This is a download from BFM 89.9, The Business Station. BFM 89.9, this is The Business Station. My name is Rich Bradbury, and I'm turning in for Mr Jeff Sandhu. So as the world becomes increasingly wired, we often hear that culture is becoming more uniform and homogenised.
Are we really heading for a one-world order? Someone who's not sure, but it's pretty certain that it may not be the one world we imagine. Is Culture Pops my Armitage? It's time he maps plain.
I'm at. Hey Rich, how are you doing? I'm doing good. Is it true you've had Jeff lucked up for the crime of sarcasm?
Well, we're living in a fake news world, and those of us with the power can bend the judiciary to our will. So last week Jeff said some horrible things about me. They may have been true, but I choose to call them untrue. Right.
So he's away this week. I've had him locked up for a week to teach him to be more polite. I assume this has some link to the Yeshore? Well, you know what they say about assuming.
But yes, there is a link. Nobody seems to know which way is up right now. True is false, green on red, orange is not the only fruit. We're living in this weird and uncertain age when no one knows the rules.
It's like we're futuristic and medieval at the same time. On social media, our lives are there for everyone to see. But in real life, we're kind of walled up in these castles, and we hide behind all these kind of physical and mental barriers. How is this leading us to a one-world order then?
Well, conspiracy fans are more than familiar with the New World Order, and that's not what we're going to be talking about today. As you mentioned in the intro, people are starting to wonder whether digital technology is actually pushing us towards a more singular vision of the world around us, rather than allowing us to share and celebrate the difference in terms of cultures around the world. We're talking about Amazon and Facebook rather than a sinister plot to take over the world. Well, precisely, but the strange thing is it's quite possible that they could end up being the same thing without the conspiracy, but with the power still concentrated amongst a handful of companies by virtue of their size.
Now, we did a show on Amazon a few weeks back, and the company really does seem to be poised to become this global trade monolith. Along with companies like the Alibaba Group based in China and of course expanding across Southeast Asia. These two companies are starting to carve out a niche for themselves where almost all of our trade touches them at some point, whether it's an online payment system, an app using cloud services or something we buy. It's quite incredible the number of the companies and products that we use from day to day that have some direct or indirect connection to companies like Amazon and Alipay.
But you're not sure this is where the future is at? Well, a lot of today's show is actually a bit of a thought experiment. So usually when I do these shows, I'm quoting from lots of sources at the very least, you know, website. Yeah, a lot of them, a lot of what we'll talk about today is kind of conjecture on my part, but that's one of the best things about futurism.
You know, you look at the information you have today, you hope that you've got to handle on what's going to happen tomorrow, and you use that information to project or predict what's going to happen in 10 or 50 or 100 years time. So I can't cite any particular studies to back up a lot of what I'm about to say, but I think that if I'm on track, a lot of people are going to be doing research in these areas very soon. So, okay, where are we heading? Well, I don't think people are wrong when they talk about a monoculture of the future.
I think where they get hung up is in terms of what that monoculture is going to be, what it's going to look like. Okay, well, you'll have to explain that a little bit more. I'm more than happy to do because, you know, we've got to pull a 20-minute show out of a vague and not fully formed notion in my head, so explaining is pretty much all I've got. When we talk about the culture, we're often talking about Western influence consumer culture, so we tend to mean McDonald's and Coke and Levi's and Nike.
Cultural commentators like to talk in terms that these are the symbols that brought down the Iron Curtain in the 1980s. Which is a simplistic generalization of a whole host of factors that ended European communism. Yes, but we probably won't get into that because we've got 20 minutes to fill, not two weeks. So, certainly when the Russian economy was in freefall immediately after Gorbachev stepped down, Levi's and Nike and Coke and certain tobacco brands became part of a barter economy alongside Black Market US dollars.
So, it kind of became a truism that the CIA was shipping all these things into the country to shore up the economy, but you know, you get to believe what you want to believe. Certainly, it's partly to do with the perception that they helped bring freedom to the world. And I think people like us, the 80s generation, have a very different opinion of those brands compared to the generations that have come after us. Do you remember your first McDonald's?
Well, this is the weird thing. We're both English, right? And a lot of people, especially here in Asia, might assume that we had all those brand symbols floating around just as commonly as they were in the United States. But I think I may have been maybe nearly 10 years old when I had my first McDonald's.
And that was on a trip to Greenwich in London, although for the life of me, I can't remember what I was doing there. So, my association with McDonald's as a child really came from their cartoon ads on the TV. I remember one Christmas, we all asked for those hamburgler character dolls. If that means nothing to you can Google it.
