Riding the Zeitgeist: How Pop Culture Can Boost Your Sales

While Sabrina Carpenter is hijacking the internet, you’re aimlessly scrolling the feed trying to understand the cause of the controversy — if there’s indeed a controversy concerning her femininity, talent, or artistic proclivities — wondering if a pop star like her could be called a zeitgeist capturing everybody’s attention during an advertising campaign. Oddly enough, the answer is yes: Sabrina, or bbno$, Arcane, Clair Obscur, or Severance, or God forbid, Squid Game (yup, it’s still running) can become a goldmine for brands savvy enough to ride the trend wave.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to tap into pop culture without cringing, clout-chasing, or confusing your audience — and turn those trends into hard sales. Let’s make your brand part of the conversation (before the conversation moves on to something shinier).

Be Where the Buzz Is

If you hoped to stay away from all this pop culture clatter, supplanting these pop culture bits with a remotely apt substitution and crossing fingers for good luck, you must be crestfallen to discover that pop culture is no longer a want but a need (sorry not sorry for speaking in TikTok/Twitter vernacular.) Sounds contentious? Bears looking into? Okay, we have some hard data you can’t call down.

A study by Magna/IPG and Twitter states that brands that want to go upscale must embrace the pop culture slant, especially if they’re aiming to grab the attention of younger consumers. Turns out, 44% of shoppers admire the classic combo — quality and price. However, another 31% buy based on the vibe check: their purchasing decision depends on how they feel about the brand, and a solid 25% fully expect brands to bring the cultural heat. Yup, you heard that right: a quarter of consumers want the brands to make it pop.

You’re undoubtedly galvanized into action and spurred by these precious findings, ready to intersperse your success stories with the hottest TV series and video games, but hold up and read further for more information. You can’t just gather some salient features, gush the concocted landing pages into cyberspace, and wait for the conversion rate to grow at breakneck speed just because you watched the White Lotus. Woe to the marketer who slapped on some trendy slang and called it a day! These days, people aren’t so gullible anymore, so you won’t fool them with pop-ups and billboards — simply because they want more than just brittle verisimilitude. The proof can be discovered in that same study by Magna/IPG/Twitter. Their survey reveals that 47% of respondents care deeply about social movements, and 38% say brands getting involved in these causes and pop culture matters a lot — especially millennials and Gen Z Twitter users.

The major takeaway from this data is that brands aren’t expected to sound current; they are supposed to be current. When brands want to evince their knowledge of their target audience, they should do so by tuning into what matters most to said audience. According to the study we have already mentioned several times, people are sharper on social issues like fair trade and gender than on the latest pop culture buzz. But that’s only tangential to the subject of our today’s discussion.

Let’s retrace our steps and explore pop culture further, investigating how the emotions fueled by the phenomenon could help you engrave the name of your brand into the brainpan of your consumers.

• Relatability. Leave soulless promotions to the spirits of hell, that’s their fiefdom. The approach du jour is cultural relevance that makes your brand more relatable and modern and shapes the personality of your business.

• Understanding. Now, a cornerstone of marketing: you cannot contribute to a noble cause your target audience advocates for unless you comprehend the motives and create the portrait of your average consumer. Whether you like it or not, you’re thus prodded to learn who you’re selling your products to: what are those people, what lifestyle they stick to, what movies they watch, what music they listen and where they hang out.

• Connections. Once you’ve established yourself as a trustworthy ally who supports a certain cause and spices things up with a pertinent pop culture mention, you are guaranteed to build lasting relationships, eventually increasing brand loyalty.

• Shareability. Pop culture spreads like wildfire, admit it. If you know how to create relevant and relatable posts with a sprinkle of pop culture fast enough, you can sure count on gaining traffic, increased likes, comments, and interactions.

• Soft sells. At the end of the day, all your marketing endeavors are aiming for a bigger gain, and let’s announce what should have been announced several paragraphs before: people are most likely to buy from brands that speak their language.

Trend Radar on Alert

Okay, you’ve taken a deep breath, counted to ten, and exhaled. Amassed your wits. Prepared to clamber onto the summit of success using all Sabrina Carpenter’s references you’ve encountered while chatting on Twitter. What should you pay heed to in order to unearth a trend that can boost your conversions in the blink of an eye? Here's a shortlist of contestants for you to consider.

• Twitter. That’s too evident an option, but this one’s impossible to ignore. No matter how much effort Elon Musk puts into ruining the core of the platform, it rises like a Phoenix… and bursts into millions of altercations, skirmishes, and controversies. While Twitter is indeed notorious for its testy mood, it’s often the place where pop culture gets its first take even before omnipresent paparazzi get the whiff of the drama surrounding the Kardashians, Doja Cat, or Beyonce. All you have to do it to monitor trending hashtags, follow commentators and niche communities, and track conversations. Oh, and don’t forget to contact your chamomile tea supplier because Twitter has no chill.

