What we learned at Meltwater Summit 2025: 4 Standout sessions we couldn’t wait to tell you about

From brain rot to brand building to NASA astronauts, Meltwater Summit 2025 served up some serious insight and left our group here at Audiense feeling inspired and excited for the future of audience intelligence. 

Here at Audiense, Meltwater has been a valued partner of ours for years now, and our two platforms work so well together: one shows you what an audience is saying about your brand online (Meltwater), and the other shows you the people behind that conversation (Audiense). 

So, in support of our partner Meltwater, a team of 5 of us here at Audiense made our way to NYC, and here are our five favorite sessions of the Summit: 

🌞Reese Witherspoon - how to build a brand that captures attention and resonates

🍪Crumbl - the perfect brand recipe 

🧠Nick Borenstein - it’s giving brain rot

📷Wendy Nguyen, Alex Wong, and Alyssa McKayWhy - influencer marketing partnerships succeed or fail 

We’ve highlighted the key takeaways that we don’t want you as marketers, creators, and communicators to miss out on.

Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon opened the Meltwater Summit with the kind of energy only Elle Woods herself could bring -  but what she shared went way deeper.

She talked about why she started Hello Sunshine in the first place: she was tired of scripts that didn’t have strong female leads. After realizing how few movies centered women, she said, “fine, I’ll make my own.” And she did - turning Hello Sunshine into a $900M brand.

Her advice for anyone trying to build something meaningful? “Walk in the direction you are going, and others will follow.” Here’s what else she taught us:

• It's important to figure out what your values are. “Keep it to five things. Get laser focused on your mission.”
• To build a loyal social media following, be empathetic, authentic, and vulnerable. Think about the audience before you post anything and ask “how would this make them feel”
• To stay creatively inspired, look at accounts that have nothing to do with your business; look at art, music etc. 

Finally, Reese admitted to being a data nerd. Why? “Because it can prove I’m right about things.” What she was really saying is to embrace data to validate your initiation.

As a legally blonde fan I showed up to her talk, excited, but I left with a whole new level of respect and admiration for her - thank you Reese!

Crumbl 

Crumbl Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer, Sawyer Hemsley, was made for storytelling - his talk might be up there as my favourite (he also gave out Crumbl cookies to the audience). 

Sawyer shared his incredible journey from a single Utah cookie shop to a $1B international sensation. 

Here’s what he attributes Crumbl’s success to: 

• His obsessive focus on customer feedback and social virality - especially TikTok
• Building with your guests not just for them - if you’ve ever been in a Crumbl store you know that it’s a whole experience; you can see them making the cookies, you can smell the cookies - it brings back your own memories of baking with your friend, your mom, your grandma in the kitchen
• Their branding - he said “when they zig you zag”, meaning you brand has to be totally different than anything out there, and that’s exactly what he’s done with Crumbl’s branding - even if you took off the Crumbl logo, anyone could recognize the pink Crumbl cookie box 
• He made their app fun and engaging (and now it’s number two in food and bev. In the app store); people can share their cookie reviews, vote on flavors, its a whole experience and his audience loves it 
• Bringing branding inhouse (all those cookie videos - ya they make them in house, and this allows them to create them faster and be more aligned with their own creative ideas)

All in all, he did such an amazing job at telling his story and it just goes to show that he presents just like he does everything in his business - at 100%, and that’s really the key to Crumbl’s success, a leader like him 🫶. 

Nick Borenstein

Nick Borenstein, the GM of The Webby Awards (awards for excellence on the internet) gave a hilarious and highly relatable talk on “brain rot” - which is the condition of being chronically online. 

This is something we all suffer from, but he didn’t talk about it as a bad thing. In fact, “brain rot” and scrolling and scrolling for hours on our phones can actually foster connection and community. 

How? When you’re chronically online you start to understand niche references and find your people who get those same references. 

For example, Nick Borenstein showed his own FYP and when I saw the Real Housewives TikToks he was watching, I felt seen, because that’s what’s on my FYP too. 

Brands who want to join in on the “brain rot” and jump onto the same trends their audiences are loving online, must: 

• Act quickly (participate when a trend is still trending, think Bratwurst)
• Use comedy (think of Duolingo's strategy)
• Add a touch of play (Nutterbutter nails this on social)

Our takeaway? “Brain rot isn’t bad -  it’s actually very mindful, very demure, and it’s where the culture is. When brands can hop onto brain rot trends in the right way, audiences will take that over generic ads any day. 

Why influencer marketing partnerships succeed (or fail)

Content creators Wendy Nguyen of Wendy's Lookbook, Alex Wong, and Alyssa McKay were interviewed by host Sarah Boyd (CEO of the Digital Department), on all things influencer related - but what we left with was a clear understanding of what really makes an influencer partnership successful: 

Trust and authenticity

• Successful partnerships occur when brands trust creators to understand their audience and allow creative freedom. Creators like Alyssa McKay emphasized natural product integration and brands giving them space to tell their story authentically.

Open Communication

• Brands and creators need clear, collaborative communication. To creator Alex Wong, this means having a detailed brief, and being open to the creator's insights about what works for their audience, and being willing to adapt the campaign strategy together.

Long-Term Relationship Focus 

• Successful partnerships aren't just about one-off campaigns. Creators like Wendy Nguyen highlighted that repeated, organic mentions of a product over time often perform better than a single sponsored post. 
• Brands that view influencer relationships as ongoing collaborations tend to see more sustained success.

Our key takeaway? Influencer marketing works best when brands trust the creators. 

Let them tell their story in their own authentic way, collaborate openly, and think long-term. It’s not about control, it’s about partnership, communication, and real audience connection - and no one knows their audience better than the creator! 

Thank you Meltwater!

We loved attending the Meltwater Summit because every session left us with ideas we couldn’t wait to bring back to our team (and you, in this blog). It reminded us just how powerful audience-first thinking really is. And with Meltwater and Audiense working together, brands now have everything they need to listen to and understand those audiences.

If you are a Meltwater user, adding Audiense in your workflow completes that 360 degree view of your customer. So sign up, try it out, and complete the full picture of your audience.