Brain rot surged in 2024—what marketers should know about the social media trend

The online discourse around so-called “brain rot” content flooding social media feeds reached fever pitch this year, so much so that Oxford University Press selected the term as its 2024 word of the year and assigned it a formal definition: “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of over consumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” The record levels of brain rot content now circulating social media in the form of nonsensical memes (most recently, a torrent of posts about the Grinch getting knee surgery or a comic panel of a mother shushing her wailing baby by declaring, “Queen never cry”); surreal imagery and “brain rot language” such as “only in Ohio” and “what the sigma?” are also increasingly spilling over into marketing as brands aim to impress Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers. Take Nutter Butter’s bizarre TikTok strategy or a recent post from its sibling brand Sour Patch Kids with a pixelated image of one of its gummy candies screaming into a white void. Duolingo has also leaned heavily into brain rot memes this year, racking up more than 68 million views and 6.6 million likes on a TikTok video of a plush of its owl mascot Duo singing a gibberish version of “Cotton Eye Joe” and securing over 70 million views and 11.5 million likes on its take on the aforementioned “queen never cry” meme in just over a week. As of this writing, the latter video is the most-viewed post on Duolingo’s TikTok account. @duolingo brain rot courses dropping soon #sigma #brainrot ♬ original sound - the english guy Memes for the masses Brain rot’s influence on marketing also extended beyond social media this year. The “Skibidi Toilet” web series, often cited as a prime example of brain rot content, jumped to major retailers including Walmart, Target and Amazon in October after Invisible Narratives, the digital studio behind the series, partnered with Bonkers Toys to produce a line of Skibidi Toilet toys. “Memes are not just internet speak anymore—[they’ve] really become a pretty dominant cultural currency,” Maggie Walsh, head of strategy at digital marketing and social media agency Glow, told Ad Age. “So, I’m advising brands to think of memes not as just a content bucket, but as part of your writing and communication strategy.” Indeed, Oxford pointed to the proliferation of brain rot language “spinning offline into the ‘real world’” as part of its reasoning for choosing “brain rot” as its word of the year. The term “brain rot” grew in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024, according to Oxford, and searches for “brain rot meaning” have ballooned by over 2,073% over the past year, per data from RWS Holdings, a U.K. company that provides language, content and intellectual property services. “This spike indicates a growing interest in understanding these terms, but it also suggests that if people need to look them up, the effectiveness of brain rot language in communication is questionable,” the company said in an email. Krissie Petfield, head of marketing for the company’s AI-powered translation platform HAI, added that, “the overuse of trending jargon can lead to messages that feel empty or insincere, which can ultimately harm a brand’s reputation.” @heidsbecker Brainrot bestie episide 9! Not me on another failed date ♬ original sound - Heidi Becker While memes and internet slang certainly aren’t new, they’re increasingly crossing into the realm of “low-quality” brain rot content. And, like most memes, the trends and language tied to brain rot content typically have a short shelf life, Walsh said. “So, if [it] suddenly becomes 100% of your writing, even on social media, you’re basically putting a timestamp on your brand voice” and potentially “dilut[ing] your brand message,” she said. Overusing mindless brain rot content can also cause brands to “become part of this endless scroll—not the thing people are stopping and paying attention to,” said Adi Rajvanshi, head of strategy at digital content company Portal A. Marketers tapping into brain rot vocabulary or trends to impress young consumers should still ensure the resulting social content reflects the brand to prevent it from getting lost in a sea of similar, user-generated brain rot posts, she added. The Buffalo Bills, for instance, regularly centers its players in its bizarre brain rot videos on TikTok, splicing together clips from games, interviews, the NFL Draft and other footage featuring the team with the latest brain rot trends and vocab terms. In April, Marc Jacobs leaned into the “TikTok Rizz Party” (a phrase that is nonsensical to anyone who isn’t chronically online) by partnering with two creators involved in the phenomenon while also highlighting several of its clothing items and accessories. @buffalobills Tyler Gas. #nfl #billsmafia #joshallen #win ♬ original sound - Buffalo Bills For most brands, however, while blending in with user-generated brain rot content can temporarily drive additional engagement and viewership, it rarely tends to generate brand awareness or brand recall “because all of that content starts blending in,” Rajvanshi said. “If you’re a brand where your approach to social programming is one of quantity over quality … then you absolutely need to make some of this brain rot content into your always-on feed, because that’s how you’re going to keep the algorithms happy,” she added. “But I think about any brand’s programming strategy as a balance of things that you do to blend in and things that you do to stand out.” Acknowledging the brain rot At the same time, the rise of brain rot content “speaks to a much larger cultural trend,” Walsh said. “It’s part of a cultural craving for very dumb comfort right now, or just dumb fun,” which consumers (particularly Gen Zers, 40% of whom reported feeling anxious or stressed “all or most of the time” in a recent Deloitte survey) are often seeking from social media. In other words, the mindlessness of brain rot content offers young consumers respite from financial and political stressors or other sources of anxiety. Tapping into the surging desire for lighthearted, mindless entertainment doesn’t mean a brand needs to immediately start throwing around brain rot lexicon in its social content, Walsh said. Instead, marketers should consider “how [they] can serve that need … for some comfort or some dumb fun” more generally in their marketing, she said—such as by collaborating with comedy creators or integrating their brands into lighthearted social media series, as Amazon Prime recently did with the show “Boy Room.” Part of the increased discourse around brain rot this year stems from a growing self-awareness among those consuming brain rot content, largely Gen Z, of the potential harms of spending hours watching low-quality, senseless videos and endlessly parroting terms such as “sigma” and “skibidi.” Some use “brain rot” in a self-deprecating manner, said Rachael Datz, managing director of social media at VML, while others (not just Gen Zers) are leveraging the term in conversations around regulating social media use among children and teens. In just the past few days, following a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the looming U.S. ban on TikTok, a handful of TikTok users have posted videos admitting a ban on the app could help them overcome their addiction to brain rot content—and social media as a whole. @xiasha.robertson1 sad i didnt get to live out my influencer dreams but.. #fyp #foryoupage #relatable #microinfluencer #tiktokban #trending #ban #brainrot ♬ original sound - Frankie Bleau “Whether it’s like a pop culture reference or this [brain rot] stuff happening in the comments, I always come back to the same thing, which is that you have to understand who your audience is” and what they want from social media, Datz said, rather than just jumping on the latest brain rot meme or vocab term as “an easy way to get likes.”

Brain rot surged in 2024—what marketers should know about the social media trend

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