Tribal counsel

By Gena Tuffery, July 18, 2007 @ 11 pm

Idealog July/August 2007, page 58. Illustration by Dean Proudfoot

Two Wellingtonians have written a guide to the dreams, desires and dislikes of our fellow Kiwis, using well-known cities, towns and suburbs to identify our ‘tribes’. Gena Tuffery reckons she learned a lot reading 8 Tribes (but then she would say that—she’s apparently a Grey Lynn gal)

It’s been six months since 8 Tribes appeared with a publisher’s promise to help New Zealanders better understand each other. The tribes [represent] eight different value systems, the blurb reads. They explain why you know from first glance that your new neighbours aren’t ‘people like us’.

Reaction to this new form of social shorthand was strong and varied—which perhaps proves the book’s argument. Although the eight suburbs used to identify the tribes aren’t indicative of literal location, some Kiwis I canvassed feel penned in by the geographical descriptors. They protest that to be labelled a representative of the ‘achieving’ North Shore, ‘intellectual’ Grey Lynn, ‘staunch’ Balclutha, ‘entitled’ Remuera, ‘free-spirited’ Raglan, ‘unpretentious’ Papatoetoe or ‘community-minded’ Otara is no more character-revealing than, say, being dubbed Dopey or Sneezy.

Meanwhile, thousands of others happily share their tribal mix with friends and family: “I’m 47 percent Grey Lynn and ten percent Balclutha. What are you?”

To those fluent in the tribal language—a skill acquired from two hours of book-reading or two minutes of online test-taking at the 8 Tribes website—this is a revealing disclosure indeed. In nine words, a stranger can now expose herself as an intellectual, socially-aware culture buff who owns her own gumboots. (Those versed in the 8 Tribes lingo would realise this person probably wears her gumboots too—but only when tending her inner-city, naturally-irrigated, organic vege plot.)

“8 Tribes doesn’t answer every question you’ve ever had about people,” co-author Jill Caldwell concedes of the book whose ideas she developed for 12 years while working as a social trends analyst. “But it does help you to think about groups that you wouldn’t normally think about—to understand their underlying values and motivations. People already know this stuff instinctively. We’ve just supplied the vocabulary to make it accessible.”

“It’s a shortcut to empathy,” adds her co-author, brand consultant Chris Brown. It seems we need one. After all, how can we hope to understand another tribe if we don’t understand their morals or goals in life?

In a world where we move in different circles to people who hold different values to our own—then judge them through a murky lack of understanding—a shortcut to empathy has to come in handy. And not just in an esoteric Grey Lynn way, either.

Caldwell and Brown are “applying the conversation we’ve started” to an area where all good conversations take place—around the modern-day campfire, the watercooler. 8 Tribes Workplace Workshops will utilise values testing, initially to help an organisation understand their employees, then as a tool to help them understand themselves.

“We want to give companies insight into why their staff operate in particular ways, what they need, what perceptions they have and where those perceptions come from,” says Caldwell. “This in turn will create the understanding that people’s values aren’t bad, just different.”

But what if you discover your employee’s values are vastly different from your own? Wouldn’t it better to build a mono-tribal workforce of Mini-Me fembots?

Those buzzing inside the Beehive would certainly be tempted. The country’s most scrutinised house is run by MMP—or 8 Tribes in action—and it’s complete chaos. You can bet the North Shore’s crown prince, John Key, will never be pressured into voting to add ‘no discriminating against social tribes’ to the Employment Relations Act. Especially after the embarrassment of having to compromise with the Grey Lynners over something as namby-pamby as smacking.

This problem of “the human desire to express their inner world in their outer one”, as Caldwell puts it, is central to 8 Tribes. After all, if you’re a Raglan tribe member who believes freedom is imperative between 5pm and 9am, chances are you subscribe to this idea the rest of the day too.

Likewise, if you’re of the Papatoetoe tribe—a believer in old-fashioned Kiwi modesty—you might feel uncomfortable with the back-slapping and air punching found at a North Shore company’s Friday night drinks. Then again, if there were only competitive North Shore citizens at those drinks, the punching might not all be in the air. Goodbye bloodymindedness, hello bloody nose.

