Virality as Your Competitive Moat! Chat, Are we Cooked?
Marketing to a new generation of buyers, where virality is the new currency.
If you understood the second half of that title, you’re probably spending too much time online. If you didn’t, that’s the whole problem in one sentence: the people you’re trying to reach are fluent in a language your marketing doesn’t speak.
So, are we cooked? Only if you’re still marketing like it’s 2019.
Building a product has never been easier. Anyone with an idea and an afternoon can ship something real. So the hard part moved. It used to be building the thing. Now it’s getting a single person to care that the thing exists. And that comes down to one skill most founders underrate: understanding your audience.
Because the audience changed. Attention spans are sub-second. Streamers out-rank movie stars. Most people would rather ask an AI how to format a document than open a single how-to page. They aren’t reading blogs or scanning your landing copy. The AI summarized it for them, or they never arrived.
This is hardest on B2C founders, because the old B2C playbook was built for a world that no longer exists. Before 2019 you could simply buy reach: run the ads, rent the billboard, sponsor the podcast, and demand would follow. COVID broke that. The people who’ll actually use your product, the ones who keep paying for the next decade, now live in group chats, FYPs, and AI. Paid search still captures demand that already exists. It does almost nothing to create it with a 19-year-old who’s never heard your name. If you’re not in their world, you’re invisible in it.
Look at who’s winning, and notice the common thread.
Every one of them understands exactly who they’re talking to, and they’re bold enough to act on it.
Apple, one of the most controlled brands on earth, wiped its TikTok account and reposted a dozen deranged clips to launch the low-cost MacBook Neo: a lemon FaceTiming a lime, the MacOS logo blinking and blushing. If you’re over 25, the videos make no sense. That’s the point. Apple isn’t talking to you. It’s talking to the teenager buying their first Mac, who’ll be in the ecosystem for the next 20 years. Apple was willing to put its name on something most of its current customers don’t understand. That takes nerve, and it’s working.
KFC spends its day replying in the comments of “Italian brainrot” videos and built a whole Chizza relaunch around the trend. What does fried chicken have to do with an AI-generated meme of a crocodile in a bomber jacket? Nothing. And everything. It’s low effort, high reward, and it buys more cultural relevance than any TV spot could.
e.l.f. is the clearest case. Its #eyeslipsface campaign became the most viral TikTok campaign in history: 7 billion views, 5 million videos people made for the brand. e.l.f. puts about a quarter of its net sales into marketing and treats social as the product, not the megaphone. Analysts don’t call this luck. They call it a cultural relevance moat competitors can’t copy.
Here’s the throughline.
Marketing has quietly become one of the biggest assets a company can build. And the highest return on that investment isn’t a clever ad. It’s embedding your brand in culture. Because people follow culture. They want to belong to something. When your product becomes part of a moment they’re already in, you’re not interrupting their attention, you’re part of why they showed up.
In a world where everyone can build, that cultural capital is the real moat. The brands that move at the speed of culture capture the market. The ones waiting for a polished, on-brand campaign get lapped by a teenager with a phone.
So the takeaway isn’t “go viral.” It’s this: know your audience well enough to know where they already are, then be bold enough to show up there. Jump on the trend. Make the video that doesn’t make sense to your parents. Put your name out there before people even know what you do. Get them using the product early, and you’ve earned a customer for the next ten years.
Virality isn’t a vanity metric. It’s the new currency. Spend accordingly.
One thing to try this week: pick one trend your future customers are already in, and show up inside it. Not with an ad. With a reply, a remix, or a joke. Then tell us what you tried. We’ll feature the boldest experiments from the community in a future issue.
— The Tribe Team
🚀 Now accepting applications: Tribe Innovation Hub: AI Stream
Build it. Test it. Take it to market.
Most accelerators teach you how to build. This one makes you build.
Tribe Innovation Hub: AI Stream is a 16-week applied venture validation program for racialized founders in Nova Scotia building AI-enabled startups.
Built, not taught.
Whether you’re shipping your first MVP or have a business idea in mind, the program meets you where you are and helps move your venture to the next stage.
✔️ Bi-weekly applied builder sessions where the work happens with you, not at you.
✔️ Milestone-driven coaching and mentorship to sharpen decisions and keep growth on track.
✔️ Peer accountability pods with founders building alongside you.
✔️ A complete AI-supported venture building toolkit: ICP, GTM, pricing, pitch deck, and traction tracking.
✔️ Access to investors, ecosystem partners, and pathways into accelerators, pilots, and grants.
You come in with an idea or prototype. You leave with a venture that’s been built, tested, and taken to market.
🗓️ Applications close June 22, 2026
Something exciting is coming on June 9 👀
Join us from 6:00 pm–8:30 pm for our next AI Showcase and Mixer, presented in partnership with Volta.
