What working in marketing is ACTUALLY like in 2026
Two operators sit down and inventory every tactic currently moving money, from street interviews to commission-paid UGC to brands that are speed-running a legacy.
Posted
2 days ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
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15.7K
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Whatever format is winning organically gets absorbed into paid media within months, so the advantage belongs to whoever recognizes a format early, builds the operational capacity to produce it at volume, and acts before it saturates.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A brand or agency marketer who has to decide this quarter where creative budget goes and wants a current read on which formats are still producing results.
A creative strategist briefing freelancers and UGC creators who needs concrete angles, formats, and pre-production checklists to hand over.
A freelance content creator deciding whether to chase commission-based ad platforms instead of flat per-video rates.
A founder or social lead at a small brand weighing whether a social show, a coffee shop, or employee posting is the right experiential bet.
Anyone building a personal brand who wants a worked example of counter-positioning applied outside of consumer packaged goods.
SKIP IF…
You want evergreen strategy fundamentals. Almost every example here is dated to late 2026 and several of the tools and windows are explicitly short-lived.
You work in B2B services or high-ticket sales. The commission and performance-creator economics discussed only apply to things that can be bought directly from an ad.
You're looking for step-by-step tutorials. This is a conversation about what to do and why, not how to execute any single tactic end to end.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Marketing in late 2026 runs on a short co-option cycle: a format wins organically, brands pull it into the ad account, and it saturates. The two operators walk the current list, street interviews, retail coffee shops, scripted social shows, employee-generated content, commission-based UGC marketplaces, TikTok live selling, long-term creator signings, AI-assisted editing, slideshow volume plays, counter-positioned collaborations, and athlete-backed brand building. The practical conclusions are consistent across all of them. Pre-production beats improvisation, volume with a tracked variable beats a single polished asset, a low-risk pilot format should precede any expensive show, and the economics only work when the creator making the asset shares in its upside.
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The landscape moves too fast to track alone, so an agency-side marketer and a hands-on creative strategist agree to compare notes on tactics rather than headlines.
00:52 – 04:05
02 · Street interviews
The man-on-the-street format moves from organic TikTok to paid ad format. Why low-cost giveaway products scale it, and why pre-production is the entire difference between usable and wasted footage.
04:05 – 06:08
03 · Why brands are opening coffee shops
Streetwear stores are adding cafes to create steady foot traffic and a cheap entry point into an expensive brand, with Kith's ice cream counter as the template.
06:08 – 10:28
04 · Social shows
Scripted recurring series like the Brooklyn coffee shop format work because viewers know exactly what they're getting. Most brands lack the talent, writing, and production to pull one off.
10:28 – 13:11
05 · Employee-generated content
Three levels of staff posting, from a couple of active leaders to a recruited team to a full episodic cast, plus the saturation clock on the whole strategy.
13:11 – 14:42
06 · Internal tools for marketing teams
Sponsor segment on building a custom asset-request and assignment dashboard through chat instead of stitching together spreadsheets.
14:42 – 18:25
07 · Trybe and UGC ads
A commission marketplace for Meta ad creative. Brands add volume without new cash outlay, creators earn a percentage of spend, and the incentives finally point the same direction.
18:25 – 19:50
08 · TikTok live shopping
A 10,000 square foot LA studio rents sets and hosts to brands on retainer, and viewers buy because they like the host, not the pitch.
19:50 – 23:17
09 · Creators signing long-term deals
A major creator signs a multi-year AI partnership, another goes in-house. Brands now compete for creators on retainer and have no playbook for the employment questions that follow.
23:17 – 25:13
10 · Scaling content production
Template-driven apps turn a camera roll into finished videos in seconds, which matters when a single strategist touches dozens of assets a week and an agency touches hundreds.
25:13 – 27:17
11 · Dark marketing
One-shot story vignettes and mass AI-generated slideshows, published by the hundred and shooting for a handful of viral hits. The volume competitor legacy brands rarely see.
27:17 – 28:40
12 · AI editing and what it unlocks
Conversational editing removes the hour of work that used to kill casual videos outright, so the change is in which content gets made, not just how fast.
28:40 – 29:49
13 · Creator clothing brands
A blunt assessment of creator-founded apparel: little money, less status, heavy saturation, and audiences that can tell when the founder does not actually love it.
29:49 – 32:03
14 · Larry June and Adidas
Counter-positioning as a collaboration strategy. Quiet luxury and fruit instead of the genre's default imagery, and a legacy brand taking the bet.
32:03 – 34:06
15 · Apple's iPhone rollout
The folding phone as a marquee shiny object for the mainstream model underneath it, and the keynote reframed as the highest-production webinar in the world.
34:06 – 37:39
16 · Cadence and athlete partnerships
An upstart signs Olympic athletes and builds an LA performance center ahead of the 2028 games, speed-running the kind of legacy Nike and Gatorade took decades to build.
37:39 – 39:58
17 · Becoming a creator and a strategist
Why the people briefing creative are now making it themselves, and why burnout rather than talent is what stops most people before they find a winner.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Formats that win organically get pulled into paid ad accounts within months, so the entire advantage is in recognizing one early.
Winging a street interview is the worst option available, because the plan is what makes the footage cuttable into a story.
On a man-on-the-street shoot you need interesting-looking or interesting-sounding people, because the person is half the hook before they speak.
Ask one question and one or two follow-ups. Ten questions produce footage where only two or three answers survive the edit.
Retail coffee shops exist because a $5 coffee is a low-friction entry point to a store selling $400 hoodies.
A cheap in-store purchase removes the social awkwardness of browsing without buying, which matters more with younger shoppers.
Social shows fail on foundation, not idea. They require charismatic on-camera talent, a genuinely funny writer, and a production environment, all three.
Test a social show concept with a carousel of five to fifteen second vignettes first. It is a low-risk format that still proves whether anyone cares.
Buffer gets outsized reach on LinkedIn by incentivizing roughly sixty of its eighty employees to post, not by buying distribution.
One company put a $20,000 monthly bounty on twenty employees posting daily and treated it as a lead-generation line item.
Employee-generated content has roughly eighteen months before it saturates, which makes a real internal program an act-now decision.
Commission-based UGC marketplaces mean a brand adds creative volume without a new cash outlay, and a creator can earn $10,000 from a single scaling asset.
Creator work is a volume game, so the discipline is to test angles against a known best-seller instead of copying the current winner.
Live selling converts because a viewer can ask how the hoodie fits someone six foot three and get an answer from a person instead of a chatbot.
Creators are being signed to multi-year brand deals and poached from each other on fixed retainers, so loyalty now has to be bought with upside, not a single ad fee.
When forty percent of a company has a personal brand, HR has no toolkit for the resulting financial and workload questions.
AI editing collapses the cost of casual content, so the real change is which videos now get made at all, not how fast existing ones get cut.
Starting a clothing brand pays little, carries less status than it used to, and is saturated, so the only defensible reason to do it is genuine love for the work.
Counter-positioning does not require being countercultural. It only requires offering something familiar in form but different in the lifestyle it appeals to.
Apple's annual keynote is a high-production webinar: invite an audience, demo the product, sell, and harvest clippable moments.
A folding flagship phone functions as a shiny object whose job is to make the incremental mainstream model worth paying attention to.
A new brand can speed-run legacy by signing high-profile athletes early instead of buying twenty years of television awareness.
An athlete whose bio reads Nike and your brand lends you the larger brand's credibility for free, which is parasite marketing in its modern form.
Most creators quit before they hit a winner, so consistency under a volume model matters more than any individual asset's quality.
