When Does A Meme Become Marketing?

Hello Ping fam 👋

The internet has a new hobby every other week.

A dialogue becomes a meme.
A forgotten TikTok format comes back.
Everyone starts taking selfies like a five-year-old.
Spider-Man catches everything.
AI babies start talking.
And suddenly, every brand's social team is in a WhatsApp group asking:

“Can we do this?”

But here's the thing.

Not every trend needs a brand.

And the brands that get trendjacking right aren't necessarily the fastest ones to jump in. They're the ones that understand why people are participating in the first place.

Take “Money Follows Ma Brathaa.”

The dialogue became a template because people could drop almost any context into it and still make the joke work.

That's what makes a trend useful to brands:

You don't have to explain the format.

The audience already gets it.

The brand just needs to bring something worth inserting into it.

That's very different from forcing a product into a viral moment simply because everyone else is there.

The recent kids'-selfie trend is another interesting one.

Technically, there is nothing sophisticated about it.

Bad angles.
Odd framing.
The slightly chaotic look of a photo that shouldn't have been posted.

And that's exactly why it worked.

After years of increasingly polished social content, imperfection suddenly became the aesthetic.

People weren't participating because they wanted to create better content.

They wanted to create something that felt less like content.

That's a useful distinction for brands.

Sometimes the trend isn't selling the format.

It's selling the feeling behind it.

Then there are formats like the Spider-Man catch.

You see the trend and immediately know how to participate.

Catch something.
Add your own context.
Post it.

Same with the three-glow-up trend.

Three phases.
Three versions of yourself.
One little story.

And that's why these formats travel.

The audience doesn't have to come up with the idea.

The trend has already done the creative heavy lifting.

For brands, that's a dream.

But only if the brand has something natural to put inside the format.

The TikTok throwback and Kuchu Puchu trends work for another reason: they are instantly recognisable but still leave enough room for interpretation.

One plays with nostalgia.

The other plays with absurdity.

Neither requires a brand to completely reinvent its social identity to participate.

And that's probably the biggest test of all:

Can a brand enter the trend without looking like it has entered the room late?

Because there is a very thin line between:

“That's clever.”

and

“The social media manager has discovered the internet.”

Trendjacking is often treated like a race.

Who spotted it first?

Who posted it fastest?

Who got the most views?

But maybe speed isn't the real skill.

Relevance is.

A good trend gives people a format they already understand. A great brand knows exactly what to do with it.

So before asking: “Can our brand do this trend?”

Maybe ask the more uncomfortable question: “Would anyone care if our brand did?”

Because the internet has plenty of trends.

What it doesn't need is another brand trying desperately to be one.

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