Brands in Australia and New Zealand are facing an increasingly narrow window to capitalise on cultural trends, with most disappearing within just three days, according to a new whitepaper from Publicis Groupe and TikTok.
The report, Globalisation of TikTok Trends: How Culture Travels, Transforms and Connects, explores how cultural moments emerge, spread and fade across markets, and what this means for marketers trying to stay relevant in an environment defined by speed, participation and constant change.
In Australia and New Zealand, the findings suggest that cultural attention moves faster than almost anywhere else in the region. Drawing on six months of data analysed through Publicis Groupe ANZ’s Cultural Fluency engine, the study found that 55.9 per cent of trends in Australia disappear within a single work week, with a median lifespan of just three days.
Maurice Riley, chief data officer at Publicis Groupe ANZ, said the challenge is no longer simply identifying trends, but understanding what will endure long enough to matter.
“Cultural Fluency shows us what audiences are really watching across trends, creators and cultural categories to signal what’s about to stick,” he said.
While speed is now considered a baseline requirement for brands, the report stresses that longevity is where real value is created. Only 27 per cent of trends persist beyond two weeks, yet these more durable cultural moments are where brands are most likely to build sustained relevance and growth. The implication, the study suggests, is not to chase every viral spike but to quickly identify the smaller subset of trends with deeper cultural gravity.
The report also highlights a clear divergence between Australia and New Zealand despite their proximity and shared media environment. In New Zealand, lifestyle and vlog-style content shows exceptional staying power, with a median lifespan of 74 days, significantly outperforming global benchmarks. In Australia, attention is more concentrated around self-transformation content, which sustains engagement for around 27 days. The findings point to the need for more nuanced, locally tailored strategies across the Tasman.
A central theme of the research is that while trends are fleeting, the audiences driving them are far more stable. Publicis Groupe ANZ identifies these as “Culture Core Audiences” — communities that consistently engage with and extend the life of trends, regardless of format or platform shifts.
Cat Wilkinson, general manager of Influential Australia, said brands risk missing the bigger opportunity if they focus only on individual moments of virality.
“A trend is a spark that fades fast, but the people engaging with them are a permanent flame,” she said. “Effective brands focus on building creator partnerships and social content that maintains relevance and impact long after the trend may have disappeared.”
The whitepaper also examines how culture moves globally, finding that trends spread through regional corridors rather than in a uniform way. It shows that formats often travel more effectively than messages, and that creators play a critical role in extending the lifespan of trends by remixing and adapting content for local audiences.
Sapna Nemani, chief solutions officer at Publicis Groupe Asia Pacific, said this shift requires a fundamental rethink in how brands approach cultural engagement.
“At Publicis, we see that culture on TikTok doesn’t spread by chance – it scales through participation,” she said. “This white paper decodes why some ideas persist, and how participation turns cultural momentum into lasting brand impact.”
TikTok’s vice president of global business solutions, Shant Oknayan, echoed this view, highlighting the role of community in driving creative scale.
“On TikTok, creativity travels further and faster when powered by people,” he said. “This white paper celebrates the unique alchemy between community creativity and cultural momentum, giving brands a blueprint to understand not just what trends spread, but why they resonate, empowering them to co-create with communities and convert cultural relevance into growth.”
Overall, the study positions cultural agility as the defining challenge for marketers in ANZ, where brands must now operate in near real-time while still making decisions based on long-term audience value rather than short-lived viral moments.