Takeaway
Every winning format has a closing window
WHAT TO LEARN
Each tactic covered here works because it is familiar enough to stop a scroll and new enough that most brands have not copied it yet, which means timing is the real variable.
02Street interviews
Decide who you're talking to before you leave for a street interview shoot, because casting and question choice both depend on that one decision.
Cast people who look interesting or sound interesting, since the person on screen carries the hook before a single answer lands.
Ask one core question and at most two follow-ups. Ten questions produce footage where only two or three answers survive the edit.
Giveaway-friendly products like snacks or basics scale this format cheaply, because the cost per person approached stays low.
03Why brands are opening coffee shops
A $5 coffee inside a store selling $400 hoodies is an entry price for the brand, not a side business.
A second revenue stream in a retail space also removes the awkwardness of browsing without buying, which matters most with younger shoppers.
04Social shows
A recurring series works when the setting, angles, and character types stay fixed, because viewers return for a known experience.
Running a show requires charismatic talent, a genuinely funny writer, and production capacity at the same time. Missing one is why most attempts fail.
Test the concept with a carousel of five to fifteen second vignettes first, since that format needs no plot and still measures whether anyone cares.
05Employee-generated content
Staff posting scales in three stages: a few active leaders, then a recruited and incentivized majority, then episodic content with recurring characters.
A software company reached a large audience on LinkedIn by activating sixty of its eighty employees, which is reach built from headcount rather than budget.
Paying a bounty for daily posting turns employee content into a measurable lead channel with a line item instead of a vague brand benefit.
This strategy has roughly eighteen months before saturation, so starting a real program now beats starting a better one later.
07Trybe and UGC ads
Commission-based ad marketplaces let a brand add creative volume without a new cash outlay, which changes who can afford to test at scale.
A creator earning ten percent of a scaling ad can make more from one asset than from twenty flat-fee videos, which realigns everyone's incentives.
Study what is already winning for a specific brand instead of copying another brand's winner, because different customer profiles respond to different angles.
Check what a brand actually has in stock before producing for it, since volume spent on a sold-out product is wasted.
08TikTok live shopping
Live selling converts because a viewer can ask how something fits a specific body and get a real answer instead of a chatbot guess.
Questions asked during a live session are free research for the next round of hooks and briefs.
A creator who performs well on live should appear on the main feed too, so the audience attaches to a consistent face.
09Creators signing long-term deals
Creators are now signed on retainers and poached by competitors, so a long-term relationship has to offer more than a one-time fee for one ad.
A partnership works best when the product solves a problem the creator genuinely has on camera, which is why an in-context demonstration outperforms an endorsement.
When a large share of staff has a personal brand, the employment questions it raises arrive before anyone has a policy for them.
10Scaling content production
Template-driven apps now assemble finished videos from a camera roll, which matters when one person is touching dozens of assets a week.
Any tool that is even decent is worth testing once output volume becomes the constraint rather than ideas.
11Dark marketing
Mass slideshow and one-shot story formats are being published by the hundred to fish for a few viral hits, and that is the real competitive set for a legacy brand.
Those story formats hold attention because the drama comes first and the product mention arrives mid-way, after the viewer is already invested.
12AI editing and what it unlocks
Conversational AI editing removes the hour of work that used to kill casual videos outright, so the change is which content now gets made at all.
Once variations cost nothing extra, the question shifts from how fast you can cut to what you would make if time were not the obstacle.
13Creator clothing brands
Creator-founded apparel pays little, carries less status than it used to, and is saturated, so genuine love for the craft is the only defensible reason to start one.
Audiences can read whether a founder cares, and derivative product plus detached content is what gives away a brand built as something to do.
14Larry June and Adidas
Counter-positioning means offering something familiar in form but different in the lifestyle it signals, not being deliberately countercultural.
The same move applies to personal brands and artists, where talking about what your category never talks about is itself the differentiator.
15Apple's iPhone rollout
A marquee product nobody expects to buy can earn attention for the mainstream model it sits beside.
A high-production annual event is a webinar with better staging, which means the mechanics of inviting, demonstrating, and selling still work at any scale.
16Cadence and athlete partnerships
A new brand can compress decades of credibility by signing high-profile athletes early and building a physical hub around them.
Signing with an upstart is increasingly more appealing than signing with an incumbent, because newer associations carry more narrative value.
An athlete whose profile lists both a legacy sponsor and your brand transfers the larger brand's credibility to yours for free.
17Becoming a creator and a strategist
Doing the work yourself makes you better at directing others, because you learn why a specific execution failed rather than guessing.
Most people quit before they produce a winner, so building a routine you can sustain matters more than any single asset's polish.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
ICP
Ideal customer profile. The specific type of buyer a campaign is built to reach, defined tightly enough that casting, questions, and angles can all be chosen against it.
Street interview
Also called man-on-the-street. A format where a host approaches strangers in public with a short set of questions, now widely adapted into paid advertising because the footage reads as organic.
UGC
User-generated content. Video made by independent creators in a casual, first-person style and used by brands as advertising rather than as organic posts.
Employee-generated content
Social posts made by a company's own staff on the brand account or their personal accounts, usually incentivized by the company to generate reach it would otherwise have to buy.
Creative strategist
The person who decides what creative gets made and briefs the creators who make it, including the hooks, formats, and angles to test. Distinct from an editor or a media buyer.
Social show
A recurring scripted or semi-scripted series published on social platforms with returning characters and a fixed setting, produced by or for a brand.
Thumb stop
The rate at which scrolling viewers stop on a piece of content. A familiar-looking format tends to stop more thumbs than an obviously produced advertisement.
Counter-positioning
Deliberately presenting a brand or person against the dominant convention in their category, so the audience notices the contrast rather than the product claim.
Third place
A physical space that is neither home nor work where people choose to spend time. Brands build them to create a reason to visit that does not require a purchase.
Creative volume
The practice of running a large number of ad variations simultaneously rather than a few polished ones, so the platform's algorithm can find the winner.
Dark marketing
High-volume, low-signature content such as story-time slideshows and one-shot vignettes that carry a product mention mid-way through, published in bulk under creator accounts rather than brand ones.
Parasite marketing
Borrowing the credibility of a larger brand by appearing alongside it, for example an athlete whose profile lists both a legacy sponsor and a newer brand.
“You kind of put your money into the Meta black void.”
vivid metaphor for untracked ad spend→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
19:23
“Everyone's so tired of going in and typing into the AI chatbot their question about whatever the hoodie is.”
names a universal annoyance and sets up the live-selling case→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
22:33
“They're just stealing from each other. They're just stealing creators. So like, where's the loyalty?”
tension in the creator market stated plainly→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
26:27
“This is what you're competing with. There are companies being like, cool, we're going to spin this up, we're going to get these views.”
direct address that reframes the competitive set→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
28:17
“It's just the time to value. It's always been the key thing.”
compact explanation of why good content never got made→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
28:58
“It's a brutal, horrible game where you make very little money, has less clout than ever, and is ultra saturated. So if you do it, you have to really love it.”
the most contrarian take in the episode→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
33:39
“Apple is just a webinar. They are doing a once a year, high production, clippable webinar.”
reframe that lands in one sentence→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
36:03
“What people like Ross are doing so smartly is they're basically speed running, building a legacy brand.”
names a strategy most people feel but can't articulate→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
“They burn out easily and they give up before they actually strike gold.”
closing-line wisdom with no context needed→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
The Script
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It's impossible to keep up with everything that's happening in the marketing and social media landscape. But at the same time, everything is moving so quickly. Tactics are changing, new software, new systems.
