Social-first: Unpacking marketing’s most confusing yet rewarding opportunity

“Social is the greatest transformational force in marketing" is the kind of thing many of us were saying back in 2012.

But more than a decade, and hundreds of millions of brand social media posts later, can we, hand on heart, say that it’s really transformed everything we do? In many cases, no.

We often face one of two problems: The work is ‘social’, but it’s small; or it’s big, but not social.

On one hand, the work is ‘social' in that it makes the most of the opportunities offered by social platforms and behaviours, but because it’s not ‘on-brand’ or ‘on strategy’, it doesn’t enjoy the big brand spends previously reserved for TV and other broadcast media. This type of work is usually done by teams and agencies that know the platforms and trends inside and out, but don’t have the experience of—or patience for—the brand thinking. The work stays small.

On the other hand, the work might unlock some of those bigger brand spends and is strategic and on brand; however, even though it ends up on social platforms, it isn’t truly social—i.e. its reach is limited by social algorithms and there’s limited engagement. Sometimes the work is cutdowns of above-the-line (ATL) assets and it is often done by teams that get excited about bigger storytelling and longer-form films, rather than the nitty gritty of the platforms. The work is big, in terms of media spend and production budget, but it’s not making the most the opportunity offered by today’s social platforms and behaviors.

The good news is that social is back on the agenda—in particular, ‘social first’. It’s on trend and being talked about again at the highest levels at some of the world’s biggest brands. Another piece of good news is that we’ve learned a lot over the past decade when it comes to social. The expertise and understanding are there… It’s just disconnected and in siloes across the wider brand and agency ecosystem.

What if we could bring it all together? What if our social media efforts were both big—i.e. strategic and on brand enough to enjoy the types of budgets previously reserved for TV and other broadcast media, and were truly social—i.e., made the most of the opportunities offered by today’s social platforms and behaviours?

The opportunity is what we call “social-first integrated”: Ideas, campaigns and always-on posts that make the most of today’s social media platforms and consumer behaviours, with plenty people will see, do/create, and talk about. Such work is not separate to the big brand investments, it is the big brand investment.

First, there’s the opportunity of giving people something to ‘do’ or ‘create’ on social. On one hand, if designed well, our campaigns can get influencers and users creating on our behalf—i.e., putting content out there that communicates a brand’s message in a more authentic way than a brand could have done in the first place. On the other hand, with the right calls to action and targeting in the first place, we can move users along a connected customer journeys and closer to a sale or signup. While only a tiny minority will ever engage at this level, not having something for the enthusiastic few is a missed opportunity.

Second, there’s the opportunity to get people talking and sharing on social. We know that the best social media campaigns are not social media campaigns; the best social media campaigns are great TV commercials, are great OOH, are great products. If you want to get people talking on social, we sometimes have to go outside of social and design various forms of marketing with social in mind. By doing so we can maximise earned reach—if we’re lucky our work might even gain viral reach. However, while such social-first executions often don’t get the scale they deserve. For every stunt or activation that gets a little viral reach, there are dozens that don’t.

And this leads us to the third point: The importance of putting stuff out there that consumers will see. Sounds obvious right? Well, you’d be surprised how often this gets missed. Too often we place large amounts of effort to get the other channels right—even if we’re doing so with social in mind (see point two)—but don’t have content that’s fit for the platform. In fact, CreativeX estimates that 55% of ad spend is wasted due to not getting the basics right on social platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok.

We need content that’s both designed for the social platform—i.e., will get not get hidden by the algorithms and ticks all the strategy/campaign boxes to make it worth putting sizeable media budget behind it (the types of money previously reserved for TV and other more traditional broadcast media). This is what I call the ‘predictably good’ bit of a campaign that will guarantee the campaign works—even if your campaign doesn’t ‘go viral’.

Note that these three are not content pillars. If you’ve come up with a campaign idea, but then try to add something people will talk about, it’s often too late; likewise, if you’ve got a talk-worthy stunt that doesn’t lend itself well to fit-for-platform content, then it will struggle to scale. Ideally the campaign will have the three ingredients at a campaign idea level.

For Colgate, we brought it all together with a campaign that had plenty for people to see, do/create and talk about: Colgate believes every smile is beautiful, and that there is no perfect smile. But the truth is that many in APAC feel they can’t smile freely—with two in five experiencing “smile shame." In response, on World Smile Day, Colgate adapted its iconic smile logo to celebrate gap teeth, buck teeth, fangs, misaligned teeth, and every other smile. This was made possible by an AI-powered Colgate Smile generator, which was trained with over 15,000 orthodontic photos. We took over the news, social media and billboards with everyone’s smiles, and even created personalised toothpaste packs.

At the heart of the campaign was something people would talk about—the changing of Colgate’s iconic logo. There was plenty for people to do/create: They could adapt their own version of the logo. And, finally, there was plenty for people to see—hardworking built-for-platform social media content. 

Too often our social media efforts miss part of the social-first integrated opportunity. We do stunts and executions that some might talk about, but that don’t scale because we don’t have fit-for-platform content that we put big media money behind or that get obscured by the algorithms. Other times, we come up with on-strategy, on-idea content that we’d put big media money behind, but that miss out on all the opportunities offered by today’s social media platforms and consumer behaviours.

We need to do social-first integrated marketing communications: Ideas, campaigns, and always-on posts that truly make the most of the platform opportunities, with plenty people will see, do/create, and talk about.