Social Media Fest 2025 Day Three – The Summary
The sessions at day three of Social Media Fest proved that clear purpose plus smart, inclusive creativity — whether via weather GIFs, bold safety stunts, fit-first influencers or accessible design — lets evert team, of any size or budget, drive real-world impact. Enjoy the day’s summary below, and do join our SocialDay 2026 waitlist here.
How the Met Office’s GIPHY Strategy Hit 1 Billion+ Views
With Ross Middleham, Creative Lead, MetOffice.
Ross explained how the Met Office took Britain’s national obsession with talking about the weather and turned it into a GIPHY channel that now exceeds one billion organic views, detailing both the creative moves and the optimisation tactics that made it happen.
Highlights:
Purpose-led creativity: Every GIF ties back to “helping you stay safe and thrive.”
“Ideas into action” culture: A casual brainstorm became an executive-backed pilot.
Early optimisation: Verification, keyword SEO, and trend tagging unlocked rapid reach.
Measure what matters: Data showed stickers and advice GIFs drove 80% of views.
Session takeaway
A clear purpose plus fearless, data-driven experimentation can propel even a public service brand into every day relevance.
The Case for Being Brave
With Zander Mills, Corporate Communication Manager, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue.
Zander’s session covered why bold, emotionally charged storytelling is essential for life-saving fire-safety messages,
Highlights:
Fortune favours the brave: Cut-through saves lives; blandness costs them.
Serious ≠ sombre: Pets and music make safety messages relatable.
Live your values: Public stances deepen audience trust and staff pride.
Aim high, accept imperfection: Even a No. 41 charity single raised national awareness.
Session takeaway
In public-sector comms, courage is the difference between messages ignored and messages that save lives.
Social-First Safety: Making People Aware - and Making Them Care
With Fiona Denham, Social Media Manager, RNLI.
This session covered how the RNLI re-imagined its “Float To Live” advice for socials. They moved from polished TV spots to vertical, phone-shot clips—and how that shift boosted reach, recall and real-world safety.
Highlights:
Start in the middle: Hook within one second to beat the scroll.
Native everything: Shoot vertical, use in-app text, ride trends.
Listen, iterate: Viewer comments fuel next-round creative tweaks.
Reactive storytelling: Real rescues + trending posts reach non-followers.
Session takeaway
Authentic, platform-native storytelling makes lifesaving advice stick and spur action.
Charity Social Media Marketing Panel
Hosted by Tom Fishenden, this engaging panel focused on charity communications, discussed by experts Aimee Ashworth (WWT), Ellie Denney (The Marketing Den), Sam Hopps (Mind), and Eleshea Williams (Amnesty International).
This panel covered playbooks from five charity communicators who, with largely limited resources, achieved outsized awareness, donations and policy change – proving that phones, clear values and agile decision-making can outperform big budgets.
Panel highlights:
Story beats spend: Authentic emotion outperforms glossy ads.
Reactive + relatable = reach: Timely tweets can nudge policy without media spend.
Repurpose ruthlessly: Resurface evergreen advice to stretch resources.
Know your values: Clear stances guide replies to hate.
Crisis-ready culture: Escalation trees and wellbeing plans prevent burnout.
Session takeaway
Clear values, swift workflows and fearless stories let even one-person teams punch far above their weight – sometimes even changing the law.
How to Avoid Influencers Who Don’t Give a Sh*t About Your Brand
With Alex Payne, CEO & Co-Founder, The Influence Room
Alex’s session covered why so many brand–influencer partnerships flop and how Alex’s F.A.N.S. framework helps marketers choose creators who genuinely care about the product and weave it into stories their audience will trust.
Highlights:
F.A.N.S. checklist: Fit with the brand, proven Advocacy, real-life Narrative integration, and the right Signal to audience values.
Case studies beat theory: Virgin Media O2 saved nearly £2 million in production by tapping rugby-shirt super-fans who posted for love, not fees.
Monday-morning brief: Invite storytelling first, then decide where the content can live and how it drives growth.
Session takeaway
Influencer ROI soars when you start with genuine brand fans and let them fold your story into theirs – instead of forcing them into a scripted ad.
Unlocking Real Growth with Paid Social
With Jon Quinton, Founder, Overdrive Digital.
Jon’s engaging session covered the most common paid-social mistakes agencies see and offered a pragmatic roadmap for structuring Meta, LinkedIn and other campaigns that hit clear, business-led targets.
Highlights:
Pick one decisive KPI: Multiple goals paralyse optimisation; one number speeds every decision.
