The brand presses the same gas pedal that used to work, but nothing moves. What used to overperform, now underperforms. We hear terms like being “stuck in TikTok jail”. I’ve even heard some brands question if it’s even worth showing up on organic social anymore.

Today’s newsletter is a toolkit for getting out of a social media stall. (Yes, it’s possible!) Link in Bio contributor Matthew Stasoff walks us through:

• Why social media strategies stall

• How to identify if your strategy is stuck

• Three steps to jump-starting your account

Matthew is the Group Director, Social Strategy and Creative at Anomaly and has spent the past 10+ years shaping how global brands show up online. I’ve already bookmarked a few of the frameworks he outlines below.

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In a recent article in Vulture, influencer Audrey Peters shared that the formats she was making a few years ago on TikTok now felt “overdone”. To keep up with the fast pace of algorithms, she’s had to keep pivoting. New bits, new topics, new series. “I’m going to have to constantly adapt and rebrand,” she said.

The article got me thinking about my own experience as a user. How I’ll come across a new creator, engage, see more of their content, until one day they just disappear from my FYP. On the off chance they do reappear, the comment section will be filled with notes like “the algorithm hasn’t shown me your videos in months”.

Brands experience this exact same thing. Content that used to do absolute numbers all of a sudden isn’t hitting.

It’s like the car your family has had forever. It works, it’s reliable, and then one day it just doesn’t get to where it needs to go.

Your social strategy has stalled.

Why do social strategies stall?

There are three reasons an account’s momentum might stall out.

The platform: Stills to carousels, carousels to video, landscape to vertical, and so on. What worked today doesn’t tomorrow. Certain formats get more reach. For example, Reels are shown to non-followers and single-image posts are not. Your strategy must adjust with these updates.

The brand: An internal brand change is enacted that no longer resonates with your existing audience. Maybe it’s a rebrand or new campaign.

The audience: A user’s algorithm reflects where they are in their life and what they consume. When a life change occurs (relationship, hobby, or interest), that new behavior sends signals, the algorithm rewires, and the FYP reshapes. Importantly, as audiences spend time in one niche, they might burn out on specific topics or formats more quickly.

Rachel recently described the algorithm as an air traffic controller. She wrote, “When your account doesn’t have a focus, your posts have a ‘cold start’. The algorithm air traffic control doesn’t have a strong test group to point that video towards.” Brand accounts that stay within a specific world make it easier for the algorithm to essentially source viewers.

What’s changing though is that platforms are giving the audience more power over their algorithms. Thanks to features like Instagram’s “Your Algorithm” people can hand-select what they want to see more of or less of. This theoretically puts your audience in that air traffic control tower too. That means audiences can, to some degree, pick and choose if they want to see more of your content.

How to know if your strategy is stalled

It’s just not working. I call this the “lemon stall”. The entire strategy is just not resonating. You’ve got a lemon. Maybe it never resonated or maybe what used to work is no longer working. The first step to fixing a lemon is being honest with yourself that you have a lemon.

It’s working, but with the wrong audience. The “hamster wheel stall”. You’re getting engagement and views but your audience demographics or KPIs are saying otherwise. Empty attention.

You’ve been audience captured. Your brand is letting your audience dictate what you should post. You’ve lost sight of what you should be making. It’s the “spell stall.” Writer talks about it with influencers, but it applies just as much to brands. He says, “Audience capture is an irresistible force in the world of influencing, because it's not just a conscious process but also an unconscious one. While it may ostensibly appear to be a simple case of influencers making a business decision to create more of the content they believe audiences want, and then being incentivized by engagement numbers to remain in this niche forever, it's actually deeper than that. It involves the gradual and unwitting replacement of a person's identity with one custom-made for the audience.”

The hardest part about fixing a stalled social strategy is first acknowledging that the account has slowed in the first place. It’s easy to exist in a stall for a long period of time, blaming the algorithm or external forces. But there’s always a way out of a stall. It just takes a strategy shift.

Three steps to jump-start your social strategy

1. Pop the hood on your audience and brand.

To be clear, this isn’t a trend-finding mission. It’s an insight-finding mission. You’re after the “why” not the “what.”

Spreadsheet data and Google Slide personas rarely account for what someone sees when they scroll. Anecdotally, I’ve heard of multiple agencies that have dedicated burner phones set up in the office for different passion points. Each one has a fine-tuned algorithm for a specific niche: The Sports Fanatic Phone, The Romantasy Reader Phone, The Gamer Phone. People in the agency are then encouraged to pick it up and scroll to learn about what’s on the feeds of their potential customers.

Another option is using the DASH framework on your audience:

(D)IET. What’s actually on their FYP right now. Less about formats, more about the topics.

(A)UDIO. What’s in their ears? The song, the sound, the podcast they’re deep on.

(S)TARTS. What did they pick up in the last 90 days? From the hobbies to the behaviors.

(H)ANDLES. The five accounts they’d name if you asked who they actually watch. Not the big ones. The ones they’d be a little embarrassed to say out loud.

The goal here is to get a more dialed in version of who your audience is.

2. Change what you’re putting in the tank.

Break away from your brand’s mythology. The resurgence of the finsta and spin-off accounts are all signals that how a brand perceives itself and how the audience perceives them can be at odds with each other. Be honest about those perceptions.

Too many brands hold back their potential when they think of themselves as “too premium” or “too serious”. Here are some suggestions:

Run a content sprint. My preferred version is the 5×5 method: five new formats, five pieces of content each. If an idea can’t extend beyond five pieces, kill it. Remember that focusing an account or having a “niche”, whether it’s a brand or creator, helps an account more easily find audience.

Build better on-ramps. You know this from this newsletter, but campaigns need more on-ramps, more chronology-agnostic ways in. Here is a resource I put together, with a few listed below.

Better fuel, better mileage. What is an idea you can put out into the world that shows the work your team put into it? This can happen by bringing people behind-the-scenes but also just developing an idea that clearly took effort. This isn’t about big production, it’s about big effort.

3. Warm it up, start it up, and pay attention.

Prime the account. You don’t fix a cold start by flooring it. Warm that baby (your account) up first. Interact with content you would want your own posts sitting next to in someone’s scroll. Let the algorithm know where it should direct your posts.

Sweat the details during this phase. If you look back at your past 30 posts, what would you have changed? A different hook, font choice, tone, set, etc? Test the shit out of any new content you’re making. There’s no doubt Trial Reels have opened the door to testing and refining content, ideally taking it from good to great. You can find more info on how brands are approaching Trial Reels here.

In the end, sometimes the data says it all. Listen to it closely. Be honest about what’s working and what isn’t.

