Most brands want to be part of culture. Unfortunately, that often means dropping the product into whatever people are currently discussing and hoping some of the attention rubs off. But mentioning a cultural moment does not make an idea culturally relevant. A more useful question is:
What’s happening right now in culture that I can satirise or play off?
The question encourages you to do something with the moment. Here are seven creative routes it can unlock.
- Satirise the Hype
- Reverse the Trend
- Redirect the Conversation
- Gate-crash the Event
- Turn the Trend Into Proof
- Let the Moment Control the Campaign
- Reinterpret What Is Spreading
1. Satirise the Hype
What is culture taking far too seriously?
Metaverrrrrrr — Krungsri First Choice
At the height of metaverse mania, brands everywhere were rushing to announce virtual worlds, digital experiences and futuristic activations. Krungsri First Choice responded by making an intentionally overblown and badly executed metaverse campaign. Rather than celebrating the technology, the brand satirised marketers’ desperation to be associated with it. The campaign used the trend's language, aesthetics, and excitement to expose its absurdity from within.
The creative lesson: When everyone is joining the same cultural obsession, the more interesting move may be to mock the rush to join it.
2. Reverse the Trend
Who is excluded from this trend—and what could their version of it be?
#LittleMoneyBigFun — KFC Romania
Through hashtags such as #RichKidsOfInstagram, social media had turned extravagant lifestyles into entertainment. Private jets, sports cars and luxury hotels became familiar cultural imagery—but not something KFC’s young audience could experience themselves. KFC invited people to recreate rich-kid photographs using imagination rather than money. Luxury cars became shopping trolleys. Private pools became paddling pools. Expensive lifestyles were reconstructed on tiny budgets and shared as #LittleMoneyBigFun. The brand copied the recognisable behaviour of the trend while reversing the values underneath it.
The creative lesson: If your audience cannot participate in a trend on its own terms, give them a version tailored to their reality.
3. Redirect the Conversation
Where else could this cultural anxiety, excitement or attention lead?
I Want AI to Take My Job — UNICEF
As artificial intelligence became part of everyday conversation, much of the debate focused on employment. Which roles would disappear? Who would be replaced? What would happen to people whose work could be automated? UNICEF redirected that fear towards children doing dangerous and exploitative work.
In this context, “I want AI to take my job” stopped sounding like an expression of adult anxiety. It became a demand to eliminate jobs that children should never have been forced to do. UNICEF did not merely borrow AI as a topical reference. It redirected the anxiety surrounding it towards an overlooked human problem.
The creative lesson: Don’t just join the conversation. Ask whether its emotional energy could make a different argument more powerful.
Four More Ways to Turn Culture Into an Idea
Subscribers can unlock four additional creative routes—including how to gate-crash major events, turn trends into brand proof and make live culture control the campaign itself.
