WARC says brands need social & emotional strategies

WARC has published The Pace Principle 2.0, a study on the effectiveness of social-first marketing. Drawing on evidence from Asia, it argues that brands need both social and emotional creative strategies.

Rising investment in social and creator marketing has not guaranteed scalable growth for brands, the report argues. Marketers risk focusing too heavily on virality and engagement metrics while neglecting longer-term brand effects.

The study examined 210 advertising case studies from Southeast Asia, Greater China and India, alongside questionnaire responses from their authors. WARC says the findings are relevant beyond Asia because of the region's high social media engagement and its role as a testing ground for social-led marketing.

Its central argument is that social and creator activity faces three structural ceilings. The first is the platform ceiling, where reach remains concentrated within algorithmic feeds and fades quickly when paid promotion ends. The second is the cultural ceiling, where campaigns tied to short-lived moments lose traction. The third is the self-sustaining ceiling, where only a small number of brands can persuade creators and audiences to keep an idea moving without direct prompting.

Many marketers still treat social as a media choice rather than a creative strategy, WARC argues. That distinction matters because effective social ideas do not stay confined to one platform. Instead, they move across creators, public relations, search and wider cultural conversation.

The study also draws a distinction between social and emotional strategy. Social-led work is better suited to provoking participation and conversation among specific audiences, while emotional campaigns are more effective at building memory and preference across a wider market.

Its data found that targeted social campaigns were 2.4 times more effective than targeted emotional campaigns. By contrast, broad emotional campaigns were 2.1 times more effective than broad social campaigns on brand and business impact. They also delivered more than double the short-term effects and nearly four times the long-term effects.

Campaign effectiveness can improve by up to 70% when brands match their target market with the right creative approach, according to the study. That means using social work where participation among defined communities matters most, while relying on broader emotional campaigns to support long-term market growth.

Two-speed model

The study builds on WARC's earlier work on what it calls twin-paced marketing. In this framework, brands balance shorter-term, performance-led activity with broader brand-building efforts rather than relying on a single route to growth.

Here, WARC extends that argument to the social-first environment. The report suggests that a heavy bias towards content production and platform optimisation can trap marketers in a "social sprint loop", where brands keep producing more work for immediate traction without creating lasting customer resonance.

Rica Facundo outlined that concern in comments accompanying the research. "Since publishing the Pace Principle last year, what has become clear is that with investment pouring into social and creator marketing, marketers risk getting trapped into a social sprint loop whereby brands are producing more content for virality, optimising for the algorithm rather than enduring memory and customer resonance. Virality is not a strategy, it's an unpredictable outcome for growth.

"The loop challenge doesn't require a new playbook but reinterpreting proven principles through a new media ecosystem. If there's one idea to take from this report, it's understanding the three ceilings of social. That's what separates a social sprint from sustained growth," said Facundo, Managing Editor, WARC APAC.

Asia evidence

The focus on Asia provides a backdrop of markets where social commerce, creator influence and mobile-first media habits are especially pronounced. WARC presents that context as useful for marketers elsewhere facing similar questions about how to measure the value of social investment and avoid over-reliance on narrow engagement indicators.

The report's evidence also challenges the assumption that the best social campaigns are those most heavily dependent on social media platforms. In WARC's sample, the most effective campaigns relied on social platforms less than average, with ideas spreading through a broader communications system rather than remaining tied to one feed or format.

That conclusion is likely to resonate with marketers reassessing budget allocation as spending on creator partnerships and social content continues to rise. The study does not reject social-led marketing, but argues that brands should be more disciplined in matching creative strategy to audience breadth, time horizon and desired effect.

For WARC, the practical implication is clear: brands seeking sustained growth need to combine participation-driven work with broader emotional communication rather than expecting one stream of social content to do both jobs at once.