Written By Logan Miller
Media Analytics Executive
Charli XCX may have declared brat summer over, but its effects aren’t going away anytime soon. On June 7, 2024, Charli XCX released her sixth studio album, BRAT, and ushered in a summer of partying, neon green and the carefree, confident attitude that comes with being “brat.” Fans resonated with the bold, honest, and fun energy of the album and applied it to their own lives, defining a “brat” as “someone who misbehaves in a cheeky way and doesn’t conform to expectations.” This way of thinking and acting was fully embraced and it showed; the album had huge commercial success with it debuting at number three on the Billboard 200. But more notably, the success of BRAT can be seen with its huge impact on the marketing strategies of countless brands across different industries.
To understand how companies are using BRAT to promote their own products, it is important first to comprehend how “brat summer” came to be. Charli XCX is by no means a fresh, new artist; she's been making music for over a decade but nothing has garnered her the undeniable mainstream success that BRAT has. The straightforward, edgy nature of BRAT allowed for the marketing of the album to have a similar tone. It started with bold, in-your-face billboards that popped up in various cities and continued through the fans and the viral trends and content they created about the blunt, relatable lyrics of the album.
This attitude of risk-taking and being upfront has infiltrated the marketing strategies of many including brands like Chanel and Urban Outfitters. They released collections that were BRAT-inspired, utilizing the neon green motif, or the “girl out on the town, sweating in the club, and wearing a simple white tank top” aesthetic that Charli XCX herself described as being the brat look. Some jumped onto the visual aesthetic of BRAT, adhering their social media posts to the simple stylization of the album cover or releasing products in the signature green color. Others stuck with just jumping onto BRAT social media trends, posting videos using the music, or altering their brand voice to align with the bold, honest attitude of BRAT. The most significant example of this is the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. It is no surprise that brands have hopped onto the
BRAT trend, using it for marketing and social media strategies, but it's not every day that a political campaign as prolific as the Harris campaign utilizes a trend as youthful
and casual as “brat summer.” In July, when Harris was announced as the Democratic nominee for president, Charli XCX posted on X, declaring “kamala IS brat.” This elicited
a rapid response from her campaign team with them quickly rebranding the Kamala HQ X account to match the BRAT album cover. Since then, they have maintained the “bratty” attitude on their social media accounts, posting in a manner that is casual and upfront, appealing to young voters.
The widespread success of BRAT and its infiltration into mainstream communications, particularly the Harris campaign, shows the need for authenticity and originality in modern marketing as well as the importance of catering to the interests and opinions of young people.