Put The Audience First And The Brand Second
Content creator and brand partnerships will evolve in 2024, with co-creation set to become one of the key trends in social media marketing, writes Emily Styles
This year, social media success will hinge on cultural integration. Brands must not only react to culture but also embrace it, and sometimes lead it. That’s the view from the Social Media Trends 2024 report from ad agency Ogilvy, for whom the main trend is the evolution from social 2.0 to social 3.0.
In this analysis, social 2.0, defined by Meta’s heyday of curated productcentric content, was built for paid distribution and helped advertisers achieve reach at scale. In the current state of social 3.0, the pendulum has swung back to content built to entertain and inform, with algorithms once again rewarding organic traction.
Report author Dimitri Cologne says big brands who have been slow to adapt to this new environment are now starting to feel the pressure from socialfirst challengers who have built new brands almost purely through digital native propositions.
“The opportunity in 2024 is to build relevance in much more sophisticated and enduring ways,” says Cologne. “Successful brands will be those which get clear on the role they have to play in the culture landscape, and the engagement levers needed to activate accordingly. Brands will increasingly seek unusual alliances, and the more original, counter-intuitive or bizarre, the better for disruptive engagement.”
Ogilvy expects that creator partnerships will continue to evolve, from obvious product placement and staged enthusiasm to more ambitious co-creation between creator and brand. Ogilvy believes that fake news, polarisation, and overstimulation have led Gen Z and millennials to tire of traditional social. Instead they’re opting for combinations of platforms to meet specific needs, participating in online communities based on shared passion or fandom, or connecting in niche platforms.
“This is indicative of a bigger move away from pay-to-play approaches towards audience and interest-first social content that’s geared for optimal organic performance,” advises Awie Erasmus, who also contributed to the report. “This is fuelling a rise of brand social that’s more platform-native, and closer to lo-fi influencer-generated content and user-generated content.”
Digital advertising accounted for twothirds of the €1,470m advertising spend in Ireland in 2023. Spend on social media ads grew by an estimated 13% to €410m, according to media agency
Core, with video ad spend increasing 10% to €450m. Video includes YouTube, and broadcaster and social video on demand.
Core expects further spend growth of 13.5% on social media and 10.4% on video in 2024, with spend on TikTok forecast to increase by 42% in 2024. This tallies with Ogilvy’s description of TikTok as the new TV. “The dominance of TikTok and Instagram Reels, and the uptake of YouTube Shorts, speaks to consumers’ enduring love for punchy, short clips,” says Ogilvy.
In Ireland, the ‘creator economy’, the polite adland phrase for influencing, is a growing marketing segment, both for the influencers and their intermediaries. One of those gobetweens in Lynn Hunter, who started her own business in public relations in 2009, added on an influencer arm in 2017, and now sees opportunity in informal social media video content made by influencers and other creators.
Hunter started working with content creators over a decade ago when they were just bloggers. “Then Instagram launched and all these girls were creating great content,” she recalls. “I realised there was a missing link between the brand and the creator, somebody who understands the value the creator is bringing and who can also educate the brand how it works.”
Hunter established The Collaborations Agency in 2017, and the agency now represents scores of influencers and other content creators. The talent roster includes Mayo funnyman Garron Noone, who has been latched onto by Keoghs Crisps; Limerick comedian Séamus Lehane, who collaborated with Noone for
content plugging Rockshore beer; travel and adventure creator Marius Monaghan, who has promoted Connected Hubs to his 200,000 TikTok followers; drag queen Davina Devine, who is popular with Boots marketers; and foodie Karol Daly, who is admired by Marks & Spencer.
For marrying brands with influencers, Hunter looks at reach, relevance and resonate factors. “For the brand and creator, I want to marry them on those three points. The best campaign is when a brand wants to collaborate with the content creator and go with their ideas.
“I always ask the brand, what is your rationale? Why do you want to work with this person? If you won’t let them be who they are, it’s not going to work. Content creators know their audience, so why would you work with this person if you want to change how they are to who you want them to be.
“I’ll give clients examples of content that has worked due to a particular collaboration, and then they get it. When we receive the brief from the client, we share it with the content creator to see if they want to do it. They will come back with a concept, and when that is agreed with the client we’ll shoot it. Once the content is made, we usually only allow for one round of amendments. We’re not shooting an Oscar movie.”
Hunter’s latest initiative is Social Content HQ, a service where her roster of content creators make soft-sell content without necessarily making a personal appearance in the video. The idea is that TikTok and Instagram require a constant feed of videos, and that Hunter’s creative types can churn these out at a lower cost than an advertising agency.
“Our social content creation service is perfect for social media managers and business owners who want to focus on the big picture while leaving the creative heavy lifting to us,” Hunter enthuses. “We take care of everything from ideation and strategic planning to editing, and our services include custom graphics for feed and posts, and snappy videos for Reels or TikToks.”