The world around us is in a constant state of change. Technology is advancing, trends are evolving, and cultures are shifting. What’s popular today will be old news tomorrow. For marketers, this poses a new and difficult challenge. When the psychographics and “mediagraphics” of consumers are more varied and obscure than ever, how can we pinpoint and establish a meaningful connection to demographics with a higher propensity for brand loyalty and product purchase?

Don’t bother me kid; go ask the Chief Culture Officer (CCO). That’s the latest solution out of the business world. The CCO is an emerging corporate role created to establish a “systematic way of understanding” people’s contemporary lifestyles that allows a company to maintain a “very vivid presence” there, according to Grant McCracken, Research Affiliate at MIT. To put it plainly, the CCO’s task – and it’s a daunting one – is to figure out what people care about and identify opportunities based on those findings. For perspective, McCracken believes Steve Jobs embodies all the characteristics of a successful cultural know-it-all. (Those of you reading this on your iPhone are proof that McCracken is an expert on the subject.)

Given the oh-so-cluttered marketplace and the increasingly discerning customers that meander there, it seems advertising is an industry in the aforementioned business world that might benefit from the CCO. Or, at the very least, someone with a similar job description. Maybe Trend-Spotter-Slash-Account-Planner? Someone with a sixth sense for The Next Big Thing as well as analytical chops. Someone that can establish a connection between the innate desires of an individual and the bottom-line interests of a company. Someone that believes in the intrinsic value of studying the composition and malleability of the cultures that we marketers attempt to penetrate everyday.

And yet, without an established set of metrics to define it, this soft science remains a hard sell. Are you buying it? Or, is the CCO just a pseudonym for positions that already exist within your infrastructure?