Social media has been around for ages in marketing terms, but its current era feels like it started in the pandemic haze of 2020 with a TikTok video of a man sipping Ocean Spray while gliding along on a skateboard and listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” The blissful clip, later expanded into a TV campaign by the cranberry juice maker, led Ocean Spray to fly off of store shelves — and helped place “Dreams” back on the Billboard charts — while serving as an early indicator of TikTok’s distinct power in sparking viral product sensations.
Five years later, the “TikTokification” of media is mainstream and CPG brands are making a bigger pivot to the social-first model, with leading companies allocating up to half of their total ad budgets on the channel while dropping billions to acquire more nimble rivals. This escalation comes as the chase for Gen Z consumers intensifies and as marketers try to account for the further decline of linear TV, their lever for mass reach essentially since the living room screen’s inception.
“It’s largely to do with capturing the next generation and FOMO,” said Nick Valenti, CEO of agency Mādin, over email. “Gen Z no longer goes looking for information. It finds them through the feeds they live in. Social is where they form taste, trust and identity.”
Such moves represent more than a budgetary change, with a growing number of marketers seeking marketing services providers with deep knowledge of social and influencers, including through dedicated agency of record appointments and the establishment of new in-house units. The moment additionally bears an existential aspect: Can legacy CPGs, rooted in rigidly defined brand values and sometimes literally squeaky clean images, relinquish a sense of control as they face a fleet of ankle-biter upstarts built on the socially native approach?
“Every year, there’s more examples of success,” said Evan Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of the Movers+Shakers agency. “I think most brands can point to some indie competitors that are eating their lunch that really get social.”
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