The art of anticipation (branding lessons from  Charli XCX).

The release of Charli XCX’s latest album is a masterclass in the art of anticipation.

Over a YEAR ago (365 days, millenia in internet years), Charli created a private Instagram account named “360_brat,” which briefly went public and accepted a select number of fans for exclusive (and mysterious) content. Months later, “360” was confirmed to be the name of a single from their newest album, and “brat” was the name of the album itself. For all those months, the name of the album/single was the username in front of our very own faces. 

During the month of the album’s release, Charli XCX’s TikTok account went live with a view of a nondescript wall in New York City being painted. NYC fans eventually found the wall and livestream, and started to gather by the camera, thereby creating a fan meetup on top of thousands of virtual fans already engaging in the livestream. The finished mural depicted the artwork of the album.

After the release of the album, Charli XCX goes live at the same NYC wall. And it’s being painted something else! The neon green background is overlaid with eggshell white; is it over? No! Text is being painted over the white background, what does it say? What does it say!? “brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not:” the deluxe version of the album artwork.

Following the format of the initial livestream was very smart because it created the same expectation of a reveal, which led to more fan meetups on stream and hundreds of thousands of people engaged online (myself included) waiting for the finished mural. I found myself enraptured by watching paint dry, and that is some damn good branding.

And guess what? She did it again! Going live at the ‘brat’ wall for a third time, the muralists painted most of the text the same eggshell color as the background, so it really looked like this whole wall event was coming to a close. But some parts of the text were left up for a while, which created excitement. Ultimately, the remaining text spelled “lorde,” another Charli-adjacent artist with an equally passionate fanbase. Lo and behold, a remix featuring Lorde was released that week, and the internet eats it up.

It can be hard for brands to attract a die-hard fanbase, especially in a short time-frame. However, I believe any brand can build a core audience by creating/fostering anticipation and delivering on that expectation. Anticipation creates an audience that is excited to engage, a reservoir of future engagement. What’s more valuable than that?

Pictured: a meme about the ‘brat wall' by reddit user superstar8217.