[Podcast] Making Brands Relevant: How to Connect Culture, Creativity & Commerce with Cyril Louis

We sit down with hybrid creative leader Cyril Louis who is Creative Partner at The Royals and the mind behind campaigns for Beats by Dre, EA Games, and Heineken to unpack how brands can become culturally relevant and commercially effective.

We explore:
• What “brands in culture” really means (hint: it’s more than just riding trends)
• The difference between cultural resonance and “culture-washing”
• How to authentically engage with cultural movements without getting burned
• Practical frameworks to align your brand with the right cultural moments
• Why the future of branding depends on understanding global and local nuance
• The role of emerging tech (like AI & Web3) in shaping brand relevance

Whether you’re a strategist, creative, or entrepreneur, this episode will help you think bigger about branding and your brand’s role in shaping culture, not just selling into it.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Hello folks, and welcome to the latest episode of JUST Branding. Today, folks, we are in for a treat. We have the one and only Cyril Louis with us. I know him as Cyril the Squirrel, but no one else can call him that apart from me on this podcast. Who is Cyril? Cyril Louis is a hybrid creative leader whose career spans the worlds of technology, fine art and brand innovation. From building robots in the south of France to shaping global brands like Beats by Dr. Dre, EA Games and Heineken in the APAC, Cyril has mastered the art of blending cultural relevance with brand storytelling. With a customer-centric approach, Cyril has led transformation across London, Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai, wherever he’s been there in the world, crafting seamless digital and physical experiences that resonate with audiences worldwide. If I was to list out all of the awards Cyril has won, I think we’d probably spend the whole of the rest of this podcast just walking through those. But let me just tell you, he’s had over 200 international awards for his creativity, and his expertise lies in brand building, digital innovation and storytelling that enhances people’s lives. Currently, he’s a creative partner at The Royals Agency in Australia, and they claim to be the most interesting agency in the world. So we look forward to tucking into that with Cyril in a minute. Cyril, welcome to the show. Thank you for spending some time with us.

Thank you for having me.

I was just saying to Jacob just off air that we work together in our early careers, and I think you said it was 2003. I mean, how bizarre is that?

22 years ago.

Before you had a beard, Matt.

I mean, could I grow a beard then, Cyril? Do you reckon? I don’t think I could, really.

You had a bit of like a youngish, like stable, like a very smooth beard, you know, the type of one that doesn’t grow fully. So like a young chicken very much.

You used to call me roast beef, I remember, quite frequently, which was a lovely term. So you were Cyril the squirrel and I was the roast beef because I go red all the time.

Well, it’s the pejorative term that’s like French, like old British people usually, because when they come to the south of France where I’m from, they kind of like hand handle the sun and they’re the same color of the roast beef.

I remember you had a mullet, if I remember correctly at the time, so you know.

I did have a mullet, that’s quite in trend now, that’s in Australia, but I cannot grow a mullet like unfortunately like anymore. But yes, I did.

Well, what’s amazing is that since those years, Cyril has gone on to be this phenomenal superstar, and I’ve just sort of ended up with Jacob Cass on JUST Branding.

So I don’t know where you’re going.

So I’m really excited to ask you, Cyril, give us a bit of your journey and your background, from where we started in that small agency in London, to where you’ve been over the last few years. Give us a sense of who you are.

Even before, so it’s funny because I started in Mechatronic. So my… And it’s something that you don’t know, Matt. It’s very much like when I was like a kid, I wanted to build Starships. Fan of like sci-fi, but I realized that Starships, like really we still don’t have Starships. So I went into Mechatronic because I’m from the south of France. That’s where Europe Aerospace is based. So I wanted to be the closest of doing that. But after a while, in fact, it was not that interesting to me. It’s a bit like when you go into architecture or even design, you want to be like Jonathan Hive or Frank Gehry. You think that you will be working on the most interesting stuff, but in fact, you start at the low place and then you have to build it for a very long time, and I didn’t have this patience. So I moved into fine art, like very much, and then studying like spatial and print, like very much. And that was in France, moved to the UK without speaking a word of English.

