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Most brands still buy attention. The impactful ones earn devotion, the kind people will rally behind and fight to protect. Consumers want a role in movements, not just transactions. When brands focus solely on economics, spark and engagement disappear. Consequential brands ignite a shared spirit, tapping into values, not just wallets, and building communities of advocates. But how do you actually build cultural power? For my forthcoming book Branding as a Cultural Force: Purpose, Responsibility, and Resonance (Columbia University Press, 2025), I interviewed creative leaders worldwide to find out. Across those conversations, six clear strategies emergedactionable patterns that separate brands that ride culture from those that positively shape it. These strategies turn brands into cultural forces that generate enthusiasm and prosperity. 1. BE IRREPLACEABLE In a world of infinite options, cultural power begins with being impossible to replace. “A brand should embody something unique that others can’t easily replicate,” says Nick Law, creative chairperson of Accenture Song. Uniqueness isn’t about features or benefits anymore, but about occupying cultural territory that only you can claim. U.S. Bank’s Translators documentary reveals a hidden reality: bilingual children serve as interpreters for their immigrant families, navigating everything from banking to healthcare. Rather than just advertising their Spanish-language banking services, U.S. Bank collaborated with filmmaker Rudy Valdez to tell this authentic story. The documentary validates an experience millions live daily. When they later launched Asistente Inteligente, the first Spanish-language virtual assistant from a U.S. financial institution, it felt like natural understanding, not marketing. As Leland Maschmeyer, cofounder and CEO of Collins, puts it: “The reality is that brand is differentiation. Without it, a product is a commodity.” Cultural power comes from creating territory that only you can occupy. 2. TRANSFORM PROMISES INTO ACTIVISM It’s no longer enough to promise functional benefits or emotional connection. People expect activismmanifestos turned into measurable action. As Juliana Constantino, group creative director at Dentsu, explained: “Purpose-driven brands embody a social mission integral to their business. Others jump on social issues for short-term campaigns without genuine commitment. These efforts come across as insincere or opportunistic.” Telecommunications company Orange and creative agency Marcel challenged football bias with a highlight reel of dazzling plays by Frances male stars like Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann, only to reveal audiences had actually been watching the womens team, digitally altered to look like male players. The campaign proved that skill transcends gender bias, making WoMens Football the most shared content fighting inequality in the sport. Apple has taken a sustained approach. “The Lost Voice” spotlighted accessibility. “Fuzzy Feelings” explored empathy through creativity. And Frybread Face and Mean Apple Original feature on Netflix, written and directed by Billy Lutherelevated a story by an Indigenous filmmaker. What matters most is not any single story but the pattern: activism embedded as brand practice. 3. MEASURE IMPACT, NOT JUST PROFIT Profit without purpose is just extraction. The brands building real cultural power have moved beyond traditional metrics to measure what actually matters: their contribution to the world. “The key is differentiating between a nice idea and actual impact,” says Ben Miles, chief design officer, APAC, R/GA. “Design has to be intentional.” That intentionality means embedding impact measurement into every decision, not treating it as an afterthought. Ben & Jerry’s exemplifies this approach by integrating nonpartisan social metrics into operational decisions. Their mission seeks to meet human needs and eliminate injustices across communities, creating accountability throughout every function. They’ve published annual social and environmental assessment reports with third-party reviews for decades. What makes them culturally powerful is how consistently they follow this mission, from ingredient sourcing to activism campaigns. 4. GO PLANET-FIRST, NOT HUMAN-CENTERED The human-centered approach that dominated the last decade assumes we have infinite planetary resources. We don’t. As this reality becomes undeniable, consumer expectations have fundamentally shifted. It’s no longer enough to be less badpeople expect brands to be actively regenerative. The numbers tell the story: More than half of Gen Z and millennials will pay more for sustainable products, with 25% researching a company’s environmental impact before every purchase, according to Deloitte’s 2025 sustainability survey. Around 65% feel anxious about the environment’s state, and over 70% have experienced extreme weather events in the past year. Lived experiences are driving purchasing decisions. As Gaëtan du Peloux, CCO and co-CEO of Marcel Paris, told me: “I believe companies have both rights and duties. It’s an implicit understanding between people and businesses: We allow companies to make money, but in return, we expect them to contribute positively to society. This collective responsibility is crucial.” The brands responding to this shiftfrom Google and American Airlines reducing contrails to Sheba restoring coral reefsare building the cultural credibility that environmentally anxious generations demand, turning planetary stewardship into a competitive advantage. 