• by Randy Gudiel , April 29, 2026

We’ve made progress in how we talk about culture in marketing, but we’re still getting one thing wrong.

We’ve moved from treating culture as a segment to treating it as a signal. On the surface, that feels like an evolution. But most brands still don’t know how to read that signal.

Because recognizing culture is not the same as understanding it.

Today, it’s easy to point to cultural moments: A song goes viral. A dance trend takes over social. A certain style or look starts showing up everywhere. Brands are getting better at reacting to these signals, and in many cases, reacting quickly. That’s a good thing -- don’t get me wrong. But reacting is not the same as interpreting.

A viral moment tells you something is happening, but it does not tell you why it matters, who it matters to, or how long it will last. That’s where most strategies fall short. They chase the signal without understanding the behavior behind it. But music, fashion, dance don’t exist separately. They move together.

A track starts gaining traction. That track fuels a dance. That dance gets picked up by creators. The way people show up in those videos influences fashion, style, and identity. Suddenly, what started as a song becomes a full cultural expression.

And yet most brands only see the surface. They react to one piece of it or borrow the aesthetic -- reacting to the output, instead of the behavior.

That’s also why so many attempts by brands to tap into culture feel disconnected. They show up in one lane, but their audience is experiencing everything together.

For brands trying to connect with multicultural audiences, the opportunity is major -- mainly because these audiences have never been “just” a segment. They’ve always been at the center of how culture moves across music, fashion and dance. They shape how trends emerge, evolve and spread. But instead of learning from those behaviors, the industry typically builds separate strategies around them.

For a fresh approach, try this:

Stop looking at trends in isolation. If a song is taking off, look at what else is moving with it. How are people expressing it visually? Where is it showing up beyond one platform? That's where the real signal lives.

Focus on behavior, not just the moment. Instead of asking how to show up in a single trend, ask how your audience consistently engages with culture across music, fashion, and content. That approach creates repeatable opportunities.

Align your media and creative approach to that ecosystem. If participation is happening across platforms, your presence should reflect that. If identity and self-expression are driving engagement, your creative needs to feel native to that behavior, not layered on top of it.

Rethink how you approach multicultural audiences -- not as a separate strategy, but as a source of insight. These audiences often sit at the center of how these cultural systems move. The value is not just in reaching them, but in understanding how culture flows through them.

The brands that get this right aren’t just reacting faster; they’re planning deeper and identifying how culture connects across behaviors so they can show up in a natural way -- not just when something trends.