Cerveza Cristal
February 28th — March 12th
Hey readers! Here’s our hot take: Maybe it’s the Oscars, maybe it’s the Dune memes, but it feels increasingly essential to be up to date on pop culture to create timely and entertaining content. In addition, being able to understand why certain trends take off can only benefit your social media presence. Having that deeper understanding will help you avoid the pitfalls of trying too hard to be relevant.
🎵 Top Sounds 🎵
Our curated picks of the top sounds on TikTok
This Is NOT A Banger 🙅🏻♀️
Use this sound when you have an unpopular opinion or just need to criticize something.
Big And Small 👯♀️
A bop from Mitski that has an accompanying TikTok dance, but mainly is great for a background to a joyful video.
Yep, it’s another trending remix of Linger. The tone of this particular remix is upbeat and pairs well as a background for positive content.
The Vibe I Bring To The Function 🌝
Use this sound with a photo slide post of the vibes you exude. Personally, I’m 100% Miss Piggy.
Assert your dominance with this sound.
🔉Sound Highlight 🔉
Mood: 😎
Travel creators are using this sound but there’s potential for a lot of niches. Use this with a photo slide post to share what you’re blocking out, and what you’ll be choosing to do instead.
🌟Trend Highlight 🌟
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It’s all about the Dune memes right now, so get your blue-eye filters ready. The easiest Dune meme is by far featuring your own personal hype man as Stilgar.
💫 Post Highlight 💫
This UAE cinema group has a surprisingly fantastic TikTok presence. This post, which uses the Dune Stilgar meme is perfect advertising not just because it’s current but also because the account posting is the place you’d go to catch a screening of Dune.
☕ The Zeitgeist ☕
Hot topics and discourse from across the internet
Cerveza Cristal’s ads team played the long game with their movie product placement.
It’s Women’s History Month which is why brands are doing marketing like this but still paying their majority female marketing staff 3/4ths of what men earn!
Black Twitter is getting a three-part docu-series premiering May 9th on Hulu.
Congress is thinking about banning TikTok (again) and users are in revolt. TikTok even urged users to contact their reps about the potential ban.
An influencer successfully invoiced The Daily Mail after they used her content for an article. A big win for all creators whose videos have been content farmed by large publications without compensation or consent.
The Queer Eye cast drama escalated after Bobby Berk announced he was leaving and JVN was in the center of a Rolling Stone article delving into reports of tension and on-set rage.
🥡 The Takeaway 🥡
What marketers are taking away from trends
I’ve said it before, and until it clicks, I’ll have to say it again: not every trend is for you!
The British Museum has no business adding misogynistic memes to its crimes. Their recent repost of a video to their TikTok caused many to call out the organization for sexism. The suggestion I have for The British Museum is to a) return the Benin Bronzes (and other stolen artifacts) and b) stop being babygirl.
It isn’t that the girl trend is off-limits. You can be tongue-in-cheek about it, you can subvert the meme. It’s that the worst elements of the trend are misogynistic. The worst version of this trend, which is by now almost a year old, earnestly asserts that stereotypes about women and girls are true.
The other issue is The British Museum’s social team seemed to miss what was so funny about the Roman Empire meme. It wasn’t that men had some superior understanding of Roman engineering, were in awe of Agrippina’s hold of power, or all had Ovid’s Metamorphoses memorized by heart. It was about the absurdity of the fascination some men have with their idea of a highly masculinized Roman Empire (never mind differentiating between the Roman Republic and the Empire). The girl trend and the Roman Empire trend were both about gender. And using the tone of the girl trends paired with the Roman Empire trend read more like a sprinkle-sprinkle coach’s content than fun social copy. This was only made worse by the impression many have of The British Museum— far from another female peer, the museum to some represents an older, more regressive, authority.
Understanding memes and their implications is critical in social media marketing. Even the silliest meme or image can be tied to a dark history or contemporary usage by far-right groups. It’s our job as social media marketers to know and to do better.