How to get ahead of 99% of brands in 2026 (content playbook)

Transcript

All right, I'm back. The first video of 2026. I am fresh from the Swiss Alps. I'm ready to talk to you about how to get ahead of 99% of brands in 2026 and the state of content in 2026. There's a lot to learn for brands and a lot to learn for creators, too. We're going to talk about the size of the prize and what we're fighting for in this world where content, ads, and attention all become one thing. I'm going to go through the eras of content: 2024, 2025, and 2026, and what worked in each and what's about to work next. I'm going to talk about what doesn't work. If you've been banging your head against the wall as a brand, trying to figure out how to leverage this new content world or how to even build outside of it, and wondering why you can't get it, we're going to hit that. We're going to talk about the short-form brand playbook for 2026 and picking an archetype. This is the easiest way, if you don't know what to do, to get a plan together that will fix it. Then we're going to talk about building on top of that archetype for more strategic brands to get an actual far-reaching plan that takes full advantage of the scenario that we're in today. And then we're going to talk about perhaps the biggest differentiator that I see brands who are taking advantage of that era using. I could not be more excited to lock in. We are back, baby. We are fucking back. So first, let's talk about the size of the prize here, because this is the part in the adoption curve, especially for brands and people using social media, where everyone gets scared. There are so many creators. How can I possibly compete? So many brands are good at this. How can my brand build a following now? Social media might be over. Shouldn't I be looking at something else? I see these threads or posts that say X social network is dead. This must be true. And overall, this big idea that I'm too late. And for every turn for five years now, people have felt this exact same way. TikTok is going to be banned, so I shouldn't start creating on it. Look how that went. The algorithm sucks right now, but somehow all these other people are growing. And the truth still remains that every minute spent consuming traditional news on websites with outdated interstitials, bad pop-up ads, and paywalls you click through is being taken by people who are simply getting that information from carousels online and from videos. And there are literally billions of dollars and millions of human consumption hours that have yet to make that switch, that you are able to arbitrage, because that is in the middle of the swap of the adoption curve, not at the end. And then now every piece of traditional TV is consumed with a phone in hand. So when that ad comes on, or the plot gets slow and the game's not interesting, they are on Instagram, they are on TikTok. And this is a zero-sum game that you get to play to win. And brands are winning it. Where instead of all these things that were traditionally entertainment, that weren't branded experiences, that weren't necessarily advertisements if you didn't pay to be on it, you now get to get for free. And you can tell we're at a really critical point in this adoption because the institutions are scared. Disney is bringing their IP into OpenAI in the hopes that they will be able to maintain relevancy in a different era. Netflix is bringing pretty non-video-friendly podcasts over onto their network because they're scared of YouTube. Let's talk about your blueprint as a brand to take advantage of this. Starting with the era. So 2024 content, an amazing time to make content, was about value. Could you educate people with your content in a somewhat entertaining way? People learned about marketing tactics. They learned how to cook. They got their fitness regimens, how to knit, whatever it was. If a brand or a creator was teaching people and giving tips and tricks, they were able to build an earned audience where very few other people were doing it. In this era, I was making Instagram videos about cool combos of colors for design and getting hundreds of thousands of views on them because simply no one else was doing it. But now that is commodified. And that's the era that, when you look at a lot of big brands, you look at a lot of big content gurus, they're still in it because they already had their followings and they can simply talk on camera and it's done, but it's not that simple for brands anymore. This was also the end of the era, that 2023 time where your brand could still have a couple pictures of its product or something simple online, and because people have brand affinity, they'd like it. That era is done. And I want to implore brands out there who think social media doesn't work for them, that they should be marketing in different ways, of thinking of other stuff and not thinking social first. If you are still posting the same stuff you posted then and expecting the result and blaming the algorithm, the problem isn't that. The problem is you. The codes are there in front of you from myself, from other creators, from so many brands that are doing it. You just have to man or woman up. And 2025 was about story content. The storyteller thrived. Experts explained the history of a fragrance note, the process with which a paint color comes to life. Personalities who actually had expertise in their topic, and brand owners and people that represented brands in particular, took over. Value alone slowed. Value