I think I helped you a little bit with that from time to time.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, you did. And you were patient, like trying to understand what I wanted to say.

I still don’t know what you want to say half the time, but you know, yeah, I did my best.

So I’ve worked like across like then since then, like the UK, like across a few continents. So I work in the UK, I work in the US. I work like in the UAE, like in Singapore for the whole APAC and now in Australia. So my career like taking me from creative agency to government, like in the UAE to innovation labs, from building global brands like with like Beats or like Beats by Dre, Heineken, to shaping national narratives, like doing donation branding like for the UAE as an example. And we told there’s one thing that become very clear that’s very much that brand that connect with people lives beyond the product are the one that matter the most. Like really, so I really become obsessed with understanding why certain idea cut true, like as well, which is one of the things I moved from design. So design was not a choice when I moved to the UK. It was a necessity without speaking the language. I could not go into a creative job very much. So understanding why certain ideas cut true, why some brand feels like they belong in your world, and other feel like strangers, yelling from billboards. And the answer was always culture. Culture is the collective term of what people believe, the fear, the hopes. And talk about what if a brand can find its place in that home, like if it can listen and then speak meaningfully, it doesn’t just sell, like it sticks with people. So like in a nutshell very much that’s what I’ve been doing for the last like 20 years is moving from continent to continent, learning culture, learning people, moving like into different jobs, starting in this, starting in mechatronics, moving into design, moving into more like a creative, creative leadership and more strategic positioning as well. And then moving from brand to digital. So it’s very wide, key shapes, how people want to call it. That’s very much like me in a nutshell. And what I’m interested in is why certain are the true. And then, and very much I did that base in culture and brands that works well in culture.

Yeah, fantastic. I always thought you had this thirst for knowledge and curiosity, which I always admired about you back when we worked together. And it sounds like that’s just carried on right across the world. So phenomenal. Jacob, did you have a question?

Yeah, I was just going to say that it sounds like the perfect person to have on the podcast to talk about culture, seemingly very cultured living across all these places and experiences. Excited to tuck in. I think the first question is like, what does brands and culture actually mean to you? And why is it so important in today’s world?

The world is noisy today. Everybody’s fighting for attention, and everybody’s got like an attention span of a squirrel. So it’s everything’s moving fast, everybody’s fighting for the same thing. So very much like branding culture, it means earning your place in people’s life, not interacting with them, but being like invited in like very much. So it’s not shouting from a billboard, but people wanted you in their life because you add value. So culture is where brands become more than what they sell. It’s where they can inspire, they can provoke, they can support, or even comfort. So that’s like powerful. So for me, that’s what like brands in culture means. And in today’s world, I talked about where attention is short and also skepticism is very high, things are moving like a lot. And people also expect a lot more than brands like today’s than it was like 10 years ago. So like, and the way they engage with that cultural relevance isn’t optional anymore, it’s existential. Like brands need to understand people and they need to be wanted. Otherwise, not only they have like to spend like millions and millions to be able like to be seen, they not listen to, they just like seen like very much. So if you’re not in couture, you’re out of mind.

I just wanted to kind of raise things for folks because one of the things that I’d encourage everybody to do when they get a moment is to go and have a look at Cyril’s website, right? Because if I may Cyril, if that’s okay, just plug that because then people will get what you’re talking about, right? So if you go to Cyril Louis, spelled C-Y-R-I-L, louis.com, you’ll see some of Cyril’s work. Just to give you a flavor, for example, I know you did some work, for example, with Heineken, didn’t you, on the boring phone? This is like tapping into the cultural zeitgeist, which is that we are frustrated by all the noise of digital kind of messages and stuff, and you create a whole campaign for Heineken, a beer brand, around a boring phone, right, that only kind of sent messages and did phone calls, and you built a whole campaign around that. And I just think that that’s so interesting. So that taps into culture. And then another one you did for Heineken, which I looked at the other day, was HeineKicks. And the idea was that you could kind of put, I think it was Heineken in the souls of a trainer, Shoo?