But the toys were actually stronger icons to us in the late 70s than the early 80s than the food was, because we didn't have access to food. And it took a long time for those icons to penetrate somewhere as culturally remote as the village in Norfolk that I came from. Well, I mean, I would comment about how in the middle of nowhere this village is, but I come from somewhere equally in the sticks as well. And I don't think I had my first McDonald's, but I was probably about the same age as well.
And even though it was seen as a treat, you had to go to town for it. You had to travel for it. And that's kind of the point. Even in the 1980s, those brands were still working hard to penetrate this kind of grey and monochrome culture of post-majestic.
In the 1970s to UK, the town I grew up in or the village I grew up in, or the neighboring town in fact has no McDonald's or Starbucks to this day. The neighboring town of Kingsleyn got its first McDonald's I think in the late 80s or the early 90s. My nephew who was brought up in the same village I grew up in, he didn't have his first Starbucks till a couple of years ago. I know it does seem way around.
And when I was a kid, we wore Dunlop Green Flash, not Nike's. And there was one shop in the town that sold Levi's. To a lot of our listeners, the 1980s might as well have been the dockages. Which, you know, I understand that so I can give it some context.
It was a time when we had personal computers and video games. So it may be weird for some listeners to imagine that there was a time when you could play Space Invaders, but not eat a big Mac. Air travel to Europe was common in the UK by then, but the US was still this kind of magical faraway place. Disneyland.
Well, exactly. You only really heard about people going to the States when you were a kid to go to places like Disneyland. The idea of jumping on the red-eyed to go to a meeting in New York. That idea was only really starting to take off.
And where I lived, it was a big deal if you drove for an hour to somewhere like Cambridge. Doing that was enough to get you marked at school as being a posher because, you know, you weren't buying your clothes from the local market school. Right. And that's only 20 or 30 years ago.
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. Just 20 or 30 years. We were still viewing America as this magical place. And I've never been a Disney fan.
So for me, the fascination was always the neon and the road signs and the diners and the highways. Obviously, you know, if your recollection is different, feel free to tell me. But America, to us, to me, my friends, my siblings, it was only really something that existed on TV. You're right.
The air team, Air Wolf, Blue Thunder, MacGyver. This seemed to be the full guy. This seemed to be the America that I assumed existed. Yeah, exactly.
And then when you find out that the reality is somewhat different, you know, that's a bubble that's literally dispersed. Yeah. OK. So how is this leading us to monoculture?
What does it have to do with the future, man? I mean, we've spoken about the 18. Everything leads back to the 18. We had this vision of these brands being permanent that they're cemented into our lives.
And that is possibly true if you live in the US. But I think for people in the rest of the world, these brands were not something we had easy access to. They were aspirational in only the Vegas Times. I mean, like you just said, it was something you saw on TV.
You didn't have any tangible access to them. So the fact that they're now so rooted in our lives is a relatively recent phenomenon. One of the things I like to do is if you mention the A&W franchise to any Malaysian over the age of say 35, you know, you better sit down because you're about to be on the receiving end of a 30 minute monologue that illustrates how frosted root beer floats were interwoven into the experiences of their teens. And that cultural influence of A&W is far stronger for that generation than McDonald's or Burger King is.
And that explains the monoculture, how? Well, people have this idea of what the monoculture is going to be. And part of that, I think, is down to the presence of big brands in science fiction movies. There was David Nicoll movie on Netflix earlier this year, and on with Clive Owen and Lee.
Now, in the movie, augmented reality turned buildings into ad spaces that were personalized for you. And it was all luxury watch brands and all the usual consumer brands that we've been used to. So we get the idea that these big brands are going to be the ones that lead us into that future. But I've got a feeling that the future is actually going to be very different, more on which after the break.
Oh, great. Finally, after only eight years of doing these shows, my arm of the image has mastered the reveal. Stay with us for this for his anti-climatic return after this. Boyish 40-something millionaires.
BFM, age of 9.9. BFM, age of 9.9 at the Business Station. I mean, the studio, of course, with Culture Pop is very on. I'm going to talk about what the future and monoculture is.
The future and monoculture, yeah. OK, so enough being around. Why do you think that the big brands are today maybe heading away from the sunshine? Partly because nobody has any real idea how to communicate with the newest generation, the Gen Z, the generation that has risen from the ashes of the millennials.
So those guys are starting to reach their data mining maturity. Sorry, don't you say that again? Those guys are starting to reach their data mining maturity because, you know, that's how our work and value to society will be calculated in the future. But it goes back to what I was saying about living visible lives inside medieval castles.
This is the first generation that Point Blank refuses to let the marketers in. Why do you think this will have impact on today's big brands? Because we have this idea of trusted brands. People will choose one brand of car over another, not because it's more exciting, but because it's more reliable or it has a better resale value.
