Sep 18, 2026
Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast: Why White-Collar Workers Love Hayrettin Kaos Show
A sociological assessment, through Bourdieu, Goffman, Durkheim and Drucker, of the white-collar audience’s bond with Hayrettin Kaos Show, the cultural legitimisation of slang, and the power of marketing that can read culture.
Sociology
Culture
Marketing
Culture
Eat culture before culture eats you.®
Peter Drucker once said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” For years, the management world used this sentence to explain why corporate change programmes fail. Strategy that ignores culture collapses — true, fine, agreed. But nobody asked the next question: What about marketing? Doesn’t marketing sit at that same table and eat culture itself?
I am asking. And I have both a theoretical and a very personal answer, because I was one of those who used to say “ugh”.
I Used to See It as Lumpen Too
I have to confess: in the early days of Hayrettin Kaos Show, I was one of the people who turned up their noses. I used the word “lumpen” — directly, without hesitation. That humour did not belong to my world; it did not match my aesthetic.
But this was not just a matter of personal taste. As Pierre Bourdieu put it, taste is not a preference but a position. What you find beautiful, what you laugh at, which content you consider “quality” or “vulgar” — these are not aesthetic decisions but reflections of your class position and your effort to reach it. At that time I, too, looked at the world with the reflexes of someone climbing the career ladder and building a corporate identity. And that reflex said “lumpen”.
As millennials, we were all climbing back then. University, a white-collar career, an urban identity, an “enlightened” aesthetic — all were parts of the same social mobility project. In that project, crude humour was a class danger. Liking it meant belonging to that world — and you did not want to belong to that world. That is why people said “ugh”. It was not an aesthetic choice; it was an existential distance.
Years passed. As my position settled and the things I had to prove became fewer, I noticed something: I could laugh now. Not only at Hayrettin, but at my old self too. Bourdieu would read this as an inverted habitus: once your position is secure, you can embrace tastes you once rejected within an ironic or nostalgic frame. Disgust was a status anxiety. Loving it was the freedom that came when that anxiety disappeared.
Front Stage
Kaos Show gives the audience brief permission to step backstage.®
The White-Collar Worker on Goffman’s Stage: The Man Exhausted by the Front Stage
Erving Goffman compares social life to a theatre — and this metaphor may be the sharpest tool for understanding white-collar life. For Goffman, we are always on stage. There is the front stage: the space where we know we are being watched, feel we must be “correct”, and perform. The backstage is the refuge where we take off the mask and are simply ourselves.
The white-collar worker’s entire working life is front stage. On the way to work, in meetings, writing emails, even posting on LinkedIn, a standard of correctness applies. Word choice, tone of voice, the dosage of a reaction — all are a constant practice of self-monitoring. And in the digital age this front-stage curtain never closes: in a world where everything is recorded and every mistake becomes a screenshot, the white-collar worker knows they are being watched at every moment.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is right behind that curtain. There, nobody speaks correctly, nobody manages an image, nobody performs — or rather, everyone knowingly performs a fake performance, and that very fakeness is what makes people laugh. The audience laughs, but they are actually laughing at their own daily performance. Inside, they say: “I am like this too; I just can’t show it.” In Goffman’s terms, Kaos Show gives viewers brief permission to step backstage. And that permission instantly releases the accumulated fatigue of hours of front-stage performance.
Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence also comes into play. Millions of people watching the same content at the same time renew their social bond through a shared experience. Doctor, marketing director, finance manager, lawyer — in front of the screen they all look at the same stage and laugh at the same moment. The hierarchy of daily life melts away for a few hours. And this collective release serves both an individual and a social function.
Slang
Hayrettin’s Real Revolution: Bringing Slang to the Stage
Now I come to the real point — and in my view this is Hayrettin’s least discussed but greatest achievement.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is not just content that makes people laugh. It achieved a transformation that is sociologically very rare: it brought street language, slang and everything considered “lumpen” onto the stage and gave it cultural legitimacy.
In Turkey, slang long remained the language of a particular class space. It was seen as a sign of lack of education, of living on the margins, of being outside corporate life. White-collar workers kept their distance from it — because, as Bourdieu said, language is also capital, and slang was a language you believed could not accumulate symbolic capital.
