Why your brand needs to break up with trends

If I have to read the word demure one more time, I’m going to donate my eyeballs to science ♡

(For the record, being loud about how demure you’re being kind of defeats the entire purpose…)

The viral trend started on TikTok when creator Jools Lebron posted this video. And it has since infiltrated every corner of the internet. And I mean every corner. I actually wish there were other corners, safe corners, where demure wasn’t.

And as with every trend, the word has now entered the marketing playbooks of brands, always eager to tap into the zeitgeist.

Everybody from Maybelline to Warner Brothers, and even SSENSE have woven 'demure' into their social media marketing.

Which feels like when your kind of cringy middle-aged uncle starts wearing Sambas… you know the trend is dead.

However, brands will continue to flog this dead horse until the next hyper-fixation word comes around.

While marketing blogs try to theorise the fad as a 'deeper cultural shift' and a reaction to the current climate of economic uncertainty, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say it’s just a fleeting trend at the end of its life cycle.

Hence, the cringy brand input.

As marketers, if we want to participate in a trend, we must first know the lifecycle of one and where we’re jumping in.

Because nobody wants to be Uncle Joe at the family BBQ in his Sambas saying, 'it’s lit!' to everything.

So, I spoke with Jony Lee, content creator and short form video strategist, about the lifespan of a trend.

She also shared her advice for when to jump in, and whether brands should even attempt to.

We all know a trend starts when someone on the internet does a funny, relatable thing.

The funny relatable thing blows up, then gets adopted by other creators online, who add their little twist to it. This is when it becomes hyper-relatable.

Reach goes crazy, virality hits the roof, everybody and their grandmother is referencing it – both online and IRL.

Then it reaches the brands…

Womp-womp. The fun is over.

Why? 'Brands typically come at it from a selling point of view, not a “this is the most relatable part of my brand” point of view,' explains Jony.

When you try to fit a square peg into a round hole, just for the sake of being round to everyone else, it’s not authentic to your brand. It’s not relatable. And it comes across, well…cringe.

Social media trends are meant to almost be like 'going rogue' with something. It’s unhinged behaviour.

And the more obscure, the more viral it often goes (think: hawk-tuah.)

So the idea of an organization jumping into it kind of ruins the fun of it.

This is where we reach the fatigue part of the lifecycle, currently where I’m at with 'demure.' This is the part where you consider giving up the ability to see just to avoid it.

And then the next thing steps in to take its place, and we forget all about it.

Remember Brat Summer? No, neither does TikTok. Despite it being 0.5 seconds ago.

The accelerated lifecycle of trends becomes faster and faster with each one, leading us to ask the question:

Have trends lost their meaning?

They once indicated a meaningful social change. An emerging and defining collective thought, behaviour, attitude or value. A potential shift in society.

But when brands joined the conversation on social media en masse, it set off a chain reaction. This led marketers to eventually devalue the practice of trend forecasting, and ultimately the definition of a ‘trend.’

‘If we participate in these discussions, we win culture, which equals sales,’ is the general thought process of brands tapping into the zeitgeist.

As a result, marketers became obsessed with what the ‘trending’ story of the day is. What’s the meme, the hashtag, or core-aesthetic of the moment? Because they began believing that posing as consumers' ‘friends’ would unlock cultural resonance and convert to business.

But in the process of chasing cool, we’ve ended up chasing our tails, and lost the purpose of analysing culture. Because these ‘trends’ are nothing more than short bursts of facetious entertainment.

We are confusing what is ‘trending’ with what is a ‘trend.’

Trends are trending. And the trending is seen as trends. It’s a mess. For this reason, we need to break up with trends as we currently know them.

I know, I know. You want your brand to come across as fun and relatable.

But hear me out--it’s a futile game.

Firstly, trends are exhausting, and inherently fleeting. About 64% of people feel the pace of culture accelerating. We’re seeing trends go meta with anti-trend trends and #corecore – a movement addressing context collapse and the absurdity of life online. It feels impossible to keep up.

Secondly, you’re pissing off the people you’re trying to sell to. Around 66% of people believe brands try too hard today. Even if a brand successfully jumps on a trend, its mere participation undermines the outcome.

As soon as you show up, you may begin to mutate or dilute the ‘trend’. That’s the womp-womp stage I was talking about. This is why identifying the right opportunities and the strategic ways in are so necessary.

So, what’s a brand to do?

Go back to the basics.

The truth is that consumers would rather brands serve their needs by understanding what they actually care about. Not just trying to appear relevant by leaning into the latest trends. Especially when the trends don’t mean anything in the first place.

Ask yourself before implementing it into your strategy--does this actually mean something to a real person, and not just an algorithm?

At the end of the day, we are not selling to the machine. We are selling to humans, who are at the core of marketing.

-Sophie, Writer