Marketing Briefing: ‘High risk, high reward’ — Understanding the state of social media guardrails

The desire to crack that code is something that often allows social media managers and strategists a bit more creative freedom — a necessity for a brand to truly find a way to break through. Marketers who understand that have started to roll back some of the intense guardrails (lengthy approval processes, for example) that have historically been put in place, with the unintended consequence that they prevented brands from being able to tap into the trends and conversations of the moment. Others, meanwhile, are still stringent. It all depends on how much a brand wants to show up in pop culture and that brand’s risk tolerance.

“A lot of marketing leaders are recognizing that it’s a high risk, high reward situation on social media,” said Nathan Jun Poekert, CMO of brand agency General Idea.

That risk tolerance comes into play often for marketers and the agency execs working on brands’ social media management. Many brands want to show up on social media in a way that will get people to care about them, get people talking, and make them the new cool brand. But few are willing to take the risks required to get them to that place, according to marketers, agency execs and one social media brand strategist who asked for anonymity. Some marketers might be keen to try something new, or find themselves interested in a plan that has the potential to achieve this level of cultural relevance, but few are willing to be a first mover, noted Lia Haberman, founder of ICYMI, a creator economy newsletter, and influencer marketing instructor at UCLA Extension.

Even as marketers are still figuring out their general risk tolerance, there is a sense that social media managers and strategists do have more creative freedom today than they have in the past. Much of that can be attributed to the comments sections on social media platforms. Social media teams have to devote a significant amount of time to responding to comments and posting in comment sections themselves. There is less oversight in those comment sections, noted agency execs, and that comes from a place of trust.

“There’s not as much [oversight] as a full post,” said Anna Walsh Lipparelli, social creative at ad agency Pereira O’Dell. “Good community management comes from giving the community manager trust to go out and represent the brand. You have to level set with those people how far you want to risk it and how far you don’t but they have to have the autonomy to speak on behalf of the brand.”

Few brands allow their social media managers the freedom that the team behind gut health brand Olipop seems to have. The brand’s response to competitor Poppi’s influencer Super Bowl campaign — Poppi sent several influencers vending machines, which led to some backlash online — seemed to earn Olipop a lot of attention. But social media managers and strategists said that level of freedom is rare and can be a gray area. (Even Duolingo found itself in hot water after it waded into the trial involving Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.)

For the brands lowering their social media guardrails partially or altogether, the move could be seen as a trickle-down effect of the current cultural climate, noted Haberman. As brands recognize that social media platforms are rolling back content moderation and the highest office in the land, the White House, signals that guardrails don’t matter, there’s a sense that brands are following suit.

Standing out on social media has only gotten harder, so it’s not entirely surprising that some brands would take a “shock and controversy” approach, explained Savannah (Sav) Rabin, strategist at Mother New York. It’s not just that social media has fragmented, that algorithms continue to shift and change, or that people are tired of hearing from brands on social media. It’s also that people are so aware of brands and that many brand voices meld together, all using internet speak and “flattening” into one kind of brand voice, Rabin added.

What matters most for brands today is finding a unique point of view on social media. If everyone is going for the type of brand humor that Duo made popular, then that kind of humor might not help a brand stand out. What will stand out will depend on the nature of a brand’s account, its brand values and how it uses those to create its social voice.

“How do you give social teams autonomy while still maintaining your brand guidelines? It’s tough,” said Lipperelli. “It’s all about brand love and how you can show up in a way that your audience is like that’s fun, conversational and still true to what your audience expects from you.”

3 Questions with Noha Abdalla, CMO of Choice Hotels

Talk to me about the media mix for your brands. Where’s it at?

Everything from broadcast cable, streaming TV, radio, social and digital platforms. We’re even leveraging [actor Keegan-Michael Key’s] social media platforms, but it really is a video-first strategy. We know that we can tell a better story about our brands using video and we know that video performs really well, especially in the social and digital platforms. So we are following our target customers’ behavior. As they shift more and more of their media consumption, from linear TV to connected TV and digital and social, we’re also following them there.

Does a video-first strategy mean a bigger marketing and ad budget to support those video-first initiatives?

Yes, it does. We’re also experimenting with some different platforms that allow us to take the user from watching a video straight into our catalog of hotels. So it moves them through the proverbial marketing funnel of awareness to consideration to acquisition. We’re experimenting with different platforms and different ad types that allow us to go a little deeper with the consumer.  We’re also doing some work with Teads in the programmatic video space. They’re allowing us to try out some of these new ad units.

What have been the early indicators that video-first is working, especially when it comes to programmatic and pause ads?

Like most of our campaigns, we do a lot of consumer testing as we’re developing the concept. As the concept comes to life in video creative, we then continue to do consumer testing. So while we just launched a couple weeks ago in-market, we have gotten back our consumer testing results from the campaign and the campaign creative is continuing to test above the threshold. We use Kantar as our platform for where we test, and the creative is testing above the norms. — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

There’s been a back and forth between performance and brand marketing over the last few years as marketers look to strike a balance between the two. On one hand, marketers are expected to do more with less and are focusing on performance marketing to ensure return on investment. On the other hand, brands recognize abandoning brand marketing to focus on performance can hinder the brand reputation.

A new survey from brand-building platform Frontify speaks to that pendulum swing and how marketers are looking to work in the middle. See below for key findings:

• 39% of marketers identified “creating a strong, unified brand experience across all omni-channel touchpoints” as their top priority.
• Another 39% said they prioritize “demonstrating the ROI of branding and marketing activities.”
• 41% of marketers are still creating content templates manually in-house, which makes it harder to scale consistent branding while also wasting valuable resources. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“It seems like the ‘D’ word is the most problematic one.”

— said Liv Lewis, an executive marketing communications consultant, when asked about why there may be a need for rebranding of the term DE&I.

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