Culture is not translated. It is decoded.

I gave this keynote in Kuala Lumpur. The long title is Cultural Intelligence: how AI decodes real-time culture to drive smarter brand decisions. What follows is the thread. The deck is at the end, to read in full.

Three cities

Bogotá, Mexico City, Singapore. Twenty-plus countries. In each one I learned the same thing a different way: culture does not show up in the brief. It shows up when a word changes meaning at a border.

Vélez entered Mexico with chaqueta. In Colombia that is a jacket. In Mexico it is something else. There you say chamarra. A whole market, one word.

In Singapore, kopi is not coffee. It is a code. Kopi, kopi-O, kopi-C, kopi gao, kopi siew dai. Ten percent is the cup. Ninety percent is community, ritual, identity.

Free RAM

After I sold the company I had time. Free mental RAM. I started to study culture seriously. Not to translate it. To decode it.

If a human needs years to read a culture, how does a brand do it in weeks?

What you cannot see

Culture is everything we learn by living inside a society. We absorb, repeat, normalize. Ninety percent sits below the water: values, beliefs, norms, assumptions. A like is not just a like. A save is not just a save. A comment is not just a comment.

Cultural intelligence does not observe. It interprets.

Most brands act as tourists, not as locals.

The speed of the scroll

Today culture moves at the speed of the scroll. While you read this paragraph, stories, searches, videos are born. Thousands of micro-cultures are invented, mutated, or killed. Brands move in quarters: brief, approval, production, launch. Monday’s insight is dead by Friday.

The tools we use are lagging indicators. Focus groups, surveys, trend reports. They tell you what already happened.

The real question is different: how do we move at the right speed so the information is still alive when we use it?

AI will not save us if we use it wrong

The first reflex is easy: AI will save us. No. Brands are using AI wrong. Gen AI produces volume. Volume is noise. You are not winning by speaking louder. You are losing more efficiently.

There are three jobs: listen, interpret, act. Listen to Reddit, TikTok, Google, Instagram. Interpret meaning, not mentions. Decide while the signal is still alive.

That is what I built with Kulta: listen, decode, decide.

Polaroid, Fanta, Prime, Duolingo: when a brand moves like a local, you feel it. When it does not, you feel that too.

Local beats loud. Don’t translate. Decode.

The full deck is below.