Post Performance Report: Bold brands delivering social ROI

We’re back with another installment of the Post Performance Report (PPR)—a series where we compile and analyze social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and break down what makes them so genius. We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the business impact, too.

This time, we’re rounding up some of the boldest brands on social. These posts and campaigns are generating so much more than awareness, with a clear influence on the bottom line and tangible ROI.

But what does it mean to be bold? According to the Q2 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey, consumers are most likely to define bold brands as honest about their products, services and what they stand for. The same report found consumers want brands to prioritize audience interaction and original content.

Here’s our lineup of brands delivering on boldness and strategic objectives. Use their playbooks to inspire your own.

Chili’s triple dips into user-generated content

Bloomberg found that 2024 had the highest number of restaurant bankruptcies since the pandemic. Meanwhile, casual dining restaurant chain Chili’s is growing—expanding their sales and customer base via social media buzz.

While the quick service brand’s double-down on quality and menu slashing certainly helped drive more foot traffic, the company used social media as both the source of consumer insights and a critical brand amplification lever.

Kevin Hoffman, Chili’s CEO, told the Wall Street Journal: “We saw that people on social media were posting their fast food receipts and complaining about how expensive their meals were. So, we came up with an idea: What if we came up with a burger that had a familiar taste profile of a famous fast food restaurant, but done in the format of Chili’s?”

The value deal skyrocketed Chili’s performance. They’ve since applied that same formula to marketing their Chicken Crispers against competitors on social.

Not only were their social efforts important for getting people in the door, they also played a significant role in customer advocacy.

On speaking about the success of the viral Triple-Dipper platter, Hoffman said, “Our marketing team was focused on bringing this to social media…When we started marketing this product on social, it [introduced the item] to a younger generation. Then, they’d come into the restaurant to try it, and start posting about it. That’s when it caught fire.” The company reported that Triple Dipper sales grew 70% from 2023 to 2024, and made up 14% of all sales in Q4 2024. Overall, company sales are up 50% from three years ago.

Hoffman went on: “When you see the cheese from the Triple Dipper mozzarella sticks on social, that’s what it’s really like in the restaurant. We created a quality experience and product.”

So far, the restaurant chain has received 5 million likes on TikTok alone. The seemingly limitless number of videos about the Triple Dipper alone have garnered millions more views.

The play: When you position social at the center of your go-to-market plan, you set your brand up for publicity you can’t find on other channels. As Chili’s demonstrates, the key is integrating social across every stage of development—from information gathering to creative execution. Learn what your customers really want before building your content.

Florida Lottery races toward revenue

The Florida Lottery knows scratching a lottery ticket doesn’t look as thrilling as it is. So they crafted a campaign for their newest X THE CASH Scratch-Offs where players were placed in extreme, adrenaline-pumping situations to mirror the thrill of the game.

Instead of following the category’s norm of polished, traditional ads resized for social media, the lottery focused on capturing real emotions. They embraced a gritty, unscripted aesthetic native to Instagram and leveraged it in bespoke social-first assets.

As a result of the campaign, the scratch-offs became the top-selling games in every price point within a week of launch, generating $527,906,715 in sales. This success helped the Florida Lottery maintain its position as the top lottery in the nation. Most importantly, those sales fueled one of the largest contributions ever to Florida’s Bright Futures Scholarship Program, providing $91.43 million to students across the state.

Meta recognized the campaign’s success in a recent case study, highlighting its 16% lower cost per result and 6.8-point higher brand lift due to creative efficiency and native execution.

The play: Simply resizing assets meant for other channels isn’t enough to grab attention on social. As the Florida Lottery proved, investing in original, social-first content pays off. Even if you have limited bandwidth for production, it’s better to focus on fewer, lo-fi assets than treat social as a broadcast channel for made-for-TV ads.

Bath & Body Works enlivens our senses

There’s just something about a Bath & Body Works store that brings us back to the nostalgic heyday of shopping malls. I can still imagine the smells of Sweet Pea and Cherry Blossom pulling me into my local store. How can a brand like B&BW recreate that same experience in the social era? Enter TikTok LIVE Shopping.

