The dark side of brand hype (and how to sidestep it)

In Greek mythology, the ouroboros is a serpent eating its own tail.

In marketing, it’s when the hype you’ve built starts consuming the very thing it was meant to protect: your product.

We’ve all seen it happen. The story gets so big, so viral, so frenzied that it stops being about the product’s actual usefulness and starts being about the sheer idea of owning it. The hype feeds sales, sales feed more hype, hype feeds more marketing, and around we go until the whole thing starts swallowing itself.

But hype is hype, right? Aren’t we supposed to be happy about our product flying off the shelves? Well, yes and no.

The Stanley Cup cautionary tale

For over a century, Stanley Cups were quietly excellent thermoses. Functional. Reliable. The kind of thing you bought once and kept for decades.

Then the TikTok girlies got involved. Suddenly, Stanley wasn’t selling hydration at all. It was selling status. Colour exclusives. Scarcity drops. Influencer hauls showing off entire rainbow-lined shelves. People camped outside Target like it was a freaking Harry Styles concert.

Stanley leaned all the way in. And why wouldn’t they? Demand was outpacing supply. Media coverage was free. Every drop sold out.

But here’s the risk: Stanley’s cultural moment is now bigger than its product story. People are buying faster for clout than for coffee. And when a brand’s relevance becomes untethered from its utility, it’s living on borrowed time.

The Ouroboros problem

This isn’t just about Stanley, obviously. Other brands have fallen into this trap too. Supreme, BeReal, even Crocs in some eras (hello, 2023). The moment the marketing becomes the product, you’ve entered ouroboros territory.

The healthy version:

• Marketing amplifies real product value.

• Storytelling deepens connection to something inherently worth owning.

The unhealthy version:

• The product becomes interchangeable. Swap it out and the hype would just shift to the next shiny thing.

• The drop is the dopamine, not the actual experience of using it.

And clearly it works (albeit temporarily).

Hype sells fast. Scarcity creates urgency. Social proof snowballs. You can ride a viral wave and look like a genius. That is, until the current changes.

Novelty burns out quicker than loyalty. If your retention depends entirely on keeping the spectacle alive, you’ll need to keep outdoing yourself until you either run out of ideas… or the audience runs out of interest. The likely is the latter.

How, then, do we hype without hollowing out?

If you want longevity, the hype has to serve the product, not replace it. That means:

• Anchor to utility: Even in the drop frenzy, remind people why the product is actually good.

• Evolve the experience: Don’t just release new colours; improve the design, add features, or enhance the service.

• Measure what matters: Look at repeat purchases and post-trend engagement, not just launch-day sellouts.

At the end of the day, it’s about leaving your mark, not just a moment.

The ouroboros is a closed loop. But your marketing doesn’t have to be. The brands that last break the cycle by feeding the product as much as the hype, building something that holds up after the hashtags fade.

Because in a saturated world, your legacy isn’t the frenzy you sparked. It’s the fact that when the dust settles, people are still using what you made and telling the story for you.

-Sophie Randell, Writer