of the United Kingdom’s capitol city.
There’s a new formula emerging, designed to help brands maintain their market relevance. It’s the “Cultural Collab,” and its formula is fundamentally very simple.
You take a premium brand, shove it into a beloved cultural destination, and invite some credible influencers to visit it and (hopefully) talk about it. Or, if the brand wants to engineer the PR machine effectively, they can pay said influencers to share their experiences and, ideally, activate the hype cycle that will ultimately draw locals and tourists alike to the destination.
This might sound overly simplistic, possibly to the point of cynicism. But increasingly, the outcomes of these cultural collabs make this definition feel pretty accurate.
Take Burberry’s recent partnership with The Newt in the UK. The Newt is an exceptional and achingly cool hotel in Somerset that attracts exactly the sort of wealthy, young, and aspirational crowd that Burberry is eager to regain. And so the collab was born.
To publications like Haute Living, the collab has transformed The Newt into a “mood board” that “layers countryside serenity with high fashion flair.” To me, it’s Burberry smacking their brand on every surface they’re allowed to, like a sugared-up toddler with a favorite sticker book. It’s picnics with a Burberry blanket. A Burberry-check lawn. And, of course, a pop-up boutique offering a curated edit of the brand’s Summer 2025 collection that visitors can shop from in the event they forget their swimsuit or need a last-minute umbrella. How convenient.
Cue every luxury retail analyst in the world heralding this partnership as a defining moment in the history of retail, and using words like “hyperlocal” and “storyliving,” which always make me feel slightly nauseous.
Everyone seems to love it, and I don’t. And it’s part of a much broader trend.
When Being 'Real' Became Really Profitable
The Burberry example is, of course, just one among many.
Every Milan Design Week, Highsnobiety collaborates with (AKA shoves their logo on) Bar Basso, an iconic cocktail bar in the east of the city. Hundreds of hip designers sip cocktails in a bar they would have otherwise ignored, while the locals find themselves meandering over to a different bar over the road to look on, bewildered.
In London, barely a month goes by that a luxury brand hasn’t taken over a pub. Kate Spade’s takeover of Exmouth Arms is another relatively recent example. And around the world, it feels like the floodgates are well and truly open for brands to occupy anything, anywhere. That is, if the price is right.
But do you create cultural relevancy and authenticity simply by piggybacking off something else that is truly authentic? Is brand strategy really that basic? Are customers really that one-dimensional to so quickly flock and fawn over these experiences?
The reality is that there’s a cavernous gap between the digital impression of these collabs and the impression in reality.
The digital impression is that these collaborations are a masterclass in fusing together culture and commerce. They’re a way of bringing authenticity and localisation to a global brand. They’re ingenious tools that bring the brand story to life in an ephemeral way.
In reality? I went to the Kate Spade pub. It felt like going to a London pub, but without the things that make it fun and authentic. Punters had been replaced with PR, and the whole thing felt like a strange but boring dream.
When Scarcity Kills Spontaneity
By turning the space into a promotional stage, Kate Spade inadvertently dismantled the real experience of going to the pub. Because the most effective pubs have an atmosphere that encourages you to stay, relax, and in the process, spend more money. “Let’s stay for one more” is a sign that the pub is getting it right.
But the Kate Spade pub didn’t feel like a space you’d want to stay and spend time in. It had an agenda packed with workshops and events that you had to book in advance, completely doing away with the actual cultural tradition of just dropping into the pub for a “quick one.”
There’s a reason so many of these pop-up experiences sell off fun in pre-booked timeslots: because there is always an implicit pressure to leave so that someone else can come in. And I actually think it’s this timed nature, rather than genuine enjoyment or wonder, that drives a lot of the photos, videos, and online comments. Consumers feel compelled to document everything while they have the chance, which is what fundamentally activates the viral lifecycle of these spaces.
For many consumers, capturing photogenic evidence to document their presence at a “hot spot” is more meaningful than the experience itself. And that’s the biggest part of the problem.
Why Brands Should Be More IKEA
The simple truth is that you don’t create authenticity by borrowing someone else’s. Cultural collabs might be a cheat code for some online virality, but a genuine connection isn’t nearly as formulaic.
Perhaps even more fundamentally, the heavy-handed cultural collab overlooks the fact that culture and commerce don’t need to be fused together. They’re already joined at the hip, and leveraging that fusion is far more complex, nuanced, and subtle.
