UN 421 - Kaley Mullin. Reading Culture Right.

Kaley Mullin is a sociologist and cultural insights practitioner who cofounded Cool Shiny Insights after serving as Head of Youth and Trends at YouTube and working on Disney's ABC Family to Freeform rebrand. In this episode, she explains what semiotics does for brand strategy, how cultural listening differs from social listening, and how to use the residual/dominant/emergent framework to time market moves. The conversation covers why brands consistently enter cultural spaces too late, what made Carhartt's cool-by-accident trajectory so instructive, and what organizational structures most marketing teams are still missing.