even when it does not exist, appeals to our
primitive survival instincts. Our activities, then, become habitually directed
towards meeting the next set of needs we have yet to satisfy. The social
construct of culture then is added on assisting us in the decision of what food
to purchase. Therefore we must meet the most basic need before applying our own
definitions of reality and those needs precede the needs of the cultural
identification that exists within self-actualization.
While
we now understand that there is a direct targetable zone within the human mind
that can be appealed to, we can posit that it is more than possible to bypass
cultural attachments during a campaign. Inclusion, for example, “relates to the
extent to which we feel the need to establish and maintain a feeling of mutual
interest with others…most of us want to be included” (Gamble & Gamble,
2014, p. 330) and falls within the hierarchy of needs as one of our most
primitive requirements. “Interpersonal communication is the most persuasive and
engaging of all the communication tactics” (Smith, 2009, p. 188) because it
appeals to our primitive needs of inclusion. Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign succeeded because it was able to transcend
culture and appeal to our need of inclusion. Our ability to customize each can
or bottle with names furthered this need by allowing its publics to develop a
sense of enhanced self-worth. Therefore, manipulating social construct is
possible by appealing to primitive needs.
Second,
it is important to understand that the aforementioned strategy cannot exist
without the usage of another theoretical model. “The circuit of culture consists
of five moments in a process – regulation, production, consumption,
representation, and identity – that work in concert to provide a shared
cultural space in which meaning is created, shaped, modified, and recreated”
(Curtain & Gaither, 2007, p. 38). Each one works together to make a whole
and with the application of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs we can complete an
indubitable strategy for the field of public relations. In order to understand
and make the most of our publics, practitioners need to understand the
fundamental needs of their target while applying the circuit of culture.
Additionally, those needs should also complement the needs of the organization.
Subsequently, we cannot ignore the cultural additives that society tacks on to
their basic needs. The circuit of culture provides a bridge between public
relations practice and the cross cultural realm (Hansen-Horn & Neff, 2008,
p. 288). If the circuit itself is a bridge then the hierarchy of needs
represents the water in between and underneath; constantly gnawing away at the
foundation of both sides. Both sides require the water and the bridge is the
organization’s attempt to satiate those needs through production. It then can
be said that in order to understand and make the most of our publics,
practitioners need to understand the fundamental needs of their target while applying the circuit of culture.
The circuit of culture can be broken down simplistically into the following:
·
The moment of production “outlines the process by which creators of cultural
products imbue them with meaning” (Curtain & Gaither, 2007, p. 39). It is
in this step where public relation practitioners will create their overall
strategy for their campaign. It is in this step where the integration of the
meaning of a product with Maslow’s hierarchy could be communicated with the
target public to foster a direct and primitive need. Production is basically
making the thing.
·
The moment of production is unable to
exist without the moment of consumption.
In the moment of consumption, consumers of the product will apply their own
meaning to what was produced. This is where culture will be impressed onto the
product’s meaning overall affecting its representation. Here is where we will
apply the theory that the hierarchy of needs can make a product undeniable and
a necessity.
·
The moment of representation “is the form an object takes and the meanings
encoded in that form” (Curtain & Gaither, 2007, p. 40). Here meanings can
be “extended from the known to the new through semantic networks in which
meanings are expanded through associations” (Hansen-Horn & Neff, 2008, p.
289). Representation, then, is the meanings associated with the thing from both
the organization and the target public. For example, a cell phone company could
advertise that their phone is necessary for survival by advertising someone
handing a homeless person a phone so that they could use the internet to better
themselves. This “meaning was created through extension of and association”
(Hansen-Horn & Neff, 2008, p. 289).
·
The moment of regulation, perhaps one of
the most important loci in the circuit of culture but not as much for our case,
is where what is or isn’t allowed is established by culture or the laws of the
land where that culture exists. “Anything that doesn’t fit an individual’s
system is rejected” (Hansen-Horn & Neff, 2008, p. 291).
·
The moment of identity refers to the
involvement of all the agents in play. Identity is socially constructed just as
much as it is biologically determined and “identities create meanings as they
are produced, consumed, and regulated within a culture” (Hansen-Horn &
Neff, 2008, p. 290).
There
is a nexus where both the circuit of culture and the hierarchy of needs
intertwine. “Culture is said to embody the ‘best that has been thought and
said’ in a society….and the word can be used to describe the ‘shared values’ of
a group or of society” (Hall, 1997, p. 2). “Thus culture depends on its
participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them, and
‘making sense’ of the world, in broadly similar ways” (Hall, 1997, p. 2). An
organization’s involvement in these cultures can be interpreted by each
individual, then, through social constructionism then shared and redesigned
until the entirety of the culture identifies that organization in the same way.