There are certain promises that we expect brands to fulfill. It's part of the bargain, our money, in exchange for a certain amount of style or design or utility or quality. It's part of how we calculate the value of that brand and decide where it fits into our life. You see that changing?
We're seeing a lot of direct cultural shifts, which I'll get to in a little while. But there have been all these warning signs for the last years. And I think what helped me bring all this stuff together was doing the King of the Crowd section for gigs. Now, for those of you who don't tune into that show, shame on you.
It's really good. I do a lot less talking. King of the Crowd is an item I do on the show every week where I select a notable product or service from the crowd funding sites. And Jeff and I try to figure out what, if anything, is cool or interesting or groundbreaking about that product.
Because crowd funding sites are becoming increasingly mainstream. A lot of product-focused startups now use the crowd funding model as their primary business model. Because it allows them to bypass the middleman, the physical and online retailers. Precisely.
And it's really interesting for people like me because it's so transparent. I can log on to a product page on Kickstarter and see precisely how many people have invested and what kind of sums the product or company has raised. In fact, that's the modus operandi. The first thing you see when you log on is how popular this is and how much money they've raised.
So to get the same kind of information from Apple or Facebook would be far more complicated and time-consuming. And it's also interesting because it's a very direct way to assess new consumer trends. Do you think the next Apple or Nike is going to come from one of these crowd funding sources? I think possibly not because I think we're looking at it kind of the wrong way.
What's interesting is the number of projects that are raising really big sums of money. Take, for example, the Tropic Travel Shoe, which I think was a king of the crowd a couple of months ago. To me, they look like a kind of generic version of Nike's Roshi Run series shoes. They're marketed as a travel shoe because they have an aquedraining sole.
You can use them for hiking and they look smart enough that most places will let you in to eat dinner if you're wearing them. With an early bird price, and remember that you're cutting out the retail store, which typically takes 100% margin. An early bird price of $70 US a pair plus shipping, they're not cheap. But today, the Tropic shoe has raised $3 million on the crowdfunding sites.
$3 million is probably not going to worry, Nike or Adidas? Well, it should because you have to look at it from another perspective. If you walked into a sports store and you saw two pairs of shoes, roughly the same price, they look pretty similar. One pair comes from Nike and the other comes from a company you've never heard of before, which you can buy.
That's a good question. I mean, I probably buy the Nike's. Exactly, because you understand them, you know what that brand promises. I know their brand story.
Yeah, exactly. And the crowd funding sites have turned that trust relationship around. Or rather, I think they've become the avenue for people to demonstrate that that implicit trust that you were saying is no longer there. There are loads of similar examples on crowd funding sites.
And also, these companies spread themselves across our social media fields. And sorry, these companies also spread across our social media feeds, and they've raised millions of dollars direct from consumers. These are companies that have an idea of product. They don't necessarily have an established brand pedigree.
Yet tens of thousands of people are willing to invest in them, and often to wait months for the product to be delivered to them to finally come to market. So if we go back to your earlier question, $3 million is not going to worry Nike. But if there are 10 projects like this, and together they're taking $20 to $30 million out of the sports footwear market, that's really something that ought to be getting them worried. So do you think the existing model is already broken?
If not broken, then I think fundamentally changed, and still in the process of changing, billions of dollars are being spent every year through sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Those are billions of dollars that are being spent on startups rather than on established companies. Because every single dollar that's spent on one thing on those sites is a dollar that's not being spent on a more established alternative. But you don't see the added assets of tomorrow emerging from the crowd funding?
Not in the same way, because I don't think people are interested or focused on the brands themselves in the same way that say older generations are interested in Coca-Cola. There are people who spend their entire lives collecting Coca-Cola memorabilia. I can't imagine the same thing happening to Tropic the Travel shoe. What we're seeing is a change in the way that people are buying products and a profound shift in the products that they're buying.
And you think that's generational? Partly, I mean, I don't have any hard data. I mean, that's what I was saying earlier about some of this being conjecture. So I don't have the hard data on the demographics of people purchasing through the crowd funding sites.
But I'm imagining that a lot of those consumers are what we term as millennials and gen-c. So I think it goes hand in hand with the erosion of trust in civil and social institutions in general. And that's especially so for the gen-Z. And I think technology actually has a lot to do with those changes.
Smartphones make you less brand loyal. Well, smartphones make people less sarcastic as Jeff is finding out. If you look at the differences between our generation, generation X and the millennials, the gap between the generations is actually relatively small. In a sense, millennials have a foot in the pre-digital world and a foot in the digital world.
