Entertainment alone isn’t enough.
That was the core message I shared with the World Federation of Advertisers recently as part of our Culture to Commerce research. And within days, the market proved why it matters.
TikTok accelerated in-app shopping integrations across Southeast Asia, doubling down on frictionless checkout and creator storefronts. And across APAC feeds, “de-influencing” content resurfaced with creators openly advising people what not to buy.
Consumers across the region are becoming more deliberate, researching more, filtering more, trusting less. Attention has never been more abundant, but trust has never been more fragile. And yet brands are responding by producing more, faster, louder, as if volume alone could close the gap.
Somewhere along the way, brands became the production funds of the platforms – pouring budget into content that feeds algorithms, grows creator ecosystems and drives eyeballs. All on the assumption that more content means more commerce. Nobody stopped to ask who that equation actually benefits.
And we dressed these tactics up in jargon: “authentic content”, “platform-native strategy”, “social-first thinking.” In practice, it often meant chasing trends and copying templates that contributed to the conversation, but not commercially. The obsession with virality isn't building brands. It's commoditising them – turning marketing into a performance that only other marketers applaud.
There is no shortcut to this. The golden rules of marketing still apply: brands need a clear role in people's lives, content that earns real attention, and a path that makes it genuinely easier to choose and buy. Entertainment alone cannot do that job.
The problem is the industry stopped there. It heard "entertainment" and reached for the easiest interpretation: humour. Memes. Reactive cultural references. Brands contorting themselves to join whatever joke the internet is telling that week.
But culture doesn't work like that.
Consider the renewed fascination with Wuthering Heights aesthetics following Emerald Fennell's film adaptation. That trend didn't spread because it was funny. It travelled as a mood (romantic, escapist, participatory), inspiring styling videos, storytelling content and creator interpretations across every platform. It succeeded not because it made people laugh, but because it gave people something to believe in, imagine and be part of.
This isn't an anomaly. It's how social and community work, and it's provable. Our Culture to Commerce research set out to build a repeatable model — mapping the relationship between social engagement and verified purchase behaviour across categories. The pattern that emerged was clear and consistent: humour and meme-based content captured attention. It just didn't move people to buy. The data speaks: only 19 in every 100 purchases made through social could be linked to meme or entertainment-led content. The content getting the most attention was responsible for the least commerce.
So what actually works? Three content roles consistently outperformed humour in driving real decisions and real purchases: competence, connection and contribution.
1. Competence builds confidence
Competence-driven content builds authority and reduces friction. In beauty and active lifestyle categories especially, this often takes the form of “edutainment”, but the strongest examples go beyond surface level tutorials.
The strongest competence-driven content doesn't promote, it equips. Shiseido educates on skin science, diagnostics and underlying concerns rather than simply talking efficacy. Lululemon shows you how to improve performance rather than what to buy. For luxury brands, this becomes even more critical – intelligence, craft and heritage aren't decorative, they're the reason someone pays the premium. When a brand arms you with the right knowledge, the decision feels less like being sold to and more like choosing for yourself.
In an era of de-influencing and for many, economic pressure, competence becomes even more powerful, it reduces choice paralysis and anxiety to make it inevitable.
2. Connection builds trust
Connection-driven content plays a different role. In travel, hospitality and lifestyle, authenticity consistently outperforms polish. Across APAC, micro-creators sharing real itineraries, honest budget trade-offs and genuine travel mishaps are outperforming one-sided, rose-tinted storytelling. The audience isn't fooled anymore.
As AI-generated content floods platforms and APAC's creator economy surpasses US$26 billion, the industry's conversation has shifted from scale to trust. Nissan's Navara campaign made this move deliberately by dropping performance specs entirely for real worker stories, because credibility increasingly comes from lived experience. Not from a script.
Audiences trust real, lived-in stories, and the imperfections as much as the hidden gems. For brands, that means rethinking your creator strategy. Lo-fi doesn’t mean low effort, it means high relatability rooted in deep local cultural insight #IYKYK
For brands, this raises an uncomfortable question. Not "what content should we make?" but "do we actually know how we're being talked about in local culture?" And if the answer is yes, are you genuinely equipped to embrace it or just to sanitise it into something brand-safe? Connection requires the courage to show up in culture as it actually exists, not as marketing would prefer it to be.
3. Contribution builds intent
The third role is contribution. Content that doesn't just inform or reassure, but provokes, debates and invites people in. Nothing proves this more than the raw pull of two opposing voices: rival idols, sports pundits, creators taking sides. Banter and drama aren't lowbrow, they're participation in disguise.
Intent is highest when content gives people something to do, not just something to watch. Participation creates a sense of ownership and ownership accelerates action.
The most ambitious brands take this even further. They don't just invite reaction, they invite imagination. When audiences can interpret, debate and co-create a brand's world, they stop being consumers of it and start being part of it. With AI expanding what's creatively possible, this is no longer a nice-to-have. The brands that thrive won't be the ones with the biggest budgets, they'll be the ones brave enough to hand the pen over.
Culture to commerce isn't about reverse-engineering virality. It's about earning a genuine role in the movements that matter to people and participating in culture, not just observing it. Adding to it, not extracting from it.
That means finding your brand's distinct territory. Creating content that adds something real to people's lives. And sometimes (the part that makes most marketers uncomfortable) it means stepping back and trusting that consumers will take your brand somewhere you couldn't have planned. Vaseline Verified is proof. The brand didn't go viral, the people did.
The brands that win in culture to commerce won't be the most reactive. They'll be the most intentional, the most curious about culture, and the most willing to experiment.
Thinking will not overcome fear. Action will.
Don't go for the tropes. Join the circus.
Mimi Lu is head of insight & intelligence at Dentsu APAC
