The Sociology of Business

The Sociology of Business

How to operationalize a cultural program

From relevance to revenue: turn cultural ambition into coordinated execution

Ana Andjelic's avatar
Ana Andjelic
Mar 23, 2026
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A lot of brands still treat culture as a communications task.

A campaign launches. A collaboration gets attention. A product goes viral. A founder says something quotable. Everyone calls it cultural relevance.

But culture is not an outcome. It’s a cross-functional production model that coordinates execution across the entire organization.

For this execution to be ongoing, repeatable, scalable, and commercially impactful, it cannot sit in marketing. Story, product, merchandising, media, retail, partnerships, timing and finance all work together on one cultural program.

Cultural program is the way a brand organizes itself to produce cultural influence on purpose.

It is a series of decision on what story a brand is telling, what cultural products it will

Behind the paywall, I outline how specifically to operationalize the cultural program (the steps, like defining the business goal or cultural narrative or KPIs) and what it means for the role of each of the departments. Choose one of the paid options to access.

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