What if the marketing digital trends breaking all the rules are the ones actually working right now?
A $1.2 million launch from “yapping” on Instagram…
A 5x higher email click-thru-rate…
420,000 views on a completely unhinged Instagram post…
What is going on!?! Today I’m counting down the major marketing trends I’m seeing right now.
Over the last few months, I’ve been noticing some very interesting shifts happening online from branding, to content, to email marketing.
Some of them surprised me. Some of them completely contradict what marketers have been teaching for years. And all of them explain why so many businesses are struggling to stand out right now.
Now, before I get into these trends, I want to tell you about a resource that can help you with your posting so you can show up with confidence and clarity.
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Now let’s get into it. Here are the 5 major trends I’m noticing right now. And let me .
Marketing Trend #5: Nostalgia, Whimsy & Maximalism
For years, branding seemed to move in one direction, towards a clean, polished and curated aesthetic.
The perfect Instagram grid, flat logos, sans serif fonts, polished photos, and lots and lots of white space.
But lately? I’m noticing something different.
The brands getting the most attention aren’t necessarily the most polished or clean.
They’re the most human, the most real. The ones that bring us back to a simpler time before the “aesthetic algorithm” took over.
Think teenage bedrooms from the 90s and early 2000s.
You had boy-band posters next to “Got Milk?” ads next to a photo collage of all your best friends. Random colors, sponge painting on the walls & blow-up furniture. Things that definitely didn’t match or “go together.
That’s what made it special. That’s what made it feel like a place you wanted to hang out with your friends playing Dream Phone.
I am living for this Instagram account where 30-year-old Melinda Hague decided to “bring back the 90s” and completely decked out her bedroom with all her favorite childhood things. And I know I’m not the only one who is craving this sort of analog chaos. Think hand-written doodles, scrapbooks, clashing patterns, bright colors, and stickers.
There is a major trend right now toward people seeking more self-expression, originality and creativity in visual branding.
Why is this happening?
In my opinion, this is a direct clap back to the basic, bland, vibe-coded websites we see popping up all over the freaking place.
If you haven’t heard of vibe coding, it’s where, instead of manually creating or designing a website from scratch – or hiring a designer to do it for you like I did – you simply describe “the vibe” you want to AI.
And it builds the whole thing for you.
Now, this might sound like an incredible shortcut, but the problem is that when everyone does it.
The internet is full “vibe-coded” websites that all look, well, almost identical. And once you see it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Purple gradient buttons, glowing cards, rounded corners, hero sections that say something like “Transform your workflow” in a clean, safe sans-serif font.
Perfectly neat and tidy, with zero personality and ironically zero “vibes” to speak of.
A designer named Živilė Ma (Givilay Ma) wrote about this recently and described it perfectly.
She said: “Vibe coders are trained on huge datasets of HTML, CSS, and screenshots. They don’t learn taste or visual hierarchy, only what repeats most often. If purple gradient buttons show up in a lot of examples, those become the “safe” choice. Same with glowing cards, gradient headlines or rounded corners.
The model doesn’t understand when to use those things. It only learns that they are popular. So when it generates a page, it stacks everything that scored high in the data.”
And when you compare “vibe-coded” websites.
To websites that have been designed intentionally to reflect personality, values and taste.
You notice a big, big, big difference.
It’s like AI copywriting. Just because AI can do it, doesn’t mean it’s good.
When everyone uses the same AI tools, the same templates, the same generic output. The feeling that something was made by a real human with a real point of view is rare, and we want it.
And that’s exactly why we’re seeing a major shift towards nostalgic visuals, maximalism and “whimsy”.
In fact, the term “whimsy” has seen a huge spike in Google searches this past year.
And Pinterest trend reports “cultivating whimsy” as one of the top 5 trends on the platform right now.
If you’re sitting there wondering “what is whimsy” like I was, here’s how Pinterest describes it:
And they even predict “ThrowBack Kid” and Pen Pals to be upcoming trends this year. And this all tells us something very important.
No, not that your brand has to feel like it was plucked out of the 90s, but that we should all be asking ourselves…
How do I create a brand identity and POV that’s impossible to mistake for anyone or anything else?
Marketing Trend #4: The “How To” Apocalypse
To quote my friend Shawn Twing, another shift I’m seeing right now in content marketing is what he calls the “How To” Apocalypse.
Basically, the notion that selling “pure information” is now dead.
Now, before you come at me, I’m not saying that online courses are dead (and I’ll prove it to you later).
I truly believe teaching real skills and sharing real value will always work.
But the way people consume information has fundamentally changed.
Think about it. AI can now generate unlimited blog posts, unlimited frameworks, unlimited lists, unlimited “5 tips” type of content.
AI has made basic “how-to” information completely dirt cheap…
There is no shortage of this type of content online. But there is a trust shortage.
People are doubting more than ever before if what they’re “learning” online has any truth or real human experience behind it.
And that’s why we’re seeing a major shift from pure education to evidence-based insights. Or what I like to call “Show, don’t tell” content.
Like this post where I talk about the 8 things our highest-converting emails have in common.
Instead of sharing “8 tips to improve your email conversions” as an example.
In this “Show, Don’t Tell” post, I pulled examples of real high-converting emails we sent our list. And shared real insights, backed by real data.
Here’s another example….
This carousel on “10 Genius Social Hooks” could have very easily been a “tell” post. We could have just listed out the 10 social hooks that, honestly, anyone could have asked ChatGPT for and left it at that.
