Brands like CeraVe and Stanley prove that listening first and sparking conversation can transform marketing into advocacy. Unsplash+
The hardest part about marketing today is that competition for attention grows by the millisecond. Brands aren’t just competing with each other but with millions of entertaining and talented TikTok creators, YouTube stars and Instagram influencers for the same finite audience. And if earning attention seems tough now, it’s only going to get tougher from here.
As global internet access expands, the amount of content, creators and conversations will continue to surge. Our lives are increasingly lived online, and the line between real and digital is blurring. Add to that the rise of A.I. as a massive content-generating machine, and the volume of material competing for eyeballs is only going to accelerate.
This is what’s known as the “attention economy,” where attention is a scarce and valuable resource. In this landscape, word of mouth—which is the leading source of brand discovery among U.S. internet users, according to recent surveys—becomes more important than ever. Which leads us to the question: How do you get people talking?
A rapidly growing number of brands worldwide are winning in this battle by embracing a social-first philosophy.
How social-first brands win
Many marketers define social first narrowly: content created specifically for social platforms. In this sense, social media isn’t just a distribution channel but requires bespoke content. This “lowercase social-first” approach matters—you can’t simply drop a landscape video from your website onto TikTok—but it’s ultimately focused on what the brand has to say. The content is about the company, crafted for the company.
A true Social First brand, however, takes a more holistic view. Social first is the practice of getting sparking conversations about your brand. It’s communication flowing from person to person, from person to brand and even from brand to brand. Social first is not social media first; it’s understanding human behavior and interests first. Just like a great artist, it’s important to focus not solely on what’s there, but on what’s missing. And the most important element of social-first is the word that’s missing: media. Here, media is secondary. What matters is what others are saying, not just what you publish.
Listening is the first move
The brands winning attention are the ones listening. Social-first thinking starts with observing, not talking. Social media can be imagined as a double-sided tool. On one end is a microphone, and on the other is a hearing aid. Most brands focus on the microphone. But just like any good communicator, social-first brands understand the value of the hearing aid: listening before speaking. Not for any noble reason per se, but because the seeds of attention usually come from topics people are already interested in. And that’s rarely a corporation trying to sell a product.
In a traditional brand-first approach, brands seek to create an audience interested in hearing stories about the brand, as told by the brand. And as a result, there’s usually only a small audience interested. This is not a reflection on the brand, it’s a byproduct of human nature. Few consumers want to amplify a business’s talking points. They care about themselves, their humor, their problems, their ideas.
The smartest brands recognize that the power dynamic has shifted and make the consumer an active co-creator. CeraVe’s 2024 Super Bowl campaign, highly acclaimed by both critics and fans, is a perfect example. The creative brief for the campaign was built around the idea of a playful tongue-in-cheek conspiracy: What if CeraVe was developed by actor Michael Cera?
To build the conspiracy, the brand needed to get started weeks before the Super Bowl. Fueled by influencers, social partners and PR plays, the conspiracy took off across social media. The brand also did its part on its own channels by playing along and “fighting back” against the conspiracy. The conversation went viral, amassing 15.4 billion impressions before the Super Bowl ad even aired.
But this winning campaign, which had people talking for weeks, wasn’t drafted out of thin air in a boardroom. Consumers had been joking about the Michael Cera/CeraVe connection for years on social media, both on their own accounts and in the comments of CeraVe posts. Most of the comments either joked that Michael Cera was the creator of CeraVe or simply called attention to the naming coincidence and suggested the two should form a partnership.
CeraVe listened, leaned into the humor and built a campaign around it, turning an inside joke into a cultural moment. By listening first, CeraVe taught an important social-first lesson: If you can lead with an idea that people are already talking about, it’s much more likely to resonate.
When your audience does the marketing for you
Marketing success today is measured less by clicks and impressions and more by advocacy, moving beyond external communications explicitly. What people say about you matters more than what you say about yourself.
Remember when the Stanley Quencher, a stainless steel tumbler, became one of the hottest products on the planet? Just a few years ago, the product was close to being discontinued. Up until that point, Stanley had been in business for over 100 years, known primarily for their hammertone green thermoses that people took to their blue-collar jobs or out camping. Then along came a group of Utah moms who saw a product that looked as great on the kitchen counter as it did at a campsite.
These women recognized an audience that Stanley hadn’t seen themselves: moms. They ordered thousands of tumblers wholesale and began marketing them to their peers. The tumblers sold out quickly, and the community around them grew into a passionate audience of Stanley evangelists. Stanley couldn’t have orchestrated this on their own. They needed their audience to market to themselves. But they did get to reap the rewards for this social-first practice. In just four years, revenue soared more than tenfoldhitting $750 million.
Trust is the real currency
At the heart of social-first is trust. Seeing others talk about your brand is nice, but having them advocate for it is transformational. According to Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over any other form of advertising. And for bottom-line skeptics, McKinsey estimates that word of mouth is the primary driver behind 20 percent to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions.
Social-first isn’t just good marketing—it’s good business. It scales trust in a way traditional campaigns rarely can. In an era where attention is fleeting and competition is relentless, brands that listen, co-create and hand the microphone to their audience will keep winning.
