WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS

The 2026 World Cup really is for the fans—and we actually mean all the fans, not just the soccer ones. From the cinematic universes created by mainstays Nike and Adidas that weld together soccer stars and pop culture icons, to the concertification of sporting events with the first-ever World Cup half-time show, it’s easier and more satisfying than ever to enjoy the ride via shared rituals and passion points—and they might not even involve caring about the actual matches.

  OUR TAKE

Brands have always participated in the World Cup to court the true-blue soccer and sports fans, and it was a halo effect if the ‘normies’ happened to engage as well. The event has always been a party that brought together people with communal and high-energy fanfare—it was fun and low stakes to pop into the pub with your friends to watch a game. Even the soundtrack permeated mainstream consciousness (Ricky Martin’s The Cup of Life for 1998, Shakira’s Waka Waka for 2010) by being great pop songs and sheer omnipresence. 

Fashion and music are still anchors of the event, but the catchment area for brands is now bigger. Consumers now feast from a huge spectrum of fandoms and interests, many of which cross-pollinate and rub shoulders. Brands, in order to meet consumers where they are most engaged, now need to be cognizant and thoughtful of this multi-hyphenism. For brands engaging with soccer and the World Cup, maximum cultural impact means touching many different types of consumers and sustaining their attention post-event.

It’s a no-brainer to leverage the biggest bands on earth for this. The reveal announcement for the half-time show had Coldplay’s Chris Martin, characters from Sesame Street and The Muppets (not a coincidence that these are some of the biggest kids’ IPs in the world) FaceTiming BTS. An entire 18-track official album was created, with artists from BLACKPINK’s LISA to content creators such as IShowSpeed. Masked J-pop singer Ado has a soccer jersey collaboration with Adidas and music video that channels peak storytelling from sports anime. 

It almost feels like the World Cup is playing catch-up to the sports event + concert combination, which brings in the music-slash-live-events crowd, as exemplified by the Super Bowl and F1.

Soccer jerseys are one thing; fashion and luxury brands now look to be always-on. This means a longer pipeline and lifecycle of culturally rich moments—it’s one thing to imagine yourself dressed as a soccer player on-pitch, but the off-pitch ‘civilian’ possibilities are endless. Loewe and Spain’s national soccer teams’ new partnership is for off-pitch and travel wardrobes, and spans World Cups up ‘til 2030. PEACEMINUSONE, Nike, and the Korea Football Association have a streetwear collection that is said to reference blokecore (British football culture), but really embodies the most culturally resonant thing—G-DRAGON’s weird, wonderful mind. Even WAGs (wives and girlfriends—another British term popularized by soccer) are analyzed from a fashion lens and are often content creators and reality stars in themselves, with the male athletes as background dressing.

Cameos and Easter eggs, beloved for the IYKYK cache, have even spun off into multiple storylines that evoke some of the hottest topics online. The GOATs’ Goodbye, Nike’s feature-within-a-feature from Rip the Script, tapped into the intrigue and speculation around the stars’ retirement plans, which culminated in Serena Williams rounding out the cast. Ted Lasso is literally everywhere—in the Nike commercial, as well as Burberry’s “A Good Sport” campaign. The performance by JI Blue is a winking nod to fandom, as the singers and songwriter are bona fide soccer fans who also happen to be idols and musicians (members of boybands JO1 and INI, and legendary J-pop artist Taku Takahashi of m-flo).

Toy and video game companies are also taking the chance to tap into the broader culture of play. Video games such as Electronic Arts’ EA Sports FC and Konami’s eFootball are long-running soccer game IPs that include World Cup skins. LEGO’s soccer-themed playsets and Singapore pop-up aim to bring in both young and older audiences. Roblox has an official tie-up with FIFA for World Cup-themed games. Roblox creators are also adding their own (non-FIFA affiliated) World Cup and soccer spin to their games—user-generated content that will live beyond the tournament in forever games.

Given the way consumers and brands now interact, this World Cup season feels both broad and hyperlocal, with a tail that will extend to years after. Whatever activation or collaboration that emerges, the moments that have true staying power are the ones that feel most authentic—like distinct pieces of culture. When the quick solution is to market towards just the one passion point, how will you evolve the cultural playbook and stand out?

