How to Capitalize on a Cultural Moment
In content strategy, cultural moments are the ultimate test. They arrive without warning, they move fast, and they reward teams who are already prepared.
As a creative digital agency, we've had a front-row seat to several of these moments while collaborating on content with the Elizabeth Taylor estate, like Taylor Swift honoring her with a song and releasing a music video, or Margot Robbie walking the red carpet while wearing her jewelry. Here, Funkhaus Head of Content Erin Himes shares what we’ve learned about how to effectively capitalize on a cultural moment.
Preparation happens long before the moment
The most important work you can do actually happens before anything happens. When a cultural moment strikes, the brands that win aren't the ones who suddenly work harder, they're the ones who already know their subject better than anything.
"House of Taylor has done the real internal work," says Erin. "They understand Elizabeth's core values, and they know exactly how they want to preserve her legacy and build her brand into the future." With them, we've spent years working together on their content-driven website and social presence — so when a cultural moment arrives and millions of people suddenly want to know more, the infrastructure is already there, including a website full of well-researched stories; social profiles that consistently reflect the brand's core values; and a clear sense of who Elizabeth is and how she connects to the present day.
That clarity of brand and internal alignment is what makes everything else possible, because when the team is moving fast, everyone is moving in the same direction.
When you get a heads-up, use it
Sometimes you get a little lead time — when that happens, you have to jump on it. Not to create something brand new, but instead to make sure your existing content is ready to work for you.
When we catch word of a potential moment, our team spends a couple of hours doing exactly this: updating trackable links across web and social, making sure that profile highlight icons were current, and pinning relevant, recent pieces to the top of the profile so that anyone landing there would encounter it immediately. Utilizing best practices across socials, as well as editorial website design that makes content easy to surface and navigate, is what allows this kind of rapid preparation to actually pay off.
First, engage
When a moment breaks, your first job is to be present, even if that presence is lightweight. That could mean just getting a still up from the music video the hour it drops — the goal isn't to have the most polished piece of content in the world, it's just to be a visible part of the moment.
Community engagement matters as well, so it also looks like showing up in the comments of relevant TikToks, and liking and responding to posts so that real people in the conversation can see the brand is alive and engaged. "Our team at Funkhaus is proactive about commenting on people's content, not just responding to our own," Erin notes. Leaving genuine comments of support and shared excitement puts the brand in the room without requiring any new content at all.
Then, go deeper
The first 24 hours matter, but so does the long tail. Robust info that taps into what people are searching for and deeper storytelling that continues to connect a brand's story to the moment at hand — that content earns its place long after the initial spike fades.
"The framework for us is as follows: fast and lightweight immediately, timely and substantial in the days that follow," Erin says. "When we put this into practice around a big moment in March, the results reflected it — TikTok views increased by 560% over the previous week."
Use paid strategy and cross-team collaboration to amplify
When organic momentum is high, paid posts can extend it. We’ll often launch a paid ad around a moment where eyes are on a brand, running it for a few weeks and helping us capture attention that was already elevated.
Cultural moments reward the teams who have invested in a true collaborative process — building trust with each other long before the moment arrives, because there's no time to build it in the moment. When our content team flags an interesting video and a brand's PR team can immediately engage, that kind of frictionless cross-pollination is worth more than any single piece of content.
The bigger picture
There's a version of this kind of brand management where you're constantly reaching — trying to shoehorn your client into every trending topic, hoping something sticks. But consciously choosing not to engage with moments that don't align makes you available for the moments that do.
“We’re always thinking about how to bring our clients into cultural conversations, but we never want it to feel unnatural or forced, so we hold for the right moment,” says Erin. “If you’re lucky, the right moment finds you, and staying true to the brand pays off.” The goal is for cultural moments to feel like they're orbiting the brand, not like the brand is chasing the moment. When you've done the foundational work, that happens naturally.