Brand Social Trend Report: Q2 2025

Empathetic marketing, Artisanal Reality, films on feed, spectacle content vs sponsored content, and more.

Hi! If this is your first time receiving one of these reports, welcome!

This isn’t your usual graphs and stats report. Think of this like the scribbled notepad version of the brand trends you’ll eventually end up seeing in all those graphs and stats reports in six months. It’s like getting early access. A little bit of science and a whole lot of gut—kind of how I approach social strategy in general.

The Brand Social Trend Report: Q2 2025 covers things like:

• The rise of “high effort, low stakes” content

• Empathetic marketing

• Why teaser posts have become announcement posts

• Artisanal Reality

• The platform every marketer is talking about

• Cinematic restaurant Reels

• Spectacle content > sponsored content

• Focused feeds

There are also trend contributions from smart people working at places like Notion, YouTube, National Park Service, The Whitney, and more.

Thank you to Link in Bio paid subscribers for making reports like this possible! If you’re a CMO who hasn’t upgraded yet, this is the newsletter to do it for—your social team will thank you. Let’s dive in.