My favourite example of how culture and commerce are already conjoined is IKEA.
In the UK, IKEA’s famed blue “Frakta” bags are hidden somewhere in just about every home, whether you live on a council estate or a country estate. IKEA is a leveller that straddles every demographic, taste, and region.
For that reason, what IKEA does when it comes to PR, brand positioning, and its place in our culture really matters. And what does IKEA do to affirm its role in our cultural fabric? It just doubles down on being IKEA.
IKEA recently opened its much-hyped flagship on Oxford Circus. There was significant buzz leading up to the store’s opening, with industry folk, media, and everyday consumers alike wondering what they might do.
But that buzz fizzled out rapidly when analysts and designers visited and realised it was… just a regular IKEA.
Collective head-scratching began, and many shared their disappointment. They had expected giant slides, immersive tech, artistic expression, and bold cultural statements.
After all, IKEA had purchased this iconic building for £378 million, and it remains one of the busiest shopping locations in the world. The purchase was as much about marketing as sales. IKEA placed itself at the heart of city centre shopping, and therefore, at the heart of British culture.
But I think it’s brilliant—and I think many people completely missed the point.
If commerce is culture, then IKEA is culture. They had no reinventing to do. No self-discovery, shape-shifting, reimagining, or cultural piggybacking required.
Getting lost in IKEA is a cultural moment. Eating cheap meatballs and buying candle holders you didn’t need in the first place is a cultural moment. Using an IKEA blue bag to pack up the clothes your son no longer fits into, but that you can’t yet mentally or emotionally handle getting rid of, is a cultural moment.
IKEA has both the intelligence to understand all this as well as the humility to execute it.
You Can’t Engineer Culture
The hype narrative around culture-driven commerce experiences is misguided because it prioritizes appearance over authenticity. What actually feels real.
Cultural collabs often feel like a desperate shout for attention, and as a result, they tend to look like an identity crisis.
And maybe a lot of the problem is that these types of collaborations tend to come from luxury or “cool” brands that already seem like an awkward fit for the cultural moment they’re trying to align themselves with.
Of course, people who buy Burberry may go on picnics, and Kate Spade bag owners probably go to the pub. But these cultural collabs always seem to give off a sense that those activities or that location have suddenly become valuable because that brand has decided to attach its name to it.
There is so much that brands can learn from IKEA: about knowing who you are and, more importantly, how to find cultural relevance by amplifying your own authenticity rather than borrowing it from somewhere else.
But maybe the biggest takeaway is that IKEA isn’t trying to engineer cultural moments like most brands. It’s simply doing the important foundational work of creating products, services, and spaces that customers want to incorporate into their lives. And in the process, the brand itself has become a cultural institution.
Case in point: IKEA’s cultural cachet is so strong that when it did its own experiential pop-up, it didn’t need to team up with a cultural destination to make an impact.
The Hus of FRAKTA pop-up in London was located on Oxford Street - the same famed shopping street that the new IKEA flagship is on - and ran for four months before the flagship opened.
As the name suggests, the pop-up primarily focused on IKEA’s blue FRAKTA bag, building on the cultural power of IKEA’s own product. Not a pub or a hotel or a gallery, just a 75p, blue, polypropylene bag that people paid £3 to customise.
The Hus of FRAKTA captured more attention than nearly any of the hollow cultural collabs precisely because it was a confident amplification of the cultural landscape that IKEA had already created over the years. It wasn’t IKEA trying to reinvent itself or change the way that people thought about the brand.
IKEA knows exactly who it is and, more importantly, shoppers know exactly who it is. And that’s why they love it.
Jack Stratten is a retail trends speaker, writer, and researcher. As Director of Insider Trends, he has delivered presentations and keynotes to audiences worldwide for over 15 years, cutting to the core of emerging retail trends by sharing clear, jargon-free insights that inspire and generate new ideas. Jack’s deep understanding of retail, consumer behaviors, and business strategy is sought after by clients across the entire retail ecosystem, including retailers such as Converse and LVMH, tech companies like Microsoft, shopping center operators like Westfield, and retail associations around the world. He is consistently recognised as a leading retail voice, including being named a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for three consecutive years and one of NRF’s Retail Voices for 2025.