You know, they're post-internet and pre-smartphone if you want to put it in those terms. There's was kind of the bold experiment in living your life entirely in public view. So for marketers, they were, and are, a dream come true. They're highly social.
They like to take pictures of themselves, wearing or using whatever they've just bought. And they still accept the idea that the world is built around brands like Coke and Pepsi. And Gen-Z? And Gen-Z, well, same time but different.
Highly social, but not so interested in sharing with the world. So look at the tail-off of interest in open access sites like Twitter and Facebook. They're finding it very hard to attract this younger demographics. And Snapchat as well now.
And Snapchat as well, yeah. And these guys are not so interested in the idea of universal communication. They may have one feed, say, on Instagram that goes out to the world, but everything else happens behind closed doors on these button-down messaging system. This is your painting bubble system.
If only I'd be rich. Rich, I tell you. But I'm not. And you're rich.
Yeah. So bubbles is right. And that's how I explained it to a friend recently. So millennials and Gen-Z are the first generation to essentially live inside protective bubbles.
With millennials, those bubbles are kind of perforated. They allow communication with the old world. With Gen-Z, those bubbles seem to be entirely closed. It's like there's a self-sustaining ecosystem inside them.
So I wouldn't call it an echo chamber because I think this generation is actually a lot smarter than that. So are you saying they don't necessarily believe in brands? I think what they don't believe is that anyone is telling them the truth. So they're as skeptical of large companies and global brands as they are of news organizations and politicians.
It's all part and parcel of the same thing. There is also a social awareness and activist component to this as well, though it's hard to see if that scales up enough to have a global impact. But the most important thing is that I think they just aren't listening to brand messages. This is the world of artists and beard oil, homemade cosmetics, and unknown sneaker companies like Tropic.
You know, it's all about the unicorn shakes. It's things that are quick consumption and designed for sharing. Is this back to your uncertainty principle? Yes, very much so.
You know, technology and trends are moving so rapidly that these guys are living in a world that doesn't have certainties. But I think what we have to get our head around as older generations is that this doesn't actually worry them. This is what they consider to be normal. So big companies have spent billions of dollars in decades to build their brands.
And this is the first generation that genuinely doesn't care. This is the generation that's more interested in the product and its provenance than in the producer. How is this driving us towards a one-world order? Well, because it goes back to what I was saying right at the start of the show, there are very few companies that aren't in some way touched by Amazon, Alibaba, or another one of these large logistics groups.
You could quite easily look at Kickstarter's business model and transfer that onto Amazon.com. Amazon doesn't really care where the products come from. It's only interested in shifting volumes. And if anything, dealing with the tens of thousands of small players making artisan or bespoke products actually gives a company like Amazon much more power than if they're dealing with the big brands because Amazon has to negotiate with those big companies.
With small retailers, it simply sets its terms. It's very much a take it or leave it offering. And that's great for Amazon's bottom line. And it's also great for its power position.
Because it's the only marketplace. And yes, and that's how I think we end up with this kind of commercial monoculture. Because access to that retail and cultural gateway can be effectively controlled. Isn't the crowdfunding model a demonstration of independence though?
Well, it is on one side. But I think that's something that people overlook. That the massive online retailers are Amazon are actually all about infrastructure. So you may be able to sell your product independently.
But how do you get that product to your customers if the shipping and career companies are owned by the Amazon's of the world? Who hosts your retail site and payment gateway? What cloud does your app sit on? So that's what I meant earlier by saying these companies have a finger in every part of the transaction pie.
Should we fear it there? Well, you should say that anything that gives someone or some company unchecked power is something that you should fear. It's kind of ironic that anti-consumer sentiment could lead to the creation of these big global trade dominators. But it shouldn't be that surprising.
You know, we're living in a world where the social algebra is failing, where the answer to what's two plus two seems to change on a daily basis. Where's the hope in that? Well, the very unpredictability of these brand new generations of humans, I think, is our best hope. They've been forced to evolve and adapt socially far faster than any generation before them.
Maybe that means in the future everything's just going to go boom. But I've got a feeling that that sense of adaptability, that the capacity to deal with uncertainty and change is going to enable them to make some very hard decisions about the future, that my generation, our generation, has singularly failed to do. So I do think there's hope in what this generation is going to do. If you're looking for ways to navigate the uncertainty, check out culturepot.com for transcripts of these shows and more info on how to get in touch with Matt.
Listen to Matt's Blainty on BFM 8.9, stick around. We've got Geeks squawking up in just a few minutes at BFM 8.9. Thank you for listening to this podcast. To find more great interviews, go to bfm.my or find us on iTunes, bfm 89.9, the Business Station.