#015 Brat as a Viral Playbook
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Earlier this week VP Kamala Harris announced her intention to run for president of the United States.
Less than 24 hours later the Twitter account Kamala HQ had grown to 1 million followers, in no small part due to an endorsement from singer Charli XCX.
After the popstar declared ‘Kamala IS brat’, the account’s content—which previously featured shaking hands and kissing babies—made a Gen-Z about turn. Tweeters can now find a slime-green banner advertising ‘Kamala HQ’ in low resolution ABCROM font, alongside TikTok dances and a medley of memes.
Put simply, since XCX’s viral endorsement the Democratic campaign has gone from Biden to brat.
So what is brat and what makes it so influential?
brat TLDR
Released on June 7th, brat is the 6th studio album from the singer behind hits like ‘Boom Clap’ and ‘I Love It’. Yet, while Charli’s IDGAF attitude has won her millions of fans, her work has never been mass culture. That is until brat.
Over the past 6 weeks brat has become the internet’s viral moment. Inspiring TikTok dances, fashion weeks and marketing campaigns for everything from Vegetarian Sausages to the UK’s Green Party.
According to Vogue Business, in its first week brat generated $22.5 million in media impact value (MIV) with searches for items in brat’s signature green surging 17 percent between June 20th and July 4th.
But what’s behind brat’s meteoric rise and how can it be harnessed?
brat’s brand pillars
At the core of its meteoric rise is brat’s approach to brand strategy.
Rather than being treated like an album, brat’s success has resulted from tactics that are more commonly used by brands like MSCHF and Balenciaga, than record labels like Universal and Atlantic.
Broken down, brat’s strategy can be segmented into six pillars that facilitate a virtuous cycle of viral engagement. Looking closely brat hinges on the interplay between:
SIMPLE BRAND SIGNIFIERS – we live in the age of the deep-fried meme1, where the aspirational influencer images of the early 00’s have been replaced by viral moments and celebrity fits that anyone can appropriate (à la Angelica Hicks).
Central to the success of brat is its recognition of this reality. With the album marked by three visual identifiers, so simple that anyone can make them their own:VERBIAGE – in a TikTok with over 3 million views Charli introduces brat as a verb:
“Brat is about being confident, putting yourself out there, being out, being about, being the center of attention.” – Charli XCX
Since the phrase was re-coined, ‘brat’ has been Googled over 118,000 times, with the internet christening everything ‘brat’ from engagements, and fits, to presidential candidates and supermarket chains.
As with all great internet trends, this proliferation has transformed brat from album title into lifestyle, with neologisms springing up left right and centre. Shortly after ‘brat’ was conceived a new term ‘brat summer’ hit social media, with the phrase seen in 28.7 million posts at time of writing.COLOUR – brat has claimed a particularly recognisable shade of slime-green chartreuse as its own.
A fan sporting brat-green hair In an interview with Vogue Singapore, Charli describes the album’s signature colour as:
“An offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong” – Charli XCX
Much like Yves Klien blue or Barbie pink, brat green provides an instant signifier of affiliation for fans to jump onto. And where fans are running, brands are never far behind.
So far ‘brat green’ has been used by UK retailer Flannels, Athleisure brand Adanola and even Kate Spade to promote their products. And even where brat verbiage is not directly present, its influence is clear. Etsy reported a 40 percent increase in searches for lime green home decor and furniture since the release of brat, and retailer BeautyBay posted that they would ‘only be using green beauty products this summer’.ARTWORK – in line with its IDGAF aesthetic, brat’s final visual marker is its low resolution text in ABCROM font. In a world of overly stylised, hyper sexualised album covers, this early internet energy is very brat. But most crucially the brat artwork’s simplicity is important because it’s easy for fans to replicate and meme: two elements essential to viral culture.
An acclaimed bratification earlier this week serves as case in point, where, less than 12 hours after Biden stepped down in the presidential race, a group of Fire Islanders were filmed wearing brat x Kamala t-shirts.
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REALNESS & RELATABILITY – the idea that brat’s simple visual identifiers are key to making it a part of viral online moments goes hand in hand with the concept of its realness.
Charli has long defined herself as a grunge it girl, an attitude perfectly aligned with her Gen-Z audience. Speaking to Vogue Business, TikTok’s Kristina Karassoulis attributes XCX’s ‘stratospheric rise’ to the pop star ‘not selling a perfect, polished image’ as fans on TikTok ‘always respond well to content that is authentic and real.’ This relatability is most evident when it comes to:BRAT’S LYRICS – described as expressing a ‘refreshing honesty’, Charli told Billboard Magazine that brat’s lyrics were written 'the way I would say it to a friend in a text message’. Along with this absence of pretentiousness, brat confronts parts of the female experience that most albums wouldn't dare. Charli’s admonitions of jealousy and self consciousness are interspersed with buzzword-bolstered hooks which perfectly align with 2024’s TikTok trends. Everything from angel numbers2 ‘666 with the princess streak’, to club culture ‘bumpin that beat’3 make brat simultaneously relatable, repostable, and algorithmically optimisable.