There’s a new formula emerging, designed to help brands maintain their market relevance. It’s the “Cultural Collab,” and its formula is fundamentally very simple.
You take a premium brand, shove it into a beloved cultural destination, and invite some credible influencers to visit it and (hopefully) talk about it. Or, if the brand wants to engineer the PR machine effectively, they can pay said influencers to share their experiences and, ideally, activate the hype cycle that will ultimately draw locals and tourists alike to the destination.
This might sound overly simplistic, possibly to the point of cynicism. But increasingly, the outcomes of these cultural collabs make this definition feel pretty accurate.
Take Burberry’s recent partnership with The Newt in the UK. The Newt is an exceptional and achingly cool hotel in Somerset that attracts exactly the sort of wealthy, young, and aspirational crowd that Burberry is eager to regain. And so the collab was born.
To publications like Haute Living, the collab has transformed The Newt into a “mood board” that “layers countryside serenity with high fashion flair.” To me, it’s Burberry smacking their brand on every surface they’re allowed to, like a sugared-up toddler with a favorite sticker book. It’s picnics with a Burberry blanket. A Burberry-check lawn. And, of course, a pop-up boutique offering a curated edit of the brand’s Summer 2025 collection that visitors can shop from in the event they forget their swimsuit or need a last-minute umbrella. How convenient.
Cue every luxury retail analyst in the world heralding this partnership as a defining moment in the history of retail, and using words like “hyperlocal” and “storyliving,” which always make me feel slightly nauseous.
Everyone seems to love it, and I don’t. And it’s part of a much broader trend.
When Being 'Real' Became Really Profitable
The Burberry example is, of course, just one among many.
Every Milan Design Week, Highsnobiety collaborates with (AKA shoves their logo on) Bar Basso, an iconic cocktail bar in the east of the city. Hundreds of hip designers sip cocktails in a bar they would have otherwise ignored, while the locals find themselves meandering over to a different bar over the road to look on, bewildered.
In London, barely a month goes by that a luxury brand hasn’t taken over a pub. Kate Spade’s takeover of Exmouth Arms is another relatively recent example. And around the world, it feels like the floodgates are well and truly open for brands to occupy anything, anywhere. That is, if the price is right.
But do you create cultural relevancy and authenticity simply by piggybacking off something else that is truly authentic? Is brand strategy really that basic? Are customers really that one-dimensional to so quickly flock and fawn over these experiences?
The reality is that there’s a cavernous gap between the digital impression of these collabs and the impression in reality.
The digital impression is that these collaborations are a masterclass in fusing together culture and commerce. They’re a way of bringing authenticity and localisation to a global brand. They’re ingenious tools that bring the brand story to life in an ephemeral way.
In reality? I went to the Kate Spade pub. It felt like going to a London pub, but without the things that make it fun and authentic. Punters had been replaced with PR, and the whole thing felt like a strange but boring dream.
When Scarcity Kills Spontaneity
By turning the space into a promotional stage, Kate Spade inadvertently dismantled the real experience of going to the pub. Because the most effective pubs have an atmosphere that encourages you to stay, relax, and in the process, spend more money. “Let’s stay for one more” is a sign that the pub is getting it right.
But the Kate Spade pub didn’t feel like a space you’d want to stay and spend time in. It had an agenda packed with workshops and events that you had to book in advance, completely doing away with the actual cultural tradition of just dropping into the pub for a “quick one.”
There’s a reason so many of these pop-up experiences sell off fun in pre-booked timeslots: because there is always an implicit pressure to leave so that someone else can come in. And I actually think it’s this timed nature, rather than genuine enjoyment or wonder, that drives a lot of the photos, videos, and online comments. Consumers feel compelled to document everything while they have the chance, which is what fundamentally activates the viral lifecycle of these spaces.
For many consumers, capturing photogenic evidence to document their presence at a “hot spot” is more meaningful than the experience itself. And that’s the biggest part of the problem.
Why Brands Should Be More IKEA
The simple truth is that you don’t create authenticity by borrowing someone else’s. Cultural collabs might be a cheat code for some online virality, but a genuine connection isn’t nearly as formulaic.
Perhaps even more fundamentally, the heavy-handed cultural collab overlooks the fact that culture and commerce don’t need to be fused together. They’re already joined at the hip, and leveraging that fusion is far more complex, nuanced, and subtle.
