If I have to read the word demure one more time, I'm going to donate my eyeballs to science ♡

(For the record, being loud about how demure you're being kind of defeats the entire purpose...)

The viral trend started on TikTok when creator Jools Lebron posted this video. And it has since infiltrated every corner of the internet. And I mean every corner. I actually wish there were other corners, safe corners, where demure wasn't.

And as with every trend, the word has now entered the marketing playbooks of brands, always eager to tap into the zeitgeist.

Which feels like when your kind of cringy middle-aged uncle starts wearing Sambas... you know the trend is dead.

However, brands will continue to flog this dead horse until the next hyper-fixation word comes around.

While marketing blogs try to theorise the fad as a 'deeper cultural shift' and a reaction to the current climate of economic uncertainty, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say it's just a fleeting trend at the end of its life cycle.

Hence, the cringy brand input.

As marketers, if we want to participate in a trend, we must first know the lifecycle of one and where we're jumping in.

Because nobody wants to be Uncle Joe at the family BBQ in his Sambas saying, 'it's lit!' to everything.

She also shared her advice for when to jump in, and whether brands should even attempt to.

We all know a trend starts when someone on the internet does a funny, relatable thing.

The funny relatable thing blows up, then gets adopted by other creators online, who add their little twist to it. This is when it becomes hyper-relatable.

Reach goes crazy, virality hits the roof, everybody and their grandmother is referencing it - both online and IRL.

Then it reaches the brands...

Womp-womp. The fun is over.

Why? 'Brands typically come at it from a selling point of view, not a "this is the most relatable part of my brand" point of view,' explains Jony.