Things get antiquated faster than ever. So in this video, I'm going to sit down with my friend Drew, who's a creative strategist for a number of brands. And we're going to talk about exactly what's happening.
And not just, hey, this person did this, but the actual tactics. Because you'll see he is actually in the trenches. He's making content.
He's doing creative strategy for individual brands. He's working on social media. He's working on launch videos in all these categories.
And I'm working at it on the agency side where I'm briefing creative strategists. We're working at like macro level brand planning. So we have two different interesting perspectives for all these things that are going on from social shows to UGC to...
to influence, to brand collaborations. We're gonna zip through the list, talk about all of these, break down actual tactics you can use to help in your marketing or social media career. And I think it's gonna be an ultra valuable video.
Let's lock in. All right, so I wanna kick in here by talking about street interviews. You guys have probably all seen these on TikTok where people are like just out there on the streets of San Diego, the streets of wherever, interviewing somebody.
But you've actually been working, turning this into an ad format as well. And you've actually been in the street. You wanna talk to us a bit about that?
Yes, it's an interesting type of format or also known as... man on the streets, street interviews, man on the streets. It's one of those things that's easily scalable with a low budget.
How much can you give away without it actually costing a lot for you? But more often than not, when a brand has like a protein bar or blanks, it's a lot easier to give out a scale. Yeah, it's a simple way.
Yeah, I think what I liked about this is that so great ad content or great brand content often comes from good organic content, right? And street interviews dominate. People are, it's easy, casual content.
You see an interesting person or a funny person or like a place, you know, hey, this is in like our friend Kevin does this in San Diego. If you're from San Diego and you see it, you're like, oh, that's my area. That's my spot.
But then for brands to co -op that, it's like, okay, how can you kind of. put yourself in the middle of it. How can you make the product a center of attention?
So yeah, what are some strategies for that product sampling? Like obviously, but I know you mentioned blanks. Like you did this with clothing, right?
Yes. I did this with a clothing brand named seven third studios. It's a luxury blank company.
And the biggest thing it's like, okay, they want to introduce a new format and a way they're like, okay, we have a budget. This is our budget. And we have blanks.
The thing is with blanks, you can hand out a lot of it, right? They control the ball yarn to the final execution. So it's a lot easier for them to go out.
For example, in Venice beach, you're watching these videos. It's like, oh, that's in my backyard. Oh, that's really cool.
Oh, that's Muscle Beach. Thinking about any kind of like organic content, you need a plan, right? Like at the end of the day, what probably both of us do the most of is brief actual things that people are going to go do when they actually execute an ad or a piece of content.
What's involved in a plot? What's an example of like the plot of what you guys did for 7th Earth? So for 7th Earth, it was more like pre -production more than anything.
A lot of people just kind of wing it and they go on the streets. It's like, okay, let's just record. But that's like probably the worst thing you could possibly do because you kind of want an ideal, like who you want to speak to.
Like ICPs in a demographic is very important when it comes to your brand. And so when you have luxury product blanks, who are you going to be catering towards? But more often than not, when you're actually in the streets, it's like, how can you control the variables as much as you can?
And so what I mean by that is ideally you're going to have all the pre -production. You're going to be like, all right, this is the hooks and the angles and the questions that we want to ask people. Also, the host has to be on point too.
He has to be obviously charismatic. He has to be able to handle rejection, right? Then go into the shoot and kind of ask basic questions because people try to over -complicate by asking too many questions.
Then you go, like, for example, for me, then I go in the editing side. It's like, okay, how can I actually stitch all this together and actually tell a story and make sense to the ICP or the demographic or the goal based off of what we're trying to achieve? Yeah.
I feel like every time we've done this for ads, we've been really focused on, okay, you need interesting people, right? That's number one. Like everyone's like, oh, we're going to interview as many people as possible.
It's like, okay, well, they either need to look interesting or be interesting to kind of be part of that hook. So either their initial, like you just see them and then they're like, oh, this is part of the hook or their actual answer. is immediately like a good part of the content.
And then it's like, all right, what's that? You have your first question, maybe one to two follow -ups. Even if you ask 10, like what's going to make it in the video is like kind of two or three.
So having that concrete plan really works. But I do feel like this is something every brand should probably like get inside. If you have a, especially a consumable product or even something conceptual like mental health, et cetera, like getting it in the ad account, just because it's such a familiar format that that thumb stop is going to be really high.
Speaking of like in real life experiences and things we've been, you were in New York the other week and we were talking about the idea that like everything has a coffee shop now, right? Where'd you go? you see so i just went to new york city just for a little fun trip and i was really curious just to stop in supreme everyone knows supreme and just kind of watch people how they how they're buying and just on the consumer aspect and i asked them a question i was literally just like is did supreme fall off and they're like no like obviously traffic is low they're like you should go ask the the store next door which was clientele new york city they recently just opened it's more of like a third -party resale aspect and they're more working on their own apparel right now so i walked in there and i noticed the coffee shop right away way and funny enough i saw someone buying the coffee and they had no idea that the store was even like a store for clothes and so i was just talking to this guy and he was just like yeah like i'm here for the coffee i thought it was just a coffee shop called clientele but sure enough obviously you know i saw him walking out with a bunch of clothes and shoes so i guess well you see this now like new york it's now every streetwear store ald has the coffee shop you go like bandit has rhythm zero inside of it like all of these
It's all like kind of this cohabitation. I think we see this a lot with physical space in general because basically, A, you kind of need two things to survive. Like any amount of money you can bring in if you're only selling so many $400 hoodies or whatever it is, is like, okay, is there some regular flow that we can have?
And also there's that experiential aspect, right? Where it's like an entry point to the brand. I think Kith is like the perfect example of this, right?
Where a lot of people who don't even know Kith sells like expensive clothes, know the ice cream or brought their kids there or have like begun to engage with the brand in this like completely other way. And it's a much easier price point. Oh, I'm going to go get, a $10 dessert or a $5 coffee and get introduced makes it accessible.
It makes you feel like you can browse in a way where I feel like you'd almost be awkward if you're in there and you're like not going to buy. And especially with kind of, I feel like Gen Z is a little more awkward about that than previous generations. It's just not as used to shopping.
It seems like a very different dynamic. Everyone's doing coffee. So it was a really interesting way to obviously tap into sneaker culture by treats.
It's obviously became a huge business model for him and collaborations and Kip treats has actually grown significantly. It's as interesting or as compelling and as culturally. relevant to the business as the clothing line is like over time.
One thing we talk about all the time, we're actually just talking about even with the people in the studio here is this idea of like social series, the social shows, like who can pull them off. And I want to bring that up because I saw Away do one, the Away luggage the other week. And they had one where it was basically like a, it's like a relationship kind of playing out in real time.
And I always look at what brands like. brands do in the summertime where people aren't buying a lot. Like people aren't going and making their luggage purchases like after like their Euro summer trip, right?
So it's like, okay, a lot of the actual brand campaigns come out then where they're trying new stuff. They're trying to build top of funnel awareness, like going into fall and the big buying season. And they did a great job with this where they kind of basically had these people having these like awkward breakup and social scenarios, like live in the train station or the airport.
And yeah, I'm just curious what social shows you've liked. What do you think of this as a strategy? I think it's a really interesting strategy when you get it right.
I really like Brooklyn Coffee Shop because they've really... kept the same angles and when you watch them you know what you're getting and i think that's very compelling like when you're watching a reality tv show like you know like there's going to be drama you know there's going to be an interesting character and so being able to see brooklyn coffee shop bring in really interesting characters nonetheless actors you know movie stars it really keeps you on your toes so i feel like the brands that do it correctly and well and scalable like you know it's a scalability like can you actually scale the format and is it you know bring an roi and more often than not when it leaves a huge, remarkable impact on you.
