I'm starting to wonder if we've completely lost the plot

Every brand on earth is trying to emulate Taylor Swift's album art right now.

And I'm starting to wonder if we've completely lost the plot.

Taylor drops orange-tinted visuals for her new album, and suddenly the entire internet turns into a pumpkin spice latte.

McDonald's posts orange content.

Shake Shack goes orange.

FedEx, Netflix, even the Empire State Building - all frantically painting themselves in Swift's colour palette hoping some of her cultural relevance rubs off on them.

But the one that really got me? Airlines.

Multiple airlines celebrating Taylor Swift.

The woman who's literally notorious for taking private jets everywhere 😅

The cognitive dissonance is staggering.

United Airlines was particularly shameless about it.

They made millions from Swift's tour - "ten millions of dollars" in flight revenue from fans traveling to see her shows.

So naturally, they jumped straight into the orange meme game, desperate to claim their slice of Swift's cultural cachet.

While completely ignoring the fact that their industry's relationship with Swift is... complicated, to say the least.

This is panic participation at its worst.

Brands see a cultural moment trending and immediately think "how can we insert ourselves into this conversation?" without ever asking the more important question: "should we?"

It's the same energy as brands jumping on the Oasis reunion by referencing "Wonderwall" and calling it a day.

Surface-level, lowest-common-denominator cultural participation that misses the entire point of why these moments matter in the first place.

Taylor Swift's album rollout works because it's authentic to her brand, deeply strategic, and rooted in genuine artistic expression.

Her orange aesthetic connects to broader themes in her work, her personal journey, her relationship with her audience.

When brands copy the visual language without understanding the emotional context, they're essentially creating cultural karaoke.

Same notes, zero soul.

The speed of modern media has created this weird FOMO culture where brands think they need to participate in every trend within hours of it emerging.

But reactive marketing done badly actively damages brand credibility.

Compare this to reactive marketing done right.

Remember Nothing's response to Jaguar's "Copy Nothing" campaign?

Jaguar launched this bizarre, car-less rebrand with the tagline "Copy Nothing" that had everyone confused.

Nothing, the tech company, immediately jumped in with a clever parody that played off Jaguar's own messaging while amplifying their brand relevance.

That worked because it was contextually relevant to both brands.

It demonstrated wit rather than just mimicry.

It added something to the cultural conversation instead of just parroting it.

The Swift orange-fest does none of these things.

It's pure aesthetic copying without strategic thinking.

Brands are literally just changing their profile pictures to orange and hoping that counts as marketing.

Cultural relevance can't be forced.

Either you belong in the conversation or you don't.

And sometimes - often - the best way to participate in a trend is to avoid it entirely.

When every brand jumps on every trend, cultural moments lose their distinctiveness.

The thing that made Swift's aesthetic compelling in the first place gets watered down by thousands of corporate interpretations.

Plus, it reveals that so many brands see cultural moments as resources to be extracted rather than conversations to genuinely contribute to.

It's transactional rather than relational.

Whereas the most successful brands usually understand that authenticity beats timeliness every single time.

They'd rather miss a trending moment than participate in a way that feels forced or irrelevant to their actual brand identity.

Creators understand intuitively that cultural participation has to feel natural, not opportunistic.

They know their audience well enough to know when jumping on a trend makes sense and when it would just look desperate.

Rather than: “Swift posts orange content. We post orange content. Job done."

But that's not how culture works.

That's not how audiences respond.

And it's definitely not how you build lasting brand equity.

Know when to sit out.

Not every cultural moment needs your brand's input.

Anyway, rant over 😂

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

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