The key to those demure, mindful brand posts? Speed—above almost everything else

The key to a good trend post? Be very demure, very mindful…and, ideally, very timely.

After creator Jools Lebron’s “demure” audio took off after it was posted on TikTok on August 5, it didn’t take long for brands like Patrick Ta, Southwest Airlines, Verizon, Synergy Kombucha, Netflix, Edible Arrangements, and K18 to find ways to work with her. Even on videos where Lebron has sought out collabs with brands like Airbnb, she’s attracted offers for opportunities with brands like Spotify and AvantStay in the comments.

One of Lebron’s latest collaborators is real-estate platform Zillow, which appointed her as the brand’s “chief demure officer” last week and asked her to assess the “demurity” of certain homes in a video posted to Instagram and TikTok.

Ben Levine, senior director of social and channel marketing at Zillow, told Marketing Brew that once the brand’s community managers saw the “demure” trend catch on, they worked with the social marketing agency Viral Nation to connect with Lebron, come up with a concept, and get the video posted—all in four days’ time.

“We found it, we picked up some phones, we made some emails, and we got it out there really quickly,” he said.

Very cutesy, very authentic

Lyft was also eager to partner with Lebron after the trend took off. Anya Schulman, social media manager at Lyft, told us via email that the brand reached out the same day it went live and made their collaboration happen in one week.

“As of now, the Reel is our second-most-engaged organic post of all time,” she said.

When it comes to hopping on a trend, Levine said it’s important to not only be quick, but to make sure it’s the right fit.

“Timeliness is the second most important thing,” he said. “The first most important is the authenticity of the partnership.”

For Zillow, that means looking for trends adjacent to home décor or lifestyle content. At Lyft, Schulman told us the Lebron partnership connected with the brand’s goal of supporting the queer community.

When “demure” started going viral, Levine said his team spitballed ways to connect those themes with the audio, but in the case of both brands, it was Lebron who had the final say in how it would be used in the creative.

“We didn’t come up with ‘demure and cutesy.’ She did,” Levine said. “She has every right to lead the charge there.”

Move it

Gabe Feldman, director of strategic and enterprise accounts at Viral Nation, which works with Zillow on its social presence, said the four-day turnaround time was due to a singular workstream between its community management and creator teams, but acknowledged that it can be challenging for brands to move fast.

“There’s a lack of connective tissue between what’s happening on social [media] from a listening perspective, and how you can act on it through things like influencers,” Feldman told Marketing Brew.

Levine said the post with Lebron is part of the brand’s efforts in the last year to develop a stronger social presence, including working with accounts like Zillow Gone Wild and “[leveling] up the quality and caliber of [its] culturally relevant content.”

“We think that’s important for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason is because it gives us an authentic and clear way to reach a wider and wider audience,” he said.

According to Levine, Zillow looks at qualitative data like comments as well as quantitative ones like engagement rates to measure the success of culturally relevant content. As of August 26, Zillow’s video with Lebron had received more than 1.8 million views, 82,000 likes, and more than 2,000 comments across Instagram and TikTok; Levine said it’s “trending above all of [Zillow’s] general benchmarks” and has also led to an increase in the brand’s followers.

Lebron has been vocal online about how the brand support in recent weeks has been a positive boost, sharing online that she’s been able to afford to help friends and loved ones as a result of “demure” taking off. That sentiment has been reflected in some of the comments on her work for Lyft and Zillow, with fans congratulating Lebron for finding ways to make the most out of the virality.

“Many commenters are excited that Jools ‘got her bag,’ and so are we,” Schulman said.

Levine said there are no plans for a second video, but Zillow would be “more than happy to continue working with Jools,” perhaps on future “chief demure officer” videos.

In the meantime, he said Zillow will continue to look out for the next trend—and act quickly.

“Now that we have some of the infrastructure really built, you’re going to start to see more of that real-time or near-real-time turnaround that you did with Jools, for sure,” he said.