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A hipster smoking
Being cool isn’t everything: consumers are more receptive to other personality traits. Photograph: Wayne Tippetts/Rex Features
Being cool isn’t everything: consumers are more receptive to other personality traits. Photograph: Wayne Tippetts/Rex Features

Nerds v hipsters: what sells for brands?

This article is more than 8 years old

Not every product or service gains a benefit from its efforts to be hipster-cool and in many cases, consumers value qualities such as reliability more

This is a tale of two trends: nerd and hipster. Both have dominated culture in recent years and audiences have drawn up their own set of stark contrasts between the two. Through a bit of image trickery, one reddit post succinctly summed up their differences in a single shot.

Brands have also exploited the two personas. Think back to those Apple ads from the late 2000s that depicted Mac users as trendy, chilled hipster-types and PC fans as stale, suited nerds. The image of the latter may have since shifted from a pocket protector-wearing weakling to an informed tech savant, but both personalities are still hot property for marketing campaigns. Just look at GE’s Hammer ad for the nerd and Jeep’s Renegade ad for hipster.

But is there a better personality for a brand to communicate, to drive the bottom line? Over the past eight years, I’ve tested hundreds of brand attributes (from “easy to use” to “corporate social responsibility”), including 39 different personality traits (like passionate or visionary), in a wide variety of purchase decision-making contexts (eg kitchen cleaner, dating services).

My findings show that various personality traits, including nerd and hipster, can matter even at a business-to-business level, where you’d think this kind of branding wouldn’t matter.

Rise of the hipster?

What I found is that in the past few years, brand messaging based on the hipster persona (being cool, hip, edgy and so on) is more impactful than messaging based on nerdy attributes (being conservative, down-to-earth and straightforward).

But compared to the full set of personality traits, hipster-based messaging only seems somewhat important for consumers. Essentially, being hipster isn’t everything. Consumers are more receptive to traits such as being dependable, prestigious and unique – the top three on the list.

The hipster persona is also facing stiff competition from other trendy personalities and styles. Take, for example, normcore, which is characterised by its lack of coolness.

There are industry segments where hipster messaging has considerable impact on buying decisions. Professional services such as design and online activities such as dating and ordering food thrive on this. Take Tinder, the mobile dating app that introduced us to swiping left and right. It wouldn’t have infiltrated the phones of millennials or pop culture if it wasn’t branded as being cool, fun and accessible.

Interestingly, for food, my work found that people don’t need their actual food to be hip or edgy, just the way they order it. Naturally, in verticals such as entertainment (games consoles, for example) cool prevails.

My long-term surveying also showed that being seen as cool and hip has a significant impact on talent acquisition. Look no further than the ever-present kegerators and ping pong tables of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups, and you will see that they’ve put a real emphasis on having a fun, hip company culture in hopes of attracting the best talent.

Revenge of the nerds

There are areas where being branded as hipster-cool is not helpful. This includes segments such as mobile phone companies, many aspects of information technology (software and storage devices, for example) and television companies. It’s understandable that such segments are more concerned with consistency, reliability and tech-savviness, which veers them into nerd territory. It makes sense; no one needs a storage device to be hip; it needs to be reliable.

One particular nerd-like quality I tested (“develops cool and interesting products”) impacted well. It suggests that nerdier brands can be seen as rock stars if they’re producing products renowned for their technical mastery. Take Arduino, the inexpensive electronics board that allows both experts and layman to build a wide range of electronics. The company has encouraged significant press and a strong following by leaning on learning, experimentation and DIY.

So the world seems to have gone topsy-turvy and “cool” is not just for, well, the cool kids anymore. The nerds have carved out their own bit of cool and the hipster movement has created a “cool” appropriation of a culture classically seen as anything but.

But which is right for your brand? You might be surprised. Not every vertical gains a worthwhile benefit from their efforts to be cool and in many cases consumers value other qualities more, such as reliability or interesting product lines.

Rolf Wulfsberg is global director, quantitative insights at Siegel+Gale

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