wrapped in a story took off. One of my favorite creator examples of this is Ken Sakata from Front Office, who provides amazing educational content about fashion in general that shows his care for the craft that then helps promote his clothing line. The era of how-tos, but wrapped in work and opinion. What would you do in a scenario? The art of the story. Resale companies would tell the stories of the products and the brands that they were reselling. They would turn every piece, instead of a product promo, into a larger story the product could fit inside of. And this was the time when first movers and old-school influencers really got replaced by genuinely more interesting people. Follower accounts started to matter a whole lot less. And it was the rise of the thoughtful creator and the brand led by thoughtful people who were able to really succeed online. And this was an incredible content year. If you wanted to consume non-brain-rot content, the algorithm would give it to you. And if you didn't see it, you should think about the habits with which you consume. And this era was the sweet spot for me, right? For what we teach inside Cut30, we had dozens of experts who just smashed. People explaining farm hotels to hospitality, to the front of their fragrance brands, to photography businesses. So we got to see firsthand how this worked and what worked about it. While at the same time, the bigger brands I'm working with, our goal was to: how do we get pros on camera to help tell the story? But people know the secret is out. So going into 2026, what is the scenario? And there are more and more creators, more and more interesting people, so many folks who are putting up 100,000-, 200,000-view videos all the time. We're getting good at this. A lot of us. What happens? What do we do now? So we've talked a lot about social and leveraging expertise, but where do you go to get more topics? If you're trying to find strong topics and do the research behind them without spending hours on it, then this free guide from HubSpot on Google Gemini and Notebook LM is exactly what you need. It's called How to Do 10 Hours of Research in 20 Minutes: The Marketer's Guide to Google Gemini and Notebook LM. This ebook explains step by step how to analyze competitors and build research flows to understand customer needs, so you can get hours of research done in a short working session. Google Gemini has research functions and access to a world's worth of sources. And I will hit it with a bunch of questions to quickly understand the topic or the place of a brand in a market. A few quick examples: What are the most common questions people ask about a category and the direct product? What are people complaining about in reviews about a category or a specific product? What are the top complaints and objections for competitive brands in your category? You can even ask it to generate the competitive list for you. And it will pull the results from all over the internet, and these topics become the basis for your expert-driven content. Everything I just mentioned is for using Gemini, but my favorite part is the next step: bringing all that research into Notebook LM. When you combine that research with your content scripts, your brand guidelines, customer reviews, and other brand materials you have, you're basically creating a queryable world of content for your brand. You can ask for really specific results. And this ebook walks through that entire flow. You can get this for free and learn more about automated deep research and AI workflows at the link in the description. And thank you so much to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. So 2026 is the year of format. You find your angle as a brand or as a creator, then you become recognizable. And then you expand your brand out and around it. And we'll talk about archetypes and systems with which to do that here in a minute. And so by format, and these topics become the basis for your expert-driven content. Everything I just mentioned is for using Gemini, but my favorite part is the next step, bringing all that research into Notebook LM. When you combine that research with your content scripts, your brand guidelines, customer reviews, other brand materials you have, you're creating a queryable world of content for your brand. You can ask for really specific results. And this ebook walks through that entire flow. You can get this for free and learn more about automated deep research and AI workflows at the link in the description. And thank you so much to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. So 2026 is the year of format. You find your angle as a brand or as a creator, then you become recognizable. And then you expand your brand out and around it. And we'll talk about archetypes and systems with which to do that here in a minute. And so by format, I mean, what are universal things that make it recognizable when you get on feed? So, for instance, if you see my content, what I've been doing recently, you'll notice that I have the same similar gradient-colored background looks. I have a new editing style with all the graphics that are on my page. And you will see it's not just a green screen video, it's an orange green screen video. It's a branding play. Creators I love, like Internet Anthropology, is a great one. She has a set that's in her background as she talks, and she instantly recognizes it as her, even though it's just another talking video. The setup of it makes it unique. And for