Yes, be a pianist only, yes.

Amazing. So these were all tapping into cultural kind of quirks and cultural ideas, which then resonated and the success rates are on there. I mean, they’re just two from Heineken, but there’s loads of others on Cyril’s site for everybody to have a look at. So that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Taking things that are on people’s mind culturally, and then weaving them into brand narratives and campaigns that kind of are relevant to people they find interesting, they invite into their lives so that they can connect with them.

And there’s a way very much to do that. It’s for brands like we like to know which place, which role they can play in culture, because not every brand can play a role. Some of them can play a very large role, or is clearly inherited from the brand DNA, which is they have a fit in society very much. They have a point of view about what is happening, and they can immerse themselves into that to be able then to be wanted. And some of them, it’s a very, very, very small place, a very small space to play. In the Heineken case, very much, he’s all about… So, like, Freddie Heineken was, like, saying, I don’t sell beer, I sell good times. And that’s tick, like, with people. It’s not about the beer. And people do that, you know, when they say, like, let’s go, let’s have a beer. They talk more about the moment they will spend together than the beverage, like, very much. So it’s all about what block, like, social life Heineken have a say about it. And can do something to make it happen, make it more fluid or making people understand that is happening to them, that social life really matters. And then you should be taking care of. Another example, like Matt, is like the one that’s, it’s an old series that was, like, globally for Heineken under the label called Work Responsibly, which started pre-COVID and then went along for a few years, which is people forgetting, like, to have a social life because they spend too much time at work, a lot, very much. And it’s all about looking into the culture and then the context. And you need to be family, you need to be contextual and like to be, like, in the right place. I’ll give you just like three very, like, examples of that same things, that’s very clear, which is when it started, it was during COVID. During COVID, we had one problem, to not, like, been able to switch off because people were working at home, it was new to them and they could not, like, see the difference between work and, and play and life, like, generally. So we did, like, something like, called, like, very much a bottle opener, in fact, that helps people realize that they have, like, to switch off. It was very simple, but it was, like, done, like, in a muristic way, like, to make people realize how, like, crazy it was, like, to stay, like, very much online, full on all the time because you were at home. And then we moved on into, like, different spaces where post-Covid people went back to the office, but they spent too long. So they are, like, not going out. So again, you can see how the same issues, like, is evolving, like, through, like, the time. And then it went on and on, like, that’s, like, very much how culturally a brand can immerse themselves on the longevity as well because the issue about socializing is always, like, evolving.

So that’s, like, takes a very human need, doesn’t it? And then looks at that context of that culturally. I love that. I mean, the other thing, you know, I mentioned, and we probably should just circle back on this, the Heineken thing that you did, the campaign where there was beer within the soul of these trainers. And the reason for that was that there was another big problem for Heineken to launch in certain markets, weren’t there? So, you know, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s interesting because you solved that problem creatively.

So, this one was like, it was two things. So, the funny things, it’s, when we launched this, a sneaker with beer in the soul, the soul is transparent. It’s done by the shoes version. Really well known, like in the US, for customizing trainers and so on. People did not understood. The right audience understood. But there was a big reason, more than reaching a specific audience, which was like a young audience who didn’t like beer, who didn’t care about like a 125 years old brand, like as well. So, we needed like something to talk to them on their level, who had street credential, so the shoes version. But as well, one of the other big issues is that we had to advertise what we call in alcohol jargon, dark markets. Dark markets, it’s places where you cannot advertise alcohol. So, the only way to advertise alcohol was to create something that is not alcohol. That was the shoes that have Heineken silver within the sole, and then we’re advertising the shoe, not the alcohol. And that’s how we managed to advertise beer in markets where we can advertise alcohol. So, that was a bit of a trojan horse.

