Best social campaigns of 2025
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What makes a good social marketing campaign? Is it the imagery? The messaging? The creators featured? Or a combination of all of those elements?
As someone working in paid social every day, I see my fair share of social campaigns through research, whilst scrolling LinkedIn and also on my own feeds. There have already been so many good social campaigns in 2025 (and we’re only 5 months in!), but some brands have got everything right when it comes to the different elements of a campaign.
In this blog, I’ll be highlighting two social marketing campaigns I think were executed particularly well this year: Blank Street’s Spring 2025 campaign, and Garnier’s ‘Dull to Bright’ brand trip. Each of these campaigns built anticipation and utilised imagery and video in a fresh, unique way, making for particularly effective campaigns.
Blank Street ‘Spring 2025’
Matcha has been rising in popularity over the past year, thanks to influencers such as Sophia Tuxford and Cinzia Baylis-Zullo featuring the drink across their social media and YouTube channels. Blank Street has rightly jumped on this trend and managed to establish itself as the go-to place for Matcha, with influencers like Sophia and Cinzia backing the brand and organically posting them to their socials.
The rise in matcha’s popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed in our social team (we LOVE a lunchtime matcha run!), and our Head of Social recently wrote about its rise in popularity on LinkedIn. Her research showed that Matcha is at its highest popularity in 5 years, making it the perfect time for brands like Blank Street to jump on the trend. I’ve personally had my eye on Blank Street’s marketing for quite a while, and wrote about their collab with popstar Sabrina Carpenter in a LinkedIn post last year. Their collab came at a time when Sabrina Carpenter was rising in popularity, and had recently had a hit single called ‘Espresso’- making it a perfect collaboration.
This year, Blank Street’s marketing has continued to catch my eye. Their Spring 2025 campaign, launched in March to promote their new Strawberry Shortcake Matcha, has been successful on socials thanks to a combination of well-thought-out organic posts and in-person brand activation events. The brand teased their new offerings for Spring with a reel that had a Y2K feeling about it- featuring Tamagotchis, phone charms, and a song that wouldn’t sound out of place in an original Barbie movie. Given that the first new flavour they teased was ‘Strawberry Shortcake Matcha’, it makes sense to use nostalgia as a marketing tool, and take the audience back to the early 2000s when the Strawberry Shortcake cartoon and original Barbie movies were on our screens.
In contrast to this, the next reel Blank Street posted was also 2000s themed, but took on a grungier style, with clothing like Adidas being featured as well as Sum 41 ‘In Too Deep’ as the music. This reel was to promote the new ‘PB&J Matcha’, and aimed to promote two contrasting drinks with two contrasting creative styles. This is also a clever move as it opens up their audience- typically, Blank Street targets their marketing towards women, particularly ‘girly’ women. By posting a reel in a contrasting creative style, they’re catering to a wider audience.
As well as lots of organic posts, Blank Street also used in-person events to increase their visibility and promote Spring 2025. The coffee chain treated people in London, Boston and New York to ‘a slice of spring’ by giving away actual slices of strawberry shortcake, invited people in to ‘press for picnic’ and receive a matcha and a picnic box via a hole in the wall, and most recently took brand loyalty to a whole new level by giving away free tattoos at their pop up tattoo studios in London and Manchester.
All events were, of course, covered on Blank Street’s own organic socials, but the best part about these events was that they were so aesthetic and shareable, attendees were posting about them organically. The tattoo pop-ups were particularly effective for this, with people rushing to social media to show off their free tattoos, thanking and tagging the brand. This not only gave Blank Street bang for their buck as they didn’t need to pay for ads, but it also gave them a level of authenticity money can’t buy.
Garnier ‘Dull to Bright’
Another one of my stand-out campaigns of this year was the ‘Dull to Bright(on)’ campaign by Garnier. The influencer landscape has grown and expanded massively in the past few years, with questions around creator integrity and authenticity naturally popping up when influencers choose to collaborate with brands that don’t necessarily align with their regular content or audience’s interests. The concept can be well thought through, the product can be great, every other channel’s strategy can be perfect, but if the wrong influencer is chosen, it can not only damage the influencer’s reputation, but the brand’s as well. Garnier got everything right in this campaign by selecting relevant, authentic influencers to participate.