5. PRACTICE LEADERSHIP AS CULTURAL STEWARDSHIP Leaders who act as cultural stewards, not just profit maximizers, build the most influential brands. Emma Robbins, CCO at M&C Saatchi Melbourne, emphasizes: “Shared purpose from brands with their customers comes when brands don’t behave like corporations but just like people.” She adds, “The best brand storytelling happens when it tells the story of the customer. Brands can appear arrogant when they tell a ‘we’ story.” Mastercard exemplified this with True Name, allowing transgender and non-binary customers to display their chosen names on cards without legal name changes. The initiative prioritized dignity over traditional banking protocols, putting customer stories at the center. By making it available to other banks, Mastercard encouraged industry change. 6. AMPLIFY MANY VOICES The strongest brands dont just tell their own sory; they amplify underrepresented voices and invite audiences to help shape the narrative. When brands open space for participation, communities cocreate meaning and hold them to standards of authenticity and transparency. As Nancy Crimi-Lamanna, CCO at FCB Canada, told me, truly relevant work addresses current and relevant cultural issues by providing insights and driving engagement for positive change.” That belief powered FCBs long-term partnership with the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. From inclusive voice algorithms with Google to Adidass Runner 321 bibs reserved at major marathons, they turned representation into policy, not taglines. Dove has taken a similar approach. When TikToks Bold Glamour filter went viral, the brand mobilized against unrealistic beauty standards with #TurnYourBacka replicable action that audiences themselves carried forward. Posts using the hashtag gained 54 million views and more than half a million engagements, proving that real cultural power emerges when people see themselves as participants, not consumers. THE CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP IMPERATIVE The brands that will dominate won’t be those with the biggest budgets, but those that communities respect and promote. The future belongs to brands that communities claim as their own. As Maschmeyer writes in the foreword to my book: “The brands that thrive will not be those that shout the loudest, but those that matter the most.”
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E-Commerce
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Short screech. Long screech. Static. More beeps. On September 30, one of the most memorableif not infuriatingwaiting experiences since the dawn of the internet went the way of the dodo. AOL finally discontinued its dial-up service. If you grew up in the 90s, you knew that sound by heart. Some of you also knew to bring a newspaper while waiting for a single web page to load. AOLs iconic 30-second symphony of screeches and static wasn’t just the sound of connection. It was the sound of anticipation, of mandatory patience in an increasingly impatient world. Today, that pause is all but extinct. Pages load more or less instantly, apps respond in milliseconds, and information moves faster than we can formulate a complete thought. Technological advances have virtually eliminated the wait, but waiting isn’t wasted time. Studies have shown that simple pauses can help strengthen our self-control, and savoring the anticipation of an event can help us prolong pleasure. Our overstimulated brains might find the wait to be frustrating, but underneath all the noise, we just want a quiet moment of pause. Waiting gives us a chance to rest and reflect. This is as true of the real world as it is online. That’s why designers are sneaking the wait back into modern digital experiences. The Return of the Pause On a recent afternoon, I had to call my medical provider to ask a question. When someone picked uppredictably, a voice botI provided my name and date of birth. Then something interesting happened. Instead of processing my information in digital silence, or to the sound of hold music, the bot pretended to type it into a keyboard. I heard a click, clack, click, clack. The built-in typing may not have been totally for showperhaps the software genuinely needed the processing time. But it was designed to humanize my interaction, to mimic what psychologists call “conversational rhythm, in which pauses signal thought, consideration, and care. The concept translates to digital experiences, too. Take OpenAIs GPT-5. While previous versions typed out answers slowly, like a typewriter, the early version of GPT-5 dumped the full answer in one go. Some users found it hard to engage; others found it boring. “It just slammed a wall of text at me,” Marcel McVay, director of UX and digital solutions at Octo, tells me. “It was so much information at the same time, that it was off-putting.” [Illustration: