Marketers have talked about culture as though it were something to be observed from a safe distance for years. Brands watched the conversation, identified the trend, borrowed the aesthetic, then wrapped it all up in a neat campaign and hoped the audience would applaud. That model once worked because culture itself was more linear. Brands told stories, audiences consumed them, and attention was the reward.
That world is gone. Culture has changed, and the model most marketers are still using was built for a world where audiences simply watched. Today, they do not, and what’s needed is a new cultural operating system, one that defines how a brand shows up, evolves and compounds inside culture. Because if people cannot enter what a brand creates, they will not stay with it.
Culture is participatory
The shift has been gradual, but its impact is now impossible to ignore. Audiences have moved from consuming culture to actively shaping it.
Asia’s younger generations have been raised on participation. Gaming taught them to inhabit worlds. YouTube taught them to respond, reinterpret and critique. TikTok taught them to remix at speed. Discord taught them that communities do not just consume meaning; they negotiate it together. These platforms don’t just distribute culture; they have rewired how culture functions.
A feedback loop has been created where audiences shape culture in real time, which is why culture now moves more like a system than a broadcast. While Gen Z have been at the forefront, the behaviour is spreading across generations because the platforms themselves have changed expectations.
Yet much of marketing still behaves as if the job is to publish a finished story. Campaigns are polished, controlled and complete. They arrive with no gaps, no entry points and no role for the audience beyond watching.
That is the disconnect. Culture is now something people enter, but brands are still building things to be observed from the outside.
Why a cultural operating system matters
Participation does not happen by accident; it needs structure. A cultural operating system gives brands the ability to create that structure and when those elements are in place, marketing starts to behave differently. It becomes less about delivering messages and more about enabling behaviour. The brand creates a space, and the audience brings it to life.
Instead of resetting with every campaign, the brand builds something that evolves. People return, contribute and reshape it over time. That is how cultural relevance compounds. Without that system, even the most culturally aware idea risks becoming another short-lived spike.
Brands building for participation
When brands operate with a cultural system in mind, the work feels open rather than closed.
You can see it in how some brands create ongoing worlds rather than isolated campaigns. Instead of interrupting culture, they build environments that people choose to spend time in. Their audiences are not just consumers, they are participants, contributors and, in many cases, advocates who extend the brand far beyond its original output.
The difference is not just creative, it’s behavioural. People have something to do. They can interpret, remix, share, debate or perform. The brand becomes part of how they express themselves, rather than something they briefly pay attention to.
One of the best examples of a brand operating a cultural system is Red Bull. It rarely behaves like a brand trying to interrupt culture, but builds arenas where culture happens including extreme sports, music, gaming and performance. These are not just sponsorship categories, they are worlds Red Bull has helped shape, then repeatedly nourished. Its athletes and creators are not decorative additions, they are protagonists in a wider universe that audiences keep returning to.
DoorDash’s Super Bowl campaign turned the biggest advertising moment of the year into a live collective experience which was built around delivering every product that was advertised during the game to one lucky winner. What could have been a one-off spot became an evolving environment spanning teaser content, social, creators and a custom-built platform, where products were added to a live cart in real time as ads aired. DoorDash aired its own ad during the Super Bowl with a 1,813 long promo code needed to win the prize package, causing some fans to miss the end of the game. The result wasn’t just a memorable stunt, but a shared cultural moment that proved the product at scale.
Where brands go wrong
The most common mistake marketers make is confusing proximity to culture with engagement with it.
Many brands still believe that showing up alongside a cultural moment or attaching themselves to a popular figure is enough. But without giving audiences a role to play, that presence is superficial. It might generate attention, but it does not build attachment.
This is particularly evident when brands try to tap into fandoms without understanding how they function. Fandoms are not just highly engaged audiences waiting to be activated, they are complex communities with their own rules, rituals and expectations.
Pepsi Thailand is a good example of what can go wrong when a brand assumes fandom will mobilise automatically. Pepsi engaged rookie K-Pop group, Babymonster on ads and cans assuming K-fans would automatically mobilise. But the group was unproven, creating a status mismatch with a global brand. Assets were static with no drops, challenges or rituals leaving fans nothing to remix, organise or defend. Fandom is not just audience reach with attitude. It has rules, hierarchies and rituals. Ignore those, and the brand becomes an outsider trying to use the room without understanding it.
If there are no rituals, no remixable assets, no reason for fans to contribute, then the brand is still only asking people to watch. And watching is not enough anymore. When brands fail to respect that, the response is swift. Communities will call out inconsistencies, reject shallow executions or simply ignore the work altogether. Credibility is earned through contribution, not claimed through association.
A new cultural operating system demands that marketers stop treating culture as input and start designing for participation as output, creating worlds people can step into, shape and return to. Because where attention is earned through involvement, not interruption, the choice is stark. Evolve, or keep producing work that gets seen, admired and instantly left behind.
Huiwen Tow is the head of strategy at Virtue Asia.
Source: Campaign Asia-Pacific