You want to binge more and more often than not, it's going to be successful. It is funny. I pulled up the first Brooklyn coffee shop video I pulled up here is a Samsung paid partnership.
So good for them for securing the bag. But it was interesting because that started this idea, this concept for those who haven't seen it. It's a social show where people come in, they come into the coffee shop, they have a conversational, but it was a skit, right?
These are comedians. It wasn't like promoting a coffee shop. A lot of people assumed it was real, but it was purely just like, it's an invention of the internet.
It's more of a show, but brands have co -opted it right and this kind of goes back to the original thing we talked about it like things that do well in organic are quickly co -opted by brands and they should be whether that's for their organic strategy or kind of in the ad account but now you've seen other people do it too so i bring up this example of other ship so they are they're like a sauna company in in new york and they're doing the exact same format right two people behind the counter someone walks in it's a scenario like it's a skit based scenario but they play really well into like the health wellness interpersonal dynamics like the one i just pulled up here is the group chat all said they were going to go and like only one guy And he's like, hey, I have a reservation for seven, but it's like, it's just me, which is a very, which, you know, it's very shareable, plays in that whole idea of like the group chat.
It's positioned in a way that like. is inherently social and so it's interesting to see that like continue to work and even in this kind of same exact style but i also see a lot of them flop and it takes so much to actually produce a show you need sort of like charismatic talent that are on camera you need someone who writes who's like genuinely funny and culturally relevant understands it and you need the production environment i think a lot of brands consider oh we should do this but probably aren't cut out for it curious what you think i think it's really important to be able to have the foundation to be able to empower these social shows I feel like people are just like, they see something and they just want to be like, let's recreate it right up there and then, but they don't have like a long -term goal to why it actually, they should be doing it.
And so I would say just reverse backwards. A lot of brands don't really think about the idea of like, okay, where do we want to go? How can we actually fund this?
And what makes sense for like right now that we can work towards this goal? And more often than not, when people are kind of disorganized and not really sure like the through line of what they have, it kind of falls apart. It's like, okay, who is your one -of -one creative talent?
I feel like every brand needs to be like, who? is what do we have like any person that's just better than other people at one core thing creative direction writing, social strategy.
Like you need one person who's like a standout and then lean into their strengths. And if that happens to be someone who's like funny enough to write that or someone who's charismatic enough to like lead, you know, be a front person on social, like he's really just leaning into who that talent is. But recommendation I have, Claude did this series of vignettes.
I think the vignette format where it's basically just a carousel and they're, you know, a couple five to 15 second little mini films, like in all the slides on the carousel is a great way for brands to basically like test the waters of this. So say, okay, you have this opportunity to shoot a couple shots, each one that tells a story.
story inside a place or with people or with characters. And then be like, is this compelling enough that our audience cares? And it's a low risk format, right?
It doesn't have to have some crazy through line. It doesn't have to have an amazing plot. It just needs to be visually interesting.
And like, you know, is it cool enough to like share and get engagement with? I'm always like, just validate with that, like carousel vignette format first before you're diving into something like a social show. Yeah.
Super high production and actually invest in a lot of capital into it. Yeah. And look, and this all ties to this bigger theme that everyone's talking about around, which is employee generated content, right?
It's like, okay, you could go hire a bunch of actors and amazing talent to actually like be the ones on camera but a lot of this is either hybrid like we see in style has done like a hybrid where it's like real people that work at in style and they bring in like actual uh talent from you know whether it's influencers or celebrities like come in and then you just have this idea of just hey all of our employees are posting on social media the expectation now for a lot of companies that um social media is like employee first you're curious what you're seeing out there i'm not sure if you guys are relevant of the beerista starbucks cup that went viral because a girl simply just said hey come spend a day with me i'm with this viral cup that's sold out and it's just a really interesting opportunity because even fortune 500 brands like brands are super high in legacy or even startups can do it there's no in between like everyone can do it it's an easy way to obviously capitalize what's already there for example it could be like behind the scenes of the creative director how he thinks about this shoot and how he's going to go about obviously presenting it to the world like there's so many ways to go about it like literally a day in a life to like
like behind the scenes vignettes, right? There's no right or wrong answer. Yeah, I think if I was to break down the levels of it, like, okay, what are the levels of employee generated content that makes sense?
Like level one is like, okay, there's a couple people at our company that are just very active, right? It's like, hey, whether that's the founder or like one of the leaders and two of the social media people are both active on the main account and they're active like on their individual socials. And the second level, I think what we're seeing a lot more now is you're recruiting a good chunk of the team, right?
I always bring up Buffer as an example of this, Buffer, like the scheduling software, because they have on LinkedIn, they have like 80 employees and like 60, are active. They're posting all the time and they incentivize it.
And they generated a lot of impressions for like a pretty, you know. kind of an antiquated social scheduling platform by just having that number of people be active, just like sharing company updates, you know, doing the whole like LinkedIn piece. They're not even on these other social media, but I think that's kind of like your level two now where it's like, we have a lot of employees who, especially when you're in a company that has to be somewhat socially relevant that are like engaged.
And then all the way to, okay, now we're, we're making something episodic. We have like a kind of a world and an arc where these characters play these roles. We're on multiple social networks all the way up to like, wait, now we have a social show, like incorporating those people.
And it's interesting because I feel like we are this is happening right now. And we probably are at the point where we about 18 months where it's like a super saturated strategy.
All these companies are like incentivizing everyone to post. Like we had a, I have something on screen here from Matt. I know from X who, look, they incentivize 20 people on their team to post on X every single day.
They put like a 20K bounty on it every month or something like that. So they're paying people to do it. And it was a huge lead driver for them, right?
But this is going to become, everyone recognizes this is valuable enough. It's going to become saturated. I think like you could act on this right now, probably, anytime between now and the end of the year, like get a real program running.
And then we're going to hit like diminishing returns. So I think it'd be, if you are considering that, I think brands should really look at acting on that now. Since I know a lot of you are working on marketing teams or in your own agencies, I wanted to highlight a tool that's been really useful for multiple teams I work with on the backend.
And that is lovable. What do I mean? Right now, I know a lot of you are cobbling together feedback portals, asset request intake, campaign dashboards, and tools for your field teams.
All these combinations of spreadsheets and random pieces of software. What more and more smart teams are doing are building simple internal tools to work exactly like they want to. Here's an example in Lovable.
If you want to build an asset request form that you or your clients or your internal team can give to each other and it actually tracks timing and output, you could just go into Lovable chat and say, hey, I'd like to make a form where people request an asset type. They can choose between photo and video. They can put in their date.
They can attach any reference assets. And I want to have a backend view of this where I can add team members and I can assign things to those team members that actually just sends them a Slack message. We can have a dashboard view of what's pending and unassigned, what items are in work.
And I can have a report at the end of every week on what assets actually got done by which team members and how much time they took from request to finish. So in chat, I can actually request a tool, monitor all the things that are being asked for, assigned, and actually created by my team. I can prompt all this into chat and it's actually going to build that with lovable.
It will prompt me to fully integrate Slack. I don't need to do anything technical. I can just type in the initial names of my team members to add.
I now have a fully functioning system built exactly how my business works. I would highly recommend if you have a social team, if you're trying to manage influence, et cetera, you have any part of that process that is manual today. Using Lovable to fix that process for you is an easy win that you can put on the board.
