Josie Pereira.
Social-first doesn’t mean dominating on TikTok. It’s an all-encompassing approach to brand. Get it right, and you’ll command more than your fair share of attention. XXVI’s Josie Pereira explains.
Social-first strategy isn’t about social media. It’s about understanding how your customer thinks, feels, speaks and moves through the world, then building your brand around that reality.
Research from Deloitte says social-first brands drive 10.2 per cent revenue growth. Why? They prioritise engagement with consumer behaviour over traditional marketing methods. And that’s why social-first is having a moment.
We’re living in an attention economy. People have time to read, but they won’t take it. The average attention span has shrunk to eight seconds – shorter than a goldfish’s – according to research by Microsoft. Add 95 million posts waiting to be liked every day on Instagram, TikTok as a cross-demographic discovery engine, and YouTube commanding more than 48 minutes daily per user. If you made it to the end of this paragraph, congratulations!
For brands, that’s less time to make an impression. For consumers, it’s completely rewired the expectations we carry into every interaction. When we walk into stores, open menus, check our inbox or walk by the bus stop. What cuts through comes down to a few patterns – clarity, relatability and personality.
To be relevant is to hold a mirror up to your audience
Or whatever Shakespeare said. The brands that connect sound like their customers. The real, messy humans they’re speaking to, not the dream board version of them.
Banks like Monzo and Ubank nail it. Monzo repurposes memes to get its customers thinking about their spending habits, while Ubank poses questions like: Does anyone else get so overwhelmed by sales they end up buying things full price a week later instead?
The tone doesn’t feel manufactured to sound young. It’s observational. Fluent in culture, brands like these speak with an awareness that engages naturally rather than on schedule.
A 2025 study on the influence of meme marketing found that when a brand’s tone and language align with its consumers’ cultural identities and everyday realities, it fosters deeper trust and perceptions of authenticity. As a result, passive audiences turn into loyal advocates.
Drop the fourth wall
In a traditional branding mindset, uniform language signals the quality of a brand. In a social-first mindset, it draws distance. When you break away from your brand and speak in a dynamic and direct way, you win.
Bunnings leans into this. The brand’s voice is practical, grounded, and unmistakably tied to the customers’ world. The same ‘how-to’ energy travels from the shop floor to your feed, building recognition across every channel. The brand feels less like a corporation and more like Brett in his Bunning’s apron on aisle 14.
Jetstar takes it further with ‘The Intern Voice’. Hated by marketing purists, loved by Gen Z, it breaks almost every traditional branding instinct. Think out-of-pocket humour like: “Did you know that eagles can carry up to 7kg, so it’s not inconceivable that instead of weighing your bag, we would get an eagle to try and take it and then another smaller eagle to take some money from your wallet if it’s too heavy”.
The brilliance of Jetstar’s approach is the permission a big-name brand has given itself to communicate through a chaotic, self-aware persona. The brand side-steps corporate speak entirely. Maybe it’s the shock value that hooks people in. Or perhaps this unhinged character is a refreshing break from corporate slop.
You’re probably thinking, they can’t be serious. But a US study found that cultural involvement, like Jetstar, Monzo and Ubank demonstrate, significantly increases emotional connection, making people more willing to pay premiums. Not that Jetstar needs to worry about that.
The art of conversation
The most effective social-first brands do two things. They understand that there’s a buzzing discourse online. And they stay in their lane. Instead of trying to dominate the conversation, they contribute to it in meaningful ways.
Telstra nails this. It doesn’t just default to telecom language; it adapts its voice to the context of each moment and channel. The brand leans into niche cultural references and audience-specific nuance with posts like: “I don’t know why, but I can’t stop texting exclamation marks”. In turning away from the pursuit of universal relevance, Telstra has created an iconic social-first identity that consumers seek out.
But before you get too chummy, don’t try to be your customer’s best friend. They already have one. Although it feels like the logical move, (most) consumers are too media literate. And have zero tolerance for cringe. They can sense when relatability is engineered rather than earned.
Because let’s be honest – no one opens their Instagram app to see what meme their insurance company has repurposed for a few likes. But they’ll probably laugh at the next thing Jetstar’s intern has to say if it pops up in their feed.
Social-first is the greatest advantage of all. Because it starts with real people. Always. And the brands that people notice aren’t the loudest, but the ones that pay close attention. They notice how people speak, what they ignore, what makes them laugh, and what earns their trust. After all, when a brand is built from culture, it feels at home there.
Josie Pereira is a writer at brand language studio XXVI, part of the Principals group.