exploring the Powerful Partnerships Shaping Culture Vol. 21
IT’S HARRY WEEK! Mr Styles is back and he is in a skimpy tee, which means the brands are talking! What we didn’t expect was the NHS to have won the Harry Style’s posting lottery, but through keen audience insight, cultural saliency and a genuine CTA they served up a masterclass in reactive posting.
On the subject of attractive men, we dive into the Heated Rivalry boys and why their torch bearing is not only visually pleasing, but also a community and brand savvy move. Elsewhere rich people drama is pushing brands to reach into their archives and Guess Jeans is bringing back 2005. 2026 is off to a fiery start.
tiny tee!
GUESS JEANS really are that girl. They have served us a Y2K brand campaign that has made the girls gag. GUESS ditches polished perfection in favour of pure, unfiltered attitude and shoots the entire campaign on iPhone 5cs. Creative director Nicolai Marciano equipped his horde of it-girls - a mix of stars and unknowns alike - to capture exactly what it means to be a ‘Guess Girl’ in 2026.
Going full guerrilla mode, billboards showcase off-the-cuff selfies, ditching the studio gloss. Each model writes their own narratives, with captions like “idk i GUESS i like JEANS” and “am i a GUESS girl now?” It’s influencer culture turned inside out, and Guess is letting the girls run the show. I love it and now I want to be a GUESS girl.
Now there is nothing we like more than rich people drama. No one is getting hurt and realistically they will all profit from this in some capacity. It also provides rich source material for memes, X ( sorry ) comments and brands to jump on that burning Peltzbeckham ship with witty, smart and guerilla campaigns. No sooner had I read that last 8 slide story from Brooklyn had Kicker’s posted their TikTok. This type of reactive brand marketing is so effective because it taps into attention that already exists.
Cultural moments - especially low-stakes, high-entertainment drama - have people glued to their feeds, scrolling comments and sharing memes. When a brand joins in quickly and intelligently, it rides that wave rather than fighting for attention. Most importantly, reactive marketing rewards speed and clarity over big budgets. With the right instincts and empowered social teams, brands can turn fleeting moments into outsized relevance, reach, and cultural credibility.
Taps into creator-led celebrity, turning parasocial influence into appointment viewing and pulling Gen Z audiences where traditional star power no longer does. Alix Earle x Netflix is a smart acknowledgment that creator-led celebrity has overtaken traditional star power. Alix doesn’t bring an audience to Netflix - she brings trust, built through years of daily, unfiltered access and parasocial intimacy. By turning that relationship into long-form content, Netflix converts scroll-based loyalty into appointment viewing, meeting Gen Z where influence actually lives. It’s not about launching a new face; it’s about formalising an existing one and proving that today’s most valuable IP isn’t invented by studios, but grown in comment sections.
GRAZA - MAYO - MARKETING ACTIVATION POST
After the success of Marty Supreme’s marketing run, brands are now adopting even more unique ways to market their products, and Graza constantly delivers. Graza ‘leaked’ their launch by using stockists and their own socials in a ‘mock reality TV’ social post. This approach flipped the typical product rollout on its head: instead of broadcasting information, it invited speculation, gossip, and audience participation. The result wasn’t just awareness - it was conversation. Graza has also shown that a social strategy that listens and reacts to cultural moments can amplify reach (e.g., leaning into viral conversations, meme culture, or trending discussions).
HEATED RIVALRY - OFFICIAL TORCHBEARERS
The Mythos team can’t be the only ones thirsting over the Heated Rivalry boys. Streaming minutes for the Queer Hockey Show (lol) exploded from 30 million at launch to 327 million during its finale and so has its fanbase.
The fandom has been a masterclass in collective joy: memes, inside jokes, timeline takeovers, grown adults publicly swooning over fictional hockey players named Shane and Ilya. And as always happens when culture catches fire, brands notice. This can often leave a bad taste in the organic fan base's mouth, quick monetisation and awkward brand affiliation disrupts and ruins genuine fan engagement.
So when Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams were announced as two of the torch bearers for the upcoming Winter Olympics, it felt right, both for their characters and for their fan base. A moment, not a transaction, or a sale, it fed the flames of the ever growing community - even more relevant that it is the Winter Olympics! Inevitably, multiple brand deals will be hounding the inboxes of the two IT Boys and we will see them on the side of every bus and billboard but for now, they are quietly cultivating their own identities outside of their characters, an act that will stand them in good stead.
NHS - TAPPING INTO THE HARRY STYLES CRAZE
The post reached more than 10 million people - 97% of whom were non-followers, with 64% aged between 25 and 44 - and generated nearly 400,000 engagements. Commenting on the impact, Head of Social Media at NHS England, Lilith King Taylor, said:
“We saw loads of comments from women saying the post had reminded them to book their screening, and a 37% increase in traffic to the NHS cervical screening webpage (bearing in mind our Instagram post caption couldn’t even include a link)”
The moment highlights how powerful culturally relevant creativity can be when paired with clear social objectives, strong audience insight, and the agility to move within the cultural zeitgeist.
WHAT WE SAW
WOMEN IN SPORT hosted by NXT LVL.
Female athletes are shaping culture right now, and our recent NXT LEAGUE event with NXT LVL made that impossible to ignore, bringing 120+ senior marketers together to explore why women’s sport is one of the most exciting – and overlooked – opportunities in brand marketing. From the underdog rise of Charlton Athletic Women to the widening sponsorship gap between the top and bottom of the women’s game, one message came through clearly: if brands want real growth, they need to invest smarter and spread their support beyond the usual big-club suspects
OLIVIA’S OPINION
MORE MEMES. Clearly this is a big theme this week. I love memes, I love when Drake did Hotline Bling and it was everywhere. It felt like a simpler time, and a lot less like Elon Musk is going to burn the world down. It is also a very effective brand strategy that covers every aspect of culture, much like a cave drawing, anyone can understand a meme. They also, as the NHS showed, hold significant power to instill social change and drive action! It also doesn’t matter if the memes are bad or messy, that is sort of the point of memes? One follow on Instagram that sates this appetite for images with words over the top is Raven Smith, or if we wanted the US version, Evan Ross Katz.
the good old days!
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