The Trend Tragedy of the Commons
What a post-mortem on demure reveals about the truth of trend-hopping
In September, we published The Risk of Being Relevant, a contrarian point of view on the danger posed to brands trying to keep up with cultural trends. We warned brands of entering a sea of sameness - an indistinguishable blending of brands all playing off the same trends, language, and cultural moments.
We call this the Great Brand Soup.
In the following weeks, we saw this catch on quite a bit, not only rising to become one of our most popular thought pieces ever but influencing what seems to be a slew of peer agencies sharing similar thoughts as well.
Like all recipes, our Brand Soup had ingredients (like brands saying ‘bestie’), and even examples of finished products (see the Coca-Cola x Oreo collab).
However, one ingredient was missing from its analysis: time.
As brands, agencies, and marketers, we accept that culture is moving fast. Faster than ever.
But how fast is fast? And what does that mean for brands today that try and keep up?
The Demure Post-Mortem
When we asked our network of Gen Zers in early October about their feelings on brands participating in the demure trend, the results were clear: way more cringe than cool. Here are the results from 1,020 Gen Zers polled:
70% of our Gen Z respondents said that brands that did the demure trend were cringe, not cool.
Beyond proving that racing to keep up with every trend can repel young consumers, the following analysis of content from pre-demure to post-demure times reveals just how fast trends come and go.
How Fast is Fast?
From a look at data on TikTok from July 4th to October 4th, 2024, 51,400 videos on US TikTok content included #demure or mentioned “demure.” 6,311 - or 12.2% of those posts were from brands. The top post came from Beetlejuice (likely amplified by Jenna Ortega), but most were not sponsored; brands were simply jumping on the trend.
We overlayed a standard bell curve to show a comparison to the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Shoutout to Casey Lewis for the inspiration—check out her latest piece referencing this theory).
It took exactly 10 days for demure to go from 2.5% of its peak popularity to 50% saturation.
This theory, developed in 1962, originated to explain how an idea, product, or trend diffuses or spreads through a social system over time. The speed of this spread of an idea, trend, or innovation depends on how useful the idea is, how easy it is to understand, and how well it can be shared among friends and family. In short, it helped us understand why some trends become popular faster than others. Below is a visual that outlines the bell curve of the different kinds of adoption that happen over time.
If we compare this to the engagement trends we see with “demure” - there is a clear truth. The speed of culture today makes a trend go from nothing to something to dying in just about 10 days. Trends today are highly compressed.
This, however, has another unintended consequence for brands and marketers.
The Trend Tragedy of the Commons
When we ask “how fast is fast,” it is not just about the trend itself playing out in a matter of days; it’s the fact that more than 6k of 50k uploads of demure are from brands themselves in that compressed timeframe.
This adds an ingredient to our understanding of Brand Soup - it is not merely brands joining trends that is a risk, but doing so too quickly, which can disrupt any natural evolution of the trend itself, and limit its cultural impact.
This trend rush creates a “tragedy of the commons” around trend-hopping:
Brands collectively exhaust the brief windows in which trends could take root, and end up diluting and depleting the very cultural richness they aim to exploit.
As brands continue to race to these fleeting cultural moments, the real question becomes: are brands driving culture forward—or just speeding up its rate of change?
Further Reading:
AdWeek - Beyond Brat: The Trend + Brand Product Formula Is No Longer Enough
Rachel Karten - Q2 2024 Social Report - Ownable Social
Further data on the impact of trend-hopping on marketers:
42% of marketers plan to stop working in social media within the next two years and 63% of social media professionals are either experiencing burnout or have experienced it within the past one to three months. (Sprout Social Survey)