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

29:00Now, there are a few other brands in the US like Roomies, and you hear them by a car loyalty company called Built. CAVA are doing it. Even, I think, DoorDash are starting to experiment with it. But it's just starting to show that Leadwood Entertainment almost be built towards this kind of... It's more the escapism 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 of ways you could break that down for hours and how you do it. So they're on that side of ones that are doing well.

29:34From a search point of view, there are a few brands, but it's too early to see any kind of big case studies come true on who's winning in the world of slow search, slow prompted. 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 finding it slow to see the data. if we're being totally honest, search is about 6 to 12 months old and we're not seeing the case study 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, like the fast prompted, there's probably been like countless examples of when you saw trends like Dubai chocolate and how that started to become a thing.

30:17And the search terms 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 there really really well interesting so the opportunities like the blue ocean would be the definitely in the slow prompted slow unprompted as well yeah all of them i think the other three quadrants is where the room is to grow and if you were to like find ways to insert yourself into the news cycle but without trying to force it with you know these ridiculous trends all the time like if enough clout happens to a news 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 naturally going to want to go look for the piece of the moment.

31:03And again, even take the Brit Awards, which were on recently. There was like moments where people were silenced or things were cut 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 People are searching to see, well, what is the fan footage? 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 traitors where people might wear something.

31:37There's always that opportunity in that fan 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 can of poppy and an American football helmet on the other just because Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift got engaged, which is where most of them lean because they're trying to force themselves into a moment that they probably just shouldn't be in. What about slow unprompted? What are some good examples of that? Slow unprompted. Again, that's the more the episodic content style. So the candy kittens, I think, would have been a good example of that.

32:14Or hot ones? like hot ones yeah not as a brand but a good example like Simon Sundays 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 roomies by built and they all create almost like these sitcom-y 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 and if you think how many TV stations are on your TV box, there's probably hundreds. And within each of those TV stations have different formats and genres of content.

32:53And then if you go into each station, there's different show formats with different teams. You should be trying to think about, well, 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 Sidemen and what they do, they look at show formats in the past and recreate them into their new spinoffs. or Channel 4 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 surf and the TV to look at what is a repeatable format episodic content that I think that I can create that could make it memorable.

33:30And that doesn't mean you have to slap all your heavy branding. And the funny thing is a lot of brands don't have many distinct assets right now. And that might be an opportunity to actually build something and build it over time. but that takes time and it takes time to consume, it takes time to go. You might get lucky in how it's consumed really fast and gets picked up and 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?

34:00Anything 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 pride you can be inspired but if you directly copy things that's where we just go from you know Happy Pancake Tuesday brands back in the early 2000s to now everybody's jumping on trends brands of 2026 to then repeatable formats that all look like friends sitcoms and social.

34:48We'll just constantly do this all the time if we don't like build and actually think like marketeers 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 or 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 Slack channel.

35:21I 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 examples. How would you advise a brand to think about where their gaps are? I guess it starts with whether they have 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. Because again, we all as people who want to learn and grow constantly look for new information and new things.

36:01and then thought leaders within our industry are always trying to give us new things. Like I think this is going to be a hot new thing in 2026. I'm very happy being the person that is like, actually, do you want to slow down? The timeless truths of marketing, 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 else has? Or one, the category is going on that everybody's doing it a certain way or everyone's trying to behave in a certain way that you either can't fight against or you can't do or you can find a way to do it differently.

36:38Understanding culture, like 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 unlock it. And then customers, motivation, wants and behaviors and then trying to see what's this eureka moment. What is the thing that the tension between the problem and the opportunity that unlocks this aha moment. And that's where you need to think about it really clearly and cleverly 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, and what you can do, which is different, and how they're positioning themselves in a way that, you know, you can't already own.

37:17If you try and do it, you're going to be the poor person's version of it. And in most cases, like, you'll probably be outspent 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 operationally 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 what we're doing on social especially if you have a brand with huge investment who haven't invested enough on social but are using the rest of the marketing mix quite effectively.

37:56And if you're spending millions upon millions on reach, on other touch points, well, reach might not be your problem and your thinking and your process, the strategy will unlock that. But there might be something that reach can't do, that social can do. 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, well, now I'm proving to you the value of the platform and now I'm proving to you 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 the perception for many many people and we have this gap in the middle still of like people in the sweet sweet know the social is a big thing but they just think it's oh viral content lots of lols and not an actual beast that can do things and I think they're slowly starting to learn because of the creator economy like they're learning because people like Sideman, people like, you know, Beta Squad, people like Dude Perfect, these guys are building operations that aren't just creative.