Hayrettin tore down that wall. Not by writing a manifesto, but by building the stage. He put slang on stage not as a character but as the language of the setting. Without belittling it and without apologising, he said: “This language exists too, and it is powerful too.” And when the white-collar audience saw on screen the language they could never use on the front stage but kept suppressed inside, they laughed, recognised it and, for a moment, embraced it.
This is the process of cultural normalisation: a language or expression first exists on the periphery, is then carried to the centre through popular culture, and is finally adopted by the mainstream. Hayrettin accelerated this process, consciously or intuitively. Slang is no longer “those people’s language”; it has become a cultural raw material that everyone laughs at and embraces, used in brand communication and in advertising.
Think about it: how many brands today could split their social media language into before Hayrettin and after Hayrettin? How many pieces of copy and how many digital campaigns have grown by feeding on this new cultural free zone? Hayrettin was not only a content creator; he was also a changer of language politics.
Finding Gen Z: Bringing Ordinary People to the Stage
But Hayrettin did not stop there. He built the millennials’ platform, and then he did something else that was very clever: he brought the people Gen Z was already laughing at onto the stage.
Look at 4380. Look at Palavracı Bilo. Look at Kadıköy Boğası. These are not coincidences; they are the products of a highly deliberate tribe-finding strategy. These characters come from the street — from Gen Z’s own world, names they already know and already own. By bringing them onto the Kaos Show stage, Hayrettin built a very shrewd bridge: Gen Z’s heroes on the millennials’ platform.
So two generations share the same stage, but each laughs from its own point of reference. Millennials watch because Hayrettin is one of them — they grew up in the same period, carry the same cultural codes and lived those “ugh” moments together. Gen Z watches because it sees familiar faces from its own world on that stage — and it doesn’t need to share millennial nostalgia to laugh at them.
This is a classic tribal marketing strategy. Instead of imposing “you are my audience too” on a new audience, you organically bring onto the platform the elements that audience already knows and owns. In terms of Bourdieu’s field theory, Hayrettin set foot in the symbolic field of both generations and built resonance in both directions. That is a rare mastery in content strategy.
The Zeki Triko Lesson
The Zeki Triko Lesson: Strategy That Understands the “Lumpen” Wins
I lived this transformation not in theory but in practice.
When I joined Zeki Triko, I found a long-established but tired brand. A structure trapped in its own identity, carrying the prestige of the past but unable to talk to today’s consumer. And who was that consumer? Exactly the millennials. Exactly the generation that grew up inside the cultural dynamics I once called “lumpen”, yet carried a suppressed longing for elegance and identity.
At that time I understood something clearly: being able to genuinely read the cultural dynamic I had once looked down on became a major strategic advantage. I could see the audience not “from above” but “from within”, because I had been there too. I had personally lived that suppressed desire, that “I no longer have to prove anything” phase. The thousand-percent revenue growth we achieved in online channels was partly fuelled by this insight.
My own “ugh” past became my most valuable marketing tool.
Arming Drucker: Eat Culture Before Culture Eats You
When Drucker said culture eats strategy, he was giving a warning: every strategy that ignores culture fails. It was a defensive position.
Marketing read that warning, turned it around and made it an offensive position. Understand the culture, settle inside its pattern, grow with its momentum. Eat culture before culture eats you.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is the living proof of this strategy. It appeared exactly when millennials were entering the “I no longer have to prove anything” phase — that is, when Bourdieu’s inverted habitus kicked in. This safe backstage format was born when the white-collar worker’s Goffmanian front-stage fatigue was at its peak. It legitimised slang, turned street language into cultural raw material and built an organic bridge between two generations. And what Durkheim called collective effervescence happened: millions of people laughed at the same content at the same time and renewed their social bond through a shared experience. The hierarchy of daily life melted away for a few hours.
Sociology Defines, Marketing Wins
That first “ugh” did not disappear. Its meaning changed. In youth it said: “This is beneath my level.” Today it says: “I am far beyond that anxiety now.” The same content, a completely different meaning.
