Marketing Genius: Social Media Is About to Change Forever (Here’s What to Do)

It is a steaming sack of. droid now when it comes to social media. You're creating things that remember the trend, but very little about the brand. You might get an impression, but you're not making an impression. So if you're not making the impression, what's the point? That's Michael Corcoran, the marketing genius behind your favorite brands on social media where he's generated over two billion impressions. In this episode, Michael reveals how social media is changing in 2026. We're living on very fragile ground right now. A wage and centaisism, fake news, AI Slop. You could have and grow and build into all this work to build this following reputation, this region, these platforms. They could be switched off overnight and you own nothing. You don't own your audience. They do. The marketing strategy that will set you up to win. Four different ways now we can win on social. Fast, low, unprompted and prompted. The best probably uses social media right now for most brands is. Interesting. How smart brands are cutting through? You have to have locomotion. You have to create some form of tension. You have to make somebody feel something. And then the hasty things within your creative that build cues back to the brand. The dark arts of social media that creators don't talk about. Testing hundred tonnails thing that goes on and podcasts as the way to win views. I get it, but I think it's absolutely a barless because I think it's hiding what really some of the smartest podcasts companies have been doing is. That's crazy. And so much more. This is a marketing masterclass. I really hope you enjoy it. Now let's dive in. Social media managers are finally going to get exposed for doing shit work. Quick one before we get into the episode. One of my goals this year is to grow this podcast. And the only way I can do that is with more subscribers. It just helps us get more guests, bigger guests, better guests, and keep improving the show for you. And it also just sends a signal to the algorithm to show this to more people. So I'd really appreciate it if you subscribed to the channel. And now let's get into the episode. Michael. - Come on. - Who are you? Round two. Round two. - Ding ding. - We're back. - We're back, baby. - We are back. 2026. Social media marketing strategy. Where do we begin? The same place we were with the last time we met. Starting with strategy. I think now more than ever. And the last say, two or three years as I've kind of unpacked the Ryan air days, which we'll talk hopefully very little today about when we're moving forward. And as I start to work with more and more brands in this big bag crazy world, the need for strategy is far more stronger than ever. And it's not even just social strategy, brand strategy. And so I don't think how you set up and develop a strategy has changed. I think the need for it has. Like again, I still take the same principles I've taken since I figured out what the focus strategy was in the first place, which is again, trying to find a problem gap opportunity for the business. That aha moment that you think your brand can solve or use it as a way to be more memorable and sell lots of shit. And find how you can change how you deliver upon that and where you are now to where you need to get to next. Looking at the 2026 landscape, how do you see things? I'll be a little bit blunt. It is a steaming sack of shit right now when it comes to social media. And I'm not just trying to throw shade at how brands are doing it, but I just think the world and social media as a whole. Yes, it's getting a really bad rap for a lot of reasons around outrage and sensation and fake news, AI Slop, yada, yada, yada. But we're living on very fragile ground right now. And what's happening in the world is quite tragic and unfortunate. And social is again, from one to the better, where there were a weapon in that unpacking. You have two types of people in the world right now. You have people on one side and people on the other. And anything that's been put out in these platforms right now is catered to winning the attention of one and creating tension against the other. There's very few centered people, I think, on social right now. And everybody knows, and in the past, outrage and sensation was done as an anchor to grab attention and win attention. But the implications of that in the world we are right now is the scary place to be, because if you step back and look at it, the richest man in the world currently owns X. When you look at it, it was the second, but now I think the fourth or fifth richest man in the world has just acquired the US arm of TikTok. And it was the third richest man, but I think the fifth or sixth, but those tables change, lucky men are our own lucky in certain cases. That richest man owns meta. And we have to be realistic with what's going on right now that how their algorithms or businesses are structured and how the platforms are working is to benefit them and the people at the top without getting too political. And whoever sits in a certain house in a certain country, they will appease to keep the profits of those businesses going. And that's a really important part to think about when these platforms are playing out, because if you remember years, a few years earlier, moderation and safety was starting to be on an all time high and these platforms were being held to account. But now those have been pulled back for want of what we call free speech. And it's just made these platforms very uneasy and unsteady. Then when you put on another couple hairs on this, is we're also living on rented land. And that scares me as a brand owner and as somebody working on behalf of brands who are investing money in these platforms. And we saw this in the years of Avila and must taking over Twitter in potentially TikTok US closing down that you could have and grow and build and do all this work to build this following, to build this reputation, to build this reach in these platforms. But they could be switched off overnight and you own nothing. You don't own your audience, they do. And that's also a scary realization that we have to, these platforms are amazing. We can do very good, creative, incredible things in these platforms, but we don't own our audience. So we need to understand that how we can use into our benefit, but not disregard, they need to diversify the platforms and also make sure that you're building other touch points that can re-engage these people if these ever go off. So that's all doom and gloom. And it is a pretty sheer place to be. We have this last piece of it then, which is again, the inflation of certain tactics on the platforms based on the outrage and sensationalism, based on what's working, based on these platform owners wanted to keep you with attention. And again, I hate saying this, but a little bit of laziness on behalf of brands on how they can win attention on the platforms. And I get why they do it. And this inflation of trends has caused a problem for that particular tactic on social to work, because we talk about the little little, you know, airplane days of working on Ryanair and how we use, we broke it down in the previous episode around how to identify trends, wind trends, win attention in the news cycle, as a way to build reach. And that can still be the case, but the problem now is almost all brands are doing that now. And that becomes a difficult situation to become memorable, because if we're all doing that and we're reacting to engagement news of Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift and the second that happens every brand is piling on, the people who are enjoying the news and the breaking story are getting the little bit of serotonin, the bit of entertainment from it. And that's great, they're loving it, but they're loving the trend and remembering the trend for the majority. The platforms are loving you even more. And if I use this quote right, Jack Dorsey, I think said former owner of Twitter, we are the greatest employees of these platforms and we do it for free. And in fact, I go one more that brands actually pay to work for these platforms. They are laughing at us because you're keeping, I'm playing to the benefits of the algorithm right now to win the attention of these people and keep them on the platforms for longer. And what is the important for them? But they make money by putting ads in between that. So they're winning. After all these efforts that are going on, we have to ask ourselves, are brands winning here? Are you being memorable? And I don't think people are measuring that to prove it or disprove it. So I'm on the fence, but it's going to take a lot to convince me now that jumping on trends and the way brands are doing right now in these platforms is making that brand as memorable as they think. Now they can argue, we're getting a million impressions from time to time or putting a little funny in the comment sections and we're getting impressions. But think about the behavior, what's going on? I'm a person who's scrolling my phone. I am scrolling five to 10 times to 20 times a day. And in that I'm scrolling 100 times. It's more, I'm probably being conservative here. But you stop in a video, you laugh, you find it funny to trend. You scroll a couple times again, same trend, different representation, you laugh again. You go to the third time, you do it again. You're really enjoying this trend, but again, the fatigue at some point. But then you go, I bet this creator of the comment section is great. They go in and there's brands upon brands upon brands landing one-liners and all this and they're getting lots of entertainment and lots of engagement. They give it an easy, like a lazy like and then they scroll out again. They do that again and again and again and again. In that behavior, can you be so confident convinced that they're going to remember your brand in all of that? I struggle. Yeah. Now there is brands that are doing it and brands