Marketing in Dialogue with Subculture

Anyone like me who isn’t familiar with the DJ or hip-hop scene probably doesn’t know what a backspin is: the quick rewinding of a passage on a vinyl record. The term itself is easy enough to look up. But what it actually means within the scene and how that culture works can’t really be grasped from the outside. For that, you need people who are rooted in it. And that’s where the challenge for marketing and agencies begins.
Agencies play an intermediary role between companies with advertising brands and their audiences. In the age of mass communication and mainstream culture, that role was shaped largely by top-down or inside-out models. The needs of the target groups were understood primarily from the perspective of companies and brands. For various reasons among them, of course, the rise of the internet that approach no longer works nearly as well.

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One key reason is that the mainstream has splintered into a variety of subcultures and is, in turn, shaped by them. As any ethnologist knows, cultures are difficult to understand and describe from the outside. The communicative dynamic between brands and their audiences has shifted, because audiences today are defined less by traditional demographics and more by subcultures. These subcultures set their own priorities and have their own perspective on brands.
This creates the need for dialogue on equal footing. In recent years, the term cultural marketing has become established for this approach, and agencies specializing in it have sprung up like mushrooms. But shouldn’t it be in the very DNA of agencies—especially creative agencies to ensure that the ideas they develop resonate in pop culture or subculture? Do we really need specialized agencies for that, or will most agencies be working this way in just a few years, simply because traditional campaigns are becoming rarer?

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Culture lives within us and within society. Everyone is part of a subculture, even if they’re not fully aware of it. Sometimes it may not even look like a “culture” from the outside—but for those within it, the dos and don’ts are clear. For agencies, there’s no way around engaging with this reality. In the past, we may have lost sight of that. Too often we delivered what brands wanted, and too rarely did we ask what subcultures needed—and how the two could be brought together.

To succeed in this space, agencies need people who are deeply rooted in subcultures driven by passion and expertise. People like Niko Backspin, who, together with Franziska Gregor and Sven Labenz, leads the Serviceplan Culture unit. I spoke with Niko in episode #129. Beyond his agency role, he is also the owner and editor-in-chief of Backspin, the hip-hop magazine that once even had a print edition.
Serviceplan has developed a data-driven scoring model to determine which cultural field best fits a given brand. But that’s only the first step. In direct dialogue with a subculture, it may turn out that other brands are preferred there which then forces fresh thinking. Ultimately, the aim is to immerse in cultures for the long term, rather than simply launching short-lived campaigns.
Campaigns are familiar mechanisms within this system. But they need the framework of a roadmap—one that defines how a brand connects with a culture, what milestones matter, and how long-term consistency can be achieved. If campaigns are designed only for the short term, hopping from one subculture to the next, the strategy is bound to fail.

If brands only dip into a culture episodically, they remain outsiders. They may extract some honey from it, but they don’t make friends—in fact, often the opposite. Long-term commitment works far better. For example, Niko has been producing a documentary series on hip-hop for Porsche for years, called Back to Tape, which forges an unexpected bridge to the brand. Red Bull has supported hip-hop dance culture for more than two decades, earning the recognition of the community, which now sees the brand as an enabler.
Dialogue with subcultures shouldn’t come at the end of the food chain after brands and agencies have already done most of the work. Nor is it enough to treat cultural marketing as an exotic side experiment, with only a fraction of the overall budget, while the rest of the brand’s work—branding, awareness, performance remains untouched. The right decisions need to be made at the right points in the process.
A key factor for success is finding the right balance between give and take. That requires cultural fit between a brand and the subculture. Brands have to ask themselves—and the culture they want to engage what that culture needs and what the brand can contribute. What would resonate, and what would fall flat? Only through that dialogue, and in collaboration with representatives of the subculture, can campaign ideas emerge that truly connect. Ideally, those campaigns are then realized with artists, photographers, and directors from within the scene itself. This approach brings credibility—an essential value in this context. It marks a departure from the old logic of starting with the brand and the product, and only then working outward toward the audience.

This kind of translation work—a classic core function of agencies—is done better in some cases and worse in others. There are many reasons for this, but often it simply comes down to a lack of cultural understanding. If companies and brands are investing money into a specific culture, it should flow to the right places—so that both sides benefit.
Another key lies in fostering dialogue at eye level between culture and business, with the agency serving as mediator and translator. That requires genuine expertise in the subculture at hand. At the same time, the underlying mechanisms tend to repeat themselves across different fan communities. And that, in turn, is one reason why specialization in cultural marketing makes sense.

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What’s needed are people who truly understand this—and networks that reach deep into different subcultures. Both are still too rare today. Even in decision-making roles, there are people who lack the necessary knowledge and connections. After all, culture is ultimately driven by the personal and the private.
Cultural marketing starts with the search for cultural fit and with genuine dialogue with subcultures. It shifts the very self-image of marketing (humility is the keyword here) and benefits agencies as well—even those that don’t define themselves strictly as cultural marketing specialists.