How Can Brands Overcome it? Thought-starters from Ollie Oshodi Cultural consultant, Ollie Oshodi, shares insights for marketers on moving culture forward and avoiding getting stuck on repeat.  After a brat summer where Charli XCX successfully repackaged indie sleaze for a new generation, Elijah called out UK radio stations for overlooking Black British music in favour […]

“An Original British Period Drama” | Brand: British Airways | Agency: Uncommon Creative Studio | Date: July 2024 The background: “Hello and welcome aboard.” When Air New Zealand introduced hobbits into their safety videos back in 2014, the gauntlet was thrown for airlines to come up with entertaining safety videos that used humour and cultural […]

What do we think about social trends this Autumn? Not so demure. What do sausages, salad cream and Sadiq Khan all have in common? The answer: a Brat Summer. From neon-green packaging to pro-Ulez posts, Charli XCX has become one of this summer’s biggest marketing moment. Alongside Sabrina Carpenter; Chappell Roan; Tinashe; Addison Rae; and […]

Let’s start with how AI ‘thinks’ about culture. Culture is a complex adaptive system, interdependent with the actions and reactions people make to different prompts within it. Their reactions are coded based on their individual senses of identities (yes their plural identities, more on that later), their personal values, attitudes and beliefs and also their […]

BARBIE’S “OSCARS” Earlier this year, Mattel’s Barbie movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards (or Oscars), and took home one. Now, heading into the “Oscars of Advertising”–The Cannes Lions Awards–will the film that painted last summer pink fare better at this event? As a consequence of oversharing my opinions about the Barbie movie, I was […]

Culture campaigns… culture-led brands  “We create culture”. One thing our industry can agree on in 2024 is that we love to talk culture. But sure as culture changes and evolves, so has our use of the term, culture marketing, that has kicked around for well over a decade and has at times become shorthand for […]

CULTURE CASE Here’s our pick of a brand that successfully created a cultural moment.  The brand: Sweethearts The cultural moment: Romance, relationships and dating What’s going on here:   ‘Situationships’ was a term coined by Cosmopolitan a few years ago to describe a new relationship status where couples were getting (ahem!) physical but hadn’t labelled it […]

Culture Starts at Home: A Brand’s story This month’s column comes from Matt Watson, ECD at PepsiCo’s in-house creative agency Sips & Bites Europe. Culture starts at home It might seem obvious, but it’s still worth repeating: in today’s media landscape it’s more important than ever for brands to connect in deeper, more meaningful ways […]

Each month we invite two experts from the fabulously well-informed B&C community to take a second look at a recent brand and culture story to help us understand what it means, why it’s important, and, crucially – what can brands learn from it? This month’s special guests James Kirkham, co-founder of Iconic, and Leila Fataar, […]

Breaking with routine, accelerating with culture: a CMO’s story Let me take you back a few years. It’s deep in lockdown, but I’m not on furlough. I am the CMO of Jaguar Land Rover’s just-launched car rental business which obviously wasn’t seeing the strongest trading numbers. Despite no one going anywhere soon, we had to […]

The background: a world of unrest It’s 2020. The sound of the global Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is at its peak, but most brands are avoiding the issue. They either fear being seen as overly political, or they’re preoccupied with the challenge of sustaining a business through a period of global upheaval. But this […]

😎 If you’re too busy to keep track of what’s cool, hot or happening, our chums over at In Good Co, produce a weekly newsletter called Good Thinking. It’s a treasure trove of best-of-the-best culture, trends and general brand magic cleverness. Here’s a selection of our favourites from this month… We’re all loving love triangles […]

Each month we invite two experts from the fabulously well-informed B&C community to take a second look at a recent brand and culture story to help us understand what it means, why it’s important, and, crucially – will it work? This month: LVMH goes to Hollywood This month’s special guests: Dino Myers-Lamptey, founder, The Barber […]