WHO REALLY DECIDES WHAT’S COOL?

Somewhere along the way, brands started chasing social media influencers. Big following? Perfect. Send them the product, pay for a post, get a few thousand views and call it a campaign. For most brands, influencers became another way to reach people. A reminder that the brand exists. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you think someone with a million followers can automatically make your brand cool, you’re missing something. Because reach and influence are not the same thing. Someone can make your brand visible without making it desirable. People see the #ad, maybe like it, scroll past it, and move on. The creator gets paid, the brand gets impressions, everyone is happy. But did anyone actually start seeing the brand differently? Probably not.

So who actually decides what becomes cool? Fashion influencers don’t create most trends from scratch. Food influencers don’t suddenly discover what everyone will be eating next. By the time something becomes a TikTok trend, it has usually been happening somewhere else for a while. Trends often start in places most people never see. There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada that explains this better than most marketing presentations ever could. Andy thinks she chose her blue sweater herself. Miranda explains that the decision had already been made for her long before it reached her wardrobe. Someone in fashion had decided what color was going to matter, designers followed, buyers followed, and eventually that choice reached Andy. She just happened to be at the end of the chain. And this is how culture often works. There are people who get attention, and there are people who decide what is worth paying attention to in the first place.

For years, especially in the early 2000s, Zara was mostly seen for what it was: fast fashion. Cheap, accessible, everywhere. But over time, something changed. Instead of only trying to get celebrities or influencers to wear Zara, the brand started investing heavily in the creative world around fashion. Photographers, stylists, models, art directors, people whose names might mean nothing to the average shopper but mean everything inside the industry. Photographers such as David Sims began working with the brand. Later, names like Steven Meisel appeared in Zara campaigns, alongside some of fashion’s most recognisable models. And suddenly, the conversation around Zara started changing. It wasn’t just about what was hanging in the store anymore. It was about how Zara looked. The photography. The casting. The styling. The campaigns. The people surrounding the brand. Zara understood something important: if you want people to change their perception of you, sometimes you need to influence the people who influence perception. You don’t always need the biggest audience. You need the right people to start paying attention.

So, who should brands actually be chasing? It comes down to one question: Who influences the people your customers listen to? If you’re a food brand, maybe it isn’t the food influencer with 500,000 followers. Maybe it’s the chef everyone in your city wants to work with. If you’re a fashion brand, maybe it isn’t the Instagram model with the biggest following. Maybe it’s the photographer whose work everyone saves. The stylist whose looks keep getting copied. The designer whose opinion people in the industry actually care about. These people might never post your product with a discount code. And that’s exactly the point.

Cultural influence doesn’t always look like advertising. Sometimes it looks like someone wearing your product without explaining why. Sometimes it’s a stylist choosing your brand for a shoot. Sometimes it’s a photographer making your campaign look like something people want to be part of. Sometimes it’s one person in the right room saying, “I actually like this.” And then someone else hears it. And someone else sees it. And slowly, the perception changes. The important part is that this takes time. Real cultural relevance usually doesn’t happen in a month. Sometimes it takes a year. Sometimes longer. This isn’t the strategy you use when you need 50,000 impressions by Friday. If you need quick awareness, sure, hire the influencer, send the product, run the campaign.

But if you want to build a brand that people actually care about, you have to think beyond reach. Find the people who shape taste before taste becomes mainstream. Build relationships with them. Put your brand in their world. Let the influence travel. Because by the time everyone is asking “Where did this come from?”, it’s already too late to start building.