You’re Not Global, You’re Just Online
Popular culture is being shaped far beyond the West. Are you paying attention?
This week’s BackYard POV is brought to you by our first guest, Gina England.
Gina is a London-based Researcher and Strategist specializing in fashion, music and lifestyle industries. She especially enjoys creative projects that give a platform to underrepresented voices and sets new standards for how brands show up.
As a Lecturer at the University of the Arts London, she guides and learns from the next generation of creatives on a daily basis.
When Lagos, São Paulo, and Tokyo are setting the pace, why do brands still default to London, Paris, New York? The global majority doesn’t need Western permission to validate its cultural exports.
And yet, Western organisations still behave like Lagos or São Paulo are “emerging markets” waiting to arrive. If you think that way, you’re in a bubble. And bubbles burst.
Here’s the tension: being online isn’t the same as being present. Paying a popular Nigerian artist to star in a campaign is visibility. Supporting tours, investing in infrastructure, co-creating is the real exchange. One borrows. The other builds. If you’re only taking and don’t have a presence on the ground, you’re not global. You’re just online.
We could look at this through travel: Brazil’s viral tourism boom saw a nearly 50% surge in arrivals this year, driven by Baile Funk TikTok edits, favela party clips and beach football on Copacabana Beach that pulled tourists in by sheer FOMO.
We could also look at this through food and drinks — think ube, matcha, Thai iced tea that invade coffee shops and social media.
Or through beauty - think Bakhour, K-beauty, African sponge nets, etc.
But let’s focus on three clear signals: music, fashion, and sport. The easiest doorways for audiences and the most obvious entry points for brands trying to ‘tap in.’
MUSIC
The Sonic Bridge: Lagos ↔ São Paulo
Music is the cleanest entry point to any culture. No shared language needed. Songs move faster than ever, going viral in seconds. But its culture isn’t just built online, it takes shape in the rooms, clubs, and streets where it’s played. Communities rally around sound long before brands catch up. Streaming is passive. Participation is real. That’s why artists have stopped waiting for Western validation.
Afrobeats, once a “local” sound, is now one of the fastest-growing umbrella genres in the world. Within it, Afropop is especially interesting: the next wave is being shaped by sounds outside the West.
Baile Funk is fast becoming Afropop’s newest muse. Native Mag nailed it perfectly, pointing to Skales’ “D.L.L.Y (Dance Like Lamine Yamal)”, a track built entirely on Brazilian Funk beats. This cross-pollination is part of a longer history linking Lagos and São Paulo, tied through diaspora, rhythm, and shared cultural memory. That relationship is only set to deepen: a new Nigeria-Brazil flight route under the new BASA deal cements this creative dialogue.
Artists also know the power of home. Local touring is back in focus among West African and South American artists. It’s a deliberate, culturally rooted choice. The fanbase is the foundation.
Odumodublvck toured Nigerian universities to launch his mixtape in collaboration with Main Land Block Party. Asake’s Africa-only tour builds on the same logic.
Across the Atlantic, Bad Bunny staged a three-month concert run in Puerto Rico. Residents first, tourists after. Fans flew in, Airbnbs sold out, and the city has become a global stage. In a New York Times article, Jamie Lane, chief economist at AirDNA, said: “You see this kind of bump when it’s the Paris Olympics or the Super Bowl, but those are short stints. This is the first time we’ve seen it consistently, in one city.”
WHO’S ACTUALLY BUILDING AND WHO’S BORROWING?
Case Study: Bad Bunny x adidas
adidas got the Bad Bunny play mostly right. They gave him space to move beyond “ambassador” and actually shape the product, cementing his role as more than just a face on a billboard. The silhouettes hit and the alignment with Messi positioned him as a global icon.
But not everything landed. The Mercedes-Benz F1 tie-in felt more like spectacle than story. And when adidas recruited international creatives to work on his Puerto Rico projects, fans noticed the contradiction: how can you claim to amplify his world if you overlook local talent?
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THEM?
Visibility matters. Expanding an artist’s audience matters. But it’s not enough. Invest in infrastructure, co-create, platform the ecosystem. One-off deals are extraction. Support local touring, events, and talents: that’s exchange.
FASHION
Where resale culture actually lives
Fashion’s global map is even clearer. Second-hand went mainstream in the West. Sustainability, economic necessity, and conscious consumerism pushed it forward. Platforms like Depop and Vinted, plus charity shops, car boots, thrift stores, flea markets are all part of that shift. But after Trump-era taxes, TikTok unlocked a new level. Japanese ebay: warehouse livestreams, proxy sellers, and archive drops that make Western resale look tame.
Hypebeast sneaker wars gave way to 2020s collectors hunting Y2K silhouettes and long-forgotten grails. Effort and knowledge equals clout. Japan has been ahead for decades. From Tokyo thrift stores to Shibuya archive dealers, they’ve built the deepest vaults of luxury fashion outside the West. The “Happy Victims” photo series documented this in the ’90s, but now those collections spill online. What looks like a new trend to the West is just Japan opening the door.