They handle hosting, app connection, and security. It can work on mobile and desktop and even integrate payments. I think you'll be shocked at what's possible just through chat.
You can learn more about Lovable in the description and thanks so much to them for sponsoring this video. You and I are both using this platform Tribe all the time. I want to talk about that for anyone that hasn't heard of it.
I want to give a quick breakdown of what that is. So essentially it's a UGC format for meta ads. Like you have TikTok shop, but essentially think about it, it's for meta ads specifically.
And so basically you... get all these creators that are on this platform right who are they can put assets out there they get paid a percentage like they would on shop to be able to put ads you know into your meta ads account and creators are making a lot we all talk about all this creator marketing right so every brand needs to have creators you need to have more ads in the ad account this idea of creative volume where people are really pushing hundreds of ads and meta every month but everyone has a really hard time actually filling that up and so i think what tribe did really well is they basically said we're going to bring all these creators under this platform if you want to scale that up you want more ads you can do it and you don't have to basically pay out of pocket you're not going and saying hey i need to drop another 50 15K on creative this month.
Instead, people are going to do it on commission, which means, and now a lot of these creators are incentivized. You're saying, oh, if an ad does well, right? A good scaling ad for any of the brands that darkroom works, right?
Right. It's like going to get into the six figures. And so if you're getting 10 % commission on that, like, Hey, I'm making 10K off that one asset.
Now say you made 20 assets and only one of them got there. Okay. That math is still great compared to a lot of the other like social UGC work that you can get.
And also incentivizes you to make better videos. You want to go in there and make a winner. So that winner gets some scale and then brands want to try it and want to work.
more creators because they're making money on the other end. It's really tied the economics of the UGC industry together. And this is another one where like, we were talking about Tribe maybe a couple months ago.
It was early. It was like, okay, a bunch of these brands around here were all thirsty. Now it's like...
everyone's onboarding. And so it's one of those where like, okay, if you want to do this, like this Q4 is going to be absolutely massive on Tribe. And it's going to like make or break brands, which means that right now we're recording this as September 18th.
It's probably come out end of the month. Like you've got to do it if you want to do it. Any tips?
I know you've been in the trenches on there, like how to make the most of it. A lot of it is actually looking at what's winning, then taking inspiration from that. A lot of people try to copy, let's say from Haas, from 7 3rd Studios, live reaction.
And they do the one, not two, not three, not four, but more often than not, like different. brands have different icps and like who's actually like watching and like who's buying the products right like a lot of different angles are just going to resonate so you're just going to have to test and volume it's a volume game so shots on goal but obviously being able to introduce interesting angles but also work with the ceos or whoever is obviously managing these discords to actually learn about what they're pushing and what actually they have in stock because you can make a video let's say about t -shirt and it's about to sell out and if you constantly scale and make batch editing for that it's like you're just you're just wasting your time yeah and so for creators it's like always like a studying game like what's working right now how do i test new hooks how do i test new environments can i use you know kind of use props can i try different styles and basically having to weight that against how much time you have and how much work do you want to do and then for brands it's this creative strategist idea right this is a new role we're hyper familiar with it a lot of brands are brand new to it and that's really this idea that who is the person on the team that's bringing ideas and toolkits to these creators to be like let me make this easy for you like here's this green screen format that's working really well here's this like way we've
done unboxings it also that happens to hook really well like put your spin on it but here's those couple ideas here's a couple points to hit here's how we can enable you and this is so important because it's like there's economics to it right if it works it's going to spend more it's going to make more money everyone wins and you kind of continue this this cycle and we just haven't had a bunch of that in marketing right it's like you kind of put your money into the meta black black void you would do tiktok shop and this was similar but it was so like the margins are so razor thin because like all the ways the tiktok shop works it was hard and this is one of those where like okay there's like actual money there for these brands to make i like to call it too we talk a lot about product brands we work on product brands it's just as much for software or anything else it's like anything that can be bought like through an ad directly to a commission like less for services whatever or like kind of higher ticket stuff but like anything you're doing that you can tie and directly attribute to a sale from Meta like you could run through this yes and so I'm curious you were talking too about um the transition from like this type of UGC to what's happening in live and even I think some of the tribe guys are involved what's going on there so the co -founder Haas actually
Troy, one of my good friends, he actually started a new venture called Live. So it's a studio with 10 ,000 square foot in LA. And essentially he's introducing or giving brands opportunity to go live in those like basically sets.
And that's live on TikTok or? Live on TikTok. Yes.
Yes. Being able to obviously build sets. So they hire the hosts.
They do everything. So the brands just sign up and pay retainer. That's it.
Yeah. So it's interesting enough. Like a lot of people come on the lives just to talk to the host and they're like, you know what?
I like you. I'm going to support you. I'm going to buy three tanks from you right now.
It's real. Really interesting. That's why I think they should tie the creators on the account.
This is one thing I noticed with one brand I was talking to where they had a great live creator, but that's all she was doing for them. I was like, get her on the main feed. Everyone loves her.
It's like she should be like a consistent character for the brand. And, you know, it's like tie all those pieces together. It's like some of the foundations of like decent brand world building.
And then, yeah, it's also like give people that chance for the Q &A, right? Everyone's so tired of going in and typing into the AI chat bot their question about whatever the hoodie is. It's going to spit out an answer that may or may not be right.
It's like giving the opportunity to be like, oh, yeah, like how does this look on someone who's 6 '3"? It's like, oh, let me call. bread over inside the room and he's gonna put it on and like that uh helps i think helps convert in an interesting way and it also gives you that feedback loop like i know we're always in the quest for like what can we hook with what can we make content about it's like the questions that come up on live or the moments that were funny or they got a bunch of like roses and whatever is like that's the stuff you should like clue in on to like to write new briefs and this it's interesting because now these creators like we talk about the careers on tribe are making more and more money people who are making content inside companies are getting like paid separately for that or how like bounties being put on that we're also getting this like aqua hire creator world so uh so so gemini uh so google's ai just basically signed mr beast to like a 25 million or 20 million dollar deal something like that i'm not sure if the numbers are like if i'm making those numbers up those numbers are public because a multi -year partnership promoting that so basically a huge creator signed to an ai company at the same time i saw another creator um kova cut who's like another uh she i'm like in a similar vein with her we also i make like
content for similar sponsored brands. She basically went to work for OpenAI. So I know she's done videos for Lovable, for Cursor, for like all the, you know, running through the gambit of AI and then now works in -house specifically at these.
This idea of like creators signing to brands is like a really interesting shift. So have you seen any of the Mr. Beast content with this or any of that?
Yeah, actually, I actually watched the video that he actually... The first video, matter of fact, how he used it was really interesting because he used it... Hey, Google, how do I do this river rap to get across the river?
And it was just like... seamlessly plotted in. And I had no idea consciously that they even signed before.
And I was like, is this new? And so it was a really interesting way. And I think a lot of brands or a lot of people, a lot of creators at his level are definitely going to implement it.
I think that's interesting. I liked the Mr. Beast for Gemini specifically because Gemini is like ubiquitous.
It's one of those AI's like, who uses Gemini? It's like everyone uses Gemini because it's the initial result of every Google search now. And so...
Their TAM and their audience, they have more of an explanation problem. People don't even know that they're using that. And so you're going for a big mainstream thing like Mr.
Beast, I feel ties into that well, versus I feel it's the other, you know, called just trying to make it look like it's a battle when in fact, OpenAI is so much bigger than them. It's like comical. And yeah, so everyone has their different goals.
