WHY YOUR BRAND IDEA IS FAILING IN CULTURE
Article by Hattie Matthews, CEO as recently featured in LBB.
I met someone recently who turned to me in all seriousness and asked, "OMG, who is still making TV ads?"
"Erm, we are," I said. And we’re still seeing fantastic ROI from the right sort of impactful creativity. But as we have always known, great brand building doesn't start or end with a 30-second broadcast spot.
Recent research from Common Interest found that brands with high cultural relevance are valued at 2.8x more than those with low cultural relevance. One route to cultural resonance is collaborating with creators who bridge the gap between your masterbrand and the fast-moving cultural context of the internet. It is precisely why the British creator economy is growing at 28% year-on-year, with IAB research showing 84% of brands and agencies plan to increase creator investment this year.
Yet, this doesn’t necessarily buy brand impact and commercial success. A recent report by TikTok, WPP, and System1 revealed that only 29% of creator ads beat the average brand ad on TV at building long-term brand equity.
So, why are we still struggling to effectively integrate real culture with the messages in the masterbrand model?
1. BECAUSE YOUR BRAND IS NOT A MESSAGE
I’ve spoken with several culture-first or creator partners recently who all voiced the same frustration: big brands and their traditional network agencies tend to hand them rigid 'brand platforms' born out of broadcast-first mindsets. The result? Brand ideas that are reliant on single, tonally specific 'messages' that are hard to mould into new expressions that are earned-first, community-driven, or culturally native. As one creator friend confessed to me: “nine times out of 10 we try to ignore the brand platform, because it simply isn’t workable.”
Ultimately if your brand platform can’t be picked up, played with, and shaped by creators, partners, and organic communities, it isn’t a big idea - it’s a corporate monologue.
2. BECAUSE YOUR BRAND IS NOT A JOKE
Earlier in my career, almost every creative pitch started in the same place: the TV spot. Because of the sums involved in making them, we expended immense energy scripting 30-second ads rather than building durable brand systems or big ideas.
It’s time to be truthful about scripts, narratives and (ssshhh) manifestos. They can often be a bit of a crutch - the only thing capable of holding the story, because the concept wasn't a foundational brand idea, just a narrative trick. Today, despite everything we know and everything that’s changed, it feels like our industry keeps making the same mistake: confusing a short-term campaign script with an enduring brand idea.
3. BECAUSE YOUR BRAND IS NOT A FRAMEWORK
The disconnect also manifests itself at the brand side. We hear progressive words from CMOs about pivoting into culture, yet their internal operational teams, with decades worth of experience developing the language inside rigid brand frameworks, continue to design and sign off a series of logical phrases and carefully chosen words, which lack native elasticity required to survive in a fluid and fragmented channel ecosystem.
4. BECAUSE YOUR BRAND IS NOT A MEME
Meanwhile, social and activation teams are tasked with driving immediate engagement, rather than the 'big idea'. Naturally, in search of an immediate win, they lean into reactive trends, jumping on audio tracks, Reddit threads, or fleeting memes. These get a temporary nod of approval, but don’t always build lasting memories to increase mental availability. At worst, the brand is a series of disconnected, tactical blips.
According to Kantar’s BrandZ data, culturally relevant content is six times more effective at driving large-scale brand outcomes, but only when agile moments build toward a single, coherent narrative. Marketers shouldn't have to choose between long-term strategic rigour or culture-first speed.
YOUR BRAND IS A WHOLE WORLD OF IDEAS AND ASSOCIATIONS
To build brands that thrive across the modern marketing mix, we must first rethink how we design them:
Return to your brand’s role in people’s lives. Work with your existing customers, the data in your social channels, the way the brand is discussed in forums and take a clear-sighted view of what your brand brings people, and why that matters to them. Don’t be tempted to exaggerate or overplay that role (yet). Start with the truth and build from there.
Collect and expand on the associations that surround your brand. Use your brand tracking, the way your brand is described in social or on forums, the images that spring to mind when you ask people about it. Return to your product, service or experience and describe it carefully, but in words a human might use. What does all this add up to? Great brands take powerful attributes (magic, determination, simplicity) and express them in multiple ways. Use this to establish a clear visual and verbal spine for the brand: distinctive assets and core codes that allow others to adapt and improvise without breaking the master brand.
Open the door. If you want to bring in the voices in culture, let them talk to you. Bring in the influencer agency or brand experience agency leads into the room during development. Go further, and find ways to bring in culture-makers, fans, creators and other partners. Understand their creative processes better and you will know how to brief them more effectively. If you spend most of your working life with people who write ads, you will naturally design stimuli that helps people write ads.
Keep going. Brand definition projects start and finish, but brands live long beyond that deadline. Brands are a living system of associations because people change their minds a lot. They forget things and start thinking about new things. Your brand is part of this ongoing process of sorting and re-filing memories. So, evolve and add to your world with new connections and extensions that keep your space in their lives.
SETTING OUT WITHOUT FEAR
Cultural resonance rarely happens through rigid brand guideline enforcement or isolated ways of working. It happens when we build adaptable brand frameworks that encourage play, invite expansion and embrace change. The future belongs to those willing to challenge old playbooks. It’s time to stop delivering monologues, put down the crutches of the past and step into culture without fear.
See the article and more from Uncharted at LBB here: https://lbbonline.com/news/uncharted-hannah-hattie-matthews-culture-brand