I loved it. But it shows, though, doesn’t it? The cultural zeitgeist of the trainers, the shoe surgeon, all of that stuff that speaks to the younger culture, and the trainers, and then just how bizarre that was. It just stood out to me as one of the campaigns you’d recently worked on that was super exciting for building Heineken in those dark markets where you couldn’t easily do that. So, it shows how creativity can help. So, did you say you had a couple more examples that you wanted to bring to everyone’s attention of brands that are really kind of helping or embedding themselves in culture in a meaningful way?

There’s some that’s been there for a long time. Apple is a cultural sculptor. It’s always been the case. It doesn’t just reflect sculpture. It creates it through the product design, advertising, the language of creativity. Apple makes you feel you’re joining a movement. Remember think different. I know that’s like it’s here to the misfits. That’s how it starts. So people want to be in the shot on iPhone. The new privacy positioning as well, the way they do like everything, like it’s really well done and really beautiful. It’s, it breathes culture. Heineken, like of course, I talked about it a bit. It’s all about to find modern day friction, like in social life and then solve this friction. I like in a way either make people aware, like we did like the boring phone or like the overwork or politics. We did politics as well. That’s like why it’s like bold. Like really, the night belong to the vaccinated. That was called during COVID. So again, like very opinionated point of view. To be in culture, you need to have a point of view. But one that I want to talk more like about it is parade. For years, like it sat in a shadow of a giant called Gatorade. Like we all know, nobody knows parade. It’s a bit of Pepsi Coke type of like dilemma on that. And all these sports giants as well were echoing the same we not all cost like narrative. Nike were liking this as well, they shifted a bit. But the culture shifted. We saw things like Naomi, like Osaka, like in a covert lack of time, saying it’s okay to not be okay. So people started rejecting the burnout culture and that performance, like obsession. And Poirier responded by having an opportunity to say, taking a pose to be human first, like in a legal orientated society is right. So they responded with a positioning in culture that was all about rewriting the rule of willings, which is again, something that’s fit like the new generation, that’s timely, that’s contextual with what was happening. A lot of athletes had enough of that push that were from like a different like generation. And it was the brand very much like embracing like that part. So that pivot from pushing performance to championing a pose for self care. And it deeply resonated for people. And then it moved the brand from being forgetting like on the shelves to a cultural conversation, like very much. And they did it like very like cleverly because they understood the role they could play then in society and then in culture to be able to do them work on the back of that.

Love that. I want to tap in to how you feel that they did that in a minute, but before we do, you mentioned brands have got to have a strong position and potentially an opinion on things, but sometimes that can backfire, right? Do you think? Or do you think it ever can backfire? Have you ever seen anything where it’s gone wrong? Have you ever got a… Does any examples come to mind where you feel like maybe a brand overstretched and overstepped the mark?

There is many. There’s a lot. And I can talk a bit about why it’s… There’s usually two things, a lot of brands, they want to jump on trends. When you jump on a trend, you missed it already. A trend, you missed a train, like really because it’s already too late, it’s already happening. You have to be there at the birth of it, at the forefront of that. And the way to do that is very much to understand what is your place in society and in culture. It’s very, very crucial to have that, otherwise brand goes sideways very much. And a good example of that is the Pepsi famous protest ad with Kendall Jenner. That’s a very good example when they try to hold the aesthetic of activism without engaging with its meaning. There was nothing like behind, it was shadow. So the danger of treating culture like a costume rather than a conversation, really, it shows a lack of curiosity and curiosity like is everything. In all this work that I have done, there’s a lot, a lot of research that goes. Strategy like is key like in this.

Yeah. Yeah. Jacob?

Cyril, you mentioned some really great examples. I’m just wondering if there’s other examples that are, some brands that are getting it wrong, for example, like that’s one example of a campaign. But are there any brands that are falling behind, they’re not really catching up with the culture, anything on that?

