SHR5E020P~001 | 24100995 | Marketing & Branding Portfolio

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Solomon Hughes 24100995

Charli XCX and the Brat Album Launch

The inarguable successes of Charli XCX’s 2024 album, Brat, can be attributed to a variety of marketing theories and branding concepts, including brand archetypes, cultural branding, and user-generated content. Further, the album’s iconography and written language were deeply pervasive in both mainstream and alternative culture through target marketing and relationship marketing; she has a fully comprehensive understanding of her fanbase and what they want. Through the deployment of these marketing theories, she has both strengthened her relationship with her existing fanbase and also acquired entirely new demographics, widening her audience larger than ever before.

Emotional Branding and UGC (User-Generated Content)

Charli’s prominence in the charts and critical success encourage competition against established names, lending more originality to her own image as people see her as an antidote to the mainstream. The album’s accolades lend an accurate impression of where Charli XCX sits in music culture. Her 2024 wins include Best British Album of the Year (Brits), Best Dance/Electronic Album (Grammy and Billboard Awards), and she was further nominated for album of the year by 4 separate awarding bodies. Secretly Group’s Junior Marketing Manager, Nicole Otero (2025, quoted in Sparrow, J. 2025, p. 4), stated that Charli XCX is the most recent example of what a massive following British pop music has. Unsurprisingly, the album debuted at No.2 on the UK Billboard charts and No.3 in the US.

These accolades, along with her 14 years in the industry, naturally lead to direct comparisons to arguably the biggest artist in the world: Taylor Swift. As Taylor embodies the Jungian archetype of the Lover (through her lyrics, public dating life, and album concepts), Charli has been made, largely of her own will, to take on the Rebel/Outlaw archetype. Artist rivalry has always been a marketing tool of the industry, notably Oasis vs Blur of the mid-90s, and Drake vs Kendrick Lamar from 2013 to recent years. This is typically perpetrated by labels, as the heightened media coverage lends more attention and financial gain to all parties involved. In the case of Charli XCX, this subtle drama with Pop powerhouse Taylor Swift was almost entirely fan-driven, as people tried to decode lyrics to numerous tracks on the album as evidence of their rivalry. These Jungian characters are deeply entrenched in our psyche through our earliest experiences with stories, art and life. A brand that capitalises on this will inevitably become more memorable, and it will elicit a more emotional response when projected onto real-life people. A limitation of this theory lies in its working in the human subconscious; though a deep-rooted idea may be easier to adopt, it may make it harder to comment on or be at all aware of as a consumer because of its subconscious nature.

The focal point of this feud is found on the track “Sympathy is a Knife”, where Charli compares herself to another nameless popstar whom most fans have attributed to Taylor Swift. This was further accelerated by Taylor’s song “Actually Romantic” from her October 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl, which is believed to be her response to Charli XCX. YouTube videos, TikTok’s and Instagram reels made about this drama gained significant viewership, one of the most popular reaching 685K views on YouTube Shorts (Asante Madrigal, Oct. 2025).Charli has gone on to deny personal targeting in any of her recent songs, but the effect that this User-Generated Content (UGC) has had on the medium-term longevity of the album has been notable. To have a boost in social media coverage 12 months after an artist’s most recent release is typically very rare and has resulted in the resurgence of one of Brat’s more popular non-single tracks as a TikTok sound and as an Instagram hashtag.

People engaged more with this news because it elicited an emotional response, as the drama stemmed from what was interpreted as a string of personal attacks on Taylor Swift, which loyal fans, “Swifties”, would take great offence to on behalf of the artist. Emotional branding is so strong because it puts the fan in the place of the product or person, and they register all attention either negative or positive, as if it were directed towards themselves.

Whilst this spike in media attention for the album is beneficial, virality remains a very short-term phenomenon, and like most celebrity drama, it is often forgotten after a matter of weeks, if not days.  

The marketing theories at play here, UGC and Emotional Marketing, have undoubtedly shaped the response to Charli XCX’s Brat album and its popularity without any action from the artist herself or from her label. The awareness she has of her younger and more social-media present fanbase is evident in her deployment, or more accurately, allowance, of these concepts to play out in her favour.

Audiovisual Elements and Fan Engagement  

Brat’s imagery and vernacular are, by a large margin, the most potent properties of the album and its influence over popular culture. A week after the album’s June 7th release, Kelley Heyer posted a dance to the track “Apple”, which rapidly spread across the platform and grew so prominent that Charli herself posted a video of her taking part in the trend later that same month (Heyer, K. 2024). An estimated 1.7 million TikToks have been uploaded with the ‘Apple’ sound attached; while this is not exclusively people doing the associated dance, it still shows the level of popularity that the trend gave to the song, especially on social media. This explosion of popularity for the single, and in turn, the album, is reflected in streaming statistics for the surrounding months. Appearances on Spotify’s daily global chart and the UK singles chart followed this potent trend in the following month of July (X, 2024).

