How Social Listening Can Break Through the Digital Fatigue Era

We’re living in the era of “do not disturb.” Consumers mute notifications, skip ads, and unfollow brands without hesitation. Marketing channels are saturated and attention is strained. Trust is harder to earn because audiences are more selective about what they let in. Success in breaking through hinges on understanding the signals audiences are sending and responding at the right moment. In this environment, social listening isn’t just for insight gathering. It’s how the most strategic brands turn cultural cues into decisions about when to show up, where to engage and what will resonate. 

Listening as a Launchpad

The brands gaining momentum today start by paying attention to what real people are actually doing with their products. The value isn’t in collecting signals, but in what brands choose to do with them. What happens next is where momentum is built: turning real engagement into clearer storytelling, better product/package decisions, and more authentic representation, grounded in who is genuinely engaging.

SharkNinja did this instinctively. When customers began blending unconventional ingredients and swapping recipes across Reddit, TikTok, and reviews, the team listened and leaned in. By tapping into these emerging customer use cases, the Ninja Creami became a phenomenon, with its success driven by meeting real needs, not by chasing a fleeting trend.

e.l.f. Beauty spotted a friction point in plain sight. After seeing consumers post videos of themselves cutting open product tubes to reach the leftovers, the beauty brand redesigned its packaging. What could have been a small operational tweak became a trust-building moment, showing that e.l.f. was paying close attention to the customer experience.

Naked Juice took the same approach during the U.S. Open. When a viral clip showed Coco Gauff snacking on her favorite fruits courtside, the brand capitalized on the moment with a Coco-inspired smoothie. An experiential pop-up and out-of-home placements helped amplify the brand partnership, letting fans experience the cultural buzz firsthand. The campaign succeeded by seizing the opportunity to connect with Coco’s influence and turn the largest tennis stage in the U.S. into a launchpad, strategically activating near Penn Station to reach New Yorkers at the start of their journey to Arthur Ashe Stadium.

In each case, listening wasn’t passive monitoring. It was an engine: brands identified emerging behavior, adapted to it, then let the behavior shape product direction, messaging and momentum. When brands treat listening as the starting point, relevance becomes a natural outcome. 

Agility Without Losing Identity

However, listening only works when brands know what they are. Speed can lead to reactive marketing that chases every trend and adopts every cue, diluting the equity audiences rely on. The brands navigating this moment will pair agility with a firm sense of identity.

Few moments illustrate this better than the NFL’s announcement of Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl Halftime Show. The move was a calculated effort to expand globally, leveraging Bad Bunny's international appeal and ability to engage emerging audiences. The NFL anticipated strong reactions, and that was the point: the move got people talking, drew new audiences in and expanded the league's reach, even as it frustrated some longtime fans. The key takeaway? Success comes from committing to strategic decisions, even when they spark debate.

Dove’s artificial intelligence stance offers another example. At a moment when AI-generated beauty flooded feeds, Dove leaned into its long-standing point of view, formally committing to not using AI in its imagery. Rather than chasing the trend, the brand responded in a way that felt unmistakably Dove. Listening informed the decision, but identity guided the response.

The same principle applies to nostalgia. Resurgent cultural cues — whether through memes, viral posts, or shared moments — are signals, not shortcuts. When audiences surface emotionally resonant memories, smart brands treat them as insights. Campaigns like Chase Sapphire’s Claudia Schiffer and Hailey Bieber pairing, or the renewed interest in Pokémon collectibles, work because they align cultural memory with brand meaning. Listening determines when nostalgia reinforces consistency and when it risks feeling hollow.

Future-Proofing Marketing for 2026

Success in the “do not disturb” era depends on whether organizations can recognize, interpret and act on signals fast enough without losing themselves in the process.

Future-proof brands build on three pillars:

1. staying open to emerging behaviors even when they challenge assumptions;
2. moving quickly to turn insights into action before the cultural window closes; and
3. anchoring every move in clear values and identity so agility never comes at the cost of trust.

The marketing landscape is only getting louder. The brands built for 2026 and beyond will be the ones that hear what others miss and move with enough clarity and conviction to meet the moment.

Lucy Markowitz is senior vice president and general manager, U.S. Marketplace at Vistar Media, an out-of-home (OOH) advertising technology company.