Social First: A Flagship Report

This article was written by Joshua Reinhardt, Epoch’s Associate Strategy Director.

In March 2026, Epoch hosted a webinar titled: ‘Social-First: Building Bonds on Social Media’. You can download the report at the end of this page and you can view the recording of the webinar here.

WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO BE A SOCIAL-FIRST BRAND

Social media has become the beating heart of modern culture. It shapes opinions, influences behaviour and plays a growing role in how brands are discovered, experienced and remembered. 

Yet despite the scale of the opportunity, many brands still struggle to make social media deliver meaningful business results. The problem is that being social-first isn’t really about social media. 

It’s about culture. 

The brands that are winning today are the brands that understand how culture moves, how attention works and how people build relationships with brands. Research from System1 consistently shows that emotional responses drive memory and commercial effectiveness, making cultural relevance a growth driver rather than simply a communications tactic. The challenge is that many brands are responding to this shift in the wrong way. 

The Social-First Misunderstanding 

For years, social media promised marketers something irresistible: the ability to target increasingly specific audiences with increasing precision. In the process, many brands lost sight of a simple truth, growth still comes from reach. 

Decades of Ehrenberg-Bass research has shown that brands grow by increasing penetration and reaching more buyers, not by talking to the same people more often. Social-first brands understand this. They don’t shrink their audience; they sharpen their relevance. 

Many brands are still built around campaign cycles while culture moves in real time. The brands succeeding today have developed more agile ways of working, enabling them to listen, respond and adapt without losing strategic focus. Being social-first isn’t about becoming smaller or faster for the sake of it, it’s really about it’s about becoming more relevant at scale. 

Consistency Beats Reinvention 

Perhaps the biggest misconception of all is the belief that brands need a different personality online. They don’t. 

Social-first brands don’t reinvent themselves for social media. They amplify what already makes them distinctive. Whether a brand is a Sage, Hero, Caregiver or Jester, the most effective approach is usually to express that personality more clearly rather than abandoning it in pursuit of relevance, because in crowded feeds, attention isn’t the only challenge, there is also recognition.  

Research consistently shows that consumers frequently misattribute advertising to the wrong brand. In a low-attention environment, distinctive assets become one of a brand’s most valuable growth tools. Colours, sounds, characters and slogans act as shortcuts in memory, helping people recognise a brand quickly and correctly. 

Research from Ipsos suggests that some of the most effective assets, including sonic cues and characters, remain among the least utilised. The strongest social-first brands understand this. They build consistent platforms, distinctive identities and repeatable creative systems that can flex across channels without losing recognition. 

Behaviour Changes, Strategy Doesn't 

Social has changed how brands communicate, but it hasn’t changed what makes communication effective. Different channels serve different purposes. Consumers use some platforms to discover, some to learn, some to connect and some to be entertained. Social-first brands recognise these differences and adapt their execution accordingly. They keep the message the same but the expression changes. 

But this should be reflected in how you engage with consumers on these platforms. Unlike traditional media, social media enables participation. The most effective brands don’t simply publish content. They start conversations, join existing ones and respond when audiences engage. 

At the same time, brands are no longer the only voice in the room. Creators, consumers and communities increasingly shape how brands are perceived. Recent IPA analysis found influencer marketing delivers some of the strongest long-term ROI of any channel, particularly when there is a strong fit between creator, audience and brand. 

So, the opportunity isn’t to hand your brand over to culture. It’s to participate in it without losing what makes your brand distinctive. 

It isn’t about just handing your brand over to culture. It’s to participate in it without losing what makes your brand distinctive. And for the best brands, that influence extends beyond communications. Social platforms provide one of the richest sources of consumer insight ever created, helping brands identify unmet needs, shape innovation and improve experiences. 

Final Thought 

There is no question that the brand environment has changed. Attention is shorter, competition is higher and culture moves faster than ever before. But the fundamentals remain remarkably consistent. Reach still drives growth. Consistency still builds memory. Emotion still drives salience. Distinctiveness still builds recognition. 

Social-first brands haven’t discovered a new set of rules. They’ve learned how to apply the existing ones in a world shaped by culture. Being social-first isn’t about abandoning marketing science. 

It’s about applying it properly in a new environment.