How to go viral briefly before quietly vanishing into the digital fog.
There is a particular kind of panic unique to modern marketing. It usually begins with someone saying, “We need to react to this trend immediately.”
At which point an entire organisation suddenly behaves as though it has spotted a rare celestial event that may never occur again.
Meetings are called. Ideas are thrown around. Someone says, “Can we make it more TikTok?” despite nobody being entirely sure what that means.
And within hours, a perfectly respectable brand has transformed itself into something vaguely unsettling involving memes, slang, and an enthusiasm it absolutely did not possess the previous Tuesday.
The Internet’s Attention Span (Measured in Fruit Flies)
The problem with trends is not that they’re bad. The problem is that they are temporary by design.
A trend is essentially the internet briefly agreeing to care about the same thing at the same time before immediately wandering off toward something shinier.
Building your entire marketing strategy around trends is, therefore, a bit like building a house on a skateboard.
Exciting? Potentially.
Stable? Not especially.
The Seductive Power of Visibility
Trends offer something irresistible: attention.
Fast attention. Loud attention. The kind of attention that makes marketing dashboards light up like festive decorations in December, and for a moment, it feels glorious.
Views rise. Engagement spikes. Someone proudly says the word “momentum.”
But attention and connection are not the same thing.
People may briefly notice your trend-driven content without remembering: who you are, what you do, or why they should care once the trend evaporates sometime around Thursday afternoon.
The Gradual Erosion of Identity
Here is where things become quietly dangerous.
Every time a brand bends itself entirely around a trend, it sacrifices a tiny piece of consistency. Not enough to notice immediately, but enough to slowly blur its identity over time.
One week, the brand is sarcastic. The next one is deeply emotional. Then, suddenly, it’s dancing awkwardly beside a sound clip featuring raccoons and existential despair.
Audiences begin to experience a peculiar uncertainty, as though the brand itself is having a mild identity crisis in public.
And to be fair, it probably is.
Brands, Meanwhile, Are Built Slowly
A brand is not a viral moment. A brand is what people remember after the moment has passed.
It’s the accumulation of tone, trust, familiarity, and repeated experience. It is built slowly, patiently, and rather inconveniently over time.
Which is frustrating because trends move fast and branding doesn’t.
Brand building requires consistency. Consistency requires restraint, and restraint is not particularly fashionable online.
The Algorithm Is Not Your Friend
Modern marketing often treats algorithms like slightly unpredictable weather gods.
We study it.
Appease it.
Offer short-form video content in exchange for reach.
But algorithms reward novelty, not loyalty.
They are designed to surface what is currently interesting, not what is enduringly valuable. Which means that chasing trends can slowly train a business to optimise for short-term reactions rather than long-term recognition.
You become extremely good at being briefly visible.
Which is not quite the same as being remembered.
The Brands People Actually Remember
The brands that endure tend to have something that trends cannot provide: A clear sense of self.
They may adapt. They may evolve. They may even occasionally participate in trends. But they do so without abandoning their identity.
You still recognise them. Their voice remains familiar. Their values remain visible. They don’t suddenly sound like an over-caffeinated teenager simply because the internet demanded it for forty-eight hours.
So Should You Ignore Trends Completely?
Not necessarily. Trends are tools. They can be useful when they amplify an existing brand rather than replace it.
The key difference is whether the trend supports your identity… or temporarily becomes your identity.
One builds recognition. The other builds confusion.
Final Thought (Filed Under Mild Digital Exhaustion)
The internet will always offer another trend to chase.
Another format. Another platform. Another urgent reason to abandon whatever strategy you were confidently discussing last week.
But brands are not built through panic-driven improvisation.
They are built through clarity, consistency, and the slightly unfashionable decision to stand for something longer than a news cycle.
Which is slower. Less exciting. And almost certainly more valuable.
Are you building a brand people will remember or just borrowing attention from whatever the internet happens to care about today?
If this sparked a thought (or several slightly over-analysed ones), you might enjoy the latest episode of our podcast, where we explore these kinds of marketing dilemmas in even more unnecessary detail.
