Get up close and personal with brand strategist Eugene Healey (and social media users) at SOS25.

Social media users are switching off. Turn them back on.

The bad news: Facebook interactions are down 80%. TikTok brand engagement has halved. Insta’s average engagement rate is 0.43%. The good news? People are still hanging out online, just in private. And brand maven Eugene Healey will show you how to reach them at State of Social ’25.

Meet Eugene Healey, brand strategy consultant, educator and creator

Eugene is a brand strategy consultant on a mission to make cultural chaos comprehensible for brands. He works with the likes of Google, Spotify and Red Bull on strategies to succeed in an era where media is fragmented, attention is fracked, and algorithms have turned mass culture into soup.

On top of his stellar portfolio of work, Eugene has lectured in brand management at the University of Melbourne’s postgraduate Business School. He regularly shares his insights on brands and culture via social media to a following of over 350,000. And he’s getting intimate at SOS25.

Eugene’s keynote: Surviving the Era of Unsocial Media

Social media is no longer social. Polarisation and hostility are rife. Exhausted by curating their socials and presenting themselves in a brand-saturated online world, users are finally retreating inwards.

In his insight-packed keynote, Eugene will show how brands that pivot from social carpet bombing to an authentic, hyperfragmented niche-at-scale approach can succeed by delivering value to users who appear just out of reach (without getting too close for comfort). He’ll explain:

  • the cultural, economic and technological factors driving users into the dark
  • why intimacy is the key brand imperative within this new paradigm
  • what intimacy looks like, and where the line between brands and people lies
  • how brands are already executing successful intimacy strategies at scale.

Eugene joins ex-BBC and Bluey strategist Kate O’Connor and the Empire State Building’s Tyler O’Day on our all-star keynote program. Check it out and start planning your breakout sessions. Unless, of course, you still haven’t got the one ticket everyone in digital and social needs. 

Hang out with Eugene