My favourite example of how culture and commerce are already conjoined is IKEA.
In the UK, IKEA’s famed blue “Frakta” bags are hidden somewhere in just about every home, whether you live on a council estate or a country estate. IKEA is a leveller that straddles every demographic, taste, and region.
For that reason, what IKEA does when it comes to PR, brand positioning, and its place in our culture really matters. And what does IKEA do to affirm its role in our cultural fabric? It just doubles down on being IKEA.
IKEA recently opened its much-hyped flagship on Oxford Circus. There was significant buzz leading up to the store’s opening, with industry folk, media, and everyday consumers alike wondering what they might do.
But that buzz fizzled out rapidly when analysts and designers visited and realised it was… just a regular IKEA.
Collective head-scratching began, and many shared their disappointment. They had expected giant slides, immersive tech, artistic expression, and bold cultural statements.
After all, IKEA had purchased this iconic building for £378 million, and it remains one of the busiest shopping locations in the world. The purchase was as much about marketing as sales. IKEA placed itself at the heart of city centre shopping, and therefore, at the heart of British culture.
But I think it’s brilliant—and I think many people completely missed the point.
If commerce is culture, then IKEA is culture. They had no reinventing to do. No self-discovery, shape-shifting, reimagining, or cultural piggybacking required.
Getting lost in IKEA is a cultural moment. Eating cheap meatballs and buying candle holders you didn’t need in the first place is a cultural moment. Using an IKEA blue bag to pack up the clothes your son no longer fits into, but that you can’t yet mentally or emotionally handle getting rid of, is a cultural moment.
IKEA has both the intelligence to understand all this as well as the humility to execute it.
You Can’t Engineer Culture
The hype narrative around culture-driven commerce experiences is misguided because it prioritizes appearance over authenticity. What actually feels real.
Cultural collabs often feel like a desperate shout for attention, and as a result, they tend to look like an identity crisis.
And maybe a lot of the problem is that these types of collaborations tend to come from luxury or “cool” brands that already seem like an awkward fit for the cultural moment they’re trying to align themselves with.
Of course, people who buy Burberry may go on picnics, and Kate Spade bag owners probably go to the pub. But these cultural collabs always seem to give off a sense that those activities or that location have suddenly become valuable because that brand has decided to attach its name to it.
There is so much that brands can learn from IKEA: about knowing who you are and, more importantly, how to find cultural relevance by amplifying your own authenticity rather than borrowing it from somewhere else.
But maybe the biggest takeaway is that IKEA isn’t trying to engineer cultural moments like most brands. It’s simply doing the important foundational work of creating products, services, and spaces that customers want to incorporate into their lives. And in the process, the brand itself has become a cultural institution.
Case in point: IKEA’s cultural cachet is so strong that when it did its own experiential pop-up, it didn’t need to team up with a cultural destination to make an impact.
The Hus of FRAKTA pop-up in London was located on Oxford Street - the same famed shopping street that the new IKEA flagship is on - and ran for four months before the flagship opened.
As the name suggests, the pop-up primarily focused on IKEA’s blue FRAKTA bag, building on the cultural power of IKEA’s own product. Not a pub or a hotel or a gallery, just a 75p, blue, polypropylene bag that people paid £3 to customise.
The Hus of FRAKTA captured more attention than nearly any of the hollow cultural collabs precisely because it was a confident amplification of the cultural landscape that IKEA had already created over the years. It wasn’t IKEA trying to reinvent itself or change the way that people thought about the brand.
IKEA knows exactly who it is and, more importantly, shoppers know exactly who it is. And that’s why they love it.
Jack Stratten is a retail trends speaker, writer, and researcher. As Director of Insider Trends, he has delivered presentations and keynotes to audiences worldwide for over 15 years, cutting to the core of emerging retail trends by sharing clear, jargon-free insights that inspire and generate new ideas. Jack’s deep understanding of retail, consumer behaviors, and business strategy is sought after by clients across the entire retail ecosystem, including retailers such as Converse and LVMH, tech companies like Microsoft, shopping center operators like Westfield, and retail associations around the world. He is consistently recognised as a leading retail voice, including being named a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for three consecutive years and one of NRF’s Retail Voices for 2025.