It’s getting more and more common to stall

It doesn’t matter what car you drive or the content you create, a “stall” is more likely to happen today than any other point in the history of social because of these two factors:

The feed has never been so fickle. The audience and algorithm are continually more connected. Your audience’s feed rewires every time their life does. It reshapes their FYP and the brands they used to see are just gone. Brands still think of a stall as something to avoid, but influencers already know that “adapt and rebrand” is the new normal. The social team from Grillo’s describes their social strategy as “different songs from the same band.” They told Rachel, “When we post, we want you to know it’s Grillo’s, but you’ll never know what’s coming up next on the playlist.”

There’s never been more content. In a recent episode of The Colin and Samir Show with YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway, Samir calls out that we’re in the “Abundance Era” of content, going on to say that “every video that I think about is probably being made right now.” He finishes by saying (and for me this is the most important part) that “the only thing you can think about or should think about is ‘What’s my thing to say?’” And “say” shouldn’t be misconstrued as “saying something meaningful”, it’s simply having a perspective, a point of view, an intentional look. That sets you apart from the others.

Every brand has stalled or will stall on social media. It’s the nature of how these algorithms work today. The important part is having a process in place to identify when you might be in need of a jump-start.

Check out the Link in Bio Job Board

The Link in Bio Job Board features all of the best social media roles in one place, updated daily. Right now there are roles from places like Rhode, Calvin Klein, P&G, The Ankler, and more. If you work for a brand that’s hiring within social media, this job board is for you too. Post your job listings to get in front of talented social media marketers. Check it out here!

Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoy free essays like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for making this newsletter possible!

Here’s what’s inside today’s newsletter:

• Why NowThis gives themselves eight episodes to pilot a social series

• How an NYC diner got 20M views in six months

• Five post formats to try this week

• The quote I can’t stop thinking about from Topicals’ marketing playbook webinar

• A resource with over 100K public domain video clips

Read more

Both of these strategies work, but too often I see leadership of Slow Brands ask their social teams to act like Fast Brands, with no infrastructure in place. They will message their team IKEA’s viral Severance post, for example, and say, “Why didn’t we do this?”

What these leaders fail to understand is that there’s a reason that a brand like IKEA is able to quickly (and consistently) react to culture. It’s because they have an entire rapid response team dedicated to these moments. The Responsive Project Team meets multiple times a week, has a dedicated Teams channel, and runs every post through a checklist to make sure no one comments “silence, brand”. You can thank them for wink-y posts about Zara Larsson and Punch the monkey, with the latter garnering 214K shares and being their most-liked organic campaign of all time.

In today’s newsletter I am talking to Elissa Wardrop, Global Social Media Specialist at IKEA, about the processes it takes to move fast. We talk about the “originality test” she puts every post through, the responsibilities of the Responsive Project Team, and the mistakes she sees brands make when implementing a reactive strategy.

If you enjoy free interviews like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.

I want to note that this newsletter is an educational resource and can likely be expensed through your company. I have even written a handy template for you to use when asking!

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Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me a bit about your role?

Elissa Wardrop: It’s not a typical social media job…but then again, what is?!

Rather than managing channels, I work across various project teams to shape social strategy and create content for IKEA retail with operations in 32 markets around the world. One of these is our Responsive project team, where I create fast, culturally relevant content around trends, news, pop culture, and key moments.

I also lead our internal social media community across all of our countries day-to-day, which is probably my favourite part of my role. I get to communicate with social specialists all over the world, learn about their cultures, what’s trending in their markets, and constantly share inspiration with each other.

Rachel: How would you describe IKEA’s approach to social media?

Elissa: Human, humble, and unmistakably IKEA.

Our creative direction is built around three words: simple, playful, and inclusive, which I think translate really naturally to social media. We don’t want to overcomplicate things, we want to speak to people like people, and importantly, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

A big part of that playfulness is what we call the IKEA “twinkle in the eye.” It doesn’t necessarily mean telling jokes or trying to be funny. It can be a clever connection, an unexpected little surprise, or simply a choice of words that makes you grin.

We create everything from deeper, original storytelling to quick responsive content around what people are talking about right now, but whatever we’re creating, the question is always: does this feel unmistakably IKEA?

Rachel: We’re posting at a time when people are very sensitive to how brands engage with cultural moments and trends. There are a lot of “silence, brand” comments. Your reactive strategy avoids that sentiment. I have a theory on why, but what would you say?

Elissa: I think a big part of it is that we don’t feel like IKEA needs to be part of every conversation.

When we do respond, we want there to be a genuine IKEA reason for us to be there—whether that’s a clever connection to one of our products, life at home, the IKEA experience, or our Swedishness.

And importantly, we want to contribute something new rather than just recreate the same trend with an IKEA logo on it. As I always say: we want to innovate, not imitate.

Sometimes the best response is just one image and a few words. And other times the best response is not to post anything at all. Knowing when to stay quiet is just as important as knowing when to join in.

Rachel: Many social media teams have a desire to be responsive but lack the infrastructure to move quickly. What structural meetings, processes, or philosophies do you have in place to enable this responsiveness?

Elissa: We’re lucky to have a small Responsive team that comes together two to three times a week, with a very active Teams chat in between where we’re constantly sharing things we’ve spotted and bouncing ideas around. We’re different ages, nationalities and have different interests, so our feeds look completely different and we naturally spot different things.

We also have a cultural calendar that maps out upcoming moments across pop culture, sport, movies, music, fashion, award ceremonies and more. It means we know what’s coming and can keep a closer eye on those moments as they happen, ready to jump in if something relevant and ownable for IKEA emerges. Alongside that, we follow marketing and culture pages, newsletters, Google Trends and the news, so we can keep a finger on the pulse of what’s happening.

Another big part of our philosophy is not overcomplicating the execution. Responsive content doesn’t always need a big production behind it. It might be an iPhone photo, a quick Photoshop, or some assistance from AI. Our Taylor Swift engagement post, which became IKEA UK’s most-shared Instagram post, was literally photographed against two pieces of paper on a stool next to a window. Sometimes the simplest way of bringing a good idea to life is all you need.

But I don’t think you necessarily need a dedicated team to be responsive. What matters more is having clear processes, clear guardrails and trust—empowering your social team to make decisions, while knowing when they need to bring in additional support or approval.

Rachel: What questions do you ask when deciding whether IKEA should react to something?

Elissa: We actually have a little checklist we run through.

First, we read the room. What’s the general sentiment around the conversation? Could our response be insensitive, make light of someone’s real-life misfortune, perpetuate stereotypes or exclude anyone? Is it appropriate for children?

We also consider whether there are any issues around safety, sustainability, copyright or IP, and of course whether it aligns with our brand values, tone of voice and guidelines.

Then there’s the practical side: can we create something quickly enough for it to still be relevant, without compromising on quality?

And finally, can we bring a unique, ownable IKEA angle to it? If the answer to any of those questions doesn’t feel right, we’re completely comfortable sitting that one out.

Rachel: Can you share some metrics that show the impact of these response posts? Is the Punch the monkey post still the most-liked?

