THE thinking
Thinking worth stealing.
Research, opinions and practical ways to make social work harder for business.
Steal what’s useful. Leave the rest.
The Thinking brings together Rethink’s research, frameworks and point of view on how social creates business value, shapes discovery and feeds the signals AI picks up about brands.
JUMP TO THE CHALLENGE
latest
Fresh from our heads.
-
I still know what you posted last summer
Someone looking for an answer in October could find it in your July content. There may be more value in that work than the first report revealed.
-
Before the brief gets expensive
Four questions to check the thinking behind your social brief, so you can catch a costly assumption early and give your team a stronger starting point.
-
When social deserves the credit
When you’re asked whether social is worth the budget, attribution only answers part of the question. This four-question framework gives you a way to assess social’s impact and explain what the evidence supports, even when the sale happens elsewhere.
Explore by challenge
Start with what’s getting in the way.
The thinking is organised around the challenges we see marketers wrestling with the most.
Are you fixing the right problem?
Sometimes the obvious problem isn’t the real one. This is about finding where value is leaking before throwing more time or budget at the wrong fix.
-
Before the brief gets expensive
Four questions to check the thinking behind your social brief, so you can catch a costly assumption early and give your team a stronger starting point.
-
AI made content cheaper. It did not make attention easier.
AI has expanded what marketing teams can produce. Every extra asset still needs a reason to exist. Four questions to sharpen the brief before more work begins.
Before you do more social…
Useful decisions usually start with better signals. Look at what audiences are doing and what the business already knows before adding another thing to the pile. Phew!
-
I still know what you posted last summer
Someone looking for an answer in October could find it in your July content. There may be more value in that work than the first report revealed.
-
Why buyers remain unconvinced
When social content attracts interest without resolving buyers’ doubts, stronger messaging may miss the problem. A practical framework for checking whether the evidence supports the promise.
Put social into your marketing.
Social gets more useful when it stops sitting in its own box. This is where we look at how it shapes discovery and feeds the wider marketing picture.
-
What social knows that marketing needs
Social shows how people search, what buyers are trying to understand and where the customer journey is getting stuck. The question is whether any of that changes the marketing.
-
The opportunity hiding in your social report
A social report can do more than account for last month’s spend. Use Vanity to Sanity to investigate the clues and make a stronger case for what deserves investment next.
Is social pulling its weight?
Where social is creating business value. What the report misses and why that matters when budgets get squeezed.
When social deserves the credit
When you’re asked whether social is worth the budget, attribution only answers part of the question. This four-question framework gives you a way to assess social’s impact and explain what the evidence supports, even when the sale happens elsewhere.
The problem may not be social
Before asking social to work harder, follow what happens next. A travel brand campaign shows why finding the obstacle can give you a much better brief.
See all thinking on this →