Five Strategy Lessons from The White Lotus to Make Your Brand Culturally Relevant

Entrepreneur

09-05-2025

Three seasons in, The White Lotus has become more than just a TV show: its distinctive aesthetic, sharp social commentary, and layered symbolism make it a cultural moment – something people talk about, memeify, and analyse.
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Brands can learn a lot from it. Today, cultural relevance is essential for brands, fuelled by the technology-catalysed shift from passive to active consumerism. Brands today must participate in the same conversations as their audience, with a clearly defined point of view. For brands aiming to embed themselves in culture, The White Lotus offers five essential strategy lessons.
1. Understand what 'culture' actually means
Culture can be defined as the shared values, beliefs and behaviours that turn individuals into crowds. The White Lotus' popularity is thanks to the way it centres and dramatises inequality – arguably the issue that people care, worry and talk about more than any other right now. Brands take note: for them to participate in culture means actively highlighting, shaping or accelerating such issues.
Take fashion brand MSCHF's disruptively clownish approach to its culture of, as the name suggests, mischief – a timelessly resonant shared behaviour. Veuve Clicquot's less provocative but equally effective approach to culture the sunny optimism forged by combining its compelling backstory and ownable yellow hue – inherently challenges the traditionally male-dominated, frequently old-fashioned worlds of luxury and wine. The White Lotus' culture is independent of its era: its themes – privilege, class, sex, death, spirituality – transcend the zeitgeist. Just as brands should.
2. For brands, culture isn't trends
Culture mixes timeless and new. The White Lotus resonates because it taps into our age-old fascination with power, privilege, and moral decay – exposing the fallibility of an elite that's often worse than the rest of us – but presenting this through today's lenses in its fashion, music, and language (dialogue). Culture marries current trends and age-old human truths: the satisfying schadenfreude of watching the elite's downfall is timeless, yet made more acute in 2025, with our ever-increasing awareness of the gulf between the 1% and the 99%.
Brands should note this balance of historic and contemporary. Johnnie Walker's "Striding Man" is rooted in history yet continually refreshed through campaigns like its Squid Games collaboration, its AI venture, and Jane Walker, connecting the brand to current cultural narratives while preserving its identity. Like The White Lotus, it balances old and new. Oatly, too, goes beyond dairy-free milk by championing plant-based living; its bold, activist voice aligns with enduring ideological shifts. Like The White Lotus, these brands thrive by honouring timeless themes while adapting to today's world.
3. Show before you tell
The White Lotus does more than tell a story: from its sun-drenched landscapes to opulent hotels and perfectly styled wardrobes, every frame draws you in with its sensory allure. It's a show about (inwardly) ugly people doing ugly things, but it wraps its critique of wealth and privilege in a layer of undeniable beauty. It appeals to our eyes first, and later to our hearts and heads, leaving the unflattering exposition of the 1% to linger and resonate. The way to make people care about something is to first seduce them through their eyes – after all, brands need design to 'do culture. In the case of The White Lotus, people come first for the beauty, and stay for the schadenfreude. It taps into desire before anything else. For brands to be culturally relevant and have a point of view, they can't forget the importance of looking great and leading with that first.
4. Familiar but flexible
Each episode and season of The White Lotus is simultaneously similar and different. Regular viewers start to recognise patterns in the way the show is shot, choreographed and soundtracked.
Likewise, McDonald's golden arches icon is remixed constantly, evolving across generations – even riffing on colloquialisms like 'Maccy Ds' – but with a singular, constant colour palette that's instantly recognisable. By having an identity that can flex over time, brands can be a part of culture as it shifts. After all, culture never stands still – and it's vital that brands keep up.
5. Don't just spectate, participate
Many brands show up in culture when it suits them, only to disappear when the moment passes. But cultural engagement must be embedded in a brand's DNA. The White Lotus doesn't just reflect culture: it shapes it. The show meaningfully engages with its audience by building a world we can immerse ourselves in for an hour. All with a plot that encourages conversation long after the closing credits. Like the show, brands shouldn't play it safe: they need to be on the dancefloor, not watching from the wings. Take Nike. It doesn't just sell sportswear – it creates sports culture. As campaigns like Colin Kaepernick's Dream Crazy, or So Win for female athletes show, its entire identity is inextricably tied to the world of movement, ambition, and perseverance.
In it for the long haul
A brand's approach to culture is most effective if it authentically resonates with the things that people care about, talk about, relate to, and enjoy the most. As The White Lotus' success proves, 'doing culture' is actually the opposite of what many people think it is – chiming with fleeting fads; limited editions, flash-in-the-pan subcultural movements. Cultural relevance isn't a campaign, it's a commitment forged over time.