Why modern businesses need cultural relevance teams, not just marketing teams

Businesses have never had more ways to understand consumers. Research reports are richer, analytics are sharper, and social listening has made it possible to track conversations almost in real time. Yet, one of the most valuable capabilities emerging in this environment is not simply collecting more information. It is understanding culture while it is still taking shape.

In many ways, cultural relevance is becoming more important than any individual marketing strategy. The reason is simple: culture is changing at an unprecedented pace. Trends emerge quickly, communities form around shared interests, and consumer aspirations evolve continuously. In this environment, understanding what people find relevant, aspirational, and worth associating with is increasingly shaping how brands build preference and long-term affinity.

This is particularly true for Gen Z. For younger consumers, culture functions as identity and social currency. They actively gravitate towards what feels current and relevant because these associations influence how they are perceived within their friend circles and communities. The products they use, the creators they follow and the conversations they participate in increasingly become expressions of who they are and how they want to be seen.

For brands, this creates a significant opportunity. Organisations that identify cultural shifts early and meaningfully integrate them into their communication are often able to build deeper connections with younger audiences. Cultural understanding enables brands to engage consumers in ways that feel authentic and contextually relevant. In increasingly competitive categories, that can translate into stronger affinity, greater preference and better commercial outcomes. The ability to identify these shifts, however, is becoming a specialised capability in itself.

In many ways, understanding what is culturally relevant has become more complex than creating a marketing campaign. Campaigns can be planned, budgeted and executed through established processes. Culture evolves differently. It moves through communities, conversations and behaviours that emerge organically and gain momentum quickly. By the time certain trends become visible through formal indicators, they have often already shaped consumer expectations and behaviours.

A significant part of this evolution is being driven by consumers between the ages of 15 and 22. They are creating, consuming and remixing trends in real time. The content formats they embrace, the communities they participate in and the values they celebrate frequently become early indicators of where attention and aspiration are moving.

This does not diminish the value of experience and institutional knowledge. On the contrary, category expertise and strategic thinking remain indispensable. At the same time, as culture evolves more rapidly than ever before, organisations increasingly benefit from complementing experience with perspectives that are naturally closer to emerging consumer behaviours and digital conversations.

Understanding these evolving behaviours has become an increasingly important leadership capability. Brands that accurately decode cultural shifts are often able to communicate with younger audiences more

efficiently and translate that relevance into stronger consumer preference and commercial outcomes. This is where the conversation around cultural relevance deserves a broader lens.

For years, relevance was treated largely as a communications challenge. The assumption was that if campaigns reflected what consumers cared about, brands would remain connected to audiences. Today, culture influences much more than communication. It shapes aspirations, consumption habits, expectations and even category creation. In many cases, shifts that eventually reshape industries first emerge within communities long before they become visible at scale.

Several categories that are now firmly established followed a similar trajectory. Creator-led commerce, regional entertainment, wellness-focussed consumption and specialised beauty segments all found early momentum within communities that recognised their value before they became mainstream opportunities. Businesses that identified these shifts early were able to participate in consumer conversations while they were still evolving and build meaningful positions over time. This is also why digital communities, creator culture and influencer ecosystems have become increasingly influential in shaping purchase decisions.

For a long time, creators were viewed primarily as channels for amplification. Today, they occupy a much more significant role. They are participants in communities, observers of behavioural shifts and increasingly early indicators of where interests and aspirations are moving.

More importantly, creators offer brands one of the most effective and efficient ways to communicate not only products but also the values they stand for and the cultural identities they seek to associate with. The communities that gather around creators frequently reveal emerging preferences much earlier than conventional markers. The sequence, however, is important.

The first task for businesses is to understand which cultural movements matter. The second is to work with creators and communities that are already shaping those moments. Rather than attempting to manufacture culture internally, brands can participate more meaningfully by collaborating with people who have already built trust and credibility within those communities. This allows businesses to communicate their values and cultural associations in ways that feel authentic, relevant and efficient.

India makes this opportunity even more compelling.

There is no singular Indian consumer. Businesses today are engaging simultaneously with multiple generations, languages, identities and communities. Increasingly, communities are defining themselves through shared interests rather than traditional demographic boundaries. This creates a far richer and more dynamic consumer landscape than before and makes cultural understanding an even more valuable organisational capability.

Building this capability requires organisations to institutionalise curiosity and create systems that allow cultural insights to move across functions. One practical way to do this is to intentionally bring younger voices closer to decision-making. Businesses can actively engage with colleges and early-career talent pools, particularly individuals who naturally represent the audiences they are trying to understand and who possess an instinctive understanding of digital culture and online communities.

These individuals are often deeply immersed in internet culture and remarkably effective at identifying emerging behaviours and cultural shifts long before they appear through conventional research methods.

Building internal teams that include such perspectives can help organisations recognise change sooner and translate those insights into meaningful action.

Over time, these individuals can become the next generation of brand leaders themselves. Yet even the most experienced brand managers are likely to benefit from younger teams that can identify not only emerging cultural shifts but also the moments when consumer attention has already moved elsewhere and a cultural moment is beginning to lose relevance.

Ultimately, the case for cultural relevance teams is not a case against marketing teams. Marketing will continue to play a central role in building brands and shaping narratives. But the forces influencing those narratives have become broader, more interconnected and more dynamic than ever before.

In an environment where communities influence culture in real time and culture increasingly influences commerce, competitive advantage will increasingly belong to organisations that can understand change while it is still emerging, remain consistently close to evolving consumer aspirations and build capabilities that allow them to grow alongside culture itself.

(The author is Co-Founder and CEO, IPLIX Media. Views are personal.)