There’s a new formula emerging, designed to help brands maintain their market relevance. It’s the “Cultural Collab,” and its formula is fundamentally very simple.
You take a premium brand, shove it into a beloved cultural destination, and invite some credible influencers to visit it and (hopefully) talk about it. Or, if the brand wants to engineer the PR machine effectively, they can pay said influencers to share their experiences and, ideally, activate the hype cycle that will ultimately draw locals and tourists alike to the destination.
This might sound overly simplistic, possibly to the point of cynicism. But increasingly, the outcomes of these cultural collabs make this definition feel pretty accurate.
Take Burberry’s recent partnership with The Newt in the UK. The Newt is an exceptional and achingly cool hotel in Somerset that attracts exactly the sort of wealthy, young, and aspirational crowd that Burberry is eager to regain. And so the collab was born.
To publications like Haute Living, the collab has transformed The Newt into a “mood board” that “layers countryside serenity with high fashion flair.” To me, it’s Burberry smacking their brand on every surface they’re allowed to, like a sugared-up toddler with a favorite sticker book. It’s picnics with a Burberry blanket. A Burberry-check lawn. And, of course, a pop-up boutique offering a curated edit of the brand’s Summer 2025 collection that visitors can shop from in the event they forget their swimsuit or need a last-minute umbrella. How convenient.
Cue every luxury retail analyst in the world heralding this partnership as a defining moment in the history of retail, and using words like “hyperlocal” and “storyliving,” which always make me feel slightly nauseous.
Everyone seems to love it, and I don’t. And it’s part of a much broader trend.
When Being 'Real' Became Really Profitable
The Burberry example is, of course, just one among many.
Every Milan Design Week, Highsnobiety collaborates with (AKA shoves their logo on) Bar Basso, an iconic cocktail bar in the east of the city. Hundreds of hip designers sip cocktails in a bar they would have otherwise ignored, while the locals find themselves meandering over to a different bar over the road to look on, bewildered.
In London, barely a month goes by that a luxury brand hasn’t taken over a pub. Kate Spade’s takeover of Exmouth Arms is another relatively recent example. And around the world, it feels like the floodgates are well and truly open for brands to occupy anything, anywhere. That is, if the price is right.
But do you create cultural relevancy and authenticity simply by piggybacking off something else that is truly authentic? Is brand strategy really that basic? Are customers really that one-dimensional to so quickly flock and fawn over these experiences?
The reality is that there’s a cavernous gap between the digital impression of these collabs and the impression in reality.
The digital impression is that these collaborations are a masterclass in fusing together culture and commerce. They’re a way of bringing authenticity and localisation to a global brand. They’re ingenious tools that bring the brand story to life in an ephemeral way.
In reality? I went to the Kate Spade pub. It felt like going to a London pub, but without the things that make it fun and authentic. Punters had been replaced with PR, and the whole thing felt like a strange but boring dream.
When Scarcity Kills Spontaneity
By turning the space into a promotional stage, Kate Spade inadvertently dismantled the real experience of going to the pub. Because the most effective pubs have an atmosphere that encourages you to stay, relax, and in the process, spend more money. “Let’s stay for one more” is a sign that the pub is getting it right.
But the Kate Spade pub didn’t feel like a space you’d want to stay and spend time in. It had an agenda packed with workshops and events that you had to book in advance, completely doing away with the actual cultural tradition of just dropping into the pub for a “quick one.”
There’s a reason so many of these pop-up experiences sell off fun in pre-booked timeslots: because there is always an implicit pressure to leave so that someone else can come in. And I actually think it’s this timed nature, rather than genuine enjoyment or wonder, that drives a lot of the photos, videos, and online comments. Consumers feel compelled to document everything while they have the chance, which is what fundamentally activates the viral lifecycle of these spaces.
For many consumers, capturing photogenic evidence to document their presence at a “hot spot” is more meaningful than the experience itself. And that’s the biggest part of the problem.
Why Brands Should Be More IKEA
The simple truth is that you don’t create authenticity by borrowing someone else’s. Cultural collabs might be a cheat code for some online virality, but a genuine connection isn’t nearly as formulaic.
Perhaps even more fundamentally, the heavy-handed cultural collab overlooks the fact that culture and commerce don’t need to be fused together. They’re already joined at the hip, and leveraging that fusion is far more complex, nuanced, and subtle.
