Back to the F**kture S3 Ep3: S3 Ep3: Leila Fataar on Building Culture-Led Brands
Nov 4, 2025
Leila Fataar, founder of Platform13 and author of Culture-Led Brands, helps brands become culturally relevant by centering real people. She discusses people-centered cultural positioning, why culture matters more than purpose, avoiding appropriation, managing multicultural audiences, and how heritage brands can adapt while building inclusive, long-term cultural strategies.
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Culture-Led Brands Come From Context
- Culture-led brands succeed by making sense in people's lived context rather than chasing campaigns.
- Leila contrasts 20th-century aspirational branding with today's need to read politics, economics and everyday behaviour to stay relevant.
Build Brands Around Audience Culture Not Virality
- Do build brands around the audience's life and cultural context, not just marketing channels or viral moments.
- Leila warns that viral trends are outputs, whereas culture-led strategy is an input that creates lasting consumption and advocacy.
Decisions Come From A Cultural Stack
- People interpret brands through an inheritance of background plus layered interests, which Leila calls the cultural stack.
- She explains decisions come from inherited culture (birth, religion) plus selected interests like music or sustainability.
