Linda Ong, has worked for both agencies and
television since college. Now, as CEO of
Truthco, she provides strategic guidance for network brands such as “Bravo,
Animal Planet and Univision become a force on the cultural map.” According to
Ong, Truthco mines cultural trends that can be used to track the relevancy and
authenticity of a brand message for a company. “Fifty percent of our work is
cultural analysis,” she explains, “and 50% of it is brand strategy.” There is a qualitative research component to
this called semiotics which is the use of symbols and signs to divine long term
unarticulated societal trends.
In this interview, Ong talks about which societal
trends are most impacting our culture at this time, the impact of Millennials, impact
on sitcom and drama programs, what types of research metrics she uses in her
company, how to delineate trends versus fads, what is the complete US profile,
how connect TVs impact cultural change and how the media landscape will evolve
over the next few years.
Subject Length
(in minutes)
Background and Truthco (7:48)
Studies (4:02)
Programs and U.S. Profile (6:19)
Trends (5:58)
Predictions (3:01)
Charlene Weisler interviews Truthco CEO Linda Ong who talks about her background and her company in this 7:48 minute video:
Linda Ong talks to Charlene Weisler about Truthco studies in this 4:02 minute video:
CW: Linda, give me an example of how your research is used.
LO: We have a better real time picture of how things will be received than traditional consumer insights which tend to rely on when consumers have already ingested or articulated an idea. Our track record over that past six years has been phenomenal at articulating swings in culture, shifts in culture and how things will be received. For example we just finished a study on how television news needed to shift to address the new paradigm of viewers, especially Millennials. Only a few weeks afterwards we see the Brian Williams story exploded and many if not all of the points being debated now in that story are things which we already anticipated in our study.
Charlene Weisler asks Linda Ong about program profiles and what a profile of the United States would look like in this 6:19 minute video:
CW: Can you give a profile of American culture today?
LO:
American culture today is in a really interesting place. We are about six or
seven years out of the economic collapse which was a very profound and
impactful for everyone in the country. Probably Millennials have felt it the strongest.
We call it a post-collapse culture where there is a recognition that something
bad has happened – something tragic – that has collectively affected us all. And
that forces people in their everyday lives to see the world differently than
they did before the collapse. So when you are struggling economically – to have
a job, to keep a job, to pay our bills –
you see the world differently. You process other things that equally difficult
in the world. Everything from a natural disaster, like an earthquake or a fire,
to a man-made disaster like a Bernie Madoff or a Lance Armstrong, to social
disasters like Ferguson or school shootings; all these things become connected
in an ecosystem because people are fundamentally struggling themselves. All
these thing s have happened throughout time but when times were better before
the collapse and everybody was focused on making the most money possible,
having the best plastic surgery, having the biggest house for the most money,
we forgot that there was a human cost to this. Now we have a culture that
doesn’t trust institutions – and an institution can be anything from a media
company to the music industry to Wall Street to banking - anything that was an
established way of thinking and doing things. You see a culture that is fueled
by a Millennial spirit which is that we need to make better systems. So instead of banking you have Kickstarter.
Instead of Hertz you have ZipCar. You see a much more practical way of living.
Linda Ong talks to Charlene Weisler about what trends look like according to her data in this 5:58 minute video:
CW:
What is the difference between a trend and a fad?
LO:
A fad to us is something that happens in culture, becomes very popular but has
no cultural meaning. It really just becomes something that lives unto itself.
It isn’t necessarily connected to something that has come before or necessarily
to anything that comes after. Whereas a long term trend is something that
sustains over time but also evolves, adapts or reacts to whatever came before.
CW: So there is
a difference between popularity and cultural significance?
LO:
Popularity does not necessarily mean cultural success - Certainly not
sustainable cultural success. We see sometimes that the things that are most
popular or most numerous in our culture aren’t necessarily considered the
highest quality. So you have the conundrum now between ratings success which is
a numeric measure of popularity vs quality perception in our culture. So a show
like NCIS which is the number one rated scripted drama is not held up generally
in mainstream culture as the highest quality show whereas a show like True
Detective or Sons of Anarchy or any of those show that have been widely lauded
as cultural successes don’t have the numbers of an NCIS and yet those are the
ones that people talk about. We believe, because of our analysis, that cultural
success is necessary now in order to gain ratings success.
In this final video, Charlene Weisler asks Linda Ong to look forward and offer some of her predictions of the media landscape in this 3:01 minute video:
This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com
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