The campaign for their skincare products, which takes your skin from ‘dull’ to ‘bright’, saw a group of fitness influencers take part in multiple runs, spanning the length of the country, all the way from Dull in Scotland, to Brighton. Some standout influencers chosen to take part in this trip were Zoe and Danny Rae. The married couple has authentically posted running content together on Zoe’s YouTube channel for many years, even showing their honeymoon to the Swiss mountains where they enjoyed multiple runs and hikes. Danny has recently started his own YouTube channel where he shows his life as a fitness instructor in the British Army. Both halves of the couple also share their training for multiple fitness events, including HYROX and marathons, and have built up an audience who genuinely trusts them through their authentic content, showing their genuine enthusiasm for fitness.
They were both an obvious choice for this trip, and Garnier’s well-thought-out selection paid dividends when the trip was featured on both Zoe and Danny’s YouTube channels, reaching a combined audience of 150K+ subscribers. The content was also posted across both of their Instagram accounts, reaching a combined audience of 677 K+ followers. Garnier absolutely nailed brand awareness in this campaign through the selection of these two creators alone!
Along the way, the creators captured organic content shared across their own social platforms, and Garnier themselves posted plenty of social content (over 27 pieces of organic content were shared across stories and posts on Garnier’s official Instagram- they nailed the organic coverage!).
Along the journey down the UK, Garnier shared behind the scenes looks at the group’s journey. They built anticipation among their audience by teasing the concept on their stories, before introducing the influencers. What’s important to note is that a product focused post wasn’t included until the concept and influencers had been shared and introduced- Garnier put people and their community first, before trying to sell their product. The brand included the question feature in their stories, so viewers had a chance to guess where the influencers were going next. The choice to include this feature made the story more engaging and made viewers feel like they were a part of the experience, whilst also still building anticipation as they did pre-launch.
Throughout the trip, products were integrated into organic content in a natural way, with multiple purposes and uses of the products being shown, for example sun protection whilst running, or skincare to enjoy as part of a self care evening. The trip finished with an in person pop up in Brighton, where Garnier gave away free samples of their SPF. This was documented on socials, and rounded off the trip, and audience journey, nicely.
Within the organic content shared during the making of the campaign, there was one reel in particular that stood out: a reel asking the creators to share their best wellness tips. The reel was filmed out and about whilst the campaign was being shot, with the creators still dressed in their running gear, giving the reel a very authentic, off the cuff feel.
Creators shared tips such as ‘Make sure you fuel properly before your runs’, ’less phone time before bed on an evening’ and ‘stop saying yes to absolutely everything and give yourself enough time to rest’. Not only does this provide value to the audience, rather than just pushing sales, it also links the brand’s products to wellness and gives connotations of self care and personal wellbeing, rather than being a standard skincare product.
Garnier isn’t selling skincare, they’re selling a self-care experience that will allow you to become the healthiest, happiest version of yourself, just like the aspirational fitness influencers they chose to take part in the trip. They said themselves in an organic post that the influencer’s skin was ‘getting brighter meter by meter’, giving the impression that the product will take you on a journey, just has the influencers have been on, increasing the reliability of the content.
Overall, this campaign was so effective because it:
- Used authentic, relevant influencers
- Integrated products into social content in a natural way
- Gave the audience value, not just ads
What did you think of these campaigns? Are they enough to convince you to enjoy a matcha and start a new skincare routine? Do you think in-person events are key to helping social marketing work? Or do you think social on its own is enough to sell a product? I personally think these two campaigns struck the perfect balance, and we can all learn a thing or two from them!
Want to learn more about Social? Here are some more blogs written by our team of experts:
- Our Senior Paid Social Manager, Jenny, wrote about Paid social basics.
- Our Senior Paid Social Executive, Emma, shared 25 insights into the impact of social media algorithms.
- Our Head of Social, Harriet, answered the question ‘How can paid social influence buyers in the messy middle?’
The Paid Social team at Embryo are experts when it comes to what makes a good social campaign. The team is constantly keeping up to date with the latest marketing campaigns, creative trends, and social media updates to deliver our clients the best possible service. They can help take your social strategy to the next level with their in-depth knowledge of platforms, creative, and testing. If you’d like to hear more about our services, contact us today.
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The Paid Social team at Embryo are experts when it comes to what makes a good social campaign. The team is constantly keeping up to date with the latest marketing campaigns, creative trends, and social media updates, to deliver our clients the best possible service. They can help take your social strategy to the next level with their in-depth knowledge of platforms, creative, and testing. If you’d like to hear more about our services, contact us today.
