Meghan Trainor: The Social Risk of a Rebrand That Doesn’t Feel Owned
Meghan Trainor’s new album & era became a case study in what happens when audiences start treating pop rollouts like brand audits. Meghan Trainor may have canceled The Get In Girl Tour for personal reasons. But on social media, the cancellation was quickly absorbed into a more embarrassing narrative: another pop artist overestimated demand, booked […]
#GRWM
#GRWM: Everyone Knows the Steps. No One Knows the Rules. How #GRWM turned skincare into a performance system, and what that means for every brand selling to anyone under 25. The story about kids and multi-step skincare routines is easy to flatten into parental panic: another moral spiral about tweens in Sephora, another headline about […]
Emotional Risk Economies: Escape
This article is Part 4 of 4 in our Emotional Risk Economies series, a framework that explores how different categories operate under distinct emotional contracts on social media. Each installment examines the structural pressures, audience psychology, and platform incentives shaping brand risk in real time. Emotional Risk Economies Universe: Part 1: Trust Economy || Part […]
Emotional Risk Economies: Prestige
This article is Part 3 of 4 in our Emotional Risk Economies series, a framework that explores how different categories operate under distinct emotional contracts on social media. Each installment examines the structural pressures, audience psychology, and platform incentives shaping brand risk in real time. Emotional Risk Economies Universe: Part 1: Trust Economy || Part […]
Emotional Risk Economy: Trust
Emotional Risk Economies Universe: Part 1: Trust Economy || Part 2: Alignment || Part 3: Prestige Over the next four weeks, we are digging into the four Emotional Risk Economies that actually determine how far a brand can go on social media: Trust, Alignment, Prestige, and Escape. Platforms may flatten everyone into the same feed, but they do not flatten […]
Super Bowl LX: Cultural Flex, Commercial Miss
Every year, the ListenFirst strategy team puts together a monster report on the Super Bowl, distilling what actually broke through across platforms, moments, and brand plays — not just what aired between downs. Here is a deep dive into the report, with some extra spice on the controversy that dominated the news cycle before and […]