I have lived this both in theory and in practice. When I truly understood the cultural dynamic I called lumpen, I was able to turn it into a strategic tool. Bourdieu explained how class taste works. Goffman showed why the white-collar worker is so tired. Drucker warned me: don’t ignore culture. But marketing taught the real lesson: understanding is not enough. You need to be able to bring slang to the stage, build a bridge between two generations and ride culture’s own momentum.
Hayrettin did that. I tried to do it at Zeki Triko.
The phone on Hayrettin Kaos Show is still ringing. And now everyone answers — millennials out of nostalgia, Gen Z because they see their own heroes on stage.
Long live marketing. Truly.
My Recent Posts
(Gökhan Akdağ)
©2026
What Is Marketing Consulting? How to Build a Marketing Strategy, Plan, Budget and Management Discipline
Oct 9, 2026
Marketing
What Is Retail Consulting? Store Management, Sales Growth, KPIs, Profitability and Retail Math
Oct 9, 2026
Retail
What Is Commercial Growth Consulting? How to Manage Sales, Marketing, B2B, Export, Organisation and Profitable Growth
Oct 9, 2026
Strategy
FAQ
01
What does GA Consulting do?
02
What is your approach?
03
How do projects progress?
04
What is your focus?
05
Which areas do you work in?
06
What value does it create for companies?
07
Which companies is it right for?
08
How long until a project delivers results?
Sep 18, 2026
Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast: Why White-Collar Workers Love Hayrettin Kaos Show
A sociological assessment, through Bourdieu, Goffman, Durkheim and Drucker, of the white-collar audience’s bond with Hayrettin Kaos Show, the cultural legitimisation of slang, and the power of marketing that can read culture.
Sociology
Culture
Marketing
Culture
Eat culture before culture eats you.®
Peter Drucker once said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” For years, the management world used this sentence to explain why corporate change programmes fail. Strategy that ignores culture collapses — true, fine, agreed. But nobody asked the next question: What about marketing? Doesn’t marketing sit at that same table and eat culture itself?
I am asking. And I have both a theoretical and a very personal answer, because I was one of those who used to say “ugh”.
I Used to See It as Lumpen Too
I have to confess: in the early days of Hayrettin Kaos Show, I was one of the people who turned up their noses. I used the word “lumpen” — directly, without hesitation. That humour did not belong to my world; it did not match my aesthetic.
But this was not just a matter of personal taste. As Pierre Bourdieu put it, taste is not a preference but a position. What you find beautiful, what you laugh at, which content you consider “quality” or “vulgar” — these are not aesthetic decisions but reflections of your class position and your effort to reach it. At that time I, too, looked at the world with the reflexes of someone climbing the career ladder and building a corporate identity. And that reflex said “lumpen”.
As millennials, we were all climbing back then. University, a white-collar career, an urban identity, an “enlightened” aesthetic — all were parts of the same social mobility project. In that project, crude humour was a class danger. Liking it meant belonging to that world — and you did not want to belong to that world. That is why people said “ugh”. It was not an aesthetic choice; it was an existential distance.
Years passed. As my position settled and the things I had to prove became fewer, I noticed something: I could laugh now. Not only at Hayrettin, but at my old self too. Bourdieu would read this as an inverted habitus: once your position is secure, you can embrace tastes you once rejected within an ironic or nostalgic frame. Disgust was a status anxiety. Loving it was the freedom that came when that anxiety disappeared.
Front Stage
Kaos Show gives the audience brief permission to step backstage.®
The White-Collar Worker on Goffman’s Stage: The Man Exhausted by the Front Stage
Erving Goffman compares social life to a theatre — and this metaphor may be the sharpest tool for understanding white-collar life. For Goffman, we are always on stage. There is the front stage: the space where we know we are being watched, feel we must be “correct”, and perform. The backstage is the refuge where we take off the mask and are simply ourselves.
