Billionaire Taylor Swift announced that she was engaged to Travis Kelce on instagram. The announcement referred to her as the English teacher and Kelce as the gym teacher – apparently what the fandom sees them as. There’s a song referencing him which is the clip used in the announcement. All very insider focused – and reinforcing the sense of belonging to a community.
You either get it – and scream in delight and post it on Insta – or you don’t.
Welcome to the IYKYK era
Insiders and belonging have always been there of course. For example, religious denomination was a big part of identity with a whole set of values, symbols and heroes to be followed.
What has changed now is the huge long tail of ways to belong. There may not be a pastafarian church near you, but you can find your fellow pastafarians online and have an inner chuckle if you spot someone with a colander or pasta t-shirt.
There were 4.30am shows of Superstar Rajnikanth’s latest movie, Coolie That’s for the true fans. Who are not in the malls but in the standalone theatres where they can burst crackers, douse their deity with milk and dance with their tribe.
Tribal T-Shirts
I spent much of my career in IT services, and t-shirts are the most popular freebies! It is a huge tribal marker of belonging. Go to any airport around the world and you can spot your colleagues by their t-shirt.
We are also notoriously thrifty people and therefore I still wear t-shirts of companies that I worked at 20 years ago 🙂 Once an Infoscion/Wiproite/iGATOR always one, no?
Let’s say you’re an aging Nirvana fan and you see a 20-something in a Nirvana t-shirt. You might feel a fleeting sense of kinship, no? Or a stranger wearing your college hoodie might make you smile and say hello?
That’s how these tribal markers work.
When money can’t buy you membership
For much of human history, the basics of life – safety, shelter, food, clothing – have themselves been luxuries, not accessible to all.
Then within that there were obvious markers of who could afford more than the others.
Taylor Swift and Georgina Rodriguez received marriage proposals from very rich people. And the diamonds are huge. But they cost only around a million. So then the “luxury” becomes the story of the designer, provenance etc etc. And even more importantly, who saw the Instagram post and liked it, is the real luxury.
For a lot of consumers the basics are well within reach. Just access to money is no longer an attractive enough club.
What is an IYKYK product?
IKEA did an ad on my facebook feed for their paper referencing “paper rings” from a Taylor Swift song lyric “I like shiny things, but I’d marry you with paper rings”. It’s supposed to give you an ah-ha moment that you cracked the reference and let you into the club. It’s like a modern “Open Sesame”.
If, like me, you have no idea you can just assume the paper can be used for craft and move along. Nothing for you to see.
There was a discussion initiated on my marketing whatsapp group by Karthik Srinivasan on Adidas’ collab with Ravi biryani in Dubai. It was part of a series of 12 restaurants worldwide done by Adidas.
In the 90s an Adidas sneaker itself was an aspirational shoe. Now that everyone can get one there has to be an Open Sesame to unlock the tribe. Imagine you bump into someone wearing a custom shoe collab with your favourite restaurant, you immediately have a connection into a little club.
Last week I wrote about Labubus. If you know what they are you’ll know a fellow tribe member. If you don’t, you’ll wonder why grown adults are carrying ugly stuffed toys.
As any product category becomes accessible there will emerge an IYKYK variant. These are clubs to which entry is limited not just by money but by special interest.
What should businesses do?
Identify your “open sesame”. How will you make a generally accessible product or service more appealing to a special interest? Using lingo that only your audience will know is one way. Collabs with insider or tribal brands is another.
There has to be a tiny bit of cognitive awareness required to unlock the secret. For example, “I dream of Zero CAC” would attract evolved marketers. Hmmm. Maybe I should put that in the text for the by-invitation CMO Roundtable we’re co-hosting with Razorpay Engage on September 23rd in Bangalore!
If you’re still wondering what is IYKYK, welcome to another insider word – If You Know You Know 🙂
I’m not a Swiftie – this weekend say hi if you’re at the Theo-Reticle performance at Hard Rock Cafe Bangalore or We Will Rock You at Chowdiah on Sunday.
Have a great weekend!
