Why cultural intelligence matters more than trend chasing

The risk for brands isn’t missing the trend. It’s misreading the culture behind it.

Director of Consumer, Rebecca Broomfield, explores the importance of cultural intelligence in modern communications, and why understanding the communities behing a trend matters more than simply reacting to the conversation. 

Every comms team has had some version of the same conversation: is this a cultural moment we should move on, or one we should leave well alone?

Increasingly, the answer depends not on how quickly a brand can react, but on how well it understands the cultures sitting underneath the conversation.

The recent debate around what women wear while giving birth is a useful example. On the surface, it appeared to be a lifestyle story about feeling good during labour. Online, however, it quickly became something much bigger: a debate about pressure, empowerment, identity, control, beauty standards and the impossible expectations placed on mothers.

As someone who pushed out two nearly 10lb babies, I can safely say feeling cute was not high on my personal priority list. Comfort? Yes. Survival? Absolutely. A dark nightie I didn’t mind never seeing again? Very much so. So I understand the eye-roll reaction completely.

But I also understand why, for some women, wanting to feel put together during or after birth might represent something else entirely: a small act of control at a moment when your body, plans and identity can feel completely out of your hands.

For communicators, that distinction matters.

The opportunity was never really about the outfit. It was about the cultural tension underneath it.

Too often, brands view audiences through broad demographic labels: “mums”, “Gen Z”, “families” or “women over 40”. While useful as a starting point, those categories rarely tell us enough about how people will receive a message.

Motherhood illustrates this perfectly. It is often discussed as though it is a single, shared experience. In reality, it is made up of multiple cultures shaped by different lived experiences: first-time motherhood, IVF journeys, birth trauma, home births, C-sections, working motherhood, older motherhood, younger motherhood, instagram-driven expectations and the barely-holding-it-together realities of everyday parenting.

Each comes with its own language, values, pressures and emotional triggers. What feels empowering to one group can feel deeply tone-deaf to another. Both reactions can be valid at the same time.

This is why cultural understanding has become just as important in PR as it has long been in advertising.

The role of communications teams is no longer simply to identify what is trending. It is to interpret what that trend means, who it resonates with, where the tensions sit and whether a brand has any credible role to play in the conversation.

That requires a different set of questions before advising clients to engage: Who feels seen by this conversation? Who might feel judged or excluded? What emotional pressure points are we touching? Is the brand adding genuine value, or simply borrowing attention? How might the message land differently across media, social channels, creators and communities?

These questions are increasingly important because cultural conversations move fast, fragment quickly and rarely produce a single consensus view.

Speed still matters. But speed without cultural fluency can create risk just as quickly as it creates relevance.

For brands, the challenge is no longer simply asking, “Is this trending?” The more important question is: “What does this mean, who does it matter to, and what happens if we get it wrong?” Because in today’s communications environment, the greatest risk is not missing the trend. It is misreading the culture behind it.