Expect an evening of:
✨ Live AI showcases and demos
🤝 Networking with founders, builders, and innovators
💡 Conversations around emerging AI trends and applications
Save your seat and stay tuned for more details!
Startup Atlantic Kitchen Party: Collide & Connect
Atlantic Venture Forum week starts with a party. 🎉
Before the pitches, panels, and packed schedules begin, Startup Atlantic Kitchen Party: Collide & Connect brings the community together for an evening of conversation, connection, and celebration.
Tribe is proud to be part of an event that gathers founders, investors, startup teams, and ecosystem champions from across Atlantic Canada in one room.
📅 June 16, 2026
⏰ 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM
📍 Lower Deck, Halifax
🎟️ Free to attend. Registration required.
If you’re attending Atlantic Venture Forum or simply want to connect with the people building the future of the region, we’d love to see you there.
Join CAMSC and TRIBE on June 10 for Unlocking Supplier Diversity: Pathways to Certification & Growth.
If you’re a racialized entrepreneur looking to expand your network and unlock new opportunities, this session is for you.
Hear from CAMSC representatives as they share real success stories, break down the certification process, and answer your questions on how certification can help take your business to the next level.
Spots are limited—save yours by registering through the link:
Things to Read, Watch & Listen To
📰 Read: The Attention Economy Is Dead. Welcome to the Attachment Economy.
We’ve spent years competing for attention. But in a world flooded with content, some thinkers argue the real advantage is no longer attention; it’s attachment.
This piece explores why trust, connection, and community may be the most valuable currencies in the next era of business and marketing.
🎥 Watch:Ferrari, Jony Ive, and the Challenge of Reinvention
Cleo Abrams sits down with Jony Ive and Ferrari’s design team to unpack one of the most talked-about product reveals of the year: Ferrari’s first all-electric direction and the philosophy behind its radical redesign.
What unfolds is less about specs and more about decisions. Why remove the obvious digital interfaces. Why lean into tactile controls in an increasingly screen-heavy world. And more broadly, what it means to design something “authentic” in an era where everything is becoming software-first.
It’s part product reveal, part design philosophy, and part tension between tradition and what comes next in automotive and tech.
🎧 Listen: Late Night Beats for Builders
As AI makes creating easier, what becomes more valuable? According to Scott Belsky, it’s taste, judgment, and craft.
A thoughtful conversation on AI, creativity, and why expertise still matters in a world where everyone can generate content.
MELAMOON is coming to Halifax
MELAMOON is coming to Halifax with $200,000 in prizes and opportunities for Black entrepreneurs across Canada. This is your chance to pitch your business idea, connect with industry leaders, and take the stage during one of our city stops across the country.
The journey begins in Montréal on May 23 and continues throughout the summer in Halifax, Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto. The grand finale takes place in Toronto on October 16-17. Check when Melamoon is in your city and seize the opportunity to present your idea.
Melamoon is a national pitch competition designed to give Black entrepreneurs access to:
Non-dilutive funding
National visibility
Real connections and opportunities
$200,000 in prizes up for grabs:
1st Place: $100,000
2nd Place: $50,000
3rd Place: $25,000
People’s Choice Award: $25,000
Canada Selected to Launch WIPO’s IP Management Clinic for AI SMEs
he World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, is launching in Canada an international clinic dedicated to intellectual property management for artificial intelligence companies.
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has been selected as the launch partner, and Scale AI is acting as an ecosystem partner to support outreach across the Canadian AI ecosystem.
Canadian AI SMEs are invited to apply for this unique opportunity to receive strategic intellectual property guidance and strengthen their domestic and international growth potential.
📅 Applications are open until June 12, 2026.
Ride & Connect!
Ride & Connect is a free beginner-friendly community cycling initiative designed to help people learn to bike, build confidence, and ride together in a supportive, low-pressure environment. The program is being developed with a particular focus on Black, racialized, newcomer, and equity-deserving community members who may not always have access to bikes, cycling knowledge, or welcoming spaces to get started.
Startup Atlantic Events Hub | Startup Atlantic
For a one-stop hub for events happening across the ecosystem and across the country, check out Startup Atlantic’s events calendar. It includes things like workshops, pitch competitions, networking opportunities, and much more.
Resources: Grants, and Scholarships & More🔍
RESOURCES
VOLUNTEER
General Volunteer at Akoma Holdings Incorporated | Contact nmurphy@akoma.ca
Board members at Akoma Holdings Incorporated | Contact nmurphy@akoma.ca
PROGRAMS
The Taking Root Program | support and resources for BIPOC and/or newcomer entrepreneurs to kick-start selling at the farmers’ market
SCHOLARSHIPS/ INTERNSHIPS
Show Tribe Some Love! 🧡
If you’ve attended a Tribe event, participated in one of our programs, or just love what we do—let us know! Leaving a review on Google helps us grow, reach more entrepreneurs, and continue building a stronger community.
Promotion Requests
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