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

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 ESCAPING THE CLIPPING MINES

Is anything you see online real anymore? From the excitement surrounding Justin Bieber’s performance at Coachella to the backlash against Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle commercial, there is evidence that a significant part of the discourse was inorganic and manufactured.

Synthetic hype isn’t just limited to chatter about pop stars and Hollywood actors. That Reddit thread about sunscreen brands? The debate around the latest bestsellers on BookTok? A good deal of it may actually be covert advertising, versus actual discussion in a healthy community. If everything online is dismissed and distrusted as marketing slop, it becomes harder and harder for brands to build quality connections with consumers.

  OUR TAKE

Clipping has upended social media. This refers to the now seemingly ubiquitous practice of hiring third parties to turn your content into bite-sized pieces that are then posted and shared by a network of accounts (that often turn out to be created for the sole purpose of content distribution). “Narrative campaigns” form the next step—artificial comments and opinions are planted to resemble authentic consumer banter.

The previous high-water marks of digital marketing, maximum views and engagement, can now be so juiced that brands are trying to step away from -maxxing in order to differentiate themselves. “Going viral” is no longer the end all be all, as brands think about how to build long-term relevance, credibility, and genuine loyalty.

One avenue that brands are investing in is long-form content, especially via YouTube. Passive scrolling and the trend-base algorithm exacerbate digital fatigue, reportedly felt by 58% of Gen Zs and 54% of Millennials in Deloitte Global’s recent Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Long-form allows brands to communicate with more nuance, and take advantage of a longer effectiveness tail where brand integrations have a longer shelf life instead of disappearing after 24-hours.

Even the quality of SponCon can hit different, as long-form content allows for more room for storytelling.  Creators can speak with genuine appreciation for a brand or product in a longer video essay without being immediately dismissed. YouTube has tools that identify creators organically mentioning brands, improving the match-making with advertiser needs.

Brands are also expanding what they do offline. As it becomes harder to distinguish between a flesh-and-blood netizen versus a bot account, people look to IRL events to build emotional connection, and authentic fandoms. As we previously covered on Culture Wire, brands recognize the power of community-building in these spaces, where consumers are choosing to invest their time, dollars and social ties. Literary salons by fashion houses such as Miu Miu offer the opportunity to signal shared identity and interests with real people. Prime Video announced Obsessed Fest, a convention centered around its new slate of streaming content based on Young Adult IPs.

Online, anything is now table-stakes or just plain homogenous. As the attention economy continues to evolve, brands need to be more creative than ever and truly think end-to-end to build lasting power with consumers.

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

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HEADLINE ACT

Filipino pop is having a festival moment. Weeks after BINI made history as the first Filipino act to perform at Coachella—and drew the kind of online attention that’s usually reserved for much higher-billed acts—SB19 are gearing up to perform at Lollapalooza. Novelty bookings these are not: BINI’s 2026 world tour includes stops in the US, Europe, and Asia, while SB19 reached 1B Spotify streams at the start of the year. 

BINI and SB19 are perhaps the highest-profile examples of a broader shift: across Southeast Asia, local-language artists, homegrown formats, and culturally specific stories are rapidly gaining ground. This isn’t one ‘wave’ replacing another, rather the emergence of multiple local scenes with increasingly engaged audiences. 

While previous SEA exports like NIKI and Rich Brian saw international success singing and rapping in English, these newer acts are finding global audiences while performing in their own languages. There’s still a place for global culture, but SEA consumers are becoming more confident that what’s made close to home belongs on the biggest stages.

OUR TAKE

Interest in local acts is intertwined with the evolution of K-pop. As the genre’s focus has shifted towards global audiences—think English-language releases, multinational line-ups and international training systems—it’s become both a global template and less of a geographically fixed category. But this has also allowed for the idol infrastructure to be adopted and remixed across SEA, as the all-Indonesian girl group NO:NA reveals. Although trained in an idol pipeline, they’re distinctly ‘local’, with gamelan, Balinese cymbals, and music videos set in rice terraces.