I don’t have anything on the top of my mind. I’m trying to follow the ones that are more in the right and then forgetting the negative ones. I’ve got quite as well a mind that I need to relearn everything all the time, so I forget stuff very easily. But it shows as well that things don’t stick that much. Even if they do wrong, they get forgotten. So that’s the worst thing, which is a brand needs to be top of mind. Like it’s, you know, no matter like what it is, it needs to be loved, it needs to be top of mind. Even if it’s not loved and it’s top of mind, it could be still like working. But when people don’t even know it exists like anymore, when it’s completely like forgotten, that’s it. It’s done and it takes a lot of time to go back in people’s like mind.

So how we can actually do that then? How can we tap into these cultural movements authentically?

Well, the first thing is like you have to be interested. They have to be genuine. If you’re curious first, you’re more likely to find this authentic role for the brand. What I talked about, it’s very much the first step is mapping the brand place in society and in culture. By doing that, it’s not following the trend, it’s precursing very much the trend. Because usually, you have two planes on that. People think culture is one thing, it’s not. There’s the slow and then very much like, and then the fast culture. The slow culture, the fast culture is what we see, is very much is like, think about it as an iceberg. We see the top of the iceberg, that’s what we see, the trends, the memes, the fashion, the music, is the fast culture, is the things that goes like really quick. And these trends, like very much what they are, like usually, the trends are a culture on, attains like to evolve. So in an essence, it’s evolving by sampling and testing what people might want or might like need on that. And most of the brand, they jump into this part without understanding the slow culture, you know, that deeper, more invisible layer, which is like the bottom of the iceberg, which is value, beliefs, all the social shift like in some. And usually a brand is successful when they play right, like in the middle. When they understand, they place in the slow culture or like society generally, and they can move quick into the fast culture at the birth, like of a trend. The Boring Phone was a very good example of this. I can talk a bit about the way it was very much made. Heineken is all about social life, and what comes in social life is the phone. It’s a wall in between people, in so many ways. And we saw it as a barrier to social life. And we’re looking into how could we make the young generation aware of this? How could we very much do something that is for them without being too authoritative and be too aggressive, but still have a very heavy point of view on that? And we realize, again, that the beginning of a trend, we’re like setting where a group of younger generation were taking flip phones to parties. Again, it started with that small discovery, and we were like, that’s it. That’s the way we are in into culture. So by creating the boring phone, it’s very much when your phone is boring, your social life is more interesting. We connected it like this and created something that was in culture by adding a layer also of design on it, a layer of trust. It was made by the maker of Nokia, again, and distributed in an interesting way. And the phone, it’s a mock completely of a phone. It does nothing. It has email, but it has only one kilobyte of data. So you cannot force you an email, but it has email. It has snakes, but snakes, like when you launch it, it wins straight away. And then you have a two megapixel camera that takes like, yeah, you know, like stuttery video and then like blurry photos. And it’s all of that, it’s all this analog like feel to be able to pass on the message that spending time with your friends, spending time in a concert, looking at the stage with your eyes, not through a phone, like help you connect with people and help you to have like a better life like generally.

