Marketing guru Collins drills deep to explore what drives decision making

Partly because it was on backorder for two weeks, Wendy Maxwell couldn’t wait to read Marcus Collins’ “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be” when it finally arrived last Thursday. She consumed it by Saturday.

“For one, it’s not like a regular marketing book,” said Maxwell, a Purdue University Fort Wayne junior majoring in accounting. “It takes all of these theories, or ideals, and concepts, and it makes it understandable so a normal person who doesn’t have a Ph.D. can look at it.”

Even better, Maxwell got to sit in the front row at Collins’ Omnibus Speaker Series classroom presentation Thursday afternoon, get her book signed by the author, and then ask him a question during the signature event in Auer Performance Hall later that evening.

Collins, a University of Michigan professor, cultural scholar, and marketing genius, showed why his book is so powerful during riveting discussions with both audiences. His main theme was about perspective and how the way people see the world affects society because of cultural influences. Collins suggested that everyone assumes they have free will, but it is guided by others.

“I’m a firm believer that things aren’t the way they are, they are the way we are,” Collins said. “That is, things aren’t objective, they are subjective based upon the way we see them, and if we change the way we see the world, the world will change.”

Culture, Collins said, is the operating system by which we navigate life.

“It’s a grid that we put on top of the noise and business and chaos to give it meaning,” Collins said. “That’s what culture is at its core, it’s a meaning-making system, a way by which we see the world and translate it.”

He offered an example of a cow. Different parts of the world see it as leather, a deity, or dinner—and all three can be correct. An apple can represent a fruit, a computer system, or a recording studio; a rug can be considered decor, a praying mat, or art.

The definitions we decide come because of our identity based on how we collectively see things, Collins taught. Those perceptions shape every product’s marketing.

“Brands are no longer what we tell consumers they are, they are what they tell each other they are,” Collins said.

What we like is shaped not so much by the individual products, but by whether those whom we associate with like them, and by their approval of our choices. If our friends think something is cool or approve of our choices, we lean into them. Algorithms influence us based on our clicks and also what the people we connect with are doing online, offering us similar options.

“As we observe people like us, we make decisions on what we ought to do individually,” Collins said. “The more we value a group, the more likely we are to be influenced by it.

“We only have an illusion of decision making. Most of our decisions are being made by our people, being made by the people within whom we self-identify. We observe our people and see what they are doing and say we are going to do it, too.”

Media is the main influencer of culture, Collins said, giving the example of how the ideal female form has changed and been portrayed over the decades.  

The danger, Collins said, is when one perspective believes it needs to establish dominance and impose its beliefs on everyone. The truth of different contexts has one caveat.

“If your truth means my erosion, my eradication, my marginalization, my subjugation, then we have a problem,” Collins said. “I feel like that is the world we live in. We hold so tightly to our subjective truth that we made it to be objective, and if objectifying our truth means squashing anyone who is not that, that is problematic.”

The Omnibus Speaker Series is sponsored by the English-Bonter-Mitchell Foundation. The 2024-25 season will conclude on March 25 with PBS series host, chef, and author Pati Jinich.