• TikTok. Another major player that keeps users in thrall is TikTok, known mostly for the viral nature of the content posted there. We’ve learned not to underestimate the platform, and now we’re aware it isn’t a chaotic place where dance challenges are created and where the absurd Gen Z humor is born. In effect, this is a treasure trove of sounds, slang, fashion, and viral micro-trends that often spill into mainstream media. Artists like bbno$, Lil Nas X, Doechii, Olivia Rodrigo, and Megan Thee Stallion taught us to set off a global moment. If you don’t remember any of them, just refresh your memory and let yourself fall into the rabbit hole with tons of videos posted with the MONTERO soundtrack or Edamame. Those who want to nail the platform should treat it with more precision and care than Twitter: if you want to stay in the loop, you should subscribe to major trendsetters, regularly check the Explore page, and keep an eye on what’s blowing in your niche. Bonus tip: scroll the comments — sometimes they’re more insightful (and hilarious) than the video.

• Instagram. Don’t dismiss the digital veteran just yet. It isn’t as chaotic as either of the erstwhile options, but it can offer equally ludicrous opportunities in terms of pop culture and incipient trends, though it’s more on the storytelling side. Storytelling on Instagram takes center stage, and influencers are still key players in setting aesthetic and lifestyle trends — from fashion drops to viral recipes. Your goal on this platform is to explore the Reels tab, follow trend-forward creators and lifestyle brands, and watch how people react to visual campaigns.

On a side note, it won't hurt to delve marginally deeper and surf other platforms as well. For instance, you can scroll Reddit to track the generation of the meme culture or breeze through YouTube Shorts, another trend incubator. Sometimes it’s worth checking Spotify and Viral Charts to see what bellwethers are climbing the charts and what you can potentially use in your campaigns. For those who are a little too analytical and austere, Google Trends gleaned information on what the world is searching for. We're only giving you a general direction; you're welcome to map things out and outline your own strategy.

Trend It Till You Sell It

Armed with the IT Boy song and hours of watched TikTok content (is your brain frying yet?), you’re about to integrate pop culture into your marketing campaigns. Remember, one random meme isn’t enough: even if it is successful and people respond accordingly, you cannot rely on sheer luck and expect your conversion rate to grow for no reason whatsoever. It takes timing, tone, and a little bit of tact. And if you’re frightened you aren’t in the know how to keep your ducks in a row, we’ll teach you.

• Stay Authentic. Albeit trends are popping up practically every day, not every trend is yours to keep. If it doesn’t align with your brand voice or audience, skip it. Even if the original video is funny. Even if you’re tempted to join the bandwagon with Eurovision songs. Even if… you’ve got it. The idea behind this reasoning is that forced pop culture is worse than no pop culture at all: it screams inauthenticity, and your audience spots it the moment the video appears on your account. Stay true to your brand and your values.

• Update, update, update. Trends change, songs replace each other, Charli XCX is no longer doing her brat summer, and you might be a little disoriented because too many things are happening at the same time. It’s okay to shut down sometimes; you can’t always grasp every incipient trend popping up on your timeline — but Google Trends, TikTok’s Explore page, and Twitter’s Trending can. Keep your radar sharp by checking these early warning systems and using them as your cue to get creative.

• Act fast. Perhaps this piece of advice is growing stale the moment you hear it, but when it comes to trends, nothing else can work better than speed. If you have detected a relevant piece of pop culture that might potentially go viral, snatch it.

• Amuse. Typically, pop culture thrives on emotion, especially laughter. Whether it’s a clever twist on a viral moment or a wink at internet culture, the most shareable content is the kind that feels fun. When you create content that looks — and feels — familiar, awakening an emotion to which users can relate, you can be sure you’re gonna be on top (a touch of covert America’s Next Top Model reference in this bit is on point; we did it on purpose.)

Trend Carefully

If pop culture was a spell in a D&D game, it would certainly be Charm Person: your enemy becomes your friend but only until they’re hit with a weapon. In a competitive world of affiliate marketing that sounds like a great opportunity to turn random strangers into allies — however, you must be exceedingly careful not to trigger The Cringe Factor reaction. Examine the risks and make sure you aren’t making a mistake that might precipitate your fall and haul you into the pit of despair, inlaid with sardonic remarks and jeering notes of competitors.

One such pitfall is just around the corner. Once you set your mind on using pop culture references, you ought to ensure that the references you are about to employ in your campaign are indeed all the hype. Imagine a brand bringing up a joke about Cersei Lannister’s complicated relationship with her brother Jaime in 2025. While the jest might be hilarious, it’s still ridiculously out of place: people aren’t in the fandom anymore. Fanfics might still be posted, edits might still be made, but in general, people moved on to other, more recent shows.

