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Safe is silent: The 2025 playbook for brands who still want to be heard: The State of Social 2025.

A woman is celebrating being bold on social media as part of the State of Social 2025 report release. The text reads What is bold?

By The FUEL Team
BarkleyOKRP

Social media is the engine of modern brand growth, and in 2025, that engine runs on boldness.

The State of Social 2025 report from BarkleyOKRP’s FUEL team reveals a hard truth: the brands winning attention, loyalty, and culture are the ones taking strategic risks. In an era where 23 million TikToks drop every day and consumers spend six hours with media daily, safe content is invisible.

Download our State of Social 2025

The new rules

  1. Presence isn’t power. Everyone’s online; few make an impact. Visibility without credibility means nothing.
  2. Boldness is the cost of admission. Audiences associate bold brands with honesty, inspiration, and humor — not chaos, but conviction.
  3. Creators build trust. People trust creators more than brands, and partnerships built on shared purpose outperform polished ads.
  4. Social is a growth engine. It drives brand trust, relevance, and performance — not in silos, but across your entire ecosystem.

What bold looks like

The report’s brand examples prove that “bold” doesn’t mean reckless.

  1. McDonald’s leaned into anime and streamer culture to spark a 281% lift in engagement.
  2. Loewe broke luxury norms with lo-fi TikTok content, earning 177% higher engagement than its peers.
  3. Nuuly flipped negative reviews into viral self-aware posts, seeing engagement soar 400%.

To be bold means to be entertaining. It means niche is the new mainstream, creator-first storytelling, and risk with intent. When done right, boldness pays back in:

  1. Emotional affinity: Personality drives loyalty.
  2. Cultural awareness: Relevance cuts through noise.
  3. Community participation: Confidence invites conversation.
  4. Brand momentum: Risk-taking fuels agility and growth.
  5. Ecosystem impact: Social boldness sets the tone across every channel.

What CMOs need to know

For brand leaders, social is the frontline of consumer behavior. The smartest CMOs are:

  1. Building flexible, cross-platform ecosystems that pivot with the market.
  2. Treating social as strategic infrastructure, not a content calendar.
  3. Aligning legal and creative to move fast without breaking things.
  4. Measuring boldness as a KPI — with BarkleyOKRP’s Boldness Scorecard that helps teams map risk tolerance and unlock resonance.

The bottom line

Safe may feel smart, but it’s brand invisibility. In 2025, boldness is a business strategy. Brands that act with courage, clarity, and conviction will own the feed and the future.

Be brave. Be original. Build trends — don’t chase them.

Download our State of Social 2025

If your brand’s social strategy feels safe, it’s time to get bold. Let’s build gravity that pulls people in — and keeps them for life. Contact Jason Parks, Chief Growth Officer, at jparks@barkleyokrp.com.