The brand tapped influencer Peyton Black to host the LIVE Shopping event with their education lead, Alex Mahorn. Together, this duo successfully promoted the brand’s holiday campaign, while also showcasing the $4.95 Annual Body Care Day Sale—a hugely anticipated event among B&BW fans.

The pair emphasized B&BW’s commitment to creating “magical” moments with their iconic, seasonal scents, and told the story of how each one is crafted to evoke cherished memories and inspire new traditions. Additionally, they shared tips on scent layering—a concept highly popular on social—and educated fans on “personalizing” their fragrances through different product combinations. This helped to drive sales by encouraging multi-product purchases, which was further incentivized with an exclusive discount code for viewers.

By blending education and entertainment, B&BW exceeded its objectives. The event engaged new customers, spotlighted the brand’s iconic products and built hype only TikTok can deliver. The results speak volumes:

• 2M impressions: Expanding the brand’s reach far beyond their forecasted expectations.
• 110K views: An engaged audience tuned in to experience the excitement.
• $9.4K in sales: Smashing the $2K benchmark for a first TikTok LIVE.
• 216K product impressions: Highlighting an impressive interaction with their product lineup.

The play: How can you transform a signature element of your IRL brand experience into a digital one? Whether you recreate the in-store experience through a live event or partner with influencers to showcase your products in a new light, what’s most important is that the activation feels true to your brand.

Pernod Ricard toasts to ROI

Different occasions call for different drinks: easy-to-drink cocktails for the big game, refreshing, crowd-pleasing mixes for summer parties and warming cocktails for the holidays. Pernod Ricard, the world’s second largest wine and spirits merchant, found an ideal place to promote their diverse portfolio year round—Pinterest.

Pernod Ricard partnered with Pinterest to ensure campaigns followed best practices. They developed creative specifically for the platform, with assets targeted to every phase of the purchase journey. They applied insights from previous campaigns to optimize their format mix too, blending options like image, video and carousels.

It can be tougher for CPG advertisers to measure lower funnel metrics if they’re selling through third parties versus their own site. The team made sure to build a robust measurement strategy with deep insights into impact. A combo of in-house Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and sales lift studies helped them gauge performance and see which tactics performed best. Then, they used those insights to refine, iterate and continuously improve performance over time.

Their approach to creative, targeting and campaign timing contributed to substantial performance improvements, including a 21% YoY increase in campaign effectiveness at the portfolio level. They also saw a 35% increase in ROI across campaigns for their portfolio.

The play: The boldest brands go into spaces no competitor has gone before. Making moves on unexpected networks leads to greater share of voice and impact. If you’re wondering which platforms make the most sense for your brand to experiment on, dig into where niche communities related to your sector are popping up.

Influencer spotlight: Kevin Parry

Influencer and stop-motion animator Kevin Parry has amassed over 5 million followers with his delightful, creative videos. Parry is celebrated for his seamless transitions, bringing inanimate objects to life and seemingly performing magic before our eyes.

While his videos are pure fun, they’ve also helped him earn serious income—both from brand partnerships and network ad revenue. His evergreen YouTube videos alone drove $37,000 last year, though he explains this is the smallest portion of his social media earnings.

Parry credits his monetization success on not just reaching people, but reaching the right people who are genuinely interested in the brands he works with and his creative process. He does this by providing education and value to specific subsets of people. For example, by linking to his articles about how to pitch to brands.

The play: While it may seem like generating ROI means going viral or getting massive viewership, the truth is that it’s far more important to reach people who genuinely want to interact with your content. At Sprout, we’ve adjusted our own content strategy to better reflect the needs of our audience and our business goals.

Bold brands who deliver ROI put social at the center of their strategy

That wraps up this month’s installment of PPR. Stay tuned for next month, where we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite hospitality brands on social—just in time for summer in the northern hemisphere. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

Looking for more on why social is the most effective way to drive connection, sales and loyalty? Read more about how bold social is changing business as we know it.

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.

The post Post Performance Report: Bold brands delivering social ROI appeared first on Sprout Social.