Social media agency SocialChain has launched a consultancy with the aim of putting social media at the heart of clients’ marketing strategies.
StrategyChain will comprise four core services: brand strategy, communications strategy, product innovation and business transformation. The division will be led by group strategy director Ric Hayes.
Brand strategy services will focus on leveraging real-time social media insights and continuously updated social brand resources, with the goal of keeping brands nimble.
Communications strategy efforts will aim to help clients “shift from a social-in-silo approach to social-first communications planning” and make use of social listening and A/B testing to refine general messaging across all media channels.
StrategyChain will advise on innovation by using social media for real-time testing and learning of brands’ products, particularly through engaging focus groups of existing and potential consumers.
Finally, the agency will help brands achieve “social-centricity” by “overhauling their organisational process and culture” to support, among other things, faster decision-making.
Building brands around social
According to SocialChain, which was acquired by Brave Bison in February 2023, the development of the consultancy is driven by an increase in enquiries from brands that want to approach their growth “from social out”.
“Our strategy team has been helping clients harness social to drive marketing and business outcomes for years, with the most success coming from brands built from social out,” explained Hayes.
Brands such as Jameson Irish whiskey and home electronics maker SharkNinja have already made use of StrategyChain’s services ahead of the formal roll-out, SocialChain CEO Jacinta Faul added.
In a conversation with The Media Leader, Hayes said a key pitfall for many brands looking to develop a better social strategy is that they “enter social without knowing what their value exchange is going to be” across different platforms.
“Consequently, they’re not necessarily activating their brand as effectively as they could,” he continued.
When asked whether a social-first strategy might deliver insights that are limited to “very online” users rather than a representative sample of a given brand’s target audience, Hayes argued that “social has hit the scale now that you can get a good read on pretty much any audience”, including niche and diverse ones.
A mix of brands have come to SocialChain with a “unifying theme” of the need to future-proof their brand positioning, Hayes explained, and StrategyChain will aim to offer advice that is iterative, flexible, quick and not necessarily requiring large upfront capital investment.
He added: “I’m excited to be part of a team building brands that don’t just use social but are fundamentally built around it.”
