Forget Attention, Only Engagement Matters
Matter outlines the effective routes to cultural relevance in today’s media-sphere.
The omnipresence of the attention economy has masked the fact that engagement has declined dramatically. For some brands, accustomed to using pay-for-play tactics to induce it, ROI is disappearing all together.
Luxury can’t afford disengagement. Financial pressure on the middle class globally, ongoing property and consumer sentiment crises in China, manufacturing scandals and the ceding of cultural space and share of wallet to the beauty and wellness industries have decimated growth rates from double digits to non-existent.
BCG and Highsnobiety’s recent report found that 70% of consumers believe luxury is not what it was 5 years ago. Overmarketed to and overwhelmed by the demands on their attention, this mindset is informing how consumers engage with luxury marketing. Now, 80% of core consumers appreciate when brands make subtle cultural references, just 40% notice advertising.
Metrics Don’t Matter – No One Is Engaging In Measurable Channels
In January 2024, Instagram's median engagement rate was 2.94%, but by January 2025, it had dropped to 0.61%. An estimated 32.8% of people worldwide use ad blockers. According to the Vogue Business index, relevant views on YouTube have dropped by 90% since last year’s luxury slowdown. Matter has unpacked this phenomenon in Social Media Is Too Expensive. The crux of the analysis: an increasing lack of engagement, and an almost total lack of valuable engagement.
Brands face a generational cliff: if Gen Z are engaging less, the direction of travel suggests that Gen Alpha may not engage at all. The number of 12- to 15-year-olds who take breaks from smartphones, computers and iPads rose by 18% to 40% since 2022, according to GWI. An Ofcom report in 2024 found that 47% of 16- to 24-year-olds deactivate social media notifications and use “do not disturb” mode. Behavioural therapists have shared a preference for Facetime over texts evident among under 10s. Why? “It’s convenient. You can tell stories better. But I also don’t want someone to share my messages later.”
But while younger customers may have activated DND, they are not going off-grid entirely – just off-piste. The most important conversations to sales conversion on social media are happening via DMs, group chats, and Snapchats – where being away from brands and advertising is the point. Even Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, has admitted that “People are sharing to feeds less, but to stories more and in messages even more still.” 63% of Gen Z prefer Snapchat because "it's more personal than other social media”, as per Ypulse.
There’s only one way for brands to get involved in these conversations: become worthy of conversation.
As Steve Dool, senior director of brand marketing at Depop, tells Matter: “When you're talking about cultural relevance, it involves an invitation. Someone is inviting your brand into their space, community, gathering, niche, whatever.”
Far too much of what brands put out lacks genuine cultural relevance, and the channels where brands are assigning budget do not generate significant impactful conversation.
The solution: abandon meaningless view-mining for meaningful aura-farming. Drive relevance by authentically celebrating the subcultures and niche communities where your audience already, and naturally, congregate. Signal understanding of these lifestyles, and brands will organically be invited into channels and gain meaning there.
Cultural Heat, Not Product Heat
Peer-to-peer resale platform Depop’s success in word-of-mouth and cultural relevance is impressive. This year it was a Wall Street Journal crossword clue, namechecked by Sydney Sweeney on Saturday Night Live, and has branded half-pipes and skateboards in the newly released Tony Hawk gaming title – iconic amongst first-gen gamers. Perhaps best of all, it is namedropped, repeatedly, in the chorus of Doechii, Skepta and Fred Again’s song of the summer, ‘Victory Lap’.
This level of brand awareness is invaluable, but it’s also, crucially, not linked to product — or commerce. This matters.
The speed of culture and the churn of the trend cycle has weakened the relevance of the latest “hot” product. As Thom Bettridge, editor-in-chief of i-D, told Matter, “Even though there are more trends than ever, they're less relevant than ever. We're in a trend cycle that's spinning out of control”.
“People are overwhelmed by consumption,” Juliana Salazar, a brand consultant who has worked with the likes of Aimé Leon Dore, Nike, and Tiffany & Co., tells Matter. Juule Kay, a journalist for publications including i-D, Dazed, The Face and Vogue Germany, notes a similar reality forming in Europe: “Success is becoming less about material wealth and more about mindset, flexibility, and work-life balance, with people valuing a simpler life and experiences like travel.”
Product isn't what it was. Consumers no longer interact with brands on a seasonal basis. There’s far fewer “it” items, and those that exist have far shorter relevance-spans — revolving around usability and a multitude of styling options — see Adidas Sambas. Buying trend-based items is a much more costly per-wear occasion as a result. Naffness hits fast.
