Are we all Urban now?

‘Urban’ is a word that has risen in popularity over the last few years. As the author of The Urban Mashup blog I guess I should be pleased about this, but when I recently noticed that CBS Outdoor had adopted the new end line: ‘Outdoor by Name, Urban by Nature’ I was left wondering if we are all urban now.

A quick scan of Wikipedia is enough to highlight that ‘urban’ can be used in many contexts. Most of us will have heard an urban legend, used the Urban Dictionary, or possibly even studied urban theory covering topics such as urbanization, urban decay and urban regeneration.

The dictionary defines ‘urban’ as: 1) a characteristic of a city or town; 2) popular dance music of black origin, or 3) popular black culture in general. However, the brand that can probably claim most credit for popularizing the word is Urban Outfitters. Originally launched in 1970 as ‘The Free People’s Store’ in Philadelphia, it now operates a worldwide franchise in 140 countries and is valued at over $4 billion.

I’ve been using the term since the late 1980’s when, alongside my brother and a few friends, I founded a sound system called Urban Sounds Inc. We spent a good few years DJing in house parties and clubs across London. The music we played was of black origin, but back then the term urban wasn’t in common usage in this context.

Scroll forward 15 years or so and Choice FM went from being ‘The Home of Hip-Hop and R&B’ to ‘London’s No. 1 Urban Music Station’. This appropriation of urban has extended to other areas. We now have ‘Urban Explorers’ and a popular Tumblr site proudly defines itself as ‘We The Urban’.

The ambiguity surrounding the word seems to be part of its appeal. Urban feels more inclusive and less confrontational than Black. It is often used to convey a street attitude without mentioning the problematic issue of race. With CBS Outdoor adopting ‘Urban by Nature’ as its brand positioning, it seems the word has finally crossed over into the mainstream.

The Tanning Of America

Steve Stoute, founder of the marketing agency Translation has documented a similar trend in the US.  He refers to this in his recent book The Tanning Of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture that Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy.

Forbes outlines his argument that ‘hip-hop has established a new, pan-ethnic sort of cool – one with an appeal that reaches far beyond the sort of demographics that Madison Avenue old-timers might expect.’

However, it seems the Mad Men are paying attention. Last year Ogilvy announced the launch of Ogilvy Culture, a new cross-cultural offering to help clients ‘anticipate and prepare for new ways to market to an ever changing consumer population’. Meanwhile agencies such as Noise in New York (part of Engine USA) are setting out to transform the way companies engage young adults.

Urban by name – suburban by nature

All of this should give me cause to celebrate, but despite the increased recognition of the importance of urban culture, brands and agencies in the UK remain ambivalent.

Although many campaigns try to increase their cool credentials by engaging urban celebrities and audiences (with varying degrees of success), the underlying composition of the creative communications industry is still largely anything but urban. With only a few exceptions, our industry has a woeful track record in this regard, preferring to talk urban rather than walk it. (After all, the streets can be dangerous).

The good news is that almost everyone in the industry agrees this is a problem. The bad news is they’ve been agreeing on this point for a number of years and outside of small-scale initiatives such as The Ideas Foundation (with which I am involved), precious little has been done about it.

Ten years ago Professor Richard Florida drew attention to ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’, highlighting the positive economic performance of cities that are characterized by having diverse, tolerant and creative cultures. Hopefully it won’t take another 10 years for brands and agencies to realize the implications of this and fully embrace what it means to truly be urban by nature.

The above image is taken from the 1972 campaign, aimed at the British public, to raise awareness of the racial discrimination preventing the non-white community from finding employment. Source D&AD

This post was originally published on Campaign Live

Social Media 09 – A Different Perspective

Although I’ve already written a short blog post on the last week’s Social Media 09 for Digital Public, I wanted to kick off my Urban Mashup blog by reflecting on the day from a different and more personal perspective.

The event itself was organised by Mashup* and featured a whole host of social media aficionados, digital guru’s, and online monitoring experts. The headline speakers were advertising luminary and Engine President, Robin Wight, and TV presenter Sarah Beeny, who generated a wave of positive Tweets from delegates when she picked up her newborn baby to sooth him during her presentation.

The event felt like a human Twitterfall, with speakers given strict 10 minute slots, and trooped on and off in quick succession.  Although this didn’t leave much time for reflection, a couple of impressions were left with me that don’t appear to have been addressed by other people’s write-ups of the day.

The first came during the talk from a pumped up Dan Klein who set out to convince us that nobody crunched more social media data than his firm Detica.

During his talk entitled ‘Social Network Analysis on Steroids’ he recounted how they had processed the data on every single transaction made on Ebay since 2001, and then went “looking for criminals”.  In this case, people buying Ammonium Nitrate. According to Klein, having found the top 50 traders, they reported the potential bomb makers to the US government. Although he kept emphasizing the legality of what they had done, I know I wasn’t the only one left feeling slightly uneasy by the civil liberty implications of all this.

However, it was Klein’s next case study that really grabbed my attention. He explained that Detica had also processed the details of every transaction made in Apple’s iTunes, and commented that this had revealed some interesting facts. For example, according to him: “people don’t pay for Hip-Hop in iTunes, and we know who they are”.

I found this remark extraordinary on two counts:

• Firstly, I was curious to know how artists like 50 Cent, Eminem and Jay-Z had managed to amass multi-million dollar fortunes if people aren’t paying for their music.
• Secondly, I wondered who was the “they” he was referring to?  I caught the eye of one of the handful of black guys in the audience. We both shrugged and gave each other a look, as if to ask: “is he talking to me?”

At this point, a scene from the 1989 Spike Lee film ‘Do the Right Thing’ flashed into my mind. It’s the one in which the character named Buggin’ Out begins to question why there “ain’t no brotha’s on the wall” in the pizzeria owned by the Italian-American, Sal.  The point he makes is that since Sal’s pizzeria is situated in a black neighborhood and sells pizza to black people, Sal’s ‘Wall of Fame’ should include some pictures of black celebrities.

I began to wonder about the Social Media 09 parallels, because for all the diversity on display in terms of age, gender, and professional experience, a common theme seemed to emerge as speaker after speaker took to the stage.

The clues could be found in the cultural references involving the pronunciation of fine wine, to the names of the presenters. When the second speaker named Giles appeared at the front, he quipped that:  “Social Media appears to be full of people that went to Public School!”

Although I resisted the urge to emulate Spike Lee’s character Mookie by throwing a trash can through the window, I did feel the need to use my opportunity to speak to point out that not everyone in social media went to Public School, as did Josh Feldberg who spoke after me.

I want to make it clear that I’m not criticizing the event organisers Mashup*, who deserve credit for pulling together such an interesting line up of presenters. Nor am I having a go at the other speakers (well, perhaps with one exception). They were being themselves and using the cultural references that they could relate to.

I guess I’m asking a broader question of “where are all the brotha’s and sista’s?” when it comes to social media. We know that black and Asian people participate in social media just as much, and in some cases more than white people, so why are so few involved in the cutting edge of social and digital media production?

It’s not a question I think I can answer right now. It is one that is being asked in the US too. I’m sure that I’ll return to it in this blog because I passionately believe that we’ve got to Do the Right Thing.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or debate below.