Is Your Trendy Video Helping You — or Just the Algorithm?
In June 2024, a pop album called Brat went viral and kicked off a trend. Referenced by everyone from influencers to politicians to luxury brands, the “brat” aesthetic was about having a good time, accepting the chaos of life, and most of all embracing your authentic self and all its flaws. People referred to themselves proudly as brats, talked about having a carefree “brat summer,” and used the lime green of the album cover to visually tie themselves to the trend.
The Brat Summer trend
It wouldn't surprise me if some nonprofits were also out there trying to ride the "brat" wave. After all, social media trends are a goldmine of free views. They’re an easy way to impress or entertain, grab attention and get people to engage. There have been all kinds of famous examples over the years: the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, “Movember” moustaches for awareness of men’s health issues, the Red Cross getting great results for a blood drive by offering limited edition t-shirts of Snoopy during a Peanuts resurgence.
But although it might seem like a no-brainer, before you invest time and money in a trend, it's worth taking a closer look at what it can actually do for you — and what it can’t.
Does it work?
It's true that trends come with built-in views. But here’s the thing. How good are views alone at measuring marketing success?
If people click play to watch the hottest new thing, does their interest transfer to your organization?
If you get everyone talking about the clip you put out, do you also get them to pay attention to the cause you represent?
Or do they watch, smile, maybe even share, and then scroll right on to the next thing?
If you've ever participated in a trend, you can see for yourself what story the numbers tell. It’s great if your video racked up a lot of views, but the real question is whether those views got you something worth having: a substantive bump in traffic to your website, an increase in donations or more mailing list sign-ups.
Remember, you probably needed to derail your marketing plans somewhat to hop on this bandwagon. Your staff spent hours choreographing that TikTok while the annual appeal video sat in Google Drive, unfinished. Not only that, but it might have also affected your branding — positioning your organization publicly alongside the silly and frivolous.
If you’re going to make this trade-off, I recommend you make sure you’re actually getting something for it.
Staying on message
Trend or no trend, the most important part of any marketing video is its message.
If you don’t want the attention you get to be fleeting, you need to let viewers know about your work and give them a reason to care about that. Unless you can get them invested in something other than the trend itself, none of the views you get will reflect any kind of sustainable support.
In other words, if it’s possible to use a trend to highlight something meaningful about your organization, piggybacking on its virality is a great move. A school could maybe use a dance trend to show off not only the great vibes among their students and staff, but cool features of their facilities and programming that make them stand out.
These things can’t be incidental; they have to be prominent, the goal you keep at the forefront throughout planning and filming.
On the other hand, often enough it’s just not going to be a good fit, and there’s no way to tie the latest trend into your work. In that case, making a trendy video would just be wasting resources on a quickly expired fifteen (or even just two) minutes of fame.
Have you ever followed a trend? How did it work out for you? Let me know in the comments.
And if you want to talk messaging and strategy for the next trend that comes along, you can always reach me here.