Super smart, isn’t it? I have a slight controversial example, right, of another beer brand that I think got it wrong. And I want to stay away from the politics of this because I think that’s a red herring. But in terms of the brand positioning, do you remember Budweiser a few years ago? Well, it was only in 2023. And I think this is a perfect example of them jumping on the fast bandwagon. So they were really jumping on the kind of the fast culture of progressive identity politics. And they used a transgender influencer called Dylan Mulvaney, right, in one of their adverts. And they really pushed that the transgender kind of agenda forward. But obviously, their audience, you know, the slow culture that you’re talking about, that they weren’t ready for that, right? They were around, you know, more conservative, Budweiser drinkers. And so that had a huge backlash amongst their own kind of consumer group. And so, you know, that’s a kind of perhaps an example of where a brand has just leaped on a bandwagon, perhaps in a very inauthentic way. And they’ve had that negative backlash as opposed to sort of some of the more inviting, come on in kind of, you know, response that we want, like that you’ve mentioned from Heineken. And another one I’m going to throw into the mix, and I’d love to get your thoughts on this. It’s been huge here in the UK. The Jaguar rebrand. Have you seen much of that? Like that’s really interesting because, you know, obviously, again, a very progressive kind of stance. They didn’t even show the car in their launch campaign. It’s very polarizing here in the UK. You know, you’ve got sort of perhaps more older generation, traditional Jaguar drivers, which don’t feel that the brand is speaking to them anymore. You’ve got a very high-priced product now coming out. Will the young people be able to afford it is a huge question I’ve got. So the jury is still out on that one, but interested in your thoughts on how that sort of more, I guess, politically charged campaign, is that culturally relevant? And do you think that they’ve done a good job, those brands?

It is, like from like Jaguar, like it’s very interesting because we need to look at where they were financially as well. Because they needed to reinvent themselves, like, or like be forgotten. Like an old traditional brand that will then be brought back by like a different nation and then pay nothing for it. Like, you know, there’s a few examples like that. So they had like to do something drastic, like for it. And when it comes like to the consumer, like it’s, again, you need to look into the future. Nike had the same issue with Copernic, you know, when you have like a lot of like people burning Nike trainers. But the people that were burning Nike trainers, there are like old people that were burning like one pair every three years, every four years, while the new generation were all up like for a brand, like Nike standing with like Copernic. And then the sales went up like crazy. So, while old people think, thought that Nike was done for them, they converted a lot of like new people. And I think it’s very much like the same like for Jaguar. Like even if you cannot like afford the part product that was revealed last week, two weeks ago, I think at Paris Fashion Week. So that’s the first time that we saw the car. It looks fantastic. Like by the way, that’s just my own like point of view on that. Like design wise, like it’s amazing. Again, they created something new. They maybe reinvented themselves. And the fact that they polarized the audience is right. If everybody agree with something, you know that’s like, ah, it’s meh. And you have like two piece of like some people and to please the others. Otherwise it’s what I call vanilla. Everybody like vanilla, but is it interesting?

Yeah, yeah, nice. I want to ask you a more practical question. So, you know, in your work, you mentioned sort of like you’ve got to do a bit of an understanding of, of where the brand sits in the slow and the fast aspects of culture. But realistically, what does that look like? I mean, I know you work with big agencies. I mean, do you do things personally? Like what advice would you give, for example, to a smaller brand who was listening to this and thinking, oh, yeah, we, this sounds great. But like, how do I go about that? So if you’ve got any advice, I guess, practical advice, how do we go about becoming relevant culturally?

I think the first step is very much like trying to understand where you fit in culture. Looking into the DNA of the brand, and the strategy, because it has to be aligned with the two of them. So it’s very much mapping the brand, where it sits, society and culture, like what is its role? Does it have a role? And then looking at the boundaries, the boundaries are also very, very important. There’s one key things. If you want to have a place like in culture, you have to be opinionated. You have to give like a point of view. You have to stand for something. So you clearly have to put the boundaries, because if you start stand for something that’s not right for you, then it seems as being opportunist, instead of becoming like an opportunity. So that’s like very, very important, like to find like this thing. And then the other things is finding the barriers to what stops you having this role in culture. So then it becomes like very easy to say, if my role are like, I’m a yogurt brand. My role is about bringing vitality to the world. I can talk about what stop vitality in this world. Like generally, then the brand have a role because it comes from something simple as yogurt or milk, bringing vitality to the world, what stop vitality to the world. As an example, mobile phone sucks up vitality out of young children. It’s been like proven. Then they can have a say, then you can do a brand act. You can do anything on the back of it that will be meaningful for the people, that will be contextual and that will be timely as well.

Love that.