Budget to feed the algorithm: Meta needs ~50 conversions per week per ad set – plan spend and consolidation accordingly.
Creative myths busted: On test examples, static Facebook feed images out-performed slick videos and Instagram Stories.
First-party data is gold: Shrinking retargeting pools make seed uploads and email capture essential.
Session takeaway
Paid social isn’t ‘set and forget’. It is clarity of the objective, sufficient data volume, and relentless testing of structure, creative and audiences that are the levers that unlock real growth.
susTAINABILITY Fireside Chat
With Joss Ford (Enviral), hosted by Ross Middleham (MetOffice).
This session covered how to rebrand ‘sustainability’ from guilt trips to hope-driven narratives – and why brands that weave planet-positive stories into their DNA now gain a competitive edge.
Highlights:
Sustainability has a branding problem: Technical language and finger-pointing discourage interest.
Lead with people, stories and values: Emotion and creativity cut through far better than carbon stats alone.
Progress, not perfection: Document the journey openly; when transparency is routine, there will be fewer spectating critics.
AI as a climate tool: Use advanced tech to solve big problems – but stay mindful of its own footprint.
Session takeaway
Hopeful, human-centred storytelling turns sustainability from a compliance tick-box into a brand growth engine.
The Rule of No Rules: A Framework for Distinctiveness
With Marcus Foley, Co-Founder & CMO, Tommy.
Marcus’s session covered how brand sameness (think identical beauty demos and copy-paste water ads) erodes memory, and introduced a framework for crafting content that sticks.
Highlights:
Lore first: Build a myth-rich brand world; every asset should feel like a scene from that universe.
Smile in the mind: Visual puzzles and partial narratives force the brain to finish the story, deepening recall.
Emotional intent: Plan the feeling you want.
Session takeaway
Memorable brands choreograph difference, novelty, emotion and relevance into a coherent world – letting audiences recognise them instantly in any format.
The Deaf Dollar: Engaging British Sign Language Users on Social
With Jen Dodds, Audience Engagement Manager, LumoTV.
This session covered practical, often-missed tactics for making social content truly accessible –captions, BSL, authentic casting – and demonstrated how meeting deaf users where they are unlocks both audience loyalty and new revenue.
Highlights
Accessibility starts with BSL and captions: 85% of Facebook videos are played mute; captions serve everyone.
Be fun, be real: Humorous clips or behind-the-scenes clips drive engagement while normalising deaf culture.
Authenticity test: Use deaf consultants to avoid clumsy or inaccurate signing.
Visibility matters: If you offer interpreters, shout about it – silent inclusion serves no one.
Session takeaway
Inclusive design isn’t niche; it delights deaf audiences and improves the experience for everyone—while unlocking a slice of the £274 billion “Purple Pound.”
Social Media Accessibility Panel
Magali Mas D'Amato, Georgina Twelftree (Purple Goat), Tania Gerard, and Alvin Gunputh (Thredd)
This panel session covered why accessibility features – alt text, caption accuracy, colour contrast, camel-case hashtags – boost reach and brand equity, and how to persuade sceptical leadership with both moral and commercial arguments.
Panel highlights:
Accessibility benefits all: Captions help commuters and ESL users, not just deaf viewers.
Must-haves: Accurate baked-in captions, descriptive alt text, camel-case hashtags, limited emoji clutter, high-contrast palettes.
Tools & tips: Use AI for first-draft image descriptions, then human-edit; online contrast checkers save design time.
Business case = Purple Pound: UK disabled spending power stands at £274 billion – ignore it and you leave money on the table.
Session takeaway
Accessibility isn’t extra work, it’s smarter work that widens audiences, lifts SEO and signals brand values consumers increasingly demand.
My Social Media Career – Fireside Chat
With Claire Hoang (ITV Studios), hosted by Mel Barfield.
This session covered Claire’s two-decade journey from her love for her MySpace page to steering ITV Studios’ multi-platform strategy, offering candid advice on hiring, diversity, team culture and proving social’s value to old-school stakeholders.
Highlights
Hire for passion, teach the tech: Algorithms can be learned; genuine curiosity can’t.
Diversity drives relevance: A homogeneous team can’t mirror a heterogeneous audience.
Prove worth with impact stories: From surprise celebrity shout-outs to million-view launches, show how social changes real lives.
Career mantra: Be honest about mistakes, stay solutions-oriented, and remember everyone else is an “extra” in your movie.
Session takeaway
A successful social career blends relentless curiosity, human-centred teamwork and the confidence to champion your craft – long before the C-suite fully gets it.
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