Beyond virality: Why NBA and PepsiCo say cultural relevance is built through participation

As marketers continue to chase virality across fragmented digital platforms, executives from the National Basketball Association (NBA) and PepsiCo Philippines argued that the most effective brand partnerships are no longer built around visibility alone, but around creating cultural participation, emotional connection, and tangible community value. 

Speaking at the 2026 Content360 Conference, Donna Reyes, director of global content and media distribution at NBA Asia, and Nicole Villarojo, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Philippines Beverages, said influence today increasingly depends on how deeply brands embed themselves into people’s routines, humour, fandoms, and local identities rather than simply generating short-term online attention. 

The discussion, centred on influence and culture in the attention era, reflected a broader shift taking place across marketing and entertainment, where brands are moving beyond campaign-led social engagement toward ecosystems of co-creation, grassroots experiences, and culturally adaptive storytelling. 

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Layering local culture onto global brands 

“We find that when we focus on what our local fans really want, who they want to see, who they want to know more about, what excites them - that’s really the type of content that we find people really want to engage with,” Reyes said, pointing to the NBA’s varied strategies across Asian markets. 

While the NBA operates as a global property, Reyes noted that success in markets such as the Philippines comes from recognising local fan intensity and adapting content accordingly. The Philippines, she said, allows the league to create more in-depth basketball storytelling because of the audience’s deep understanding of the sport. 

The league’s content strategy, she explained, extends far beyond game highlights. Fashion, music, creators, and celebrity culture now form part of the NBA’s storytelling ecosystem, particularly through initiatives such as “Friends of the NBA”, which works with cultural figures outside basketball. 

Recent collaborations included Korean artist Suga of popular boyband BTS and Filipino girl group BINI, whose appearance at an NBA Filipino Heritage Night game in Los Angeles generated content that spread organically through fan communities. 

“It’s celebrating the culture that surrounds basketball,” Reyes said, adding that the league’s influence now also extends into player fashion, where athletes have turned arena entrances into “fashion catwalks”, giving rise to a growing sub-genre of sports content known as “Tunnel Fits”. 

According to Villarojo, cultural layering is increasingly necessary in an environment where consumers no longer passively consume branded content but actively reshape it through memes, commentary, and inside jokes. 

“Consumers are not simply looking to consume content anymore, they want to be able to participate in the conversation,” Villarojo said. “The more that they’re able to see a way in to remix something, quote something, even make it an inside joke, the more social usability it has.” 

For PepsiCo Philippines, humour has become a particularly important gateway into Filipino internet culture. Villarojo described the company’s Mountain Dew content as “very unhinged” in the sense that it embraces internet humour and absurdity to resonate with younger audiences.

The limits of virality 

Still, both executives suggested that chasing virality alone is becoming an increasingly unsustainable strategy. 

“For us, with the high volume of content that we produce across multiple platforms and mediums, chasing virality doesn’t really work,” Reyes said. “What we try to focus on is just consistency in our content.” 

Instead of aiming for singular breakout moments, Reyes said the NBA prioritises long-term relevance by consistently celebrating both on-court excellence and the wider culture surrounding basketball. 

Villarojo similarly argued that marketers should study enduring human behaviour rather than fleeting online trends. 

“At the surface level, when we look at Filipino culture online, it does move very, very fast,” she said. “But underneath all of that are very stable emotional motivations, sometimes humour, sometimes fandom, or just a sense of belonging in the online space. Those things change more slowly than trends.”

She added that brands often make the mistake of entering conversations too aggressively in pursuit of attention. 

“Brands sometimes approach culture with too much main character energy,” Villarojo said. “Attention doesn’t necessarily mean affinity - sometimes you’re simply interrupting people’s experience.”

Instead, she argued that brands should evaluate whether they are genuinely improving a consumer experience or merely inserting themselves into a trend cycle. 

Beyond content into community-building 

The panel also highlighted how influence increasingly extends beyond content itself into physical community-building and grassroots participation. 

Villarojo pointed to PepsiCo’s partnership between Gatorade and the NBA as an example of how collaborations can create broader social impact while reinforcing fandom. Through school programmes and local basketball initiatives, the partnership has supported public schools and community courts in underserved areas, including providing basketball equipment and refurbishing barangay backboards. 

“Partnerships work best when they create value beyond the campaign itself,” Villarojo said. “By building fandom at the grassroots level, partnerships can create much greater reach, resources, and long-term impact.”

AI may scale content, but humour remains human 

The discussion also touched on the growing use of artificial intelligence in content creation. While both speakers acknowledged AI’s operational potential, they argued that humour and emotional storytelling remain deeply human. 

“Humour is fundamentally human,” Villarojo said, adding that even experienced creatives know that genuinely funny content is difficult to consistently create.

Reyes echoed the need for caution, particularly for sports organisations built around real personalities and athletes. 

“Our league is built around actual people,” Reyes said. “We want to make sure that we honour them and treat them respectfully.” 

Measuring relevance beyond the dashboard 

Ultimately, both executives suggested that the future of influence will depend less on who can dominate feeds and more on who can build lasting emotional presence within communities. 

For Reyes, signs of success are often found offline rather than on dashboards - in overheard conversations about basketball, in fans from remote provinces discussing NBA players, or in how local audiences reinterpret global culture in their own way. 

Villarojo, meanwhile, said inspiration increasingly comes from observing how Filipinos naturally interact online. 

“I think the content space in the Philippines is just so interesting,” Reyes added. “Our humour is top notch, our ability to find humour in things that may not necessarily be funny to begin with. We’re just so creative.” 

Step into PR Asia Philippines 2026 on 9 September in Manila, where communications leaders will unpack the realities of trust, nationalism, misinformation, and polarisation shaping the country’s evolving narrative landscape.

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