Ad Age is marking Black History Month 2025 with our fifth-annual Honoring Creative Excellence package. (Read the introduction and all the essays here.) Today, guest editor Kaleeta McDade turns the spotlight to Damien Baines, head of experiential and creative development at Meta, who writes about building resonant campaigns on platforms of culture.
There is so much discussion about culture in general, but particularly in marketing. We proudly proclaim when something is deemed worthy that it’s “for the culture,” lending it a larger importance than our own personal affection for it.
And I’d be remiss not to acknowledge how the fear of cultural appropriation or culture wars have entered the chat. But whose culture is it? How do we best work with and even “elevate” something that is essentially a natural, human way of being?
As an experiential innovator, I understand culture as the customs, arts, social institutions and other material output of a particular social group. Culture can also be thought of as the platform of engagement of any social group, carrying its beliefs and values. The most effective marketers stand firmly on that platform and exchange deeply with the people who built it.
Meaningful exchanges happen when the people who create culture are given the freedom to co-create with partner brands. In working with collaborators such as Es Devlin for an immersive installation about the act of storytelling or the artists of the lowriding community for Meta Lab’s approach to experiential retail, I began our conversations with a simple insight or universal human truth. From there, I let the collaborator map the journey to our desired endpoint. I never dictate how to get there but I serve as a compass, directing the work toward our campaign goals.
The outcome? Everything we consider best-in-class: authenticity, inclusivity and human truths that resonate with people. Authenticity is the natural consequence of true collaboration. If a collaboration begins with clarity and autonomy, the resulting work will reflect both its intent and the agency of the collaborator.
The shared, resonant experience will foster a sense of belonging and inclusivity, which we also understand to be critical to well-being. And, when a project is built upon the platform of culture, the work reveals the deeper, connective truth that every human is simply another version of every other human.