38:58They're building distribution models, new product development extensions, where 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. Yeah. And where they're all looking over here going, what if they can do it? Well, why 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 rode this wave, like I started in 2009 and 10, like in the early days and we were the youngest. We were the Gen Zers in the office who were the young people on social who were like, go figure that out and play with it.

39:36But the problem was we went, oh no, this is the special thing. You can't have it. You old gray haired marketeers don't know what you're talking about. We're going to be over here in our little social media bubble because you don't get it. And over the years, we kept doing that. We created then social media agencies, social media teams, and we had this little isolated island. And I think the greatest regret I had was not actually learning about how to 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.

40:10No wonder why I can't get the resource we need. Because we can't convince the C-suite 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 it can actually shift the dial. So why would they want to invest their 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 it, people who can sell it, people who can measure it. We don't. And unless we fix that gap, well, we still have a long way to go.

40:44And to me, it starts with strategy. It starts at marketing education. In the new world of, again, how to do... This is not to, like, to down or shit upon all social media professionals. You guys know your platforms. You live and breathe social. You'll know it far greater than the C-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. It's a very Roy Keane moment for me there. I 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 under-resourced, under-value, under-utilized.

41:24But we also probably haven't deserved the respect because we haven't gone 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 Huberman's and your sidemen 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.

42:06Agree. but as you say the perception of of of of it still being like social and memes and all the rest of it kind of really devalues that how do you educate the the the cmos about that i find it really difficult because every brand i go into that's the the glaring gap all the time like until we start building a language that brings it closer to marketing again or find a sweet spot of of how we articulate it until senior professionals, 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.

42:57Because 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 oh we went viral 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 impartial voices into these businesses to take people on a journey to convince them of the power of it i again have said it probably 40 times already it starts 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 um say i've got a brand i built it with paid media and i now want to build trust and i i think organic social could be a good way to do that what what what would you tell me to do next?

43:55I 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 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 good creative and really good 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's sticky, what's not, and then you can learn a lot from it. But I don't believe that every brand needs to be doing it either.

44:37I 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 of 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 annoyance or the distrust.

45:20So 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 ideas 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 fast social feed, the hook, the hook, the hook, the hook, the hook. And I still would categorically agree if you can't master a 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.

46:05Because 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 pepper yourself across such a fragmented space and place to work. And you see that a lot. Like, there are definitely people who will watch this that have developed really great creative over the years, but just has not got the views it deserved because they weren't creative enough and actually getting their content out there in front of people in the right way.

46:43And I don't mean just slapping a lot of paid media behind 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 good creative that is in a longer format rather than a 6-7, you know, skippable ad or a 6-7 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?

47:15Because we talk about this repeatable episodic content, slower brand building stuff, but we know what's winning right now because the algorithms control it is the fast social, the unprompted. But whilst that is a challenge that we shouldn't just lean in and do, because again, we're not being memorable, you have 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 it years ago of how you can actually get eyeballs on a piece of content. So to me, distribution and outreach, a long-winded way of getting there, is where we need to be more creative.

47:58So 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 have 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. Well, you can create an ecosystem of taking that idea out across like this layered onion from copy to comment sections, to video content, to earned media, to paid media, to creator collaborations that isn't just starting with the format, it's starting with the concept and blowing it out.

48:47And with that, then you're creatively thinking about, well, 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 idea still across. And as that's doing its magic to distribute and 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. 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.

49:30And 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, 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, let's get back into this week's episode. Look, we can learn a lot.

50:03Like, we're on a podcast. Podcasts have been kicking ass on this for the last few years. And like, I find this funny is like you hear this, 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 absolute bollocks because I think it's hiding what really some of the smartest podcast 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 to 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.

50:56So at least the snippets and the short formats from those podcasts have been seen by hundreds of thousands of millions of people. So the hope then is when your clips start getting seen they're going to consume more. And the more they consume of those clips well maybe they're going to 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 Banterbury Great British memes all those you know me and puberty like they set the tone of internet culture for the day.

51:29They really do. And they anything that's got from 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 doing paid 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 seed it organically, they're going to pick it up and use it anyway. And there's some dark arts and craftiness in that. And then there's the fan accounts. There are people who have fan accounts for artists, musicians, bands that if you're trying to insert yourself into a certain pocket of culture like Formula One or Kendrick Lamar fans, And you're creating content in a way that could be valuable on their channels.