BRAT’S APPROACH TO SOCIAL MEDIA – read any DAZED article and you’ll detect a yearning for the days of MySpace. A time in which posting was misunderstood as inconsequential and ephemeral.
As a star with a reputation for online rawness (Charli created her 2020 album by sharing BTS with fans online and iterating it based on their feedback), one stroke of genius was brat’s use of a ‘finsta’.
Defined by Urban Dictionary as a ‘fake instagram account used for ugly selfies, memes, inside jokes etc’, finstas hit the scene in direct response to the overly polished, commercially cringey, accounts of the influencer generation.
Now boasting 148,000 followers, the brat finsta simultaneously gives fans the feeling of exclusive access, and furthers the ‘realness’ that lays at the album’s core.
AMBASSADOR ENGAGEMENT – while fashion houses are known for exemplifying their target customers by those they choose to dress in their clothes/ star in their campaigns/ sit front row at their shows, such conscious consumer curation is rarely seen on the album circuit. That is until brat.
Shortly after the album launched, its first single ‘Von Dutch’ was reworked as a remix featuring TikTok star Addison Rae who boasts over 88.6 million TikTok followers.
On March 9th brat’s second single‘360’ followed suit, launching with a 3-minute clip featuring every single viral internet girl of the moment.
From fashion icons (Julia Fox, Gabriette, Richie Shazam and Emma Chamberlain) to actresses (Chloë Sevigny, Hari Nef, Rachel Sennot), from entrepreneurs (Isamaya Ffrench) to porn stars (Chloe Cherry), 360 gave every internet icon their 15 seconds of video girl fame,. All whilst capturing the attention of the it girls’ combined 25,906,400 (~26 million) Instagram followers.
Since the album launch Charli’s ‘brat pack’ have been ‘brat girl summering’ across the globe. And the internet. They've been posting themselves dancing manically at brat shows in New York, London and Ibiza, and most importantly bolstering the brat lifestyle with their own guerrilla stunts. Most notably, it girl Gabriette declared her engagement to 1975 frontman Matty Healy at a brat show. She instagrammed that ‘MARRYING THE 1975 IS VERY BRAT’ while flaunting her black diamond engagement ring on top of another concert goer’s ass.
Model Gabriette Bechtel’s Instagram engagement at a Charli XCX concert in New York CONTROVERSIAL CONTENT – in my recent piece ‘On MSCHF and Memecoins’ I highlighted the importance of making content controversial.
Building on the age-old slogan ‘all publicity is good publicity’, in the age of social media, hate not only makes headlines, it spurs the trolls who lead posts to grow.
Alongside somewhat questionable musical techniques (cue Addison Rae literally screaming on theVon Dutch remix), brat borne drama has included a campaign featuring a questionable plastic bag (since altered to contain a sandwich), Charli’s open discussion of cigarettes/ drugs/ sex across socials, and most notably a remix featuring long time rival Lorde.
The internet has long pitted the New Zealand singer against her Essex counterpart, and in the original song ‘girl so confusing’, XCX alludes to this drama singing ‘people say we’re alike/ they say we have the same hair’ inviting widespread online speculation.
When 3 weeks after the original edit ‘The girl, so confusing version with lorde’ dropped, the internet did as planned ‘go crazy’. With both women candidly speaking about the awkwardness in their relationship as well as their own insecurities.'Sometimes I think you might hate me/Sometimes I think I might hate you’ sings Charli. ‘I've been at war with my body/ I tried to starve myself thinner/ And then I gained all the weight back’, replies Lorde.
Crucial to note is that brat’s controversy has not just been a top-down phenomenon. Fans have also done their part to rile up a storm, particularly when it comes to XCX’s perceived rivals. After rumours circulated that singer Taylor Swift had been sabotaging brat’s success, fans went as far as to chant “A Taylor morreu” (which in Portuguese means “Taylor is dead”) at a concert in Brazil, something Charli turned to Instagram to condemn.ALGORITHMIC AWARENESS – the content loop featuring an announcement-video-single-album cycle is common in music, however brat’s approach to this content is uniquely savvy on two counts:
SPEED – as exemplified by ‘The girl, so confusing version with lorde’, brat builds on Charli’s reputation of making music in response to real time events. With this particular remix, it was only when Lorde endorsed the album– stating ‘There is NO ONE like this bitch’ in regards the album– that she was invited to record.