Another difficulty we are about to broach in this paragraph is much less obvious… and causes backfire with remarkable ease. You can post memes with a character from Baldur’s Gate 3 saying a cheeky phrase; resort to a Wes Anderson movie, or do some Lady Gaga’s Abracadabra in your ads, but always remember that some trends come loaded with deep cultural meaning about race, gender, identity, politics, or even social justice. When brands jump in without recognizing that nuance, they go from “relatable” to “out of touch” in a single post. Does it ring a bell? Your obedient servant at Traffic Cardinal is chronically online, so it’s not that hard to illustrate the situation with an example.

The first one that comes to mind is Kendall Jenner’s iconic flop, an ad that failed ignominiously and should be mentioned in textbooks on marketing. In what was intended to be a feel-good message about unity, Pepsi launched a commercial featuring Kendall Jenner leaving a glamorous photo shoot to join a protest. The vibe was upbeat, the crowd attractive and diverse, and the climax? Jenner handing a can of Pepsi to a stoic police officer — who then smiled, symbolizing peace had been restored through soda. From the sound of it, it can’t wreak havoc, can it? Alas, it can.

The ad was immediately called out for trivializing real-life protests, particularly Black Lives Matter and other global movements fighting racial injustice and police violence. Jenner’s gesture of handing over a soda to ease protest tension came off more like a parody than a tribute —oversimplifying what many see as risk, sacrifice, and struggle. The tone-deaf timing around police brutality and racial injustice, surface-level understanding of the topic, and a supermodel with no real connection to activism transformed a message into a brand stunt, not a genuine expression of solidarity.

While Pepsi miscalculated and misinterpreted the situation in the country of its origin, a surprising but nonetheless understandable occurrence, Dolce & Gabbana went to greater lengths in terms of tone-deaf messages: the brand wanted to blend cultures... and failed abysmally in the process. Promoting a runway show in Shanghai, Dolce & Gabbana released a series of short ads featuring a Chinese model trying to eat classic Italian dishes with chopsticks. A male narrator offered commentary in a patronizing tone, mispronouncing Italian words. No cultural fusion was detected; only outdated tropes reducing Chinese culture to a punchline.

The backlash was swift and severe. Chinese celebrities pulled out of the event, luxury retailers dropped the brand, and #BoycottDolce trended worldwide. The fashion show was canceled, and the brand’s image in China, one of the largest luxury markets, was deeply, if irreparably, damaged.

But even this isn’t the acme of bad decisions: in the race of terrible campaigns, Burger King takes the cake. On International Women’s Day, Burger King UK tweeted: “Women belong in the kitchen.”

The goal was supposedly to spotlight the gender gap in professional kitchens and promote their scholarship program for aspiring female chefs. Unfortunately, only the shocking first sentence appeared in the tweet preview, and it lacked any immediate context. The follow-up tweet clarified the intent — but by then, the internet had already exploded. The tweet went viral but not because it was the peak of comedy. Critics and consumers accused the brand of using sexism as a gimmick. Despite eventually deleting the tweet and apologizing, the damage was done.

However, the problems brands usually face when trying to master pop culture can’t be limited to these two challenges. There’s another one, a product of thriving capitalism: manufacturers jumping into trending moments to push a promo code. Speaking Gen Z language, this cringe in action kills the vibe and simply feels inauthentic. Visualize the situation: a brand spots a viral dance challenge, recreates it (rather awkwardly), and ends the video with “Order now and get 20% off!” Instead of connecting with the trend, it feels like a cheap ad wearing a wig. It’s hard to come up with a more embarrassing example, but we’ll try. Let's say, a brand slaps its product on it with a forced caption like, “Tag someone who needs our shampoo this Monday!” Suppress the urge to roll your eyes, though not too often, it still occurs here and there. Alas, it doesn't make brands relatable — only creates the impression that these brands just discovered the internet yesterday. Remember, pop culture-driven content should feel like it belongs in the conversation; use humor, insight, or creativity to add value before asking for anything in return.

Wrapping Up

As you may have noticed, pop culture isn’t just a sort of entertainment for a bored mind: it can be a crystal clear mirror of what matters right now, in this very moment. When brands glean information, summarize their findings, and finally tap into that energy with authenticity, humor, and the right timing, they successfully sell their product — and increase the response and engagement tenfold.

However, every time you launch a campaign tied to a pop culture moment, you should remember that being part of the zeitgeist isn’t about chasing every meme or viral moment. It’s about knowing your audience, understanding the context, and showing up with something that adds value.