Bye, bye Barbie pink, hello slime green. Following the release of her latest album, Charli XCX has unleashed a cultural phenomenon with a slime green tinge. We've seen a wave of content built around the cultural artifact over the past six weeks and a further surge in the past few days with the presumed US Democratic Presidential candidate, and identified brat, Kamala Harris taking it to new heights.
With the slime green, san-serif font and subtle design choices, this is a clear play for minimalism, pushing back on the popular maximalism trends across pop culture in recent years. Since its release in June, the world has seen a wave of memes mimicking the album cover and a staying power uncommon in the tiktok era. Within 10 days of posting, they had surpassed all of their previous posts with 50,000 comments on both X and Instagram. Charli’s 2 million strong account also received record views and engagement. Popularised terms like ‘brat summer’ and the related brat challenge where people are doing the apple dance, have also ensured its virality.
This highlights the power of Mimetics - a theory of the cultural evolution that the more something is mimicked, the more mimickable it becomes. Fun and confrontational, Charli has participated in the viral campaign herself, connecting with her audience and as a result giving it more momentum. The simple design language and accessibility by a wider audience to create their own content and perpetuate the meme or essence of the brat campaign is the key to its success here. The colour, type treatment and ‘lo-fi- aesthetic’ make it easy to reproduce - and the brat generators encourage it. However the design and execution of memes is not the point here, its the sharing of the artifact that is key.
The artist, with a music career spanning over a decade, has created a cut-through brand that bottles her essence in a simple way. Using the word “brat”, a former insult now a badge of honour, encourages her audience to be who they are while simultaneously creating genuine momentum through engineered and shareable moments. The colour and memeable nature of the campaign branding allows for the audience to identify themselves as someone ‘in-the-know’, and they can then broadcast their identity to their own audience. Our identity and pursuit of status and social distinction helps drive the shareable nature of the branding. Broadcasting to your audience that you identify with the culture, builds an affiliation with the community. Sharing a meme like this is like speaking your own language.
The visual look and feel of the off trend slime green matches the content. It’s an incredibly simple visual identity for brands to engage with, showing the power of simplicity. Green is usually synonymous with calm, therapeutic and natural, but not this green…This one is loud and aggressive, getting the attention and shock value it was aiming for. They have also leaned into the “muddyness” that green can sometimes be. Intelligently, the block colour with type treatment are recognisable enough that they can be interchanged while remaining on brand.
The slime green album cover and simple text makes the imagery shareable and easy to achieve participation. This same feature that makes it so shareable is what sets it apart from over-produced content usually making the rounds. The paired back, lo-fi looking campaign stands out and is extreme in its restraint, which is exciting at the moment. No sign of AI and clear in its intentions, this latest release has increased Charli’s audience beyond her usual niche. She stayed true to herself and didn’t fit into the mould, begging the question of whether one should ever aim to be like the mainstream or whether niche is the new mainstream? With questions like these popping up as a result of this campaign, it’s easy to see how it has a combination of commercial and cultural significance.
Fans and brands have been using the memes to extend their reach, with the #bratsummer trend boasting nearly 1 million posts on TikTok and the slime green theme used by thousands of individuals and businesses. Even Kamala Harris is piggybacking off the virality, being called “brat” by Charli herself and gaining increasing engagement from younger voters, by understanding them and speaking their language.
The self-sustaining viral campaign has three key features that we can learn from; it’s incredibly simple, easy to replicate and it makes the audience feel like they are identifying who they are by using it, giving them a sense of ownership and agency.
