As CMOs get less for every media dollar they spend and as brand investment in creators grows, new research reveals what the world's most valuable brands are doing differently

Every brand wants cultural relevance. Very few can prove the commercial impact. Now the data exists.

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CultureLab, the cultural intelligence company that sits within communications and entertainment group Common Interest, today publishes new research in partnership with renowned strategist, analyst, and author of The Mediator, Doug Shapiro, establishing an empirical link between a brand's cultural relevance and its financial value.

The research found that culturally relevant brands are worth nearly 3 x more than those that aren’t.

The findings arrive at a critical moment for marketing leaders. The most widely cited industry stat on cultural relevance has focused on the correlation with growth. But CEOs and shareholders are also looking for value. Relative company valuation is the ultimate expression of commercial performance; it reflects the market’s collective expectations about future profit growth and risk.

With media price inflation, CMOs are getting less for every dollar spent (Source: Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey). By linking cultural relevance directly to valuation, this research provides CMOs with more data to support the changing shape of their media plans.

The research analysed public market valuation and cultural performance data across 75 brands in eight categories, ultimately focusing on 16 brands in three categories: apparel and footwear, quick service restaurants (QSR) and beverages. These categories offered the largest pool of U.S.-listed companies that are closely associated with a single consumer brand or a small number of brands.

Cultural performance was measured using CultureLab's proprietary Track platform, which gives a rigorous, data-driven understanding of what drives cultural relevance, tracking a brand's performance in popular culture through earned impact only, with no paid media included. Valuation was measured using total enterprise value (TEV) to EBITDA, a metric chosen because it normalises for differences in capital structure and tax profile. Analysis was conducted within individual verticals, since different categories are valued differently. The research found a consistent positive correlation between cultural relevance and valuation across all three verticals studied. Brands with high cultural relevance are valued at 2.8x more than those with low cultural relevance.

The research also identifies a clear progression in how the highest-performing brands engage with culture, moving from transactional advertising toward entertainment, community participation, and IP creation.

Jed Hallam, Founder of CultureLab, said: "Forget media spend, the brands worth nearly three times more than their competitors have one thing in common. Cultural Equity. The industry has spent years debating cultural relevance as a concept. What it has lacked is proof. This research changes that conversation. Culture is a demonstrable driver of value, and we now have the data to show exactly how and why."

Doug Shapiro added: "Marketers are torn. On the one hand, intuitively they know that the fragmentation of media is increasing the urgency to own attention, not just rent it. On the other, there is a very strong gravitational pull of marketing budgets down funnel, to the most measurable - but most transient and transactional - media. This study is intended to equip marketers with the evidence they need to make the internal case for investing in cultural relevance."

Brands putting this into practice

Monster has built a decade-long partnership with UFC, alongside collaborations with Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Ken Block, and was an early funder of eSports teams, crews and streamers. Starbucks combines long-standing entertainment partnerships with a physical store footprint used for hyper-local events, and deep local product and cultural integration in international markets. Levi's has collaborated with Beyoncé, A$AP Rocky and Zendaya, alongside longstanding partnerships with cultural properties like Coachella and its global EMERGENT programme with COLORSxSTUDIOS.

What drives cultural relevance

CultureLab's research measures cultural relevance through five factors:

Cultural Breadth: where a brand is mentioned and the volume of attention those mentions attract

Cultural Depth: the volume of attention a brand receives within a specific area of culture

Cultural Heat: a brand's presence on the most culturally influential platforms

Share of Voice: how a brand's cultural attention compares to competitors

Cultural Sentiment: the sentiment around a brand in a given period

Three steps brands can take today

The research identifies three practical steps for brands looking to build cultural relevance:

Mirror: Integrating culture's language, iconography and key references into marketing, communications and partnerships. To do this well, brands must understand the icons, rituals and emerging trends within the culture.

Collaborate: Working with icons and real influencers from the relevant area of culture to co-create content, moments and products that are genuinely additive. This requires understanding of the values, needs and motivations of the community in question. The distinction is between hiring creators for reach and working with creators who are genuinely embedded in the culture a brand wants to participate in.

Own: Invest in building owned properties, IP, or infrastructure for relevant areas of culture. This is where brands move from participating in culture to shaping it.

The best-performing brands treat these not as sequential stages but as three levers to pull together across the short, medium and long term.

The research forms the foundation of CultureLab's Cultural Brand Audit, a practical tool for senior marketing leaders to diagnose their brand's current cultural position, identify opportunities in culture with greater granularity, and make the strategic shifts required to compete in a market where participation in culture is increasingly a primary source of business growth.

For receive more information on the Business Case for Cultural Relevance please register your interest HERE.

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Culturally relevant brands are worth nearly 3 x more than those that aren’t.