Post Performance Report: Brands turning cultural moments into standout content

Welcome back to the Post Performance Report—a series where we compile and analyze social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and break down what makes them so genius. We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the brand impact, too.

The social teams approaching social intelligence in the most interesting ways aren’t just reacting to their inboxes and direct brand mentions; they’re actively paying attention to cultural trends and figuring out how they can turn them into standout moments for their brands. This often happens by spinning stories where they’ve been mentioned, or finding moments relevant to the brand where they can become an active part of the conversation.

This time, we’re going to look at some of the brands doing it well, starting with Topgolf building on a community-driven moment.

Topgolf tells Logan’s story

At the end of December, a video went viral on TikTok of a net collapsing at the Auburn Hills location, and an innocuous comment was made by one Logan Phillips: “They better have that fixed by January 9th – my work Christmas party is there.”

And so began a chain of events that set off a whole campaign for the Topgolf team. The comment eventually racked up more than 300,000 likes. While it did not originate on a Topgolf video, nor was the brand tagged in it, it didn’t escape the attention of Topgolf’s social team.

“As we saw more and more people advocating for Logan in the comment section of the original video, we knew this was something the internet had collectively decided to care about and an opportunity for us to act swiftly and join in on the fun. The comment ultimately garnered 338,000 likes, showing us this moment reached a wider audience,” said Nili Kamolidinova, Topgolf’s Social Media Manager.

Topgolf acted swiftly to join in on the moment, providing regular updates to its audience about the repairs on the Auburn Hills facility, something that Kamolidinova says is part of the culture at Topgolf.

“We try to remain nimble at Topgolf when these organic moments arise and where we as a brand can add value to the Players story,” added Kamolidinova.

Topgolf posted a series of response videos showing the team working to repair the net, with the final videos driving 4 million views and 11 million views respectively.

Together, the viral moment combined for more than 4 million engagements on Topgolf’s channel, to say nothing of the viral community engagement and UGC. This accounted for almost two-thirds of Topgolf’s total engagement in the last 12 months, even outperforming a video featuring Mariah Carey.

The success of the moment resonated well outside the social posts, with the company also offering a promo code to its community to celebrate Logan’s Christmas party at their local Topgolf.

“As the community buy-in increased, so did the requests from Players to celebrate Logan’s Work Christmas Party at their own venues. This allowed us the opportunity to invite everyone to ‘Logan’s Work Christmas Party’ at their own venues with a half-off promo code,” said Kamolidinova.

The play: Topgolf took a potential negative and spun it into a positive with good humor and quick reactions. Make sure you’re aware of what’s being said about your brand in real time even outside of direct mentions, and be ready to capitalize on those cultural moments.

Pepsi drops the references at the big game

Pepsi released their ad a week before the big game, and it paid dividends on social media. The spot featured a polar bear taste testing the two big colas, and picking Pepsi, causing an identity crisis.

The Taika-Waititi-directed ad got a huge amount of attention on social media, with upwards of 6 million engagements on TikTok alone, making it easily the most engaging of the pre-releases.

The ad plays with our expectations around the bear, which is famously associated with Coca-Cola. But it’s the social-adjacent moments that are of interest here. The brand revived the famous taste test from the 80s and made it relevant for a social audience, which is primed for blind taste tests and shocked reactions thanks to the success of those kinds of short-form videos on social.

But it didn’t stop there. It also referenced the viral Coldplay concert moment from last year, as the two bears were caught on camera with their drinks before leaning into it and raising a toast to the audience.

Similar to Topgolf, this one video was easily Pepsi’s top-performing of the last twelve months. In fact, it performed so well that it saw more engagement than the rest of the brand’s TikTok posts combined.

The play: Audiences love to understand references, and by taking two viral social moments and leaning into them in their creative, Pepsi successfully brought those watching with them, and thereby made them feel part of something bigger, while keeping it relevant to their brand.

Dr Pepper confirms it is both good and nice

Another soda, another cultural moment, though this one was more reactive. In late December, creator Romeo Bingham posted a short jingle for the brand consisting of ten short words; “Dr Pepper, baby, is good and nice, doo doo doo.”

This took on a life of its own on TikTok, with a wide array of duets, remixes and new spins on Romeo’s original post being shared across social channels.

The post even went viral among brands, with the likes of Buffalo Wild Wings and others urging the creator to do a version for them next. It was genuinely a defining moment of 2025 on TikTok, pushing 12 million likes, a million shares and more than 100,000 comments.

On LinkedIn, people were incredulous that Dr Pepper didn’t immediately react to this on its social channels, but it turned out the brand was playing the long game (if that’s what you call less than a month turnaround time from idea to execution!)

In the middle of January, Dr Pepper’s page posted a short video of a friendship bracelet with the starting letters of the song; a typical short video trope. It then extended this joke the next day, ranking the words in the song. These two videos were the brand’s most successful videos on the platform by a significant distance, with each performing the other top videos on the page by at least 5x.

And once again, this went beyond social, with the viral jingle used in Dr Pepper’s ad at the College Football National Championship, where it was viewed by tens of millions more, many of whom may not have even been aware of it as a social trend in the first place.

The play: When people love your brand, amplify those voices. There’s so much content out there waiting to be acknowledged, make sure you’re actively listening so you’re paying attention when a moment breaks through.

Anthropologie rocks

This one’s going to take a bit more explaining. If you didn’t see it, it all began with a practical joke. Creator Phoebe Adams took a rock from outside and claimed to her boyfriend that she had spent $150 on it for their entryway table. The boyfriend’s shocked reaction at the unboxing made the prank an instant viral hit, garnering almost 2 million engagements.

Once again, the brand was not directly tagged in the video, but it created enough buzz that it got their attention. The original video was posted on September 14, 2025, and within a week the brand had officially partnered with Adams to play another joke on her boyfriend. The couple entered an Anthropologie only to find a rock display with a 50% off offer, and everyone from sales associates to cashiers were in on it. The subsequent post topped a million likes, and the brand itself commented on this post—that comment drove north of 130,000 engagements.

The brand didn’t stop there, also featuring the rock collection on its own Instagram page a week after the original video.

Social media revels in the ridiculous, and being a brand that leaned into that worked for Anthropologie. The partnership with the original creator was crucial for the success of leaning in, as her subsequent video significantly outperformed the brand’s post that referenced the joke.

The play: Let the world know you’re in on the joke. Anthropologie took a moment in time and brought it into the business, showing a sense of humor that their audience appreciated.

Utah DOT goes unhinged

This example is a more traditional display of hopping on trends, but you still need to be aware of what’s happening in culture to do that. The Utah Department of Transportation delivers its safety and informational announcements in trending formats, which they frame as “unhinged PSAs”.

What could have been a boring announcement about road closures turned into a post that generated thousands of engagements by acknowledging a trend and adding the personality of Utah Department of Transportation employees. Social storytelling is—at its heart—about building a community with your audience, and understanding when and how they will resonate most with the message you are trying to convey.

The play: Keep on top of cultural trends that your audience and community cares about, and join in on them when it makes sense for your brand.

Turning cultural trends into brand wins

That concludes this month’s installment of the PPR. Stay tuned for next month’s edition, and in the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

Of course, different content will always resonate more on different platforms. A majority of the moments we’ve highlighted here came on Instagram and TikTok, but if you want to see the kind of content audiences are looking for across the social web, you can read our 2026 Content Strategy Report.

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.