“Think about storytelling”: Luisa Sanders discusses winning social media strategies for licensors and licensees

Luisa, you recently left Aardman after a successful and productive time with them. Can you remind us what your role entailed there and highlight some of your key achievements?
I spent a very happy 12 years at Aardman shaping and building the studio’s social channels, for world-famous IP like Shaun the Sheep and Wallace & Gromit. From creating strategies for emerging platforms to launching our brands across all the major touchpoints, it was my job to nurture and grow those fan communities right across the globe, sharing all the amazing and varied work coming out of the studio.

I had sole responsibility for representing Shaun the Sheep, Aardman’s biggest global IP, across all the major platforms, including TikTok and Instagram – the latter of which I built into an engaged global audience of over 2.5 million fans, with content regularly achieving hundreds of millions of views and attracting a diverse fanbase, including a celebrities.

From a brand perspective, social is a key driver for Aardman’s activities across the marketing mix, from new film releases to product launches and partnerships. I had the pleasure of supporting some fantastic licensees, creating revenue-driving strategies that helped partners showcase their products to a huge global audience.

You are about to launch your own agency – tell us about this and the offer you are bringing to the market?
Before my time at Aardman I spent many years freelancing and contracting for a number of organisations, including Netmums and The Royal Gardens at Highgrove, the official residence of King Charles. Blending my deep experience of social media with my previous career background in copywriting and website management, I’m really excited to be relaunching my services in this area.

I’m passionate about brand storytelling and ‘cutting through the noise’. With so many platforms and so much competition for audience attention, I know it can be difficult for organisations to find the time and focus to really hone their brand voice and tell those stories in a way that is authentic, thoughtful and engaging. This is where I come in. Offering brands support across everything from social media strategy and creation to developing tone of voice, content marketing such as blog posts and website articles, to industry-focused thought pieces and press releases.

To give an example, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lovely design studio called Tyrell Katz for several years, where I’ve created social media strategies to help them establish and build a social following. Stepping in to create a year-long social media calendar, populated with content and creative ideas, allowed their small team to manage their socials in a more efficient and focused way. Social can sometimes slip when teams are busy and there’s no dedicated in-house person to keep it up, but it really is crucial in keeping your brand visible and developing meaningful relationships with customers.

Thinking about the world of licensing and manufacturers, why do you think they should be thinking seriously about their social media strategies?
It’s important to think about social essentially being your ‘store front’ nowadays. For younger audiences in particular, social has replaced traditional search engines, so from a discoverability point of view, there’s a huge opportunity for licensed products. With integrated shopping now the norm on social platforms, younger audiences expect a seamless in-app shopping experience so there’s a real potential – particularly for brands focused on Gen Z audiences – to capitalise on this revenue driver.

All that said, it’s also hugely important for brands to focus not just on the selling opportunities when they’re building their social strategies, but to really think about storytelling and audience listening. At Aardman, we always endeavoured to balance commercial opportunity with our editorial position of focusing on the highest quality content to build meaningful interaction beyond just likes and views. Audiences today want to feel an emotional connection when they’re online – it’s becoming ever more important for fans to feel the brands they love align with their values and have a story to tell beyond the ‘hard sell’.

You have a lot of insight into managing fan communities. Are there some key learnings you can share about building a positive and proactive relationship with fans?
A lot of brands forget that social is a two-way street. It’s not just about putting your posts out there and then walking away… As important as the creative execution and copy is the community engagement that happens on those posts. Listen to and interact with your fans. Not only does this help to build brand affinity, but you’ll also get some interesting audience insights that can inform wider product development and strategy too. Social is a great place to test and learn.

Social management tools that offer audience insights are crucial in understanding your fans and meeting them where they are. At Aardman, we had huge fanbases in Indonesia and the Middle East, so it was important for us to consider cultural and language nuances when building our strategies and writing our posts. It’s so easy to take a very UK or Western-focused perspective when building social strategies, but it’s important to consider the bigger picture and build that into your content plans.

One thing I was really proud to spearhead at Aardman were conversations around inclusion after recognising that our work had particular appeal to neurodivergent fans. Hearing from parents of autistic children who said that Aardman films helped their child connect with the world was truly humbling and led me to create social campaigns around Autism Acceptance Day, reflecting the Aardman mission to ‘create animated comedy entertainment for all.’ It’s so important for brands to ‘live their values’ in a way that is authentic and underpinned by action, so doing good on social is a great way to build positive and meaningful relationships with your fans.