Elissa: Yes! When looking at the total number of likes across all of the IKEA accounts that posted the Punch Responsive post, it’s still our most-liked organic campaign. It was crazy seeing how far it travelled. It was picked up by media around the world, including ABC News Australia—where my dad back home saw it on TV—The Washington Post, The New York Post, The Japan Times and many more. We also saw DJUNGELSKOG selling out across multiple countries following the post.

But some of my favourite measures of impact aren’t really traditional metrics. Our Severance post got a comment from MrBeast on a Twitter re-share, saying “I need this,” and the show’s Emmy Award-winning Production Designer Jeremy Hindle later featured it in his keynote at Figma Config.

I also love when the people we’re referencing actually find the content themselves. Actress Yerin Ha commented and re-shared our Bridgerton post, Shonda Rhimes liked it, and Zara Larsson also liked and re-shared our Stateside post.

Those moments, alongside the big numbers, are a really nice indication that the content is travelling beyond just the people who already follow IKEA.

Rachel: I think about the behind-the-scenes breakdown of the Punch post often. Can you share how that post came together here?

Elissa: When I noticed Punch starting to trend, I immediately reached out to our IKEA Japan team and learnt they were already in close contact with the zoo. I shared a rough mock-up of the idea, and they worked directly with the zoo to get their feedback and approval.

Once we had the green light, I grabbed the two soft toys and headed outside the IKEA store to find somewhere to photograph them. Sweden was just coming out of winter, so the glamorous location ended up being the only patch of grass I could find—against a mud track that was left behind by a truck that had gotten stuck in the winter!

It took 38 attempts to get the final photo, the whole shoot took 20 minutes. Once I took that last photo, I then sat on the patch of grass and edited it. Nine minutes later, I had shared the finished asset with our country’s social teams.

I think that behind-the-scenes story sums up Responsive quite nicely. Something that ultimately reached tens of millions of people started with two soft toys, an iPhone, and a patch of grass outside IKEA.

Rachel: What mistakes do you see other brands make when implementing a reactive strategy? What advice would you give?

Elissa: I think the biggest mistake is forcing it. Sometimes you see a brand jump on a trend and the connection to their brand or product is such a stretch that it just doesn’t really make sense.

There’s also the originality test: if another brand could take your post, put their logo on it and it would still work, then it probably isn’t unique or clever enough. There should be something about the idea that makes you think, “Of course this brand posted this!”

Don’t jump on something just because everyone else is doing it. Find the angle that only your brand can bring—and if you can’t find one, it’s completely okay to sit that trend out.

Rachel: Your LinkedIn bio says “I was known as the weird kid with the camera, staying up all night to make the perfect MySpace.” How has that informed the work you do now?

Elissa: I don’t think I’ve changed that much, I’ve just somehow managed to turn it into a career!

I was always making things, coming up with slightly weird video ideas and obsessing over the tiny details. One of the videos I made as a kid was called “Are you a scruncher, folder or scrunfolder (i.e. both a scruncher and a folder)?” To film it, I dragged the ironing board into our tiny toilet, put the camera strap underneath the iron to hold it in place, and angled the camera down towards the toilet. So apparently finding slightly questionable, no-budget ways to get the shot has been in me for a while! The tools have changed quite a bit since then, but apparently I haven’t.

Rachel: What advice would you give someone who wants to work in social media?

Elissa: In the words of the great Ted Lasso…be curious! You don’t need to wait until someone gives you a social media job to start building the skills for one. Make videos, take photos, write captions, learn how to edit, experiment with AI, start a silly account about something you love, just keep creating and learning.

I’d also try to become a bit of a generalist. Over the years, social media has given me an excuse to dabble in photography, video editing, Adobe, copywriting, community management, strategy, analytics and probably a million other random things. You don’t need to be an expert at everything, but knowing how to do a little bit of everything is incredibly useful.

And stay curious about things outside of marketing too—movies, TV, music, sport, gaming, fashion, internet culture, news, or whatever genuinely interests you. Some of the best ideas come from making connections between completely unrelated things.

What I’m scrolling

Why isn’t Apple sharing their very fun TikTok videos to Instagram? In the past week, the brand has garnered almost 50M views on TikTok by sharing clever vignettes featuring their products. (I love this one!) None of them have been shared to Instagram. My hunch is that they think they are too “silly” for the platform, but I’d argue they could loosen up a bit more on there. What do you think?

Brands and creators are copying Yung Lean’s music video choreography using AI. Creator Jakob Owens said it best: “We need legal ramifications NOW”.

Forward your boss UTA’s Culture Index. I first read this report a few months ago, but forgot to share it here. I think it’s excellent! “A brand can have massive reach and robust growth metrics. But if consumers do not perceive it as connected to their world, it does not exist in culture.” Download it here.

Back in June, I wondered if we’d soon see brands hire sketch artists to document their events. This week J.Crew hired @really_bad_portraits for their NYFW party. The original examples I shared were Adam Faze sharing his birthday sketches here and a NY Tech Week party doing the same thing here. Fun!

I interviewed Columbia Sportswear about their sponsored post with Kennedy Eurich. “The biggest lesson was one I’ve seen reinforced time and time again: pick the right talent, then trust them.”

A24 launched a new social show called “The Board”.

Ian Evans, who has spent four years making brilliant videos for software company tldv.io, announced he was leaving on the brand account. The post has over 8K likes and almost 500 comments. One person wrote, “I think you know you built something really special when people are going to miss you from a brand account. Can’t wait to see what you do next and I’m going to miss having your content to send to my coworkers. 👏”

Check out the Link in Bio Job Board

The Link in Bio Job Board features all of the best social media roles in one place, updated daily. Right now there are roles from places like Fishwife, Ferrari, Ritual, and more.

If you work for a brand that’s hiring within social media, this job board is for you too. Post your job listings to get in front of talented social media marketers.

During a recent event with The Publish Press, I spoke about the role creative strength is playing in influencer marketing right now. When I’m working with brands on influencer campaigns, I’ll weigh the relationship the creator has with their followers just as much as the creative effort they put into their sponsored posts. Because in today’s algorithm, a creator isn’t guaranteed to reach their audience on any given post. The content has to earn attention. Even if they have 1M followers.

That’s why I was so intrigued by Ken Eurich’s recent sponsored post for Columbia Sportswear. The original brief was for her to go on a scavenger hunt for a fax machine, shoot on iPhone, the usual. Instead, she hired a production company to make what is essentially a short film. It’s part of a larger theme I’ve seen bubbling up in the creator world. I talked to the director of the video as well as Columbia Sportswear’s social and influencer lead all about it.

Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:

• What brands can learn from Ken Eurich’s sponsored post for Columbia Sportswear

• The unexpected process I add into influencer briefs

• Three post formats to try this week

• You can now add links to your Instagram posts (for a fee)

• The beauty brand hosting a three hour webinar on how their “products, campaigns, and ideas come to life”

• How to join the Link in Bio Discord

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I wanted to bring all of that energy to one space, for one day. It’s called the Link in Bio Job Fair. The goal is for social media job seekers and job hirers to meet in the comment section of this post. It’s inspired by a similar initiative writer Anne Helen Petersen hosted for her newsletter Culture Study.

Below are more details on how to participate or you can head straight to the comment section here.

If you’re looking for a social media job, comment what your ideal role looks like.

You can include past experience, the industries you’re open to, and what skills you’d consider your strengths. Don’t feel like you need to list off your entire resume, just share the kind of work you’d be excited to dig into. Include a link to your portfolio if you have one.

If you’re hiring for a social media job, comment information about the role.

Describe the job in your own words, share the types of qualities the candidate should have, and include a link to the live job posting. If you’re open to it, let people know they can reach out or reply to your comment to let you know they applied.

If you’re not looking for a social media job, comment your best advice.

Talk about something tactical that worked the last time you were job hunting or share tips you’ve learned from your own career path.

Make it easy to get in touch.

If you’re open to being contacted outside of the comment section, make that clear in your post. There are a few options for how people can get in touch. Be sure to share which method is your preference.

• People can message you via Substack DMs

• You can share your direct email address in the comments

• Link to your LinkedIn so people can connect there

Finally, be kind!

Looking for a job is a frustrating, grueling, and tedious process. It’s always been that way, but it feels especially true today. Scam recruiting emails. AI resume screening. Hiring tests that feel more like consulting projects. The goal is for the Link in Bio Job Fair to be one of the few bright spots. See you in the comment section?

Leave a comment

Today I am sharing the much-anticipated annual list of social media hot takes. Past versions have inspired comments like “I felt like I was clapping while reading this” and “I would buy a poster with these printed on it”. It’s the collective scream we all need.

In addition to lots of my own takes, I’ve also included the opinions of a few friends of the newsletter. Contributors include Zach Schiffman, Dejaih Smith, Grace Tully, Rohan Kumar, Bari Tippett, Mitch Goldstein, Nick Gallo, Kendall Dickieson, Sara Alfageeh, Kevin Farzad, Andrew Downing, Cayla DeRegis, Naleen Camara, Sarah Whittle, and more. All of the takes have been anonymized. There are also illustrations from the very talented Jordan Awan sprinkled throughout.

Finally, don’t take these too seriously. They are all in good fun! I promise.

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Today’s newsletter continues to pull on that thread. What does it feel like to be online right now? There’s no one I’d rather tackle that question with than Ruby Justice Thelot.

Ruby is a designer, multi-disciplinary artist, cyberethnographer, and professor of design and media studies at NYU. He is also the author of the Substack and the forthcoming book In Defense of Being-On-Line. It’s his job to study the way humans interact with the internet. We obviously had a lot to discuss.

I talked to Ruby about whether brands can have taste, his media consumption rules (“1 weekend of TikTok per month”), and why you should be proud of posts that flop.

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Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me a little bit about the work that you do?

Ruby Justice Thelot: I’m a cyberethnographer which means that I study the digital lives of people and digital subcultures. I’m a designer by trade and I teach Design and Media Theory at New York University.

Rachel: I loved your media consumption rules for 2025. They were, “12 movies maximum per year. 10 minutes of Instagram per day. 1 hour of Twitter and TikTok per day but it MUST be followed by 15 minutes of writing down in the notes app or a notebook your favorite insights or things that piqued your curiosity. No TV shows. Unlimited books.” Did they change at all for 2026?

Ruby: I had to alter the TikTok rules, in spite of it being quite informational, I found myself falling into doomscrolls and going back to the app, time after time when bored...

Instead now I get TikTok one weekend per month. I catch up on the latest happenings, see the latest jokes, but the scrolling is contained to that specific weekend. For next year, I may allow TV for sports, I suffered socially from not being able to watch the Knicks or the World Cup.

Rachel: How would you describe the era of social media that we’re in right now?

Ruby: Social media is purely media now. It is closer to classic mass entertainment like TV. Reels are similar to shows with sketches and formats and recurring characters and crossover episodes. For the record, I don’t think that it’s a bad thing, I just think it’s different.

I also think that given this new function, we need to acknowledge that we should decouple the place where one speaks to their friends from the place where one sees their short-form show. That should be migrated to an alternative platform or other modes of communication. Our user experiences are worse when we commingle entertainment and communication.

Rachel: This newsletter focuses specifically on how brands show up online. Many subscribers post online for a living. We also appreciate hard truths. How does the average consumer perceive brands on social media today?

Ruby: Depends which consumer. I think there are generational differences in how people relate to brands and social media in general. As a Gen-Z, I don’t like when brands try too hard, it’s giving hello-fellow-kids. I don’t want memes, just tell me why I should buy these shoes, lol. Or do something cool that grabs my attention. Artistry in that sense matters a lot. A lot more than being #funny or #relatable.

Rachel: I’m curious what you think of online trends. They’ve really been supercharged by the TikTok algorithm. It’s especially prevalent on brand accounts. The same meme or audio, over and over again. Is that a good way for a brand to stand out?

Ruby: It’s a good way for a brand to ride an algorithmic wave, which is something it may want to do. It’s important for brand leaders and marketers to be clear-eyed about their intentions in choosing to hop on a trend. It’s ok to want to be a part of the conversation, it generates temporary views and draws attention, but it will not lead to a meaningful connection with an audience, unless the trend is very niche or specific. In which case, a subculture may feel seen. The science is however not favorable to brand hopping on trends: this study found that use of internet slang in persuasive advertising had a negative impact on brand and product evaluation.

Rachel: A lot of people who work in social media think in a very algorithm-first way. What will perform well instead of I want to make this thing. Is that mindset necessary? Can you get out of it?

Ruby: The way to break free from audience capture and algorithmic capture is to become a bit of a contrarian. I spent time in 2018-2021 studying a group of artists in a niche Facebook group who were making macros. One of the proudest things you could do as a poster/artist was to make a post so obscure, so sibylline, so arcane that it gets no likes.

In a sense, marketers (if it fits their brand) should embrace the elitism of not being understood. Personally, I have many great posts that are criminally under-appreciated. I embrace their failure on social media as a mark of my own arcaness. What can I say, in the words of Coriolanus, I will be thus to them.

Rachel: I spend more time than I’d like to admit on Twitter, which means I have been deep in the taste discourse this year. You’ve been writing about this topic for a long time. Why do you think this conversation is bubbling up right now?

Ruby: I sure have. Even wrote a book about it!