The white-collar worker’s entire working life is front stage. On the way to work, in meetings, writing emails, even posting on LinkedIn, a standard of correctness applies. Word choice, tone of voice, the dosage of a reaction — all are a constant practice of self-monitoring. And in the digital age this front-stage curtain never closes: in a world where everything is recorded and every mistake becomes a screenshot, the white-collar worker knows they are being watched at every moment.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is right behind that curtain. There, nobody speaks correctly, nobody manages an image, nobody performs — or rather, everyone knowingly performs a fake performance, and that very fakeness is what makes people laugh. The audience laughs, but they are actually laughing at their own daily performance. Inside, they say: “I am like this too; I just can’t show it.” In Goffman’s terms, Kaos Show gives viewers brief permission to step backstage. And that permission instantly releases the accumulated fatigue of hours of front-stage performance.
Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence also comes into play. Millions of people watching the same content at the same time renew their social bond through a shared experience. Doctor, marketing director, finance manager, lawyer — in front of the screen they all look at the same stage and laugh at the same moment. The hierarchy of daily life melts away for a few hours. And this collective release serves both an individual and a social function.
Slang
Hayrettin’s Real Revolution: Bringing Slang to the Stage
Now I come to the real point — and in my view this is Hayrettin’s least discussed but greatest achievement.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is not just content that makes people laugh. It achieved a transformation that is sociologically very rare: it brought street language, slang and everything considered “lumpen” onto the stage and gave it cultural legitimacy.
In Turkey, slang long remained the language of a particular class space. It was seen as a sign of lack of education, of living on the margins, of being outside corporate life. White-collar workers kept their distance from it — because, as Bourdieu said, language is also capital, and slang was a language you believed could not accumulate symbolic capital.
Hayrettin tore down that wall. Not by writing a manifesto, but by building the stage. He put slang on stage not as a character but as the language of the setting. Without belittling it and without apologising, he said: “This language exists too, and it is powerful too.” And when the white-collar audience saw on screen the language they could never use on the front stage but kept suppressed inside, they laughed, recognised it and, for a moment, embraced it.
This is the process of cultural normalisation: a language or expression first exists on the periphery, is then carried to the centre through popular culture, and is finally adopted by the mainstream. Hayrettin accelerated this process, consciously or intuitively. Slang is no longer “those people’s language”; it has become a cultural raw material that everyone laughs at and embraces, used in brand communication and in advertising.
Think about it: how many brands today could split their social media language into before Hayrettin and after Hayrettin? How many pieces of copy and how many digital campaigns have grown by feeding on this new cultural free zone? Hayrettin was not only a content creator; he was also a changer of language politics.
Finding Gen Z: Bringing Ordinary People to the Stage
But Hayrettin did not stop there. He built the millennials’ platform, and then he did something else that was very clever: he brought the people Gen Z was already laughing at onto the stage.
Look at 4380. Look at Palavracı Bilo. Look at Kadıköy Boğası. These are not coincidences; they are the products of a highly deliberate tribe-finding strategy. These characters come from the street — from Gen Z’s own world, names they already know and already own. By bringing them onto the Kaos Show stage, Hayrettin built a very shrewd bridge: Gen Z’s heroes on the millennials’ platform.
So two generations share the same stage, but each laughs from its own point of reference. Millennials watch because Hayrettin is one of them — they grew up in the same period, carry the same cultural codes and lived those “ugh” moments together. Gen Z watches because it sees familiar faces from its own world on that stage — and it doesn’t need to share millennial nostalgia to laugh at them.
This is a classic tribal marketing strategy. Instead of imposing “you are my audience too” on a new audience, you organically bring onto the platform the elements that audience already knows and owns. In terms of Bourdieu’s field theory, Hayrettin set foot in the symbolic field of both generations and built resonance in both directions. That is a rare mastery in content strategy.
The Zeki Triko Lesson
The Zeki Triko Lesson: Strategy That Understands the “Lumpen” Wins
I lived this transformation not in theory but in practice.
When I joined Zeki Triko, I found a long-established but tired brand. A structure trapped in its own identity, carrying the prestige of the past but unable to talk to today’s consumer. And who was that consumer? Exactly the millennials. Exactly the generation that grew up inside the cultural dynamics I once called “lumpen”, yet carried a suppressed longing for elegance and identity.