can find it, but they've got to prove it in measure that it's more successful than they think. If not, it's a tactic is getting low barrier entertainment, low barrier engagement, and playing to the current algorithm that's not doing anything for the brand. And that's scary. So that is all a quite a shit sandwich. But I do think that there's lightness hope and I do think there's ways to learn and ways we can get around it. And I'm trying to kind of pen it in a bit of an artistic way, but I'm calling the organic social renaissance. Yeah. Shall we talk? Let's talk what's that? Give us the prescription. The prescription. So look, I think there is a bit of renness that's happening because like if I was a brand owner or I was somebody who managed budget media and I was seeing all of that happening and I wasn't seeing any metric beyond the vanity metric moving a dial for brand or business. I be well, should we be even doing this in the first place? Is this investment worked? It's wild. I think that will be a fair question. And there's like there was always a question on the value of organic and I still think there is. And for many, many brands, if you can't crack the code there correctly, the best probably uses social media right now for most brands is really good creative, with really good paid media, or really clever partnerships with creators. One will either drive you brand awareness or consideration and one might drive you salience. And there are really good effective ways without even having to publish anything organically at all. But the case I have for organic now is a little bit different. If you can get an understanding of how the two different types of discovery works or how the platforms are working right now, I think there's a way you can get a win with all of it or some of it and prove value of what social can bring. And there's two types of discovery that are going on right now, I think, and again, bear with me because as I start to put shape on this and tall on this, I'm jumping around trying to make it make sense and I'm going on this journey of trying to articulate it as best I can. But there's two types of discovery, there's prompted and impromptu. And on prompted is the discovery that we're all familiar with in the last three or four years. It's the current algorithm is what when TikTok came to town, it was algorithm based on what it thinks that you want to see based on maybe what you consume before and all the other platforms of copy that algorithm and that's what's there. And that is like prescribed by the algorithm itself plus probably a little bit of spin doctrine by the platform owners for whatever propaganda they need to deliver. We talk about that fragile ground earlier. But then there's the on there's the prompts, the prompted side of it, which is you physically using social to find things. And again, what will you have called that in all marketing terms, organic search. And search has become this new extra layer of winning organically that I think if brands get a right, it becomes a really valuable thing because all the data and all the touch points in search behavior is telling us that younger people are using search as a vehicle to be educated, find information, what it recipes, how to's, you know, um, style inspiration, whatever it is, they're using the search for our TikTok and Instagram and YouTube as the spaces to do that, not Google. Yeah. And we see that in the traffic numbers drop. But we're also seeing that in because of a all is well and LLM's chat DBT's are doing that too. But then if you connected thoughts here and you're probably connecting them in your brain as we're talking, that where is the biggest source of a lot of the information that has been pulled through by these GPs and LLM's right now, it's content on social media. So now you can see a really good value of two things that are happening right now in in unprompted, you know, entertainment content and prompted, which is search. Now to get past the trend side of things to win, there's there's probably a few other ways we need to understand and how we do it. And this is where the time is truance of marketing command and we're seeing early days of brands that are building a, you know, strategic direction with repeatable formats or an idea platform would they get creative a repetition. There's a chance that in that, you know, fast news cycle trend content that's appearing within your feed. If you can create a format that has brand cues or cues that become memorable and distinct, the grab attention almost all this chaos. You might actually start building things that become entertaining but also memorable. Yeah. And you hear this word repeatable formats and episodic content been used a lot, but it makes sense. And this isn't anything new again. This is again, what all great marketers were doing for many, many years and traditional creative and even traditional storytellers of the past were doing all these things to create memorability to create cues that connect the dots and actually build the brand. This is a long time and so bear with me. So we have these two discovery systems that are happening right now, which is prompted and are prompted. But the behaviors around them are very different, but also how they're how people consume content in those two situations are very different too. Yeah. And again, where I'm trying to get with this is there's this thing of what I'm calling for, I'm not just calling it, but others are probably calling it too, is fast and slow social. Now, my interpretation of that and where I got to was that fast social is that, you know, low effort, high emotional, high entertaining, bingeable content that makes it easy for the people to be entertained, consumed and educated and slow is the more considered thought out that I'm going looking for and experiencing and they they they connect quite well to this prompted and unprompted settle. However, when I started thinking about it, I thought I could easily layer both over each other and then I could I could create some sort of framework of of teaching, but there's a little bit more nuance in it and I started to read a bit of the book, Tinking Fast and Slow and it complemented really well because human behavior is kind of broken down into these kind of two areas of fast and slow and and they're lying to the behaviors of how social has been constructed and how social is either been forced to be used by the feeds or been naturally used by the human to be more considered and that's the source of it. So they gel quite well. What's really interesting is that right now like both serve really good ways to win organically and social, but how you build them, the story structures and acts, how you optimize, how you distribute and the speed at which you'll see success are very very different, but when you post both of them, they're both the same on the platforms. So each post is published the same structure the same, but the speed at which it's going to succeed, how you win in both those areas and how you construct them are very very different. Yeah. So you need to construct social to be done in a very interesting and different way. Now, I did think about how you can overlay them and it would be very black and white, but I mentioned earlier the nuance. So I started to think about it more because like when you think about what I said, fast social, fast social could be trends, it could be a repeatable format, it could be common sections, it could be a lot of things in high octane, fast, short format, entertainment content, and that covers a lot of areas. And also there can be fast moments in culture where search is important also. So let's take an example. We could have the the bafters that were on over the last few weeks in the UK and Jesse Boeckley could have been on the right carpet and she was wearing this gorgeous dress from the designer James Anderson. And that is a moment in culture where it's one of many on the award circuit right now, but if somebody sees it on TV, if somebody sees it on a short clip, and if somebody sees it on a best of looks from a fashion creator, they're going to go, who's that dress from and what is it? I want something like that. So once it's a fast short moment, people will use search to try and actually just that's and what you want to make sure is if you're the dressmaker or the dress owner, you want to be sure you're you're appearing and understanding who it was and fulfilling that search term. Or if you're a fashion brand or a fashion creator and want to get more views and be the voice of a fashion or here's a look that look like Jesse Boeckley's dress, but at a fraction of the price or are you where you can get on the high street, that's an opportunity in a fast moment to win. And the same goes for like slow. You could have slow, unprompted content too, because we talked about this repeatable format. I think there's where the bit of differentiation is on fast, unprompted content is trend jacking, new cycle stuff that's short wind or low shelf life, could have a shelf life of 24 hours, 48 hours, and it's done. It's the next thing. Slow, unprompted could be repeatable formats that you know that's based on how much you watch that type of content again and again. And in your scroll between the new cycle content, it's still going to give you some of that stuff that you do like. You do follow you do highly engage with, but that might be seen for a few days. And there's still an opportunity for in even the unprompted feeds for that step content to appear. So where I'm getting to is I think a matrix of it makes sense and makes better. So if we were to draw out the matrix, we would then have fast slow, unprompted and prompted. And that means then we can break it into these four quadrants of four different ways now we can win on social. The one that most people are doing right now is fast, unprompted. The trends, the common sections appear and it can't work. It can, but it has to be done right and people need to start proving it by getting better