Meanwhile, the systems around these emerging local acts are also being built locally, through a mix of government funding, major-label investment, industry bodies, and international competition formats. Thailand’s Creative Economy Agency is in year three of Music Exchange, a program that’s seen 95 artists participate in 64 international festivals. In Vietnam, Sony Music took a 49% stake in YeaH1 Group’s music production unit to build a ‘direct pipeline’ for V-pop to reach international charts. And this November, Bangkok will host the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest Asia .

Of course, consumer interest in local acts predates export programs or investment, but now the scale is almost impossible to ignore. OPM’s share of Spotify’s Philippine daily Top 50 rose from 44% in 2023 to 63% in 2026 (note that we’ve been tracking this since budots crashed brat summer in 2024). Meanwhile in Thailand, daily music charts are a mix of K-pop and T-pop and Thai hip-hop, with Jeff Satur (the second most-streamed Thai act on Spotify globally) touring arenas across Asia and Latin America. Homegrown Malaysian acts like K-Clique are building a dedicated regional fanbase. And while Singapore remains an outlier, with K-pop, Western pop, and Mandopop still dominant, interest in local stories is surfacing in other formats.

Single x 35, a manga set in Singapore, recently went viral with fans praising the depiction of MRT commutes, bidding wars for in-demand apartments (brutal), and career stagnation. It sits alongside other webcomics like Woke Salaryman and Indonesia’s Tahilalats as an example of homegrown IP built on everyday anxieties and humor that—crucially—don’t need to be explained to the audience. Brands are starting to get it, too. Airbnb’s partnership with MILLI turned the Thai rapper into a cultural translator who guides travelers through Bangkok’s creative neighborhoods. Using an artist as an access point into a place and a culture works because MILLI’s credibility with that audience is earned.

For years, the safe bet for brands in SEA was to borrow cultural credibility from global acts. More recently, attention has shifted closer to home, but a partnership with BTS, BLACKPINK, or similar was still a bet on the biggest name in the room. Now, with local talent seeing chart success (at home and abroad), those ‘safe’ choices are starting to look less like the smart ones.

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

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BOUNCING INTO YOUR INBOX
At the start of April, Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty joined Substack, using the platform as a place to connect with fans. Promising a ‘a semi-authorized look behind the scenes at one of the world’s biggest beauty brands’, Rare Insider posts have covered everything from how a new blush was created to an interview with Rare’s Director of Global Artistry. 

There’s a strong emphasis on community and (perhaps in an effort to skirt the platform’s emphasis on high quality editorial content) content that’s uplifting and a value-add. With Substack reaching 5 M paid subscriptions in March 2025 and Google searches for ‘Substack’ outnumbering those for ‘newsletter’, it’s a good time to unpack the role of slow(er) media in a fast-scrolling world. 

OUR TAKE

In a content ecosystem dominated by speed, noise, and saturation, the most radical thing a brand can do might be… slow down. Brands are evolving from advertisers to publishers, creating content that prioritizes relationship over conversion. The informal, experimental quality of Rare Insider makes interactions feel more human and less corporate, perhaps taking cues from other fashion and lifestyle brands (The RealReal, Tory Burch, M.M.LaFleur and Saie) that have all launched Substacks functioning more like editorial publications than marketing materials. Early movers could have an advantage: in an attention economy already stretched thin, how many brand newsletters will consumers actually have time to read?

The shift toward slower content extends beyond newsletters: 68% of marketers increased long-form content production in 2024, with 70% planning to invest even more this year. Concepts are getting more creative. E.l.f. Beauty released a 15-minute true-crime mockumentary that played in theaters before Mean Girls. Patagonia’s 25-minute documentary Last Observers has 1.6 M views. Platforms known for brevity are adapting—TikTok and Instagram have both extended video length limits, while YouTube reports 1 B monthly viewers of podcast content. It’s not about creating more content, but more meaningful content that earns attention.

For brands seeking respite from algorithm whiplash, community over conversion makes sense. Rare Beauty has a long-standing commitment to community that traces back to Covid-era Rare Chats (hosted on Zoom, of course) to IRL mental health summits (#4 took place yesterday). Not only does this lend authenticity to this endeavor, it gives plenty of editorial inspiration.

