From Corporations to Memes: Crowdculture and the Humanization of Brands
Brands no longer hold all the storytelling power—crowdculture does. This post unpacks Douglas Holt’s ideas on cultural branding and shows how companies like Duolingo thrive by acting more human, blending into meme culture, and letting communities carry their message.
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Douglas Holt’s HBR article “Branding in the Age of Social Media” argues that brands failed at branded content because the real cultural power sits in crowd culture—the subcultures and art worlds that social media amplified into mainstream trends. From food movements to body positivity, it’s not brands but communities who set the cultural agenda.
Ironically, this has flipped branding’s narrative. For decades, personal brands tried to look like corporations—polished, professional, “business-like.” Now, corporations are scrambling to sound human. For decades, people tried to sound like corporations. Now corporations try to sound like people. Duolingo’s snarky TikTok owl, Wendy’s sarcastic tweets, and casual influencer-style ads all mimic the voice of the crowd. Brands no longer want to stand on a pedestal; they want to blend in.
The problem, as Holt points out, is that brands struggle to compete with crowd cultures. They’re too slow, bureaucratic, and risk-averse. But when brands do align with cultural currents, they find success. Chipotle’s anti-industrial food films or Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign worked because they tapped into existing crowdcultures, not because they invented them.
Today’s Gen Z audiences make this even clearer. Ads that look too polished scream “corporate.” The winning play is to slide seamlessly into feeds, indistinguishable from user-generated content. It’s word-of-mouth dressed in brand clothing.
Seen through a system-thinking lens, crowdculture is a web. One node—a TikTok, a meme, a niche influencer—ripples outward until fringe becomes mainstream. Brands that resist this system remain static; those that adapt become part of the flow.
The big question: where does this lead? If crowdculture is today’s engine, then tomorrow’s branding will be less about creating culture and more about negotiating with it—staying awake, responsive, and human in the network.
Topic: In the HBR article by Douglas Holt (“Branding in the Age of Social Media”), he discusses what he calls “crowdculture.” Is this really something new or just a new word for an existing concept?