To clarify, when I say her work, I don’t just mean her music. Charli doesn’t just build albums, she builds entire worlds that contribute to culture on such a deep level, it defines the way people behave and speak. She has proven to have an extremely strong sense of how young people are feeling, behaving, and consuming media. Kind of… like a strategist (like myself… yes, I have something in common with Charli you heard me). She is consistently several steps ahead with the themes she presents in her music, and in-turn her music has longevity and continuously rebirths in culture.

As seen in the popularity of party 4 u, released in 2020, yet resonated deepest several years later in 2025. Themes of yearning and poetic lyrics almost disguised with synth pop production resonates now as a compelling mixture of high and low art, which has in tandem become one of the biggest trends on the internet right now.

And of course, brat. It wasn’t just an album, it was a world, a persona, a language that completely cemented itself into culture. She had a deep understanding of what young people were craving, that the post-covid the pendulum was bound to swing towards absolute chaos and messiness.

And now, with Music, Fashion, Film, she is doing it again. Whether this album is well received or not (I personally anticipate some fans of brat will not be completely obsessed… couldn’t be ME of course), she is proving yet again she is exactly where culture is at. She’s not just defining it and providing art that people will reference for years to come, she’s also predicting, monitoring and inventing based on that.

So yes, Charli is a strategist, and I think we can all get our notebooks and pens out and learn. Here are a few observations I’ve made that brands should pay attention to from our favorite pop star, genius marketing strategist, and icon.

1. Before planning outputs, create the world

In a recent interview, Charli mentioned she actually thinks of the name and the world the songs will live in before she writes a lot of her music. For example, for brat, one of the first things she did was define what brat meant. What it was, and what it wasn’t. Pretty much everything about the universe had been defined, so when she built the songs with her creative partners, they were cohesive and endlessly faithful to the concept. Even as I am writing this article, simply using the word brat probably gives you a vision in your head of lime green, lofi fonts, and boiler room sets in Ibiza. Brands should take notes. Marketing is much more than just creating a piece of content. What are you trying to make the consumer feel? Who are you, and who are you not? These are important things to answer first, versus retrospectively to show up with a clear and consistent narrative.

2. Don’t be afraid to fail

That’s right. Every brand (and person’s) worst nightmare: failure. But in reality, that fear often holds us back from reaching our full potential. Plus, measured failure is how we learn. Good ideas aren’t going to hit for everyone, just like Charli’s new album isn’t going to hit for as many people as brat did. But, the impact it has on some will possibly be deeper than it ever was for brat. A professor in university told me, “you can’t be everything to everyone, otherwise you are nothing to nobody,” which I feel applies to all aspects of life, and in marketing. A really bold, strong idea might feel like a failure to some, but really hit for others. Either way, it’ll get people talking. Of course, do your research and have the right people behind the work to make sure it’s hitting the right notes in terms of brand safety; for example, I am not talking about the type of risk that is American Eagle x Sydney Sweeney jeans, which seemingly just wasn’t thought through by the correct people or backed by an actual cultural tension, but that’s a whole other discussion. I mean what tension can you find that makes people feel seen, maybe even so seen it makes them uncomfortable. That is a risk worth taking.

3. Marketing is an art form, meant to be accompanied by art

You may think I am deeping it too much, but I have to believe it is an art form, otherwise I will crash out. But it really is that deep, and Charli herself thinks so too. Asked in an interview if she feels passionate about marketing she said yes, but it needs to be accompanied by art. I couldn’t agree more. Creative that feels moving, editorial, and inspired is increasingly trending. This is in contrast to trends of scrappy cut and paste content trends we’ve seen in the past. I think for most brands, even if you aren’t promoting art itself, this can also mean something with meaning behind it. Identifying feelings and truths is an art form, in a sense.