Now there are universal needs that are not created by culture, the hierarchy of
needs, and if in the moment of production you imbue a particular universal need
into the product then the culture will come to the shared understanding that
your product satiates that need. This nexus point where the circuit of culture
and the hierarchy of needs meet will be further explained as the circuit of hierarchy theory. This theory
can be directly applied to the most successful campaigns to provide an
explanation of their success. Application of this integrated theory can be
viewed in the following case study. Before we begin the case study, it should
be emphasized that these theories, social constructionism or the hierarchy of
needs, nor the circuit of culture, are ineffective by themselves, but instead,
together they form a powerhouse. The success of the following is analyzed under
the combination of three to exemplify its usefulness.
CASE
STUDY
Coca-Cola
is arguably one of the most used examples in public relations and marketing
studies. For the sake of this case study, however, we will slide away from the
analysis of their failed New Coke campaign
and observe the more recent Share a Coke campaign.
Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign
began as a local campaign in Australia in 2011 and became a global sensation;
reaching Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, and Canada in 2013, Mexico
and Colombia in 2014, and Brazil in 2015. So far, Share a Coke has been successful in eighty countries including the
aforementioned, China, and Japan. In this campaign, Coca-Cola was removed from
one side of the bottle and replaced by ‘Share
a Coke with’ followed by one of 250 of the country’s most popular names. “People
often ask, ‘what’s the secret to good marketing?’ [and] some people say there
isn’t one. Well, there is – and it is really simple” (McKanna, 2014).
Within
the circuit of culture, in the loci of production Coke encoded a personal
meaning into their product. Essentially, their intentions were to create a
circumstance where consumers would associate themselves with the product
through a call-to-action strategy. In production, Coke would assign their
products with a name in the hopes that the consumer would understand that they too
were a part of the company and that the company played a role in their
experiences. In the loci of consumption, the public decoded that message and
actualized the meaning provided. In short, Coke was able to personalize and
tailor their product to appeal to each individual. The self exists both outside
of culture and within; in Coke’s campaign they forged a shared identity between
the consumer and the product. In Coke’s Share
a Coke campaign they encouraged the consumer to buy their product and share
it with someone who had the corresponding name. This is the perfect example of
where a product’s representation collides perfectly with the loci of
consumption. Coke anticipated that consumers would ascribe their own meaning to
their product so, instead of trying to curb that ascription, they encouraged
it. By encouraging consumers to ascribe their own meaning to their product,
Coke was able to maintain the products representation by asking it consumers to
share the experience they had when sharing a coke. This reinforced the products
overall personalized meaning and forged a shared identity between a public and
its organization. Regulations did not pose a threat for the countries Coke
operated in already knew the brand. Additionally, cultural regulators were
bypassed when Coke appealed to the individual’s sense of self. Finally, in
regards to the loci of regulation, we mentioned earlier that the moment of
regulation relies on the product fitting into the ‘individual’s system’ and
anything that doesn’t fit is outright rejected. Because the Share a Coke appealed to an individual’s
sense of self, it was immune to rejection due to the fact that individuals
would then have to reject themselves. A feat non-accomplishable for most of
humanity.
The
online component of was two-fold: it allowed Coke’s consumers to access an
online store to personalize their own bottles and cans – which was appealing to
those or friends of those who had unique names. The campaign not only
capitalized on emotional self-expression and sharing but utilized another
online component, social media, so that individuals could share their experience with others or with the Coke Company itself.
By
paying careful attention to the loci within the circuit of culture, Coke
appealed to the individual’s basic needs. As we mentioned earlier, it is within
the moment of production where the creators of the cultural products imbue them
with meaning. In the case of the Share a
Coke campaign, Coke embedded an answer to a primitive need within their
product that would transcend cultural decoding: physiological and belongingness
needs. It was in the moment of production that they integrated Maslow’s
hierarchy and it was in the moment of consumption where each individual
accepted that tactic. Coke became more important to the consumer because it
concurrently met two motivational and primitive needs. Additionally, because
Coca-Cola marketed its product as a motivator for action, the subsequent
experiences furthered the mergence of product and consumer identities. By
meeting the physiological and belongingness needs, the Share a Coke campaign was able to satisfy a degree of the
individual’s esteem needs (by allowing the individual to share their story
online) which subsequently contributed to a degree of self-actualization. To
put it simply, Coke’s Share a Coke campaign
utilized the hierarchy of needs to strengthen the five loci in the circuit of
culture. The strengthen any campaign, utilizing the hierarchy will strengthen
the circuit of culture; as you appeal to the basic needs and the psychological
needs you transcend culture itself while subsequently merging your
brand
with culture in the self-actualization stage.
