# For the Culture ## Metadata * Author: [Marcus Collins](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B0BD7D4F85 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BD7D4F85 * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85) ^tr-l9le12nc6 ## Highlights You don’t need many words when you’re talking with your closest friends. Friends speak in code, and everyone who understands the code just “gets it.” — location: [319](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=319) ^ref-26313 --- Budweiser’s “Wassup” commercial was more than an advertisement; it became a part of culture because it understood culture. — location: [326](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=326) ^ref-18125 --- The word originates from the Latin term “colere,” which means to cultivate, to tend to something in a nurturing way. — location: [343](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=343) ^ref-5139 --- Williams defined culture as a realized signifying system, a system through which we interpret the world and make sense of it. — location: [352](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=352) ^ref-48251 --- Culture is a realized meaning-making system. More accurately, it is a system of systems—a set of interdependent principles and mechanisms that all inform each other—which, collectively, influences practically everything that we do because of who we are and how we see the world. Therefore, — location: [354](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=354) ^ref-65155 --- Anaïs Nin is famously quoted as saying, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — location: [384](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=384) ^ref-5229 --- Shared beliefs and ideologies are the least tangible system of culture but arguably the most important because this system precedes all others. — location: [387](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=387) ^ref-16339 --- Grant McCracken — location: [390](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=390) ^ref-64744 --- When Afghani babies are born, it is a tradition to tie a beaded bracelet onto their wrist that serves as a charm to protect the newborn from evil forces. With the help of the advertising agency McCann Health India, the Ministry of Public Health reworked this artifact to serve as an immunity charm, where color-coded beads were placed on the bracelets as a way for doctors to communicate with each other about which vaccines had been administered to the child. Each colored bead represented a different vaccination: yellow for the hepatitis B vaccine, blue for the flu vaccine. With every vaccination, the doctor would add the corresponding bead as a charm to the child’s bracelet, turning a cultural artifact into a medical record. — location: [487](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=487) ^ref-6996 --- When the beliefs of the brand align with the beliefs of the tribe, members of the tribe will use the brand to communicate their identity to the world, where the brand is no longer merely a mark of ownership but a mark of identity. — location: [1133](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1133) ^ref-23910 --- As the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once tweeted, “In science, when human behavior enters the equation, things go nonlinear. That’s why Physics is easy and Sociology is hard.” Real people don’t fit into neat little boxes, though we try our best to put them there. — location: [1225](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1225) ^ref-44736 --- Meet Mike. Mike has a mohawk. What kind of music does Mike listen to? What kind of clothes does he wear? What kind of vehicle does he drive? What color is Mike’s skin? I do this exercise across the globe, and the responses are almost always the same and typically done in unison. Why? Because these are the boxes that we have established for minivan drivers and mohawk wearers. Not because it’s accurate but because it’s easy. — location: [1233](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1233) ^ref-7740 Thinking slow and fast, which of the systems? 1? --- serendipitously. — location: [1314](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1314) ^ref-46759 --- Georg Simmel who explored the relationship between the dynamics of social groups and their network structures. — location: [1323](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1323) ^ref-36615 --- David Sarnoff. Sarnoff led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for over fifty years, starting shortly after its founding in 1919. RCA would later diversify into music, movies, and hardware, but during Sarnoff’s tenure, it grew to be one of the largest broadcast networks in the world. (In the decades to follow, RCA would go on to create NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which created such programming as Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, The Office, Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Golden Girls, Cheers, Law & Order, 30 Rock, and countless others.) — location: [1326](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1326) ^ref-32323 --- Sarnoff’s law—the value of a network is directly proportional to the number of nodes connected to a central node. — location: [1335](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1335) ^ref-31574 --- Metcalfe’s work on local area networks revealed that the value of a network increases when the network is decentralized from a focal node. Unlike Sarnoff’s broadcast network, where many nodes are connected to one, in a Metcalfe configuration where many nodes can connect to each other, the value of the network is greater because of the increased utility that is created with each exchange. This would go on to be referred to as Metcalfe’s law, where the value of a decentralized network is a by-product of the number of nodes and their connections within the network. — location: [1340](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1340) ^ref-1197 --- Imagine that for a moment: a room full of marketers saying, “We’re targeting Cautious Traditionals.” Huh? I don’t even know what a “Discriminating Pragmatic” is. But one thing is for sure—no one looks in the mirror and says to him- or herself, “I’m a Comfortable Progressive.” — location: [1370](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0BD7D4F85&location=1370) ^ref-41565 ---