Exactly, say Caldwell and Brown. “The key out-take of the book for us is diversity creates energy, so diversity is good. And remember, we all love every tribe at certain times—North Shore when we win, and Otara when there’s a party.”

Brown and Caldwell say the key to making sure everyone is doing well—including the company—is to create “an authentic brand voice” so people know exactly what they’re getting; whether they’re buying your product or making it. “People join brands that are relevant to their own value systems,” says Caldwell. “We think the only real strategy that works for creative companies is to be who you are. If you don’t share the same values as your customer, look at how those values can interact.

“But remember, we don’t necessarily always want a company to share our values. I did some work with a finance company last year that was Balclutha-meets-Remuera. It epitomised what everyone wants from a finance company. Nobody wants a Raglan tribe member in charge of infrastructure—even another Raglan tribe member!”

Whatever its natural tribal affiliation, you should seek to make your brand likeable, says Brown. “It’s about being the best of yourself, not something you’re not. This is an age of empathy. Unless you have a stable monopoly, you better understand your customer and you better tell them the truth.”

This all makes sense. Don’t you want your brand to have a lot of friends? And if it’s going to be popular, it needs to know more about its mates than, say, that they’re between 18 and 30 and are in charge of doing the weekly grocery run.

People are true friends because they believe in similar things, not because they both watched Dancing with the Stars last night—although if you both watched Dancing with the Stars you quite possibly believe in the same things anyway.

Or maybe you believe in not believing—a Papatoetoe tribe member might tell you believing do-gooders are all wankers, most of all those Grey Lynn tossers. But even if you’re a non-believer you still want to hang out with people who don’t believe what you don’t. Dontcha?

8 Tribes: The Hidden Classes of New Zealand by Jill caldwell & Christopher Brown (Wicked Little Books), 2007. $35

I gave the 8 Tribes test to ten friends. Eight emerged as predominate Grey Lynners, like me, while the other two were Raglan affiliated—my social sub-tribe. Scientific? Hell no. Telling? I think so.

I was similarly unsurprised to learn the tribe I was born into is packed with Papatoetoe-Balclutha hybrids. What does a person do if her family is all one tribe and she is of another? Run away and join the circus—or the library.

And if you’re looking to run away with your brand, you should remember this: while tribal names don’t come much more Kiwi-fied than Papatoetoe, the tribes themselves are universal. Brown lived for several years in Japan and insists that once you immerse yourself in a culture, you’ll see the same tribes wherever you are. “Then you come back to New Zealand and hear about ‘the Japanese consumer’, this monolithic creature who only has one kind of demand for one kind of thing,” he sighs.

That’s not to say exporters don’t segment their market already with demographics, Brown says, but rather that the 8 Tribes segmentation is a more useful one as it cuts right to a consumer’s “secret heart”. The lesson: exporting is essentially an act of social anthropology, and that’s something we’ve historically not understood.

“We’re not trying to tell you something’s right or something’s wrong,” Brown tells me. “Just that we’re all fundamentally different.” 

And we like to cluster together. This is only natural—we started out in tribes, so maybe it’s in the collective genome of consciousness to want to gravitate back towards them. In the near-lawless country that is present-day Iraq, this theory is being proven true. The Kurds have holed themselves up in the north, Time magazine stated last year, to “enjoy the independence they have long dreamed about.” Meanwhile, the Sunnis and the Shi’ites have also drifted back to their pre-colonial corners—you over there, me over here. Opposites might attract, but we prefer to smoke our cigarettes afterwards with someone more attuned to our worldview.

Unless, of course, you’re one of those rare people who have a roughly equal slice of each tribe in them. “They get invited everywhere,” says Brown. At the other end of the scale, people with a mono-tribal identity can be very hard to get along with. “Those people tend to be very vehement in their ideas and beliefs,” he says. “There aren’t many, but of those, there are quite a few strong Grey Lynners. When they believe something, man, they believe.”

