Charli XCX’s Brat campaign should turn you all green with envy

Released on June 7, the album, already the highest-rated record of 2024 on Metacritic, has inspired countless memes and fan accounts, exploded XCX from the niche to the mainstream, and has the entire clouty creative milieu claiming that this year it’s a “brat summer.”

But why, and importantly how, has an album that came out barely a month ago already reached this level of fame and meme-ification? Brat’s ongoing rollout has been a masterclass in campaign worldbuilding that we would all do well to learn from. Let’s dive in.

Breadcrumbing and edging

Brat’s rollout was something of a curriculum in cadence and teasing. When it comes to campaigns, having a “tease phase” is something of a given these days for many marketers, but with Brat, Charli shows us the true meaning of tease beyond your typical (read: boring) Instagram announcement post.

Brat’s “tease phase” began 10 months ahead of the album launching when XCX created a private burner account, @360_brat, on Instagram. There, she interacted with her superfans, Charli’s ‘Angels,’ through Story Q&As, discussing her music, POV and the upcoming album. The account, only letting fans in at distinct times, felt like being in the green room (ba-dum-tss). It offered an exclusive peek behind the scenes where posts largely just communicated the vibe of Brat in an approach comparable to Mary Kate and Ashley’s brand on Insta, The Row.

In February, the edging continued as XCX’s Boiler Room, PARTYGIRL, was announced. Charli texted her private fan WhatsApp group chat, “LET’S RAVE—BOILER ROOM 2/22. We’re going to play some stuff from the album. I think I’m also giving away tickets later this week.”

At the show, Charli teased several songs from the album and brought Julia Fox and Addison Rae to perform. In the days that followed, the album title and cover art finally dropped, stirring conversation around its lo-fi aesthetic. This led to a slew of memes riffing on it, as fans, already incredibly hyped for its release, adorned anything with a similar shade of green with the word “Brat.”

Anticipation couldn’t be higher among fans after months of drip-feeding a now ravenous crowd.

Transparent worldbuilding in real-time

With hype well underway, it was time for Brat to shift gears into the launch phase, in which Charli and her team demonstrated another exemplary execution of a popular industry trope: worldbuilding.

What separates and excels Brat’s use of worldbuilding, however, is how it was done “in the open” and in “real-time.”

Riding the wave of memes that followed the cover art’s announcement, the “brat generator” microsite was released, allowing fans to create their own Brat covers in a matter of seconds. Explore pages across the social web lit up in neon green (to this day, my algo still favors this garish hue), while profile pics of meme admins and the like became IYKYK homages to the as-yet-unreleased album. The halo effect this had on the awareness of the album is truly something to note.

Charli later brought the meme IRL, as fans, now highly attuned to this specific shade of green (#8ace00 for the graphic designers among us), spotted a curious billboard in NYC go up, the Brat Wall, as it would later become known as.

Echoing the info teasing tactics of her private WhatsApp and Insta but now in the real world, while simultaneously reinforcing engagement with the nascent meme format. Sublime.

The Brat Wall teased upcoming pop-up shows, where Charli would later rock up in the Bratmobile (also sublime). Later, the deluxe album... Brat and it’s the same, but there are three more songs, so it’s not. Finally, fans spotted tactful subtractions of the letters on the board to reveal “lorde”. This, a nod to an unannounced remix for the song Girl, was so confusing that fans had already speculated about Charli’s complex relationship hardened by industry comparison with pop singer Lorde.

TL;DR

Brat struck a chord for too many reasons to name, without even getting into just how good the music is, but perhaps its campaign’s superpower was in its somewhat erratic yet entirely cohesive 360 (I’m so sorry…) approach. From a Boiler Room to the Bratmobile, a launch party at Dalston Superstore to interviewing kids on Recess Therapy, brat-inspired cinema screening to retconning all of her album artwork into brat-like monochrome versions.

What I find so inspiring about this approach to worldbuilding is how it recognizes that we all now live in a fractured world mediated and somewhat woven together by the social web. It’s easy to imagine discussing this global, splatter-approach in the meeting room and being met with concern that it’s too piecemeal or inconsistent, but with Brat, Charli shows us it’s not only possible but perhaps even favorable.

Brands looking to launch a product or collaboration would do well to take a leaf out of Charli’s book. Think about generating intrigue and mystique, building the world around your launch out in the open, giving your audience an authentic role to play and finally, consider how you can align style with substance to add a meta layer to your campaign that reflects what your product or brand is actually about.