4. Personal, but not optimized for everyone

Marketing that hits is feeling more and more personal. That’s right, we’re craving experiences that can’t be recreated. We’re craving tangibility that can’t be replicated. Think performing or popping up at tiny venues, no phones allowed. After years of getting used to everything being for you, artists and brands alike are increasingly thinking of how they can have genuine interactions with their consumer base, which probably means not everyone will get a turn. Measured exclusivity, hardly broadcasted by media, lives on like a legend of watching Charli perform her new songs at a 500 person venue in London. You don’t even feel left out, you’re just in awe.

So whether you are a marketer, or just a person who dabbles in any creative field, I encourage you to observe what Charli is doing, and let yourself feel inspired.

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When you look at the 2010s that people now romanticize so vividly, what really is it that we miss? What are we craving now that we had then? A lot of it comes down to monoculture.

In the 2010s, the internet and social media was ultimately still in it’s infancy. TikTok wasn’t even a thought, and Instagram feeds were chronological without the endless scroll and suggested posts based on what the algorithm learns about your preferences and taste. Your social media feed was largely just your friends, but when macro trends did surface like the mannequin challenge, everyone knows about it and it ends up on the Today Show.

Now, everything is hyper-personalized. Algorithms have developed to the point of knowing you and your interests so intimately, what you see is truly and utterly for you. There could be a massive mannequin challenge-esque trend happening and even I, a social media strategist who looks at pop culture and and trends for living, may not even see it pop up on my own feed. Everything is fragmented, and essentially, we’re all living in different realities.

As much as I personally have an individuality complex and like opening TikTok first thing in the morning and seeing a “good morning Taurus” tarot card reading, sometimes it’s easy to feel… disconnected. With hyper-personalization, somehow we have less and less in common.

Enter: Love Island. Love it or hate it (I personally am leaning towards hate this season of USA as an OG UK stan), nearly everyone is watching. And if not, it really feels like it. If you aren’t watching then you are hearing about it, seeing it grace your feeds, and you probably are only 1 person away from someone who watches it. With a new episode nearly every day, the USA has fallen into a nightly ritual. After each episode, we take to the internet to unpack, share opinions, even adapting our language based on references (my dream date, I’m TiTi, etc.). With everyone watching and discussing the same thing, it’s strangely unifying and euphoric, no matter how painful of a watch this season is.

The same could be said for the World Cup, with it’s unifying nature. Win or lose, the world feels more connected than ever right now, with everyone watching the same games and seeing the same content of the Scottish folks in Boston at that one playground and drinking all the beer in the city.

Same with Heated Rivalry and other mega-popular shows that completely dominate culture. Tell Me Lies weekly releases, anyone?

Ultimately, I think society wants us to believe that hyper-personalization is better, but what if we’re all just craving to live the same shared experience? The only thing better than being obsessed with something, is having people to share it with. After all, wasn’t society built on gathering and discussing literature, art, and politics?

What if mass-culture moments like Love Island are the subjects, and social media is the village.

So we may crave the rush we got from seeing a trend for the first time in 2016 and participating with your friends, but we’ve also managed to bring slices of this feeling into 2026. Gen Z is keeping cinema alive, psychoanalyzing the same reality TV show, and joining the rest of the world in their passion for soccer (even though we’ll still never call it football). Maybe in 2036, we’ll look back at 2026 and crave these moments where society was in moving in tandem.

It’s really about community, connection, and shared experience. What is more human than that?

Ultimately, Tumblr was for those who were passionate, who wanted to build worlds and dive into them, for those who had an imagination. I know it can be hard to imagine for those who were neck deep in Tumblr, that others were not, but it is a realization I had when I got older that not everybody dived in so whole heartedly to their passions as I did. For example, most of my friends liked music, but they didn’t spend hours diving into every interview ever posted on YouTube of their favorite band and finding rare photos of the frontman they were in love with (hello Alex Turner).

This is partly because not everyone had been introduced to this level of fandom, they may not have known it existed – I for one learned from my cooler older sister, who got me into most of the bands and series we were obsessed with and therefore onto Tumblr and doing deep dives. Others likely thought it was cringe. That was part of the appeal, after all, being able to hide behind your username and being less searchable and public than other platforms like Instagram. I remember I used to downplay how obsessed I really was with Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, and later Arctic Monkeys, the list continues. I would never have told my friends I used to have a successful Harry Potter fan account with thousands of followers.