Brands drop product ranges, mini-drops, collaborations, re-issues, and new SKUs alongside the four main collections each year consistently. As customers, we know this. We are aware of the commercial products sold ad infinitum. Today, what is crucial is that when a clothing-need does arise, your brand has the cultural relevance to be the first port of call. Rather than trend-chasing, pragmatism – aspirational but realistic use-cases, achievable wear occasions – increasingly defines consumer demand. It is largely absent from marketing narratives.
Matter unpacks this further in Does Product Design Still Matter?. Here, it suffices to say that for the majority of cohorts, consumption is not driving connection or engagement. Lifestyle is. Increasingly unwilling to consume to define their identity, customers now require brands to fit into their lives, at their invitation. Your brand is what they make of it.
“You give people a platform to do things or you focus on telling your story in the most creative way, and you let people decide what parts of that output are most relevant to them,” Depop’s Steve Dool tells Matter. “You have to be really committed — in a way that most brands aren't — to being and staying at the forefront of this way of thinking. Create space to allow other people to define and develop your cultural relevance. When you hold on to it too tightly or when you try to force it, it doesn't work,” he adds.
Depop put this theory into action during its recent New York City activations — hosting a thousands-strong, free block party earlier this summer, complete with live music, shopping, food vans, and a secondhand customisation station.
The key takeaway is: engagement isn’t pay-for-play anymore (if it ever was). It must be earned. This requires a significant overhaul of how metrics for success are measured and understood. Gone are the days of investing a set budget into paid spend, in order to achieve a fairly reliable conversion rate.
While this certainly presents internal challenges in realigning processes and budget lines, brands will be forced to adjust their expectations when it comes to how measurable channels outside of social media are. Success should be measured by long-term sentiment builds, not instant impressions.
How To Make An Image Travel In Culture: Subjectivity and Projection
In the Millennial heyday of the last decade, influencers would tout their deep connections to their communities and could effectively act as conduits to millions of potential customers. Now, social media works very differently. 87% of consumers believe it’s likely that influencers don’t even use the products they advertise.
Where once consumers engaged with influencer-content as genuine reflections of a brand’s world and an influencer’s creativity, today they read as inauthentic and overtly-commercial: committing the cardinal sin of unentertaining advertising. As Juliana Salazar points out, “With all these influencer brand trips — as soon as there’s deliverables attached, the project almost dies.”
The main benefit of hosting a number of influencers at the same event now is to adopt a Wicked-esque strategy of blanketing feeds to retrofit monocultural relevance. But that isn't an engagement play, merely an awareness strategy. Did the minimum of 224 (one per suite) influencers convince anyone to book a trip on the Ritz Carlton’s yacht Luminera that wouldn’t have otherwise? No. Are Ricky Martin and Naomi Campbell qualified to guide that purchase? No. Are we aware of the yacht? Yes.
In a fragmented media sphere this kind of coverage has value, but comes at a high cost. Scattergun talent strategies based on fame or following as a selection criteria lack critical mass in any one subculture or customer community to be effective. Yet they risk overwhelming audiences who follow a number of the high profile 224 souls on board. Onlookers may be aware, but it remains irrelevant to them.
Indeed, we are all, by now, accustomed to the aesthetic of the self-shot, highly-stylised, just-for-social fashion image. “Flat fashion”, a term coined by Ana Kinsella in an essay for Dirt.fyi, “turns every outfit into content that can be consumed.”
There are better ways.
Opportunities exist on the global culture-circuit, such as celebrity pens at sporting events like Wimbledon and the IPL, and music events such as Glastonbury Festival, where individuals of note are captured on camera, but not performing for it. These are far more fruitful as cultural relevance generators than yet another flat, unstoried, paid-for-post — as illustrated by how many times Harry Styles’ Palace jacket appeared organically in millions of feeds at Glastonbury.
To further illustrate, compare the hypothetical positive impact on sales a well-chosen, small, festival-appropriate Chanel accessory on Gracie Abrams at Glastonbury could create (post her Rodarte-draped performance), with the impact of the widely disseminated shots of her attending the brand’s Haute Couture presentation. An observation made all the more incisive when you consider the content that travelled furthest online post-show was an awkward video of Abrams, Lorde, Naomi Campbell and Charlotte Casiraghi failing to effectively engage with Laufey.
As Akanksha Kamath, a journalist and editor for publications including Vogue Business and BoF, tells Matter regarding these filmed yet naturally inhabited cultural spaces: “It’s so much visibility for a brand. The main viewing box at the Indian Premier League is similar to the NFL, where you see all celebrities, all the CEOs, everyone cares about it.”