measurement on it and vanity. But the other areas that unlock is then slow unprompted, which I mentioned was the like the repeatable forms the content we know, the greatest hit stuff that will be shared to all the time in between the chaos of the new cycle. And then we have slow prompted, which is again, then the deep considered search content, which is again, like your traditional Google, like your traditional search, you are searching for terms. There are always trends that tell you there's always infrastructure needs platforms that tell you what people are searching for, fill the gap, create the content, optimize especially current on rank as high and be there. And then there's fast. prompted, which again we touch on, which is things that are happening in culture that they see, that they search for, that they want to act on impulse. And that kind of gets us to a place where now you've got these four areas. You've got then fast, unprompted, which is again trends, which is kind of more active content, active consumption. We have slow, unprompted, which is more passive consumption. We then have fast prompted, which is impulsive decisions. And then we have slow prompted, which is considered decisions. And now by building this out, you can start to see, okay, we can see now where we can use social in different ways and different needs and try and build a value from it. Now, the greatest brands could do all of it and do all of it really well. But I'm not kind of, kind of, arc building the architecture of this to push that. If you're a brand where you feel that across all your marketing mix, your time resource and budget, or the problem you need to solve strategically, now you can look at this matrix and go, well, what are the areas of this that I could win here and do a good job on? Because you might be a brand who has so much marketing media, who's so rooted in culture, who invest heavily on creators that reaches not your problem or awareness is not your problem. The problem actually might be consideration or salience, which means, okay, if we're spending all this money over here and doing a great job, but what is the real value of organic social? Or is there a value? Well, the value might be, okay, if consideration is a problem, we should then be looking at slow prompted search as a way to deliver upon that and doing that really, really well with the time resource and budget we have. Or we are struggling to become memorable in a clutter category. And that might be fitness where there are so many power brands right now that when you search feeds, all you can see is beautiful men in tank tops with the same kind of pump fest insurance. Or the same type of running gear. You see these beautiful women in these beautiful leggings with their peachy bones, all wearing the same thing. But if they don't have anything that is building these cues to remember the brand, all you're doing is lifting the category. And all you're doing is again, trying to again make people want to work out, but you haven't done enough work to try and actually make them think of you at that moment of purchase. And that's where, okay, if that's our problem, we'll maybe then slow, unprompted, plus slow search might be the way for us to use organic social to try and solve that problem. Michael absolutely blew me away with his frameworks in this episode. And so I'm going to put a breakdown of them at the link in the description in my next newsletter. So if you want to break down of his frameworks and matrixes, I'll put it there and then you can implement them for your own brand or in your own content. You can get a link for free at the link in the description. So now it starts to build a space and place where I need to develop a strategy, which is again my north star kind of place where I need to go where I know this there's a gap problem opportunity, I think social can solve. And here's how I think we do it. Then you think about an idea platform, which is again, the creative manifestation of that, which is, it's not content petters because content petters is another problem where all we do is we force ourselves to fill a feed by creating more buckets of messaging that creates this fragmentation of messaging, rather than a single-minded thing, we do creatively at repetition that makes us memorable. And then maybe using something like this framework to go, well, if I have the ability to do it all, we're going to start building it and over time break it down and build. Or there's one or two of these areas where I think that can land on that. And based on my time resource and budget, I think this is the way I can prove to the business that we can use platforms in this way and actually find measurements that matter. And then I can go back into a room with the big boys and go, this is what's moved our brand metrics, not just vanity metrics. This is actually increased search volume, or we found a way to our measurement to attribute a sale because of this type of content. Now we're starting to actually build something that proves that these platforms can work a little bit better amongst all the chaos that we just broke down at the start. Do you think there's some, one of those boxes is there's more opportunity than others? No. I think there's more of an opportunity now for slow and prompted content, repeatable formats, episodic content, things like that, because of how much people have piled on to trends. And how much brands are spending their time over there, they're not being memorable. And it's almost like when some people zig-y, the other zag, and it was like even back in the time when we were good at this in the right air days, everybody else has been this polished, curated, perfect, happy pancake, choose their brand. And we were complete opposite. And we want attention because we did it differently. I think those that will win, regardless of where you do what you do is you have to evoke a motion, you have to create some form attention, you have to make somebody feel something. And then the has to be things within your creative that build cues back to the brand. That's not shoving product, shoving sales. And again, if you're creative enough to do that, you can still do that. You know, there are brands that do that really well. But if you're not doing that, when you're not going to win. So I imagine in these early days of it, now that's a space everyone's talking about because that's a way to win because everyone's doing it over here. You may not get as much impressions as what you do over there. Now granted, not everybody's getting the same volume of impressions because you might get one every few weeks or moments. You stick at a screenshot in the PowerPoint presentation and you present it back to the business and your smash on social. But if they were truly asked, well, can you prove to me how it's shifted the dial and brand? They probably can't. And so you might get less impressions, but the hope and if you measure correctly is whatever you do over here in this place where those brand cues are created by formats, things that make people want to stop, consume and know what's you. You, there's probably a better chance that there's more impressions within each of those deliveries that are making you at least more memorable. What's some good examples that you see of those quadrants? I think curries for an example are still doing an incredible job in this fast and prompted space. Now to be fair, they're actually building probably all of that out incredibly well. They're doing it because they're basing the trend at a moment in the right way. They're delivering their interpretation of it really, really well. What they've done, something they've consistently done since they've existed, which was they put their people, the specialists at the heart of even the entertaining content. And they're one of very few brands that are getting product in in such an exceptional way. So they did something recently, I think, on the Winter Olympics where this Canadian curler was been found out for cheating because he was doing that little extra push on the curling stone after when past that line. I don't ask for the name. I'm not, but they did it really well where they took that moment. It wasn't immediate. They shot it in a way where they used product and their people to replicate it through a pushing moment of closing a microwave, closing an engine, closing all the things within the product. And the copy was really really well too. So they're constantly doing it really well up in that space as well. And they've got a lot of QS or brands, quick service restaurants. That's a great space for them to win. And this is where I kind of changed my mind where I said, all brand should stop doing that. But I don't think so. I think when it comes to always being on the tip of culture, always need to be constantly memorable in a decision making. QS or brands can work on that space really well. When it comes to the slow unprompted content, repeatable formats and shows. I think Candy Kidns is a great example of what they've done with CKTV and how they've built this office skit style show in a workings of the sweet factory. They've done a great job of bringing in stable characters like these NPC characters. They're actually actors, but and it's shot by the guy who shoots top jaw. So again, quality well made, they're using Jamie in a really clever way who's a familiar QA familiar character under building things and cues and distinct assets within the format that every time you see it, the CKTV in the corner, Jamie in the first frame and these other characters within the office, it becomes something that when you stop on your feet, you know exactly what it is. You're going to stop and you're going to watch it. They're amazing. Oh, really good. I'm really entertaining too. Now, there's another brand that I think they're doing, which is Confused.com. They're doing it similar with how they're doing TLDR education for insurance. That's quite a bland brand. They're doing it in a way where they're