Brand Social Trends for 2025
As we step into 2025, the world of branding is evolving faster than ever, driven by changing consumer expectations, technological advancements, and a growing emphasis on authenticity. Brands today need more than just compelling products—they must navigate complex social trends, adapt to emerging platforms, and align with the values of an increasingly conscious audience.
In this blog, we explore the key social trends shaping the branding landscape in 2025.
Content Funnel
Brands will shift to developing a content funnel, meaning content ideas that are broken down into;
top of funnel: content made to go viral and drive awareness.
middle of funnel: content made to educate people on the brand, category, or product.
bottom of funnel: content to drive action or affinity.
this will result in more brands leveraging the content funnel as the testing grounds for different performance.
Character Development
More brands will approach quarters like seasons and will introduce different characters within those seasons. Characters will include influencers, athletes, ambassadors, affiliates, and employees. The goal is to connect characters to products and create fans behind each.
World Building
World building will start on social brands will take its core customers dream mood board matched with a specific tone, voice, and personality and make it the core of every customer touch point. Everything will start on the content front and will expand to how the brand communicates via landing pages, email, sms, ads, etc.
Long-Form Brand Era
This will be a big focus and area of investment for brands next year, as short-form continues to get more competitive, long form will be the next channel to tackle for brands. Not only is it an opportunity. Long form channels like YouTube and podcasts are the best mediums to build affinity with customers.
Focused Influencer Marketing
Brands are going to cut their influencer rosters drastically and focus on creating strategies, funnels, and products around the outliers. You'll see more specific influencers integrated into a brand's overall strategy. Think one influencer with his/her own content strategy, email and sms sequences, landing pages, and products.
Brand Challenges
75 Hard is a great example of what more brands should do and what you'll see in 2025. More brands will create challenges to associate themselves with transformations that integrate their product. A hydration brand will launch a hydration challenge. Running brands will launch 16-week marathon challenges. Because anyone who opts into the challenge also opts into multiple touchpoints.
Brand Partnerships
Brand partnerships will be a big pillar within world building next year. More brands will partner with other brands who share similar customer profiles to create content series, livestreams, events, and products. But you'll see a rise of more brands creating content pillars and series.
Affiliate Marketing
The algorithms have brought back affiliate marketing because anyone can now win. But gamification will be the key. You'll see more brands leverage competitions, milestones, and time ranges for the majority of affiliate campaigns.
Connective Tissue - This is the most important element.
Organic social will be the core of any brand's DNA and it will scale across every other touch point (think email, sms, landing pages). Doing so will strengthen the connective tissue of the brand and will retain customers. But it starts with your social presence.
