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Hey — Ryan To here.

In today's edition:

Every brand wants to "move at the speed of culture"...

Remember the Kumar method?

A retired accounting professional starts posting

within a week, every creator and brand is copying the exact format

Or the couple who proposed while climbing the Empire State Building

With AI image + video tools, hijacking trends has lost its novelty

When post exists only to extract empty views

You’re mentally signaling to consumers you’re extracting value

and losing brand equity

Understanding where consumer sentiment is headed is part of selling consumer products

So what’s high signal & what isn’t?

Here’s how the marketers & consumer founders decide what’s cringe & what’s acceptable

It follows a trend bell curve…let me explain

Check out @bloomnu, a perfect case study on trendsetters (high risk, novelty)

And it makes sense. Their customer is 85% Female, 18–34.

For July 4th they created a ‘Americana All Star Pack’

A Drake album. America turning 250.

If the moment is already on the calendar, your product and content should be ready for it.

As a trendsetter archetype you have to plan your:

around these movements.

@aritzia posted TSA bin videos months after every art director called them washed.

But their customer skews to middle to high income women aged 15 to 45

Their customer isn't terminally online

being at the early curve on trends is too early for their target market

Deliberate laggards are reserved for the brands with capital and leverage

@Grüns is a perfect case study when it comes to the GLP-1 craze…

when every supplement claimed to be "nature's Ozempic"

they positioned as the companion instead

putting paid spend behind this campaign

Why this works:

Have a great day ❤️

Ryan