Are you a brat?
If a few months ago you thought a “brat” was a petulant child, we wouldn’t blame you. The authors of this blog post certainly did. However, being of a “certain age,” we missed the social movement from early this summer that redefined “brat” for millions of people, most under age 30.
Then, on July 22, this new concept of “brat” leapt to a new and much broader level.
That leap is one of the most vivid examples to date of a fundamental change in the notion of how to communicate with the public, not only for politicians, but for commercial entities from banks to retailers to hospitals. As the “brat” example shows, this change is not merely in communication channels or even messages. Rather, it shows a new, and largely counterintuitive, relationship between an organization and its message and audience.
Birth of Brat
For the uninitiated, Brat is the sixth studio album by British singer-songwriter known as Charli xcx. The album, released on June 7th, 2024, was a hit (to use the vernacular of our day). But more than that, the album’s aesthetics, voice, and attitude so profoundly captured a contemporary zeitgeist that it became a social media sensation and changed the vocabulary of the moment.
The album is steeped in the counterintuitive. The cover features a background of lime-green, a color traditionally shunned by marketers as abrasive. On that background is the word “brat” in lowercase letters using the type design called Arial—a font traditionally shunned by marketers as boring—with a faint blur any graphic professional would automatically correct as a mistake.
The album’s music and lyrics similarly contradict conventional wisdom. A brat, traditionally a complete pejorative, becomes an expression of confidence and personal worth. In a TikTok video, Charli xcx described the album’s vision of “brat” as “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes…but is very honest, very blunt.”
In short, Brat transforms the undesirable into the desirable, embraces what traditionally were seen as flaws, and empowers people, particularly the young, to express themselves without shame.
Within weeks, the album’s music, aesthetics, and spirit spawned an astonishing array of social media permutations: dances, lime-green memes in Arial font, and endless definitions and examples of what it means to be a “brat girl” enjoying a “brat girl summer.”
Brat Meets Politics
Then, being a brat girl went to a new and a very different level.
On July 21, Joe Biden announced that he was pulling out of the U.S. Presidential race and throwing his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
On July 22, Charli xcx tweeted three words: “kamala IS brat.”
The tweet caught fire. All over social media, people already excited about a Kamala Harris candidacy were catalyzed by this fusing of Harris with the brash, unapologetic, joyful mood that surrounded being a brat girl.
A Fundamentally New Opportunity
For Harris and her campaign leaders, this groundswell created an opportunity both unexpected and atypical, an opportunity that was different from any notion of traditional political discourse.
We can imagine how the Biden campaign, had it ever been faced with such an opportunity, might have responded. For Biden, in many ways a traditional politician, choosing which presidential candidate to support should be based on the candidate’s policy positions and capability to enact those policies. This point of view yields political speeches that focus on policy, and political advertisements that feature serious images evoking experience and leadership.
The Harris campaign reacted very differently. Rather than being confused by or resistant to this unexpected opportunity, the campaign welcomed it.
Unfamiliar Implications
By welcoming this communications approach, the Harris campaign also had to set aside a core tenet of traditional commercial communications: controlling the message.
Any traditional communications campaign expends considerable energy to control each public expression. Advertisements, speeches, bylined articles, LinkedIn posts—all must “stay on message.”
In contrast, this new approach required that the Harris campaign accept and even embrace a certain homemade quality, following the way social media gets behind a wide variety of causes with spontaneity and creativity.
Thus, we have lighthearted dance videos on TikTok supporting Harris, we have colorfully painted yard signs by everyone from local artists to individual citizens, and we have memes, memes, and more memes. In a sign that this social media wave has reached more establishment shores, we even recently had a New Yorker podcast in which the panel discussed whether Kamala Harris, indeed, was brat.
What This Form of Communication Can Do That No Other Form Can
An August 15 Emerson College poll showed a remarkable shift in the attitudes of young voters to a Harris candidacy compared with a Biden candidacy.
Among voters under 30 years of age, President Biden, while still a candidate, had 56% support. As of mid-August, Harris had 65% support from the same group.
This shift cannot reasonably be attributed to matters of public policy. There simply are not enough differences between the policy positions of Biden and Harris to warrant such a shift.
No traditional political communication approach could have accomplished a nine-point swing in support within that short period of time. Instead, the shift is due to the very confidence and joy inherent in the social media wave that the Harris campaign has chosen to ride.
Three Uncomfortable Lessons
For those engaged in broad-scale commercial communications, we can think of three lessons from this example, although surely there are more. What strikes us most about these lessons is the extent to which they contradict some of our deepest instincts about how to convey a corporate message.
First, be willing to relinquish control. “Driving” is a favorite word in large organizations, a word that suggests strong effort directed toward specific results. However, communicating with a younger population is more like surfing than driving. The Harris example shows that in some cases riding a communication wave, even with all its unpredictability, can create more energy and cover more territory than attempting to steer a vehicle along an executive-determined course.
Second, gain comfort with the counterintuitive. In the same way that Charli xcx turned traditionally shunned terms and aesthetics into positives, the Harris example shows the power of nontraditional messages, images, and channels. Not that the Harris campaign has relinquished the traditional look, feel, and substance of political messages. But those traditional approaches are accompanied by a public-generated opposite: rough edges rather than crisp lines, awkward dance moves rather than serious faces.
Third, be blunt. Charli xcx says that a brat is blunt. Traditional political discourse, from its soaring rhetoric to its circumlocution, is anything but. The same could be said for much commercial content. For many executives, instincts and experience lead to speaking circuitously. Being direct can seem uncomfortable, even inappropriate. A story from the Harris campaign illustrates the push and pull of traditional political rhetoric and a more direct approach. Reviewing a speech, Harris said to her communications director about Donald Trump, “I want to say, ‘I know his type,’ but more eloquent.” Harris’s communications director told Harris to forget being eloquent and to be blunt instead. And a successful catchphrase was born.
This Is Your Strategy
In the past two decades, we have all experienced—as witnesses or participants—the many and complex dynamics of a public voice amplified by social media. We have experienced new lows of tedium, ignorance, and destructiveness and new highs of empathy, awareness, and positive mobilization. And everything in between. For organizations, the risks of being swept away in a particularly nasty wave of social media are real and potentially devastating. At the same time, ignoring the increasing volume of the public voice is as ill-advised as the notion that a single voice can manage or manipulate the whole.
Win or lose, the Harris campaign is a lesson of a new organizational relationship with the public voice, particularly the youth voice. One hundred and forty-two million people, 42% percent of the U.S. population, belong to the Millennial Generation or Generation Z. If reaching these people is your communications concern of the future, this is your strategy.
