For decades, the question, “Is this culturally relevant?” was left to the creative team. It sat alongside discussions of tone, visuals, and music: essentially, it was about whether the work felt timely and resonated with the right audience or had that special spark that made people want to share it. In other words, it was seen as a matter of craft.
But now, that question has moved to a different part of the company. Today, it’s more about legal and risk management than creative brainstorming. If you get it wrong, it’s not just a failed campaign; it can cause a reputational crisis that affects the company’s share price. Cultural relevance isn’t just about being interesting anymore; it’s about whether the brand understands the world it’s entering.
The category shift
The change isn’t just about style; it’s about structure. Social media has made the gap between a brand’s message and the public’s reaction almost disappear. Every campaign now acts as a public statement, and anything a brand says can be screenshotted, taken out of context, and shared with the world almost instantly by people who move faster than any company meeting.
Cultural relevance isn’t just about keeping up with trends, it’s about managing risk. When brands chase what’s “current,” they’re also taking a chance with their reputation, and that’s too big a risk to treat as just another creative goal.
When cultural relevance becomes a reputational crisis
The most telling examples are when the creative work was good. Bud Light in 2023 is a clear case. What started it was nothing unusual; just one influencer partnership, like thousands of others. There was nothing in the creative itself that would have raised a red flag. What caused the huge loss in sales and cost Bud Light its top spot after 20 years wasn’t the design. The brand misunderstood its main customers and then made things worse with a panicked response that satisfied no one.
That’s the tough part for an industry that still sees this as a creative issue. You can do everything right and still end up in a crisis, because the problem isn’t about how well the work was made. It’s ultimately about deciding whether to make it at all, for this audience, currently, and whether the brand has really earned the right to speak.
It’s important to separate this from situations where a brand chooses to be provocative on purpose. For example, when Jaguar changed its identity in late 2024 and divided opinions, many people disliked it, but the decision was made by senior leaders who understood and accepted the risks.
You might not agree with the choice, but it was made by the right people. The Bud Light crisis was different because the people who could have predicted the problem weren’t involved in the decision.
The creative brief isn’t the right place to make the decision
Part of the problem is that these decisions are made at the wrong level. A creative brief is designed to focus on standing out, being unique, and making an emotional impact. That works for those goals, but it doesn’t address a bigger question: what happens to our reputation if a group we hadn’t considered interprets this message in a way we never intended?
To answer that, you need different people than those who judge the creative work. You need someone who truly understands the brand’s real customers, not just the audience the campaign hopes to reach.
You also need someone who can spot cultural risks and manage reputation, not just track engagement. If you hide the relevance decision within the creative approval process, the people most likely to notice problems aren’t there, so the decision is made on gut feeling rather than careful judgment.
The speed problem: culture moves faster than sign-off
Timing also makes things more difficult, because culture changes in hours while company approvals can take weeks. The urge to react quickly to a meme, news event, or trending topic is strong, but the gap between how fast culture moves and how slow company processes are is where problems often happen.
Brands usually make one of two mistakes. They either move too slowly, miss the moment, and become irrelevant, or they rush a real-time response through an approval process that isn’t designed for it, and end up releasing something that no senior leader has properly reviewed. Neither approach is a real strategy.
The key is to decide ahead of time where the brand will get involved and where it won’t, so quick decisions happen within clear, carefully set boundaries.
Cultural intelligence as the missing infrastructure
At the core of this issue is a capability gap. Most organisations have brand guidelines, legal reviews, and crisis plans, but they don’t have a system for cultural intelligence. This means they lack a structured approach to understanding the communities, conversations, and sensitivities surrounding their brand.
Cultural fluency is often seen as a skill that only a few people have, rather than something the whole organisation works to develop and maintain.
That’s the gap brands should focus on closing. The best brands have made cultural intelligence a real function, not just a feeling. They build teams, listen, form real relationships in important communities, and know where they have the right to participate. The goal is to earn cultural relevance through your actions and identity, not just borrow it for a single campaign and lose it when challenged.
The ESG and values dimension, where silence is also a position
It might seem the safest option is to say nothing. But when it comes to values, staying silent is also a statement. If a brand has spent years building a values-based identity, it can’t simply disappear when things get uncomfortable. The audience will remember the brand’s past promises and see silence as cowardice or hypocrisy. The same thinking that once criticised brands for empty gestures now criticises them for inaction.
Most of what people call “cancel culture” is really about accountability. Audiences notice the gap between what a brand says and what it does. The answer isn’t to avoid taking a stand and hope not to offend anyone. It’s to make sure the brand’s values and actions match closely enough that criticism won’t hurt you. The real question isn’t whether to take a position, but whether you’ve earned the right to do so.
Cultural fluency is often seen as a skill that only a few people have, rather than something the whole organisation works to develop and maintain.
That’s the gap brands should focus on closing. The best brands have made cultural intelligence a real function, not just a feeling. They build teams, listen, form real relationships in important communities, and know where they have the right to participate. The goal is to earn cultural relevance through your actions and identity, not just borrow it for a single campaign and lose it when challenged.
What good actually looks like
This isn’t an argument for always playing it safe. A brand that is so worried about risk that it says and stands for nothing isn’t protecting its reputation; it’s just fading away. Good judgment in these situations isn’t about being cautious.
Good judgment means truly understanding your real community, not just the one you imagine. It means making decisions about relevance at the right level, with the right people in the room to spot risks. It also means building cultural intelligence into your organisation rather than scrambling for it when there’s a problem.
Most of all, it’s about realising that success depends on judgment, timing, and knowing your audience, not just on how good the creative work looks. Brands usually don’t fail because of poor creative work, but because of poor judgment. The good news is that judgment can be built into your decision-making process if you stop treating this as only a creative team’s responsibility.
About the author
Simarin Tandon | Junior Digital Account Director
Having worked with brands across the Beauty & Wellness, FMCG, FinTech, and Home & Lifestyle sectors, Simarin focuses on driving acquisition and growth, whilst managing the Digital team at brandnation.
A curious marketer, Simarin’s finger is always on the pulse when it comes to performance and digital updates across both paid and organic platforms.
