Chief Culture Officer

Grant McCracken, a Canadian anthropologist who trains large companies and consulting firms, argues that corporations need a new executive who tracks fast-moving trends while understanding the deeper, slower currents of culture. He cites Levi Strauss, which missed the hip-hop market for baggy jeans at a cost he puts at a billion dollars, and warns against handing cultural insight to cool hunters, consultants and teenage interns. McCracken separates fast culture, like boats on the surface of an ocean, from slow culture beneath it, and shows where the two converge, as in the preppy style that Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger built on. He also examines the I Love New York advertising and Dove's real beauty campaign.

Poke head of strategy Bogdana Butnar included it on her ultimate books to read list for people in advertising.