Dr. Marcus Collins has built a career doing what most marketers only claim to do. The award-winning strategist and marketing professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business spent years shaping brand campaigns at Wieden+Kennedy, running digital strategy for Beyoncé, and writing the best-selling book For The Culture. He also co-hosts the podcast From The Culture alongside Amanda Slavin, where the two unpack how culture shapes the way people think, buy, and move.
Now, in partnership with the social platform SPILL, Collins has done something rare. He studied the Black community on its own terms, through 1.7 million real conversations, and let the data lead.
What is SPILL?
SPILL at a glance could be misconstrued for an online social media app, but it’s far greater than that. SPILL is a community that happens to convene online. They share cultural characteristics that help them identify a world of randomness, turn it into something meaningful, and ultimately decide what’s acceptable and expected of people like them.
What made you decide to partner with them for this research?
I study culture as a scholar, so I’m always curious to find research sites where I can explore how people make meaning of the world. I thought SPILL was a really interesting community to explore because there’s been so much rhetoric, so much folklore and mythology about the Black experience, but there isn’t a ton of qualifiable, empirical research to get a better understanding of how this community makes meaning.
I’ve studied how hip-hop has influenced consumption, how brands engage communities based on their cultural subscription, but I never had a research site to explore a community with such great guardrails as far as what defines who they are, and ultimately be able to observe them with such great specificity.
What surprised you the most about this research?
On one end, I was able to see empirical evidence of what I knew intuitively, being a part of the community. On the other end, what surprised me is how much I didn’t realize was happening in the background. When we navigate life, we’re constantly negotiating what’s acceptable, what is expected of people like us. I didn’t expect to see it so tangibly in the way people were debating music, movies, brands, institutions, schools. Almost every aspect of social life is being negotiated right in front of us, if only you spend a little time to notice.
The report shows the Black community actively resists singular narratives. Why is that important for brands to understand before they try to engage?
Because we’re not a monolith. The Black experience is just as heterogeneous as Black people are in this country. There is Black church culture, Black Greek letter association culture, HBCU culture, Jack and Jill culture, deep urban culture, suburban Black culture, gay Black culture. Many, many cultures. Together, they make up the mosaic that we call Black culture. The challenge of flattening Blackness to one monolith is that you lose all those nuances. When you start with understanding that there is not one unified Black experience, it unlocks curiosity. And that’s the best way to explore culture.
Language on SPILL functions as a gatekeeping mechanism. What does that actually mean?
Language is the front door to any culture. Your ability to talk the talk. If we met for the first time and you said “What up tho?” I’d be like, you’re from Detroit. That’s our vernacular. It opens the door.
Because Black culture in all of its many manifestations has been appropriated and exploited to such great fidelity in this country, the community has realized that they have to guard the community by guarding language. The wordsmithing that happens within this community is unparalleled. It’s like an Olympic event. Everyone’s like a Kendrick Lamar in this place.
They’re constantly reworking and refashioning language, and the community keeps up. The only way to know is to be a part of it. In a world where the Black community faces hostility reminiscent of 60 years ago, that level of gatekeeping is not just mandatory. It is an obligation at this point.
What should brands understand about boycotts and how the community makes spending decisions?
The boycott is a byproduct of the negotiation. It’s a negotiation that happens on the platform, among the community, where they’re deciding what’s acceptable for people like them. Almost every major consumption undertaking was being debated. “Y’all going here? Y’all watching this? Have y’all driven this?” Constantly checking, not for permission so much, but for validation, to understand, is this okay for people like me?
By observing these practices on SPILL, it can be generalized to the broader Black population. These things are happening in our group chats, over dinner, over drinks, in the boardroom. We are constantly negotiating.
The community is curious about AI but skeptical. What should tech companies do differently?
You have to think about how the decisions of tech companies are affecting the community. When it’s easy for someone to replicate content, that makes it a challenge for people who historically have had their content, their ideas, their cultural markers replicated and erased. If a tech company wants to engage the Black community with regards to AI, the question is what’s in it for them. Not what’s in it for you. This community has always been willing to try new technologies. They’re always going to be evaluated through a cultural lens.
Black buying power is projected at $1.7 trillion by 2030, yet this community remains underserved in marketing research. Why does that gap exist?
The Black community are the best consumers on the planet, because we buy things that aren’t even marketed to us. We recontextualize them, we rework them, we give them new meaning, we make them cool and they benefit the brand without the brand using resources to engage us. Beats by Dre is a good example. They were able to win in the community not because they exploited it, but because they contributed to it. Those are the ones who continue to thrive, and those who don’t are the ones who ultimately fail in the long run.
Where can people find the research, and what do you hope they take away?
You can find the research at whatsthetea.spill.com. What I want people to take away is a powerful provocation. If we want to understand people, we have to see them beyond their demography, beyond race, age, household income, geography, education. We have to see them for who they are, the social actors that we are, in all the complexity and nuance that make up who we are.
When we see people for their humanity, brands can engage them in their community. Not only do brands have greater connections with these people, but ultimately they drive better business results. I don’t know what community would be more advantageous than the Black community in all of its diversity.