creating these repeatable formats around exaggerating how tough it is to be an adult. And then finding easy ways to explain the most boring things adults have to do and they're slowly building these repeatable formats that are starting to win attention and starting to grow and get reached. Same things, same cues exist. Now, there are a few other brands in the US like Rumi's and you hear them bit by a carc loyalty company called Built. Kava are doing it. Even I think DoorDash are starting to experiment with it. But it's just starting to show that lead with entertainment almost built towards this kind of it's more the escapeism or the fantasy and fiction world of content but make it entertaining and have the cues that are repeatable are the ones that are going to start winning and building and growing. And there's plenty ways to break that down for hours and how you do it. So they're on that side of ones that are doing well. From a search point of view, there are a few brands but it's too early to see any kind of big case, at least on who's winning in the world of slow search, slow prompted. And there are certainly some kind of restaurants, hotels. I know there's a few kind of adventure parks that are doing a really good job but we're we're finding it slow to see the data. If we're being told the honest search is about six to twelve months old and we're not seeing the case until the work coming. true, we are slowly starting to advise people on it, but again, it's still early days because it's going to take time to build. When it comes to fast search, the fast prompted. There's probably been case countless examples of when you saw trends like Dubai chocolate and how that started to become a thing and the search turns to Dubai chocolate went up and all the chocolate brands or all the bakeries that had the alternatives, they were using search in a very clever way to infiltrate their really, really well. Interesting. So the opportunities like the blue ocean would be the definitely in the slow prompted, slow and prompted as well. Yeah, all of them. I think the other three quadrants is where the room is to grow. And if you were to find ways to insert yourself into the new cycle, but without trying to force it with these ridiculous trends all the time, if enough cloud happens to a new cycle moment, especially in pop culture, people are searching for it or if there's the water cooler moment or if there's somebody who's chatting in DMs or in communities about it, but hasn't shared a link, you're not actually going to want to go look for the for the piece of the moment. I think I'd even take the Brit Awards, which were on recently. There was like moments where there were people were silenced or things were caught out from the show because of whatever political or message that they had. Even knowing that you want to know what the hell did they say. Yeah. So people are searching to see, well, what is the fan footage? Yeah. What's the what there must be a piece of content out there to actually tell me or show me what was said because something was censored that I didn't see. So where you can jump into those moments. Then there's obviously shows and things like traders where people might wear something. There's always that opportunity in that that fast side of it too for a brand to show up in the right way for them, rather than just jumping on or doing this ridiculous interpretation or trying to put a blonde wig on a kind of puppy and an American football helmet on the other just because Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift got engaged, which is where most of the men because they're trying to force themselves into a moment that they probably just shouldn't be in. What about slow and prompted? What are some good good examples of that? Slow and prompted. Again, that's the more the the episodic content says. The kind of kittens I think would have been a good example of that. Or hot ones? Like hot ones. Yeah, not as a brand, but a good example like Simon's on days, all of those all those types of shows where they have a format characteristics cues are great. And it's a great example because like the fear with this side is that everybody looks at a kind of kittens or a roomies by built and they all create almost like these sit-comy style shows of people together. And it's not a bad start, but you should treat that side of the world or that side of the matrix like TV. If you think how many TV stations are on your TV box, it's probably hundreds. Yeah. And within each of those TV stations have different formats and genres of content. And then if you go into each station, there's different show formats with different teams. You should be trying to think about what are the things you can recreate and use that becomes this new format or show format that works really well. And I think that's something creators do really well. And when you think of the sightmen and what they do, they look at show formats in the past and recreate them into their new spin-offs. Or channel four have done something really well on their 4OD stations where they've commissioned creators to create these kind of new show formats that become so you can learn a lot from surfing the TV to look at what is a repeatable format, episode of content that I think that I can create that couldn't make it memorable. And that doesn't mean you have to slap all your heavy branding and funding is a lot of brands or have many distinct assets right now. And that's maybe an opportunity to actually build something and build it over time. But that takes time and it takes time to consume, takes time to go. You might get lucky in how it's consumed really fast and gets picked up. Then there's things you can do tactically to make that work. And also within the distribution there are things you can do to accelerate more eyeballs on that. And a lot we can learn from podcasts and creators too. What else do you think is the state of the land in 2026? Anything else on that? What I don't want to do is over-engineer things to make people get this wrong. I think like if you were to follow a good strategic framework, develop a good idea platform and then work off a matrix of what we've just broken down. I think that gives you enough tools to make decisions on how you could do something that gives you an edge, that gives you an opportunity to actually win on the platforms and not just navel gaze and look at everybody else and copy what everyone else does. Like you can steal a lot of pride, you can be inspired. But if you directly copy things, that's where we just go from, you know, happy pancake to stay brands back in the early 2000s to now everybody's jumping on trends brands of 2026 to then repeatable formats that all look like a friend's sitcoms and social. We'll just constantly do this all the time if we don't like build and actually think like marketers or brand builders on these platforms. And we'll lose. Hey guys, hope you're enjoying this week's episode. Just a reminder that if you know someone who you think this episode could be useful for where you work at a company where there's a slack channel that you think it could be worthwhile sharing it, I would really appreciate it. It helps me grow the show, message by message, share by share. So if you know someone who might find this episode useful, please take out your phone and WhatsApp it to them or pop it in your company, a slack channel. I would really appreciate it. Now let's get back into this week's episode. I love the framework. I think that's super powerful. And I can see how definitely there's loads of opportunity in those different quadrants and those are good, those are good examples. How would you advise a brand to think about where their gaps are? I guess it starts with whether they've a strategy or not in the first place and most of them don't. And again, I'll use this word a lot. And again, something I'm probably getting a bit more comfortable with is being okay with being repetitive on that. Yeah. Because again, we all as as people who want to learn and grow, classy look for new information and new things. And then tall leaders within our industry are always trying to give us new things. I think this is going to be a hot new thing in 2026. I'm very happy being the person that is like actually, John, slow down the time this truth is American, the basics we need to get right. And I think strategy will get you there and unlock that. And strategy that will unlock the edge for that is, you know, what does your company have that nobody has has or what the category is going on that and everybody's doing a certain way or everyone's trying to be in a certain way that you either can't fight against you can't do or you can find a way to do it differently. Understanding culture, like what are what's going on there right now that we could find a sweet spot between what we want to say and what people want and then find unlock it and then cost was motivation wants and behaviors. And then trying to see what's this eureka moment? What is the thing the the tension between the problem and the opportunity that unlocks this our harm moment? And that's where you need to think about it really clearly and carefully because most people will just copy. But this point of tension should be considered based on what the others are doing which they're not on what you can do which is different and how they're positioned themselves in a way that you know you can't already own if you try and do it you're going to be the poor poor persons version of it. And the most case is like you'll probably be outspend by the bigger brands who are trying to do that anyway. But it's getting to that that's going to help you make the decision on where the rest of it is. And then you have to make a decision operation is with the rest of what you're doing on marketing. Do I need to do any of these tactics because you're doing such a great job elsewhere? Like we don't have to be like doing all the things and diluting what we're doing on social, especially if you're a