FC] What users were missing is called sequencing, otherwise known as the deliberate pacing of information delivery. When your car dashboard lights up one indicator at a time rather than all at once, that’s sequencing. When ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity type out responses like a vintage typewriter rather than slamming the complete answer instantly, that’s sequencing, too. With large language models (LLMs), information delivery was slowed down to mimic the pauses that occur in natural conversation, and to help people process information like they are used to. “If someone doesn’t pause to think about what you just said, did they even hear you?” McVay says. He is currently working on a dementia care app, called Plans4Care, that aims to help support and guide people dealing with degenerative brain diseases. He says the app, which is currently being tested in clinical trials, doesnt require a lot of processing time to load. But his team still built in a loading screen that shows the brands logo plus a rolling selection of comforting quotes and accompanying images. While technically unnecessary, the loading screen serves to pace the users experience. Its a place where we remind you, were Plans4Care, and were here to support you, McVay says. Making the Wait Worthwhile Sometimes, of course, wait time remains necessary, and companies have learned to transform these delays into brand opportunities. The Calm app invites you to “take a deep breath” while it loads meditation content. Duolingo’s mascot Duo gives you quirky language facts during brief loading screens. Expedia calls to your wanderlust with a loading spinner in the shape of a traveling plane. These moments aren’t just distractionsthey’re what Clinton Gorham, brand consultant and founder of the Gorham Agency, calls “movie trailers,” or brief moments that set the mood and manage expectations. “Smart brands treat that sliver of time as a mini canvas to make an impression, he says. The strategy isnt exactly new. In the 1950s, office building tenants in a Manhattan high-rise complained about slow elevators. Rather than installing faster machineryan expensive solutionbuilding managers installed mirrors in elevator lobbies. Suddenly, complaints plummeted. The wait time hadn’t changed, but the mirrors had transformed dead time into useful time, and people were too busy checking their appearance to notice the delay. David H. Maister, an authority on service management and the psychology of waiting in line (or a queue, as they say in the U.K.), calls this phenomenon the “occupied time principle.” The British-born former Harvard professor has stated that occupied time (spent on any activity) feels shorter than unoccupied time (free from activity). User experience designers today are using the same trick. Some years ago, UX designer Tej Kalianda was working on ShareConnect, an iPad app that allows users to securely connect to and control their computers from anywhere in the world. The app’s complex authentication and secure connection setup processes meant that it took users 35 seconds to connect. It also meant they consistently dropped out. “They thought the app was broken,” says Kalianda, who now works at Google but spoke to me in a personal capacity. The engineering team couldn’t reduce the wait time, so Kalianda decided to keep users busy while they waited. She created random, visually engaging loading screens that changed every time someone connected. “Instead of fighting the delay, I embraced it,” sh explains. And her efforts paid off. The company’s Net Promoter Score jumped from 40 to 45, and she says user feedback shifted from “This thing doesn’t work” to “I love how smooth the connection feels.” Like with the elevators, the wait time never improvedonly the perception of it. Yet users were measurably happier because they were engaged and entertained. The aesthetics of waiting A 90s kid would barely recognize the internet today. We have gone from screechy dial-up connections and songs that took 20 minutes to download to TikTok trends that circle the globe in seconds. But it’s not just speed that’s changedthe entire aesthetic of waiting has evolved along with it. Back then, waiting looked like a progress bar crawling across a gray dialogue box, or “loading . . .” text blinking in a browser. The internet felt mechanical, utilitarian. But over the next few decades, companies developed their own visual language of waiting. Some, like Microsoft, took the literal approach with sand falling through an hourglass. Others, like Apple, embraced abstraction with a colorful beach ball that spun cheerfully while our computer screens froze. More recently, Slack turned waiting into a fun distraction with messages like “reticulating splines” (a callback to loading screens from games like SimCity). Meanwhile, Perplexity narrates its thought process, and Uber loads a grayed-out skeleton of its layout, helping you visualize whats to come. In a world that never stops scrolling, these pausesengineered or notare a welcome reminder that anticipation can be a feature, not a bug. I never thought I’d say this, but watching an app load is starting to feel like a simple, grounding moment that makes us feel a little more human.