The question of taste emerged in the 17th century at a time where people needed guidance as to how to consume properly. In 1688, the Bill of Rights is signed in England after the Glorious Revolution, and the nobility’s powers are restrained. And as they lose political power, they also lose cultural power. Simultaneously, you have the emergence of the British colonies with immense amounts of wealth being generated in the United Kingdom. Suddenly you have this nouvelle bourgeoisie, a new elite that emerges. There’s a belief, at the time, that the advent of excessive luxury would will lead to the decay of society. There’s even John Sekora writes in Luxury (1977) that the excess would lead to effeminacy, it is in the vacuum, in the reduction of the cultural power of the previous nobility, that the question of taste emerges.

What’s interesting to me is that we’re in a similar position now. We’re entering a similar industrial revolution. We are in the midst of immense amounts wealth being created, and we’re asking ourselves, How do we consume virtuously? And that is why the question of taste is emerging.

As I write in my book, “Our situation resembles that of 18th century England. At the eve of a new Industrial Revolution, inundated by foreign products, lacking the central authority of an Elite to dictate and inspire mimesis, we are left wandering in endless store aisles and webpages, wondering how to properly consume.”

Rachel: How do you define taste?

Ruby: Taste, as we currently define it, to me is the faculty of “properly discerning the relative value of cultural goods” or “aesthetic discrimination”. Fun fact, it had its literal meaning of sensory taste, as in flavor etc, until roughly 1597 when Francis Bacon expanded its meaning. A cool read is “What Books Taste Like” from 2021!

Rachel: Can a brand have taste?

Ruby: A brand can have an aesthetic but taste ultimately is a social activity. Brands confer relative value to cultural goods. Tastemakers confirm that relative value. Now, as brands become more tied to individuals and influencers, you could say that a CEO or a founder or a creative director has taste. Brunello Cucinelli or Rick Owens as people have tremendous taste, in my opinion.

Rachel: At the same time, we’re seeing tech companies really investing in storytelling and “narrative” roles. To me, they mostly sound like marketing roles with new titles. Am I wrong?

Ruby: They’re marketing roles, haha. People love to reinvent the wheel. The work I do for tech brands often falls into storytelling and “narrative” but mostly it’s about developing a way to present the brand and its products to an audience, which roughly is marketing.

Rachel: I’ve been writing a lot about how AI-generated imagery and video is impacting the way people scroll. There’s a lot more skepticism. I see comments on videos that aren’t made with AI saying “boo AI”. How are you noticing AI change people’s relationships with social media?

Ruby: It’s altering it quite radically. Social media was a place to be social with other people and the slow invasion of AI accounts, AI content, and AI comments are rupturing that contract. In my new book, In Defense of Being-On-Line, I have an essay called Everything is Default Fake. When we reach a cultural state where we can no longer trust any visual media we encounter online, images and videos lose their authority as representations of reality. Their ascribed fidelity decreases and older modes like hearsay, second-hand accounts become more valuable because they are attached to an individual. I say that we enter a zone of HYPER-LOCAL / GLOBAL SKEPTICISM. We return to more tribal ways of sharing and accessing knowledge.

Rachel: Some argue that the proliferation of bots, generative AI, and algorithm hackers will drive people to be more offline. Do you see it that way?

Ruby: Not exactly. I think what Substack is doing is clever. (They recently added an AI-text analyzer so users can see if the essay or post was made using AI—it showcases the platform’s commitment to human writing). We’re going to see platforms stake their claim to “human-content.” We’re seeing “AI” labels pop-up near AI-generated content as a warning but more broadly, I think it will become the “culture” of the platform to be more AI-forward or more human-forward.

Rachel: Finally, do you have any tips or advice for lowering your screen time? Asking for me!

Ruby: I just use screen time. My team worked on a report called “Paratechnology” which we presented at Betaworks, a VC fund in New York. Para-technology is technology that prevents direct interaction with another primary technology, usually the smartphone or an app. Think Screen Time, Opal, Do Not Disturb, Brick, Yondr pouches, etc. The growing demand for paratechnological tools reflects a true and rapidly expanding need for ways to keep us off our phones. The future of positive tech is one that is convivial (to use the Ivan Illich term), one that does not engender addiction or habituation, but one that empowers its users.

I also don’t have a TV, that helps. :)

What I’m scrolling

Meta to pay up to $17.1B in landmark settlement over social media addiction claims. As part of the settlement, Meta said it would change how teenagers use Instagram and Facebook. They are introducing time limits, disabled “like” counts, the ability to turn off an algorithmic feed, and more. Meta is also requesting that TikTok and YouTube implement similar changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if adults started demanding these features too.

Digital ads are flooded with ‘synthetic’ AI models. How one state is calling them out. Peolpe are submitting anonymous complaints to the New York attorney general’s office about brands not disclosing the use of AI-generated people in ads.

This post from Meredith Dairy convinced me to immediately go buy a jar of their marinated cheese. Social media works!

If you keep accidentally DMing people on TikTok, read this.

Sick of AI slop? So are tech giants. “Across the internet, tech companies are undertaking a generative waste detox, overwhelmed in many cases by the same slop first made possible by their own A.I. tools.”

Check out the Link in Bio Job Board

The Link in Bio Job Board features all of the best social media roles in one place, updated daily. Right now there are roles from places like MLB, The New Yorker, David Zwirner, and more.

If you work for a brand that’s hiring within social media, this job board is for you too. Post your job listings to get in front of talented social media marketers.

Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoy free interviews like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.

I want to note that this newsletter is an educational resource and can likely be expensed through your company. I have even written a handy template for you to use when asking!

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for making Link in Bio possible!

In today’s newsletter, I’ll walk you through the content strategy framework I use. As social media platforms have shifted into entertainment platforms, brands have really struggled to get audiences to listen to core brand messaging. I’ve repeated it a million times in this newsletter, but people don’t have short attention spans, they have short consideration spans. It’s a line first heard from Cameron Gidari, VP of Social Media & Innovation at Major League Baseball. In this landscape of discovery-based algorithms, how you package up an idea is everything. Below I explain:

• The Peanut Butter Method for content packaging

• A helpful visual to share with your team

• 8 examples from brands

Plus details on campaign writers’ rooms, three post formats to try this week, inside Figma’s new social show, and more.

Read more

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In my Tuesday newsletter, I wrote that while you do have to entertain on today’s algorithms, that entertainment should always be in service of brand. I think the incentives of the platforms have caused some accounts to take their eye off the ball. But when I think about companies that are sitting in the middle of that venn diagram of “brand building” and “entertaining”, the luggage brand Away comes to mind.

Just look at their Topside campaign. They had their VP of design explain the technicalities of their new top-opening suitcase style while standing in front of a whiteboard. It felt like a very “your ordinary is your audience’s extraordinary” way into their design process. It garnered 3.4M views across platforms and, as you’ll find out below, sold 13 weeks of inventory in less than three weeks. One commenter referred to the VP of design in another video as their “new favorite influencer”.