I don’t know if that’s true. But this book changed my world and I believe it will change yours too. It’s quite possibly the best book ever written. Buy it and live by it or your life and company will surely disintegrate around your ears. Just my opinion.

It’s not all about money for the North Shore tribe—appearances are right up there too. Of course the Audi S8 that sparkles so prettily in the driveway sun can’t be bought with your average nine-to-five wage, so North Shore affiliates work nine-to-nine—more if there’s a spot of time-and-a-half going. They are the cogs of the economy; if there’s work to be done, they’ll be working it—especially when the boss is around. They are competitive. The ubiquitous t-shirt slogan ‘it’s all about me’ was originally designed for the North Shore chest, but you wouldn’t know it—they don’t go well with the ever-present North Shore business suit. If John Key ever loosens his tie you might get a glimpse of his. 

 

Family, church, gangs—wherever Otarans feel like part of the group, there they will be. They are the least individualistic of the eight tribes, and are all about doing, and being seen to be doing, the right thing—or seeking forgiveness when they don’t. Perhaps because Otara tribe members love to cluster, they are known for their parties, and with attendees like Inga the Winga and The Naked Samoans, it’s little wonder.

 

The Papatoetoe affiliate, firstly, would hate to be described as an affiliate. They distrust intellectual wankers almost as much as they distrust weird wankers—anyone who abandons the jeans and t-shirt tribal uniform for something as outlandish as say, a frock. Papatoetoe people want to keep up with the Joneses as much as anyone, but surpass them? Don’t be a wanker. The goal is to do and be just what everyone else is doing and being, thus epitomising the long-held view of the ‘egalitarian Kiwi’. If you fit in you are embraced. If you don’t you are pushed—probably all the way to Grey Lynn or Cuba Street. For those who stay, there are two acceptable ways to stand out: in sports or beauty. Ex-Miss New Zealand and Sports Café presenter Lana Coc-Kroft nailed it.

 

If reverse psychology were to work on anyone, it would be on a Raglanite. They hate to do what anyone says they should, and are therefore best suited to freelancing or entrepreneurial mavericking. They are society’s dreamers who are often found in suitably whimsical environments—a ramshackle cottage by the sea, or a self-built castle in the woods. Or, like Josh Kronfeld, the castle may exist in their heads. Deep, man.

 

Grey Lynners are all about the whys and wherefores as opposed to the trivialities of the whats and how-tos. They like to think about how everything will affect everyone, and as a result they’re often riddled with guilt when they do anything as un-PC as driving or consuming a bakery-bought, possibly non-free range egg sandwich. They frequent festivals; it doesn’t matter if they’re celebrating film or gay pride, as long as there’s a message in there somewhere, preferably picked up by Russell Brown. They are the well-educated who like to educate—especially if you break one of their for-your-own-benefit rules. Don’t you dare smack your child in front of Helen.

 

Cubans are the originators—or at least flatmates with someone who is. They’re the first to know something is hot and the first to drop it before it cools. They occupy inner cities and fear they’ll break out in plaid if they leave the city boundaries. You won’t catch our cover girl Hollie Smith in flannel—even if Manhattan Records sends her to Texas.

 

The Balclutha tribe is synonymous with the Kiwi—the one in the Stubbies and Swanndri (pre-Karen Walker rebrand). Gathered in cossie clubs and rugby after-match functions, they may seem simple, but they’re actually deceptively cunning. They can fix anything with anything and cook like Alison Holst, but a bit of common sense and No 8 are often called upon—as is a Toyota Hilux if you’re of the Barry Crump ilk.

 

This tribe is looking a bit thin in these post-post-colonial times. But in simple post-colonial days, membership was way up to the fourth floor of the family estate. Remuera people care about such things; the estate, how long it has been in the family, and, most importantly, how long your family has been around. Money is valued, but not if it’s that dreadful, shiny, freshly-coined kind. If the money issue can be overlooked, the manners issue simply can’t. And shan’t. Round your vowels and pass the peas. Please. And, says Doug Graham, kindly refrain from making Treaty jokes at the dinner table.