brands, it's the same exact thing: setting up in their warehouse, in a doctor's office, in the R&D lab, inside a storefront, creating these repeatable scenarios where people who like the angle of your content, they see it, it's instantly recognizable so that you don't just have to work on the hook up front. You're already hooking by being comfortable to somebody. They're tuning into their show. And on that note, you've seen tons of my content now for years on social shows. That's another extension of this, getting a concept and working through it. And we're going to talk about this, but we're also going to talk about what it means for ads and what it means for the world of creators and things around your brand as well in a minute. But first, let's talk about what doesn't work. And first is trends. And everyone always talked down on trends, but a lot of brands are able to participate in them and work in them well. But now, things happen so immediately fast that for 99% of brands, it's not even worth pursuing. If you were a brand and you wanted to post about Taylor Swift's new album release or hop on an audio that's working, you have to be able to turn it around the same day that you learn about it or it's not going to work. And so if your brand is not set up for same-day concept-to-execution-to-turn, I would not even think about a trend whatsoever. Same thing with the day in the life or day seven of building X or Y. People have seen these videos so many times now, and it's so typical that it no longer is compelling. People aren't as curious about what those look like unless you have some special elements. So one complementary thing to that that people are enjoying is if you are opening a brick-and-mortar store and you're building out the construction or something similar, those still go pretty well. Or if you add a really dynamic element, like we're seeing vlogs that are hyper-edited in the faster, insane ways, that could work in that same methodology, but the standard is over. And then tips and tricks. Anything that's not wrapped in a story, I wouldn't approach it. And Craighill is an amazing example of a brand who does it wrapped in a story. So they will go show off how they made a widget, how they made a pair of scissors, how they made a bottle stopper, and they will tell the story of the design choices they made. Like, hey, typically products used to use a hinge like this, and it was developed by this person in the 1800s, but we don't like this hinge because these three things happen. So we set out to actually design our own hinge, and it does X. It's different, but we had this challenge in production, and this is what we ended up with. And their videos will follow these formats where someone walks you through those choices inside their product. They do very well. Then the era of low production, especially for brands, is over. Now, I don't want to talk about high production, but low production in general, just hopping on the camera and talking, all the little intentional things matter. Dropping in images over your content, the framing, the lighting, it can still come across as lo-fi or be shot on an iPhone, but all of those intentional choices make a difference. Everything must be done with intention because you're competing with content from people who are savvy at it. This is important because if you are running ads, if you're using UGC creators, you need to be making sure that they're operating at that level as well. On the other end, the overproduced content is the biggest one that's entering. If you're paying 50,000, hundreds of thousands of dollars for shoots, which I talk to brands every single week that are doing, it's much better to be intentional about the tools and the spaces you already have, equipping your teams with gear. So many brands are doing this themselves with one or two cameras and one or two team members or a freelancer that comes in, X and Y, because they can. Because with YouTube and editing tutorials and everyone making content now, there are actually lots and lots of creative people who are able to execute these ideas and do it amazing. One of my favorite examples of this is Capricciosa, the restaurant that does these storytelling vignettes. This one that went viral about someone leaving their green hat when they got a phone call to the restaurant, they're describing their night, describing the things in the restaurant. And this was shot by one videographer who comes in and shoots a couple videos every time he comes in, who had a creative idea and was given the reins to execute it. And it looks like something that would cost a lot more, but this is the era that we're living in. And if you're looking at it and denying it, you're going to lose and you're going to waste money. And then faceless content. In the age of AI, its value has collapsed and gone to zero because of how easy it is to do. Without human connection, it's harder and harder to generate real leads and real sales. In the last three to four months, I haven't seen a single brand in our network who has been able to put up real sales numbers focused entirely on faceless content without someone being on camera or some combination of storytelling that is done really well and professionally. This matters because it used to be optional, but now it's just noise. And then last, jokes and memes. You used to be able to grow your brand pretty far with being very humorous. And now it's great as a part of your funnel. It's great for maybe a quarter of your content, but