The recent season of The White Lotus features Duke University, igniting discussions about brand control and cultural relevance. The article explores whether brands can truly manage their cultural manifest or if they must balance control with relevance. The Duke incident illustrates the struggle many brands face in achieving cultural 'escape velocity' while maintaining their identity. Marketers must decide how best to respond to cultural narratives, weighing options like public condemnation, professional management, or inaction. The piece emphasizes the unpredictability of brand presence in an ever-evolving cultural landscape.
This season of The White Lotus is a fever dream of power, pills, and moral collapse, and right in the middle of it, one of the most powerful brands in sports and education, Duke University, made an uninvited cameo.
The Duke drama has brought to the fore something marketers have grappled with since internet-native consumers came into their power: striving for brands to reach escape velocity in culture, then struggling to navigate the dynamics when they do.
As a brand, you have three options: Let instinct take over and throw water on it, leave it to the professionals, or do nothing.
Brands don't just live in controlled environments like websites, ads, shelves, and strip malls—they live in stories on the internet; they live as extras in the backdrop of public scandals.
Collection
[
|
...
]