How Charli xcx built Brat Summer

The master marketer reveals the recipe behind 2024's biggest trend

Hola from Mexico City!

I’m on vacation this week and enjoying CDMX for the very first time. Because of my travels - and the time it takes to eat all the city’s al pastor tacos - I wasn’t planning to produce a post this week, but then Charli xcx spilled her guts on how she created Brat Summer and I couldn’t resist writing about it.

Regular readers will know that highly flammable has lusted over Charli’s magic touch for virality for a long time. Previous posts have lauded her meme generator, the BRAT wall, surprise remixes, plane banners, those billboards, and the three word tweet that blew up the race for U.S. president. Each move helped to transform Brat from a well-received rave pop album into 2024’s biggest cultural trend. And while we’ve all watched as Charli has owned the year we’ve never heard her explain how she did it… until now.

The singer revealed her process and strategies during an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. The end result is a 52-minute marketing masterclass that every brand can learn from…

For those who don’t have the time watch the whole sit down here’s my five takeaways…

1. Scarcity is key

Charli revealed that she was inspired by streetwear brand Supreme when she devised the Brat campaign. She explained to Lowe that she’d seen the lines of loyal customers who wait outside their stores for their latest drops and wanted to create the same dynamic.

The Brat campaign started in February when Charli released the single Von Dutch and she’s managed to maintain - and grow - attention by surprising fans with a steady trickle of events, performances, announcements, viral moments and new material.

She explained: “You have to create some kind of supply and demand, especially when it comes to pop. The aim is to sell, right? And sell as much as possible and go on tour and be everywhere. And yes, there is that, but I think in a way to like get to that in an interesting way, you kind of have to sort of like starve like the audience, like drip feed the tap to get the viewer into this feverish state where they actually want more rather than you're just sort of like serving them this endless buffet of stuff.”

2. Create for your super fans, success will follow

Charli was laser focussed on her most devoted supporters when she created Brat. She refused to compromise creatively in an effort to appeal to a broader audience and yet managed to crack the mainstream anyway.

Talking about her fans, she explained: “They're hungry for us to succeed. And that doesn't mean that we have to do any pandering to any other side of the industry. We just have to do it for them. And we have to make them feel so special because they are, because they've championed me, and us, for so long. And that's all we need to like light a fire.”

Charli believes that being niche is “rewarded so much more than it ever has been,” and thinks Brat Summer blew up because she catered to her audience so singularly.

“After serving the niche, actually, like, a kind of a monoculture moment happened, which we don't see a lot of in this day and age,” she reflected.

3. Build a world, be reactive

Charli wanted the Brat campaign to feel like a club that was “special or exclusive, but actually when you're in it, it's very open and fun”. She created a “manifesto” telling Lowe that her vision was “really clear”.

Involved in every detail of the roll out, Charli even picked the specific shade of green used on Brat’s now iconic artwork. The singer explained that she wanted the album cover to feel “punchy” and to “generate conversation” and that those principles guided everything.

As Brat caught fire, the Kamala Harris campaign seized on the trend and Charli says she didn’t overthink whether she should react and get involved.

“It was off the cuff, yeah. It was me and my friend Terry, we work on a lot of kind of like my social stuff together,” she revealed. “We were just texting and we were like, should we do this? We did it. And, you know, I won't lie, like, naively, I sort of didn't actually think it would take on quite the life that it did.”

4. Take audiences behind the curtain

The raw and honest lyrics on Brat are one of the reasons Charli believes it connected so deeply with fans. She explained that she was encouraged by The 1975’s unvarnished approach to song writing, telling Lowe, “the crowds, the audience really responds to these super specific personal references because it kind of is like a window into, you know, the artist's life”.

5. Figure out your brand, be consistently that

Authenticity is a concept that’s frequently bandied around but for Charli it was key to her success and a theme she frequently returns to in the interview.

She said: “I've not really sacrificed any part of myself to appeal to more people which is something that I always kind of felt like I had to do because I never felt sort of traditionally like, I don't know, like pretty enough or, you know, that I was kind of doing or saying the right things in like the sphere of pop music to be accepted enough on like a kind of sort of larger scale.”

It’s now undisputed that Charli is not only accepted in the pop world, but one of its most respected leaders. And with the release of the Brat remix album, Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat it’s clear that she’s still unlocking new levels.

Once the Brat project is complete Charli plans to take a break from music admitting that its success could be an “albatross”. While it’ll be hard for her to replicate its season-defining success on her return something tells me it’ll act as fuel for her creativity as a world-class marketer.

This week I’ve been…

OBSESSED WITH:

Internet grifter Caroline Calloway bones-deep commitment to “performance art online” by riding out Hurricane Milton in her condo in Sarasota, Florida

How easily disturbed Vogue’s Global Editor at Large Hamish Bowles is by every vibe shift covered on the documentary series In Vogue: The 90s on Disney+

READING:

How Vinted became the most lawless place on the internet from The Independent

Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster in The New Yorker

Caitlin Clark is box office: 10 charts that illustrate her WNBA impact from The Washington Post

‘The Bachelor’ Is Shattering Its Own Fairy Tale from The New York Times

EATING:

Tacos. So many tacos.

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highly flammable is produced and written by Rachel Richardson

She’s a content creator, commentator and consultant at Beginning, Middle and End

Want more? Check out Threads, Twitter/X and Instagram

Email rr@bmend.com