🔥 AllSocial Marketing Conference 2025

1. The power of personality: people follow people

A key theme running through many of the talks was the importance of authentic personalities in social media communication. The Seeger duo emphasised right from the first talk: "People trust people – whether in paid or owned!" This insight is not new, but it is becoming even more important in times of AI-generated content.

Marc Pelzer underlined this point: "People follow people – individuals can market products/information too." It does not always have to be the CEO acting as a corporate influencer. Other employees from the company can also inspire with authentic content and make a splash for the brand.

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2. Content strategy: Kill the me-content!

Daniel Levitan and René Bunzel put it in a nutshell: "Kill me-content!" Instead, the focus should be on the product in action. The two experts stressed that social media now functions as a search engine and that user behaviour has changed fundamentally: in the past, a person would search for a product and buy it. Today, the product is automatically brought into the feed by the algorithm – and sells itself through that. Another important aspect of their presentation: "The first posts are there to help you get better. After that, you decide what quality is." This insight takes away the pressure to deliver perfect content from the outset and encourages continuous experimentation. Their provocative comparison: "A post that reaches a million people is certainly worth less than an account with a million posts." So consistency beats individual viral hits.

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3. The algorithm boost: more than just reach

Marco Gilly presented findings from the latest McKinsey study on the State of Marketing and stressed: "The funnel does not end with the purchase." After the purchase, you should switch to organic content to encourage customers to return – and ideally turn them into brand influencers. His tip for ads: Choose your fighter: ads are served in the feed in exactly the same way. That is why the content has to hit so hard that it would also work as owned content.

Jens Wiese also pointed out: ”Your current followers are not your target group. Followers are yesterday's gold." He quoted Goodhart: "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric."

Wiese also stressed the importance of an accessible social strategy: "Ideally, no social media manager develops the social strategy." Instead, different departments should be involved, because "marketing is not done only by the marketing department". One surprising tip: "Digital documents are all well and good – but get lost in day-to-day work. That is why a sheet of paper is important from time to time.” A real strategy should therefore hang above the desk – and be in view every day when creating creatives.

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4. Future trends: social commerce and AI

Lars Budde looked to the future: "Social commerce is booming, TikTok Shop is coming, and there is plenty to be gained, especially through affiliates." He sees livestreams as a new opportunity, with Asia regarded as the pioneer. The advantage over conventional videos: interaction, chat and polls – essentially "Mediashop 2.0".

His prediction for the future of the industry: "In future, there will not be a need for so many media buyers, but for creative strategists who are specialists in their fields.” Because: there will be fewer targeting options, and the algorithm will increasingly decide where your ad ends up. It can only be conquered with good creatives.

5. 🔥 Sepp, what are you doing? How showmanship gets the algorithm cooking

We also took to the stage with a deep dive into the "Sepp, what are you doing?" campaign. Our fundamental understanding of social: "We make the day better for people out there!" This approach is based on the concept of edutainment content, combining added value (new recipes every day, cooking tips, inspiration) with entertainment (humour, banter, interaction with viewers).

What would a punchy campaign be without a punchy character? "Character is everything!" With Sepp, the perfect protagonist was found, authentically embodying humour, charisma and passion. The campaign has evolved continuously and overcome growth plateaus through new formats. Particularly important was the insight that the interest-based algorithm has replaced the follower-based algorithm.

The formula for viral success: hook (the first 0,4 seconds are decisive), watch time (keeping viewers engaged for as long as possible) and interaction (shares and saves). The impressive results after exactly three years: 660 million video views, 470.000 average views per post, 890.000 more followers and 50.000 cookbooks sold. 💥

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But how much is a social media owned campaign actually worth?

Together with the renowned Observer Institute, we are currently working on a formula for calculating owned campaigns. Every comment, every share and every view has its value – but how much is it? You can find out more in the slides, which you can check out here! This development is still a work in progress, but clearly demonstrates the paradigm shift in the evaluation of social media campaigns! More on the formula will be available soon in the Digiknall Newsroom! 💥