brand with huge investment who haven't invested enough on social, but are using the rest of the marketing makes quite effective. And if you're spending millions upon millions on reach on other touch points, well reach might not be your problem and you're thinking in your process to strategy will unlock that but there might be something that reach can't do that social can do. Yeah. And that's what you should be focusing on and that's what you should be building a case that if I do this and prove to you, when I'm proven to the value of the platform and I'm proven to that I actually get how to build brand and how to maybe help the business. And it's not just this place where a bunch of 12 year olds are posting colorful things because that's still in the perception for many many people. Yeah. And we have this gap in the middle still of like people in the sweet sweet know what the social is the big thing. But they just think it's all viral content lots of laws and not an actual beast that could do things. And I think they're slowly starting to learn because of the creator economy. Like they're learning because people like Sidemen, people like you know beta squad people like dude perfect. These guys are building operations that aren't just creator of their building distribution models. New product development extensions were they're becoming self-contained based on what they've built here. And it doesn't matter what they make once they put it out there, their audience will want a piece of it. And they're all looking over here going what if they can do what can't we? Yeah. But there's a gap. And I think the marketing education gap with social media professionals is what's holding us back. Because like when I wrote this wave like I started in 2009 and 10 like in the early days and we were the young us we were the the dreads ears in the office who were the young people on social who were like go figure that out and play with it. But the problem was we went oh no this is the special thing you can't have it. You all gray hair marketers don't know what you're talking about. We're going to be over here in our social media bubble because you don't get it. And over the years we kept doing that. We created a social media agency social media teams. And we had this isolated island. And I think the greatest regret I had was not actually learning about how to brand brand build. like earlier. And I came to a point where like I was like, fuck, I really don't know what I'm doing. And I'm going to get exposed. And no wonder why I can't get the budget I need. No wonder why I can't get the resource we need. Because we can't convince to see sweet the real value of these platforms. Because we can't talk about it in the way they want it talked about or we can't prove beyond vanity. That I can actually shift the dial. So why would they want to invest our money when they've got all these models, measurements and tools. Now again, we can argue some of it effective, some of it not. But they have a way. They have people who can articulate people who can set up people who can measure it. We don't. And unless we fix that gap, we'll still have a long way to go. And to me, it starts with strategy. It starts up marketing education. And in the new world of again, how do this is not to like, like to down or shit upon all social professionals, you guys know your platforms, you live in breed social. Then a lot of far greater than the sea suite. But you've got to find a way to make sure you understand how to build brands. Because if not, you're not doing your job. Yeah. It's a very rocky moment from there. Just did my job. But if we don't do it, well, they're just going to let us play and they'll let us fuck about these platforms until we come and actually convince them and get the respect that we should be getting in the first place. Because we're on the resource, on the value, underutilized. But we also probably haven't deserve the respect because we haven't done to the table in the way we need to. It's an interesting inflection point as well because you're seeing like the rise of YouTube, of these other like organic, you would call it, I would call it organic social. But it is like long form now. So it's YouTube and it's podcasts and it's Spotify. And then you've got these media entities that have come up through the creator economy and your Andrew Hubermans and your side men and your fellow studios. So actually like the potential and the power and the case studies to build trust and convert from organic content have never been stronger. Agreed. But as you say, the perception of it still being like social and memes and all the rest of it kind of really devalues that. How do you educate the CMOs about that? I find it really difficult because every brand I go into, that's the glaring gap all the time. Like until we start building a language that brings a closer to marketing again or find this sweet spot of how we articulate it until senior professional certainly in this world actually think more strategically and develop more strategic work. It's never going to happen. And there is this like and you won't get that foot in the door or that moment to build trust if you're not speaking their language or trying to prove beyond vanity that it works because if not it's just going to be you're going to get your hour every quarter and you're going to go in and you're just going to oh here's this viral video that got a million impressions. But what did it do for the brand and business? It's just all we want viral. It's slay. They're just not going to be entertaining at all. So I definitely think there's a gap in marketing education and it goes both ways. There's a gap in social education. So we have to find a way to bring more and partial voices into these businesses to take people on a journey to convince them of the power of it. Are you getting said it's probably 40 times already? It starts at understanding how to brand build, what is strategy and then the rest I think would follow from the back of that. So say I've got a brand. I've built it with paid media and I now want to build trust and I think organic social could be a good way to do that. What would you tell me to do next? I still think you can do it with paid though. That's the thing. So it all depends on like what got you to the conclusion that trust was the issue. And why is what is the problem that's causing the distrust in the brand or the distrust in the product? There's still no reason why a brand that does really go creative and really go paid can't still earn that trust if done correctly and creatively. So it's not just a case that organic can build trust. Look organic is this space and place where the audience will tell you what sticky what's not and then you can learn a lot from it. But I don't believe that everybody needs to be doing it either. I think it goes again it goes back. We're still going back to the same thing every time that what came to that conclusion was that a survey was that what other touch points information did that and what is the best way we can maybe change people's minds in order to get them to trust us more. I don't necessarily think that organic is the solution in theory could organic do it? It could. But I think you have to get through a few steps before you decide and I wouldn't be derailing what you're doing if it's still quite effective or quite well. It just might be it could be a creative problem or it could be the actual the aggression of your media is what's causing the annoying so the distrust. So I would unpack that a lot before I would come with even saying organic might be the root for that. Where should we go next? The next I guess thing that I'm finding quite frustrating at the moment is that we're all focused on the production side the idea side and the optimization of the format and I get that and it's important and that's probably been born from trying to win attention through that bad social feed the hook the hook the hook the hook the hook the hook and I still would oh categorically great if you'd cat master hook you're never going to win attention on social feed but I think something that's neglected across this entire kind of execution side of things is the actual distribution because most people spend so much time so much money so much effort so much layers of amends and approvals and optimization to get a piece of content to the point of just hitting publish that they're completely forgetting about all the different ways that you can still create and distribute on social to actually pep yourself across such a fragmented space in place to work and you see that a lot like and there are definitely people who will watch this that have developed really great creative over the years which just has not got the views that deserved because they weren't creative enough and actually getting their content out there in front of people in the right way and I don't mean just slapping a lot of paid media by it because we know people are okay with ads on social but the view rates are not going to be to what they want they'll watch three seconds because of what they see in the feed and they scroll on if your hook is good you might win another portion of attention to keep them for a certain while but that's not going to make people want to watch really go creative that is in a longer format rather than a six seven you know skip a bad or a six seven paid format you know it's about how can we bypass the really challenging side of the algorithm now that is not getting us there because we talk about this repeatable episodic content slower brand billing stuff but we know what's winning right now because the algorithm is controlled it is the fast social the the unpronounced it but while that is a challenge that we shouldn't just lean in and do because again we're not being memorable you have to to be crafty in how you can get past that and that's where distribution can come in and there's a lot to learn from creators and podcasts and even how we used to do years ago of how you