Contextual is a key as well, depending on the market you want to hit or depending where you’re from, like in some context is always changing and evolving.

Do you think every brand should aim to have a cultural route in it?

Well, not all needs to. Can we say depends like what you are, like bank, it will be very difficult. Like for a bank, they can do it to level, but they don’t really need it because brands that have more like of a heart function, like what I will call, which is, I choose a bank for its app, for how they are safe and so on. There’s no much emotion left like around what they provide. Even if they try to inject like emotion, there’s not that much. People don’t choose a brand because they have a horse racing in a TV ad. No, they don’t do that. Like really, people are more rational when it comes to brand. So if your brand is very much more like a herd purchase, what I will call, versus like a head purchase, then you’re more likely to have a bigger role like in culture.

All right.

Okay, another quick question. Do you think that there’s a risk sometimes of culture washing, right? Like, you know, and how do we know we’re on the right culture? So you’ve said that basically what you need to do is make sure that whatever you’re rooting your thinking in, it’s true and authentic. That’s what I’ve heard from you there. Like you’ve got to figure out where does beer play generally in society and then find that middle piece. But what would you say if somebody’s sort of just trying to kind of wash culture into their brand? Like what if they get it wrong? Like any thoughts on culture washing?

Well, if they do the work properly, if they don’t try to piggyback into an existing trend, like straight away, it won’t happen. Because they will be at the forefront of it. So it won’t be culture like washing, because they will be culture like already. And they will be, again, having a clear role, a clear mapping into the culture with clear boundaries. And then that’s the first part of it. It should not happen at all. But if it happens, again, like someone that’s… It’s all about humility. If you have the right curiosity, if you’ve done the right work of really going deep into what you will put out, you know if it’s right or wrong, really. Or someone tried to hide something on it that nobody will want to know, but it goes out.

Okay, I’m going to jump us forward. Thank you for that. In terms of, you’ve worked all over the world, right? And the world is becoming more and more interconnected, isn’t it, globally, right? I was just on a discovery workshop, and we had people from literally all the continents, right? There was 30 people, and I was learning from them. And it was phenomenal, right? So this is the world that a lot of global international companies are working in now, like where they have multiple touch points in multiple cultures from all over the world. And so I guess one thing I was going to ask you about was, from your experience, how do brands navigate that, right? Because that’s really hard to be culturally relevant across multiple jurisdictions and areas. Have you got any thoughts on international brands and how they can navigate that?

So Heineken does that brilliantly. Like as an example, you have like that globally, the idea that is more refreshing social life is all about like being like social, like it’s happening on a global scale, but people doing it like differently. So it’s all about universal truths. That’s what they have like globally, local truths and then brand truths. So you need that big idea that travels routing in the brand global belief, which is that it’s like, it’s all about social life. It’s all about giving like no dis to the people, or showcasing what impede people like to have that social life. But it must be expressed with a local nuance. I’ll give you like a very good example on that. It’s what’s happening in the culture, what’s happening to the people, what matters to the people there. So the voice is, I would say the voice is consistent, but the accent changes. So what do I mean as an example? When we did the office cleaners, so that’s a work, like Responsibility Campaign, we wanted people to go out of work. And what we use, we use cleaners because cleaners come after 8 p.m. in Argentina. In Argentina, if you are 8 p.m. at work in an office, it means it’s too late. So the message was very simple. When you see the cleaners, it’s time to see your friend. And then what we did, like very much, we use QR code on them. People could just snap a picture. You’ve got a nap with a free beer, but you have 20 minutes to get it. So we lure people out of work. So very much like this campaign, this universal truth was people stay too long at work. But in Argentina, the way to lure people out, the switch in the mind was like, when you see the cleaners, it’s time to see your friend. We did the same campaign in all Southeast Asia, but completely different. So there’s no cleaners during the night, cleaners are during the day. So we cannot use a trigger very much, but there’s something that they’re very scared of, ghost. Ghost is a big thing like in Southeast Asia. And we created something where we had a fake story about a bar being ghost. Having ghost in a bar, you see beers moving and so on. It was done in a way shot from a famous person that was on holiday in Singapore. And then it started to catch fire, of course. And then we reveal what was moving, everything. So a chair was moving, a beer was levitating. And in fact, it was someone stuck at the office. And then we match the two videos. And then it becomes like a friend stuck in the office is a ghost at the bar. So we call it like the ghost in the bar. And it was all about like this. And then the term again, being ghosted by someone. So you can see how, and we lured people again out, but from a different aspect, we had friends that were not at work, that were luring their friend to the bar to be like able to do the same job as Argentina, but in a completely different way. So you can see how the same social or cultural positioning plays will be, we are all about social time and you should not work like too late. And then how it’s done completely differently, depending on where you are globally. So it’s being universal truths, local truths, and then brand truths like all done like in one very much.

