Culture Doesn’t Sell. It Turns People Into Believers.
Popular culture in Asia has stopped being a backdrop for brands. It has become the architecture of identity. Brands that understand this are not just being seen, they are being believed.
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”. Oscar Wilde had no idea how right he would turn out to be. Popular culture across Asia has not just entertained, it has rewired how we think, behave, and show up in everyday life. Cinema, music and gaming are no longer reflections of society. They are active agents shaping it.
In The Cultural Industries, David Hesmondhalgh argues that media and culture are “the primary means by which modern societies make sense of themselves.” The gap between culture and behavioral adoption used to be measured in years. Now it is measured in weeks.
In conventional framing, culture shaped demand, and brands ride on demands. Today, when a cultural moment lands, it does not change what people want. It changes who they understand themselves to be. For brands, it’s not about picking the right trend. It’s about understanding this distinction and building participation.
The new Indian spy movie, ‘Dhurandhar’ is generating praise and unease. This polarizing film repackaged national identity and masculine ambition into entertainment. Delhi Police used its dialogue in a road safety campaign and brands converted scenes into memes within hours. Its box office numbers are the least interesting metric. The film sparked intense debate; some viewers attacked negative reviews, having internalized the film’s worldview. Dhurandhar didn’t just entertain; it forged a new national narrative.
For decades, Chinese culture succeeded internationally only through extensive explanation, requiring context, decoded symbols, and narrated mythologies for outsiders. Today, Ne Zha 2 and Black Myth: Wukong demand no such concessions. They operate on universal algorithms, fandom mechanics, and social sharing rhythms, engaging global audiences not through exoticism, but through sheer cultural resonance. These aren’t just stories; they’re universal cultural currency.
Consider Labubu. The Pop Mart figure, an odd creature inspired by Scandinavian folklore, reimagined by a Hong Kong artist and manufactured in China. Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and BLACKPINK’s Lisa were photographed with them. Labubu succeeded not because anyone understood its origin story, but because it could be worn, displayed, photographed, and traded. Labubu isn’t just a toy; it’s a badge of belonging.
Mariya Takeuchi’s ‘Plastic Love’ was recorded in 1984. Last year, it accumulated over 61 million views on YouTube. What happened? The YouTube algorithm began surfacing City Pop tracks to global Gen Z audiences who had been listening to lo-fi study beats and found something unexpected: a kind of warmth and optimism that felt like the opposite of their own present. The irony: a genre born from Japan’s 1980s economic boom became sonic escape for a generation facing its opposite. The City Pop revival reinforces that nostalgia has become the most globally scalable emotional refuge.
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Much has been written about Hallyuwood’s global dominance. The first wave was cultural disruption: BTS, BLACKPINK, Squid Game, Parasite. The second wave is infrastructure, running quietly through the operating models of emerging Asian music industry. Thai-Pop, Indonesia’s rising artists, J-Pop are building from Korean entertainment playbooks. The next cultural moment in Southeast Asia is being forged in languages and traditions off regional trend-watch lists. This isn’t influence; it’s a new cultural blueprint.
For marketers in Asia, this requires significant recalibration.
Track culture as behaviour, not just content.
Stop asking what is trending. Ask what people are doing differently because of it, and who they are becoming. The Thai Boys’ Love series drama is built around love stories between men, accompanied by T-Pop soundtracks has cultivated devoted audiences across Asia. Spotify created dedicated BL playlists for global fans. The metric is behavioural change, not impressions.
Design for participation, not messaging.
Culture is co-created. Brands that earn a role in it become a part of the cultural text. The BTS x McDonald’s meal worked not because McDonald’s stood next to BTS, but because it became a prop inside the BTS narrative. This wasn’t just a meal; it was a shared fan experience.
Go hyper-local, scale globally.
The Glory on Netflix proves that local stories are globally powerful ones. In South Korea, victims of school violence who stayed silent for years filed lawsuits after watching it. In Thailand, a prominent actor publicly apologized for past bullying behaviour. Bloomberg reported that the series spurred a bullying crackdown in South Korea. A drama series didn’t just tell a story; it ignited a social reckoning.
Art imitating life. Life imitating art. In Asia, the distance between the two has collapsed to almost nothing. That is not a challenge for brands. It is the most interesting opportunity on the table.
(Views and opinions expressed here are solely personal and do not reflect the views of my employer.)