However, something has shifted recently. What used to be a niche, gate kept, private behavior from fans, has become a public phenomenon. Enter: modern social media (I was just going to say TikTok, but everything on TikTok makes its way to Instagram Reels eventually…). Every third scroll is a fan edit of a popular hockey show (take your pick), shamelessly thirsting over the main characters (take your pick). There is no barrier to entry here, there is no hiding it. The second you become a fan of something, the algorithm seems to know, and immediately feed you that content, and boom! You are able to dive into the world through fan edits, short clips, fan theories, fan fiction recommendations, and more.

As a result, we as a society have become shamelessly thirsty, with the female gaze reigning supreme. Whether you are a seasoned fan or not, you’re able to unlock a world of content surrounding your most niche interests, and maybe even find your community. What used to be seen as cringe or something to hide has become a new cultural currency, with many people experiencing this level of fandom for the first time in their lives.

The consensus? There is absolutely nothing better than being shamelessly obsessed, and a part of a community that feels the same. The only better thing than having a new fixation, is having people to talk about it with.

So long live Tumblr, which has completely transcended being a singular platform, into the sentiment of leaning all the way in.

And if you’ve found my Substack and somehow you aren’t in a fandom of some shape or form, this is your sign to find your passion and your people (this platform being a good place to start) and shamelessly dive in.

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Not to say these aesthetics haven’t been trending, we have seen messy makeup styles and party girl aesthetics dominate the runway and popular media like Euphoria glam being back and better than ever (even if the show is hard to watch, which is a completely different topic).

But we’ve seen another surprising shift: in a society that largely frowns upon traditional paths and relationships, bridal has been one of the most dominating aesthetic themes that has surfaced this year.

This contradiction is compelling, and actually falls perfectly in line with Gen Z’s conflicted nature, which I dove into in my last post. If you missed it, Gen Z is all talk about having a boyfriend being “embarrassing” and frowning upon following the mold their parents generation formed, but in reality they feel a sense of fomo whichever way they choose to live their lives.

Regardless, it is clear they romanticize anything and everything, and what’s more romantic than a wedding? From the pages of their favorite fantasy novels, they dream of being saved on their wedding day by their High Lord mate (if you know, you know), dramatic lace veils in the landscape of Wuthering Heights, your dream boy pleading “don’t marry him,” on the beach of Cousins. Weddings bring the drama, beauty, and passion they are craving.

We’re seeing shades of white dominate red carpets - like at the Oscars, where white was one of the top colors of the night. Zendaya in her The Drama press tour, wearing wedding dresses as she followed “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” Bella Hadid on the Cannes red carpet. The Met Gala. A wedding was even the centerpiece of the Super Bowl halftime show, the officiator being Bad Bunny himself.

Ultimately, this trend is in tandem with a larger shift we’re seeing in culture towards beauty, classical aesthetics, and traditional art. Think Rosalía’s LUX, where she is showing off her classically trained vocals in a multitude of languages. Even the interest in classic literature, with Wuthering Heights earlier this year, and Coach’s recent classical book bag charms they released.

The bottom line is don’t shy away from drama and doing the absolute most. Rather than scaling back and simplifying, how can you up the stakes?

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1. Not living with my sisters

2. Getting married

3. Not getting married

4. Having kids

5. Not having kids

You’ve probably seen this trend become popular on social where users share their personal “horror movie” situations with varying levels of sincerity. The trend has taken on a life of its own (as all trends do), but one of the original renditions leans on contradicting statements like the example I shared above (source).

Although just a silly TikTok trend at the surface, this actually speaks to a much larger insight about the state of Gen Z. Ultimately, the statistics show the generation continues to push societal norms. In the case of dating and relationships, this is seen in how they’re deprioritizing romantic relationships and starting families in leu of personal and career growth. Yet they still feel the pressure both internally and externally from what they feel is expected from them.

