TRENDING: BAD BUNNY SUPER BOWL RECREATION
BAD BUNNY SUPER BOWL RECREATION
Two weeks ago Bad Bunny delivered the most talked-about Super Bowl halftime show in years and TikTok hasn't stopped reacting since. Creators and brands have started lip syncing and recreating Bad Bunny’s performance with budget elements like a loaf of bread or people standing with plants in the background.
Brand opportunities
Recreate your own "halftime show" with whatever you have around the office. A product launch lip synced to a Bad Bunny track. The reason these hav edone so well isn’t due to their polished nature but because of the humour in the budget elements. The key is committing to the bit with zero polish. Any version that looks like it had a budget misses the point entirely.
FRANK OCEAN NIGHTS TREND
This trend/format initially started with fashion designer @ooo.nani.nani who showed her life walking through India interacting with food vendors and people in her neighbourhood, walking to Frank Ocean's Nights. But now creators all over the world are jumping on this trend to show their culture. The beauty of it is in the simplicity: it's a love letter to a place and an identity, and that resonance has led creators worldwide to replicate it in their own cities to the same track.
Brand opportunities
This format is a gift for brands rooted in place, culture, or lifestyle. Use it to show your city, your team, your studio, or your product in its natural environment, no staging, no selling. It works especially well for travel, fashion, food, and heritage brands looking to communicate authenticity. The trend rewards brands that are confident enough to show rather than tell.
WINTER OLYMPICS
With the Winter Olympics running this month, TikTok has found its favourite event, and it's not the one happening on ice. Creators are staging makeshift curling matches using brooms and whatever object is closest to hand, complete with deadpan commentary and on-screen text that ties the bit back to their job or niche.The format thrives on the specificity of the on-screen text: the more niche the profession reference, the harder it lands.
Brand opportunities
The on-screen text is your entire strategy here. "When our client asks for last-minute changes." "When we're trying to hit Q1 targets." Film someone on your team sweeping a branded product down a hallway and play it completely straight. It's timely, it's low effort, and it requires nothing more than a broom and thirty seconds. The window is short though, so if you're going to do it, do it this week.
BRANDS KILLING IT
PUNCH THE MONKEY
Punch is a six-month-old Japanese macaque at Ichikawa City Zoo in Tokyo, abandoned by his mother shortly after birth and hand-raised by zookeepers who gave him an IKEA orangutan plushie for comfort. Videos of him dragging the oversized toy across his enclosure and falling asleep clutching it have racked up tens of millions of views, with some clips passing 30 million. The content spans reaction videos, fan compilations, and real-time updates as people follow his integration into a new monkey troop. The hashtag #HangInTherePunch went viral as the internet collectively adopted him, and with every new clip acting as a new episode, people are hooked.
Brand opportunities
The lesson here is IKEA's playbook. When Punch's plushie was identified as their Djungelskog toy, they posted "Turns out, we’re all softies." It was a great opportunity for IKEA in various countries to respond with their own reaction to the Punch the monkey story. IKEA are great at jumping on cultural moments in a creative way and it’s something to keep in mind for larger brands
NEW FEATURES ON SOCIALS
TIKTOK’S NEARBY FEATURE
Local/Nearby Feed — rolled out in the UK, France, Germany and Italy, and then launched in the US in February as "Local Feeds," TikTok's first new feature post-ownership changes. TikTok Australia is not yet confirmed but the global rollout is clearly underway.
TikTok's Nearby Feed is a new tab in the app that surfaces content from creators and businesses in your local area, essentially a hyper-local FYP. For most of TikTok's existence, discovery has been purely interest-based and location-agnostic. This changes that. For brands with a physical presence like restaurants, studios, boutiques and events, it opens up a discovery pathway built entirely around proximity rather than niche. Rollout is still in testing across markets, but the direction is clear: TikTok is going local.
For brands, the move is simple: start geotagging every post if you aren't already, and create content that speaks directly to your local community. Think less "brand content" and more "local creator." Showcase your neighbourhood, collaborate with nearby businesses, and show up consistently. The Nearby Feed will reward local regularity the same way the main FYP rewards niche consistency.