Super smart, super smart. Love that. So looking ahead then Cyril, right? What major kind of cultural shifts do you see on the horizon that you think brand should be thinking about now so that they can be there ready when it bursts? Like got any thoughts on that?

There’s one thing, like I will say, which coming more and more, which is we’re moving from influence to involvement, that people they just don’t only want to be a thing, they want to feel a part of something. So there’s these things which is the word 10, 15 years ago used to be more tribal. The tribe disintegrated, the tribe kind of like disappeared. There’s like a sense of like loneliness, like to the whole new generation and so on. So the feeling part of something, having that sense of belonging, like we moving from just influence to involvement. So quartership, not just consumption, brands that understand this shift from transactional, tribal, like we will win, like probably.

Yeah, it’s funny because there was a whole movement around tribes, wasn’t there? I remember Seth Godin talking about that, Marty Neumeyer. And then the pandemic sort of split that all up a little bit. But digitally, people still sort of move in tribes, it seems to me. But then as we’ve gone back out into the real world, we’re looking for that connection again, that belonging again. So I think that’s super, super smart for brands to think about. Just on the tech front, you see the rise of AI, Web3. What’s your thoughts on the impact of that in culture? And should brands be looking at those types of emerging technologies, do you think? Or do you think that that’s sort of less, less important because we’ve got to get to the universal truths? What are your thoughts?

It’s always difficult with this one. We know it is like people jumping on the new tech, the new shiny toy, let’s do something with it and so on. But AI is like, is very different. Like there’s a massive like shift, like with like something like that is it’s very much like a culture shape, not just like an enabler. It’s changing how we create, how we remix, how we respond, how we see things, how everything is a lot of things are created. So the key to use, but not replace, of course, like creativity, but they amplify curiosity as well. Technology helps you to keep up, but very much curiosity helps brand like to stand out. So like it’s again, very, very like useful. I say like it’s a creature of shape, not just an enabler, just because of, especially AI, what we see done like with like AI. It does a novelty aspect of it that we haven’t seen since like a long time.

Jacob, have you got any questions for Cyril before we start thinking about wrapping up?

Yeah, I’d love to get just some final advice for brands that are looking to elevate their relevance in culture. Like, what would you give?

I would say like two things. Being culture doesn’t start with trends. It starts like way below that. Don’t look at the tip of the iceberg. Try to embed yourself like at the bottom of it or at the intersection of like, the top of the iceberg and then the bottom, the slow and then like the fast very much. Be more interested as well. Be more curious. Brands that are the most culturally relevant ones are the most curious because they interest with empathy, like insight and action like that. And then in culture, like it’s everything.

Brilliant. And just to wrap up, where can people connect with you and follow your work?

Well, on my website, but Matt like seen like that and then find me like on LinkedIn as well. That’s where things happen.

Brilliant. Well, Cyril, look, it’s been lovely catching up after, you know, 20 odd years. You’re looking well. You haven’t changed a bit. And thanks so much for carving out some time. All the very, very best in your endeavors. And we look forward to following you.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me.