This would go on to morph into one of the largest cultural phenomena of the year: ‘Brat Summer’. This trend involved ideas around partying, drinking, self-indulgence, individuality and hedonistic “hot mess” aesthetic, all serving as an antidote to the “clean living girl” stereotypes of the past (Zoe Williams, 2024). ‘Brat’ would go on to be Collin’s 2024 Word of the Year (Lucy Knight, 2024). “That’s so Brat” became a common phrase in the Instagram/TikTok lexicon to praise people – particularly young women – for self-expression, independence and personal conviction. Charli XCX’s simple, care-free and chaotic message is delivered with the album’s slime-green colour, which people used in clothing, on social media and in fan art to represent the “brat summer” trend. Paired with this sickly-sweet green, the title flaunts an all-lower-case Arial font in low resolution. This striking and intrusive colour and font combination promotes a carefree, DIY, Gen-Z-friendly attitude, serving as the perfect album cover and audiovisual stimulus as the icon for Charli XCX’s movement.

Spotify statistics and TikTok trends show the vast and rapid efficacy of viral marketing in the music industry. Whilst virality tends to be short-lived, the right timing and visual stimuli can catch a product like Brat at the perfect stage in its infancy to take it to astronomical notoriety.

Cultural Branding: Politicalisation of Brat

The most extreme use of Brat’s written language reached as far as Kamala Harris’ 2024 US Electoral Campaign. Cultural branding is one of the most pervasive practices in marketing stunts and promotion, especially when leaning into political movements as widely discussed as the US election. It was, in fact, Charli herself who tweeted “kamala IS brat” in late July, at the height of the ‘Brat Summer’ hype (X, 2024). The reaction was so strong that the Kamala HQcampaign account rebranded its X (Twitter) banner into the style of the Brat Album cover, with the same bright green and blurry Arial font.

As the Democratic candidate for the election, it was always imperative that Kamala gain young voters, as the left wing is typically considered a home for the youth. So even prior to Charli’s tweet, there was likely a considerable overlap between her fanbase and would-be democrat voters. By making this connection explicitly through social media and eliciting such a positive engagement from Harris’s campaign, Charli XCX masterfully piggybacks her already viral trend onto the most talked-about world event of the year. For many fans, this strengthens their own personal identity by combining their political views with their lifestyle and their consumption of art.

This is a fully comprehensive example of Kapferer’s Identity Prism:

Physique: The shade of green, the font

Personality: ‘Brat Summer’, setting the example of a ‘brat’

Relationship: Being relatable so that fans can picture themselves alongside her

Culture: Alignment with the democratic party and Harris’s campaign

Reflection: Consumers of her music have the ‘brat’ lifestyle

Self-Image: Fans will not only change their lifestyle, but be tempted to adopt new political views

All of these elements are fully interwoven to the point where one cannot exist without the other, and it is this cohesion that makes Charli XCX’s Brat branding so undeniably strong. Arguably, this branding technique is the most effective that she and her team have applied through the album launch, given its level of media coverage (BBC, The Guardian), its influence on culture (‘Brat Summer’), and the connection to world politics (her endorsement of Kamala Harris through the trend).

STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning): Charli XCX as a musician

While a large aspect of Charli’s branding concerns her cultural presence, her attributes as a musician and where she fits into the music scene should not go unnoticed. As previously stated, she is widely seen as a Pop star with her first hit single ‘Boom Clap’ (2014) and two chart-topping features on ‘Fancy’ by Iggy Azalea (2014) and ‘I Love It’ by Icona Pop (2012) in her early career.

Her sound has always relied on synths, sampling and programmed instruments, and yet Brat is the first album which she identifies as belonging fully to the ‘Electronic’ genre. Since its inception, Electronic Dance Music (EDM) has been dominated by faceless names such as Daft Punk, Deadmau5 and Marshmellow. Anonymity is not a requirement for artists in this space, but it is certainly normalised and often celebrated for prioritising the music over public image and attention.

So, when Charli XCX – one of the most recognisable faces in British Pop music – positions herself within that genre and subculture, it subverts people’s expectations. With a cult following to rival Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish or Beyonce, and a year-defining movement centred around her beliefs and lifestyle, she has created an entirely new kind of EDM artist. Redefining her position in the market from popstar to electronic artist makes her vast following and world stardom seem more unique and innovative. In turn, she accesses a new subculture that is already predisposed to the Brat lifestyle and is therefore likely to adopt her music. Funnelling people to her music through rave culture is an ingenious use of the STP marketing strategy; she took a new position in the market (Pop to EDM) to target a new subculture that aligned with her new movement (‘Brat Summer’).

Charli XCX was one of the most talked-about artists of 2024 for good reason. She evolved from an electro-inspired pop icon into a fully electronic dance artist, going on to win a Grammy for Dance Album of the Year; she sparked a rivalry with the biggest artist of her generation in Taylor Swift; and her movement of raunchy, chaotic and carefree individualism was the biggest cultural event of the summer, going as far as influencing a world election. Through targeting and positioning, emotional marketing, viral marketing, cultural marketing, and with a simple colour and iconography, she was able to solidify her connection with her existing fans and expose herself to generations and demographics that may not have even heard her name previously. The application of theories such as emotional marketing aided in a short-term, drama-filled discussion around her, resulting in headlines and gossip, whilst the deep-rooted cultural branding behind ‘Brat Summer’ was undoubtedly the strongest element of her personal campaign, with millions of fans engaging in online trends, adopting the colour of her movement and embracing the lifestyle that she explicitly had set out for them.

The deployment of these numerous theories gave Charli’s 2024 album, Brat, unprecedented attention, praise and critical acclaim, making it the biggest album of her career.

Bibliography

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