Since then, they’ve let tweens direct a campaign. Launched Amtrak Jazz, a website where they turned every active train in the country into a musical note. And, just a few days ago, announced @actuallyaway. The new account will feature short films inspired by actual travel stories gathered from their audience. It reminds me of The Ick, an account with over 600K followers that recreates dating stories, but for travel. You can watch the first episode here.

The strategy is led by Cayla DeRegis, who readers of this newsletter might remember from our conversation about NBA Research & Development. She has also spent time at places like Mischief and Buzzfeed.

Below Cayla and I talk about why Away is moving from posting to programming, how they create engaging product education posts, and why it’s important to find inspiration outside of social media.

Rachel Karten: First, how would you describe Away’s approach to social media?

Cayla DeRegis: Our philosophy for social media is to create value before extracting value—we always aspire to serve the viewer first. We serve them in order to gain their attention, trust, participation, and eventual brand advocacy. We want to explore content and narratives that are entertaining or educational and invite people to come back and see what we do next.

That philosophy also gives us a simple filter for what we put into the world: “Would we stop scrolling for this piece of content if we didn’t work at Away?” And just as importantly, are we excited to make it? We want to create work that we like and are proud of as a creative team, not simply content that fills a calendar. When we’re genuinely excited by an idea, there’s a much better chance that excitement will come through to our audience, too.

With that, we’re shifting to more of a human-first storytelling lens, championing and celebrating our community of travelers.

Rachel: What are some of the ways you’re doing that?

Cayla: We’re thinking beyond individual posts and toward more participatory experiences. The internet asks people to watch; travel asks people to do. On social, we create content that invites our audiences to contribute, collaborate, experience, and help shape the story.

Our Amtrak Jazz activation with Josh Wolk is a great example of that, as is this week’s launch of @actuallyaway, our new dedicated episodic social channel.

Rachel: I just saw the announcement post for @actuallyaway. Tell me more about it!

Cayla: @actuallyaway takes that idea even further by putting our community at the center of the storytelling. The channel will be home to short films inspired by actual travel stories gathered from our audience, making the community’s experiences both the inspiration and the content itself. It’s an exciting evolution in how we’re approaching social: moving from posting to programming.

Rachel: One of my favorite recent campaigns from Away was for Topside. Can you tell me how the idea for these more technical whiteboard videos with Hannah, your VP of design, originated?

Cayla: When I joined Away, one of the things that immediately piqued my interest was getting an inside look at how much thought and work goes into making our products. So when we were looking for ways to introduce our newest product, Topside, I knew I wanted to bring our process to the audience.

Topside had been in development for a long time. Internally there is a lot of intention and attention paid to the travel problems we’re trying to solve, the iterations it took to get there, and why certain decisions are made. It felt like there was an opportunity to give people access to a part of the process they don’t normally see.

Rachel: Can you share any of the success metrics? I’d imagine this video sold some suitcases…

Cayla: We sold 13 weeks of stock in less than three weeks! The success of this style can’t solely be attributed to this one organic video, but the response to the content was huge. That video has more than 3.4M views across channels and is still the most viral post year-to-date. The collection is now back-in-stock, with other colors to debut soon.

It also showed us that the format could keep working beyond that one launch. We’ve continued the series for other products, and those videos perform 95% above our average view baseline.

Rachel: Like you mentioned, Hannah has appeared in more videos since that campaign. Someone commented that she’s their favorite influencer. Why do you think this style of content is resonating?

Cayla: People resonate more with people than they do with brands. A familiar face creates a sense of recognition and continuity. You’ll remember enjoying the first video you saw with Hannah, so when she shows up again in your feed, there’s already a connection there. It makes the content feel familiar, approachable and worth watching, rather than another piece of branded content. It also helps that Hannah is so effortlessly cool – on and off camera.

Rachel: The hook in the Topside video is particularly great. “Designing a suitcase for people who like to live out of their luggage…” How do you approach coming up with engaging ways into videos?

Cayla: Product education videos can very quickly feel like ads. We talk a lot about social being the new TV, but brands still tend to approach educational content like they’re making a commercial.

TV has figured out a hundred ways to make learning entertaining through formats we already know and love—competition shows, process shows, game shows, reality shows. They take a structure people understand and apply it to a new subject. When we’re developing social content, I’m often thinking about whether there’s an entertainment format we can borrow from to make a brand or product story genuinely worth watching.

This series is essentially our version of “How It’s Made”—giving people access to the process behind a product they might otherwise never consider.

And then there are the hooks, which I obsess over. I’ll sometimes write and rewrite a hook 12 or 15 times before I land on it. A hook is visual, verbal, and written, and all three have to work together to create enough curiosity to make someone want to stay. Getting that right is genuinely an art, and probably one of the hardest parts of making content work on social.

Rachel: I recently wrote about Trial Reels. Do you use them at all?

Cayla: In the past, I’ve used Trial Reels to repost some of our top-performing content and see if it could reach a new audience, and I’ve also used it to A/B test different hooks so we can keep learning what resonates for different types of videos.

There’s a lot of potential there, and it’s definitely a tool I want to put more structured experimentation around so we can get clearer about when and how it’s most useful.

Rachel: Where do you find inspiration for the work you do in social media?

Cayla: I am a big consumer of content, but I don’t actually spend that much time consuming content on social. I consume a lot of other mediums – TV, film, books, magazines, comedy shows, museums, performances. Those are often the things that inspire me the most.

I think it’s easy to consume content on social and think, “Oh we can make a post exactly like this for our next launch.” vs. Looking outside of social gives you the space to think about storytelling and creativity in new ways, so you can bring something more unique to the platform rather than just adding noise.

Rachel: What do you love about working in social media?

Cayla: I feel so lucky that my job is to make things and share them with the world. I get to wake up every day and work with really cool creatives to tell unique stories and have fun doing it. That’s a very special career to have.

What I’m scrolling

ChatGPT is citing Reddit far less than it did two weeks ago. According to analysis by Promptwatch, Reddit held a steady 3.8% share of ChatGPT Search citations. But on August 14 that share collapsed to under 1%.

YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway, who has worked with brands like Red Bull and the Philadelphia Eagles, shared his YouTube playbook. I liked his home run ideation strategy. It basically says that you can make 10 “single base hits” (posts with an average amount of effort) or you can put the effort of those 10 videos into one video. Home runs that are attempted once a month or quarter. He says it’s a power law. “A much better idea and execution can hit exponentially more views.” It’s a good reminder for brands that are more focused on volume than quality. I also enjoyed listening to him on Colin and Samir here.

I love this video from Gap and Southern University Human Jukebox Marching Band.

Speaking of, Walmart alum Justin Breton is joining Gap Inc. to drive original content. Variety reports that Justin will serve as Gap’s VP of development and will “drive original content across a range of genres and platforms to support the apparel giant’s ‘Fashiontainment’ business initiative.” Shout out to ’s for alerting me to this.