Are there examples of retailers that are getting their social media right?
I’ve loved seeing ‘traditional’ retailers embrace the lo-fi, irreverent vibe of TikTok, and have fun on the platform. When this is done right, it can attract a whole new audience to your brand. A great example of this was Curry’s ‘When Gen Z Write the Marketing Script’ campaign that spawned a whole load of imitators – Aardman included! Our video became one of our most viewed ever! This played brilliantly to a younger audience and did a great job of making white goods funny while bringing Curry’s back into the public consciousness.

It’s not easy ‘going viral’ these days and brands have to tread a careful line between protecting their reputation while embracing new ways of doing things. Curry’s managed this really well, gaining millions of views as well as free press coverage, by pushing the boundaries just far enough.

The democratisation that has come about through social has given brands a lot of freedom and I’ve also loved seeing the likes of Waitrose and M&S allow their individual stores to take ownership of their channels. Seeing staff at the Maidenhead brand of Waitrose create their own TikToks which are authentic and warm-hearted gives brands that all-important human touch which is so important in our increasingly impersonal world.

Drilling down to creative and design, how important is it to develop bespoke assets to support social media campaigns?
It’s important that your socials are considered as part of your wider brand ecosystem. Having a consistent brand identity across platforms is key, so that visually and tonally everything is aligned. At Aardman we had dedicated style guides for use across our entire marketing estate, so we could keep that consistency across our fonts, graphics and other design assets. Aardman has a lot of fan pages so it was important for us to establish ourselves as the official source. Having a defined brand identity across our social channels was key to doing this.

But do remember that overly branded videos and graphics don’t land well with fans. When it comes to product positioning, it’s all about letting the lifestyle photography do the talking, so getting that right is key.

There are lots of smaller companies and start-ups in licensing. What encouragement would you give them in regards to their social media strategy?
I appreciate that it can feel like an impossible task to be ‘seen’ on social, with so much competition for attention and the frequent algorithm changes that can be hard to keep up with. But remember that social isn’t a nice to have, it’s an absolute necessity and is, ultimately, a cost-effective and measurable method of advertising your offering.

Social allows you to really understand your audience and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s a great tool for businesses and is an area that is well served by freelance and fractional suppliers like myself, who can plug that resource for you if you don’t have the know-how or time to manage this yourself. I’m really excited to work with brands in the licensee space to help them share their stories with the world.

Are there any common mistakes you have seen people make in their social media strategies?
For me, social is all about finding your own voice, not imitating others, or jumping on trends just because everyone else is. While it’s great to check in on the competition and get inspiration from different places, the best social campaigns are built on authenticity and originality. I’m still amazed when I see pages that post content that isn’t optimised for the platform, covered in text that sits outside the ‘safe zone’ or that doesn’t have engaging thumbnails; it’s these small but important considerations that make a big difference to your reach and engagement.

And when it comes to utilising AI, that’s a whole other conversation! It can obviously provide time-saving efficiencies but my advice to brands would be to use it with caution, and certainly when it comes to visuals. The un-declared use of AI to generate product images is a big reputational risk.

During my time at Aardman I did a lot of work around accessibility and inclusion, and I think this is another area brands often forget about, but it’s so important to integrate things like alt tags, limiting the use of emojis and ensuring design and video content is as accessible as possible when creating social campaigns.

And finally can you let us know three of your favourite accounts that you follow online and what you like about them?
When it comes to character brands I love what Teletubbies have created on social – a really fun, nostalgic but fresh take on a heritage brand that’s gloriously silly.

There are so many wellness and motivational accounts on social – many of which just add unnecessary noise, particularly when it comes to mental health – but I find a lot of comfort and reassurance in The School of Life. It seems to have an uncanny knack of posting exactly the kind of content I need to see at any particular time. Their take on the complexity of human existence and how to overcome common modern challenges always helps me feel more positive when their posts pop up in my feed.

Finally, I’m a music obsessive and I follow a lot of musicians, DJs and record stores. An Instagram account I discovered recently which I really love is @vinyls__shop, a little record store at the Sant Ouen flea market in Paris. They’ve gained over half a million followers doing what they do best – sharing the joy of music and its power to connect people, wherever they’re from and whatever their background.

The idea is simple: to show visitors hearing a favourite record while they browse the vinyl, often singing and dancing along, which is just so authentically human and joyful, and captures the very best aspects of social media. Social media can often feel rooted in division and friction, so accounts like this one are a great reminder that there are pockets of true human connection out there in the real world.

Good picks. Thanks again Luisa.