another thing that is just incredibly commodified, and also where people are losing the intention to buy from it, is purely entertainment. So if that's part of your content funnel, awesome, but it can't be all of it. And so if you're a brand, you're wondering what to do, this process is for you. I put together four archetypes. You just pick an archetype from this list that will guide you as to where to go. And the archetype is a style your brand will consistently execute in. It's a North Star. If you don't pick one, you're going to end up with a hodgepodge of unsuccessful bullshit. And brands eventually become a blend of archetypes. But to start, we're going to zone in on one. So the four are common. First is the expert. Position a team member or a credible creator or an actor or UGC person that someone credible scripts for to tell intricate stories to educate people on your brand's world and the things around it. Everything from cybersecurity to dermatology. It's an authority-first approach. Second is the artist. Social-optimized, creative-directed content that's conceptual and visually exciting. Whether it's lo-fi or immaculate production doesn't matter. What does matter is that there is someone very creative who understands social media, who is making things to be entertaining within that niche. And that is the number one focus of the content. The ideas come first. This is best if you have a one-of-a-kind social or creative talent that is on your team or you can work with. So some examples of these. The expert: I love to point out this brand, Tonester Paints, for the expert example, where literally the person, I believe it's the founder of the brand, is there in front of their paint rig. That is his set, like we mentioned before, and he's talking about their popular colors and the blends. You get to see it in action, and it's a very aesthetic process. If your brand has any kind of production facility or warehouse, use that to your advantage to create content like this. Now, if you don't want to have your founder do it or do it yourself, a great example of a brand who's done that, if it's also outside of the product space, is Opal. Opal is an app, like an anti-social And that is the number one focus of the content. The ideas come first. This is best if you have a one-of-a-kind social or creative talent that is on your team or you can work with. So some examples of these: the expert. I love to point out this brand, Tonester Paints, for the expert example, where literally the person, I believe it's the founder of the brand, is there in front of their paint rig. That is his set, like we mentioned before, and he's talking about their popular colors and the blends. You get to see it in action, and it's a very aesthetic process. If your brand has any kind of production facility or warehouse, use that to your advantage to create content like this. Now, if you don't want to have your founder do it or do it yourself, a great example of a brand who's done that, if it's also outside of the product space, is Opel. Opel is an app, an anti-social media use app. And they put a creator talking about mental health and the impact of phones, and it's a girl on a whiteboard, iPhone content, who's just educating about those things. And she is not a founder. She's someone the brand employs to do this, not even on the brand's main account. If you were a brand, I wouldn't be thinking about multi-account or anything unless you're much larger. If you do want an ability to test without ruining whatever you have going on main, it's a great approach. These are two great examples. And then the artist one I'd love to point out is Reigns. Over these last few months, they had focused a lot on conceptual content around games. And why I like to call this out is that, look, this is great content. This content they probably spent a decent amount of time and money on. But if you were to think about how do I execute a creative idea at a relatively medium budget, this is really, at the end of the day, a white background studio. And then they are fabricating games. It started simple: crossword puzzles, things you could print out. Moved its way up to guessing games and other board games, things that may cost them more like a couple hundred dollars to produce. But it is not insane. It is an example of a well-executed concept in a medium budget range that a lot of brands that were creative enough could do. And the third archetype is the wild card. Humor, memes, skits, unexpected choices. Attention-first content designed to get what falls through the funnel. This is where you'll see humorous brands like the Chinese food restaurants always have skits of people getting hit by cars to cut off their videos, right? So this is one where it's cheap attention. It can be hard to build a ton of value over the long term, but it's a great place to start. You can just focus on we're going to be oddball, we're going to be funny, we're going to get that first attention, and we can build on top of it over time. But knowing that you can lean into your weird streak if that's your superpower as a brand, this is a good angle. And then fourth is the world builder. This is choosing to say our core feed, us as a brand, matters actually much less than enabling creators, affiliates, and influencers to tell the story for us. Earned media value over owned content, or distribution beats organic. And this is totally okay for a lot of brands. What this isn't okay is to say our organic social doesn't matter and