A marketing agency employee was giving a presentation about Third Places — a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book The Great Good Place. The term refers to spaces where people gather, linger, and build a sense of community outside their homes (the first place) and their work (the second place). They’re the places where you might run into your neighbors, strike up a conversation with a stranger, or just exist in the company of other humans without an agenda.
(Just to be clear, YOU might do those things. I wouldn’t do those things. I’ll be at home, by myself, just like I like it.)
While these third places have been in decline for decades, recent trends have shown many people seeking them out, looking to find social cohesion, make human connections, and/or contribute to their local communities. People are yearning to get away from their screens and disconnect from the world.
The presenter I was listening to didn’t actually get into any of those details; they instead talked about the opportunity to have their clients and brands show up in these Third Places.
It was gross.
Acknowledging that people are wanting an escape from the daily grind only to then be excited by the chance to pump advertisements into unwilling eyeballs reminds me of those who are “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”
But even if we ignore being fully comfortable with the ick of co-opting human yearning, it also doesn’t work. A 2002 study unsurprisingly found that people don’t like pop-up ads, and that users develop negative attitudes toward the brands that use them. A 2025 study found that people binge-watching “perceived [ads] as more intrusive, in turn increasing ad avoidance intention and decreasing platform revisit intention.” All of this is part of psychological reactance theory, which, according to that same 2025 study, “posits that threats to behavioral freedoms trigger psychological reactance, which motivates people to take action to restore the freedom.”
The basic finding of both studies, and replicated many times in between, is that when people perceive an advertisement as intrusive, they don't just ignore it; they actually develop negative attitudes toward both the ad and the brand behind it.
In moments when people are trying to disengage from commercial pressure — they want to read a book, talk to a friend, sit with their thoughts, exist in the world without a transaction attached to it — a brand showing up is exactly the intrusive interruption the research has been documenting for decades.
So not only was this marketer culturally tone-deaf, they were also strategically incompetent.
I’ve seen similar efforts arise around other trends. Claiming that sustainability is in your company's DNA is a worthwhile tenet, but if your sustainability efforts are abandoned as soon as it becomes less popular, less profitable, or politically tenuous, then it wasn't really ever part of your brand. If your company has an established position around historically marginalized communities, then it will be very easy for you to show your support for Pride Month. If it doesn't, then what you should do during Pride Month is keep your mouth shut.
Again, there's actual research reinforcing all of this. A 2024 study in the Journal of Business Research found that authentic brand purpose positively affects brand credibility, while inauthentic brand purpose has a negative impact compared to taking a neutral approach. In other words: if you don't genuinely belong in the conversation, staying out of it is better for your brand than forcing your way in.
When marketers come across a trend or a cultural moment or a shiny new thing, they need to stop asking "How do we get a piece of that?" and first ask "Do we even have any business being part of this?"
Your customers can tell; they can always tell. Customers know when a brand is trying too hard to be relevant — especially with something they have no real connection to.
Most cultural moments are not marketing opportunities. Most of human experience isn’t fertile ground for a brand campaign. Most of what makes life meaningful is happening in spaces where marketing has no legitimate role to play, and the appropriate response is to recognize that and leave people alone.
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