Brands Can't Manufacture Cultural Relevance. They Have to Earn It.
By Malin Gaertig · October 9, 2026
Attention is only the first step. Across All That Matters in Singapore, conversations on F1, campaign translation and collaboration explored how brands earn relevance by understanding what people care about and finding a meaningful way to contribute.
- —Attention is only the first step; brands earn belonging through genuine contribution, not sponsorship alone.
- —Cultural relevance must be earned, with a distinction between meaningful cultural shifts and passing fads.
- —Translating a campaign into every language does not guarantee cultural relevance across markets.
- —Collaboration and an ecosystem approach can turn small changes into significant impact at scale.
- —The more important question is why people should care — rooted in their context, values and identity.
I spent three days at All That Matters in Singapore, diving headfirst into the many ways culture is shaped, expressed and influenced.
Across the sessions, speakers explored attention, trust, relevance and influence — and the importance of knowing when to let go of control.
How do brands move from attention to belonging?
David Webb, Alex Rodrigues and Lawrence Barretto spoke about cutting through to belonging. Their central point was that attention is only the first step. For brands to earn a meaningful place in F1 and its culture, they need to go beyond sponsorship and find ways to genuinely contribute.
The conversations that followed kept coming back to the same challenge: brands can't manufacture cultural relevance. They have to earn it. Andrea Ng shared a useful framework for distinguishing cultural shifts worth acting on from those more likely to be a passing fad.
The brands that make the most of these opportunities aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest logos. They're the ones that understand what people care about and find an authentic way to contribute. LEGO's race car activation on the circuit was highlighted as a particularly creative example.
Why is campaign translation different from cultural translation?
Canva's Laura Kantor and Unilever's Andrea Cappi compared approaches to campaign translation and cultural translation. A global campaign can be translated into every language and still miss the point. Culture is shaped by how people live, what they value and how they relate to one another. Those things don't always travel neatly across markets.
That makes cultural intelligence a commercial consideration, even if it's sometimes harder to measure.
What can collaboration achieve at scale?
Kok Hwee Ng from Zespri and Kevin Zhang from Pop Mart shared how collaboration has delivered significant wins for their businesses. Kok's ecosystem approach was particularly inspiring, demonstrating how a seemingly small change can have a profound impact on the environment when implemented at scale.
Why should people care about your brand in the first place?
The sessions on marketing, music, sport and gaming showed how culture finds expression through different vehicles. At its core, though, relevance comes from understanding the world around your brand and finding a meaningful place within it.
In a landscape where everyone is competing for attention, perhaps the more important question isn't how to get people to notice you, but why they should care in the first place.
Answering that means understanding the context in which people live, what they value and how they see themselves in the world.