<\/p>\n
New Delhi: Brands do not need to become entertainment studios to stay relevant in culture. They need to become cultural storytellers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is the view of Manoti Jain, founding member and Chief Operations Officer at Kulfi Collective, who argued that advertising has not lost relevance, but its role has fundamentally changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrands don\u2019t need to become entertainment studios. They need to become cultural storytellers,\u201d Jain said. \u201cThe smartest brands know when to create original IP, when to collaborate with creators, and when to step back and let culture lead. It\u2019s not about producing more content; it\u2019s about participating meaningfully in the right cultural moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jain said the shift in brand building is not from advertising to content, but from promotion to cultural relevance. \u201cAdvertising hasn\u2019t disappeared, it\u2019s just evolved,\u201d she said. \u201cBrands today aren\u2019t just advertisers anymore; they\u2019re becoming participants in culture. They\u2019re building IP, collaborating with creators, investing in communities and shaping stories people want to engage with, not just watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that system, she said, advertising is no longer the main act. \u201cIt\u2019s the amplifier. Its role is to take what a brand is building culturally and make it travel. It keeps the brand present in conversations, gives moments scale and helps translate participation into memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
To explain that shift, Jain pointed to brands across categories. She cited Cadbury\u2019s girl-POV cricket film as an example of a brand using advertising to scale a cultural shift rather than just push product. \u201cTheir girl-POV cricket film didn\u2019t just sell chocolate, it flipped a long-standing cultural trope and made the country feel something,\u201d she said. \u201cAdvertising gave that emotional shift scale and made it part of mainstream conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also pointed to Spotify Wrapped as a case where the product experience already exists, but storytelling turns it into a recurring cultural moment. \u201cIt\u2019s the storytelling around it, from OOH to creator collaborations and persona-led narratives, that turns it into an annual cultural moment people anticipate and share,\u201d Jain said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zomato, she added, has similarly used humour rooted in everyday relatability, including around moments such as Mother\u2019s Day, to stay embedded in internet culture and not just app behaviour.<\/p>\n
Moving ahead in the conversation, Jain emphasised the need to re-examine how branded content should be evaluated. She argued that most branded work is still measured on the wrong signals. \u201cViews, likes, and shares tell you how far something travelled, not whether it meant anything,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd today, scale is easy to manufacture. You can push distribution and hit numbers overnight. But branded content isn\u2019t built just to perform in feeds, it\u2019s built to live in culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her test, she said, comes after exposure. \u201cThe real question is what happens after people watch it. Do they talk about it? Do they reference it? Does it shape how they see the brand?\u201d<\/p>\n
She cited Amul\u2019s topical advertising as an example of work whose impact cannot be read only through engagement spikes. \u201cTheir impact isn\u2019t measured in engagement spikes; it\u2019s in how consistently they become part of the national conversation and public memory,\u201d Jain said. \u201cThey don\u2019t just react to culture, they archive it in real time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Globally, she pointed to Nike\u2019s Find Your Greatness and Dream Crazy as examples of campaigns that shape cultural discourse around sport, identity and ambition. \u201cVirality can create noise, but cultural relevance creates recall,\u201d she said. \u201cIn the long run, brands aren\u2019t built on what people saw; they\u2019re built on what people remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
That emphasis on memory also feeds into how she sees branding inside content. Jain said the problem is not subtle branding, but vague branding. \u201cIf content entertains but doesn\u2019t build the brand, it usually means the brand\u2019s role in the story wasn\u2019t clear to begin with,\u201d she said. \u201cSubtlety only works when the brand\u2019s voice and point of view are baked into the idea, not added later.\u201d<\/p>\n
For that to happen, she said, brands need far stronger internal clarity. \u201cAccountability really sits with how clearly the brand knows itself, what it stands for, what it wants to say, and the role it wants to play in culture,\u201d Jain said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She added that such clarity is not built through one campaign, but through repeated, consistent cultural participation. \u201cThat clarity doesn\u2019t come from one campaign. It comes from consistency, showing up in culture with intent, taking stands when it matters and telling stories with integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jain also drew a distinction between growth and brand meaning. \u201cGrowth today can absolutely be driven by product, UX and creators. But growth alone doesn\u2019t build brand meaning,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In her view, advertising\u2019s job is to shape how that growth is understood and remembered. \u201cWithout it, you\u2019re leaving the brand\u2019s narrative to chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Culture, she argued, shapes far more than just awareness. \u201cIt influences perception, identity and affinity,\u201d she said. \u201cAdvertising helps brands participate meaningfully in that cultural conversation around their product.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She used Crocs as an example, saying the brand already had functionality and creator love, but culture-first campaigns such as its K-Drama x Bollywood crossover helped frame it as a symbol of self-expression and fandom, not just comfort.<\/p>\n
That, Jain said, is when advertising justifies its spend. \u201cWhen brands become culturally relevant, it translates into real business outcomes, stronger affinity, deeper loyalty and sustained growth over time. That\u2019s when advertising earns its budget, when it builds cultural meaning around growth, not just awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shift, she said, also has implications for agencies. \u201cWe\u2019re no longer just campaign builders,\u201d Jain said. \u201cWe need to think in ecosystems, across content, communities, creators and platforms and help brands navigate culture, not just media.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In her view, agencies that continue to operate as execution partners alone will struggle to stay ahead. \u201cAdvertising isn\u2019t dying, it\u2019s becoming more intentional and more embedded in culture,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd agencies that can operate as long-term cultural partners, not just execution partners, will define what comes next.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her conclusion was direct: \u201cThe future won\u2019t belong to agencies that make ads, but to those that help brands make cultural dents.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.buzzincontent.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Delhi: Brands do not need to become entertainment studios to stay relevant in culture. They need to become cultural storytellers.\u00a0 That is the view of Manoti Jain, founding member and Chief Operations Officer at Kulfi Collective, who argued that advertising has not lost relevance, but its role has fundamentally changed. \u201cBrands don\u2019t need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2341615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[366755,21741,453895],"class_list":["post-2341614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-brands","tag-entertainment","tag-kulfi-collective"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Brands-need-to-be-cultural-storytellers-not-entertainment-studios-Kulfi.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2341614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341616,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341614\/revisions\/2341616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2341615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2341614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2341614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2341614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}