THE CHANGING FACE OF INFLUENCE (part 2)

The rules of influence have flipped: digital now shapes the real world, and AI is pushing that divide even further. As AI-generated slop floods our feeds with content that is endless, and feels hollow, audiences will crave what cannot be automated: the unexpected, the imperfect and the unmistakably human. Originality and taste will become the new currency that differentiates and stands out.

Through a six-part series, Qulture is here to lead brands through this shift, defining the human-first storytelling and creative differentiation that will set the next era of influence.

FROM CAMPAIGNS TO BRAND WORLDS

Remember the campaign hero film? A familiar artifact of a monocultural era when entire marketing budgets, production timelines, brainstorm sessions, and awards entries revolved around a 30 second film. Except they’re not exactly extinct — campaign hero films are alive and well, and continue to anchor many Tease / Launch / Sustain rollouts. 

And yet, the world that made the hero film and the campaign rollout effective doesn’t really exist anymore.

Today’s media environment is highly fragmented, with the average person engaging with almost 7 different social media platforms every month (GWI, 2025). Back when cultural attention was commanded by a smaller set of channels, a single film and corresponding cutdowns could achieve broad impact. And perhaps most crucially, it’s increasingly difficult to stand out with a single message when consumers are inundated with continuous, algorithmically controlled content.

Brand Strategy Consultant Eugene Healy, better known to 300,000 social media followers as @eugbrandstrat, summarizes our campaign hero film dilemma succinctly:  "Advertising converges into algorithmic soup. In that environment the way that your brand is experienced is less like a linear story and more like a vibe.”

Healy advocates for what he calls a “brand mosaic,” a concept often referred to more broadly as a “brand world.” It’s about relying less on traditional hero content designed for top-down communication, and more about a series of smaller, often micro, moments that invite participation, amplification, and designed to be blasted through the algorithmic firehose. Here, we rely less on a campaign story and more on a brand’s “mythology, culture, and an unshakeable point of view” (Tasty Magazine, 2025). 

Let’s step into some of digital’s most inviting, expertly orchestrated brand worlds.

Burberry

As recently as 2024, Burberry had lost its footing. Under the direction of Daniel Lee, the brand has since become resurgent and culturally vital. Its British heritage is once again central to its story, with social serving as the ideal space to explore the numerous facets of that identity beyond the limits of a traditional campaign.

Celebrity talent is activated well past campaign visuals, appearing in socially native formats such as a TikTok series that tasks each spokesperson with making the perfect cup of tea. Brand lore is surfaced through archival references, from revisiting historic logos to creating viral moments like seating its knight mascot front row at fashion week. This approach has also opened the door to more offbeat and unexpected partnerships that tell product stories through a distinctly British lens, including the casting of TikTok sensation Bus Aunty in a recent campaign.

The result is a steady stream of social content where polished hero imagery and native formats coexist easily, connected less by campaign message and more by a shared sense of identity.

Glossier

The original “clean girl” brand has continued to evolve since humble beginnings in 2014, but one thing has remained consistent: social media is central to its success, particularly in its ability to position community as the brand’s focal point.

Community co-creation is evident across the brand’s social channels, where UGC powers much of the content calendar, from product shots and tutorials to finished looks. Glossier’s consistency in its bottom-up approach also shows up in its micro-influencer strategy and in pop-ups that act as bridges between online and IRL worlds. Over time, Glossier’s community-powered editorial voice  has become well known not just with fans but also with beauty obsessives more broadly. It is a destination for anyone that wants to visit a world built on authenticity and relatability, reinforcing the aesthetic, tone, and point of view Glossier has become synonymous with.

 A24

As an entertainment company, A24 could easily limit its marketing to trailers and press-junket clips featuring A-list talent. Instead, it has consistently gone far beyond the task at hand, blurring the lines between content, advertising, and sometimes even performance art. In doing so, A24 has successfully leveraged social media to attain massive positive sentiment and brand equity in ways few modern Hollywood production studios (aside from Disney) have managed to achieve.

Some of A24’s greatest hits as of late: a dating stock exchange inspired by the movie Materialists, limited edition merch that quickly become must-have items for hypebeasts and collectors, and a branded podcast that gives directors and talent space to tell their own stories. Most recently, A24 threw everything at the wall for the marketing for its movie Marty Supreme, most notably a surreal, 18 minute zoom call with Timothee Chalamet that went mega viral. Together, these disparate activations build a brand universe that consistently shows up in For You Pages, Discover Pages, and has put A24 and its movies at the center of internet culture. 

****Part 2 of this article will follow later this month****