And so it's interesting how they position with creators around that. But I think like, I see this in my group chats with my friends now as well as like, this is the conversation. It's like, okay, are there, is there a brand or two where you're either doing those big recurring series?
Like my friend Jordan's now, he's doing a whole series with Vice Sport. he's like a big he's becoming like a vice creator right and you begin to see you know okay this person's like they're going to do the year with Polymarket or whatever that looks like.
I think that's one way to get ahead of a bunch of these, especially when we start talking about social shows, you start looking at your best creators who make those ads. It's like, how do you lock that down? Because what we all see from stuff like Tribe or TikTok shop is once creators start really making money, they're going to like the highest bidder of that and someone can outbid you.
And it's like, okay, well, what are the other things you can offer? How can it be a long -term relationship? What are these quasi -employee things?
It's something I think we're really going to see. You know, interesting enough, I actually... did hear about that in first person when i was talking to troy when i was with him he was like dude like these people are just paying the our creators ten thousand dollars a month five thousand whatever the fixed retainer is smart retainers what they called it's they're just stealing from each other they're just stealing creators so like where's the loyalty and so it would be interesting but you want that the other way too because it's always like oh you're just going to take my you're going to pay me for one ad and you're going to run that forever i'm never going to hear from you again to see both sides so you really have to incentivize these creators and obviously if they're 3x in your company maybe some equity deals.
I don't know. That is the conversation now. And I think it's interesting just because the nature of work for everybody.
When 40 % of your company has a personal brand or whatever that looks like, how does that change the fiscal relationships or their work balance or all the things that come with that? We are not, like HR organizations are not prepared with toolkits to work through those kinds of things. And this is something that's happening increasingly in companies that are fast growing, right?
Especially it's biased towards like frontier companies. So that's an interesting note. And we've talked a lot about UGC and Creator.
I want to talk about editing and some formats and stuff too. And I saw this tweet that was like, Figma has finally hired like a Gen Z content editor or like something of that nature. And it's honestly, it's just like kind of like one of these like punch out, just like well -produced, like fast edits.
It wasn't even like anything that insane. But you had brought up too, you'd seen some like some actual apps have done stuff like this. Yes.
So there's actually a popular creator named Alfie. And I'm gonna give him some flowers because he's found a way to obviously, allow people's content or their processing to make more content scale a lot easier yeah and so there's a platform called try roll he created and it's really interesting because you can basically have every video everything and basically in your arsenal and your camera roll into like a template video done in like two seconds so yeah how's that so what does that work what's the workflow there so the workflow is like basically when you're scrolling on instagram reels you have templates right and you can easily represent or like cap cut has templates too that you can easily plug in a video like it says 0 .8 of a second and you grab a clip and you put it into that and basically it's like text overlay one shot or ten shot yeah and so essentially dry roll, you scroll like it's a feed and you see a viral template and you click on it.
And next thing you know, you can just, it just automatically through AI uses your camera roll to make a video. Man, it is so quick. I have to try it.
I'm very curious. One thing we've been texting about a lot recently is we're both doing the DaVinci ChatGPT Astra editing, right? Like I think what people have to realize is, especially if you're from more traditional marketing, is how many assets are made?
Like how many videos have you worked on this week? I want to say like 60. Yeah, exactly.
So that's kind of what... like a good creative strategist, like a good person in the trenches on that is doing. This is, I'd say it's like a, I'd say it's a similar, like for me and my team and the things I'm working with and ads I'm making, I'd say probably 20, 30.
But then for Darkroom, it's like hundreds, like we're touching hundreds of briefs, you know? And so it's like, there's so much volume happening that any of these tools that are actually decent are like 100 % worth trying because it's become so much of a game like that. And another one that I've noticed we've been experimenting with and I'm experimenting with slightly for some of my own content is this like this slideshow, like kind of, I will call it like dark marketing content.
So I brought up this example here you see these one -shot videos this is one of a girl who's she's doing like a vignette piece which is like a one -shot where they have like she's just talking or she's on camera and it has like a story happening behind it and she's telling some story and they literally mention an app like midway like it's always a promo like in the middle of there but because the story has some tea or some drama or whatever people people stick with it and they publish like hundreds of those that's very similar to what like you could do it you could easily make those i think the try role is like trying to take that like a level up in terms of what the editing production looks like but the other thing people are doing is these like mass slideshows right so So this one here is a, this is the Coffee Meets Bagel app.
It's like a dating app. And they have all of these creators like who are running, just running story time slideshows, like lessons from dating app slideshows, like date story slideshows on TikTok, putting up mass views. Like you can tell it's a volume game, right?
Well, they'll have like 40 carousels up. Two of them will have 100K, 500K. The rest will all have like 10 to 30, but they're just like shooting for viral hits.
But you go into, these are all AI generated, right? This is all being done in this app called Real Farm, similar to TriRoll, where it will be like, it will generate the background image. is you kind of type in your stories will help with that.
And it will actually make you all of these TikTok variations. And I like to call this out because it's like, this is what you're competing with, right? If you are a legacy brand or a mainstream brand, or you're still spending, you know, 40K in asset or whatever it is, like there are companies being like, cool, we're going to spin this up.
We're going to get these views. We're going to do it by using these modern methods. And you kind of have to be on the fringe of these apps and like be on X and like noting where that is.
And so many people aren't. That's interesting. How'd you find out about TriRoll?
So I was just scrolling one day. I mean, I was following the creator at the time and I'm always trying to optimize and streamline, you know, outcomes and obviously more assets, depending on what brand I'm doing or helping out with.
And so I just, I was just curious. I was just scrolling on my main feed and I saw the announcement post and I was like, I'm genuinely curious. I'm going to try it, you know, because you want to be able to use the right tools to help streamline your process.
I mean, like, why wouldn't you want to use any advantage? It's going to, it's there. If other people are doing it, posting 10 videos and trials every day, like might as well just leverage and just test and see if it actually works for you.
I want to ask you, like, what do you think about being able to use Astra for editing? Because you tried it. Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's incredible, right? I, it now enables me to make videos I wouldn't make. Like I made it, I unboxed some like the Kaisenot new brand stuff, which I would never like, I would never make an unboxing video because it would take me either, it would take me either an hour to edit it myself or 40 minutes, or I'd have to spend 30 minutes briefing an editor.
do it and i'm just like that's just not worth it for that kind of content for me but when i can just be like astra cut this entire timeline down, put my normal color on it, find images for any of the sections where it gets dull and you like make no mistakes, right? And like, and then chat back and forth.
Like I shared my chat on X and it was like, I sent like three chats and the entire video was done. I'm like, oh, that changes the game for how much content I'll make. And then like, oh, well, we were talking about like for variants for ads, like I do UGC for like Roku and perplexity and stuff like that.
It's like, cool, you want six variations? Great, that now is no additional work for me beyond sitting and talking for five more minutes. So will we see more unboxings from you?
Yeah, you will see way more casual content, right? I want to make more casual content, but it's just the time to value. It's always been the keyest thing where it's like, even if I'm getting the same amount of views from casual content versus produced content, the brand equity for me is higher.
But even when we're talking about it on YouTube, the ability to just produce more is kind of fascinating. And now it's like, okay, well, what can we do we wouldn't normally? Can we upgrade our sound effects?
Can we upgrade our animation? What are things that are prohibitive for our team from a time or talent perspective that now we can do significantly more of? And so I just want to ask you, as someone who's been in it, you've obviously made clothes yourself.
What do you think about that? Is that something that a lot of people are going to start doing? It's so easy to do now.
You have to do fashion. You kind of have to love it. As many YouTubers say, like, you're going to make 20K a month or you're going to do whatever.