At that time I understood something clearly: being able to genuinely read the cultural dynamic I had once looked down on became a major strategic advantage. I could see the audience not “from above” but “from within”, because I had been there too. I had personally lived that suppressed desire, that “I no longer have to prove anything” phase. The thousand-percent revenue growth we achieved in online channels was partly fuelled by this insight.
My own “ugh” past became my most valuable marketing tool.
Arming Drucker: Eat Culture Before Culture Eats You
When Drucker said culture eats strategy, he was giving a warning: every strategy that ignores culture fails. It was a defensive position.
Marketing read that warning, turned it around and made it an offensive position. Understand the culture, settle inside its pattern, grow with its momentum. Eat culture before culture eats you.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is the living proof of this strategy. It appeared exactly when millennials were entering the “I no longer have to prove anything” phase — that is, when Bourdieu’s inverted habitus kicked in. This safe backstage format was born when the white-collar worker’s Goffmanian front-stage fatigue was at its peak. It legitimised slang, turned street language into cultural raw material and built an organic bridge between two generations. And what Durkheim called collective effervescence happened: millions of people laughed at the same content at the same time and renewed their social bond through a shared experience. The hierarchy of daily life melted away for a few hours.
Sociology Defines, Marketing Wins
That first “ugh” did not disappear. Its meaning changed. In youth it said: “This is beneath my level.” Today it says: “I am far beyond that anxiety now.” The same content, a completely different meaning.
I have lived this both in theory and in practice. When I truly understood the cultural dynamic I called lumpen, I was able to turn it into a strategic tool. Bourdieu explained how class taste works. Goffman showed why the white-collar worker is so tired. Drucker warned me: don’t ignore culture. But marketing taught the real lesson: understanding is not enough. You need to be able to bring slang to the stage, build a bridge between two generations and ride culture’s own momentum.
Hayrettin did that. I tried to do it at Zeki Triko.
The phone on Hayrettin Kaos Show is still ringing. And now everyone answers — millennials out of nostalgia, Gen Z because they see their own heroes on stage.
Long live marketing. Truly.
My Recent Posts
(Gökhan Akdağ)
©2026
What Is Marketing Consulting? How to Build a Marketing Strategy, Plan, Budget and Management Discipline
Oct 9, 2026
Marketing
What Is Retail Consulting? Store Management, Sales Growth, KPIs, Profitability and Retail Math
Oct 9, 2026
Retail
What Is Commercial Growth Consulting? How to Manage Sales, Marketing, B2B, Export, Organisation and Profitable Growth
Oct 9, 2026
Strategy
FAQ
01
What does GA Consulting do?
02
What is your approach?
03
How do projects progress?
04
What is your focus?
05
Which areas do you work in?
06
What value does it create for companies?
07
Which companies is it right for?
08
How long until a project delivers results?
Sep 18, 2026
Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast: Why White-Collar Workers Love Hayrettin Kaos Show
A sociological assessment, through Bourdieu, Goffman, Durkheim and Drucker, of the white-collar audience’s bond with Hayrettin Kaos Show, the cultural legitimisation of slang, and the power of marketing that can read culture.
Sociology
Culture
Marketing
Culture
Eat culture before culture eats you.®
Peter Drucker once said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” For years, the management world used this sentence to explain why corporate change programmes fail. Strategy that ignores culture collapses — true, fine, agreed. But nobody asked the next question: What about marketing? Doesn’t marketing sit at that same table and eat culture itself?
I am asking. And I have both a theoretical and a very personal answer, because I was one of those who used to say “ugh”.
I Used to See It as Lumpen Too
I have to confess: in the early days of Hayrettin Kaos Show, I was one of the people who turned up their noses. I used the word “lumpen” — directly, without hesitation. That humour did not belong to my world; it did not match my aesthetic.
But this was not just a matter of personal taste. As Pierre Bourdieu put it, taste is not a preference but a position. What you find beautiful, what you laugh at, which content you consider “quality” or “vulgar” — these are not aesthetic decisions but reflections of your class position and your effort to reach it. At that time I, too, looked at the world with the reflexes of someone climbing the career ladder and building a corporate identity. And that reflex said “lumpen”.
