Damon Stapleton: Creativity. Can we please have a bit of culture around here?
A blog by Damon Stapleton, Chief Creative Officer, Droga5 ANZ
“Home’s where you go when you run out of homes.” – John le Carre
We want to be part of popular culture. A phrase that you hear a million times in advertising. It’s one of those phrases. Like make it go viral. There are many phrases like this in our business. They are said so often and kind of sound good, so we don’t have to think too much about it. But for a second why don’t we think – what is popular culture?
In 1976, the Sex Pistols spat out Anarchy in the UK and the world shook. Punk wasn’t music. It was a fist. A uniform. A movement that smashed through the walls of culture and left the establishment rattled.
That can’t happen again. Or probably never in that way again.
Not because people don’t feel rage. Or alienation. Or hunger. They do. It’s because culture itself has shattered. Into fragments. Into niches. Into endless little rooms where everyone can be loud, but no one can be heard by everyone at the same place at the same time.
Back then, culture was narrow. A few TV channels. A few magazines. A few record shops. A scene in London could suddenly feel global because there were only a handful of doors to walk through.
Now? A million feeds. A billion algorithms. Every subculture has its own stage. No one needs to break into the mainstream. Because there isn’t one.
Movements don’t build anymore. They spike. A TikTok sound goes viral on Monday. Dead by Friday. Micro-movements everywhere. Nothing that unifies. Nothing that terrifies.
Rebellion hasn’t died. It’s just lost its shock value. When everyone is rebelling in their own feed, rebellion stops being a movement. It becomes background noise.
And that matters for advertising to be a part of popular culture. Because it can be done. But you better do it this week. It changes the speed and shape of how we do things. It changes advertising.
Once, brands could ride a single wave for a while. Punk. Grunge. Hip-hop. You could borrow the energy of a movement. Today there are no big waves. Only ripples. Brat lasted a summer. We speak about trends rather than movements. Now, you speak to tribes. Algorithms slice your message into niches. The danger? Trying to belong everywhere means standing for nothing anywhere.
People keep asking me: what’s the next punk?
I am not sure there is one. Or perhaps how it manifests will be very different. Punk wasn’t about sound. It was about scarcity colliding with mass culture. It was about one giant stage, and someone brave enough to spit on it. That stage doesn’t exist anymore. Yes, we all have stages. But I am not sure that stage exists anymore.
Instead of one explosion, we get a thousand sparks. Scattered. Personal. Democratic.
Maybe that’s better. Maybe not. But here’s the truth: a movement can only be massive when the culture it’s fighting against is massive too.
And that kind of culture? It’s gone. Or gone somewhere else and is waiting to be found.
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