10 cultural shifts your Q2 strategy should actually be accounting for
our April trends in one place
Every Wednesday our our team hops on Google Meet to chat about the trends we’re seeing in our social feeds and hand pick what we want to arm our audience with in the upcoming Monday email. Throughout April, we called out trends ranging from the sober curious movement, the pitfalls of “feminist” branding and why we still need humans in the room, no matter how advanced AI gets.
This month we’re trying something new and compiling all the trends we highlighted in April in one place. Please let us know if you think this is helpful ⬇️
Now, let’s dive into it….
🧃 Sober curious [but make it marketing]
You’ve probably clocked it by now, but Gen Z isn’t drinking like the generations before them. And we’re not just talking about Dry January vibes. We’re talking about a full lifestyle shift.
Recent data shows that 65% of Gen Z plan to drink less in 2025, and nearly 40% are going fully dry. This isn’t a blip or a trend, it’s a rebrand. And over the weekend, it hit IRL in a big way: Matcha Mia in Houston threw a “matcha rave” [yes, that’s a thing] and it brought in double the usual foot traffic [proving people actually want this]. Think morning house music, neon drinks, and zero hangovers.
read the OG newsletter on what you should do with this as a digital strategist here.
🔒 Gen Z is in their locked-in era
Forget multitasking. Gen Z is locking in. Finals szn? They’re locked in. Trying to hit 10K on TikTok? Locked in. Gym rat era? Locked in [and protein-shake-coded].
This isn’t hustle culture 2.0. It’s hyper-focus with boundaries, dressed up in curated playlists, aesthetic productivity vlogs, and group chat accountability. It’s giving “this is my personality for the next three weeks” and honestly? It’s working [they even made Canva schedules look cool again].
why this matters for marketers here
Upgrade to a premium subscription to get access to the 8 additional trends we covered this month ⬇️
Here’s what you can expect:
Festival branding gets smarter [How Coachella 2025 is raising the bar for aesthetic-led experiences with staying power]
Pinterest and Substack are quietly winning [What these platforms get right about creativity, community, and why Gen Z is all in]
Luxury Brands + Sports [The smartest partnerships of 2025 and why bougie-meets-sporty is a marketing slam dunk]
The Barbie AI Box [Why marketers are finally all-in on AI creativity, and how you can jump in]
AI’s Not-So-Innocent Era [The LaCroix Barbie Box fail and a reminder that unchecked AI can take your brand from clever to cringey real quick]
Another Bumble Fumble [Why dating app fatigue is real, and what happens when brand values and product experience don’t align]
The Era of Brand Mathletes [Why the marketers winning in 2025 are just as good with data as they are with culture]
Skylrk and the Rise of Soft Launch Brands [Why Bieber’s non-launch launch is the new blueprint for brand building]