A creator posted a eulogy to “background remover” because posts that use it are now being flagged as AI on Instagram. In a follow up post, Canva claimed this shouldn’t happen with tools like background remover.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani got 2.8M likes and 35M views on a post announcing he’ll start wearing a helmet when riding a bike. According to Social Blade, the mayor’s account has added 868K followers in the past 30 days.

Check out the Link in Bio Job Board

The Link in Bio Job Board features all of the best social media roles in one place, updated daily. Right now there are roles from places like Lovable, FIGS, Penguin Random House, and more.

If you work for a brand that’s hiring within social media, this job board is for you too. Post your job listings to get in front of talented social media marketers.

Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoy free interviews like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.

I want to note that this newsletter is an educational resource and can likely be expensed through your company. I have even written a handy template for you to use when asking!

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for making Link in Bio possible!

If I were to oversimplify here, Chanty Beluga is a character from the mind of comedian Courtney O’Donnell. The set up for the posts is always “A woman named ‘Chanty Beluga’ [insert activity]”. You’ll find her introducing herself at a pool party and ordering a coffee. The bit is mostly around the name “Chanty Beluga”, with each skit bringing in a small nugget of lore. She just got served court papers, for example, but we don’t know what for. Don’t worry, the audience will come up with something.

For those of you who hadn’t yet heard of Chanty Beluga, I can sense your confusion. That’s the whole thing? Yes, and that’s sort of the point. What’s harder to explain is how Chanty Beluga is the desire for discovery on algorithms that have commoditized it. The feeling like you found something niche and wanting the social capital of being the first to tell a friend about it. Chanty Beluga is shared humor on feeds that feel more alienating than ever. Chanty Beluga is just mysterious enough that everyone else can fill in her story. I could compare Chanty Beluga to Backrooms but I’ll spare you.

Longtime readers of this newsletter might remember Courtney O’Donnell from this send in 2023 about comedians who work in social media. At the time, Courtney was the the Social Media Creative Lead for McDonald’s at Wieden+Kennedy. She’s one of the funniest people I know.

Courtney was kind enough to let me interview Chanty Beluga. I wanted to learn more about how she thinks about marketing and the brands she’d like to work with.

Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:

• My interview with Chanty Beluga

• The marketing pattern I picked up on from listening to Q2 earnings calls

• Five post formats to try this week

• A fintech brand created an accountant influencer that gained 1.3M followers

• The social role we’re going to see more of

Chanty Beluga wants a brand deal with Drano

Rachel Karten: Why do you think people relate to Chanty Beluga?

Chanty Beluga: I think they relate to me because of my common name, Chanty Beluga. It’s all so wild. My friends have always told me I’m funny and that I should start posting on social media. And when my videos started to take off, I was like “what!“.

Rachel Karten: Have you been approached for any brand deals yet? Are there any brands you’d love to work with?

Chanty Beluga: I reached out to Vagisil to partner with them, which would’ve been a dream collab, but they passed. A few other brands I love that I hope reach out: Drano, Sharpie, and Ziprecruiter.

Rachel Karten: You clearly know how to get attention online. What advice would you give marketers reading this newsletter?

Chanty Beluga: Lean into the things that make you special. I was bullied as a kid for my name. Now, it’s the thing that makes me stand out. Also, maybe use the color pink in your marketing ideas! It’s the cutest color.

Rachel Karten: What can we expect from Chanty Beluga next? I hear there’s a contest?

Chanty Beluga: There is a Chanty Beluga contest on Friday Aug 21 at 5pm at Grand Army Plaza in New York. It is not a lookalike contest, everyone has to say their best “Hi I’m Chanty Beluga”. After that, who knows. I probably want to take a vacation to Turks and Caicos.

The marketing theme I picked up on in Q2 earnings calls

You can learn a lot about marketing by reading earnings call transcripts. What are CEOs saying about social media? What value did that viral campaign really drive? While looking at the Q2 reports, I noticed an interesting pattern emerge. It’s an important warning for brands right now.

Read more

Right after I sent the newsletter, I came across a post from the creator Bran Flakezz that articulates this point well. He was recapping a meeting he had with a TikTok rep about the algorithm. They told him, “When you have no niche, the platform has no idea who to push your video to.” He said that there is a section in the backend of TikTok that establishes and assigns a “niche” to every creator based off the kind of content they make. When your account doesn’t have a focus, your posts have a “cold start”. The algorithm air traffic control doesn’t have a strong test group to point that video towards. (Even if you have 1.4M followers, like he does.) Accounts that stay within a specific world make it easier for the algorithm to essentially source viewers who are more likely to enjoy and give the video the momentum it needs to reach more people.

For a lot of brands, especially small businesses, it’s worth exploring what a more focused version of your account could look like. How do you create content, consistently over time, that gives the algorithm enough clues to avoid a “cold start”?

Speaking of focused accounts, today’s interview is with one of my favorite new social shows. ScreenTime is like if your applied the camp and theatrics of SportsCenter to the creator economy. A post analyzing and breaking down A.J. and Big Justice has over 29K likes. It’s hosted by comedians Cam George and Pete Ditzler. You might also recognize them as the hosts of the now-shuttered Talking Talk Tuah podcast, where they hilariously dissected new episodes of Haliey Welch’s Talk Tuah. They approach their subjects with that “high effort, low stakes” energy that works so well on social media right now.

We talk about why their videos are resonating (“it can really activate people when they see two 5’6” guys in 3-piece suits acting as the authority on their favorite creators”), what the production process looks like, and how they plan to work with advertisers.

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Rachel Karten: First, why did you pivot from Talking Talk Tuah to ScreenTime?

ScreenTime: While we hold a deep admiration for Haliey Welch and all Podcasters, we never truly felt it was our own calling. We are forever grateful for all of the wisdom we learned from the different hosts we companioned from week to week, but we wanted to play with the format and deliver internet insights in a way that felt novel to us.

There was the better part of a year when we were searching for the next project that really felt right to us, and we stumbled into kismet at a Gelson’s wine bar (imagine the vibe of an airport bar inside a grocery store with a surprisingly OK menu) on one of our brainstorm nights.

The TVs there were broadcasting Inside the NBA, and the frenetic transitions and stat call-ups spliced into heated conversations about players’ capabilities felt like the perfect analogue to content commentary. Similar to sports, content moves at a breakneck pace, and it is impossible to keep up with its dizzying streams of vital numbers, so faithful commentary of it demands more dynamism than a standard podcast set-up.

Rachel: ScrollCenter is a show that you launched on Patreon. ScreenTime is the clips from that show. How did you land on that model?

ScreenTime: We are borrowing the upload strategy of ESPN itself of making full episodes of their shows exclusive to cable or streaming and providing just highlight moments to the more public internet, and it also turns out to be the most sensible posting process in line with our production. On each visit to the studio we rent, we record a full episode of ScreenTime, which consists of 8-10 segments around five minutes each analyzing different creators.

