mobileYouth®

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“The key to understanding the true meaning behind our actions is to understand the structure”

(Clotaire Rapaille, The Culture Code)

To understand why we buy we must first understand what role products have in our social universe. Every purchase has social utility – some way in which it can help me belong or help me be significant. This is social currency. There are products which are better at fulfilling these drivers and, needless to say, what is belonging and significant to you is a very different to the next consumer.

Social currency is the unit of social interaction. How does the Apple Iphone make me look good (significant) in front of my friends? How does texting help me reinforce my peer group bonds (belonging). How does wearing Converse Chucks help me achieve both?

Social currency is also fluid. Next year, Chucks won’t be so popular. 10 years ago, cigarettes occupied a specific niche within youth – a tool that offered a lot of social currency to certain peer groups but that unique position has been eroded by the mobile phone over the last decade. US Teen smoking peaked in 1999 the same year youth mobile ownership began to emerge. Coincidence you may say?

To remove a behavior you need to displace it with a better one. Mobile phones offered better forms of ritual, identity and peer group connection than the cigarette for most consumers. Similarly, your product needs to offer more Social Currency than the incumbent behaviors you are seeking to displace.

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