My favourite example of how culture and commerce are already conjoined is IKEA.
In the UK, IKEA’s famed blue “Frakta” bags are hidden somewhere in just about every home, whether you live on a council estate or a country estate. IKEA is a leveller that straddles every demographic, taste, and region.
For that reason, what IKEA does when it comes to PR, brand positioning, and its place in our culture really matters. And what does IKEA do to affirm its role in our cultural fabric? It just doubles down on being IKEA.
IKEA recently opened its much-hyped flagship on Oxford Circus. There was significant buzz leading up to the store’s opening, with industry folk, media, and everyday consumers alike wondering what they might do.
But that buzz fizzled out rapidly when analysts and designers visited and realised it was… just a regular IKEA.
Collective head-scratching began, and many shared their disappointment. They had expected giant slides, immersive tech, artistic expression, and bold cultural statements.
After all, IKEA had purchased this iconic building for £378 million, and it remains one of the busiest shopping locations in the world. The purchase was as much about marketing as sales. IKEA placed itself at the heart of city centre shopping, and therefore, at the heart of British culture.
But I think it’s brilliant—and I think many people completely missed the point.
If commerce is culture, then IKEA is culture. They had no reinventing to do. No self-discovery, shape-shifting, reimagining, or cultural piggybacking required.
Getting lost in IKEA is a cultural moment. Eating cheap meatballs and buying candle holders you didn’t need in the first place is a cultural moment. Using an IKEA blue bag to pack up the clothes your son no longer fits into, but that you can’t yet mentally or emotionally handle getting rid of, is a cultural moment.
IKEA has both the intelligence to understand all this as well as the humility to execute it.
You Can’t Engineer Culture
The hype narrative around culture-driven commerce experiences is misguided because it prioritizes appearance over authenticity. What actually feels real.
Cultural collabs often feel like a desperate shout for attention, and as a result, they tend to look like an identity crisis.
And maybe a lot of the problem is that these types of collaborations tend to come from luxury or “cool” brands that already seem like an awkward fit for the cultural moment they’re trying to align themselves with.
Of course, people who buy Burberry may go on picnics, and Kate Spade bag owners probably go to the pub. But these cultural collabs always seem to give off a sense that those activities or that location have suddenly become valuable because that brand has decided to attach its name to it.
There is so much that brands can learn from IKEA: about knowing who you are and, more importantly, how to find cultural relevance by amplifying your own authenticity rather than borrowing it from somewhere else.
But maybe the biggest takeaway is that IKEA isn’t trying to engineer cultural moments like most brands. It’s simply doing the important foundational work of creating products, services, and spaces that customers want to incorporate into their lives. And in the process, the brand itself has become a cultural institution.
Case in point: IKEA’s cultural cachet is so strong that when it did its own experiential pop-up, it didn’t need to team up with a cultural destination to make an impact.
The Hus of FRAKTA pop-up in London was located on Oxford Street - the same famed shopping street that the new IKEA flagship is on - and ran for four months before the flagship opened.
As the name suggests, the pop-up primarily focused on IKEA’s blue FRAKTA bag, building on the cultural power of IKEA’s own product. Not a pub or a hotel or a gallery, just a 75p, blue, polypropylene bag that people paid £3 to customise.
The Hus of FRAKTA captured more attention than nearly any of the hollow cultural collabs precisely because it was a confident amplification of the cultural landscape that IKEA had already created over the years. It wasn’t IKEA trying to reinvent itself or change the way that people thought about the brand.
IKEA knows exactly who it is and, more importantly, shoppers know exactly who it is. And that’s why they love it.
Jack Stratten is a retail trends speaker, writer, and researcher. As Director of Insider Trends, he has delivered presentations and keynotes to audiences worldwide for over 15 years, cutting to the core of emerging retail trends by sharing clear, jargon-free insights that inspire and generate new ideas. Jack’s deep understanding of retail, consumer behaviors, and business strategy is sought after by clients across the entire retail ecosystem, including retailers such as Converse and LVMH, tech companies like Microsoft, shopping center operators like Westfield, and retail associations around the world. He is consistently recognised as a leading retail voice, including being named a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for three consecutive years and one of NRF’s Retail Voices for 2025.