can actually get eyeballs on a piece of content so to me distribution and I reach a long winder way of getting there is where we need to be more creative interesting so what do I mean by that yeah I think we should all start with an idea most people start with a format so most people in social media go let's make a video rather than what's the idea because when you start with the idea you can almost create this ecosystem where you've an idea in the center of it where this is what I want to communicate or this is what I want people to feel think or act upon doing this idea but it's more than just making a video the video is the vessel to make one way of doing it but you can create an ecosystem of taking that idea out across like this this layered onion from copy to comment sections to video content to earned media to paid media to credit collaborations that isn't just starting with the format it's starting with the concept and blowing it out and with that then you're creatively thinking about what how am I going to distribute the content effectively so more people see it now you might have a core idea or a series of content that's at the heart of it that you want as many eyeballs on it as possible but there's ways that you can build around that that gets the essence of the ideas to the cross and as that's doing it's magic to distribute more people are aware of it you again start to post more of that content and it meets it and eventually starts to be seen by more people so you're almost using distribution as a way to get past the challenges of this algorithm right now that's winning attention based on trends in the news cycle in order to get the views you deserve or the views that we used to get in the past and that's really really important I'm just going to interrupt this week's episode to remind you that this show is produced by my own podcast agency's 7x content so if you're enjoying this podcast and looking to start your own in 2026 you can reach out to us at 7xcontent.com and there's a link to apply with us directly in the description so if you're enjoying this show and you like the look of some of the other shows that we produce then you can reach out to us at the link in the description we'd love to hear from you now Now let's get back into this week's episode. - Look, we can learn a lot. Like, we're on a podcast. Podcasts have been kicking ass on this for the last few years. And like, I find this funny here is like, you hear this whole like a testing hundred thumbnail thing that goes on in podcasts as the way to win views. I get it, but I think it's absolutely barless because I think it's hiding what really, some of the smartest podcasts companies have been doing is the use of aggregator accounts, clipper accounts to distribute clips from the show not just their own accounts, has been getting snippets from the show two more eyeballs. And creators have been doing this too, where they either work directly with clipper companies or clipping accounts where they'll do a pay-per-view model or they'll actually pay them a certain amount to clip scenes from podcasts and put it out on their own accounts that they've grown over the years to be seen by more people. So release the snippets in the show formats from those podcasts have been seen by hundreds to thousands and millions of people. So the hope then is when your clips start getting seen, they're gonna consume more. And the more they consume of those clips, well, maybe they're gonna go watch the full thing more. And that distribution tactic alone has grown some of the biggest podcasts in the world in the last three or four years far greater than everything else before. And same goes for like the likes of aggregator accounts, the archbishop of a band to be, great British means, all those, you know, me and Pubiti. Like they set the tone of internet culture for the day. They really do. And they, anything that's gotten there, everybody else kind of replicates and copies or if one aggregator account breaks a piece of content, they all tend to copy and follow. They're currently working with brands to invade partnerships in very clever ways to win in that space. So there's ways to either do it through a paid partnership with them or if you're good enough to see it organically, they're gonna pick it up and use it anyway. And there's some dark irats and craftiness in that. And then there's the fanocans. There are people who have fanocones for artist musicians, bands that if you're trying to insert yourself in their certain pocket of culture, like former to one or Kendrick, then my fans and your creating content in the way that could be valuable on their channels with the right outreach and distribution or even paying them is a way to get your content to your message distributed out in a really clever way. And then there's of course creators. Like creators isn't just, oh, I want to do collaboration so you can talk about this wonderful glass of water or finding ways for them to creatively make ideas in the way they make it. Creators can be, if you're creating long form series of content, there's brands that can use them as this longstanding character, but there's also a distribution tactic and having them make cameos in your content. So if you build this world of content that you have your main characters that are not well-known creators of celebrities that are certainly a more cost-effective way to do it, take candy kittens for example and take Jamie. If you have those characters that are concy in there and over time they become the cues to win. How doing partnerships with creators with cameos means that you might run like episode one, two, three, four, or five and then you've a cameo from a creator. They'll do a collab post of that episode. So now you're taking your content, extending it to their audience to get eyeballs on that and the hope that they're entertained by that specific piece and it does a bit of a job at touch point or the next time they see the episode, it becomes familiar, they might stick around and watch it on their feet. So these creators give these bursts of reach to new audiences that might long term over time build more incremental reach or compound what you're doing over there. So there's so many ways to think about how you creatively distribute the idea rather than just hoping that it's press and publish. And I guess a great example of some thing that has done this recently is Marity Supreme. - Oh yeah. - Don't buy A24. - Yeah, yeah. - Now if you think of what movie houses would have normally done, we do a trailer and then a pre-trailer and then a pre-tre-tre-trailer and we still effective because there's a lot of money, but they took Marity Supreme Dream Big as the central idea. They then went, okay, well, what is the thing I could do that could be the central point of this? Oh, how about I, the one to be marketeer that wants to pitch loads of these bachelors crazy ideas to you, the producers of this film and the marketing team. And let's do a fake Zoom cop 'cause that's low-fi entertaining. And I'm gonna pitch all these ideas and you guys are gonna roll your eyes going, what the fuck are you talking about? But then we take all of those ideas and now we bring them out into the real world as campaigns. But then we gotta make sure within this that aside from these bachelors ideas and little cues like the ping pong back to the movie or the Marity Supreme Dream Big, what are the other cues that we might need that it doesn't matter how big or small the idea, but another cue to be memorable, the color orange. So they probably got that from, oh, Bradson, remember that, the lime green was fucking everywhere. Let's use some form of a color. Yeah, O5S, exactly, there we go. In order to have another cue. So because everything was a central idea, Marity Supreme Dream Big Christmas Day, buying my message all the time, whether he was on Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, all the Jimmy shows, whether it was a ping pong van for the ping pong balls, whether it was him standing on top of the spire, whether it was him and it was a Kylie Jenner and those orange outfits on the red carpet. All of these characters cues message, all came from a central idea, blown out in lots of different ways, that built that idea. And most of the people will go back, oh, Marity Supreme Dream Big, let's just do a video, which is a trailer of movie terms and hope that that's gonna win us attention. We'll win some, but you're missing the bigger opportunity of how we can win in these fragmented spaces. And again, one other thing was the jackets. Yeah. Worn by, again, the most like dream big athletes and celebrities who started from nothing and got big. When you saw Tom Brady wearing that jacket, Tom Brady, the story Tom Brady, he was his athlete that nobody rated. He dreamt big. He became one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He wears that. Serena Williams, all of these, and the essence of the message with just a jacket done with all these people, people got it straight away. Now you think of all these cues and all these things peppered out? That's an idea, that's an ecosystem. That's distribution, creative distribution and action. That's amazing. How do you implement some of these, some of those tactics, the earlier ones you mentioned? How do you think about implementing them? So we would normally, when we do, what's called a creative sprint? So a creative sprint, again, I hate where brainstorm, because like brainstorms are good for some, but most people go into a brainstorm, they get excited by ideas, they walk away and nothing ever happens. You've got to make sure that you have the right people in the room and a structure or a process to develop those ideas, put shape on them, accelerate the thinking. But I think it's down to actually people thinking differently about this. And it's changing the mindset over like, the power of social is creation and distribution coming together. It's not one, it's not the other. It's the coming together of both. And