But instead, we showcased real posts we used these hooks in and the engagement data to back it up.
This “show” content is instantly more valuable, and generated over 38,000 views, hundreds of saves, and hundreds of shares.
People do not just want “how to” information anymore.
They want receipts, evidence, proof, and real examples that back up what you’re teaching, and this leads me to…
Marketing Trend #3: Selling The Sawdust
Before the age of “AI everything,” most people would only share or showcase their final “product” in their marketing. Think studio product shots, the perfect “outfit,” the final cut…
But the creators and businesses getting attention today are not just showing their work, they are showing themselves working.
The messy middle part that most people don’t show because it’s… well… messy! But you know what else it is? Real…
My hubby is such a good example of this.
He creates these beautiful custom-made hats.
And for a long time, all he’d post was the finished product – the gorgeous hat.
But when he started filming himself in the process of making the hat, his reach and engagement took off.
The shaping, stitching and craftsmanship that goes into each and every creation.
I mean look at this, 88 thousand views for a YouTube account with a little over 1,000 subscribers is insane.
Because showing the process is more interesting. It increases the perceived value.
And more importantly, it creates trust. So the question is, how do you “sell the sawdust”? How do you share your process, not just your final product?
Now, the next shift I’m seeing is even more interesting. And honestly, a little controversial. Because some of the best-performing content right now is simply…
Marketing Trend #2: Opinions, Stories & Relatable Rants
Research from Sprout Social consistently shows that consumers prefer brands with original content that’s relatable, authentic, and off-the-cuff.
Like this video where I rant about how “AI Is Making You Dumb.”
Now, whether you agree with that statement or not isn’t really the point.
The point is that it’s my opinion. Shared in an open, vulnerable, and conversational way. And that one post generated more than 22,000 views while maintaining a 15-second average watch time.
Why? Because true opinions create curiosity. They open the door for discussion, and they drive engagement.
And we’re moving into a world where – just like evidence – perspective is more valuable than information alone.
In fact, the Edelman Trust Barometer has consistently found that people place more trust in experts, creators, and relatable individuals than in faceless institutions or businesses.
When information is everywhere, what people trust is a real, honest, unfiltered human point of view..
And that is precisely how a creator named Jessi Jean just pulled off a 1.2 million dollar launch selling something called a “Yapping Challenge”.
First of all, I love seeing women win. But “What is yapping?” you might be wondering.
The premise of “yapping” is essentially recording candid, story-based videos on social media, speaking directly to the camera.
This is so interesting to me because for years, we were told to tighten up our scripts. Get to the point. Remove the fluff. Make every sentence count.
But now I’m noticing that some of the best-performing social content online is nothing more than a conversation.
Because opinions, stories and relatable rants build trust.
Jessi Jean saw this trend early, grew a massive Instagram following quickly and launched her Yapping Challenge, a course teaching other people how to “yap” online.
So to anyone who said “courses are dead” – HA!
Now obviously the lesson here isn’t simply “Turn on your camera and ramble endlessly.” There’s still strategy, structure, and positioning required.
And having a well-written video script still matters a great deal.
Not only because AI is known for overexplaining and adding so much unnecessary fluff to content. But because video still reigns supreme in content marketing.
Why? Because people are craving people. We want personality, perspective, humor and real conversations online.
Now, if you’re not big on “yapping” on camera, that’s OK. You can still have relatable and relevant conversations.
Look at this post I shared on Instagram right before the Christmas holidays. “Absolutely Unhinged Office Replies“.
It hit 420,000 views and 17,000 shares. Not because it was following some “viral framework”.
But because it was relatable and felt deeply human.
And that leads me to the biggest trend I’m seeing online right now. And one that we have been leaning into hard at the Copy Posse…
Marketing Trend #1: Personalized Copywriting
For years, marketers have obsessed over automation at scale. Essentially, how can we speak to the largest number of people, all at once, on autopilot?
However, with the market becoming increasingly flooded with generic “made for everyone” messages, coupled with a major spike in overall skepticism and distrust.
Buyers are ignoring messages that don’t feel like they were made just for them.
But it all comes down to this. The more you can personalize your copywriting based on things like past purchases, interests and demographics, the better your marketing will perform.
And one of the most practical ways to do this is through your email marketing.
Since the start of the year, we’ve been emailing smaller interest- and behavior-based segments way more often than we send to our full newsletter list.
These are people who have actively shown interest in specific topics. By signing up for a related lead magnet, engaging with a particular piece of content or taking some other sort of intent-based action.
And the copywriting for each of these segments is highly personalized to them vs a “batch and blast” messaging approach.
Take a look at this. In February, we sent a total of 8 emails to our entire newsletter, and our average open rate was 32.3%.
But here’s what’s wild. In April, we sent a total 51 emails across different segments of our newsletter. 51!
And our average open rate? 31.1%.
So basically the same despite sending 6x as many emails.
The truth is, sending more emails was never the problem. Sending irrelevant emails was. And here is where it gets even more interesting.
Our targeted segments generated a 4.19% click rate on average.
Compared to the average 0.79% CTR on our full-list campaigns.
That’s more than five times higher.
If you’re not personalizing your marketing in 2026, you are seriously leaving money on the table.
Btw, I have an entire blog post walking you through the “new rules” of email marketing that I just dropped.
And until then. I’m Alex. Ciao for now.
