Nasser: 

Welcome to Shift Happens. I’m Nasser Sahlool. Today on Shift Happens, I’m joined by Jessi Wood, Senior Content Strategist at DAC. Jessi helps brands create content that feels relevant, human and consistent across social channels. 

In this episode, we’re exploring how social’s role has expanded beyond brand discovery. It’s now a key part of brand relatability, deepening connection and creating the kind of loyalty that turns followers into long term fans. Welcome to the show, Jessi. 

Jessi: 

Thanks, Nasser. I’m so excited to be here. 

Nasser: 

And Jessi, I understand that you bring a friend today. A bit of a celebrity. 

Jessi:  

I have my own social media star. Yes, this is Juice. 

Nasser: 

Oh my God. 

Jessi:   

So Juice is my eight-month-old mini pig, and he has quite the Instagram following.  

Nasser: 

I feel very strongly about this in a positive way. Just looking at his face, but I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that this pig is more famous than you or I combined. 

Jessi: 

I know, I know, I’m sure he’s also going to rack in the views too for us today. 

Nasser: 

Absolutely. Now, I think that he does make me question the choices I’ve made in my life that I’m being outdone in my career by a pig. But there you go. 

So Jessi, I think that a lot of brands still treat socials as a top of the funnel channel and a place to get seen. But today it feels like social plays a much bigger role in how people experience a brand. Is that the shift? 

Jessi: 

Absolutely. Social’s no longer where brands just get discovered. It’s where users are deciding whether a brand feels relevant, feels human, and worth staying connected to. And that really matters, because behavior has changed. 

Social isn’t just influencing awareness, it’s influencing connection and ultimately driving purchases too. So today’s consumers use social as more as a search engine, a review platform, and a trust signal all at one time. 

Nasser: 

So that’s interesting because it’s about building relationships and really building preference, right? 

Jessi: 

Exactly. And the brands that are doing this well aren’t just chasing views and quick followers. They’re really cultivating relatability, relationships and then ultimately loyalty. 

Nasser: 

So that’s interesting. Let’s start at the beginning. Or I mean, maybe it’s not quite the beginning because the beginning, was platforms like Digg and Delicious and Stumble Upon, which kind of sounded a lot like this, probably before your time. But I’m aging myself here a little bit. Where did social originally sit in the brand toolkit when we look back a few years? 

Jessi: 

First of all, I was when I was thinking about the beginning, I was like, oh, that’s a lot of XX Pro and Valencia filters. So that was my beginning. But from the brand lens, for a long time, most brands treated social like a digital storefront. 

Really just a place to post product, push campaigns, maybe hop on a trend here and there. But it was mostly one directional. The brand talks, the audience watches, and success is measured by impressions and follower growth. Social was important, but most often used as a broadcast channel. 

Nasser: 

So the brand was present, but the relationship was pretty transactional. 

Jessi: 

Exactly. Brands were speaking, rather than relating. The goal was getting attention, not building connection. So the job was basically show up, look polished, stay active. But that’s very different from actually building a brand that people want to follow and stay engaged with. 

Nasser: 

And is that why you ended up with these weird situations where news would happen and these brands would start interacting with each other and it all looked super gross and weird? 

Jessi: 

Yeah, it was very random, and often seemed out of the blue. Brands would jump on to different situations just to be part of a conversation. But not really thinking about whether it related back to who they were. 

Nasser: 

Okay, so when did this shift start to happen? 

Jessi: 

So I’d say it started when social stopped being just a channel people checked and really became more of an environment that they live in. That really kind of changed the rules. So today, people encounter brands in between texts from friends, in between looking at memes, scrolling through recommendations, news… It all takes place in the same feed. 

So the standard’s higher. We’re not just competing with other brands anymore, we’re competing with everything that feels interesting, authentic, or worth paying attention to. 

Nasser: 

As somebody with a very authentic face, I can say that brands couldn’t just show up anymore polished and promotional, right? 

