The smartest move a brand can make on social right now is often to skip the trend.
Not because trends stopped working overnight, but because audiences have started to notice when a brand is performing for the algorithm instead of talking to them. In our latest Spark Session, we walked through a new consumer report, debated about it as a team, and landed on a simple rule: chase fewer trends, and make more things only you could make.
Casey opened the session with the 2026 Global Consumer Trends report from Mintel, a market research firm that has studied how people buy for decades. The report points to one tension that will shape marketing through 2030: efficiency versus humanity. People can get things faster and cheaper than ever, and a growing number of them are starting to miss the human part.
Casey summed up the first shift, which the report calls the anti-algorithm, like this: “People feel they’re being fed by the algorithms rather than being served by them. Content that feels super manufactured for reach, the trend chasing, the copycat, is starting to read as insincere. Even if it’s performing in the short term, it’s not building brand trust.”
This might sound blunt, but you have to decide whether your job is to empower the people watching or just feed the algorithm.
Ailís said out loud what a lot of social media coordinators have been feeling: “I’ve been annoyed by some trends lately. When I try to apply a trend to a client, there’s sometimes a disconnect. I’m not feeling it as the person creating it.”
That feeling is the warning sign. If the person making the content can tell it is forced, the audience can too. Ailís’s fix is to lean the other way: “It could be a good moment for our brands to develop original content that nobody else is doing, content only each of our clients can make, that nobody can copy, so we fully stand out.”
A trend is borrowed attention. Anyone can use the same sound or format, which means the reach fades the second the next brand copies it. Original content is the opposite. It is slower to make, but it belongs to one brand, and no one can lift it.
Maggie gave the team the reframe that made it click: “Instead of staying trendy, I’ve been liking the idea of staying topical.”
The two words sound similar and are not. Trendy means copying a format because it is spreading. Topical means showing you pay attention to the world your audience lives in. Maggie’s example: she used a Hillary Duff song on a client video. “It wasn’t a trend, the video had nothing to do with her, but she’s on tour right now, so it’s topical.” The post felt current without chasing anything.
Her rule of thumb is worth stealing: stay plugged into the internet and what's happening in culture, but don't treat every trend like a shortcut to views. "Let's be topical, and obviously tapped into what's going on," she said, "but don't just hop on every trend because you want to repeat it and get views. That's not the vibe."
Halfway through, the team got sidetracked in the best way, trying to define a piece of slang the younger audience uses: aura farming. It is worth explaining, because it is the exact behaviour brands should avoid.
Aura means you are cool. Aura farming, as Casey put it, is “intentionally doing things just to look cool.” Ailís translated it across generations:
Casey’s version was simpler (and honestly, more relatable to me): “Back in our day we called them try-hards.”
That sums up the core lesson: a brand jumping on every trend is just aura farming, aka trying too hard. Audiences instantly spot when you're trying too hard to be cool. Timing is everything. Ailís even scrapped a late-September trend because it would feel ancient by then, opting for something with actual staying power instead. Spotting a dead trend before you hit publish is a skill in itself.
The team didn't swear off trends completely. Some audiences genuinely love them, and light, fun content still has a place. The point is to have a filter instead of a reflex. Before you make the trend, ask three quick questions.
If a trend passes all three, use it. If it does not, spend that time on the thing only your brand could make.
Attention through 2030 won't go to the brand that posts the most, or the one that jumps on every trend the second it lands. It'll go to the brand that skipped the trend, stayed topical instead of trendy, and used that time to build something only they could make, the thing a competitor can't just copy with the same sound and a different logo slapped on. That takes a bit more patience up front, but it pays off every time someone scrolls past a copycat post and stops on yours instead.
So pick one idea this month that's unmistakably yours. Work smarter, and run your ideas through the three questions above. If it holds up, make it. If it doesn't, let it go and put that energy into the thing only you can make. Don't be a try-hard. Stop trying to aura farm your way there.
Spark Session lead by Casey Mathison, with Ailís Rinet, and Maggie Renouf.
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