Trends are an ingredient, not a recipe.

Every brand meeting eventually arrives at the same question, asked slightly sheepishly: "should we be doing… the trend?" The meme, the game, the sound, the format that's everywhere this week.

Our answer is always the same: trends are an ingredient. The brand is the recipe. Get the proportions wrong in either direction and the dish fails. All trend and you're a brand cosplaying as a teenager; all brand and you're wallpaper.

When we said yes

This year we've dropped a food-delivery brand into a Minecraft world, rebuilt its logo as a playable-looking arcade animation, and produced a motion piece that lovingly borrows the visual grammar of a certain blue hedgehog's universe. Different executions, one common thread: in every case, the trend was a language the audience already speaks, and the brand had something genuine to say in it.

The Minecraft world worked because back-to-school season belongs to kids, and that's where kids live. The arcade logo worked because play is the brand's personality, not a costume it rented for a week. The parody worked because it was crafted, actually animated, actually funny, rather than a template with a logo slapped on.

When we say no

We decline trends more often than we ride them. The filter question is simple: if you removed the logo, would this content still only make sense coming from this brand? If any brand could have posted it, the trend is using you. You're paying to promote a meme, and the meme keeps the attention.

We also say no to speed traps. Some formats have a 72-hour shelf life; if the approval chain takes five days, the corpse of a trend is worse than silence. Part of running a brand's feed is knowing which waves you can actually catch with the paddling speed you have.

Craft is the differentiator

Here's the part that gets missed: when a trend is right, half-effort is the worst effort. Everyone can repost a format. Almost nobody can rebuild it properly: model the world, animate the logo frame by frame, write the joke so it lands in Arabic and English. The feeds we run earn their engagement not because they chase culture, but because when they step into it, the craft is visibly a level above the noise.

Trends expire. Taste doesn't. A brand with taste can borrow anything for a week and hand it back better. A brand without it can't even borrow safely.

Want a feed with both? Say hello.