In the first of our 2025 Beyond Great Minds series, we sat down with brand leaders, cultural strategists, and social media marketing experts to talk about one of the biggest challenges facing brands today: Are we chasing numbers at the cost of real cultural relevance?
With budgets getting squeezed and the demand for instant ROI louder than ever, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. But if the energy in the room taught us anything, it’s this — the brands that win long-term are the ones that invest in real communities, not just in campaigns.
Here’s everything you need to know.
📊 The Performance Trap: Winning Today, Losing Tomorrow
The conversation opened with a sharp reality check: Brands are over-prioritising performance marketing at the expense of long-term brand building.
The pressure to deliver fast metrics — clicks, views, conversions — has meant that deeper, slower, and more meaningful brand work often gets sidelined.
“We’re winning the short game — but losing the long one,” one speaker said.
Social media is now the number one space for brand discovery, yet leadership teams still treat it like a traditional advertising channel. The room agreed: social isn’t just media. It’s culture.
Treating it like a numbers game only weakens the very cultural roots that audiences care about. If you want future-proof brand loyalty, you have to think past quarterly reports.
🌍 The Hyper-local Reign Continues…
As we know, micro-communities are where the real magic is. With audiences more fragmented, more niche, and more values-driven than ever, brands need to rethink how they show up.
“If you’re not showing up for your people, you’re just showing off,” someone put it.
This means leaning into hyper-local marketing, community-first strategies — from partnerships with grassroots venues to tapping into niche cultural scenes — and moving away from mass-blast content designed to hit everyone and no one at once.
Real connection is happening at a micro level. Brands that want to stay relevant need to learn how to move at community speed, not campaign speed.
📬 Own Your Audiences, Before It’s Too Late
The group also got into the shifting power dynamics of platform dependency. In short: If you don’t own your audience relationships, the platforms do.
TikTok, Instagram, YouTube… they’re all incredible discovery tools. But they own the data, not you. Building first-party data ecosystems — through email lists, WhatsApp communities, owned content hubs — is essential to de-risk brand marketing strategies in 2025.
“If TikTok changes its algorithm tomorrow, what do you actually own?” one guest asked.
The smartest brands are the ones thinking beyond rented reach… and building spaces they fully control.
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🔥 5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE SOCIAL ROUNDTABLE
- Short-term wins aren’t enough: If you’re not building cultural equity, you’re losing cultural ground.
- Micro-communities = Major opportunities: Local-first brand strategies are the future of relevance.
- Own your audience: First-party data ecosystems aren’t optional anymore.
- Social media is culture, not just advertising: Treat it with the respect it deserves.
Consistency is credibility: Showing up once isn’t enough — it’s the brands who stay in the conversation that get remembered.
Final thought: In 2025, the brands that will still be standing aren’t the ones who sprinted the fastest — they’re the ones who built the deepest roots.
Culture moves fast. Loyalty moves slower. Invest wisely.
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