🎙️What Makes a Brand Culturally Relevant

Hey everyone - Episode 21 of The Speakeasy just landed.

In this episode, we sit with Partnerships and Sponsorships Strategy Lead, Perla Bloom, to discuss what it really takes for a brand to earn a genuine place in culture, why leaning into core fandoms as a trusted channel instead of avoiding them is key, and why platform choice should follow a brand's natural storytelling style rather than chasing wherever the audience currently is.

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In Perla’s opinion, the test when it comes to hype isn't whether a brand moment generates noise, but whether it's a message only that brand could plausibly own. As she puts it: "How can you translate your message into that fandom in a truly ownable way that can't be mistaken for any other brand in that category?" There’s a distinction that Perla highlights. "There's creating hype, and there's creating conversation," she says, "but ultimately people are not... taking a claim on that mental availability for your brand."

"Be additive to the fans’ experience," she says, "and definitely understand fandom in different channels and in different formats." Brands that invest in areas that seem niche, like an anime, an underrated sport, etc., can build brand equity with a dedicated and relevant audience. She applies the same logic to Ffern's long-running relationship with folk music culture: "they have done so much for folk music and folk music culture" not as a sponsorship, but as a multi-year foundation supporting undiscovered musicians, which only works, she says, because "it's ingrained in their brand." That’s a level of authenticity that takes time, and real strategy, to garner.

One of Perla's most interesting points is that relevance isn't just a one-and-done. It's something that has to be re-earned platform by platform, based on what a brand's content actually is and what audiences already expect from it. It’s as much a case of knowing where to go as knowing where not to go. As she says, "Maybe that's actually a channel you don't focus on. Don't just do it because everyone's on Substack." The underlying principle is that presence has to be earned by substance: "It's not just about reach. It's also about how you can translate your brand in a way that's going to actually engage with people."

Asked to look five years out, Perla's answer wasn't about a platform or format, but about how marketers think about their own careers. The old model rewarded specialists who perfected a single lane; she thinks that model is already shifting. "I would get rid of pigeonholing," she says. "You're not just one thing." That extends to the strategy/creative divide too. She argues the split "needs to be blurred a little bit," since the best strategists should be able to envision the creative their strategy leads to, not hand it off as someone else's problem. Her advice, simply put: "don't stay in your lane".

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