Welcome to this week’s edition ofCulture Wire, a newsletter brought to you by Singapore-based pop culture and lifestyle marketing agency Culture Group.
In this week’s edition:
Headline of the Week: Shopee is streamlining social commerce in SEA
Fax, No Printer: Horror, brought to you by GentleMonster
Before You Leave: From Y2K tech to Bearista cups and Fedora Man mysteries
HEADLINE OF THE WEEK
🛍️ SHOW & SELL
Southeast Asia's e-commerce market is projected to hit $186 billion by 2025, and the current market leader Shopee just made a play to dominate the field even further.
By being the first brand to join Meta's newest project, Facebook Affiliate Partnerships, they're allowing creators to integrate their Shopee products on their Facebook Live, complete with a dashboard to manage everything from product curation to payment. Currently piloting in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, it's a bet that SEA's livestream commerce market is just getting started.
💡 OUR TAKE
This partnership arrives amid discussions about the future of the creator economy: can human influencers extend their reach through AI avatars? Can creators license their likeness? Interesting yes, but the more immediate issue for brands is how people actually buy. The online purchase journey isn’t linear anymore, it’s a combination of discovery, emotion, and repeated touchpoints shaped by creators and other customers — from traditional influencers (KOLs) to everyday consumers sharing opinions (KOCs) to the new breed of sellers going live from their bedrooms (KOSs)
Per Shopee data, in 2024, affiliates generated over 100 million pieces of Shopee Live and Shopee Video content (a threefold increase from 2023). Creator content now underpins everyday e-commerce, but it’s not all perceived as equal. In SEA, trust in mega-influencers (creators with 1M+ followers) is declining faster than trust in nano and micro influencers, highlighting the importance of authenticity. In parallel, 79% of SEA social media users are more likely to engage with creator content that ‘feels like a story rather than an ad’, and product links drive 31% of purchases, more than any other format. Taken together, the signal is clear: storytelling-led posts with soft-sell shopping cues from smaller creators are winning.
The Shopee x Meta tie-up will allow more Key Opinion Sellers — who are primarily focused on livestreams and short videos — to join the creator economy, attracted by the chance to boost their income. As they do, the volume of UGC developed by creators for brands will continue to grow, further accelerating the push towards invisible selling. Of course, that’s not just happening on Shopee. It’s also happening on TikTok Shop and Lazada.
For brands, UGC from smaller creators isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s essential. WARC’s Influencer Marketing Benchmark 2025 revealed that creator-led campaigns deliver 3.5x higher engagement rates than traditional paid media across Southeast Asia, while non-professional content investment is set to overtake institutional by 2026.
Consider what’s already happening. In Indonesia, over three-quarters (76%) of consumers buy from creator recommendations, particularly in fashion and beauty.Jakarta's migration is slowing, partly because people can now earn from anywhere. A bedroom in Bandung is now as valuable as an office in the capital. When it comes to social shopping, the region has gone beyond proof-of-concept and entered the infrastructure-building phase. For local brands, this levels the playing field: you don't need a marquee budget or celebrity endorsement when thousands of micro-creators can bring your product into daily life. The winners won't be those who resist this shift toward invisible selling, but those who recognize that in SEA, commerce has always been social — but it’s now more scalable than ever.
FAX, NO PRINTER*
For those of you born before 1997, 'fax, no printer' is Gen Z speak for 'undeniable facts I agree with'
With the launch of their 2025 Fall Collection, South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster released an online one-minute live action film and a browser game. What are the titles of the film and the game?
Scroll to the end of the newsletter for the correct answer!
BEFORE YOU LEAVE...
Check out our curated list of must-read articles from the past week
Gentle Monster is no stranger to the hyperstylized and the experiential, as evidenced by its offline stores, which serve as contemporary art galleries. It’s also not the first time the brand has utilized the games medium for campaigns. In 2022, Gentle Monster and BLACKPINK’s Jennie released a farming simulator mobile game titled Jentle Garden.
The Hunt and The Room move away from cozy vibes and venture into suburban madness. In The Hunt, director Nadia Lee Cohen embeds popular Hollywood horror movie Easter eggs (i.e., the original yellow slicker from I Know What You Did Last Summer, the eerie masks from The Strangers, axes-in-walls from The Shining) in an A24 retro-style film. Euphoria actress Hunter Schaefer is both predator and prey, the embodiment of psychological drama. Meanwhile, the point-and-click game The Room pulls you into a Resident Evil-style word puzzle with escape-room urgency, rendered in pixel art that nods to Clock Tower.
Film and gaming are cultural currencies that brands can leverage to futureproof themselves and stay relevant in the attention economy. But the kiss of death? A weak brand slap that leaves consumers thinking the film or game was boring. Gentle Monster, however, seems to have mastered their way out of that trap. By tapping into horror as a genre, the brand delivers immersive storytelling that pulls you into a riveting narrative—while making the product look cool and aspirational.
Similarly, this year, Japanese FMCG brand Kao droppedSilent Cleaning, a spooky cleaning simulator (likely a nod to horror game Silent Hill) that mashes up housework and monster battles. It’s weird, specific — and it works.
After watching or playing, will consumers rush to buy luxury eyewear or cleaning products? Maybe. But they’ll remember what they just spent their precious time on. And in this ever-shifting marketing landscape, memorability is the best way to stand out.
🚀 OVER AND OUT!
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