When Culture Is Sponsored By A Corporation - 3 July 2026
This week's thread
The Tour de France. Bacon for breakfast. The word 'jaywalking'. These things feel like permanent fixtures of our world. But they are not organic developments. They are commercial inventions. This is the power of Culture-Shaped-by-Marketing: the rare ability of a brand or industry not just to tap into culture, but to create it from scratch. Most attempts are clumsy and forgotten. The successful ones become so deeply embedded that their commercial origins are erased.
This week's concept
Culture shaped by marketing
Brands largely fail to tap into culture - but a rare few shape it forever.
Thread ONE
Bacon for breakfast
Before the 1920s, Americans ate light breakfasts. To sell more bacon for the Beech-Nut Packing Company, PR pioneer Edward Bernays persuaded doctors to endorse a 'heartier' breakfast. He then publicised this 'scientific' advice, positioning bacon and eggs as the definitive hearty meal.
Why it matters
Frame a desired consumer behaviour as the solution endorsed by respected experts.
Thread TWO
Jaywalking
As cars filled city streets, pedestrian deaths soared. Keen to avoid regulations and blame, the 1920s auto industry ran a PR campaign to stigmatise crossing the road freely. They coined the pejorative term 'jaywalking' to successfully reframe the narrative and paint pedestrians, not drivers, as the problem.
Why it matters
Popularise negative language to reframe a public narrative and shift responsibility.
Thread THREE
Tour de France
In 1903, the sports newspaper L'Auto was losing a circulation war with its rival. To create an unmissable media event and crush the competition, its editor invented a grand, multi-stage bicycle race across France. The spectacle became its own content, guaranteeing newspaper sales and creating a global sporting institution.
Why it matters
Create a proprietary event so epic that it becomes the story, rather than just sponsoring someone else's.
The thread, pulled tight
Most marketing is ephemeral. These examples prove that commercial ideas can become permanent cultural fixtures if the execution is powerful enough.
From the archive
Blue Monday
This modern example of manufactured culture has less wholesome origins. 'Blue Monday' was created in 2005 by a travel company, which used a pseudo-scientific formula to pinpoint the 'most depressing day of the year' and sell holidays.
Continue the thread
What other cultural norm feels like a marketing invention?
Reply with the best example you've seen. I read every response, and the best ones often end up on Uncommon Thread.
Keep pulling the thread