The Thing About Vibes

DID YOU KNOW…

In an era when baseless conspiracy theories and fact-checking have become standard fare in the contemporary political discourse, a surprising factor has emerged as the game-changer in the upcoming presidential election: vibes. That's right—the vibes, the distinct emotional response we experience when interacting with the world around us, will determine whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will take office in 2025. It won't be policies that will sway voters at the ballot box but, instead, the candidate's ability to connect on an emotional level.

That might seem counterintuitive; however, vibes have a greater effect on our behavior than we realize. According to the late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, most of our decisions are made intuitively based on emotional associations, not through rational data processing. Our experiences and worldviews give meaning to the information we encounter in our daily lives, which informs how we think because of what we feel—the vibes.

 We are not rational human beings; we are emotional, rationalizing beings who disproportionately make most of our decisions based on shortcut heuristics and intangible feelings. Vibes determine what we buy, where we go, who we date, and, in the case of this election, how we'll vote—not because of the substance of the candidates' policies but because of how the candidate resonates in our hearts and minds.

In a political landscape where facts are often disputed, and trust in institutions is low, the intangible quality of vibes could be the deciding factor in who takes office. As voters head to the polls, they may find themselves swayed not just by what candidates say but by how they make them feel. Are you feeling joy or vitriol? That's the choice, and that choice is yours to make—but choose wisely. 

THE LIST

What makes for a good campaign that successfully leverages the sway of culture in its marketing activities?

That’s a good question—one that the good folks at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity asked me to consider. So, I curated seven of my favorite campaigns that engage culture as an effective catalyst for behavioral adoption.

The truth is, there is no external force more influential on human behavior than culture. Those who understand its dynamics are more likely to have influence, while those who don’t are almost always influenced by those who do. Hopefully, this list might help get business leaders closer to the former than the latter.

Check out the list here.

THE CHEAT CODE

If you like the list of campaigns above, then you’re in luck. I dig into how these campaigns came to be and how you, too, can leverage the operating cultural mechanism that powered them so that you can engineer your own effective marketing campaigns in my new Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Unlocking The Influence of Culture: A Marketer’s Greatest Cheat Code 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

The course goes live on September 30th.
We’d love to have you with us.