Cooperating with Culture vs. Co-opting It

Avery defines 'cooperating with culture' and critiques brands co-opting trends without performance.

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Aves and Daniel Sendecki get into a problem a lot of brands still haven’t solved: how do you make ads feel culturally relevant without making them cringe, tone deaf, or useless in performance channels? This episode breaks down why “brand voice” alone no longer carries paid social, how algorithmic feeds reward relevance over cleverness, and why the best creative now has to do two jobs at once: feel native and resolve intent.

For DTC founders, growth marketers, and creative strategists trying to make Meta and TikTok ads feel native without losing conversion intent.

In this episode, we cover:

Why brand voice was built for an older distribution model, and why that model doesn’t dominate anymore
How to “cooperate with culture” instead of awkwardly borrowing it
Why great paid social creative now needs both cultural cues and problem-solution clarity
How generational context shapes what kind of humor, references, and framing actually land
What Super Bowl ads, street interviews, and creator-style content reveal about where attention is moving

Who this is for:

DTC operators, paid social teams, creative strategists, and founders who want better-performing ads without sounding like every other brand online.

What to steal:

Build ads that use native visual language from the feed, not polished brand-world aesthetics
Use cultural references as permission to speak, not as the entire message
Match creative tone to the audience’s deeper context, not just surface-level trends

Timestamps:

00:00 Cultural elements in ads that actually work

02:00 Cooperating with culture vs co-opting culture

04:01 Why brand voice works differently now

06:04 Generational marketing and millennial humor

08:58 Relevance, intent, and permission to speak

11:07 Why ads need to feel native and authentic

13:14 Ad examples that build cultural relevance

17:18 Creative systems and authentic brand messaging

19:02 McDonald’s, Burger King, and authenticity in ads

23:03 Why Super Bowl ads missed the mark

27:08 Where the best ads are happening now