Category:
E-Commerce
Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. Its reshaping industries, expediting innovation, and shifting how we work at unprecedented speed. For many leaders and employees alike, that reality sparks an uneasy question: if AI can do my work, where does that leave me? The answer lies not in competing with AI, but in doubling down on what makes us distinctly, and irreplaceably, human. In my work on human leadership, Ive explored how leaders can step into a technology-centric future without sacrificing humanity. The truth is: AI can process, predict, and optimize. But it cannot lead, inspire, or create meaning in the way that humans can. Here are five leadership skills that AI will never replace, and how you can harness them to stay future-ready: 1. Empathy AI can simulate human responses, but it cannot feel. Empathy, the ability to truly sense and connect with the emotions of others, is foundational in relationships, building trust and fostering a sense of belonging. Research consistently shows that workplaces where employees feel understood and valued perform better, yet empathy is a skill that many leaders overlook (and dont develop). To harness empathy, leaders need to move beyond surface-level check-ins. Create practices that encourage active empathy by making space to connect with employees to ask open questions. Listen for what they dont say, and tailor your leadership approach to the unique human in front of you. It takes more time and intention, but its irreplaceable. 2. Contextual Judgement AI excels in patterns and algorithms, but struggles with nuance. And in a complex world, nothing is ever black or white. An AI algorithm might be able to analyze millions of data points, but it cant weigh organizational history, cultural dynamics, ethical dilemmas, or interpersonal relationships in the same way a human leader can. Contextual judgment is the art of knowing not just what to decide, but when, why, and how to execute on that judgment. Slow down decision-making when the stakes are high, and dont be fooled into the belief that a fast decision is a good one. Think fast and slow. That means paying attention to your initial reactions, but its important to interrogate those, too. And hold space for paradox thinking. You need to consider both/and rather than either/or choices to widen your perspective and avoid being boxed into binary outcomes. 3. Creativity and making meaning Yes, AI can now generate images, songs, and even strategies. But it cannot interpret or assign meaning. Human creativity isnt just about producing noveltyits about storytelling, creating understanding, symbolism, and inspiring shared purpose. Leaders who can craft a vision that resonates emotionally give people a reason to care, not just a reason to comply. If youre struggling with creativity, start by creating rituals and narratives that tie day-to-day work back to a greater mission, your reason for being. Whether its connecting a teams project to customer impact or designing a shared symbol of progress, your ability to make meaning is uniquely human. Its this emotional connection that drives motivation. 4. Humility and self-awareness AI doesnt experience self-doubt, nor does it have blind spots. Humans do, and acknowledging them is a strength, not a weakness. Leaders who practice humility are open to feedback, adaptable to change, and better at building psychological safety within teams. Leaders should model vulnerability by admitting when they dont have all the answers. Ask your team: What am I missing? What do you see that I dont? This not only builds trust but also elevates collective intelligence and empowers those around you. 5. Connection and belonging AI can simulate conversation, but it cant forge authentic relationships. Humans are hardwired for connection, and belonging is a key driver of performance and wellbeing in the workplace. Leaders who invest in cultivating genuine connections foster resilience and loyalty that no algorithm can replicate. People do their best work when they feel truly seen, valued, and understood. It’s important to value the relationships with your team above all else. Build micro-moments of connection into your leadership practice, whether thats starting meetings with personal check-ins, celebrating small wins, or mentoring emerging talent. All of these practices create touch points for genuine connection. Leading in the age of AI Fear of being replaced by AI is real, but if we understand where our strengths lie, we diminish the threat. AI is not a rival to human leadership; its a tool. The danger isnt that AI will replace leaders, but that leaders will neglect the very skills that make them indispensable. The future belongs to leaders who embrace technology to elevate humanity. By leaning into empathy, contextual judgment, creativity, humility, and connection, we not only safeguard our relevance, we redefine what leadership looks like in the age of AI. At the end of the day, people dont follow algorithms. They follow humans.
Category:
E-Commerce
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