Brand is social, social is brand.
can we all stop pretending?
“I work in social,” is almost always met with a few reactions: pity, condescension, or apathy. Nearly a decade into social as a profession, it remains one of the most disrespected, misunderstood, and thankless parts of the marketing mix. Working in social means simultaneously having a ridiculous amount of importance placed on your role and unrealistic goals (Can we go viral? Aka, can you solve a business problem with a single Instagram carousel?), while being the last team that’s briefed in.
Here’s how it often feels like it goes:
Social media is managed by “interns.”
The brand is the remit of the Serious Marketer.
Social can’t build the brand.
The way we think about social as a phenomenon and as a practice needs to shift, radically. Social has resulted in seismic sociopolitical shifts, flattened the distance between online and offline (when was the last time you said BRB?), and most specific to this piece – shifted the way brands are built.
The advent of Instagram, in particular, has allowed every single person to become a curator in their own right: digitally merchandising their entire existence through signals of consumption. The endless paradox of choice has left us scrambling for the all-knowing that tells us what to buy, consume, engage with, amplify. And so a compelling brand expression on social becomes ever more important as a vehicle to allow for differentiation, engagement, and loyalty.
I regret to inform you that brand is social, and social is brand – and it’s about time we all stopped pretending otherwise. At this point in the brand marketing world’s evolution, it’s not about having one strong campaign a season - the relationship between a brand and its consumers is now symbiotic rather than authoritarian. This shift has 100% been powered by social media. You can pretend that you’ll be able to tell people what and who you are: but I promise you that the modern consumer will pick it apart in a matter of moments if there is no real substance there.
While different platforms operate on the scale of ‘most broadcast focused’ to ‘most communal’ differently the message is: brands are now built through thousands of micro-interactions on social platforms, developed in conversation with your community rather than in opposition to them. Instagram allows you to broadcast more than TikTok will, but each platform allows for feedback more than an OOH or TV campaign ever could.
First Interaction Advantage
Think about the last time you discovered a brand that was truly new to you. Where did it come your way? Chances are, on Instagram. A cursory scroll through their Instagram probably helped you decide whether that brand was for you or not - through an elaborate mix of signals: visually based, verbally based, and values-based. You probably saw if they respond to irate consumers in comments, and if so, how.
So why wouldn’t you want the team that manages this feed to help inform all parts of brand?
And in addition to social being one of the first parts of your brand a consumer engages with, your social team is the closest to the consumer’s world. The blessing and curse of being a social media marketer is being continually plugged into the world’s fastest-moving, ever-changing firehose of content. Every social strategist worth their weight will be able to keenly chart the trajectory of any trend, social event, or major news event breaking for you in moments and be able to show you where your brand does or doesn’t fit in the conversation.
Dynamic Brand Voice Development
A brand voice often begins in a deck and serves as the barometer for all brand expressions. But in practice, your voice is constantly in flux, shifting with the world and the times – and social is the place where it is iterated continuously: from the resolution of a CX issue to a few carefully placed emojis in response to a consumer.
As a social team, we’re always translating the deck into reality, prototyping, developing, and evolving the brand in real-time. There are so many brand expressions no one can ever plan for in the bounds of a playbook. When we do social, we’re actively testing, learning, and pressure-checking your brand strategy.
Moving Beyond Vanity
My final note on all things brand and social? Vanity metrics and expectations.
Brands are often so infatuated by being first to something without recognizing if the brand expression makes sense in the first place. Let’s focus less on getting on the newest platform, on getting ten thousand followers; let’s focus on engagement — is the current audience responding? Your audience will always tell you the way they feel. Trust me.
Instead of asking, “Why don’t I have 10K on Instagram?” ask yourself “Why should I have 10K on Instagram?” What would 10K do for your brand if it’s 10K people who don’t particularly care?
It’s time we realized brand is social, and social is brand – and that the social team doesn’t do just social: they build your brand incrementally every single day. Oftentimes, social teams inherit brand strategy that doesn’t translate beyond a deck or a business problem that is structural: and are expected to solve that with very little support or executive buy-in. Involving social teams from the inception of the brand will allow brands to flourish at the speed of culture.
Better yet, stop thinking of us as the social team, and start thinking of us as the people on your brand team that just happen to manage social.
All images throughout this piece are by John Yuyi.