Jessi: 

No, you want to be relatable. You want to give users a reason to keep coming back, turning to you and conversing with you, more or less. 

Nasser: 

So could you give me an example, of this? 

Jessi: 

So a really well known example I’d say is GoPro. Years ago the brand used social for very cut and dry product marketing. Here’s the camera, here’s the feature, here’s the ad. Over time though, they’ve really evolved into something much more interactive. So their presence across channels today, is powered really by customer footage first. Creator perspective, interactive, community challenges and brand curation. The audience no longer just watches the brand, they actually participate in it. And that’s, I think, the key here.  

In 2024, I know that GoPro reported 53.6 million followers across social platforms, and close to 5 billion YouTube views in one year. That growth matters, but what’s more interesting is really how they built it. By inviting the audience into the brand narrative itself. 

Nasser: 

So that’s a huge difference, right? The product is still there, but the story is bigger than the product alone. 

Jessi: 

Absolutely. And that’s really the sweet spot. So brands transition from being just something you buy to something you want to be a part of.  

Nasser: 

So the job is now bigger than visibility. It’s really about positioning. 

Jessi: 

Exactly. And positioning is different from activation alone. It involves feeling. Does your brand feel recognizable? Are you consistent? Are you distinct? What sets you apart? Do people know what to expect from you and actually want to keep hearing from you? That’s what strong brands are really building now across all social platforms. Not random spikes of attention, not coming out of the ether just to jump on a trend, but repeated signals that cultivate familiarity, and then affinity. 

Nasser: 

And that’s where you come in, right? Because that has to change the strategy. Because you can’t just build that kind of affinity one post at a time. 

Jessi: 

That’s exactly where I come in. So it becomes less, “What are we posting this week?” or “what are we posting in the moment?” And more so “What kind of relationship do we want to build over time?” 

Nasser: 

So that’s actually an interesting distinction, because brands can confuse relevance with randomness, which is kind of what we were talking about earlier. 

Jessi: 

Totally. And audiences can pick up on that immediately. If a brand hops on every trend, again, with no real point of view or a natural perspective that relates back to the topic… Sure, it might get a moment of attention, may even go viral. But it doesn’t build sustainability or cultivate any level of trust. The brands that remain consistent and coherent are the ones that really succeed.  And even when they’re playful, they still feel like themselves. 

Nasser: 

So if the presence is the goal, how does that actually come to life in the content itself? 

Jessi: 

I think it’s usually through a mix of different content type, playing with formats. Each that do a different job. User generated content or UGC is a big one because it shows the brand in the most authentic way possible. Through the eyes and experiences of the everyday consumer. It adds proof, relatability, and credibility. It answers the question for the user and the social viewer of “Does this brand actually fit into my life?” 

Influencer or larger creator partnerships I’d say really matter too. Creators drive trust, platform fluency.. They know how to make the brand feel really native to the space. Whether we’re talking about TikTok or Instagram, instead of dropped in randomly. 

Of course. Brand, and native content is still critical because that’s where voice, consistency and point of view really shine. That’s often what tells the user whether the brand understands the platform and the audience they’re speaking to, or is just repurposing assets and really hoping for the best. 

Nasser: 

So that that’s cool. Because, you know, when we think of content often in social, it’s an individual asset, it’s an individual channel. What you’re talking about here is a much more of a systemic approach to things. 

Jessi: 

Bingo. That is the perfect word. The strongest brands definitely build an ecosystem. Duolingo is another great example of a brand who does this well. So in their annual report, Duolingo mentions leveraging social to drive growth through entertainment rather than promotion. And often leans into UGC content. 

The approaches had real scale. So in Q1 2025, the company said its Dead Duo social campaign generated 1.7 billion organic impressions. And drove meaningful lift across both new and returning users. 

Nasser: 

Now I’ve used Duolingo. Have you used it? Are you one of those impressions? 

