The New Rules of Cultural Relevance
Let's do a deep dive on why Nike is loosing cultural relevance vs. why Adidas is on the rise and what this reveals about the new rules of culture and brand.
My husband exclusively wears Adidas sneakers. And over time - almost all of our running shoes, casual shoes and lots of kids’ clothes are all Adidas. Honestly? I never really questioned why until recently. What I realized is that I was not actually buying the shoes - I was buying alignment and vibe. And I’m not the only one, so let’s get into it.
Monoculture is dead. Brands Need Subcultures!
Nike’s recent struggles feel less like a campaign problem and more like a broader cultural relevance problem. The challenge legacy brands increasingly face is this: how do you maintain mass scale while still feeling culturally specific?
The answer? Brands need Subcultures. The same way I’ve written at length about the need for stacked niche communities. Brands need to have cultural fluency and do so with speed.
Many months ago, I wrote about Nike’s misguided “Why do it” campaign awhile ago and since that campaign dropped in Sept 2025 - and like I said then - there is nothing inherently wrong with the messaging but in their execution. It was monolithic. It was a very “mad men” approach to branding: craft a big message, make a beautiful spot, broadcast it to the masses.
"Mass marketing and Michael Jordan and that being the thing that carries the brand and creates a halo for everything…that’s over,” (Nate Jaffee from Praytell -Marketing Dive) “It is a decentralization, a fragmentation of what we pay attention to and what people are excited about and interested in.”
Nike’s biggest problem is that culture doesn’t move top-down anymore. A “cool” or aligned brand is one that shows up in the ecosystems of its consumers, its community and not one that just broadcasts to it. And the only way to do this is to truly immerse.
Nike continues to grasp to their old playbook of “broad elite athletic storytelling” is struggling in their attempted marketing comeback. Younger consumers (and I’d argue almost ALL consumers) discover brands through social proof, adjacent communities, creators, aesthetics and subculture adoption. Relevance spreads horizontally now, not through mass broadcast. Nike is seeing this first hand - as it stocks continue to tumble and it’s cultural relevancy continues to slide internationally. Oh and it doesn’t help that Air Force ones jokingly referred to as “old people shoes”. Which to me, is ironic when New Balance someone has managed to shift perceptions of the original orthotic shoes (shoutout to 530s!) to be the iconic GenZ shoe.
Adidas, on the other hand, has continuously leaned into culture from the ground up. Instead of dictating taste, it’s embedding itself within aesthetics, sports (of course!) and subcommunities that have momentum and strategic partnerships (Lionel Messi, Jude Bellingham, Wales Bonner, Bad Bunny, Edison Chen, Fear of God etc etc). And the approach is working - GenZ is wearing more Adidas than ever - with the rise of the Taekwondo, Spezial, Tokyo, and even the Handball Spezial Loafer isn’t just about footwear or clothing - it’s about how brands become signals within identity systems. And to be clear - this goes beyond logos and designs. Adidas has always had sports lines with their trefoil vs. their original aka casual wear lines, as does Nike with their respective sports lines… But, Adidas has managed to insert themselves as a brand participating in culture alongside its consumers.
That cultural understanding understanding extends also to international markets. Take for instance the viral Adidas’ Chinese New Year Jacket vs. Nike’s consistent decine in the Chinese market . The lesson: local and dee[ consumer understanding can scale. And let’s be very clear here - subcommunities isn’t a synonum for small. Especially in a high fragmented and global, social economy.
Now let’s switch gears and talk about Partnerships. For instance how Nike shows up to their consumers via their recent collaborations. Their most notable being skims x nike. Commercially successful? Yes, Nike says so. And LaLisa staring in their campaign? Personally, loved it! But from a brand standpoint it did not earn any cultural relevancy - it doesn’t tell consumers anything new about who Nike can help them be. Alignment with skims gave nike no new cred.
Partnerships and collaborations work best when the venn diagram of audience, relevance and taste making (trust) overlap at JUST the right amount. Gap is writing that playbook in real time in a way that is relevant to the younger generations. Balancing uplifting various subculture tastemakers ex. Cult Gaia, Sandy Liang, Dapper Dan, DÔEN, BEIS to name a few - understanding that it is about alignment to subcommunities - showing what Gap believes to be ‘cool’ and who gap can be for - and building trust from those communities into a broader pie. Not just names you already see at the mall.