There’s a new formula emerging, designed to help brands maintain their market relevance. It’s the “Cultural Collab,” and its formula is fundamentally very simple.
You take a premium brand, shove it into a beloved cultural destination, and invite some credible influencers to visit it and (hopefully) talk about it. Or, if the brand wants to engineer the PR machine effectively, they can pay said influencers to share their experiences and, ideally, activate the hype cycle that will ultimately draw locals and tourists alike to the destination.
This might sound overly simplistic, possibly to the point of cynicism. But increasingly, the outcomes of these cultural collabs make this definition feel pretty accurate.
Take Burberry’s recent partnership with The Newt in the UK. The Newt is an exceptional and achingly cool hotel in Somerset that attracts exactly the sort of wealthy, young, and aspirational crowd that Burberry is eager to regain. And so the collab was born.
To publications like Haute Living, the collab has transformed The Newt into a “mood board” that “layers countryside serenity with high fashion flair.” To me, it’s Burberry smacking their brand on every surface they’re allowed to, like a sugared-up toddler with a favorite sticker book. It’s picnics with a Burberry blanket. A Burberry-check lawn. And, of course, a pop-up boutique offering a curated edit of the brand’s Summer 2025 collection that visitors can shop from in the event they forget their swimsuit or need a last-minute umbrella. How convenient.
Cue every luxury retail analyst in the world heralding this partnership as a defining moment in the history of retail, and using words like “hyperlocal” and “storyliving,” which always make me feel slightly nauseous.
Everyone seems to love it, and I don’t. And it’s part of a much broader trend.
When Being 'Real' Became Really Profitable
The Burberry example is, of course, just one among many.
Every Milan Design Week, Highsnobiety collaborates with (AKA shoves their logo on) Bar Basso, an iconic cocktail bar in the east of the city. Hundreds of hip designers sip cocktails in a bar they would have otherwise ignored, while the locals find themselves meandering over to a different bar over the road to look on, bewildered.
In London, barely a month goes by that a luxury brand hasn’t taken over a pub. Kate Spade’s takeover of Exmouth Arms is another relatively recent example. And around the world, it feels like the floodgates are well and truly open for brands to occupy anything, anywhere. That is, if the price is right.
But do you create cultural relevancy and authenticity simply by piggybacking off something else that is truly authentic? Is brand strategy really that basic? Are customers really that one-dimensional to so quickly flock and fawn over these experiences?
The reality is that there’s a cavernous gap between the digital impression of these collabs and the impression in reality.
The digital impression is that these collaborations are a masterclass in fusing together culture and commerce. They’re a way of bringing authenticity and localisation to a global brand. They’re ingenious tools that bring the brand story to life in an ephemeral way.
In reality? I went to the Kate Spade pub. It felt like going to a London pub, but without the things that make it fun and authentic. Punters had been replaced with PR, and the whole thing felt like a strange but boring dream.
When Scarcity Kills Spontaneity
By turning the space into a promotional stage, Kate Spade inadvertently dismantled the real experience of going to the pub. Because the most effective pubs have an atmosphere that encourages you to stay, relax, and in the process, spend more money. “Let’s stay for one more” is a sign that the pub is getting it right.
But the Kate Spade pub didn’t feel like a space you’d want to stay and spend time in. It had an agenda packed with workshops and events that you had to book in advance, completely doing away with the actual cultural tradition of just dropping into the pub for a “quick one.”
There’s a reason so many of these pop-up experiences sell off fun in pre-booked timeslots: because there is always an implicit pressure to leave so that someone else can come in. And I actually think it’s this timed nature, rather than genuine enjoyment or wonder, that drives a lot of the photos, videos, and online comments. Consumers feel compelled to document everything while they have the chance, which is what fundamentally activates the viral lifecycle of these spaces.
For many consumers, capturing photogenic evidence to document their presence at a “hot spot” is more meaningful than the experience itself. And that’s the biggest part of the problem.
Why Brands Should Be More IKEA
The simple truth is that you don’t create authenticity by borrowing someone else’s. Cultural collabs might be a cheat code for some online virality, but a genuine connection isn’t nearly as formulaic.
Perhaps even more fundamentally, the heavy-handed cultural collab overlooks the fact that culture and commerce don’t need to be fused together. They’re already joined at the hip, and leveraging that fusion is far more complex, nuanced, and subtle.
