Oasis have always been my favourite band. After waiting 20 years to see them live again, I finally got to the Live ‘25 shows in Melbourne. They were worth every second, and every cent.
What surprised me most was not the music. It was the marketing.
Somehow, a band formed in the ’90s managed to feel more current than most modern organisations. Oasis didn't simply revisit the past. They engineered a cultural moment, and in doing so, offered a glimpse of where brand experience is heading next.
The hype wasn’t accidental
From the moment Live ‘25 was announced, the build-up was a masterclass. Teasers, nostalgia-soaked visuals, and just enough mystery to keep fans guessing.
By the time Melbourne rolled around, it felt like the whole city was in on it. Oasis shirts everywhere. Bucket hats. Tracksuits. Trainers. It wasn’t just a concert. It was a takeover.
Normally, wearing the band’s T-shirt to their own gig is considered a fashion faux pas. But here, it became the uniform. Matching tees, coordinated groups, bucket hats worn like badges. It wasn’t about standing out. It was about signalling you belonged.
That is the first lesson. Great marketing does not just sell tickets. It creates identity.
And in a world where audiences are increasingly fragmented by algorithms, identity is one of the few scalable advantages left. The next era of marketing will not be built around campaigns. It will be built around communities, designed to be seen, shared and amplified in real time.
FOMO meets fandom
The pop-up store was another stroke of brilliance. Fans could pre-book exclusive time slots, then queue for limited edition merch that was not available at the gigs or online. Scarcity was built into the experience, but it never felt forced. It felt earned.
And it worked. A friend of mine spent $1,400 over two visits. She didn’t plan to, but the design of the experience made it almost impossible not to want more.
What stood out most was how seamlessly the pop-up blended digital control with physical hype. Timed bookings turned retail into an event. It was not just a shop. It was a system that engineered anticipation, exclusivity and momentum, and that is exactly where the future of commerce is heading.
An ecosystem, not a campaign
There was no single “big idea” campaign driving this. It was an ecosystem. Social feeds were humming with teaser clips, setlist speculation and fan reactions. TikTok and Instagram were flooded with footage from the first shows, fuelling anticipation before the next city even had its turn.
It was organic amplification, powered by fan-generated content and decades of emotional equity.
But what makes this model future-facing is not the channel strategy. It is the decentralisation of content itself. Oasis did not need to control the narrative, because the narrative was being produced by the crowd in real time.
This is where marketing is rapidly heading. Content is becoming ambient. It is created everywhere, continuously, and often outside the control of the organisation. AI will only accelerate this, remixing live footage, generating highlight reels, translating moments instantly, and pushing them across platforms at the speed of culture.
The marketing lesson here is uncomfortable for many organisations. You cannot control a movement. You can only create the conditions for it to grow.
You can’t manufacture magic
What made Live ‘25 so powerful was that it never felt like a brand trying to be relevant. Oasis have always known exactly who they are. They have never chased trends. That consistency is what makes people wait twenty years and still turn up dressed like it is 1996.
That is what most strategies miss. Loyalty is not built through frequency. It is built through identity.
In a world increasingly shaped by automation, recommendation engines, and synthetic content, authenticity becomes more valuable, not less. When everything can be generated, the differentiator is what cannot be replicated: history, emotional truth and cultural meaning.
“Live Forever” moments
For me, it was not just a concert. It was twenty years of waiting, the opening chords of Hello, and the roar of a crowd that somehow felt both enormous and intimate. For a few hours, thousands of strangers were connected by the same lyrics, the same memories, the same sense of belonging.
That feeling is hard to describe. But you know it when you experience it.
Oasis reminded me that the strongest marketing is not persuasion. It is meaning, identity and shared memories.
In a world where algorithms decide what we see and AI can generate almost anything on demand, the organisations that endure will be the ones that create moments people choose to carry with them.
That’s the real future of marketing: using all the intelligence, data and technology we have to create more moments like that. Moments that make people feel something real.