we're going to handle things completely elsewhere. You have to have other people doing this participation for you. You have to be saying we're going to let other creators and seeding and all these things do the story for us, and we're going to focus on that. But for a lot of brands where that has more power potentially than their organic, or they have that kind of figured out but have struggled with it, this is still okay to lean in. That our core organic branded feed, if you're good at the rest of it, can matter less than ever. But now you have to be laser-focused on how do I enable my creators, or making sure that their stuff is framed well, that they're lit well, that they have props, that they're doing sets, that they have recurring bits, that we're sharing hooks and themes, that we're creating unboxing packages that are going to work really well on social, that we're connecting them to each other and building a community, that we're compensating people to go above and beyond and building out a world around that. And then once you're good at this, once you've found your initial take of what angle you want, you're going to use the pillar system. I've got whole videos about this pillar system, but basically where you're picking a couple methods of content. If you have your expert-driven content, for instance, you're doing carousels that call their stuff out, while you're doing hands-on explainer videos, while you're doing more, say, hiring campaign content with them. You're building a couple approaches around each of these with a pillar system. I'll link the pillars video at the end of this video. But then once you're good at that one thing, what comes next? It's about expansion. If you've got traction, wins are happening there. If you haven't put an expert on screen yet, that's the next thing. So if you have great art-directed content or you're building your great brand world or you're doing your more risqué or funny content, the next step for everybody I cannot recommend enough is get that expert on cam, whether it's someone from your organization, a paid professional you get, a creator you get, whatever it is. Get that expert on screen. That has to be your next step. If it's not the first thing you do, then it should be that second. And then the next is build a signature series. It is a thing that people call out for creators a lot, that they have a recurring thing that they do. Brands need the same thing. What is that hit format you can have with your expert or with your campaigns you can do a lot? You can do it every week, every month, and people are going to want to tune in and recognize it. What can you tell around your niche? It needs to be a repeatable format with clear association and batchable productions you can do a bunch. So a few examples: Bape has one where people go shop in store and make an outfit based on a color they pull out of a bar. It's great for a storefront. Alexis Batar has a serialized drama. Built has their rom-com. Even that whiteboard self-help channel that I mentioned is basically a signature series. But thinking in that social show format, I've seen a lot of brands now are using puppets, just trying to find some recurring bits that they can do to think of it like our brand is TV. I have a whole video on that as well. From there, it's about expanding your world, collaborating more, social being social. So you've built your core, you've added on your expert. Now get that expert working with other people in their niche and doing collab posts. Get more people on screen. Enable the staff and the teams that you use that are on social media or the people you have in production to be part of it. You'll notice there's a trend now where the DPs, the people that are executing the content, that post the behind the scenes go bigger than the campaign. It happened with one of Diesel's recent campaigns. That's great. Enable those people to post, encourage them to do it, incentivize them or pay them to do it, have them collaborate across the board. You need to take advantage of the whole world of people around you. Same with your customers that are posting content. How do you encourage them, collaborate with them, get guest appearances, work it out, really map it out like it's a landscape? This is how worlds scale. A great example of how to do this is say you were doing a release and you're sending out a new mailer and it has a theme to your campaign. Got one sitting here above me from Morphe, who I work with. It's a big stick of butter, right? So say that you were able to send that to your top customers, and you were also able to give it to your UGC creators, and you had it in the campaign that you had on main, and everyone had a recipe-themed thing they were going to do because there's a food on it, and your expert is collaborating with one of the top influencers you have, actually with them doing a mini cooking thing. It was all part of the same campaign. You're involving every layer of your world, and you're centering it around an object, and that is smart world building that will help build out your social world. Now I'm going to end on maximizing ROI, one of the biggest differentiators a brand can have in 2026, and that's actually using comments and DMs. Let me tap into that. So you've seen creators run ManyChat where you say comment report and I'll DM you the link. This is 100% something brands should do, especially service brands, but it works for product brands and stuff as well. If you are doing a release, get