Our Social Media for Drummies guide is in full swing, breaking down exactly where the social channel is right now, in 2025. To cap it off, we went to the top strategists and creatives in the social media marketing game to ask them how exactly they’re cutting through in 2025, amid declining organic reach, a fluid platform environment and the coming AI wave.
Tiah Slattery, head of influencer, Dept: “Try deliberately bad content. The more polished and over-produced something looks, the less people trust it. What’s cutting through is lo-fi, chaotic, ‘ugly but honest.’ Think screenshots, messy memes, brutally honest captions and vertical video that feels like it was made in someone’s Notes app five minutes ago. It’s not off-brand, it’s off-perfection and that’s what makes it stick. In a world of AI slop, audiences are craving imperfection as proof of humanity. This doesn’t mean lazy. It means smartly unpolished. The kind of content that looks like it was made by the intern but says exactly what everyone’s thinking. If your brand still has approval rounds for punctuation, you’re going to lose. If you can get comfortable with chaos (and stay culturally fluent), you’ll win. Not ev
erything should look like an ad. Sometimes it just needs to feel like a thought worth sharing.”
Tom Stone, co-founder, Re:act: “Run conversion-style ads in reach placements, even when it feels like the wrong format for the job. It breaks the platform’s logic, but that’s exactly why it works. You’re forcing a direct-response mindset into spaces built for scale, which lets you tap the full audience pool, not just the 10% likely to act. We’ve seen this consistently drive offline sales, which most digital formats struggle to influence cleanly. And if your core audience skews male, don’t sleep on YouTube Shorts. The CPMs are steep, but it’s where short-form still holds the attention of men scrolling with intent. YouTube knows this and is making a big play behind the scenes to turn male attention into advertiser value. It’s one of the few places where algorithm, audience and ad format are genuinely starting to line up again.”
Andrea Sarhis, associate director, paid social, Good Apple: “The terms ‘authenticity’ and ‘UGC’ get tossed around constantly, but too often the execution ends up feeling disingenuous due to brand overinvolvement. Reverse creator collaborations move us closer to what authenticity is meant to be, cutting through the noise by letting creators do the leading. Instead of brands scripting talking points, trust creators to lead with their own voice, storytelling style and format that feels truest to them. The result: content that resonates because it’s rooted in personal style. Audiences crave real human connection and experiences. Influence today isn’t about curation or vanity, it’s about resonance. Brands win when they amplify trusted voices and nurture authentic content that sparks connection and builds community.”
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