The Occupational Hazard of (Trying to) Know Everything
“Cultural strategy” only became a practice because legacy media channels (TV, OOH, radio, print, search, and display) lost its shine. The remaining “channel” is culture. Granted, all those other mediums remain ways of interacting with culture, but those levers don’t cut it. Now trends, vibes, memes, merch, people (creators/influencers), IP collabs, and events are seen as the go-to levers for resonance.
This will change... because the work always does. But in the meantime, anyone who trades attention remains desperate for resonance, and is increasingly relying upon “culture” as their lever and strategy.
Yet this task of making sense of the world is insanity in itself. And while studying TikToks and memes for a living is a blessing, it’s also a curse. When everything is a potential signal, you never clock out.
Considering the strain the work induces, ZINE surveyed 150+ global experts in the practice to better understand the state of “cultural strategy” and most importantly how we can survive it.
The State of “Cultural Strategy”
According to 150+ people around the world who self-identify as working in “cultural strategy”:
74% agree there’s too much BS in trend work
74% want more accountability for bad takes and decisions
46% are exhausted, but afraid to slow down
Those in advertising, marketing, branding, PR, entertainment, comms, media, etc. are reckoning with their own contradictions. We name the BS and desire accountability, yet still perform around it.
43% perform productivity at work
39% have been asked to do ethically questionable work
Only 36% feel guilty about working in their industry
Ambivalence.
People are finding themselves stuck in a system they don’t entirely love, let alone believe in. This is best summarized by two final data points from ZINE research:
2-in-3 people don’t feel their work is bettering society, yet
69% of consumers around the world believe brands can better culture if they wish
It’s a problem when most meaning makers don’t feel optimistic about their own work, yet the public is increasingly looking to brands for social change. After all, businesses are still trusted more than governments, the media, and NGOs.
If brands weren’t so important in people’s construction of self (values, differentiation, belonging, etc.), we won’t see so many people filming themselves burning products and “voting” with unsubscription screenshots. A logo is never just a logo.
The industry’s apathy is driven by many things — work cultures that self-sabotage, self-enshittify, and lie with data. Fearful of losing health insurance or rocking the boat...
Nobody wants to be first. Everyone wants to be second. Something just needs to be proven first.
But perhaps the most invisible, unspoken driver of this apathy is an insidious occupational hazard — a tension between needing to “stay ahead” and needing to “stay sane.”
“Resonating in culture” first requires comprehending culture... seemingly in its entirety. And we know this is impossible. (We know this is impossible, right?!) But if that’s what the job requires, how do we maintain our sanity?
ZINE clustered answers from those 150+ experts to identify the:
Top 7 strategies to “stay ahead”
Top 7 strategies to “stay sane”
Plus 100+ examples to accomplish each