the link sent to people early, give out those free downloads. If people have questions, give them the ask, them to be able to say comment or DM or whatever, get in that response format, because these are selling. One thing you'll notice, something that this brand Elf had done very well, if they were doing community management and comments, they're saying instead of just commenting back when someone messaged something like, hey, we're messaging two emojis or whatever, Viral Nation, the team that worked with them on it, was providing product advice, they were providing recommendations and pairings, they were actively turning comments Now I'm going to end on maximizing ROI, one of the biggest differentiators brand can have in 2026, and that's actually using comments and DMs. Let me tap into that. So you've seen creators run many chat where you say, comment report and I'll DM you the link. This is 100% something brands should do, especially services brands, but works for product brands and stuff as well. If you are doing a release, get the link sent to people early, give out those free downloads. If people have questions, give them the ask, them to be able to say comment or DM or whatever, get in that response format because these are selling. One thing you'll notice, something that this brand Elf had done very well, if they were doing community management and comments, they're saying instead of just commenting back when someone messaged something, like hey we're messaging two emojis or whatever, Viral Nation, the team that worked with them on it, was providing product advice, they were providing recommendations and pairings, they were actively turning comments into more of a selling and educational tool versus just a response tool on their own videos and on other videos about them. That was a weapon for you to be able to say we're going to turn our commenting from just acknowledgement into conversation, into recommendation, into this product might go great with that, or have you looked at this prior, or you have any questions about X. Turn that proactive, turn that conversation on. The DMs is the same thing. Services brands especially would pay attention to this. One of the brands we had in Cut30 that was doing roofing, they were saying, hey, we're getting a lot of the right people and we're getting a lot of comments on there, but people aren't asking about buying a roof. I'm like, well, you might need to ask those people. So for instance, if you are, I think they were in the Midwest, I was like cool, if any of the people that comment are in your state, click there and look on them. It doesn't take you long. There's 34 comments. You can click through and see if anyone's also in your state. Well, message them and see, are you thinking about a new roof because you've commented on multiple of our roofing videos. Take that proactive. DMs and comments are sales tools. If you are an agency or a services business and you're not doing this, you're actually foolish. It's stupid to not do this. And if you're a product brand, it comes down to bandwidth. Can you, how much can you work on this? You should at least be working the comments like that, answering the sales questions that come in direct, and incentivizing the team to make that stuff work, giving them codes that help track the conversion or get people a discount if they engage in conversation. And truly, where else in the world do you get one-to-one access to your potential lead sources for your business where you can just send them messages? There's no other way to do that besides cold email. So every brand needs to be DM and comment maxing in 2026. So anyway, thank you for watching my state of content. I hope you learned a lot here. Our tour in Toronto, New York, and Miami is coming up. I have the information down below for that. I do have this all in written format. I have a guide with tons of links, etc. I will also link that down below as well. I have an awesome video of the creative direction of sport coming up soon. Stay tuned, and I appreciate y'all so much for watching that, that you become a blend of architects. But to start, we're going to zone in on one. So the four-hour command, first is the expert. Position a team member or a credible creator or an actor or UGC person that someone credible scripts for to tell intricate stories to educate people on your brand's world and the things around it. Everything from cybersecurity to dermatology. It's an authority first approach. Second is the artist. Social optimized, creative directed content that's conceptual and visually exciting. Whether it's lo-fi or immaculate production doesn't matter. What does matter is that there is someone very creative who understands social media, who is making things to be entertaining within that niche. And that is the number one focus of the content. The ideas come first. This is best if you have a one-of-a-kind social or creative talent that is on your team or you can work with. So some examples of these. The expert, I love to point out this brand, Tonester Paints for the expert example where literally the person, I believe it's the founder of the brand, is there in front of their paint rig. That is his set like we mentioned before and he's talking about their popular colors and the blends. You get to see it in action and it's a very aesthetic process. If your brand has any kind of production facility or warehouse, use that to your advantage to create content like this. Now if you don't want to have your