it was a bit easier back in all marketing days because you had a TV, a 30-second spot. You knew the architecture, the story arc, start to finish. You could develop that. You could then hand it over to a media company who could then put it out to as many people as possible. But here it's very different. So it's the coming together of the two of them and the two disciplines is where I think we need to get to. And I think the latter end of the distribution side has been neglected. I think aggregator accounts, fan accounts, creators, have kept that. And it's why you mentioned earlier, why we look towards these empires, like Andrew Hoobermann, Chris Williamson, they've brought the two of them together. They understand how to do it. And now they've got creative and distribution side by side. And it doesn't matter what they create or make. They've got the tools and the mindset to build big ideas that can be seen by more people. And then when they start building extra extensions upon that, they have the blueprint to drive it forward. So again, to answer your question. They're really sweating the ass as well. Oh, completely. And sweating the idea. Yeah, sweating the idea. And sweating the idea and understanding all these little fragmented places are social to go, yeah, the same format might work anywhere, but what might happen on it? Let's take for example, it might be again, how does the clip take another layer of inception in another channel and another way, rather than just clipping it down? Some people will take the pure clip and post it. Some people will then clip it and put a montage or a different song over to make it more emotionally dry. Like a mile. Exactly. Others might actually then go like the aggregate accounts. There might be a clip from a show where they'll go, I'm actually going to put it on a TV screen and play it on the TV, but I'm going to record it like I'm watching at home reacting in real time to make it an oh my gosh. I just saw this on TV and it's made me think of this. Yeah. And it's taken the, like, and that's coming from the same concept but blown out in different ways. Sweating the ass and understanding all the different ways and getting creative with the distribution that is not just, here's the same format blasted everywhere with paid media. Yeah. Yeah, I used to do a lot of this with, well, we still do some podcasts. It's definitely easier with the creators 'cause they're more comfortable with it. So I'd be interested to get your take on that, but we used to do a lot of that where we would look at who the guest is, where their audience is, see how gifts as exclusives to certain fan pages. And then yeah, if you get, as you say, if you get the right ones, then their stuff is copied all the time by the rest of the people and then they might post it in Reddit as well and there's a whole ecosystem on Reddit as well. But certainly with brands, when I speak to them about using clipping services or using some of these tactics, they start to get more nervous. So how do you navigate that? And there's an ethical thing I think that their mind over, it does a pretty good job. brand safety thing and there's an ethical, it's losing control. And that control has lost in two ways. Is brand marketers have been so conditioned to live by the brand guidelines book of the color, the logo and everything been perfect. And they're not able to let go what real like internet culture is where you've got to give control to other people to use your brand. And this is lovely line that, though there's two actually, just Tom Roach who talks with these lots of littles. And there's Eugene Healey who talks about brandism, Josec. And it's a great representation of how we build brands has changed. He used to be able to build it on in one format done many times, but now it's all these smaller formats broken out. Right now, the problem with socialists, there's lots of lots, which brands who lots of different messages, which is confusing people and it doesn't help in this fragmented world. And we need to move to lots of details where the essence of the message is the same, but the creative way it's built, created, distributed is different. So there's a way of letting go that the brand almost needs to become a curator of the brand, not a guardian of the brand and the old sense to make it work. And then it's just an education thing. And again, once you use the right distribution methods, once you're abiding, I guess, by ASA rules or the guidelines and declaring certain things, it becomes a little bit more safer. So that should protect them a little bit more. I think the bigger thing of them, let them go, it's not just using different accounts in different ways. It's actually letting go of control of the brand. That's the biggest fear. They just go, I get, okay, with that. That's where education, understanding how the platforms have changed. That's the gap. It's this messy middle right now that we have to educate them on. And we also need to be educated on the expectation of being a marketer in the world of social media. What else are you excited about in 2026 when you're talking to brands or people that you see and you're loving what they're doing? I'm excited that people are actually starting to ask these questions now. I feel the gig is up. And that's what excites me now, because it keeps me in a job for hopefully a long period of time. But I guess we're asking the right questions now. And we've lived in this little isolated island for far too long. And there's a lot of heads of social media and social media leaders have big brands right now that are a little bit uncomfortable. And that's okay. But they're afraid to probably put their hand up for fear of losing the role because they have gone in this journey of claiming the way I've like I did. I became a head of social in an agency in five or six years. I became a head of social in brands where like working in Bedfair, where they were spending ridiculous money on partnerships and content. And we were just like doing things to try and chase engagement and reach. We don't really think in about the brand. So I think what excites me is the questions are being asked right now. I think that more people are realizing that the platforms are far more challenging to navigate based on the current state of affairs that we need to fix. I am excited that we are being challenged as marketers on trying to prove the value of the platforms more and more, which means off the platforms of vanity, we've got to prove a measuring success better. Now, I think everybody else in the industry is probably sharing themselves, but I'm excited because that means then we're trying to make these platforms better and the value that they bring. And I think if we get through this sticky period over the next year or two, I think there'll be a far greater respect for how you can brand on these platforms more, which means then it should result in more investment, more resource and then probably better work that will come out the door. What are the shining lights of the people who are using social really well in 2026? - There's running brands like brand bandit. There's gym brands like Jim Shark that will always be at the center of this. And I find Jim Shark's journey really interesting where, if you were to ask people name some of the best brands using social media, they've always been high up the list because they've been negative to social and they've grown. But now they've come to this crossroad where they are trying to compete with the big players who've been using all other marketing channels and they're starting to slowly introduce. So their challenge is how do they evolve from what they've been doing now to where the value of social is next and they're starting to make that trajectory and change through the storytelling that they're doing. And other brands I think doing good work, I struggle like some are doing incrementally good stuff. Like brands like KFC in the world of this fast and prompted side are doing so many good things that is still building record. I saw some recent work on how Wendy's are starting to now make change and they're actually trying to make a step change that's different from what a lot of the kind of quick service restaurants are doing and representing themselves in culture but different. It is some really clever stuff I learned in fashion week recently. Anyone else that I tune is doing an exceptional job. I always get this and I always never prepare myself for it later. But that probably just goes to show that personally how I'm not blown away by a lot of the brand work. And if I was to start naming brands, it's probably more than just to work their doing on social and it's to work their doing as an entirety of building a brand. When you're talking to brands, like what are the things that they struggle, they're struggling with most? They don't know what they're doing. They understand the size of the opportunity that social still has and they don't know how to operationalize and build it. So they might get to a stage where they start to invest more. They can maybe start to strategically see where it's going. But then they don't know how to build the operations to get enough return investment in what they're investing now to either get better results or to build the business case to get more. And that's where they'll struggle. Not understanding how to operationalize them because if they are going then the root of wanting to be around culture moving faster in this role of social, they're relying on external agencies right now who are doing it. And that isn't sustainable and long term. And it's why I think we've talked early, curries do a really good job because they have an in-house team who do a really well. But they also have enough external support to give that fresh perspective and that extra injection when it's needed. But the people in there will know the brand far better than the agency will and be able to react and build a new one of the brand in really, really good. The other challenge