Taste and judgement plays a crucial role in choosing the right moments. Case in point, Stone Island’s decision to partner with Oleksandr Usyk, when he became heavyweight champion for the third time in London, combined mass awareness, massive reach, with unique brand presence. Note, Paddy Power’s tweet, “Oleksandr Usyk getting the badge in on the ring walk. If Dubois wasn’t sh*tting it before, he will be now.”
The correct cultural context matters. Consider the reception of images of Sydney Sweeney and others at the Bezos wedding – heavily disseminated, certainly, but with very little goodwill attached. A controversial billionaire’s wedding has little relevance to consumers’ daily lives; a summer gathering around sports or entertainment is more obviously pertinent. Olivia Rodrigo, wearing vintage gingham to a day-time event in the heat, is a much more relevant inducement to engage and spend. It speaks to a genuine, aspirational-yet-achievable use-case and wear occasion. Its reception and reach was massively amplified by the ability of online commentators to project what they believe was whispered between the couple and what other interactions in-box took place, in the absence of audible narration.
Paparazzi shots certainly speak more readily to consumers’ pragmatism as a source of cultural power than human-flat-lays. While an obvious pay-for-play look will fail to cut through, think of the stickiness of images such as Paul Mescal’s in O’Neills short-shorts, Addison Rae’s Danielle Guizo mini skirt, or Jennifer Lawrence in her Sleeper set and Dior saddle bag. For some time now major stylists have been employed to craft naturalised looks, featuring brand’s products, amplified through low-key, non-produced paparazzi shots. The best strategies allow products to be incorporated in multi-brand looks to increase the credibility and authenticity of the image.
Responsiveness is necessary to achieve relevant and timely cultural seeding. Lacoste missed such an obvious opportunity to work with Doechii that, as Outlander Magazine pointed out, fans of the brand and musician alike were quick to ask why a collaboration wasn’t already in place. The lesson: act sufficiently fast, and brands can build association via highly disseminated images in the zeitgeist that are less tainted by commerciality. In this instance, Gucci scored the viral talk show appearance.
How To Tap Into Localised Relevance: Aura-Farming, Not View-Mining
As consumers, we are all well-versed in inauthenticity. Many of us have grown up consuming influencer content and are adroit at identifying paid-for-posts, even going so far as to call out creators who neglect a #spon tag. Five years ago, Hailey Bieber’s summer Rhode Beauty pop-up – a two week takeover at Beach Club Gran Folies in Mallorca, launched with an influencer trip – would likely have been well-received by fans. In 2025, the context has shifted.
As Casey Lewis wrote in her newsletter After School, “While the Rhode-branded beach club is technically open to the public, making the whole thing ostensibly inclusive… the backlash across the brand’s fans was swift. Hosting a lavish brand trip after raising prices, owing to tariffs and the “global supply chain,” is not a great look.”
The undeniably elegantly executed pop-up did not include merch or retail opportunities for visitors, with the event materials even going so far as to warn that “guests will not be able to take home or purchase exclusive items like our Rhode towels and beach inflatables.” With hotel partnerships already overdone, strategically this kind of activation risks a lack of cut through, as well as negative backlash, no matter the standard of aesthetic execution. Success should no longer be measured solely on the output on Instagram.
What is far more effective is localised relevance: subcultures, activities, and hyperlocal traditions or spaces which speak to a brand’s investment in genuinely connecting and creating joy for their community.
As Dazed reported in their Weekly Echo Chamber Newsletter, “We are witnessing a re-localisation: a renewed appreciation for personal heritage, local identity, and sense of place led by a new generation. Globalisation created a standardised experience in culture and consumption — a sense of uniformity, a blandness. Think of the Soho House effect: the experience is the same no matter where you are in the world, it has created a flattening of culture and nuance.”
Now, the anti-flattening. As Andrew Roth, founder of Gen Z research firm DCDX, told Vogue Business recently: “Gen Z and millennial consumers are gravitating towards more curated forms of gathering since the pandemic. People were seeking out spaces they hadn’t previously thought of for community and belonging.”
Brand involvement in these spaces must be executed with extreme taste. Taste is critical because brands seek shortcuts shortsightedly. Steve Dool tells Matter. “Burberry and that chip shop in London [Norman’s] – there was a backlash against it as an obvious marketing ploy.”
Far more effective to collaborate with a beloved institution like Tiny Desk, or partner with Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me on a niche cultural entity.
True relevance is found offline or in niche channels where success metrics may be far less measurable. The amplification of subcultures shouldn’t be occurring in the channels that are irrelevant to them. Instead, they should be pushed through channels pertinent to that subculture: local run clubs, niche interest apps (Strava, Letterboxd, Storygraph), activity-or subculture-specific podcasts and newsletters.