Why Japan? Strict counterfeit laws, rigorous retail culture, and a reverence for preservation make it one of the safest, richest resale markets. Collectors now fly in with empty suitcases to hunt, not just shop.
WHO’S ACTUALLY BUILDING AND WHO’S BORROWING?
Case Studies: eBay and Buyee
Which brings us back to platforms. What about the ones that are purely online? If your only value is “connecting buyer to seller,” then you’re just a middleman. eBay cracked open the vault, but does little to support the archivists who built it. Buyee, by contrast, drives traffic back to seller pages, redistributing visibility and value. Most platforms still stop short of investing in curators, stories, and context.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THEM?
The bigger question: what role should these platforms play beyond transactions? Are they investing beyond the interface? Shipping, storytelling, experiences? And create pathways for buyers to understand the culture behind the clothes to facilitate exchange, not extraction. Anything less is just tapping in online.
SPORT
Practice beyond the look: how communities keep sport real
While every brand claims to sit “at the intersection of culture, style, and sport”, most don’t, genuinely. They borrow the aesthetic, not the practice. Without the communities making your product relevant, you’re just another logo on a shelf.
Participation is what gives a product its meaning. Real culture is built in streets, gyms, and parks where people actually practice. For many, sport is infrastructure for identity and community. The subcultures built around it carry their own codes, language, and soundtracks. You don’t need to speak the same language to play football. Aesthetic may spark interest, but participation builds culture.
Muay Thai shorts became fashion, but the culture only exists in practice. Moving, training, showing up. This is participation. Some take it further, traveling to Thailand to train, connect with gyms, and join the communities that shaped the sport. Without this connection, the shorts are just merch. Only when you move, train, and belong do they carry their full weight.
Just like Muay Thai, skate culture isn’t bought or rented. Crews carve their own rules, spaces and codes. Skateboarding is no longer California’s monopoly. Every city builds its own scene, claiming streets and scraps of concrete as skate parks. Lagos has WafflesnCream. India has HolyStoked. And in Ethiopia, their first all-female skate crew (EGS) is turning heads. They define their aesthetic, sound, and rules while creating space for other girls to skate. Crews become subcultures, and subcultures become brands, dropping merch, imagery, and content fashion scrambles to co-opt. EGS’s recognition from Vogue shows culture built this way reaches far beyond borders without losing its roots.
Ethiopian Girl Skaters for Dazed MENA
WHO’S ACTUALLY BUILDING AND WHO’S BORROWING?
Case Studies: RedBull and Patta
The difference is simple.
RedBull is the blueprint truly global brand. They invest directly in communities through their DIY program, building skateparks from the Philippines to Khayelitsha. They host tournaments, document local talent, create content, and provide platforms for those shaping culture on the ground.
Whereas Patta’s series of Muay Thai short collabs with Thai Based brand Fairtex? They look cool but don’t build anything. As HighSnob writer Tayler Wilson put it, “No sport seems off limits when it comes to a fashion infiltration nowadays.” It’s surface-level. Nothing supported, nothing lasting.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THEM?
Participation beats visibility. Unlike music or fashion, you can’t inhabit Muay Thai or skating from afar. Movement = culture. Show up where it’s happening. Fund it, support it, keep it alive after the cameras leave. In other words, sport is the ultimate test of exchange VS extraction because you can’t fake engagement.
The Diaspora Loop
And if you can’t be on the ground, diaspora is the bridge. They’re translators, feeding back in real time. Diaspora is your only honest access point.
Some of the most exciting Western projects are diaspora-driven. Look at Jah Jah Paris. Their collaborations don’t dilute their brand. The partnerships have strengthened their brand without losing creative control.
HOMECOMING’s work with Pioneer DJ and Alpha Theta for the Start From Scratch series gives diaspora creators tools, networks, and confidence.
Telfar ignores the mainstream fashion calendar entirely, dropping collections on their platform Telfar TV. And when they partner with brands like Converse or UGG? They remain in full control of the story.
Let’s Be Honest
As strategists, researchers, and creatives, or in FKA Twigs’ words, “thinkers”, we can’t keep looking outside the West just for inspiration. That’s not collaboration. That’s othering. Markets beyond London, Paris, and New York have their own systems, histories, and culture. Western formats don’t translate automatically. We have to engage as equals and co-create in local languages and fonts.
Stop calling your brand “global” if your map only covers London, Paris, and New York. Stop labeling something “local” when HQ Googled it without local teams.
If you want to know what’s next, go where it’s happening. Don’t just consume. Collaborate. Speak the language. Show up. Build. Fund. Lift. And if you’re not doing this, the real question remains: Are you really global, or are you just online?