founder do it or do it yourself, a great example of a brand who's done that if it's also outside of the product space is Opel. Opel is an app like an anti-social media use app. And they put a creator talking about mental health and the impact of phones and it's a girl on a whiteboard, iPhone content who's just educating about those things. And she is not a founder. She's someone the brand employs to do this, not even on the brand's main account. If you were a brand I wouldn't be thinking about multi-account or anything unless you're much larger. If you do want an ability to test without ruining whatever you have going on main, it's a great approach. These are two great examples. And then the artist one I'd love to point out is Reigns. Over this last few months they had focused a lot on conceptual content around games. And why I like to call this out is that, look, this is great content. This content they probably spent a decent amount of time and money on. But if you were to think about how do I execute a creative idea at a relatively medium budget this is really at the end of the day a white background studio. And then they are fabricating games. It started simple. Crossword puzzles, things you could print out. Moved its way up to guessing games and other board games things that may cost them more like a couple hundred dollars to produce. But it is not insane. It is an example of a well executed concept in a medium budget range that a lot of brands that were creative enough could do. And the third archetype is the wild card. Humor, memes, skits, unexpected choices. Attention first content designed to get what falls through the funnel. This is where you'll see humorous brands like the Chinese food restaurants always have skits of like people getting hit by cars to cut off their videos, right? So this is one where it's cheap attention. It can be hard to build a ton of value over the long term but it's a great place to start. You can just focus on we're going to be awwball we're going to be funny we're going to get that first attention and we can build on top of it over time. But knowing that you can lean into your weird streak if that's your superpower as a brand this is a good angle. And then fourth is the world builder. This is choosing to say our core feed us as a brand matters actually much less than enabling creators affiliates and influencers to tell the story for us. Earned media value over owned content or distribution beats organic. And this is totally okay for a lot of brands. What this isn't okay is to say our organic social doesn't matter and we're going to handle things completely elsewhere. You have to have other people doing this participation for you. You have to be saying we're going to let other creators and seeding and all these things do the story for us and we're going to focus on that. But for a lot of brands where that has more power potentially than they're organic or they have that kind of figured out but have struggled with it this is still okay to lean in. That our core organic branded feed if you're good at the rest of it can matter less than ever. But now you have to be laser focused on how do I enable my creators or making sure that their stuff is framed well that they're lit well that they have props that they're doing sets that they have recurring bits that we're sharing hooks and themes that we're creating unboxing packages that are going to work really well on social that we're connecting them to each other and building a community that we're compensating people to go above and beyond and building out a world around that. And then once you're good at this once you've found your initial take of what angle you want you're going to use the pillar system. I've got whole videos about this pillar system but basically where you're picking a couple methods of content. If you have your expert driven content for instance you're doing carousels that call their stuff out while you're doing hands-on explainer videos while you're doing like more say hiring campaign content with them you're building a couple approaches around each of these with a pillar system. I'll link the pillars video at the end of this video. But then once you're good at that one thing what comes next? It's about expansion. If you've got traction wins are happening there if you haven't put an expert on screen yet that's the next thing. So if you have great art directed content or you're building your great brand world or you're doing your more risque or funny content the next step for everybody I cannot recommend enough is get that expert on cam whether it's someone from your organization a paid professional you get a creator you get whatever it is get that expert on screen that has to be your next step. If it's not the first thing you do then it should be that second. And then the next is build a signature series is a thing that people call out for creators a lot that they have a recurring thing that they do brands need the same thing. What is that hit format you can have with your expert or with your campaigns you can do a lot you can do it every week every month and people are going to want to tune in and recognize it. What can you tell around your niche? It needs to be a repeatable format with clear association and batchable productions you can do a bunch. So a few examples like Bape has one where people go shop in store and make an outfit based on a color they pull out of a bar it's great for a storefront. Alexis Batar has a serialized drama Built