Brainfood: Evolution of Social
Welcome to Brainfood – a new blog series where we walk you through what’s been keeping us creatives and strategists up at night! To kick it off, our team discusses the evolution of social media and some of the best accounts to emulate.
Welcome to Brainfood – a new blog series where we walk you through what’s been keeping us creatives and strategists up at night!
In all seriousness though, we’ve been diving into a new trending topic every month internally, and we figured, why not share our learnings with others. To kick off the series, we explore the evolution of social media, which is very much like the evolution of man; it has found its legs and has certainly gotten better looking over time. Gone are the days of heavy filters, today we welcome social content that is super authentic and REAL. According to Hootsuite’s 2024 Social Trends Report, users want to be entertained on social, with 56% of consumers thinking that brands should be relatable on social media. Their biggest turn-off is when brands focus highly on self-promotion.
With that, the lines between branded and organic social content are becoming more and more blurred. Certain brands are starting to realize the best way for their consumers to engage with their content is to act like a friend on their feed.
So, this led us to asking a few FUCRs: If you were to recommend any brand’s social account to follow who would it be and why?
Slim Jim | Drew Lindsey, Creative Strategist
The Slim Jim account, AKA home of the Long Boi Gang, AKA CEO of verified comments, has made their mark on social by being unserious, timely, and highly relevant.
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Why we like it:
Memes > Branded Content: Slim Jim prioritizes relevant and timely organic content VS. high quality paid content. They’re also deeply embedded in Gen Z/Millennial meme culture, which helps them dominate in terms of tailored content for each platform.
CEO of Verified Comments: Slim Jim ensures they have frequent interaction with its community. They use UGC as a driver to deepen their engagement from micro to mega influencers/creators.
Engaging Partnerships/Collabs: Slim Jim’s approach to brand partnerships and collabs lack seriousness; but what they don’t lack is interest and engagement, because they know which partners are going to grab their audience’s attention.
Liquid Death | Mike Furlong, Copywriter
Liquid Death have made a name for themselves by claiming to be “The most metal of water,” which serves as a double-meaning for their anti-plastic bottle message in a non-boring way. They would probably describe their social strategy as “two birds stoned at once.”
Their strategy to standing out in the water category? Make water cool. How? Act like an energy or alcoholic drink.
Why we like it:
Distinct POV: They certainly stand out, having an edgier upper hand to the Dasani, Pure Life’s, and Aquafina’s of the bottled water world. They pride themselves on “taking the piss” out of the category when it comes to positioning themselves as a capital “W” Wellness brand.
Onion-Like Influencer Approach (Layered): They focus on finding influencers and brand partners that fit their persona. They have a layered influencer approach across channels at various scales of followings so they can generate word-of-mouth marketing through partners like Mythical Kitchen, Travis Baker, Tony Hawk, Tom Segura, and even good ol’ Martha Stewart (not all partners are necessarily predictable!).
Metal Mascot: They know in today’s social age that there has been a resurgence in brand mascots. Their can-headed, eyeball nippled mascot (yes you read that right) acts as talent for a lot of their social media content, providing an unforgettable face to the brand.
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Milwaukee Public Library | Cristina Markham, Associate Creative Director
You thought brand tycoons like Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Duolingo are the only ones able to REACH millions of users on social? How about turning to a public library for some social strategy inspo?
Milwaukee Public Library is bringing the lost art of library science into the digital age. With things like “booktok,” reading is now making people’s FYP a page-turner! With their social content, they have managed to: bring visitors back post-COVID, dispel common misconceptions about the library, highlight little-known services, create a sense of community, and entertain viewers all at the same time (while packing it into a platform-recommended length video).
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Why we like it:
“Pill in the peanut butter” trick: Educating people and feeding them information goes down a little smoother when you layer it with some amusing audio, popular memes, and charismatic on-screen talent. With that tactic, users will surely be coming back for your social content recipe.
Don’t try to be cool: When it comes to social – it’s harder for brands to fake it until they make it. Users can see through phony tactics and all they want is to be true to their TOV. So, for Milwaukee Public Library what’s cooler than being cool? Not being cool.
Build a community full of tourists: Since Milwaukee’s population is 569K and the library’s following is 199K it is safe to assume most of their followers come from outside of Milwaukee. This is not an easy feat. To put things into perspective, here in Toronto our population is 2.9M and our library doesn’t even have a quarter of Milwaukee’s following, with a little over 40k followers. Which I mean is probably the usual for a library’s social presence, but Milwaukee library’s content unlike their beer is worth consuming.
Overall, brands should take advantage of what their target audience is saying about their brand, competitors, and industry. This can help inspire content and help identify which UGC to respond to. Interact with users, especially as 27% dislike when brands have poor engagement with comments/DMs and use “entertainment” as the ultimate goal when brainstorming content.
Stay tuned for next month’s Brainfood!
