Speaking at The Drum’s Predictions, leaders from Born Social, Garnier and Primark said brands are being forced to rethink how they define success on social. Big numbers still look good on slides, but much of the real work now happens out of public view.
Opening the Social Media session at The Drum’s Predictions, The Drum’s Lynn Lester questioned whether traditional social metrics still reflect how people actually behave online. “Long gone are the days when you had the beautiful dashboards, the big stats, the word engagement,” she said. “A lot of that chatter happens in DMs and WhatsApp group chats. Brands are kidding themselves if they think everybody is totally engaged just because they see big numbers.”
The panel agreed that this reflects a change in how attention works on social platforms. Callum McCahon, chief strategy officer at Born Social, described it as a move “from breadth to depth on social.” Over the past year, he said, attention has begun drifting away from the biggest platforms toward spaces where people spend time more intentionally.
“Last year was the first year where attention actually peaked on the big platforms and then started to move away,” he said. “We saw real gains on platforms like Substack, Reddit and YouTube. That’s a real indicator that audiences are looking for a deeper relationship with the content they consume.”
For brands, that means changing what they measure. “We need to be looking at those depth metrics to really measure what we’re doing,” he added.
At Garnier, that depth increasingly shows up in comment sections rather than feeds. Its head of advocacy, communications and influence, Fiona Halstead, said users are often more interested in the discussion beneath a post than the post itself.
“People go on TikTok and they’re not even always looking at the content,” she said. “They’re looking at the comments. It’s so important to be driving that conversation there.”
Halstead also pointed to a rise in what she described as “silent engagement.” “We’ve seen such a shift in saves and shares. People aren’t always commenting or liking. It’s what’s going on behind the scenes. You have to create content people want to share in their WhatsApp groups.”
For Primark, consistency and realism have become central to how the brand shows up on social. Senior global social media and community manager Kymberley Thomson said audiences increasingly expect brands to behave less like corporations and more like communities.
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“It’s not ‘we’re a company and you’re a user’ any more,” she said. “It’s much more community-driven. You have to be true to your brand and how you show up everywhere, from product to social.”
When comments, saves and shares move into private spaces, brands lose some of the signals they used to rely on.
At Garnier, Halstead said the brand has begun using AI tools to analyze comments for signs of purchase intent. “We can actually quantify how many comments show purchase intent,” she said. “That’s really exciting.”
TikTok Shop has also given Garnier clearer visibility into conversion. “We’ve sold millions of units on TikTok Shop,” Halstead said, adding that roughly 70% of buyers were already followers of the brand. “That shows we’ve got a loyal audience, and that loyalty does transform into sales.”
Even so, she cautioned against treating social as a pure performance channel. “A lot of what we’re doing is brand building. People discover beauty products on TikTok, but they don’t always buy them there. We see a halo effect in places like Boots, Superdrug and Amazon.”
McCahon took aim at the limits of platform metrics. “Most metrics on social are bullshit,” he said. “There is loads of research showing there’s no correlation between vanity metrics and proper business growth.”
Instead, he argued, brands should refocus on harder measures. “Brand lift studies, marketing modeling, conversion lift. Those old-fashioned ways tell you much more than follower growth ever will.”
That discipline also matters when brands decide whether to jump on trends. Lester challenged the panel on how quickly brands should move and what should be off-limits.
McCahon’s answer was skeptical. “You’ve got to ask, what is this actually going to do for the brand? Most of the time, it’s not driving distinctiveness. 99 times out of 100, jumping on a trend does nothing.”
Thomson agreed, particularly from a brand safety and PR perspective. “You can jump in quickly and get your likes and shares, but the comments might not land how you expect,” she said. “You have to think about what you’re actually jumping on and whether that’s what you stand for.”
Halstead echoed that caution for large brands. “There’s a person behind these trends. Sometimes it’s OK to let the internet do its thing and not touch everything.”
Looking ahead, the panel’s predictions involved restraint. McCahon expects brands to slow down. “People are tired of the amount of slop in their feeds. We need slower storytelling and more intentional content, not more digital landfill.”
Halstead predicted continued growth in unfiltered content and nostalgia-driven formats. Thomson pointed to employer brand and behind-the-scenes storytelling, where brands invite audiences into the business rather than speaking at them.
On AI, the panel struck a pragmatic note. “There’s going to be a rise in real content as proof of life,” McCahon said. Thomson added that AI’s biggest value may lie in helping teams scale work across markets, freeing up time for ideas rather than execution.
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