StreamLined’s core product is understanding, communicating and reaching people authentically for our clients. In order to do this properly, there must be a foundational understanding that people are not monolithic and that there is a need to reach each person in the multiple ways they identify. Our marketing philosophy is that if we fail to reach a person by their intersectional identities, then we’ve failed to properly communicate our client’s interests in this person and therefore, their community. Being able to translate a personal approach to millions of people for a campaign can be difficult, but we approach it in two ways: cultures and generations.
What is culture?
At Streamlined, we believe communities of people and their experiences create culture. Because of this, how an individual identifies across race, sexuality, gender, socio-economic, socio-political and geo-political sectors must be researched in order to develop an understanding of a larger group’s way-of-life. This materializes in a few ways. For example, there is a collective Black Culture, a Black experience, that spans across an individual’s gender, sexuality or socio-economic status; however, within this larger Black culture are subcultures of Black straight, Black LGBTQ, Black Poor, Black Wealthy, Black Fathers, Black Mothers, Black Men, Black Women— and the intersections and subgroups continue to multiply depending on an individual’s identification and experience. But no doubt, with that individual identifying in multiple ways, there will be others with them, and their way of life will be similar to one another. This fact spans across race and can be interrogated through all of the aforementioned sectors. The point is: it’s not as easy to understand or communicate with a culture as companies or their agencies may think. And StreamLined’s interests and work lies in uncovering communities and individuals of those communities who can help tell the stories of their culture in an authentic, impactful way.
On Understanding Generations
Cultures span across generations. The collective struggle, successes, ideologies, patterns and more are what makes a culture sustainable. It is almost impossible to have a culture without understanding the generational nuance and exigence for this culture. While there is a set understanding of age “demographics” in the marketing industry, misunderstanding how particular generations influence decades-long brand loyalty and consumer patterns is a dangerous gamble. At Streamlined, our embrace of connecting across generations is to understand how the past will influence the future; how groups of individuals and their experiences–their culture–will shift over time; how long this shift will take and more.
Learn more about Streamlined’s work in connecting cultures and generations through our client work here