As millennials, we were all climbing back then. University, a white-collar career, an urban identity, an “enlightened” aesthetic — all were parts of the same social mobility project. In that project, crude humour was a class danger. Liking it meant belonging to that world — and you did not want to belong to that world. That is why people said “ugh”. It was not an aesthetic choice; it was an existential distance.
Years passed. As my position settled and the things I had to prove became fewer, I noticed something: I could laugh now. Not only at Hayrettin, but at my old self too. Bourdieu would read this as an inverted habitus: once your position is secure, you can embrace tastes you once rejected within an ironic or nostalgic frame. Disgust was a status anxiety. Loving it was the freedom that came when that anxiety disappeared.
Front Stage
Kaos Show gives the audience brief permission to step backstage.®
The White-Collar Worker on Goffman’s Stage: The Man Exhausted by the Front Stage
Erving Goffman compares social life to a theatre — and this metaphor may be the sharpest tool for understanding white-collar life. For Goffman, we are always on stage. There is the front stage: the space where we know we are being watched, feel we must be “correct”, and perform. The backstage is the refuge where we take off the mask and are simply ourselves.
The white-collar worker’s entire working life is front stage. On the way to work, in meetings, writing emails, even posting on LinkedIn, a standard of correctness applies. Word choice, tone of voice, the dosage of a reaction — all are a constant practice of self-monitoring. And in the digital age this front-stage curtain never closes: in a world where everything is recorded and every mistake becomes a screenshot, the white-collar worker knows they are being watched at every moment.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is right behind that curtain. There, nobody speaks correctly, nobody manages an image, nobody performs — or rather, everyone knowingly performs a fake performance, and that very fakeness is what makes people laugh. The audience laughs, but they are actually laughing at their own daily performance. Inside, they say: “I am like this too; I just can’t show it.” In Goffman’s terms, Kaos Show gives viewers brief permission to step backstage. And that permission instantly releases the accumulated fatigue of hours of front-stage performance.
Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence also comes into play. Millions of people watching the same content at the same time renew their social bond through a shared experience. Doctor, marketing director, finance manager, lawyer — in front of the screen they all look at the same stage and laugh at the same moment. The hierarchy of daily life melts away for a few hours. And this collective release serves both an individual and a social function.
Slang
Hayrettin’s Real Revolution: Bringing Slang to the Stage
Now I come to the real point — and in my view this is Hayrettin’s least discussed but greatest achievement.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is not just content that makes people laugh. It achieved a transformation that is sociologically very rare: it brought street language, slang and everything considered “lumpen” onto the stage and gave it cultural legitimacy.
In Turkey, slang long remained the language of a particular class space. It was seen as a sign of lack of education, of living on the margins, of being outside corporate life. White-collar workers kept their distance from it — because, as Bourdieu said, language is also capital, and slang was a language you believed could not accumulate symbolic capital.
Hayrettin tore down that wall. Not by writing a manifesto, but by building the stage. He put slang on stage not as a character but as the language of the setting. Without belittling it and without apologising, he said: “This language exists too, and it is powerful too.” And when the white-collar audience saw on screen the language they could never use on the front stage but kept suppressed inside, they laughed, recognised it and, for a moment, embraced it.
This is the process of cultural normalisation: a language or expression first exists on the periphery, is then carried to the centre through popular culture, and is finally adopted by the mainstream. Hayrettin accelerated this process, consciously or intuitively. Slang is no longer “those people’s language”; it has become a cultural raw material that everyone laughs at and embraces, used in brand communication and in advertising.
Think about it: how many brands today could split their social media language into before Hayrettin and after Hayrettin? How many pieces of copy and how many digital campaigns have grown by feeding on this new cultural free zone? Hayrettin was not only a content creator; he was also a changer of language politics.
Finding Gen Z: Bringing Ordinary People to the Stage
But Hayrettin did not stop there. He built the millennials’ platform, and then he did something else that was very clever: he brought the people Gen Z was already laughing at onto the stage.
