10 cultural shifts your Q2 strategy should actually be accounting for

Every Wednesday our our team hops on Google Meet to chat about the trends we’re seeing in our social feeds and hand pick what we want to arm our audience with in the upcoming Monday email. Throughout April, we called out trends ranging from the sober curious movement, the pitfalls of “feminist” branding and why we still need humans in the room, no matter how advanced AI gets.

This month we’re trying something new and compiling all the trends we highlighted in April in one place.

Now, let’s dive into it….

🧃 Sober curious [but make it marketing]

You’ve probably clocked it by now, but Gen Z isn’t drinking like the generations before them. And we’re not just talking about Dry January vibes. We’re talking about a full lifestyle shift.

Recent data shows that 65% of Gen Z plan to drink less in 2025, and nearly 40% are going fully dry. This isn’t a blip or a trend, it’s a rebrand. And over the weekend, it hit IRL in a big way: Matcha Mia in Houston threw a “matcha rave” [yes, that’s a thing] and it brought in double the usual foot traffic [proving people actually want this]. Think morning house music, neon drinks, and zero hangovers.

read the OG newsletter on what you should do with this as a digital strategist here.

🔒 Gen Z is in their locked-in era

Forget multitasking. Gen Z is locking in. Finals szn? They’re locked in. Trying to hit 10K on TikTok? Locked in. Gym rat era? Locked in [and protein-shake-coded].

This isn’t hustle culture 2.0. It’s hyper-focus with boundaries, dressed up in curated playlists, aesthetic productivity vlogs, and group chat accountability. It’s giving “this is my personality for the next three weeks” and honestly? It’s working [they even made Canva schedules look cool again].

why this matters for marketers here

Upgrade to a premium Substack subscription to get access to the 8 additional trends we covered this month here.