Notice that we have quotations around everyone in this blog title? It’s purposeful. 

We’re steering away from telling you whether you should’ve jumped in on this trend or not because we’re here to educate you to the point of you being able to decide whether or not a trend is a purposeful fit for your brand. 

The Cheetah Company stuck away from the “Little Miss” trend and we could share all of the reasons why, but we’d rather share the reasons why we believe this trend went viral and how to infuse these working reasons into setting the next trend (maybe sans cartoon character?) 

We’re positive you remember this trend, but just in case someone goes digging into The Cheetah Cafe in the future with a wonder of what the heck this “Little Miss” trend was…let’s uncover it.

The “Little Miss” trend was a quick-hit trend that lasted about a week with content creators, business owners, and regular folks utilizing illustrations of sketched characters from Mr. Men and Little Miss (a 1970s book series, then a 1995 children’s television series that ran roughly for five seasons). Funnily enough, it popped onto the Instagram show pretty late (as most trends do!) because these characters and sayings were populating in early April 2022 on other social media platforms such as Discord, Twitter, and the first noted meme was created in 2021 and posted on Tumblr, before heading to TikTok by way of quiz and pre-made filter and then to Instagram as created content by users.

Let’s move on to the psyche behind this specific trend and why we believe it went viral on Instagram specifically, our favorite place to hang out! 

Liking

One of the main pillars of sales psychology? Liking. 

We want to like the person that we’re preparing to give our energy, time, effort, and money to, but beyond that we want that “liking” to be mutual and continual. 

The way that we saw this work within the “Little Miss” trend is the solidified connection between two people sharing a similar thought. 

Some of the more sane, calm, and entrepreneurial style memes within the trend had sentences such as: 

• Little Miss phone on 1%
• Little Miss pre-booking BTS
• Little Miss iced lattes only 
• Little Miss market researching before making a new offer

We desperately need connection, consistent care exchanged between us, and clarified experiences of “oh, we speak the same language, then working together will be so easy” to ensure that we’re making a good decision with our purchasing power. 

Ultimately, the simple answer rings true here…we just want to be able to say “me too” to another person, laugh at our oddities and quirks and solidify a kinship with a human across the digital space. If you’re wondering how you can implement this into your marketing strategy consistently, especially on social media, begin to matrix out the ways that you are odd, different, and quirky, and find ways to allow for kinship to be an experience within your brand. If you’re not a particularly quirky brand, that’s okay, too, find ways to allow your community to say “me too” to you in a way that fits your brand markers (sophistication, witty, high-brow, sassy!)  

Storytelling

Can you tell a story with a “Little Miss” one-liner? Yep.

The mind is wired for story and pattern-weaving; this has been executed both intentionally and unintentionally within this trend. Similar to the first point of liking, being able to say “me too” in the “digital room” with someone else, the solid pillars that are intersecting and connecting here are storytelling and self-identification. 

Being able to say “me too” allows for the connection points to be made between two humans (usually many more in the comments), and the storytelling is happening in less than six words in most of these memes (giving a wink at old Hemingway with his six-word-story), and being able to self-identify with mentalities like “phone always on 1%” is solidifying that human connection and experience with an underline.

Anyone else here always on 1% or is it just me? You’d think after years and years of using my phone for business (even before this brand!) that I would charge it more often, but let’s be real…that never happens. 

You’re welcome to weave these three pillars into your content regularly. Consider how you, too, could play around with the “less is more” factor of leveraging six-word-stories within your content. Folks are busy, they’re scrolling fast, and if you’re seeking to connect with high-level entrepreneurs especially, that are established and running massive brands, then you’ll most likely want to begin practicing the art of capturing attention quickly and not wasting a single syllable (to waste a syllable is to waste someone’s valuable time that they could spend filling out your application, pressing “purchase now”, and the like!) 

In case you’re wishing that someone else could make your content calendar for you (so you can get back to serving your community with ease!), we have a complimentary resource for you. Try to make your hooks six words or less with these content topics!  