Look at 4380. Look at Palavracı Bilo. Look at Kadıköy Boğası. These are not coincidences; they are the products of a highly deliberate tribe-finding strategy. These characters come from the street — from Gen Z’s own world, names they already know and already own. By bringing them onto the Kaos Show stage, Hayrettin built a very shrewd bridge: Gen Z’s heroes on the millennials’ platform.
So two generations share the same stage, but each laughs from its own point of reference. Millennials watch because Hayrettin is one of them — they grew up in the same period, carry the same cultural codes and lived those “ugh” moments together. Gen Z watches because it sees familiar faces from its own world on that stage — and it doesn’t need to share millennial nostalgia to laugh at them.
This is a classic tribal marketing strategy. Instead of imposing “you are my audience too” on a new audience, you organically bring onto the platform the elements that audience already knows and owns. In terms of Bourdieu’s field theory, Hayrettin set foot in the symbolic field of both generations and built resonance in both directions. That is a rare mastery in content strategy.
The Zeki Triko Lesson
The Zeki Triko Lesson: Strategy That Understands the “Lumpen” Wins
I lived this transformation not in theory but in practice.
When I joined Zeki Triko, I found a long-established but tired brand. A structure trapped in its own identity, carrying the prestige of the past but unable to talk to today’s consumer. And who was that consumer? Exactly the millennials. Exactly the generation that grew up inside the cultural dynamics I once called “lumpen”, yet carried a suppressed longing for elegance and identity.
At that time I understood something clearly: being able to genuinely read the cultural dynamic I had once looked down on became a major strategic advantage. I could see the audience not “from above” but “from within”, because I had been there too. I had personally lived that suppressed desire, that “I no longer have to prove anything” phase. The thousand-percent revenue growth we achieved in online channels was partly fuelled by this insight.
My own “ugh” past became my most valuable marketing tool.
Arming Drucker: Eat Culture Before Culture Eats You
When Drucker said culture eats strategy, he was giving a warning: every strategy that ignores culture fails. It was a defensive position.
Marketing read that warning, turned it around and made it an offensive position. Understand the culture, settle inside its pattern, grow with its momentum. Eat culture before culture eats you.
Hayrettin Kaos Show is the living proof of this strategy. It appeared exactly when millennials were entering the “I no longer have to prove anything” phase — that is, when Bourdieu’s inverted habitus kicked in. This safe backstage format was born when the white-collar worker’s Goffmanian front-stage fatigue was at its peak. It legitimised slang, turned street language into cultural raw material and built an organic bridge between two generations. And what Durkheim called collective effervescence happened: millions of people laughed at the same content at the same time and renewed their social bond through a shared experience. The hierarchy of daily life melted away for a few hours.
Sociology Defines, Marketing Wins
That first “ugh” did not disappear. Its meaning changed. In youth it said: “This is beneath my level.” Today it says: “I am far beyond that anxiety now.” The same content, a completely different meaning.
I have lived this both in theory and in practice. When I truly understood the cultural dynamic I called lumpen, I was able to turn it into a strategic tool. Bourdieu explained how class taste works. Goffman showed why the white-collar worker is so tired. Drucker warned me: don’t ignore culture. But marketing taught the real lesson: understanding is not enough. You need to be able to bring slang to the stage, build a bridge between two generations and ride culture’s own momentum.
Hayrettin did that. I tried to do it at Zeki Triko.
The phone on Hayrettin Kaos Show is still ringing. And now everyone answers — millennials out of nostalgia, Gen Z because they see their own heroes on stage.
Long live marketing. Truly.
My Recent Posts
©2026
What Is Marketing Consulting? How to Build a Marketing Strategy, Plan, Budget and Management Discipline
Oct 9, 2026
Marketing
What Is Retail Consulting? Store Management, Sales Growth, KPIs, Profitability and Retail Math
Oct 9, 2026
Retail
What Is Commercial Growth Consulting? How to Manage Sales, Marketing, B2B, Export, Organisation and Profitable Growth
Oct 9, 2026
Strategy
FAQ
What does GA Consulting do?
What is your approach?
How do projects progress?
What is your focus?
Which areas do you work in?
What value does it create for companies?
Which companies is it right for?
How long until a project delivers results?