52:07Well, with the right outreach and distribution or even paying them is a way to get your content or 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, you know, creatively make ideas in the way they make it. Creators can be, if you're creating long form series or content, there's brands that can use them as this long-standing character but there's also a distribution tactic in having them make cameos in your content so if you build this world of content that you know you have your main characters that are not well-known creators or 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 constantly in there and over time they become the cues to win doing partnerships with creators with cameos means that you might run like episode one, two, three, four, or five.

53:03And then you have 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 in the hope that either they're entertained by that specific piece and it does a bit of a job, a touch point, or the next time they see the episode, it becomes familiar. They might stick around and watch it on their feed. 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.

53:39And I guess a great example of something that has done this recently is Marty Supreme, done by A24. 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-pre-trailer. And it's still effective because they have a lot of money, but they took Marty 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'm the wannabe marketeer that wants to pitch loads of these batshit crazy ideas to you the producers of this film and the marketing team and let's do a fake zoom call because that's lo-fi entertaining and I'm going to pitch all these ideas and you guys are going to 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 got to make sure within this that aside from these batshit ideas and little cues like the ping pong back to the movie or you know the line Marty's 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 Brad Summer remember that the lime green was fucking everywhere.

54:56Let's use some form of a color. Yeah, or Fyre Fest. Exactly. There we go. In order to have another cue. So because everything was a central idea, Marty Supreme, Dream Big, Christmas Day, bang bang, a message all the time, whether he was on Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, all the Jimmy shows, whether it was a ping pong van full of 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 things, characters, cues, message, all came from a central idea blown out in lots of different ways that built that idea.

55:34And most other people will go back, oh, Marty's supreme dream big. Let's just do a video, which is a trailer in movie terms and hope that that's going to win us attention. It'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 this 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 the earlier ones you you mentioned how how do you think about implementing them so we would normally when we do we do what's called a creative sprint so a creative sprint again i hate the word brainstorm because like brainstormers are good for some but most people go into a brainstorm room they get excited by ideas, they walk away and nothing ever happens.

56:51You'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 old marketing days because you had a TV, 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.

57:26But 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 like these empires like Andrew Huberman, 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.

58:03And 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 assets. Oh, completely. And sweating the idea. Yeah, sweating the idea. And sweating the idea and understanding all these little fragmented places of social to go, yeah, the same format mightn't work anywhere. But what might happen on, let's take, for example, it might be, again, how does the clip take another layer of inception in another channel, in another way, rather than just clipping it down? Some people will take the pure clip and post it.

58:35Some people will then clip it and put a montage or a different song over to make it more emotionally driven. Black and white. Exactly. Others might actually then go, like the aggregator 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. And it's taken the, and that's coming from the same concept, but blown out in different ways. Sweating the ass, understanding all the different ways and getting creative with the distribution that it's not just here's the same format blasted everywhere with paid media yeah yeah i used to do a lot of this with um well we still do some podcasts it's definitely easier with the creators because 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 seed out gifts as exclusives to certain fan pages um and then yeah if you get as you say if you get the right ones then they their stuff is copied all the time by the rest of the people and um you know 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 and they do how do you navigate that and there's an ethical thing i think in their mind over there's a brand safety thing and there's an ethical it's it's losing control and that control is 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's culture is where you've got to give control to other people to use your brand and there's this lovely line that um well there's two actually there's tom roach who talks about these lots of littles and there's eugene healy who talks about Brand is Mosaic.

1:00:30And it's a great representation of how we build brands has changed. It used to be we could build it all in one format done many times, but now it's all these smaller formats broken out. Right now, the problem with social is there's lots of lots, which brands do 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 littles 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 in 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 letting go it's not just using like different accounts in different ways is it's actually letting go of control of the brand.

1:01:29That's the biggest fear. They just got to 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 marketeer 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.

1:02:09But 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 on this journey of climbing the wave 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 Betfair where they were spending ridiculous money on partnerships and content.

1:02:42And we were just like doing things to try and chase engagement and reach without really thinking 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 marketeers on trying to prove the value of the platforms more and more, which means off the platforms of vanity, we've got to prove and 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.

1:03:32and 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 build 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 Bandit. there's gym brands like Gymshark that will always be at the center of this. And I find Gymshark'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.

1:04:17But now they've come to this crossroad where they are, you know, 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 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 recall 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 they did some really clever stuff at London Fashion Week recently anyone else that I think is doing an exceptional job I always get this and I always never prepare myself for it either and but that probably just goes to show that personally how how i'm not you know blown away by a lot of the brand work and if i was to start naming brands it's probably more than just the work they're doing on social and it's the work they're 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 this the size of and the opportunity that social still has and they don't know how to operationalize it and build it.

