I binged Squid Game in two days like everyone else on earth, and when I emerged from my couch, bleary-eyed and emotionally devastated, my first thought was not about the show itself. It was about the fact that 111 million households watched a subtitled Korean drama in its first 28 days and nobody at Netflix predicted it would be their biggest show ever.
It was about the fact that 111 million households watched a subtitled Korean drama in its first 28 days and nobody at Netflix predicted it would be their biggest show ever.
Let that sit for a moment. The most sophisticated content recommendation engine on the planet, powered by more viewer data than any entertainment company in history, did not see this coming. They barely marketed it. The show had no stars that Western audiences recognized. It was not in English. Every traditional metric said it should have been a modest regional hit.
And it became a global phenomenon because of one thing that no algorithm can manufacture: genuine cultural currency.
This is the part that matters for anyone building a brand right now. We are living in an attention economy that is simultaneously infinite and scarce. There is more content than ever, which means attention is harder to capture than ever. But when something does break through, it breaks through completely. There is no middle ground anymore. You are either Squid Game or you are one of the 47 shows Netflix canceled this quarter that you never heard of.
The middle is gone. The barbell is all that remains.
For brands, this means the old strategy of consistent, moderate visibility is increasingly ineffective. You are not building awareness through frequency anymore. You are building it through cultural resonance. And cultural resonance cannot be bought. It can only be earned.
What Squid Game had that most branded content lacks is a point of view so sharp it cuts. It had something to say about capitalism, desperation, and human nature that felt urgently relevant to a global audience living through economic anxiety. It was not trying to be for everyone. It was trying to be true. And truth, it turns out, is universal.
The brands that will break through in this environment are not the ones spending the most on media. They are the ones with something genuinely interesting to say. Something that makes people text their friends: "you have to see this."
That is the brief now. Not "drive awareness." Not "increase consideration." Make something worth talking about. Make something that 111 million people cannot shut up about even though they have to read subtitles to understand it.
Simple, right?