Marketing in 2025 isn’t just thinking about where you show up. It’s about changing what you are saying. Less promotion, more perspective. Less selling, more storytelling. Substack might not be the right platform for your brand. But the mindset shift—from interrupting customers to inviting them in—definitely is.

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

Which surprising collectible is gaining traction in Singapore?

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GEN Zs KRAVE SOMETHING MORE

Earlier this week, KraveBeauty launched two limited-edition tamanu oil products* made from oil sourced directly from a farm in Indonesia. For every purchase, Krave Beauty will donate 5% to the Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) to support the women farmers involved in the production. The brand also worked with Indonesian illustrator @thef00lswhodream to create the packaging. 

*For all our non-beauty junkies: tamanu oil is a multipurpose nut oil that’s used to treat scars and cure a variety of skin conditions. It’s derived from the seeds of the tamanu nut tree, which is indigenous to Southeast Asia

OUR TAKE

First, some background. KraveBeauty was founded by Liah Yoo, a K-beauty creator who saw success sharing skincare tips but became increasingly disillusioned with the volume of products and the pace of skincare trends. By focusing on product efficacy, sustainability, and transparency (how’s that for a trend bingo?), Yoo and her team built a niche beauty brand that has reached cult status. Other activations that link back to the brand’s mission include an Anti-Consumer Consumer Grant, the Waste Me Not pop-up, and a Rewind series that traces products back to their raw materials. 

It’s not surprising that Gen Z beauty consumers — increasingly concerned about the climate crisis, interested in ingredient provenance, and are looking to purchase honest products that work — are gravitating towards brands like KraveBeauty. These storied products don’t just look good on the shelf; they actually deliver results in more ways than one. 

After all, as regular readers know, this demographic is tired of empty promises: they want action and accountability. Liah Yoo provides that with insightful videos that explore the hidden side of the beauty industry — see how this Reel breaks down the tamanu supply chain and explains why the brand decided to change their strategy and work directly with a farm. Meanwhile the partnership, with the WEA promises a tangible outcome: per a press release, it’s expected to result in more than a 50% increase in income for tamanu farmers in two Indonesian provinces. These aren’t vague promises, they are tangible commitments. 

Of course, KraveBeauty isn’t the only creator-led brand that’s looking to disrupt the industry by zeroing in on responsible sourcing. Launched just this month by Indonesian creator and public figure Maudy Ayunda, From This Island is a clean beauty brand that utilizes super-ingredients native to the archipelago. We expect more to emerge in 2024.

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

MAD FOR IT!

Purveyors of halal ‘acne safe makeup’, Indonesia-based Mad for Makeup is appealing to Gen Z with a potent mix of co-creation and community. Members of the Rebel Secret Society (the brand’s beauty community with 1K+ members) can make suggestions for new products and offer up recommendations. The brand also organizes face-to-face meetings to connect like minded users with similar interests. 

Our take

Community Co-creation Collaboration If we were playing the Gen Z trend bingo, this brand would be a full house! But why does this formula work so well? 

Skincare is highly personal and young consumers – particularly those concerned with acne or other issues – want to know brands truly understand their concerns. Giving young consumers the chance to have their voices heard creates relatability; connecting them with other like-minded beauty aficionados fosters a sense of belonging. Of course, this all plays into Gen Z’s demand for greater transparency and a growing distrust of influencers – read more about that here. 

Mad for Makeup isn’t the first beauty brand to have a passionate fanbase – hello Glossier, meet Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty and others. But putting (some of!) the brand in the hands of that community creates a stronger sense of ownership. To borrow from the brand’s website: Mad curates. Our community creates. That’s a lesson brands and marketers in any industry can apply! 

One final thing to note about Mad for Makeup: all the products are halal certified. The halal cosmetics market in APAC is projected to rise with a 9.08% CAGR between 2023 and 2032 and. Given the challenge halal certification presents for international brands, homegrown brands have a competitive advantage. Regardless of the industry you’re operating in, understanding local sensibilities is key. Combining that knowledge with a community-first approach?

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’