The internet has turned everyday moments into brand battlegrounds. An iced coffee at a job interview somehow became a referendum on professionalism. A viral photo of climbers on the Empire State Building became a blank canvas for logos. Then Fenty Skin, Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty released similar eye patches within days, and #EyePatchGate became this month’s template for social teams.
WiredCo Head of Social Content & Creative Steph Edwards has a straightforward warning: moving at the speed of culture can cross from relevance into what she calls “social slop.”
The iced coffee test
The debate started when a creator questioned whether showing up to an interview with an iced coffee was unprofessional. Gen Z, millennials and recruiters all picked sides. Then the brands arrived.
Starbucks responded with a social post showing someone holding an iced coffee and the caption “pulling up to the interview like.” Indeed Australia posted a video of someone bringing an iced coffee into a job interview with a sharp take. Edwards says both worked because they had the material to land the punchline: Starbucks already owns iced coffee and Indeed already owns the job interview.
That ownership is the test. When a brand is naturally part of the conversation, a reactive post reads as a point of view, not as a reach.
Where social slop comes from
The Empire State Building banner meme showed the opposite. After an image of two climbers holding a giant banner went viral, brands began replacing the banner message with their own. Currys, Caraway, Petco and Spritz were early, and dozens more followed.
Edwards points out that at some stage, moving fast stops looking culturally relevant and starts looking like every social media manager got the same message at once.
The same pattern appeared with #EyePatchGate. Fenty Skin, Glow Recipe and Huda Beauty leaned into the packaging coincidence, and the exchange was genuinely funny because it was their moment. Then Gillette, Poppi and countless others copied the format. The original joke became a template, and brands started diluting their own identities to make content about someone else’s moment.
Ask before you post
Edwards says the industry has overcorrected after years of urging brands to move faster and join conversations. Her advice is to slow down just enough to ask:
- Does this conversation naturally connect to our brand?
- Do we have something uniquely ours to add?
- Are we making the joke better, or just putting a logo on the same meme?
If you have to work too hard to connect a trend back to the brand, it is probably the wrong trend.
The difference is between being part of culture and simply reacting to it. Starbucks in an iced coffee debate and Indeed in a job interview debate land because they own the territory. Brand number 37 Photoshopping a product onto the Empire State Building, or brand number 112 posting an eye patch container with a logo, may just be social slop.
For social teams, the practical shift is simple: speed loses its value the moment everyone else has the same idea. A strong trendjack should be recognizably yours, not a logo-swap.
Source: Campaign Brief