You're not. It's a brutal, horrible game where you make very little money, has less clout than ever, and is, like, ultra saturated. So I just don't think it's, like, a good look for many folks.
And so that means if you do it, you have to really love it. And what I felt like as I watched this entire brand unfold is it doesn't seem like he really loves it. It seems like he's doing it as something to do.
And then you can tell by the clothes, which were a lot of, like, really easy derivative knockoffs, et cetera. And I'm like, if you can't tell some interesting, really compelling story, like, look. there's people who love and hate to represent guys.
They obviously love what they're doing. They love the clothes themselves, the lifestyle, the art, the illustration, building the team, the ethos of the brand. It bleeds through in every piece of content.
It's like, if that's you, like even Marshall Cruz, who has his brand, like he obviously loves everything about the lifestyle that he's putting together in that. And if you feel that from a person or a creator, like I feel like that energy is going to go somewhere like really well. Do I feel that from what we're getting around?
Like Vivette, like absolutely not. So transitioning from the Kaisa not, feeling as you know I guess it just does not feel as authentic to something that I think we both feel does feel pretty authentic is the Larry June adidas campaign I want to break that one down for me yeah so it was very remarkable because I actually went in person and I got to meet him I got to talk to him and I got to see in the environment what was really cool is the counter positioning a lot of people are talking about you know drugs sex rock and roll he's talking about quiet luxury and fruit That's so different.
And so if someone's listening to this on the subconscious level, they're more likely going to go for the jog, like he's saying. And so I think it's very remarkable for have someone like Larry June make a sneaker called watermelon smoothie based off his lifestyle that he's already living. I think this is very important.
It reminds us that like, no matter who you are, you can still counter position against something and stand out and et cetera. Yeah. I love it.
Everyone always looks at like, okay, we talked about these big positioning concepts. They're really important for any brand or any campaign. It's like, okay, like who's your target?
market how are they being talked to today how can you talk differently but counter positioning is for personal brands too for musical artists too and like i think he's a good example of especially in like the quote unquote like what do you hear about mostly in rap and then him presenting that differently in the way his audience uh goes through it's like i think that's a really it's just something everyone should be thinking about in terms of like personal brand where it's like encounter positioning doesn't have to be everyone also assumes counter positioning means like liquid death or counterculture and it's like hey it actually just means what is the consumer normally seeing how can you give them something that feels familiar like that but actually just appeals to like a different lifestyle or you know, makes it so a more positive person might be like, hey, I don't want to hear about like negativity all day or I don't want to hear about like hustle culture all day.
I want to hear about things that are like resonant to me as a, you know, someone who's a piece of myself or whatever and leans in. I like that campaign a lot. But that too, but also like.
adidas taking a chance on him too like adidas is a big legacy brand and so being able to take a chance on a guy let's say larry june i'm saying guy because obviously it's a rapper there's many rappers there's many athletes and people to do collaborations but then in a day like it's really remarkable and just it just shows the show like hey if you stand for something you definitely stand for something you'll like it and he has this furniture collaboration too that was just pulling up which is um kind of outrageous i i like that uh we're in like the larry june collab era um that's interesting he's doing like he's doing numbers as he says.
Okay, he owns a Dune sofa. I was like, does he make a knockoff Dune sofa? No, yeah, it's interesting to see where the product goes, but those do feel more authentic to me than what we saw above.
All right, two more topics that we're going to hit here before we wrap this up. The first is the iPhone Duo and talk about that rollout. Are you going to buy the fold -out iPhone?
No, I'm not going to buy it. I think it's just a waste of... I was, yeah, well, my initial reaction seeing it is that this is excellent marketing, right?
I feel like they're, really what they're announcing is the iPhone 18 Pro, whatever, that like everyone's going to get, it's going to be the default phone. It's incrementally better, but that is just no longer exciting enough. It's like the 18th variation of it that they had to have like a marquee product that's literally just a shiny object.
I don't think they expect a lot of people to buy it to then just get enough attention to go on this one. We saw that with who they rolled out too, right? Like speed is at, it's like at the Apple rollout.
They did a backflip, like, you know, with the owner next to the owner. Can I hold it? You know what I mean?
Like, it's just, it was, and I remember like, I was at WWDC last year. So I was like one of the influencer team and it was not like this, right? It was like myself, it was Rachel Carton from Lincoln Bio.
It was Emily Sundberg. And it was like, yeah, all the people you'd expect, iJustine, MK, UHD, but it was not like speed and like Kid Cudi and whatever. It was like, obviously there was like a different set of priorities.
And so like this year, they went so much bigger with that. But I think it's because it's, again, it's marketing. It's like, all right, we're launching this product and it's about the, like we need to highlight Apple.
general it's basically the shiny object to sell this thing below and i think they did a good job with that i also like to call out there's there's this um one of the things i talk about a lot inside the content on this channel is using tactics that like people use in more like i don't know like info product businesses or online using them in real businesses and one of those we've i haven't talked about is like the webinar like the idea of like get people on like a call and like sell to them or explain things and this is apple i always like to call out apple is just a webinar They are doing a once a year, high production, clippable webinar.
They invite you on, they're going to sell you their products, and you're going to get a bunch of side moments that come out of that. I just want to remind people when you think about how do you push more sales for your business? How do you think about marketing?
Those are key things. And these concepts you might look down on, like why would we do a webinar in 2026? That's actually what Apple's doing.
They're just doing it in a modern way. They have a streamer there. They have the equivalent of like, there's equivalents for whatever industry you're in, whatever size you are, they're probably really resonant.
All right, last topic we have here. I want to talk about the Cadence LA Performance Center. And you know something about this, right?
Yes. So I was very fortunate enough to work with the Woodhalls. So the Woodhalls, they're a couple.
They're actually a gold Olympic couple, matter of fact. So Hunter is an amputee with no legs and he does 100 millimeters. And Tara is a gold medalist long jumper.
So they're quite the power couple, that's for sure. And so being able to associate and be involved in the brand like Cadence that's up and coming, I think it was such a power play for them. Because I remember vividly that Ross was saying like, Like, hey, I want to be associated with these, not necessarily the wood halls, but I want to be associated with athletes, like real athletes.
And so what better way to obviously. grow with the right athletes that are doing things at a high level. And then they've put this whole LA Performance Center together.
And so, and that's like, what's interesting to me about that is all these brands are trying, hey, we want to become a third place. We want to add in this experiential part of our brand. But they did it in LA, in a performance center that I feel like really has the eye on the ball for kind of exactly what you're talking about here.
How do you compete with a legacy brand, right? Because what are we going to see in LA in 2028? The Olympics.
The Olympics. Yeah. I think the power association is still there.
So being able to have someone at their gold caliber level and association, Like for example, Gatorade could assign them. But they chose with Cadence because they believe in the mission, let's say.
Ross did a really good job. to be able to kind of nurture this third place and build it and push for the hub for the 2028 games. Yeah, I also think it's kind of uncool to sign to a legacy brand.
We saw this with Kylian Mbappe this morning, signed to On, right? Where it's a major shift from Nike and people are like, oh, why would they do this? Why would they do that?
I'm like, is it really, is it cool for someone in the newer generation? Like if you're choosing, do I want to sign to the same thing everyone else has done forever? Is Gatorade still exciting to anybody?
Like, no. Is anyone you know really knocking down a bunch of Gatorades? Like, no, they're drinking Cadence, especially out here.
It's inescapable, right? And so it's like, okay, you have to look at the association matters for people that are thinking about their narrative arc. I feel like the Nikes and the Gatorades have lost that.
