Culture Lab Newsletter: Your Culture Lab Wrapped Has Landed 🚨

And with that, the 2025 season comes to an end. But before we start ‘circling back in January’, it’s time to reflect on Culture Lab’s first year of newslettering - from the wildest viral moments to the trends that had us scrolling until the wee hours, we experienced it all together.

Here are your 2025 stats…

Your genre: Watching TikToks during work hours

Your top trend: Narrator VO

Your top song: Pretty Little Baby

Your top artist: KATSEYE

Your top viral moment: Coldplay kiss cam

 Your ‘guilty pleasure’ trend: 67

Now that you’re suitably gift-wrapped, let’s kick off this year’s final edition.

What’s Gone Viral? 🔥

Just want the headlines? Here’s a peek at some of the bigger viral convos before we dive into trends and the more… unhinged.

Introducing Pantone’s Colour of the Year

Yessss, give us nothing!! Pantone announced their highly-anticipated annual Color of the Year: Cloud Dancer, which, for the first time EVER, is a shade of white. And yes, as you’d expect, the internet has had their say. From humour-led reactive videos to more serious statements suggesting it’s a “Pantonedeaf” reflection of the current political climate, we can’t imagine anyone is winding down for Christmas in Pantone’s PR team just yet.

Netflix is buying Warner Bros… maybe?

Bear with us on this one, because we don’t actually know yet. On 5th Dec, Netflix announced a deal to acquire Warner Bros, including HBO Max and HBO. Now, it seems that there’s a bit of tension in Hollywood, with Paramount throwing their hat into the ring with a $108 billion hostile takeover just THREE DAYS after Netflix. Whatever happens, there’s a concern that a deal could limit diversity within the industry, but also potentially lead to the death of cinema if the Netflix takeover pulls through. 

Google announced their Year in Search 2025

In the words of the great Davina McCall - do you want another one? Everything has its own Wrapped these days (big up, Spotify) and now it’s time for the big dog of search engines: Google. From looking up hot honey recipes to googling Bad Bunny’s lyrics after the Superbowl announcement, the hottest searches of 2025 can all be found within the Year in Search 2025 trend report.And, if you prefer to consume your data in fun video format… you’re welcome.

Trending Meme Alert 🚨

If you haven’t seen Jon Hamm vibing on your socials lately, where have you been?

The Jon Hamm meme is an example of a trend that has a thousand different uses and, with it only really taking off last week, it’s still fresh enough to hop on. Creators are editing their own clips seamlessly into the dancefloor scene from his Apple TV show “Your friends and neighbors”.

A big part of this trend, making it instantly recognisable on feeds, is the accompanying audio - “Turn the lights off” by Kato. Not only is this trend thoroughly entertaining, it’s demonstrating the impact of social media (particularly TikTok) on the music industry, as the 15-year old track has just entered Spotify’s Viral Top 50, pulling around 140k streams daily.

In fact, in TikTok’s Top Artists and Songs of 2025, they reported that 8 out of the 10 Billboard Number Ones this year had a TikTok viral moment first. If this doesn’t demonstrate the power choosing an audio holds on social media, we don’t know what does!

TikTok Brand Champion 🏆

For this edition’s rather wholesome Brand Champion, we’ve chosen an account that’s bringing history to life on TikTok - English Heritage.

For brands looking to educate on social, it can be tricky to create content that delivers serious or ‘boring’ messaging in an engaging and memorable way, particularly with attention spans diminishing. That’s why English Heritage is the last entry of our 2025 Hall of Fame. 

They’ve merged Pitbull audios with Battle of Hastings reenactments, swapped the viral cucumber salad for Mrs Crocombe’s cucumber soup and even included phallus-shaped hooks within content to stop the scroll (extra props for the ‘National Trust for Scotland’’s comment).

English Heritage are the perfect example of making social work for you. You don’t need to be a copy and paste version of every other brand if it doesn’t work for the message you’re trying to get across. It’s all about adapting with trends and change, without losing your identity 🏰

More Industry News 🗞️ 

Looking for a specific industry or topic? Say no more. Here’s a selection of a few bonus newsworthy moments and trends, organised into categories, ‘Type A’ style.

Travel & Hospitality ✈️

Ultra-luxury travel and transformative experiences are set to define 2026

The winners of the Tatler Travel Awards are here, and we’re impressed

Bali is moving forward with plans to ban private beaches

Food & Beverage 🍹

BrewDog has expanded its alcohol-free portfolio with magnesium beer

Mamma mia! Italian cooking has (rightfully) been awarded Unesco status

Jamie Laing’s Candy Kittens set to acquire Graze in a deal with Unilever

Fashion & Design 💅

Frenzy around Timothee Chalamet’s Marty Supreme merch pop-up

Pinterest Predicts has released its list of anticipated 2026 trends

Another Colour of the Year, anyone? This is Ikea’s… and it’s FUN

Tech & Sport  ⚽️

He’s done it! Little Lando Norris secured his first F1 Championship win

Football’s Africa Cup of Nations is about to kick off, here’s the full schedule

Disney has licensed part of its catalogue to OpenAI… to some concern

Trending Format Alert 🚨

With this being the last newsletter of the year, how could we not look at how users are summing up their 2025s on social? It’s still early, but we’re already seeing a lot of ‘2025 Core’ montages on TikTok in particular, with people looking back fondly on the last 12 months. 

We also expect to see a lot of content using the annual “and with that, the season comes to an end” audio very soon - which our chronically-online readers probably spotted us reference earlier in this edition (and if you didn’t, we’ll wait here while you scroll back up).

Last but certainly not least, we are SAT and ready for Mikey Angelo’s annual song, recapping the absolute chaos that’s been 2025. For a teaser of what’s to come, here’s his 2024 track.

On that note, it’s time to say goodbye! Not only to us (for now), but to 2025 and all of its wonderfully ridiculous memes, trends and internet culture. Thank you for being part of Culture Lab with us this year - it’s been a joy to share the internet’s latest and greatest with you.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

The Culture Lab team 🎄