The five drivers of cultural distinction
Building structures that drive ideas as defensible, ownable, and economically useful.
MENTAL MODELS are your monthly pocket-sized blueprints for structured intelligence. Synthesised frameworks derived from current data, research, and cultural trends, and precisely curated to be easily applicable tools as you work and create.
How do you harness creativity in your company? Does it follow a reliable process, or is it adopted informally and without structure?
I recently caught up with a founder of a consumer goods brand who found themselves in an IP itch. Their brand name, for a venture yet to launch, could not be legally protected in its core region of business. The name was considered too close to a popular phrase and therefore was not ‘distinct enough’ to be owned.
This is a common enough story for brands that lean on colloquial slang. Language, aesthetics, and shared references are effective tools for building cultural capital because they create immediate recognition and emotional resonance with their audiences. The art of differentiating well, however, is to hook people in with familiarity and hold their interest with novelty.
Trying to trademark a phrase like “old mate” in Australia, for example, would almost certainly collapse under scrutiny. (That said, Aussie comedy duo Hamish and Andy did manage to launch Australian-themed ‘Old Mates Pub’ in New York City. More on this later.)
After all the time and investment that goes into developing a resonant brand identity, it can feel devastating for a founder to go back to square one. But, often, this isn’t even necessary. What separates an idea as undeniably distinct is just a little more creative processing.
Your idea might only be under-processed.
Differentiation is not necessarily the output of a quirky personality with a rare creative gift. Distinctiveness is created through treatment. And because treatment can be designed, creativity can be applied as a business system that is predictable, repeatable, and scalable in its own right.
This month’s Mental Model addresses exactly this.
Use The Cultural Value Five to build process around your creativity — to be replicable and systemised. In doing so, you can build cultural capital intentionally, under the very real parameters of time, budget, resources, that businesses contend with daily.
This month’s Mental Model:
The Cultural Value Five
Key idea: Distinctiveness is not created through ideation alone, but through processing depth. Ideas become defensible, ownable, and economically useful when they are systematically treated across multiple components.
Use it to: Apply creativity as a repeatable business system rather than an ad-hoc capability.
Core components:
Cultural signal — the raw idea, phrase, trend, or reference.
Context — where, for whom, and under what conditions the idea operates.
Narrative framing — the role or meaning the idea is assigned.
Specificity — deliberate constraints, exclusions, and focus.
Defensibility — legal, cultural, and economic distinctness.
Distinctiveness in creative output is usually the result of just enough minor shifts across these five components. Push an idea too far into originality (there is such a thing) and it risks obscurity, entering avant-garde territory that audiences may not yet have the language or appetite for. Equally, leave an idea under-processed and it crumbles before it can be sustainably applied.
As for Hamish and Andy’s ‘Old Mates Pub’ in New York. Would it have worked in the middle of Sydney? Likely not so well, as you remove its context as a nostalgic haven for Aussie expats living abroad.
Old Mates Pub relies on all components of the Cultural Value Five:
Cultural signal — the brand name plays on a well-loved Australian phrase. High recognition, deeply embedded in everyday vernacular.
Context — New York City, not Australia. Geographic displacement creates asymmetry.
Narrative framing — a food and drinks venue suddenly becomes a cultural outpost and a playful, tongue-in-cheek expression of Australian identity.
Specificity — the concept is tightly bound to Aussie pub culture and reinforced by founder-led cultural credibility (Hamish and Andy).
Defensibility — these signals compound to accrue cultural capital as a gathering place for anyone seeking connection to Australia.
How do you harness creativity in your company? Establish the conditions that allow it to be captured. Consider your brand’s Cultural Value Five. The more markers you can meaningfully activate, the greater leverage you have to build enduring brand equity.
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