Brands have always been interested in being part of culture. Broadly, this means borrowing attention from subjects and stories that are more important or interesting than their own. As we look to the year ahead, it’s worth thinking about how the drivers of consumer attention are changing. With this is mind, I’ve picked three areas of which we’ve all become more conscious over the past 12 months — rage farming, OnlyFans and brain rot — and have tried to tease out some possible implications for marketing in 2025. They’re certainly not the be-all-end-all for the year, but they might inspire some useful (and perhaps event entertaining) discussion and debate. Anyway, here goes.

Rage farming

The internet increasingly rewards provocation, which has given rise to "rage farming" – creating content to deliberately incite anger. As the Jaguar brand refresh showed, beyond media investment, one big driver of reach online isn't how much people like your content, but how much they hate it.

The effectiveness of rage farming stems from a couple of different elements of human psychology. To begin with, we all have an inherent negativity bias, which explains why words like “wrong”, “bad”, “awful”, “hate”, “sick”, “fight” and “scary” predict a 2.3% increase in click-through rates. When media budgets are low, provoking comments like these will boost the chances of your content being seen.

Then there’s the fact that rage farming splits and motivates audiences, creating passionate in-groups and out-groups. By tapping into growing social divisions, brands that attract criticism from one group make themselves a champion for another, who rally around them in return. A significant part of brand strategy used to be about defining who your brand was for. Maybe these days it could be more about defining who you're against and getting a good grip of their hot buttons and how to trigger them.

So, is the secret to effective brand building in 2025 learning how to generate polarising pile-ons? Maybe not. Studies show increased anger correlates with decreased institutional trust. And trust is still a critical part of long-term brand growth in every sector. So, tread carefully, because there's a risk people will quickly tire of rage farming and emerge more cynical about marketing in general.

The OnlyFans-ification of the media

While rage farming pushes people apart, another trend is pulling them closer together. Despite being banned in 17 US States, Pornhub is now the seventh most viewed website globally. Its demographics are shifting: women now account for 38% of traffic (up from 14% over the past decade) while 49% of visitors are over 35. Meanwhile, OnlyFans boasts 4.1 million creators and 305 million users, with both numbers growing 30% annually and platform revenues exceeding $6.6bn. Since VHS versus Betamax, adult entertainment has been a weak signal of wider change. Are we now witnessing the “OnlyFans-ification” of the media?

In terms of content, the success of OnlyFans shows people’s growing desire to reconnect with what’s real. In this case, that means creators in bedrooms, not stars on set. Likewise, over on Pornhub, searches for “authentic sex” are up 43%, and the Behind The Scenes category has skyrocketed 75% year on year. This demand for authenticity is now shaping expectations far beyond adult content, with even mainstream brands like M&S encouraging staff to make TikToks from the shop floor for their corporate account.

When it comes to creating and monetising fame, OnlyFans highlights how far downstream of social media traditional broadcast channels like telly have become. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen Hailey Welch, the “Hawk Tuah” girl, go from a sexually explicit viral TikTok to hosting Spotify’s third most popular podcast. Meanwhile, Alex Cooper’s infamously NSFW podcast, Call Her Daddy, reached the dizzying heights of a presidential campaign, with Kamala Harris appearing on the show.

In the opposite direction, established pop stars like Lily Allen and Kate Nash have turned to OnlyFans as their income from music has declined. If you're not Taylor Swift packing stadiums globally, the platform might be your next revenue stream. As Allen posted on X: “Imagine being an artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify but earning more money from having 1,000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet.”

OnlyFans has erased the traditional boundary between adult content and mainstream entertainment. While sex has always sold, brands now face a more complex challenge: how to earn cultural cache when the lines between artist, creator, influencer, and adult performer have blurred.

Brand identity in a brain rot era

These trends collide with a cognitive crisis. Oxford University Press’ word of 2024, “brain rot,” reflects research from Stanford, Harvard Medical School, Oxford, and King’s College London showing that internet use is shrinking our grey matter, shortening attention spans and weakening memory.

As more and more marketing teams buy in to the importance of mental availability, we face a paradox. While attention fragments and memories become fleeting, the need to build memory structures remains unchanged. We’re all trying to create lasting brand memories in minds increasingly resistant to forming them.

In this landscape, brands need high-frequency, repetitive messaging across multiple channels. While individual encounters may be fleeting, their cumulative effect helps cement brand memories. Success lies not in any single campaign, but in orchestrating consistent messages across every available medium.

Brand identities must be immediately recognisable yet flexible. Distinctive assets need to be simple enough for instant processing, while maintaining their power across channels, touchpoints and campaigns. They should be immediately recognised whether on TikTok, podcasts or retail.

Lastly, brands need fresh creative executions that balance novelty with consistency. This means high-volume content that feels new while remaining unmistakably on-brand – refreshing execution, while maintaining core messaging.

It’s a perennial truth that the most valuable brands find ways to become part of culture rather than just borrow from it. But the cultural currents from which they’re drawing from are shifting dramatically. Rage farming offers reach but risks trust. OnlyFans shows how authenticity is trumping polish. And brain rot demands we rethink how we build lasting memories in distracted minds.

The brands that will thrive in 2025 won’t just chase cultural moments – they’ll shape them. They’ll know exactly where to draw their lines and precisely when to cross them. The question is: in this new landscape of polarisation, authenticity and fragmenting attention, where will your brand plant its flag?

First published in Campaign.