Alternatively, Nike’s recent collaboration with A’ja Wilson on the Cosmic Unity, a new sneaker silhouette, was accompanied by intentionally layered storytelling. It earned its place in conversations.
The first TV ad iteration shows Wilson, the two-time WNBA champion and three-time league MVP with the Las Vegas Aces, sitting on the steps of a front porch with a girl of about 10, who is teaching her a handclapping routine to the tune of “Miss Mary Mack”. It effectively incorporates a celebration of shared Black culture, as well as multiple, known, and conversation-inducing creatives like Malia Obama and Jenn Nkiru.
Layered storytelling is effective because of the influences and collaborators chosen to execute it: more specific content, more angles on it, more in-built relevance to consumer groups all result in more engaging advertising.
Other, hyperlocal activations speak to a genuine understanding of how subcultures and communities operate: whether it’s a Spaziergang along Berlin’s Kreuzberg canal or a weekend hike to a sauna up Mount Takao near Tokyo. This is about capturing the luxury of a third space, fine weather, and good friends. These are the visual codes of luxury today — much more so than the over-commercialised codes of recent years.
The key is to leave communities better than you found them: see Kith’s restoration of three courts at Yardley Tennis Club in New York which had fallen into disrepair, Aimé Leon Dore’s SONNY Youth Club and Masaryk Community Gym initiative, and Vans’ years-long support of skate parks globally. “It’s giving back to a city that they really obviously take a lot from also — and reference a lot,” says Juliana Salazar, when speaking on Aimé Leon Dore.
The other significant opportunity lies in building owned entertainment franchises from scratch, reflecting the shift from advertising to entertainment as a means of connection. This is going one step beyond Saint Laurent’s movie production wing – retailer Footlocker’s reality-television YouTube content is more tightly aligned to the current zeitgeist.
Top-of-Tentpole Consistency & Subculture Situationships
In order to invite subcultures into a brand universe, a consistent blueprint of brand expression needs to be established top-of-funnel before it can be reimagined and reinterpreted. The meme-ification of information has created an inherent instinct to edit, alter and reframe cultural collateral to fit our own individual contexts. Brands still need a major tent pole presence, maintaining a central narrative whilst creating space for new narrators to explore deviations and variations.
These top-of-funnel moments are also critical as an aligning force. There is no subculture big enough for brands to focus efforts in one area exclusively. Yes, music, film, sport and wellness are globally pervasive concerns, but the real advantage is in evidencing how brands fit into a multitude of lifestyles and cultural contexts, reinterpreted in each idiosyncratically.
This is critical. Without easing, brand identity will fossilise. The creators of brand-sanctioned imagery are no longer in control of brand identity. The churn of unofficial, Gen-AI, branded content is already out of control. In one popular TikTok video, ‘Brands in Highschool’, Louis Vuitton represents the popular kids. Hermès the bookclub kids. Celine the nerds, Miu Miu the cheerleaders, and Gucci the theatre kids. Those characterisations are based on the superficial slivers of brand legacy the creator is aware of. Clearly, they did not attend Miu Miu’s bookclub activations, for example.
Without living, breathing examples of your brand in action, in spaces relevant to your communities’ lived experience, uninformed amateurs can, and will, reduce it to its most asinine perception.
At least no one pays attention to social media anymore.
What Matters
Place Product in Real Context: Cultural impact is driven by narrative and entertainment, not aesthetics. As influencers and paid-for-posts lose credibility, the images and events which generate cultural conversations are those which present moments to discuss and disseminate in real life in real time. From Wimbledon’s boxes to the Apple routine dancer at a Charli XCX concert, consumer’s interest in discovering fashion is informed by their interest in the event they’re analysing or memeifying.
Meet Subcultures In Niche Channels: The brand activities generating conversation in the culturesphere now take place outside of social media, disseminated via niche channels and private social, and directed by distinct, uniquely relevant communities and experts. Amplification of subcultures must be done in channels relevant to them. Nor should subcultures merely be used only for reach and relevance. The key is to leave communities better than you found them. Engaging these communities at scale requires a reevaluation of how success is measured.
State The Brand To Deviate From It: In order to invite subcultures into a brand universe, a consistent blueprint of brand expression needs to be established top-of-funnel before it can be reimagined and reinterpreted. The meme-ification of information has created an inherent instinct to edit, alter and reframe cultural collateral to fit our own individual contexts. Brands still need a major tent pole presence in order that it can be deviated from, maintaining a central narrative whilst creating space for new narrators.