One red telephone beat the whole media plan

Somewhere in Saint-Tropez this month, a guest picked up a red telephone, a butler named Jacke arrived with French fries and a month of coverage followed.

The brands getting culture right aren't just finding smarter ways to put themselves in the conversation, they're finding ways to contribute something to it. So this issue asks a simple question, what are brands actually doing for culture?

The answers might surprise you!

For years, the job for brands in culture was about proximity, be in the right place, borrow the right moment, get the right audience in the room. But something is shifting. The more interesting brands aren't just trying to be present in culture, they're helping other people create it.

Vogue Business asked this month whether brands should stop marketing culture and start acting more like its patrons. Nothing is putting $10,000 each behind four grassroots music collectives to help stage their next event, responding to the disappearance of clubs and rising pressure on grassroots music. Balenciaga is putting money behind Substack writers and giving them the freedom to decide what that sponsorship looks like. The brand still gets something from the relationship, but it doesn't have to be the main character.

We're seeing versions of that thinking across categories. Spotify put Genesis Owusu in front of 240 fans at the Bat & Ball in Redfern, then built the room around the world of his new record, right down to album artwork dusted in cocoa on the espresso martinis (The Music,Rolling Stone AU). Louis Vuitton handed its Objets Nomades collection to Tamsin Johnson and let her guest-edit RUSSH Home around it (RUSSH). Tiffany opened its first Blue Box Cafe in Southeast Asia with a menu by Julien Royer of three-Michelin-starred Odette (Eatbook).

Sometimes the contribution is simpler, give people something they actually want to participate in. At AREV in Saint-Tropez, every room comes with a red telephone and a single button. Press it and a butler named Jacke arrives with French fries and an unreasonable number of toppings (Pursuitist). A small ritual became something guests wanted to talk about, photograph and retell.

Being present in the right places still has value. But presence becomes more powerful when the brand gives people something to do, discover, remember or pass on. Maybe that's the better question for brands trying to earn a place in culture. What are we adding that wouldn't exist without us?

Hilton's 2026 Trends Report finds 63% of travellers now name downtime as their main reason to travel, and 56% of US travellers would consider a silent retreat (Hilton, The Zoe Report). Hotels are packaging it as hushpitality, with soundproofed rooms, solo-day itineraries and sleep programmes like Rosewood Schloss Fuschl's Sleep Well.

Rest was always the point of a holiday. What's changed is at home, where wellness tracking has become part of everyday life through the smartwatch, the sleep ring and the daily readiness score. A holiday is the one week you can take them all off, so guests do, and hotels are learning to charge for the silence.

📌 Marriott found four different Gen Z travellers living inside one demographic

Marriott's Luxury Group surveyed 2,800 affluent APAC travellers, 1,200 of them high-earning Gen Z, and found four luxury mindsets with clashing priorities where campaigns tend to assume one. Trips are stretching to nine nights and more than half are self-funded. Every generation segments once the salary lands. This is the first solid look at where affluent Gen Z's money is actually going.

📌 The Gulf's fastest growing spirits category contains no alcohol

Dubai marketplace Drink Dry offers more proof that the zero-proof shelf keeps rising, reporting non-alcoholic spirits sales up 242% in a year across some 700 GCC outlets, while Pernod Ricard lands Beefeater 0.0% in the region by Q3. The category outgrew its trend phase years ago and just keeps compounding.

📌 Sydney hotels posted their best June since 2019 without adding a single room

Sydney hotels just had their best June since 2019, selling 74.1% of rooms at an average nightly rate of AUD244 while the city's room count shrank. Fewer than 800 new rooms are coming before 2028, so the pricing power is built in. Any hotel entering Sydney can charge high rates from day one, so the real test is whether the stay lives up to the price.

📌 A third of American adults now run their lives like a programme

36% of US adults now identify as “Optimizers”, organising their lives around sleep, biomarkers and performance. But that doesn’t mean giving everything up: 74% of Gen Z still drank alcohol in the past six months. The shift isn’t towards abstinence, but fewer occasions with higher expectations. Wellness isn’t replacing going out. It’s raising the bar for when people do.

Ten products, USD212 million in sales, three years after launch, e.l.f. Beauty came knocking with an offer worth up to USD1 billion(CNBC, CNN).

But the product was only part of what Rhode was building. The world came first, glazed skin, grey hoodies, oversized leather, a lip treatment held up to a phone camera. Hailey Bieber gave the internet a visual language and enough room to play with it, so “glaze” meant something before Rhode had much of a range.

Then Rhode gave people ways to participate in that world. A USD16 Krispy Kreme lip treatment turned “glaze” into something you could literally eat, with the strawberry glazed doughnut brought back to match (WWD). The USD38 Lip Case put the product directly onto your phone and sold out in minutes (303 London). Then came a coin-operated Rhode Booth that traded a photo for a free tint, drawing hours-long queues in London and 2.5 million impressions across a Coachella weekend (Desiree Design, Shop Drop Daily). A doughnut, a phone case and a photo booth might not sound particularly complicated, but each gave people something to do with Rhode rather than simply something else to buy.

Strategist Eugene Healey calls packaging the new top of funnel for young brands (Considered Chaos). Rhode took that further. The packaging became the content, the booth became the event and the product became a prop inside a much bigger world.

That's the bit worth paying attention to. Rhode didn't keep asking people to buy into the brand. It kept finding new ways for them to take part in it.

Last weekend, we helped our client InterContinental Sydney turn one of the city's biggest sporting moments into a reason to look up.

Sydney Marathon brought runners and supporters from around the world into the heart of the city, with the Opera House as its finish line. Sitting just moments away and 32 floors above it, is Aster Rooftop Bar, InterContinental Sydney's rooftop overlooking the harbour, race route and skyline.

We supported the PR launch of Finish Line to Skyline, Aster's Sydney Marathon afterparty created in partnership with Stylerunner. On Sunday, the rooftop shifted from race day to recovery with a DJ set, recovery-inspired cocktails including an Electrolyte Martini and Barroca Spritz, a post-race menu and Stylerunner merch for the first 60 guests that booked.

The partnership didn’t start at the rooftop. Across marathon weekend, Stylerunner took over the InterContinental Sydney lobby with a shoe charm station, claw machine, limited-edition merch, healthy bites and a competition to win the Ultimate Her Run Era Weekend Experience, including an Opera View stay and Stylerunner wardrobe.

For us, the opportunity was bigger than promoting an afterparty. It's about putting InterContinental Sydney and Aster into a conversation the whole city is already having, using the hotel's location, rooftop and hospitality to give marathon weekend somewhere to go once the race is over.

The best place for a brand is inside the moment, not beside it.

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Helen Farmer is a best-selling author, journalist and broadcaster on Dubai Eye 103.8FM, where she keeps the city entertained and informed with discussions on everything from finance to fitness every weekday afternoon.When she's not on the air or writing, Helen shares snippets of her life on social media, offering a peek into her world, with a relatable mix of Dubai life, travel, style, and those all too relatable parenting moments.