1:05:46So 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 operation to get enough return on investment in what they're investing now to either get better results or to build a business case to get more. And that's where they'll struggle, not understanding how to operationalize it. Because if they are going down the route 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.

1:06:19And it's why I think we talked earlier, Curry's do a really good job because they have an in-house team who do it 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 nuance of the brand in really, really good. The other challenge is the current agency set up and modeled. 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.

1:06:56Why 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 it strategically, we think, and based on your time, resource, and budget, we think the best way to get salience is not for you to make content. It's actually to create creator content or create a full funnel creator approach of funnel fillers, consideration drivers, and affiliates to actually use social tools' true potential.

1:07:39But they're never going to recommend that because that's all the budget handed away. I mean, they're saying we don't want the money. They're not going to do that. Why would they do that? And 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 the aha? 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 lies probably the biggest problem for a marketing decision maker. Because once they come with bias, they start making content.

1:08:10They start making average content because it's, you know, agencies with people working on 25 different brands who don't have enough nuance of the brand, who aren't creatively spending enough time and just churning this content out, throwing it out there and creating this already abundance and slop of content out there that exists. And a lot of money has 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 end use of the people consuming probably will get pissed off with brands a little bit less because of their doing the thing that makes sense.

1:08:51Your time at Ryanair, what are some of those tactics that you think still work in a high value? I particularly always think the reactive stuff is super powerful but again it just relies on the again like you're just not planning like how do you it seems to me that most brands are in this mode of 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 it's again I used this again joke before maybe they've gone too far that way so now they're not doing the planned stuff No, but also they probably don't have enough people who understand the brand to bring it in or who understand the nuance or who just aren't good crafty comedy writers in that space to make it work and stick.

1:09:38And 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, mark it up. Ding, ding, full house. He said about 40 times. It's then building an operation and 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 it time after time.

1:10:14If it works, people will engage. If it doesn't, experiment, change, try again. If it works again, this time, brilliant. you found again a step closer to figuring this out and that wasn't just reactive in Ryanair we had process for reactive we'd process for repeatable formats and we built the banger bank I've talked about these things over the past many times and in the previous time we talked about it's again it's it's the 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.

1:10:48We broke down that matrix that gives you four areas, but in within 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 still 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 now they've seen your posts so context is easier for the brain to consume but if there's not enough connections back to the brand and well enough for what you're trying to do or solve you might just be creating basic awareness which is why we said earlier qso restaurants that might actually just help because you want to have a takeaway you're going to be on a deliveroo app and you're going to be looking at all 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 shopping mall in westfield shopping center and you see all the up in the food court that might be just enough to do it for them.

1:11:43But if your problems of what you need to do for the brand of business are far 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'll say that nauseam that you're creating things and cues that remember the trend, but very little about the brand.

1:12:21And 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. So if you're not making the impression, what's the point? You're not actually doing anything to build anything for a brand. What I've built in Slice and the consultancy has been born from the tools that made Ryanair what it was. But the tactics and how they did it, can they still win? Yeah, there's brands that are proving that it can. But for the majority, no. Because of how fragile the ground is, how the platform is going, we've got to think about it differently.

1:12:57But if you can find your aha moment with strategy, you can get creative or repetition with that. and then you can find the right tactics and distribution to do that time and to get rewarded with doing good work and being seen, that probably gives you the greatest chance of actually doing something and billing the case for doing a good job on these platforms. How do you see AI in all of this? You kind of have to ask that question, don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to ask that again. AI is just going to create more slop, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Do I think AI is bad for creativity?

1:13:26No. If the idea is good enough and it's told through some sort of, you know, 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 in tactically it's helping with workflows but yeah it's going to make the channels maybe more shit because again i think colin samir their podcast they talk about in the recent time with 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 far against it i think the tools that help us take the mundane 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 gone through my career marketing you used to have these all-around marketeers these jack-of-all-trades who understood with all touch points in the old marketing world and all the old marketing channels.

1:14:32So 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 It's just that task, which means whether it makes it benefit big picture. They don't care because my job focuses to win in this.

1:15:08I think what AI is going to do is AI is going to remove all those shitty fucking, like 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 to come out of it. I can talk about the doom and gloom 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.

1:15:52Andrew 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

1:16:22Thank you.