is the current agency set up on model, most agencies that will come to each of these brands, they come with bias, which means that when they go into that room to pitch for business, they're going to prescribe to make lots of content. Yeah, why is that? Because that's how they make their money, which means that it doesn't matter if the strategy says this, they're still going to prescribe making content because that's their business model. So if we want to do better for brands, we have to make sure we start with an impartial way of thinking how all of these platforms can work. Because those agencies are not going to go listen, we looked at a strategic, we think, based on your time resource and budget, we think the best way to get salines is not for you to make content. It's actually to create a content or create a full funnel, creator approach of funnel fillers, consideration drivers and affiliates to actually use social tools to do potential. But they're never going to recommend that because that's all the budget handed away. They're saying we don't want the money. They're not going to do that. Why would they do that? It's why I guess we're a bit different and why we have this point of difference is we have no bias. Our bias is to find what is that thing? What is that? And then based on everything you have, what is the best way to use these platforms to actually deliver upon that? And that's where it lies probably the biggest problem for a marketing decision maker. Because once they come with bias, they start making content. They start making average content because it's agencies with people working on 25 different brands who don't have enough nuance of the brand who aren't creating enough time and just churning this content out, drawing it out there and creating this already abundance and slump of content out there that exists and a lot of money's been invested in it. That's probably not being used to the most effect. So that's probably the biggest challenge. And if you have that impartiality, they could probably make better decisions, which means they could use these platforms better, which means the endures of the people consuming probably will get pissed off of brands a little bit less because of their doing the thing that makes sense. Your time at Ryanair, what are some of those tactics that you think still work and I high value? I particularly always think that the reactive stuff was super powerful. But again, it relies on the, again, you're just not planning. Like how do it seems to me that most brands are in this mode like planning out the month, planning out the quarter and they struggle to get their head around. - It's a little bit of both. They're all leaning in reactive now because again, I used this again, JavaScript. - Yeah, maybe they've gone too far away. - It's got those two far away. - Now they're not doing the plans now. - No, but also they probably don't have enough people to understand the brand to bring it in or who understand the nuance or who just aren't good, crafty comedy writers and that space to make a work and stake. And it's just become a race to who's the fastest social media team to put something out rather than actually who can cut through. - Yeah. - So if you ask me what are the things, well, strategy number one, again, I know it's the same thing. Again, if you have your bingo card marked up, ding, ding, full house, he said about 40 times. And it's then building an operation on building the tools and the processes. to actually give everything the greatest chance of actually working. It's testing and experimenting in real time, let the audience decide. You're not going to crack the code immediately, but build content in a way where you have enough degrees of change. So you can improve a time after time. If it works, people will engage if it doesn't. Experiment, change, try again. If it don't works again, this time, bring it. You found again, a step closer to figure this out. And that wasn't just reactive in Rainier. We had process for reactive weed process for repeatable formats. And we built the Bangor Bangor. I've talked about these things over the past many times and in the previous time we talked about it's again, it's the thinking, it's the doing the operation and it's the feedback loop is the things that I would say. And again, I would never prescribe what's the right or wrong way to use these platforms. We broke down that matrix that gives you four areas, but in all of those four areas, there are all other small tactics and things you can do that are different than all brands can do. So it's a very difficult thing to answer. Do I think reactive so works? I think it does. The benefit is news breaks, stories posted on social. The first brand that appears quickly underneath that feed, it helps because they've just seen that. And they're just seeing your posts. So context is easier for the brand to consume. But if there's not enough connections back to the brand, I would enough for what you're trying to do or solve. You might just be creating basic awareness, which is why we said earlier QSR restaurants that might actually just help because you want to have a takeaway. You're going to be on a delivery app and you're going to be looking at all of them. What's the thing that's going to make me think about something quickly? And that might do it. Or you're in a shop in mall and Westfield shopping. Either you see all the open the food court. That might be just enough to do it for them. But if you're problems of what you need to do for the brand of business, if I were different, that's just not enough. And again, think of the basics. Like we need to be mentally available and physically available. And our job is to do one of two things there. And if we're not becoming memorable or mentally available at a point where people want to select the thing on the shelf online and we're not in that consideration set, but we haven't done our job. And the fear is over there. Again, I said at nauseam that you're creating things and cues that remember the trend, but very little about the brand. And if you're not doing it strongly enough to connect it, well, that's a space that you might get an impression, but you're not making an impression. You're not you're not actually doing anything to build anything for a brand. What I've built in in slice and the consultancy has been born from the tools that may run air what it was, but the tactics on how they did it. Can they still win? Yeah, there's there's brands that are proving that it can, but for the majority know, because of how fragile the ground is, how the platform is going, we've got to think about it differently. But if you can find your aha moment with strategy, you can get creative a reputation with that. And then you can find the right tactics and distribution to do that time I need to get rewarded with doing a work in Benzian, that probably gives you the greatest chance of actually doing something and building the case for doing a good job on these platforms. How do you see AI in all of this? You can have to ask that question. Yeah, when that's asked again, AI is just going to create more slop. But that's not necessary about thing. Do I think AI is biore for creativity? No. If the idea is good enough and it's told true some sort of animated AI creative, that's really good. Well, that's fine. I think for us, as AI speeds up the process of spending more time being more creative, or spending more time being tactically, it's helping with workflows. But yeah, it's going to make the channels maybe more shit because again, I think Colin Simeer, their podcast, they talk about the recent new time, but this abundance was already there. Now it's going to make even more abundance of content, which means people are going to get fatigued, which is why how you do the opposite, how you stand out, even how you do the reverse of this is where the opportunity might be. I'm not forer against it. I think the tools that help us take them on day and stuff away. What I do find interesting is that, and I think it actually could save brands more is that over the years, certainly when I have country micro-enmarketing, you used to have these all-around marketeers. These Jack of all trades who understood all touch points in the old marketing world and all the old marketing channels. So when you were thinking about brand, you were thinking about everything and it goes back to maybe the idea ecosystem and distribution. They had that capability. But as we started to build digital out more and more, we have SEO managers, paid managers. We have for every individual task is broken down into an individual role. And in each of those individual roles, we are so pressured with the optimization of each area that all we focus and obsess about in that role is just that task, which means whether it makes it benefit big picture, they don't care because my job focuses to win in this. I think what AI is going to do is AI is going to remove all those shitty fucking really low level over optimization jobs and automate that and maybe bring more of us up here to be more all-around marketeers and think big picture again. And if AI can reduce that crap, it can speed up workflows so we can spend time to be more creative. And if we can be more creative, and if we can again be more rounded marketeers, that's a positive locomotive. There's no, I can talk about the dimming limit like everybody else, but I see it as a benefit rather than a hindrance when you think of it like that. If you enjoyed this episode with Michael, you're going to love my episode with Andrew Block. Andrew is the marketing and PR genius behind Lord Sugar and he also had a huge PR agency which he sold. He's an absolute genius and a good friend of mine. So if you're into marketing strategy and PR, I think you'll really enjoy that episode. Give it a listen, queue up next, and let me know what you think. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you have a great week. Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]