What tension are we resolving?

Every good cultural moment has a tension underneath it.

Examples of tensions (not claims, just patterns):

• health vs indulgence


• softness vs ambition


• minimalism vs personality


• privacy vs visibility


• effortlessness vs performance

Your job is to pick the tension you can own without sounding fake.

Cult brands” don’t happen by luck

Lululemon did not become a cult by accident.

Rhode pop-up lines did not come out of nowhere.

Those are more than just “good campaigns.” They are identity systems .

• Lululemon is not leggings, it’s a version of discipline and control that looks cute in public.


• Rhode is not skincare, it’s access to a clean, glossy,

... See more

Formats are easy to copy. Trends die faster than decks can be approved. And the algorithm does not reward effort, it rewards resonance.

The brands that win next will not be louder.

They’ll be clearer on what they mean.

Cultural strategy is the practice of decoding the bigger forces behind aesthetics, behaviors, and identity.

Not just what’s trending, but:

• what status is it signaling?


• what “type of person” does it let you become?


• what community does it quietly gatekeep?

This is why culture beats content.

Content is what you publish.

Culture is what people use to build... See more

We are in the era of:

• algorithm randomness


• content fatigue


• aesthetic slob


• “same content, different creator” type of posts


• AI-generated sameness everywhere you look