Platform13

🔋 Culture has never moved according to traditional marketing calendar windows and brands shouldn’t either. To address this, @leila_fataar has refocused #Platform13_ for Q2 of the 21st century. 🔋 Leila founded Platform13 in response to the problem facing brands: how to become and remain relevant in a world shaped by ever changing political, technological, societal and behavioural shifts. This is still our role, but since then, one truth we have always championed and now has become impossible to ignore: while one-off projects can create one off brand moments of ‘hype’, culture is living, breathing and constantly evolving. Cultural relevance for a brand happens when people advocate for it, defend it, work for it, buy it and champion it at all times, and especially outside a paid campaign. Culture-led brands build authority and legacy, and not just hype. From 2026, Platform13 has refocused to support organisations and brands move away from fleeting and/or one off campaign spikes....and towards brand systems designed to adapt as culture, fandoms, communities and behaviours shift with creative frameworks that flex across markets and moments to drive ongoing and consistent relevance. We partner with brands navigating cultural and generational shifts, relevance erosion, growth inflection points, innovation and future, brand evolution beyond traditional positioning. Our work has always spanned categories, markets and cultures, but always grounded in relevant real world cultural context. Explore the updated Platform13 website featuring frameworks like The Culture Stack and the Cultural Pipeline from her book, our new approach using Cultural Agility to hack the Corporate Algorithm, our pioneering Cultural Positioning methodology and the two offers - Cultural Branding and The Cultural Reset - that can support brands, businesses and organisations become and maintain relevance in this era of #CultureLedBrands 💚 Platform13.net 📈📈📈📈

So you want the brand to be culturally relevant? But, if it starts with a brief, the decision that makes it difficult to land has already been made upstream. For big brands it’s in the planning cycle, the approval process, the success metrics built for a different era - #TheCorporateAlgorithm Your agencies deliver ‘cultural’ research through social listening, used an AI-filtered-and-influenced consumer insight for your ad campaign or a celebrity in your content or perhaps a new ‘cultural’ media partner or influencer activation. And then, there could be feedback without the experience to feed back credibly. You may even have a one off, one moment hit. But the distance between the brand and the cultures it’s trying to be part of, that matter to its audiences stays exactly the same. Because cultural relevance is not a marketing output. It’s what happens when people advocate for a brand, defend it, work for it, share it, talk about it, buy it and champion it at all times, and especially outside a paid campaign. That’s soft power that drives always on growth. You have to earn that, through decisions made upstream of the brief. This carousel maps the system behind brands that are Culture-Led and the three different types of brand - Corporate, Challenger and Cultural - that need it for different reasons. I write about this and more in my book, #CultureLedBrands and is the foundation for everything I do - senior strategic and culture advisory and Leadership Reset and a refocused @platform13_ #CulturalRelevance #BrandLeadership #TheCorporateAlgorithm

It’s Q2 of the 21st century and here are some culture-led realities that need to be faced: ❓How do brands and businesses become resilient in this new polarising world order and where the masses are conscious? ❓What does it mean for organisations dealing with a multi-and-inter generational workforce and consumers at the same time? ❓ How do brands resonate in and with multi-and-cross cultural communities and fandoms credibly, be discovered across a fragmented media landscape, with the multi market nuances and contexts needed for resonance and relevance? ❓ How do businesses prepare for organisational evolution ready for new growth opportunities as they shift to new multi-category places and multi-market spaces? We are truly in transformational times, where the only certainty is uncertainty. And, while this multi-reality landscape may feel out of all our control, for brands, businesses and organisations, staying static is a growth, relevance, resilience and organisational risk. ⚫️ To change business outcomes and brand output, you have to change the inputs. So I have added real world interventions, designed to shift how leaders and their teams make decisions and how brand teams build brands in this CULTURE-LED era: 🔴The Leadership Reset 🟡The Cultural Reset with @platform13_ Links in bios 📈

Today in 2018, a few months after our launch, @leila_fataar shared her vision at @d_and_ad - it’s never been more relevant 🗣️🔊💚 #platform13_ Full talk in the commentary section of our site. 🔋

Content masterclass 🎯

Moments like Coachella, the Super Bowl, the Met Gala and the World Cup have never been “cultural moments.” They’ve always been calendar moments inside music, NFL, fashion and football cultures at mainstream phase of #TheCulturalPipeline #CultureLedBrands show up inside that specific culture, credibly, at all times, and deliver cut through and formula breaking work in these scale calendar moments - that’s what separates activity that is legendary from the ones that are interchangeable. This happens because they have built #CulturalAuthority by compounding #CulturalRelevance across the Cultural Pipeline from sub, to emerging to mainstream culture, not bought inside a two-weekend activation window. The past week has seen round after round of Coachella activation write-ups. Most brands ran the same formulaic experiential playbook: ✔️an offsite House (or Haus, for ‘differentiation’), ✔️the same creator brief and shot list - delivering almost identical ‘creator / influencer’ output, ✔️a celebrity drop-in, ✔️a data-led and/or AI-personalised shareable asset mechanic, and ✔️a theme of “community connection” rendered in nostalgic look and feel. The standout for us was Bieber’s unexpected formula breaking headliner set featuring YouTube - planned or not. It got better placement and sharability in one unscripted moment than any activation managed across two weekends. It will be talked about for years. Most brands can’t close that distance from an activation budget. The question is whether they’re building something that one day could. That’s why Platform13 has refocused - to deliver cut through and formula breaking systems for brands.🔋

