Monetizing brand marketing often feels a distant concept because linking it to financial results seems impossible to measure. Traditional metrics, such as TV viewership or newspaper circulation, no longer reflect the way brand marketing operates in today’s media landscape. To truly measure impact, we need to remember: Brand Marketing is there to create a link between company and (outside) culture, transcending mere product sales to influence culture through storytelling, aspirations, and human experiences.
Today, brand marketing is about cultural influence, shaping subcultures, and connecting with niche communities through cultural products such as content, events, and merchandising. These products are amplified through media to reach not only customers but also cultural commentators and creators.
This strategy allows brands to thrive in relevant cultural contexts, ensuring their long-term success by building affinity, commanding higher prices, and sustaining market advantage. Cultural influence, when done well, yields measurable commercial value and helps drive strategic investments that offer the highest financial returns.
Here are important notes we’ve gathered from an essay by strategist Ana Andjelic:
When brands sell products, they are essentially selling a narrative, and when consumers make purchases, they are buying into that narrative.
1. Long Term + Short Term
Cultural influence yields both short-term and long-term outcomes. It balances immediate impact with extended timelines.
Certain cultural products, such as collaborations or content, may show delayed results, others, like experiences or events, tend to produce more immediate effects.
Take for example the advent of impersonators in the Philippine politics such as Inday Tasha. In a time of political unrest and trending memes depicting golden moments in local politics, brands can bank on these quick strikes and show its affinity to a “better, well-governed society.” While establishing momentary relevance, they are able to associate themselves to values of good governance and transparency.
2. Story, Story, Story
A compelling brand story provides context and depth to the company, enhancing its desirability. When brands sell products, they are essentially selling a narrative, and when consumers make purchases, they are buying into that narrative.
Internally, a strong brand story unifies the organization and simplifies decision-making. It aligns editorial direction with products, shapes design into a cohesive narrative, and streamlines merchandising, styling, and marketing efforts.
Beyond being a valuable asset, brand storytelling is crucial for customer acquisition and loyalty. Once consumers connect with a brand’s story, they are less likely to switch brands than if they were only buying a product.
Most importantly, an effective brand story guides the development of creative products and defines their rollout and media amplification strategy.
3. Cultural Products
Brand stories are communicated through cultural products, with the best stories and cultural products being mutually reinforcing.
Cultural items, such as archive reissues, enhance and lend prestige to a brand’s current narrative, while the brand story ties together diverse cultural products—like merchandise or capsule collections—with the main collection.
4. Media
Media spend, viewed as the amplification of cultural influence, becomes a creative endeavor focused on identifying diverse cultural contexts for a brand to engage with.
By being present in various cultural spaces, a brand can remain agile and responsive to unexpected cultural shifts, such as the sudden popularity of the aesthetic niches or the rise of new TikTok editing formats.
This cultural portfolio approach helps avoid customer stagnation by preventing the brand from repeatedly targeting the same audience. The role of media is to identify cultural conversations, trends, and emerging aesthetics, and leverage them to amplify the brand’s own cultural products.
We enjoy how the agency Death To Stock (DTS) is utilizing a multimedia approach to decipher cultural chaos into visuals for brands.
@dtstrends We’ve become accustomed to remote work for the last few year — now, education is increasingly taking place in the home. This speaks to a need for education to evolve with the times, as some school districts have embraced future-fit curricula to better prepare youth for our rapidly changing world. What do you think about this trend? Are you on board for this new curricula, or do you stand with traditional learning? 🎥 @The algorythm #homeschooling #education #tech ♬ original sound - DTS
5. Audience Segmentation
A cultural influence strategy evaluates customer segments based on their ability to expand the brand’s cultural impact in ways that maximize financial returns.
It then develops cultural products and media amplification plans to achieve those returns. These cultural products must convey the brand’s story to the right audience, within the appropriate cultural context, to generate profitable cultural influence.
Since not all audience segments have the potential to create cultural impact, brands must prioritize products for those who do.
The cultural influence strategy—how the brand’s story is told through cultural products and amplified by media—will affect different segments based on the company’s specific business goals.
We like how home-based colorist @magpatinahair is building a niche where creatives freely celebrate their uniqueness through hair color.
