How brands master social media

What every marketer needs to know

Author

Antonio Collins
March 06, 2025

The Fathers are back, and this week, we’re talking social media for marketers— what brands still don’t get about content, and why most marketing teams are flying blind.

Plus, a marketing confessional featuring a disaster class “shrink it and pink it” failure, Jason Mraz’s unexpected return, and Coca-Cola’s late entry into the prebiotic soda wars.

Let’s get into it.

Marketing Confessional: “Shrink It and Pink It”

What happened: A major sports nutrition brand (one you’ve seen in Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens) decided to launch a women’s-focused protein powder. The strategy? Copy-paste their existing men’s product but:

✔️ Shrink the size
✔️ Cut the protein from 30g to 16g
✔️ Slap “Created for Women, by Women” on the label (despite an all-male leadership team)
✔️ Make it pink—the exact shade of the CEO’s daughter’s J.Crew jacket

The Fathers Take: Lazy marketing. If you’re going to build a product for women, actually build a product for women—don’t just recolor the packaging and call it a day.

The easiest issue to spot was the men’s version had “Enhance Performance” on the label while the women’s version said “Guilt-Free Indulgence”—tells you everything about how these guys see their customers.

The Truth About Social Media for Marketers

So many marketing teams still don’t get it. They’re either not using the platforms themselves or hiring a hodgepodge social media TEAM who all have different responsibilities.

A few hard truths:

🚨 The algorithm isn’t the problem. Your content is.
🚨 Generic content doesn’t work. You need stories, not just “thought leadership.”
🚨 Your first 3 seconds matter more than your brand guidelines.

We see brands with insane product ideas get 7,000 views because they made a boring video. Meanwhile, one killer hook could have given them 10M.

There’s too much to go into depth here on the newsletter but marketers: if you don’t understand content, you will fall behind.

Jason Mraz x Perfect Bar

What happened: Perfect Bar launched a chocolate raspberry flavor inspired by… Jason Mraz? Yes, the I’m Yours guy. And yes, they put his fedora on the packaging.

The Fathers Take: At first, we were confused. But maybe this is secretly genius? Perfect Bar’s demo is millennial moms, and Jason Mraz was the soft-rock heartthrob of the 2000s.

Still, we have questions. Like, who pitched this? And more importantly, who’s next? If this kicks off a washed-up celebrity collab series, we’re in.

Coca-Cola Finally Joins the Prebiotic Soda Wars

What happened: Coca-Cola launched Simply Pop, its own prebiotic soda - entering the Ollipop vs. Poppi battlefield.

The Fathers Take: Big brands always wait for startups to prove the market before swooping in. Sometimes they opt to acquire fast growers and other times they decide to meet them head on with a copy cat competitor.

Considering the nuclear growth and size of Olipop/Poppi it makes sense to at least take a stab at creating their own prebiotic soda. The issue is we can’t tell whether this is positioned as a juice or ‘Pop’ considering it says the word juice on the front of the packaging FIVE times.

Big brands like Coca-Cola can launch nationwide instantly because they’ve spent decades building relationships with top retailers.

If you’re not Coca-Cola (like 99% of brands), you’ll need help securing and maintaining elite retail placement. That’s where PLTFRM comes in. They handle the heavy lifting, leveraging years of connections to get you on shelves—and keep you there.

Just ask Father Oren—he used them long before they were a sponsor and has nothing but good things to say.

Final Sermon

We broke down why most brands are still clueless about social media, roasted a pinkwashed protein fail, and analyzed the random-but-maybe-genius Jason Mraz collab.

Go watch it all in depth on the full episode below

Until next time,
The BrandFathers