Some brands react to culture, others define them.

This guide is for people who want to do the latter. There are key pieces for brands to follow if they want to be culture defining brands. Most companies never try this. They instead want to participate in the culture, hoping from trend to trend trying to stay relevant.

If you want to get off the hamster wheel of fighting for relevancy, here's how you can create a culture defining brand.

1. Find your Unique Insight

In order to define a culture, you have to be 100% you. To take your unique perspective of the world and how things work and put your world view in a digestible format for others to experience.

So we start here with this simple question.

What's your unique insight?

Dietrich Mateschitz at Red Bull just wanted to create a world based on the extreme. But he also had that sort of personality.

Maybe your unique insight is the world needs more hugs, or the world would be more fun with vibrant colors.

Take time to think through your life experience and what makes you, you. That 100% uniqueness can't be taught in a business class, figured out from a questionnaire, or figured out through ChatGPT, it's something that you have to figure out for yourself.

Take out a pen and paper, and write down all the things that come into your mind.

Once you have a good idea of what you want to do, you're ready for step 2…

2. Design a Vision Bigger Than Your Product

How does your unique vision fit into the world (or against it).

Is this something that is easy for your audience to participate in. Charli XCX brat was easy for people to participate in because it was just a simple color. All you had to do to participate in Red Bull's was grab a Red Bull then do some adrenaline pumping s**t.

Red Bull wanted a world where people are pushing themselves to their limits.

What does it look like for "the world" to participate in your vision. Is it hard? Can they do it from home? Do they need money to do it? This vision is going to be the foundation for your story. The foundation for if this is going to work or not at scale.

Most people create visions that don't align with how people really are.

Human behavior is, well human.

Think through the emotions you want to spark, and really visualize what your vision would look like at scale.

Don't pull back your punches, don't be afraid to dream. Picture something BIG (because it just might happen).

3. Tell a Captivating Story

Here is where the rubber meets the road for you.

Can you tell a story that gets people truly sold.

A captivating story includes tension, build up, resolution, and of course a main character.

The main character is… your customer.

In this story you want them to be the hero, the person who conquers the world, who uses your product to get there.

If you can tell a good story you can change the world. Use what we got from the previous two steps for inspiration. The "Red Bull gives you wiiings" phrase fits in with people wanting to soar. And it gives YOU wings. Not someone else, YOUUU.

Tell your story, retell your story, then keep telling your story. Fine tune it until people can get it fast and want to be apart of your story.

4. Leverage Spectacle and Stunts

This is something that Red Bull has mastered.

What does this look like for you? (With your current budget.)

How can you pull this off in smaller versions to reinvest in yourself until you can pull off the bigger version.

If your vision is to create more empathy in the world, you can do a small event centered around people telling their story. You can do this in your backyard, at the park, whatever.

You don't have to start HUGE.

If you do have resources, then go big. Create things that would spread over social. Where people would post videos of it. Where people would share it on socials. Think BIG.

Red Bull had someone jump from space which netted them 37m views on YouTube.

What is your jumping from space moment?

5. Invest in Your Community

This is once your mission starts spreading. You have to invest in people who are spreading your vision of the world.

Red Bull sponsors extreme athletes and even has created a Formula 1 team.

If you're a fitness brand promoting healthy lifestyle, you want to get influencers in the gym to spread your mission. You want to invest in the zealots of your brand.

You want to give your customers (you community) a way to participate easily and to give them incentive to do so. To post UGC about you. To tell their friends about you. To turn your brand into part of their lifestyle.

Invest in the people and the people will invest in you.

6. Think Beyond Marketing: Build a Media Empire

Red Bull has a media house to fuel all of this.

Once you have the scale you need to invest in your content.

If you're a solo founder then that means investing part of your day into creating content about it.

Post about your mission, the world you want to create, document everything above.

If you do this right, then you're going to be doing just fine.

Key Takeaway

• Culture-defining brands aren't hoping on trends.

• They create the trends.

• Think about the world you want to create, and create it.

• Make it easy for other people to participate.

• And soon people will look at you as a source of culture.

Hope this helps :) Happy to answer any questions, just drop them on the video or if you want to hop on a call to chat marketing just set up a demo. Talk soon!