Responsive creation and real-time remixes are familiar to any of the 1 billion users on TikTok, but to witness it on a record under a label like Atlantic is almost unheard of. This form of bratted content speaks to the album’s alignment with today’s approach to entertainment. Plus, it makes fans feel like they’re engaged with something evolving, incentivising them to follow along in anticipation of the next instalment.OPTIMIZATION – numerous elements of brat have been optimised for social media. Medicat Magazine even describes theVon Dutch remix as ‘purpose-built for TikTok’ due to Addison Rae’s lyrics running for exactly 15 seconds (the optimal length for a TikTok clip).
Similarly ‘Apple’, which initially became a dance phenomena due to TikToker Kelley Heyer, has now seen itself performed by the likes of Ashley Tisdale, Joe Jonas and Lisa Rinner.
The ‘Apple dance’, as simple as it is sticky, has caught the attention of amateur everymen due to the lack of skill needed to execute it. This means that some very unlikely characters, such as actor Kyle MacLachlan and shoppers at ASDA, have taken to performances, widening the brat web in a semi-ironic, and very entertaining way.
THE DIGITAL TOOLKIT – finally, brat has been bolstered by a digital toolkit, encouraging fans to create user generated content. These include:
THE BRAT TEXT GENERATOR – a simple brat-built site, which allows anyone to create their own brat style content. Mimicking the album’s format, text submitted into the generator is reconfigured into the style of the brat album which users are then encouraged to screenshot and share.
THE FACE FILTER – along with the text generator the brat team have released an Instagram face filter, allowing users to emblazon brat across their cheeks and nose. This has since been accompanied by hundreds of AR copycats across Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Some turn any object brat green, while others transform the user’s face into the brat album cover.
So what should brands take away?
On Friday Charli uploaded an Instagram slider with three bearish headlines:
1. ‘brat summer and it’s the same but it’s dead so it’s not’ – Pitchfork
2. ‘brat and it’s the same but people are ruining it so it’s not’ – DAZED
3. ‘brat summer is over’ – ___antiart___
Her caption: ‘oh? see you next week’
Unlike Tyla’s ‘water dance’, Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ or even TikTok’s ‘Mob Wife’, I see brat enduring next week, next month, and even after brat summer’s been and gone.
This is because over the past 8 weeks brat has managed to create a brand that is reinforced not just from the top down (by Charli and her team), but from the bottom up (by her fans). This loop creates a virtuous cycle that in turn provides the longevity which all modern brands should strive for,
Starting with simple symbols that are relatable and replicable, furthering them by providing tools for participation, and finally ensuring the whole spectacle is algorithmically amplified has allowed brat to forge a near impenetrable:BRAT WORLD – in the early days of entertainment worldbuilding was done through passive consumption, in 2024 it’s done through content that is participatory. As Nikita Walia says in her essay on brand universes ‘The dialogue between brand and consumer is now two-way’.
The strength of the brat world stems from its depth (its verbiage, ambassadors etc.) and breadth (the variety of who/ what can be brat), spurred on by the invitations and apparatus for anyone to participate.CONTENT POOL – in explaining his decision to create Moncler Genius – a labour intensive business model which demands that Moncler create new collections 1x per month instead of 2x per year – CEO Remo Ruffini told BOF founder Imran Amed that brand is all about content.
In a time of unprecedented information saturation, the only way to stay front of mind is to remind people over and over again that you exist, in new and novel ways.
With a content approach that is raw and responsive, brat evolves across the internet in real time. Not only remaining at the top of our feeds, but equally piquing our interest in the weird and wacky ways it will spring up next.EMOTIVE LINK – whilst Taylor Swift and her ‘clean girl’ squad are all well and good, humanity’s morbid fascination with grit will never be squashed by the algorithm.
Memorable in its decrepitude, and aspirational in the fact we could all become it, brat appears to give unfettered access to its reality.
Whilst perfected AI influencers and ‘Sephora kid’s’ unblemished skin are an unquestionable part of contemporary culture, these phenomena are not easily bonded with nor rooted for. Brat and the modern-day mean girls who exemplify it, on the other hand, are both intriguing and relatable. After all, even Taylor Swift’s a bitch at times.
So for anyone looking to bratify their brand, its not the lurid green that sticks. Rather its all about providing your community with the kind of access that spawns connection. Along with the tools to co-create. And of course, make sure you know how to work the algorithm. Because if no one sees your content, did you even post it at all?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
The Business of BRAT by Lucy Maguire for Vogue Business
- for the The Sociology of Business
This is your brand with a universe by
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A deep fried meme is a meme which completely loses its original content as a result of sharing, resharing, remixing and screenshotting
An angel number is a repetitive or predictable sequence or pattern of numbers, like 1111, 777, 5656, or 321.They are thought to represent an omen and as of today have been used to create 721,000 videos on TikTok
A reference to both dancing and hard drugs
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