Nice to catch up with @j9hearn - one of our fave ex-clients esp our long term @vans collab and friend of the fam at #Platform13_

An excerpt from my book #CultureLedBrands written in 2024 and what I have been talking about even before that, makes this ‘new’ 2026 stance of ‘Analog / IRL’ by big brands and big voices already late…and worse for those brands who are over investing in trad influencer and online only strategies this year. That is why I created #TheCulturalReset with @platform13_ The Cultural Reset is designed for the teams that need to get there first. Ideal for marketing, go-to-market and innovation teams expected to move at cultural pace and break formulae and category norms. Culture has always moved across #TheCulturalPipeline, emerging cultural movements and new expressions within established cultural territories bubbling up in response to the mainstream - and trad influencer marketing and pay to play media is mainstream - disrupting it, interrupting it, breaking formulas through experimenting with creativity. The outcome: formula-breaking work that sets the brand up to show up credibly as culture moves to mainstream. This type of of emerging Cultural Intelligence is: - For Corporate Brands, inside #TheCorporateAlgorithm that resists it. - For Challenger Brands when the Cultural Relevance they’ve earned is under pressure from scaling, from acquisition, from The Corporate Algorithm. - And for Cultural Brands when the cultural territory they came from is shifting and they need to stay embedded in it, not just associated with it. Mail [email protected] to balance short term activity and plan for the mid term.

#cr8torweekafrica 2026 by @cr8torcon | 🇿🇦 Jozi / Gauteng, South Aaaaaaahhh / Mzansi 🇿🇦 I come back from a week in Johannesburg even more convinced of my home country, and the African continent as a whole, as one of the most important global cultural engines now and in the future. I have been talking about the rise of the Global South since forever. It’s clear that these territories must no longer be referred to as ‘emerging’ markets, but should be taken seriously by brands as ‘growth’ markets. It was inspiring to connect with this new (and free) generation of creators and creatives across music, art, design and style. Proud of their heritage and cultures, reimagining creativity for today and tomorrow, their work firmly rooted in Africa, innovative and relevant for a global audience. But this time, it is important that these homegrown resources are not extracted, but invested in and protected, as it spreads and influences globally. I feel excited and confident about these creative and cultural communities being fostered because its is in the hands of people like @_ambidextrx_ and his incredible team - @_rooat @nalediled @siya_molemela and @nathi_n.s (missing from the pic) - all deeply motivated to build a better industry, connecting and collaborating with others to drive the thing forward, with care and intention. I feel honoured and privileged to share my knowledge through my book #cultureledbrands, a keynote and on a panel of heavyweights: @sunshineshibs @therealdjkenzhero @pure_jeaniuss and Andrew Knocker, moderated by the wonderful @lootlove2 . The invite-only audience for day 1 were keen to learn and asked loads of questions…and it worked both ways. I learned a LOT from my fellow panelists, sharing our stories and experiences across culture, creativity and corporate, at the intersection of the Global North and Global South. Across the rest of #CWA, the energy built and continued…will share more soon 🔋📈

🚨EP9 of #CulturalVoicesPOD with @chop.per is LIVE 🚨 Remarkable careers don’t just happen. They are defined by a person’s Culture Stack, global culture and The Culture. It takes a bit of risk, an ability to adapt and a lot of resilience. In this episode, I speak with Mark Fleming, co-founder of @rosielee.group - a creative agency known for using culture to create cut through storytelling beyond the creative. Their long term clients include Nike, where they created #AirMaxDay and was part of the football debut for the brand. Other clients include global heavyweights like Google, Converse and Marvel. We talk about growing up in Birmingham, navigating dyslexia, and share how independence shaped our creative instincts early on. Mark also reflects on the role of support – how having someone in your corner can keep you grounded, and shift the way you face challenges. Watch on YouTube. Link in bio. 🔉 Powered by @platform13_ #platform13_ #ACulturalStateOfMind #LeilaFataar

🇿🇦Beyond proud, honoured and excited to be asked to be part of @cr8torcon AFRICA week in Johannesburg🇿🇦 This is exactly what I meant in my book, in the last chapter titled ‘THE WIN WIN of cultural relevance in business growth’. In the subsection, THE GREAT RESET, I shared my WHAT IFs and number 1 is: What if we start with rethinking the countries in the Global South as overexploited not underdeveloped? It’s initiatives like this that will continue to support the Global South finally RISING. So happy and grateful to be able to share my knowledge as part of this and to learn much, in and about my home country. We kick off on 24th March with the Corporate Panel, which I am part of…the topic is essential to respectfully and positively co-create the future. “The CWA 2026 Corporate Panel gathers visionary leaders redefining how culture and corporate power responsibly co-create. We explore culture-to-corporate best practice — where cultural insight drives growth, governance, and innovation — and corporate-to-culture approach to working partnerships — where institutions build systems that protect, resource, and scale creative economies that leverage responsibly. The conversation now deepens: from culture to business, from messaging to mechanisms, from visibility to value creation. For Creators. By Cr8tors.” #CR8TORWEEKAFRICA #CWA #CR8TORCON

The CWA 2026 Corporate Panel gathers visionary leaders redefining how culture and corporate power responsibly co-create. We explore culture-to-corporate best practice — where cultural insight drives growth, governance, and innovation — and corporate-to-culture approach to working partnerships — where institutions build systems that protect, resource, and scale creative economies that leverage responsibly. The conversation now deepens: from culture to business, from messaging to mechanisms, from visibility to value creation. For Creators. By Cr8tors.