How today's biggest brands are listening their way into culture

Every conference season, marketers gather to swap the same handful of ideas about staying relevant: move faster, be authentic, live in culture. But sit through enough sessions from the brands actually pulling it off, and a more specific pattern starts to emerge.

The brands staying relevant usually aren't inventing trends out of thin air. They're watching for signals that are already there — a fan theory, an unplanned viral moment, a jersey that sells out unexpectedly — and only stepping in once they've earned the right to.

Across sessions with marketing leaders from Starbucks, Crocs, Mastercard, Carter's, General Mills, Goodwipes and Mike's Hot Honey from Brandweek Atlanta 2026, the same idea kept resurfacing in different forms. Here's what stood out most.

1. Listen, listen, listen

The clearest throughline of the week was that culture is something brands notice. They don’t manufacture it themselves.

Mindy Murray, Director of Social and Content at General Mills, described how Cinnamon Toast Crunch's 15-year-old "cereal eats cereal" ad campaign had slowly become cult lore online, with fans drawing comparisons to true-crime obsession, long before the brand decided to lean back into it. The team didn't invent that reading of the brand. They knew it resonated with audiences because Reddit told them.

"We talk about it in the hallways all day, but we're not sure [that people know and get what the brand stands for]. And sure enough, on Reddit, people know, and they are obsessed with it."

It’s this understanding of the audience that gave Cinnamon Toast Crunch the permission to lean into cannibalism and keep going with it.

The same logic applied to Lucky Charms, where teen creators had already turned the cereal into one of TikTok's most popular "story time" backdrops — entirely without the brand's help.

"The girls already did that, and so we had a ton of permission to be there."

Carter's Global VP of Brand Marketing, Aubrie Corey, told a similar story through sales data instead of social listening. When Mexico became one of Carter's best-selling World Cup jerseys, her team treated it as a signal worth watching — a sign that its multicultural consumer base might warrant more direct investment going forward.

Starbucks EVP and Global Chief Brand Officer Tressie Lieberman put a name to this discipline: she's built her team to actively hunt for it, rather than wait for it to land in their lap.

“I think [we’re] creating a culture where everyone has ideas. So really encouraging the cross-functional teams to weigh in. You would be amazed how many culture ideas I just got a few weeks ago from finance. We're really transforming the organization to think about being these ‘culture hunters…’ We have great tools, but we don't catch it all. There's a lot of people talking about Starbucks, so mining for ideas and sharing those and actioning them.”

And she has built standing channels for it. Every other week, she gets on calls with a rotating group of about 40 frontline baristas, nicknamed the "Golden Apron" partners, specifically to stress-test menu ideas before they ship.

"They're telling us what's going to work, what's not... it's constant conversation and collaboration across teams."

The same instinct shaped the Starbucks app: the team added a dedicated "trending" section after noticing how much unofficial menu customization customers were already inventing and sharing on TikTok. And when a limited-edition barista collectible cup unexpectedly went viral last year, Starbucks built a recurring drop calendar around it, most recently with a Snoopy release.

"People say, ‘Oh, well, that's just scarcity.’ It's not. It's people camping out and creating memories around these collectibles."

2. Move at the speed the signal deserves

Once a brand spots something real, the next differentiator is how fast it's willing to act on it.

Crocs' EVP and Chief Brand Officer, Terence Reilly, framed this as a deliberate operating principle. His advice for anyone trying to build a social-first culture is to strip out the layers of approval that usually stand between an idea and its execution.

“If there's too many people, you're losing. Too many opinions slow things down, and this has to move with speed.”

That philosophy is what turned into 744 consecutive hours of live streaming 24/7 through last October — a stunt that tripled Crocs' TikTok following and generated 550 million impressions. It wasn't a campaign so much as a bet that the audience was already there and waiting.

Mike's Hot Honey's Senior Integrated Marketing Manager, Catherine Sullivan Krueger, described the other half of that same equation: Speed only works if a brand is also willing to lose. She calls it the "freedom to flop" — treating a failed idea as data, not a setback, so the brand never gets stuck imitating its competitors or repeating its own past playbook out of fear.

“I think it gives us the freedom to flop, which is sometimes just as important as learning from what does work.”

Mastercard's Cheryl Guerin, EVP of Global Brand Strategy and Innovation, showed what acting on a signal can look like at full scale. Her team noticed Lady Gaga's cultural momentum ahead of the Grammys and, rather than buying a traditional ad slot, secured the exclusive premiere placement for her "Abracadabra" music video. They then invited fans to submit their own versions of the video on TikTok, remade it using fan submissions, and had Gaga surprise the creators involved — landing the number one branded hashtag of the year.

"Living in culture, not just your category, is really important."

Her broader point: noticing the signal early is only half the job. The insight has to be paired with the willingness to commit real budget and turn the audience into participants, not just viewers.

3. Culture arrives — you don't have to chase it

Not every brand has to go looking. Sometimes the strongest proof that a brand belongs in a conversation is that the conversation finds it first.

Catherine Sullivan Krueger, Senior Integrated Marketing Manager at Mike's Hot Honey, described watching an unpaid, unplanned product placement show up in a hit TV series with no negotiation and no media buy. There was just a bottle sitting on a table because the brand had already worked its way into people's kitchens.

"[Before joining the brand] I was like, wow, this brand has budget to secure a prime spot in a hit TV show. And after joining the brand, I actually found out that was completely organic because the product just worked its way into that TV spot."

4. Even taboo categories can earn a way in

Listening can also surface permission to talk about something brands have previously avoided entirely.

Goodwipes co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Sam Nebel built the brand's entire voice around this. He described how customers were already having unfiltered conversations about bathroom habits in private — texting friends, comparing notes — long before the brand decided it could join in publicly.

"We've found these little code words where we can speak about things and have a conversation that we've already had without trying to create a new one."

The lesson is that the audience had already normalized the conversation. Goodwipes isn’t just being edgy for the sake of it. The brand just had to notice and meet them there.

The biggest takeaway

None of these brands got ahead by predicting culture. They got ahead by paying close enough attention to notice it first — in a comment section, a sales report, a fan's unprompted TikTok — and having the infrastructure in place to act before the moment passed.

That's the harder version of "authenticity": it's a discipline. It requires actually hearing your customers before you decide what to say back to them.