Breakdowns

YETI sells coolers, and they’ve put out more than 75 films. One of them is a Jimmy Buffett documentary, free on YouTube. On paper that sounds like a pretty expensive hobby. But when anyone can make polished content for next to nothing, polish isn’t really what you’re paying for anymore. The story is. And the

Most brands are trying to keep up with culture and losing. Not because they’re slow. Because they’re betting everything on one piece of content at a time, and that start / stop game is impossible to win when the feed never stops moving. There’s a way to change that, and it’s something we use at

There’s a stage in content production that determines whether the creative will work, and most brands don’t use it. It starts with discovery. Before anything else, brand marketers need to discover and (re)define their goals, audience, KPIs, and messaging. Then comes distribution strategy, and this is the one that most brands miss. Where is the

The brands growing the fastest on social right now aren’t the ones with the biggest ad spend. They’re the ones who are planning for deliverables across all social platforms before pressing record. I’ve found a lot of brand teams leave awareness on the table by focusing on one deliverable and one platform. They show up

Clients were coming to us saying the same thing. Let’s go out, shoot one big hero campaign, and call it done. All the eggs in one basket. And I’d always think… what if that one big thing doesn’t work? You’re already on set. You’ve got the talent, the crew, the location. Everything’s right there. So

Film production is such a strange job. The Oakley x Meta shoot had us hauling multiple bags of cheezies up a hill… Insurance paperwork nearly derailed the whole thing before we got on location. Weather kept shifting. A couple of the bigger creative swings were “Hail Marys” going in. But some things clicked. Reflections became

There’s a reason some brands feel familiar the moment you see them… and it’s not the logo. As feeds get noisier and AI content floods every platform, building recall is quietly becoming a crucial game in brand building. The brands winning it aren’t necessarily the loudest or the most polished. They’re the ones that keep

Most brands think the “polish” should show up in the first frame. I keep seeing the best-performing launches start somewhere completely different. Manors Golf Apparel Golf does it at the top of their latest film. The whole opening looks like someone just pulled out their phone and hit record, handheld and slightly messy. And that’s

Mr. Beast does something in the first three seconds of his videos that brands could learn from. It’s not the crazy challenges. It’s not the budget, the stunts, or the production scale. It’s just the opening. Almost every single video starts with something unresolved… a tension, a moment that feels incomplete, and your brain immediately

Most brands are investing in the wrong thing and they don’t even know it yet. Not because they’re bad at marketing. Because the scoreboard they’re watching only shows tomorrow. A lot of teams are pouring budget into paid campaigns, transactional content, constant product pushes… and it feels smart because the numbers move. Sales spike. The

Brooklyn Coffee Shop is a social show that all brands should pay close attention to. Most brands are still treating their social feed like a bulletin board. New look every post. New message. New format. New vibe. Each one might be decent on its own, but nothing ever stacks. Nothing becomes recognizable. It peaks… and

SATISFY Running has built one of the strongest worlds on social media right now… and they’re still leaving brand awareness on the table. Not because the creative is weak. The look, the feel, the tone, all of it is premium and consistent. You scroll their Instagram and you know immediately you’re inside the “Satisfy universe”.