The way this is expressed? Gen Z’s favorite coping mechanism of humor and sarcasm, with an underlying feeling of existential doom.

Want to double click? Just look at the comment section.

Maybe their problem is overthinking, constantly hearing the opinions and seeing the lives of others romanticized on social. As the comments say, it is a lose-lose either way, in a society that will give you “fomo” no matter what you choose to do, especially since they feel they’re “running out of time.” It’s like analysis paralysis on steroids.

Some takeaways and thought starters below:

• Gen Z feels conflicted because of a sense of wrongness they get from the idea of possible outcomes of their lives - either way they fear they will see someone who made the opposite life choice, and get “fomo.”

• Gen Z continues to deal with serious life issues and milestones with avoidance, dry humor, and sarcasm. They often flip between existential dread and detachment.

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Now, I am not here to do a deep analysis on the societal and environmental impact of AI – others have got this covered, and I recommend you get yourself up to speed if you aren’t aware of the implications. Rather, I feel it is my duty to contemplate its affects on culture, and human behavior, as I always do in life and in my career in digital marketing strategy. Specifically, I have been contemplating: in an age where perfection is so attainable, are people craving ugliness? In 2026, I anticipate we will see imperfection as a human watermark. Being able to say “I made this myself” or “I thought of this myself” will become the biggest flex. Originality will be social currency.

Below, I unpack how I think these themes will be reflected in 2026 across marketing, fashion and beauty, and human behavior.

Marketing

We’re increasingly seeing it in advertising – brands loudly sharing their lack of AI usage in their content, using it as a splashy badge of honor to earn the trust and respect of consumers that are seeking real. But, the shock factor and therefore the effectiveness of these tactics will soon fade. What will remain? Content that is unmistakably human – think messy, scrappy, and almost accidental. So outlandish that no machine could’ve thought of it. Leaning heavily into fandoms and getting weird with it. Revealing the people behind the work, and proving credibility by showing the process.

Fashion and Beauty

Maximalism is back, baby! It honestly blows me away that the “color of the year” is a neutral white cream color. Maybe, it’s reflecting where society is technically at, but in my opinion, it is deeply out of touch with what people are craving. For a while now, the resurgence of 2010s have been trending in all their messy and sometimes cringe glory, but this is the year people will commit to the bit. We see this in moments like Zara Larson once again becoming an it-girl, with users on social obsessing over her colorful rainbow makeup.

We’re also seeing it in thrifting and second hand shopping becoming almost more desirable than new clothing – being able to say “I found this” is much cooler than saying “I ordered this from TikTok shop.” And, on that note, the only thing cooler than finding a niche, borderline ugly vintage piece, is being able to say “I made this myself” and it actually looking handmade - think chunky knitted pieces that came out of a new year resolution-induced hobby.

Human Behavior

People have been ready to be scrappier, more unhinged, and messier for years now. Brat was a huge signal of this, and the cultural effect that Brat had and still has will have to be saved for another post. However, we still have been seeing a rise in “grandma hobbies” and wanting to stay in and protect peace; I do not anticipate this to go away – I think this behavior is prominent and I can even get behind it depending on the day.

That being said, there is a shift I have seen in people contemplating the social implications of this – users on social have posted about how protecting your peace is actually selfish when it means not showing up for others. I feel that with the lack of third spaces and the growing difficulty to connect with people IRL, people are starting to get sick of protecting their peace, and are wanting to do MORE. Whether that be bringing back house parties, partying until the sun comes up, and maybe even starting some drama. Because, after all, feeling and experiencing is one thing AI cannot replicate.

In conclusion, it is my prediction and also my hope that 2026 will get uglier, messier, more colorful, more human. Right when the algorithm thinks it knows you, never let ‘em know your next move. Lean into the weirdest fandom possible, and write horrible fanfiction. Take ages to do things by hand, even, and most especially, if it is bad. This is the energy I will be bringing into 2026 at least.