When brands tap culture… and mean it

Rob Doubal, global chief creative officer of M&C Saatchi, sometimes feels that he and his agency colleagues are caught in the eye of a storm, around which the forces of culture and commerce rage.

“I actually feel in the middle of that relationship between, let's call it raw artistic culture, and then brands,” he says, adding that he must then “worry about the market and the sell all the time”.

Doubal is speaking at an M&C Saatchi-hosted session at Cannes Lions 2025, where he is joined onstage by Esi Eggleston Bracey, chief growth and marketing officer at Unilever, and renowned contemporary artist and one of TIME100’s Most Influential People, Mickalene Thomas. The session was part of a wider programme exploring cultural power in all its forms – from conversations onstage to a headline DJ set by Spice Girl Melanie C. 

Eggleston Bracey, who has worked on high-impact, culturally resonant campaigns such as Dove’s long-running “Real beauty”, is asked by Bellan-White to give her interpretation of cultural power.

Culture is ‘us’
“It's all about harnessing the power of people, intuition, and instinct to move forward and create desire and aspiration,” she says. “We think that culture is this thing that's out there. But it's us; we are a part of that.”

For Eggleston Bracey, marketing must start with knowing your audience, and not just in terms of demographics.

“It always starts with understanding people,” she says. “Too often we think, ‘What do people need?’ Understanding people is so much more than that. It's understanding what we're a part of and what we desire, and a big part of that is culture.”

As a woman of colour, she says that she was asked mainly to disregard her background early in her career.

“I was taught to move my personal experience and culture aside to try to listen and filter that out, to hear what people need,” she recalls.

“And what I’ve learned is that the magic that makes a difference is feeling what you're a part of collectively in community, tapping into unspoken needs and desires, which are in culture, and then breathing that life into brands.”

She cites the “Real beauty” platform – which famously celebrates women as they really are rather than as a platonic ideal – as an example of tapping into unspoken truths.

“Sometimes people can't even say what they need, and it's artists like Mickalene that create, and then people react,” she says. “The best creative work does that – it moves people, and it moves the business when you can tap into it.”

For artist and creator Thomas, cultural power is inseparable from self.

“In my experiences as an artist, my cultural power’s currency is about us owning our narratives and then shaping [them around how] we see ourselves,” she says.

She describes her artistic process as an act of reclamation: “Taking that back, putting it out there, flipping it, reversing, doing all those things, throwing it up against the wall with all the information we have, and then taking that information back into our own practices, to make sense of it.”

But Thomas also sees her work as not just personal artistic expression but as an influence that can shape other people and brands.

“I think as an artist, I have the ability to radically shift the narratives, and also use them as a way and platform for present and future generations of artists to create platforms.”

Shifting the narrative
One such platform was her collaboration with Christian Dior, which culminated in a fashion show inspired by American and French dancer, singer, and actress Josephine Baker.

“When Dior came to me as an artist, I pushed back at first, because I wasn't really sure they would understand my voice or get the narrative that I wanted to convey… But the more conversations I had with them, I realised that they were really wanting to embrace my story.”

The campaign included a series of 13 photo collages celebrating black women, including Nina Simone and Lena Horne – “African American women who had gone to Paris to really find their voice and their platforms".

“That for me was a chance to shift the narrative and use Christian Dior as a platform,” she says.

Thomas is clearly proud of its impact. “It was the first fashion show with [Christian Dior artistic director] Maria Grazia Chiuri where they had young black women lead the runway. The percentage of women of colour in that show was a precedent for Dior.”

For Eggleston Bracey, the Dior partnership should be inspirational for all marketers.

“That's what we have to do as brands, and why we use creators, and why it's so important to pick creators where their voice is what we want our brands to be, so we can let go and let them unleash it,” she says.

“The foundation of [such campaigns] is creators. But what we can't do is muzzle the voice, distort it. We link it, get behind the voice when it lines up beautifully.”

Brands that lead culture
For Doubal, harnessing cultural power in advertising is an iterative process, one “you can only do if you use the right codes and beliefs, if you understand the language, the art, the words, the comms, to resonate with that culture”.

“That’s why so many things fall flat,” he says.

He outlines the path from cultural understanding to brand leadership: “Once you’ve done that time and time again… the power goes from those comms to the brand.

“And then, after time, your brand is set to have cultural power. Once you get to that space, you go from following culture to adding to culture.”

Then, possibly, a brand might end up “in a position where you can lead culture”.

Eggleston Bracey concurs. “I love the use of the [term] cultural power,” she says, emphasising the word “power”. “Because it is power. I'd say it's even more powerful than an insight. Tapping into the cultural community and experience is really powerful.”