I feel like what people like Ross are doing so smartly is they're basically speed running, building a legacy brand. It's no longer like I have to do this over a 20 year time horizon. You're like, wouldn't a cadence start like two years ago?
Like if even like, it's like they go, okay, we can, we know what we're doing. We can come in from the start. We can poach like really high profile, like athletes or people like out of the spotlight and make them representative of our brand and give them a wider audience.
You used to have to buy with television ads, buy social media and like the documentarian YouTubes and then do these like really kind of smart plays where it's like, okay, how do you, how do you put the dollars you have work to maximum value? I think bandit running was really the people who really were thinking about this in an elevated way to start where they did that unsponsored project where they got a lot of attention in the Olympics.
Then they had, I think it was like the Grenadines or one of those they sponsored for the Olympics. They were like, saying, hey, how can we take these bets to act on a world stage while supporting really like smaller, lesser known people and just like say the upside is going to be worth it.
And now I think that that cycle is you can be, you know. Cadence could be in a conversation with a Gatorade in a sub five years. And that's a really interesting thing to think about.
I think it should be terrifying for those luxury brands. I think it's really interesting too, because back to association, like the Woodhalls are signed to Nike. Like they're permanently signed to Nike or like not permanently, but their deal, obviously.
Yeah, it's Nike times Cadence in their bio that we had up here. So exactly. So like being able to see Nike and ex -Cadence is the power of the association.
You know what I mean? They did a photo shoot with Cadence and Nike on their shirts and stuff, like a lookbook and whatever. Game day photos, I would say.
say you know we call that parasite marketing i always viewed it back in the day where it'd be like cool we're gonna show off this skirt but she's the girl's been wearing gucci tights or whatever and it's like yeah this is this is the elevated version of that yeah so i think it's a really cool opportunity to people start connecting the dots really it's all about that's all it is like how can you connect the dots to like how you want to be associated to whatever brand absolutely so what are you working on next what are you excited about coming up i'm working on a lot of ugc right now i'm actually for your own content too right you're the egc creator yeah so i'm working As of right now, I'm working, honestly, a lot of things.
But what I'm most excited for is like the uncapped potential for UGC. And so me being a producer and having the experience to edit. at volume i'm like huh imagine if i put this like you know instead of doing all these trial rules for my clients imagine if i put it to myself and get the ry right away so that's something i'm messing around with that's just like it's been a month and i'm ready at like 80 videos so we'll see like i'll probably update like probably in two months and see it is funny it's about how many people uh like i have like a very similar i don't like villain origin story arc where i was like we're paying these influencers how much i was like i could do this yeah and then like yeah and then fast forward a couple years uh and so but i do think that there is that that kind of hybrid now where like anyone who is good at this creative like cool I should be on both sides of it it was almost used to be awkward it's like oh I'm either the talent or the creative director or whatever now I do think we're in this kind of amorphous world where you can do any of these things and and you kind of want to you want it because it means like you're going to be a better strategist a better like operator because you're like in the trenches like oh that's why this video didn't work well that too but I think it's a really crucial important like understanding if you're also in the trenches doing the work you can actually talk to these creators and they'll look up to you and so something like you've mentioned in the past like I wanted to make content organic
it because i wanted to be able to brief it better absolutely that's exactly where i'm at on the ugc on the paid side so when i do these calls with these brands that i'm internal with i'd be like here's what i'm testing and here's how i was able to make 20 different variations from this batch so i don't burn out and so that's the biggest thing too a lot of people don't understand like they burn out easily and they give up before they actually strike gold and so i've been helping a lot of like brands and like a lot of creators like how to stay consistent but also stay motivated because everyone's motivated by money but it's like how can you get them to stake assistant, but also make quality ads.
Absolutely. I really appreciate you coming on. I think it's valuable for people to like actually see what operators are doing and working on them.
Like what we think about and how we feel about these campaigns and like how people think strategically about marketing. So I think really cool to get a glimpse of that. I'll put your links down below so people can hunt you down for whatever reason if they want to.
We are doing another community call coming up. If you have any questions about anything like this, we can hit onsite, do like a live FAQ on that. I'll have that link down below as well.
Thank y 'all so much for watching. you
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The premise is an admission: nobody can track every shift in marketing anymore, so two people who work opposite ends of the same industry sit down and inventory what is actually working. One briefs creative strategists at an agency. The other is the strategist in the field, shooting, editing, and shipping the assets.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:42list
Street interview pre-production checklist
Define the ICP before casting anyone
Write the hooks, angles, and questions in advance
Cast a charismatic host who can absorb rejection
Ask one core question plus one or two follow-ups
Plan the edit so the clips assemble into a story
The stated reason most street interview shoots fail is that crews go out and record without deciding who they're talking to or what the finished story is. Controlling the variables up front is what makes the footage cuttable.
Steal forany on-location interview or testimonial shoot
11:29model
Three levels of employee-generated content
Level 1: a few naturally active people, usually the founder and the social team
Level 2: a recruited majority of the team posting consistently, often incentivized
Level 3: episodic content with recurring characters across multiple networks, up to a full social show
A maturity ladder for staff posting, with Buffer cited at level two and brands running cast-based series at level three. The levels are sequential, so a brand that has not done level one has no business attempting level three.
Steal fordeciding how far an internal social program should go before it outruns the team
09:56concept
Vignette carousel as a social show pilot
Before funding a full series, publish a carousel of five to fifteen second mini-films that each tell a small story in one place or with one character. It requires no plot and no through-line, and the engagement answers whether the audience wants the bigger format.
Steal forde-risking any expensive content format before committing budget
29:55concept
Counter-positioning
Identify what the audience in a category is used to seeing, then present something familiar in form but different in the lifestyle it signals. The framing explicitly rejects the idea that counter-positioning requires being countercultural or edgy.
Steal forpositioning a personal brand, an artist, or a product in a crowded category
33:39concept
The keynote as a webinar
Apple's annual event is reframed as the same mechanism as a direct-response webinar: invite an audience at a fixed time, demonstrate the product at high production value, sell, and generate clippable moments as a byproduct. The tactic looks dated only because of how most people execute it.
Steal forarguing for a live sales event inside a business that thinks webinars are beneath it
36:03concept
Speed-running a legacy brand
Rather than building awareness over twenty years with television and retail, a new brand signs high-profile but not-yet-mainstream athletes early, builds a physical hub around them, and compresses the credibility timeline into a few years.
Steal forchallenger-brand planning against an incumbent with decades of head start
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
39:39link
“I'll put your links down below so people can hunt you down. We are doing another community call coming up. If you have any questions about anything like this, we can do like a live FAQ on that.”
Soft and late. The guest's links come first, then a single invitation to a community call framed as a place to ask follow-up questions about the tactics just covered. The mid-roll sponsor segment carries the heavier commercial weight and is clearly signposted as one.
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A 22-minute tactical breakdown of five social-media archetypes — Oracle, Performer, World Builder, Catalyst, Helper — with the resource-audit prerequisite most strategy videos skip.
Oren and Sir Kensington's founder Scott Norton break down how brands turn customers into characters, using Vacation, Wes Anderson, Ralph Lauren, and Anduril as case studies.
A 25-minute content operations playbook covering team structure, brand examples, and the pod system for turning any marketing org into a media company.
A 35-minute A-to-Z playbook from beginner to advanced: levels, archetypes, formats, positioning, monetization, and the timing framework most people get wrong.
A two-hour-47-minute marketing curriculum that runs from positioning theory to a live Meta Ads build, a Klaviyo flow, and a whiteboard of the lead funnel.
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