has their rom-com even that whiteboard self-help channel that I mentioned is basically a signature series. But thinking in that like social show format I've seen a lot of brands now are using puppets just trying to find some recurring bits that they can do to think of it like our brand is TV I have a whole video on that as well. From there it's about expanding your world collaborating more social being social. So you've built your core you've added on your expert now get that expert working with other people in their niche and doing collab posts. Get more people on screen enable the staff and the teams that you use that are on social media or the people you have in production to be part of it. You'll notice there's a trend now where the DPs the people that are executing the content that post the behind the scenes go bigger than the campaign it happened with one of Diesel's recent campaign. That's great enable those people to post encourage them to do it incentivize them or pay them to do it have them collaborate across the board. You need to take advantage of the whole world of people around you. Same with your customers that are posting content. How do you encourage them collaborate with them get guest appearances work it out really map it out like it's a landscape. This is how worlds scale. A great example of how to do this is say you were doing a release and you're sending out a new mailer and it has a theme to your campaign got one sitting here above me from Morphe who I work with it's a big stick of butter right? So say that you were able to send that to your top customers and you were also able to give it to your UGC creators and you had it in the campaign that you had on main and everyone had like a recipe themed thing they were going to do because there's a food on it and your expert is collaborating with one of the top influencers you have actually with them doing like a mini cooking thing it was all part of the same campaign. You're involving every layer of your world and you're centering it around an object and that is smart world building that will help build out your social world. Now I'm going to end on maximizing ROI one of the biggest differentiators brand can have in 2026 and that's actually using comments and DMs let me tap into that. So you've seen creators run many chat where you say comment report and I'll DM you the link like this is 100% something brands should do especially services brands but works for product brands and stuff as well. If you are doing a release get the link sent to people early give out those free downloads if people have questions give them the ask them to be able to say comment or DM or whatever get in that response format because these are selling. One thing you'll notice something that this brand Elf had done very well if they were doing community management and comments they're saying instead of just commenting back when someone messaged something like hey we're messaging two emojis or whatever Viral Nation the team that worked with them on it was providing product advice they were providing recommendations and pairings they were actively turning comments into more of a selling and educational tool versus just a response tool on their own videos and on other videos about them. That was a weapon for you to be able to say we're going to turn our commenting from just acknowledgement into conversation into recommendation into this product might go great with that or have you looked at this prior or you have any questions about X turn that proactive turn that conversation on the DMs is the same thing services brands especially would pay attention to this one of the brands we had in Cut30 that was doing roofing they were saying hey we're getting a lot of the right people and we're getting a lot of comments on there but people aren't asking about buying a roof I'm like well you might need to ask those people so for instance if you are I think they were in the Midwest I was like cool if any of the people that comment are in your state click there and look on them it doesn't take you long there's 34 comments you can click through and see if anyone's also in your state well message them and see are you thinking about a new roof because you've commented on multiple of our roofing videos take that proactive DMs and comments are sales tools if you are an agency or a services business and you're not doing this you're actually foolish it's stupid to not do this and if you're a product brand it comes down to bandwidth can you how much can you work on this you should at least be working the comments like that answering the sales questions that come in direct and incentivizing the team to make that stuff work giving them codes that help track the conversion or get people a discount if they engage in conversation and like truly where else in the world do you get one-to-one access to your potential lead sources for your business where you can just send them messages there's basically no other way to do that besides cold email so every brand needs to be DM and comment maxing in 2026 so anyway thank you for watching my state of content I hope you learned a lot here our tour in Toronto New York and Miami is coming up I have the information down below for that I do have this all in written format I have a guide with tons of links etc I will also link that down below as well I have an awesome video of the creative direction of sport coming up soon stay tuned and I appreciate y'all so much for watching that ! that you