I recently spent an unhealthy amount of time deep-diving into the hottest campaigns, brand strategies, and media trends as part of an audit to understand what’s actually getting press right now.
I looked at more than 30 of the U.S.’s most viral campaigns from the past 6-8 months—analyzing everything from the core idea to the rollout plan and press strategy—to spot patterns and figure out what’s the “thing” helping them generate that word-of-mouth all brands crave. I tracked which brands have consistently shown up in coverage over the last few years and how their behavior has evolved over time. I spoke to editors and other industry professionals about what is landing and why.
You’d think, after all that, I’d have some big, industry-shaking insight to share. Instead, I have a migraine, dry eyes, and a creeping sense that I’ve seen the same campaign repackaged at least 87 times.
And I guess I do have a takeaway: Everyone is running the same damn play.
A few years ago, an unknown brand with a weird, unhinged idea could break through simply because it was original. It was weird enough, smart enough, or just perfectly chaotic in a way that made people stop scrolling. Now? The weird, the chaotic, the absurdist—it’s still happening, but it’s happening on purpose. It’s not about taking real swings anymore—it’s about carefully orchestrating randomness, manufacturing virality, and refining the art of looking like you’re not trying while actually trying very, very hard.
Which, ironically, is why so much of it feels The Same™. At some point, brands realized that controlled chaos was the easiest way to make noise. And once that became clear, everyone started following the same blueprint. The nonchalant campaign announcement that “drops” at just the right time. The influencer “randomly” posting about something that was, in fact, briefed in a 50-slide deck. The brand that “accidentally” leaks something, resulting in an “unexpected” hype cycle mapped out months ago. All safe. And by safe, I don’t mean boring—I mean strategic in a way that feels a little more calculated, a little more “we’ve hedged all our bets.”
Yes, to the outside world, it all feels unexpected, unscripted, maybe even unhinged—but break down the anatomy of any one of these campaigns, and the formula is glaringly clear. It’s chaos optimized.
