The rise of Organic Earned on social

A new generation of fast growing brands has emerged post-lockdowns. Not surprisingly, they tend to be TikTok champions, but more unexpected is the unprecedented share of organic Earned in their activity mix. (up to 75% of the total footprint for top brands) This share rarely exceeded 10% back in the golden age of Instagram (2014-2020), and goes to show how fast and how much the “winning playbook” has evolved.

This note explains why organic earned is on the rise, why it’s coming to Instagram after getting its start on TikTok, and what brands can do to land more of it and lower their reliance on paid Earned.

There are several factors driving the rise of organic Earned:

1. Suffering from influencer fatigue, Gen Z now craves independent information about brands:

   • All content viewed as unbiased faces greater odds of success

2. TikTok’s meritocratic algorithm allows anyone to go viral: 

   • This motivates the long-tail of smaller accounts to try their luck: even a small proportion of viral posts from that long-tail means a huge amount of attention for organic earned posts

   • Note that while Instagram remains primarily “oligarchic’, it is making the right decision to become (slowly) more meritocratic 👏🏻

     

     IG Engagement rate for Earned posts from influencers: smaller accounts see RISING odds of success at the expense of larger accounts

3. Search plays a key role on social (esp. on TikTok): savvy creators of all sizes know that featuring popular brands in their posts helps them be found by more fans of the brand (surfing a brand wave 🏄🏼‍♂️)

   • Posting about brands on the rise becomes an investment. (especially if you show that you love these brands)

The above highlights dynamics behind the rise in organic Earned content, but it doesn’t really explain the orders of magnitudes we see for winning brands, e.g., we estimate that well over 50% of Sol de Janeiro and Drunk Elephant activity is in fact organic Earned. Why?

Brands with positive momentum enjoy self-reinforcing loops of organic activity - made up of the following stages:

1. 💬 Viewers are more likely to comment on posts featuring popular brands (all comments are a form of organic Earned) — richer comment activity makes posts “stickier”

2. Algorithms (esp. TikTok’s) reward sticky posts with more views: sticky posts x more views = spikes in interest and searches for those brands 📈

   • This is why the top 20% of posts get 93% (!) of engagement

3. These spikes fuel trial, UGC (#haul, #unboxing, #review etc.), and even organic posts from larger creators/media that recognise a surfable brand wave when they see one 🏄🏼‍♂️

4. All this organic activity grows brand credibility and tolerance for its (inorganic) content: “if so many post about that brand unpaid, it must be worth a closer look!” 🧐 For example, now that it is so popular, most SDJ owned posts get great organic results regardless of content quality.

The rise of “independent” (ie. organic) Earned posts has placed a premium on “talk-worthy”, “sharable” brand activities on- and offline: for example, sampling, sizing, merch, events (pop-up store!), partnerships (our brand on Roblox!), discussion-worthy new products, PR, even promotions —all are opportunities for brand fans, trialists and even considerers to become conversation contributors.

These cycles may be organic in nature, but ultimately they are orchestrated and stimulated by a marketing mix on- and offline, on and off social, that considers each activity’s potential for a second, extended life on social.