Challenger brands: It’s time to invest beyond the social media stratosphere

“These are Trojan horses: they look wonderful and great … but you invite them in and they take over.” 

The damning words from a Los Angeles courtroom following a landmark ruling that social media IS harmful and addictive – and has been engineered that way - should be sounding alarm bells in every brand boardroom. 

For the last decade, social platforms have offered challenger brands the richest audience insights, allowing them to target niche communities in the most cost-effective way.  

It's meant many challenger brands have thrived quicker and easier than ever. Paint brand Lick disrupted with a ‘community-powered decorating movement’, Electrolyte drink Sult used social‑native storytelling to demonstrate demand before expanding distribution and Sisters & Seekers sold their socially-native aesthetics through Instagram.  

But things have changed.  

What’s the news?

Overnight, we now live in a world where – officially – spending long periods on social media is harmful. A new wave of restrictions will undoubtedly follow, along with tighter parental controls and a greater backlash against the digital world. There are more than 1,600 cases against social platforms looming in California alone, it’s clear the age of social innocence is over. 

The awarding of $6m to a 20-year-old who alleged YouTube and Instagram ruined her mental health and led her to self-harm is set to be as significant as the first person to take the tobacco companies to court, saying that smoking was harmful to health. Who remembers those days? And while Meta and Google might fight these claims, they’re unlikely to hold back the tide of public opinion. 

Over the course of a six-week trial in Los Angeles, it was revealed that she first went on YouTube at age six, and on Instagram at nine. By age 10, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm. She struggled to form normal relationships with peers in school and her relationship with her family was strained. At age 13, her therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which in court was attributed to her use of Instagram and YouTube. 

This young woman’s story needs to be taken seriously by every brand in the country currently banking on achieving growth via social media alone (or predominantly).  

So do brands need to turn away from social?  

At Democracy, we don’t think so. Responsible use of social media with healthy boundaries and protected age gating has benefits. 

But we do strongly believe that social only brands urgently need to build out their comms plans, going beyond the social media stratosphere and invest in connecting with the real world in order to protect their brand. Connecting by showing that they too exist beyond the confines of a screen. 

So what to do?

Start to mix it up a bit. Bring your brand back into the real world with experiences that your audience will put down their phones to go and see. High streets are full of empty units that would love to be a buzzing brand pop-up for a couple of weeks, a month or longer. Your contracted creators can blend events with online posting.  

And for any brand that’s invested in building a social community, they do need to consider what they’re asking of their audience in terms of time spent online and what the alternatives are. This is what responsible brand behaviour looks like now, in the wake of the KGM verdict.

It’s a new age for social media and all who live there, and the quicker brands adapt, the better.