Last time, I wrote about The Circle of Cultural Trust—how creators and companies rise when they build, deliver, and reinvest in the communities they serve.
Maintaining that circle of trust is crucial to long-term survival. It keeps the culture on your side.
Break that trust, and you end up like Vimeo, which lost its inroads with the creative community.
But trust, on its own, isn’t enough to keep the culture. People can trust you—and still move on.
Plenty of people “trust” Patti LaBelle’s music, but she can no longer sell out Madison Square Garden.
And that’s not necessarily an age thing.
Jay-Z remains near the top of hip-hop. And Madonna just wrapped a tour that sold 1.1 million tickets and grossed $225 million.
So while being young is an advantage in maintaining cultural support, aging artists, creators, and companies can keep that support—if they close The Culture Gap.
Defining the Culture Gap
The Culture Gap occurs when companies or creators who built their success by aligning with a specific culture start to lose touch with the very culture that made them successful.
Because culture constantly evolves, this gap forms at the intersection between the speed of cultural change and the slower pace at which individuals and institutions adapt.
No person or brand can ever fully keep up with an entire culture—but they can mind the gap: stay close enough not to lose relevance, or occasionally even anticipate where the culture is heading.
Importantly, this isn’t just about missing new technology, trends, or aesthetics. It’s about losing connection to the shared meaning that culture rests on. The further removed you become from that meaning, the wider the Culture Gap grows—and the more members of your community you lose.
Vimeo is a clear example. Yes, they broke what I call The Circle of Cultural Trust by failing to reinvest the community’s faith back into creators. But they also failed to close The Culture Gap—making Staff Picks, creator tools, and filmmaker initiatives less central to their brand.
As a result, filmmakers and creators migrated to YouTube, Patreon, and TikTok—platforms that, at minimum, understood and spoke to their needs. By the time Vimeo tried to pivot back with headlines like “Vimeo Wants to Let Every Creator Launch Their Own Netflix,” the gap was already too wide.
The culture had moved on.
How to Evolve with the Culture
If the Culture Gap is the distance between a creator and the culture, the question becomes:
How do you close that gap? How do you evolve alongside the culture that built you?
Here are five ways I recommend evolving with the culture:
1. Stay Close to the Feedback Loop
Culture moves fast—faster now than ever.
We’re living in the era of micro-cycles: memes and trends that used to last a year now die in three months. The only way to keep up is to build a feedback loop between yourself and your community.
This can come through social listening, real-time dashboards, or simply tracking a roster of aligned creators. But it has to be built into your weekly routine—because it’s easy to let “other work” distract you from the data that matters most.
A recent example: Damola Adamolekun, who is famously turning round Red Lobster by actively measuring customer satisfaction, listening to feedback, and testing new ideas in real time. That’s closing the Culture Gap through active listening (and execution!).
2. Reinvest in Emerging Mediums
Every generation has its own cultural playground.
For Gen X, an explosion of cable channels made TV—and getting on it—desirable and achievable. For Millennials, the rise of the internet and social media created an entirely new second life. For Gen Z, algorithms now dictate both consumption and connection.
As a creator or business, you have to recognize those tectonic shifts and set up shop on the next one—before it happens.
Every smart brand was on Instagram in March 2020—but how many were already experimenting with TikTok? Not because anyone should’ve predicted its pandemic-era explosion, but because platforms like Triller, Clubhouse, and of course, TikTok, were already testing grounds for Gen Z. Those who were watching closely were ready to move.
This principle applies everywhere. Vice’s gonzo-style YouTube journalism helped them dominate early digital video. Complex’s shift from magazine to website to experiential brand has kept it relevant for two decades.
On the flip side, as digital video competition rose, Vice launched an old-school cable channel instead of experimenting with podcasts, short-form content, or creator partnerships. It would go on to declare bankruptcy.
3. Empower the Next Generation Inside the Brand
If you helped kick off a culture—or have simply been riding with it for a long time—it’s almost impossible to see the next shift before someone new does. The president of a record label won’t discover a new artist before the kids on the stoop do.
So if you’re trying to mind the Culture Gap, you occasionally have to hand the mic over to new voices.
For creators, this means collabs, crossovers, and guest hosts. For companies, it means creator partnerships, community-led campaigns, and incubators.
Terrell Grice, host of The Terrell Show on YouTube, does this brilliantly. He stays close to the culture by interviewing new and emerging artists—many of whom, like Coco Jones, rise to stardom and bring their audiences with them.
By contrast, BET dabbled in digital content but never fully empowered internet-native voices to shape the brand online. That left the door open for Blavity, CultureCon, and Complex to own that space instead.
4. Build Flexible Formats
Cultural habits change faster than production pipelines.
The creators who best mind the Culture Gap aren’t those spinning up something new every time a new platform drops. No, they’re the ones who design modular formats that can be remixed across mediums.
Take The Read podcast: its foundation is social commentary. That’s been repackaged into live tours, books, specials, and partnerships—all without losing its core identity.
Contrast that with early podcast leaders built on serialized storytelling. When YouTube became essential to podcasting, those narrative formats couldn’t adapt. Now, the top of the podcasts charts belongs to conversational, long-form shows that translate seamlessly between audio and video.
5. Evolve the Business Model with Audience Behavior
When audience behavior shifts, so must the business model.
As media moved from TV to digital, Jeff Zucker famously warned about trading “analog dollars for digital dimes.” He saw a costly shift coming—and embraced it anyway.
Within digital, we’ve seen that same evolution play out:
- The blogging era monetized via banner ads.
- The social era depended on branded content.
- The web 3.0 era thrives on direct subscriptions and payments.
And now, creators like MrBeast are moving beyond selling content altogether—turning their content into advertising for their physical products like candy bars and (potentially?) credit cards.
Vimeo did the opposite. When its early creator investments didn’t generate quick returns, it didn’t evolve with its audience—it chose a new audience. And in doing so, broke the company.
Lessons for Creators and Media Companies
With these principles, any creator or company built on culture can maintain its relationship with it.
By definition, creators and founders are innovators. They have to keep their ears to the ground—always ready to ship, test, and evolve in public. Those who don’t will cease to be innovators, and the gap between them and their audience will only grow.
For culture-driven creators—especially those rooted in Black culture—this is even more vital. Our communities shift faster, experiment harder, and adapt earlier than most. Yesterday’s resonance isn’t guaranteed today.
But minding the Culture Gap doesn’t mean chasing every trend or meme. It means building a simple, repeatable framework that keeps you aligned with a culture that never stops moving.
In Closing
This concludes my two-part thesis on The Culture Covenant.
Part 1: The Circle of Cultural Trust: build, deliver, and reinvest in your community.
Part 2: The Culture Gap: stay aligned with your community as it evolves.
Or, in shorter terms:
Keep the circle. Close the gap.
That’s how creators, and companies, stay in rhythm with the culture long enough to shape it.