My favourite example of how culture and commerce are already conjoined is IKEA.
In the UK, IKEA’s famed blue “Frakta” bags are hidden somewhere in just about every home, whether you live on a council estate or a country estate. IKEA is a leveller that straddles every demographic, taste, and region.
For that reason, what IKEA does when it comes to PR, brand positioning, and its place in our culture really matters. And what does IKEA do to affirm its role in our cultural fabric? It just doubles down on being IKEA.
IKEA recently opened its much-hyped flagship on Oxford Circus. There was significant buzz leading up to the store’s opening, with industry folk, media, and everyday consumers alike wondering what they might do.
But that buzz fizzled out rapidly when analysts and designers visited and realised it was… just a regular IKEA.
Collective head-scratching began, and many shared their disappointment. They had expected giant slides, immersive tech, artistic expression, and bold cultural statements.
After all, IKEA had purchased this iconic building for £378 million, and it remains one of the busiest shopping locations in the world. The purchase was as much about marketing as sales. IKEA placed itself at the heart of city centre shopping, and therefore, at the heart of British culture.
But I think it’s brilliant—and I think many people completely missed the point.
If commerce is culture, then IKEA is culture. They had no reinventing to do. No self-discovery, shape-shifting, reimagining, or cultural piggybacking required.
Getting lost in IKEA is a cultural moment. Eating cheap meatballs and buying candle holders you didn’t need in the first place is a cultural moment. Using an IKEA blue bag to pack up the clothes your son no longer fits into, but that you can’t yet mentally or emotionally handle getting rid of, is a cultural moment.
IKEA has both the intelligence to understand all this as well as the humility to execute it.
You Can’t Engineer Culture
The hype narrative around culture-driven commerce experiences is misguided because it prioritizes appearance over authenticity. What actually feels real.
Cultural collabs often feel like a desperate shout for attention, and as a result, they tend to look like an identity crisis.
And maybe a lot of the problem is that these types of collaborations tend to come from luxury or “cool” brands that already seem like an awkward fit for the cultural moment they’re trying to align themselves with.
Of course, people who buy Burberry may go on picnics, and Kate Spade bag owners probably go to the pub. But these cultural collabs always seem to give off a sense that those activities or that location have suddenly become valuable because that brand has decided to attach its name to it.
There is so much that brands can learn from IKEA: about knowing who you are and, more importantly, how to find cultural relevance by amplifying your own authenticity rather than borrowing it from somewhere else.
But maybe the biggest takeaway is that IKEA isn’t trying to engineer cultural moments like most brands. It’s simply doing the important foundational work of creating products, services, and spaces that customers want to incorporate into their lives. And in the process, the brand itself has become a cultural institution.
Case in point: IKEA’s cultural cachet is so strong that when it did its own experiential pop-up, it didn’t need to team up with a cultural destination to make an impact.
The Hus of FRAKTA pop-up in London was located on Oxford Street - the same famed shopping street that the new IKEA flagship is on - and ran for four months before the flagship opened.
As the name suggests, the pop-up primarily focused on IKEA’s blue FRAKTA bag, building on the cultural power of IKEA’s own product. Not a pub or a hotel or a gallery, just a 75p, blue, polypropylene bag that people paid £3 to customise.
The Hus of FRAKTA captured more attention than nearly any of the hollow cultural collabs precisely because it was a confident amplification of the cultural landscape that IKEA had already created over the years. It wasn’t IKEA trying to reinvent itself or change the way that people thought about the brand.
IKEA knows exactly who it is and, more importantly, shoppers know exactly who it is. And that’s why they love it.
Jack Stratten is a retail trends speaker, writer, and researcher. As Director of Insider Trends, he has delivered presentations and keynotes to audiences worldwide for over 15 years, cutting to the core of emerging retail trends by sharing clear, jargon-free insights that inspire and generate new ideas. Jack’s deep understanding of retail, consumer behaviors, and business strategy is sought after by clients across the entire retail ecosystem, including retailers such as Converse and LVMH, tech companies like Microsoft, shopping center operators like Westfield, and retail associations around the world. He is consistently recognised as a leading retail voice, including being named a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert for three consecutive years and one of NRF’s Retail Voices for 2025.
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