The 100-Year-Old Secret to Fixing Your Social Media Strategy.
For the last five years, marketing has been split into two warring camps.
On one side, you have the "Brand Purists" who either don’t understand or don’t care for social (because they’ve been told they don’t understand it)—a place to dump TV ads and hope for the best. On the other, you have the "Social Natives" who want to burn the brand book and act like creators, chasing engagement at the expense of equity.
Both are wrong. And both are creating inefficiency that leads to budget cuts.
Customer-First, Not Social-First.
We often hear the phrase "Social-First." But "Social-First" is a misnomer. The goal has always been, and remains, Customer-First.
The difference in 2026 is that the customer’s standards for "quality" and "relevance" have been redefined by social media. They have been affected by millions of creators who have curated content that is easy to digest, and offers immediate, high-value return usually linked to customer emotion.
If your brand’s "day-to-day" marketing feels slow, bloated, or disconnected from how people actually consume information in 2026, you aren't being "premium" or “true to brand” you’re slowly becoming irrelevant.
The Century of Equity meets the Second of Attention
In 2026, brand equity isn't built by jumping on a trending audio or with a crude Gen Z personality. It’s still being built through decades of consistent storytelling and emotional connection. However, that equity is useless if it can’t survive a shrinking attention span, especially one that is being inundated with more content and advertisement than ever.
The 100-Year Lesson: Short-form is not "new." A billboard is a three-second ad. A print headline is a one-second hook. As marketers we’ve always known how to be brief; social has just positioned itself as a ‘special knowledge’ that has disconnected itself from the legacy experience that senior marketers offer.
The Modern Expectation: Consumers now have access to more content than ever. They are professional curators of their own feeds and if they’re not, platforms will do the job for them. If your brand doesn't meet the "Social Standard" of being engaging, digestible and entertaining you won't even get the chance to tell your deeper story.
The Inconsistency Tax (Part II)
When we believe that the person liking our TikTok is "different" from the person walking into our retail store, we commit a strategic sin.
It is the same human.
If there is an internal disagreement about how much your "social personality" can resonate across other touchpoints, you don't have a channel problem, you have a confidence problem. A truly strong brand doesn't need to wear a mask on social media; it simply needs to learn how to speak the language of the platform without losing its character.
The Role of Social in the Sales Funnel
In 2026, social is the "connective tissue" of the sales funnel. It is where communities are built and where advocacy is scaled. Brands continue to face the “what now?” challenge, they grow communities, serve social content, but fail to understand what to do with them. How to transform them from passive viewers to advice advocates. The alternative is a social team that challenges itself with vanity metrics instead of Real Influence.
To be clear, social is not a sales-only channel, nor is it a "vanity-only" channel. It is a high-stakes environment where you generate real influence by proving you understand your customer’s world.
The brands that will dominate the next decade are those that stop treating social as a siloed experiment and start treating it as the frontline of their brand evolution.
Stop choosing between Brand Equity and Social Relevancy. If your strategy doesn't encompass both, your strategy is missing vital opportunity.
