Brands blend with culture to break through in the AI era
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Brands are increasingly tapping graffiti, hip-hop music and other connections to cultural communities to create campaigns that don't feel like traditional advertising.
Why it matters: Communication leaders overseeing these efforts need to walk a fine line of participating in a community without coming off as exploitative.
Zoom in: This summer, insurance company Lemonade launched a campaign across multiple cities with graffiti-like billboards and signage.
- The primary purpose of the campaign was to tell the brand's story and show how "we do things in a different way," co-founder and co-CEO Shai Wininger says.
- Wininger was careful to avoid linking the campaign directly with street art. "To call it 'art' would be an insult to art," he says, emphasizing the "sloppy by design" nature of the signs instead.
- Lemonade's approach is to run multiple ad campaigns simultaneously, he says, and test them through a "survival of the fittest" approach, ditching the flops to try something new instead.
The big picture: Consumers are bombarded with ads across every platform, making it increasingly harder for brands to cut through.
- AI tools are also contributing to a "sameness" across advertising, making campaigns that feel human, imperfect and culturally connected stand out.
Zoom out: Sprite's summer campaign builds on its history of participating in music and global culture.
- Sprite's "Obey Your Thirst" campaign dates back to the 1990s and has featured artists like Nas and A Tribe Called Quest. That legacy makes it possible for the brand to engage with hip-hop culture without being accused of co-opting it.
- "Sprite was one of the brands that tried to serve as a platform for the genre and its artists — not take from the culture," says Oana Vlad, Sprite's global brand vice president.
- And to keep the brand safe from any explicit or offensive lyrical content, anything that threatens Sprite's "authentic, inclusive and progressive" brand values gets a "hard no," Vlad says.
Between the lines: At the heart of these decisions is the relationship among communications, marketing, legal and other functions.
- Communicators have to stay on top of the internal and external environments in which the campaign will exist, says Josh Rosenberg, CEO of Day One Agency.
- The best campaigns, he says, live in the middle between "brand truth" and "fan truth."
- "They're so authentic to the brand, the consumer sees themselves reflected back in that campaign."
Case in point: Duolingo launched a Japanese animated series on YouTube, featuring their mascot, Duo.
- It was a natural extension of something the brand had observed: people turn to Duolingo to learn Japanese to get into anime, said chief marketing officer Manu Orssaud.
- The brands that cut through show up where people care, in communities like sports, gaming, art or music, he said. "But there has to be a genuine connection between that community and what your brand stands for."
- This is where comms has to show up, Orssaud added: "They have a strong pulse on what conversations are already happening in culture and where there's an authentic opportunity for the brand to participate."
The bottom line: Communicators have to understand the cultures and conversations their brand is entering — and make sure every campaign is grounded in the company's values.