Anchoring

This is a funny little point and you may have to pop into our DMs on Instagram with questions and thoughts for further discussion because this is a less-spoken-of human psyche element that’s usually only used in pricing, but we see it being leveraged within this trend. 

Anchoring is essentially a cognitive bias that influences a person’s decision due to an “anchor” or a nearing reference point that is creating the bias. Anchoring allows for limited information to be in the mind, leaving little room for other options because we’re actively choosing between X amount of choices (let’s say for online business purposes… one offer with three separate pathways that allow us to ascend or descend in pricing based on how much support we desire within the offer!)

This trend “anchored” specific traits in front of folks to create all that we’ve already discussed – liking, storytelling, self-identification – and now we’re talking about compelling capturing of attention through limited information.

The same person that could post a meme that says “Little Miss phone on 1%” could also post another meme that says “Little Miss iced lattes only” and the person reading it may only “approve of” the 1% option because they take their lattes hot with a dash of vanilla.

But since we’re focused on one meme, one line, and one quick hit of dopamine at a time that says “we’re alike and we should be in the same room saying the same things because we’re already thinking the same thoughts” … we’re now in the “anchoring” arena. 

Interested

Would you rather be interested or interesting? 

A main pillar regularly discussed inside sales rooms is interest; sales professionals are taught to be both interested enough in the clientele in front of them while leveraging interesting things about themselves and the company to stick out in the consumer’s mind post-sales experience. 

Being in many sales rooms myself throughout my career in corporate probing and positioning for high-ticket sales, this was a delicate balancing line to walk. If you’re too interested in yourself as the sales professional then your consumer may consider that the product isn’t all that great since the only thing we seem to be talking about is the sales professional. Vice versa if all we’re talking about is the consumer to the consumer (probing questions about their lives, their days, their usage of other products similar to the product that’s being sold at hand) then the consumer can begin to fall into the “interesting” loop until they recognize that there hasn’t been much discussion about the product at hand…just the consumer at hand.

Shifting the focus back to the “Little Miss” trend, the content creator that was posting the trend was actively talking about themselves, interested in themselves and their specific quirks, but the door was open to the consumer to be able to identify said quirks about the content creator and then self-identify. 

Each new layer that we’re revealing here continues to feed into the same foundation: people want to be known, people want to be able to know themselves in your marketing, and striking the balance between the two is the most revolutionary, yet old-as-time, way to create solid connection within your communities. 

Inquisitive

We thought about calling this section “nosy”, but inquisitive is the more sophisticated way to say so. 

People are inquisitive. They want to know what makes someone else tick. They want to know what makes someone else laugh. They want to know what makes someone else feel known.

And then…the cycle begins again because they want to be known, to know you, to know your brand, and they want to know that you know them and that they know you.

The real working thing here? Knowing. 

Key Takeaways

You’ll probably want to know my take, right? Whether or not you should have jumped on the bandwagon? If some of the largest accounts on Instagram are doing it, shouldn’t you? If that’s so, why didn’t The Cheetah Company take advantage, especially if we dig this deep into a trend while it’s going on? 

I’d love to leave you with questions I would ask you if we were working together in a consulting container: 

• Is this trend something you feel pulled to have on your feed?
• Is this something you want to be known for, right now, and in the future? 
• If there were ideal clients reviewing your feed, this trend being your latest post, would you feel comfortable, proud, and content with that trend and that post being your first and last imprint on the potential client?

I don’t necessarily love when my mentors won’t give me their straight answer regarding their “yes” or “no” to something (we usually review my thoughts, feelings, and experiences at large before I go asking questions about what they think and what they would do in this situation), therefore, my truest answer: I wouldn’t want a potential consulting client (what we’re actively booking for right now) to come to my feed, see that trend as our last post, and then begin to consider whether or not we’re a good fit for them. Our private long-term consulting packages round out to be a five-figure investment and to me…the “Little Miss” trend doesn’t promote sophistication, high-ticket, or timelessness. 

For us, it’s a no, but that’s why we have our brand and you have yours. You’re allowed to choose – would you go back and choose this trend if you could? Send us a DM and let us know!