Culture-Led Work Requires Permission. But Not The Kind You Think.

The starting point  for culture-led work is looking outward, not inward. Rather than trying to set culture, the brand instead identifies what’s already moving and then, if the values align, the brand can provide the platform or resource to amplify the movement or trends. 

However, without being able to prove a return, culture-led work is destined to stay embedded in organic or low-cost channels, or done sporadically rather than being part of a sustained strategy. Permission to play in culture at scale - the type of work marketers dream about where you actually amplify culture rather than just ride it - relies on proving its return to the business.

That also changes the internal conversation because culture-led work only becomes possible once two conditions are met: 1) Permission to play and 2) Permission to fund.

Permission to play

For culture-led work to land, there has to be an alignment between the cultural moment and the establish values of the brand itself. Humans are built to detect BS and if the tie in feels inauthentic or transactional, the public will rightly reject it.

At TouchNote, the permission came from what the brand already believed. Physical connection as a more meaningful form of communication was the brand’s genuine point of view and it was given further credibility through a behavioural science partnership with Dr Anna Machin from Oxford University on the emotional and neurological effects of card sending. When the cultural moment arrived (COVID and a collective reckoning with the limits of digital connection), TouchNote had the values, and the evidence to show up credibly. Card designs that captured the absurdity and tenderness of that period (the toilet roll humour, the baking jokes, the clapping for everyday heroes) saw us reflect the tone and feelings that already existed in the community. An artist program, built from a Central Saint Martins partnership, that let artists earn passive revenue from their work in the app did the same. 

Most recently, GAP’s Coachella activation is a clean external illustration of the same principle. A brand with decades of genuine connection to American style and youth culture showing up with a limited edition customisable hoodie at a music festival, pairing utility with a cultural moment already generating its own social energy. 

Permission to fund

The commercial permission is what’s most difficult and where most culture-led strategies stall internally.

At Temple & Webster, culture-led thinking was embedded first into the channels where the cost of experimentation was low and the feedback was fast - content, PR, social, CRM, trend intelligence, a creator program built around gifting rather than commissions. Blending social data and style movements into the Spaces Reimagined Report established an editorial point of view. Cultural moments like Dopamine Decor moved through owned and earned channels because that’s where we could move quickly and read what landed. 

Proving brand’s return through MMM, branded search and brand lift is started to evolve the conversation. Making a bigger bet on culture-led work requires a budget meaningful enough to matter and small enough that a failed experiment doesn’t define your quarter, with out the commercial case that conversation proves difficult.

The sequence

1) Establish the values that give your brand genuine permission to play. 2) Identify what’s already moving and start in the channels where experimentation is low risk, 3) Make the commercial case so you can take the work to the next level and make a bigger bet on culture-led work.