Jessi: 

I attempted to learn Spanish but after getting off my streak, I just  barely got past “Hola.: 

Nasser: 

Literally the easiest language to learn. 

Jessi: 

I know, I know. I’m more fluent in social media. What can I say? 

Nasser: 

Beautiful. All right, so that’s a smart model because it makes the audience feel like they’re part of the brand story. 

Jessi
Right, and the scale of that participation really is driven by authenticity, and then the relatability of the brand’s own viewers and followers is what makes it so powerful. 

Nasser: 

So that’s a great example of socializing that’s more than just awareness. And it’s cultivating belonging. But the challenge with those examples right, Duolingo, GoPro, they’re pretty engaging brands by nature. Can more ordinary categories expect the same results? 

Jessi: 

You know, that’s a very fair question. Let me give you an example from the field.  So DAC partnered with a brand who found itself in a category that you wouldn’t necessarily equate with strong or engaging social stories to tell its audiences right? But they were looking to develop a creator content-led strategy to really drive and breathe some life into product awareness. 

So DAC helped them partner with brand relevant, already established content creators who had their own engaged audiences. Within eight months of program launch, organic engagement surpassed both industry and platform benchmarks. Then, and get this add media on top of that, and numbers really skyrocketed. With more than 90 million social views and engagement rate exceeding more than 18 times industry benchmarks. 

Nasser: 

So what you’re saying is there’s hope for people like me as well. 

Jessi: 

There is hope for you yet. 

Nasser: 

So tell me a little bit about the role of media in this. 

Jessi: 

Well, with a strong strategy when it comes to social media as a foundation, the next step is for brands to really consider amplification and how they can supercharge impact by aligning organic positioning so that the stories that they’re telling and the power of paid media. 

Nasser: 

So basically what you’re saying is that audience led social positioning elevates organic on its own. But when the media is added to the mix, audiences start discovering and flocking to follow the brand in categories they might never have done so, in channels that they may only have used to complain about them. Is that right? 

Jessi: 

In a way yes, but the principle holds true for brands of all shapes, sizes, and categories across the board. An engaging, organic social strategy is definitely paramount for long term, identity shaping engagement, and cultivating that loyalty. But then you layer in that paid media aspect, especially as it relates to user generated content and influencer partnerships, that helps brands reach new, very targeted, even niche audience members that organic social alone might not have ever accessed. The two engines working together create truly immeasurable results. 

Nasser: 

So what should marketers that are listening today take away from this? What changes tomorrow for them? 

Jessi: 

So I’d say there’s three main things. First, stop evaluating social media only on visibility metrics. It’s so much more than that. Yes, reach is important, but it’s not the whole story. Brands need to ask whether their social approach is building recognition, trust and repeat engagement over time. 

Second, I’d say build for behavior. Not just your marketing calendar. People use social to discover brands, validate them, and sometimes purchase directly through them, with tools like TikTok Shop. If your content is only talking at people, you’re missing the way platforms are being used and their ability to really create that connection that drives that purchase.  

Nasser: 

And third? 

Jessi: 

Third, think in systems, not isolated posts. Your user generated content, creator collaborations, community management, and then native brand storytelling, should all be reinforcing the same narrative or iterations of that narrative. Then push those stories out to the world. Organic sets the foundation and long term presence, paid really amplifies it. That’s how social starts to compound. 

Nasser: 

So the real shift is that social no longer just drives exposure. It creates expectation. Platforms can, of course continue to drive discovery, but the brands that really shine are the ones using it to build familiarity, affinity, and a reason to keep coming back. 

Now make it happen. Follow Shift Happens, leave us a review and share this episode with your team. If you have any questions for the podcast, please email us at shifthappens@dacgroup.com. We’d love to hear from you. 

Jessi and Juice, thank you very much for joining us today. 

Jessi: 

Thank you so much for having us. This was so much fun. 

Nasser: 

Thanks for listening. I’m Nasser Sahlool.