Nike’s recent marketing struggles feel less like a campaign problem and more like a broader cultural relevance problem. The challenge legacy brands increasingly face is this: how do you maintain mass scale while still feeling culturally specific? And sure - Lebron and Caitlin Clark will give you visibility - but trust, cultural relevancy is how you convert.
Community Led - “Backyard Legends”
What Adidas seems to understand particularly well right now is that cultural relevance is no longer built solely through celebrity endorsement (though having cultural anchors still matters). It’s built through sustained investment in communities that already have their own gravity.
This week Adidas dropped a 5 min- mini movie in celebration of the World Cup. While many legacy marketers still over-optimize around ideas like “Gen Z has no attention span,” Adidas went in the opposite direction. Creating an extended, cinematic piece that feels more like a cultural film than a traditional ad with a grassroots inspired themes. Featuring a mix of athletes and personalities spanning sport, fashion, music, and internet culture - Timothee Chalamet Lionel Messi, Bad Bunny, Jude Bellingham, Lamine Yamal, and Trinity Rodman recognizing that culture lives in both in its respective subculture lanes and interconnects. And yes- these are all big names, but how they leveraged them felt accessible and not on a pedestal. All said, do I think they could do more and build on this “backyard legends” mission? Of course, investing beyond the hero a/v through influencers and taking the manifesto into real physical spaces (communities like this in NYC), and with creators would’ve been a natural build too and cool to see.
Nonetheless, the video accomplished what it needed to - blending together sport, fashion, music, internet culture, and street-level energy in a way that feels intentionally multi-threaded. Is Nike cooked?
That’s also why the internet reaction to the spot has been so telling. A lot of the conversation wasn’t even about the product, it was about how much more culturally aware and emotionally resonant Adidas feels. In many ways, Adidas isn’t just marketing to culture right now - it feels like it’s actively participating within it. It’s clear this is why Adidas continues to close in on Nike’s once dominant brand perception.
So what can we learn? Well - if you remember one takeaway it’s this:
Cultural relevance is not about broadcast or singular campaigns. It’s about sustained participation in ecosystems, aesthetics, creators, and subcommunities that shape how people form identity and to reinterpret, remix, and carry the brand forward themselves.
Consumers today aren’t just buying products - they’re buying alignment, signaling belonging, and participating in shared cultural language. Adidas currently understands that better than most. It doesn’t feel like a brand trying to convince people it’s cool; it feels like a brand already existing inside the communities where coolness is being defined.
Which, ironically, is probably why it feels cool in the first place (but it’s not just me who thinks so - even NYC can tell Adidas is goated).
HEADLINES! HEADLINES!
GenZ no longer wants to be influencers. Even in a few short years there have been some shifts in young adult behavior, specifically in a drop in aspiration for being influencer/ content creator - preferring more traditional fields (from 41% to 5%) - in this latest Yahoo/YouGov poll (for adults under 30). The #1 public figure they’d want to emulate was Zendaya at 13%, second Lebron James 7%.
Social media IS media. Once more, another study has proven that teens 13 to 17 use TikTok primarily for entertainment (80%) and product reviews with 9 in 10 or more say entertainment is the reason they use IG, TikTok or Snapchat. The only platform being primarily used for daily communication or true ‘social communication’ was Snapchat (41% use daily) and for friendships.
The conversion pipeline is nonlinear, and not a funnel. 52.3% of GenZ shoppers are discovering products online / TikTok and then buying in-store. GenZ is also using AI for recommendations and then forums and databases before purchasing. Yes - this is VERY much a reminder for brand folks to pursue a reddit strategy to ensure you show up in AI search.
Are we speaking with our mouths less?! This recent study found that our average ‘daily spoken word’ has dropped year over year. That’s CRAZY! With the study noting that we are speaking 28% less than a year ago - especially steep for younger folks too. Wild.
Been thinking about the boom in Mahjong clubs and the “very Chinese time in your life” trends. This article on Chinamaxxing is a nuanced perspective.
The new normal is to build a portfolio and a reputation. According to WSJ we are in the era of the “mega layoff”. Yikes. And what we can learn from Coinbase’s latest 14% cut of their company - a flattened structure. A great recap here as well.
GenZ has no ladder to climb. Where are the internships and entry levels jobs? Internships are harder than ever to find and entry level graduates are forced to take whatever they can get - even outside their fields.
Is Harry Styles in a flop era? I’ve actually been spending a lot of time thinking about it, and should probably go read a book instead….
Now let me leave you with this (I just bought BTS tickets and enrolled my kids in summer camps 😭 )
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