The full episodes end up in the range of 45 minutes, and since we are funding the project ourselves, we wanted to establish a Patreon with exclusive access to the full episodes to draw in people interested in supporting the show. There is also the ambition of eventually expanding the ScrollCenter network to offer other series with different hosts who tackle the internet with their own perspectives.

Rachel: Why do you think the ScreenTime clips are resonating?

ScreenTime: The traditional monoculture may be dead and gone, but many content creators sit within a subliminal, modern entertainment pantheon, and it can really activate people when they see two 5’6” guys in 3-piece suits acting as the authority on their favorite creators.

We are actively working on the best production process for offering even more topical segments, but as we have been primarily setting the context of who our quintessential creators are, the debates have gotten heated between the two of us and with the audiences who have their own informed opinions to share in the comments. It has also been extremely gratifying to see comments from people who recognize us from Talking Talk or even Beast Pod Official and are impressed with the new production.

Rachel: The production value is so good. What does the team look like?

ScreenTime: Thank you! We are still figuring out the best team formation within budget constraints, and we would certainly love to grow enough to pay for additional support. For the first two episodes, we had five friends cut deals on offering their talents and gear, while an employee at the studio provided tech support. For our third episode, only Pete’s girlfriend was available to return and provide assistant directing support, and we paid the studio extra for their in-house camera and audio set-up.

On the post-production side, we handle all of the editing, with Cam designing the bulk of the stat graphics, and Pete specializing in the plug and play of multimedia. We have commissioned a number of talented friends and Cam’s little brother Liam to produce all of the music for the show, as well as a VFX artist for the beautiful motion graphics that keep the show zippy. It is also just us who handle all of the uploading and channel management. We live together, so it is pretty easy to coordinate things via iMessage.

Rachel: Have you worked with any advertisers yet? Are you open to it?

ScreenTime: We are currently in talks with a couple of brands, and while we are open to ad deals to financially sustain the show, we also remain fairly selective to ensure any promotions lend themselves well to the format of the show and are not for predatory products or services. We think the best partner collaborations would come from segment sponsorship (think “POV Power Hour, Presented by Popeyes”) or wardrobe sponsorships. If anyone at Men’s Wearhouse is reading this and interested in working with us, please reach out to us at mattrifeishilarious@gmail.com.

Rachel: Anything else you’d like to share?

ScreenTime: If any of our clips have made you think deeper about the world of content, please consider checking out the full show on Patreon. This is a very ambitious project for us as we juggle other jobs to fund it, and we are trying to keep it as independent as we can. Shout out to our amazing team of friends who make ScreenTime possible!

Check out the Link in Bio Job Board

The Link in Bio Job Board features all of the best social media roles in one place, updated daily. Right now there are roles from places like Olipop, Ladder, DÔEN, and more.

If you work for a brand that’s hiring within social media, this job board is for you too. Post your job listings to get in front of talented social media marketers.

Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoy free interviews like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.

I want to note that this newsletter is an educational resource and can likely be expensed through your company. I have even written a handy template for you to use when asking!

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for making Link in Bio possible!

A showrunner is a job you’d typically find on a television production. They lead both the creative and management of a series. They steer the show’s ship. So what are they doing at a brand?

In the past few years, we’ve seen companies like Bilt, Spotify, InStyle, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Alexis Bittar, and more greenlight social shows. These are recurring series, sometimes on independent accounts, that stick to a specific plot or format. With this, comes showrunners. Both Jonathan Borge at InStyle and Cyrus Ferguson at Bilt include “showrunner” in their Instagram bios.

The platforms are incentivizing this style of content too. Instagram launched a new “Series” feature. TikTok built an ad product specifically for microdramas. YouTube announced a way for creators to organize their videos into seasons and episodes.

As brands and platforms build more infrastructure around social shows, I wanted to get a bit more tactical on the topic. How long does it take to film a season? What mistakes have brands made? How much does it cost?

Below you’ll find:

• The algorithmic benefits of a social show

• A conversation with the creative behind @Life100

• Five rules for creating a series

• How to budget for your brand’s social show

Plus four post formats to try this week, details from Away on their delightful collab with Amtrak, and more.

Read more

Back in November, one of my favorite creators launched a marketing agency. You probably know Anthony Po, or @anthpo, from projects like Kid With Crocs, Timothée Chalamet Lookalike Competition, John Chungus, and Bunch of Friends. His internet performance art has likely racked up billions of views, but the most impressive part to me is that he gets people to participate. Have you ever inspired hundreds of strangers to show up to watch you eat a jar of cheeseballs?

In a recent essay, I wrote about how “breaking through” in today’s attention ecosystem isn’t about views. It’s about participation. I know something is resonating when the more interesting content is being made in comments sections and on personal accounts. I’d argue no one knows how to optimize for that behavior better than Anthony.

When he announced he was starting an agency called Pufferfish with his former MrBeast colleague Talia Schulhof, I immediately knew I’d want to interview them for the newsletter. But I wanted to let them cook first. As the agency approaches one year, I decided it was time to reach out. They’ve now worked with clients like Adobe, Coach, Epidemic Sound, Cash App, and Airlearn. How have they translated their creator instincts into brand momentum?

I talked to Anthony and Talia about how they make something “go viral”, getting buy-in for wild ideas, and why we might see brands make original feature films soon.

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Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me a little bit about Pufferfish?

Talia Schulhof: Pufferfish is a creator-led marketing agency and content production studio. My co-founder, Anthony Po, and I started the agency about a year ago. The two of us met while working for MrBeast on the short-form content team in 2023.

We started the company to help brands make content and launch campaigns that are designed to spread online. Most marketers first look toward a brand’s competitors as a hurdle to conquer for market share, but they really should be looking at content creators as their biggest rival when it comes to capturing attention. Brands will not stand out unless they put forth something that is just as, if not more, entertaining than what creators are putting out there organically.

Our experience making viral content on our own accord informs how we advise our clients so that they can think like creators and resonate with audiences as effectively as creators have been since the dawn of the internet.

Rachel: The biggest social media trope is a boss asking their social team to “go viral”. But you’ve marketed your agency as being able to do just that. As Business Insider put it, you’re a “creative marketing company focused on viral stunts that have a cultural impact — both in person and online”. How do you define viral?

Anthony Po: We don’t think of virality as a pure numbers game. We care about the value of a view more than we care about the view itself. We would much rather make a video with 20K views that people leave becoming true fans, as opposed to one with 10M views and the people forget about the video within a day.

Talia: Though we’re positioning ourselves as being able to help clients go viral, I don’t think “viral” is the offering. It’s really just a byproduct of the work we do.

We don’t go to our team and ask, how do we make something viral? We ask, how do we make something funny? How do we make something that makes someone step back and go, I’ve never seen anything like that before? How do we create something people have no choice but to share because it speaks to them on a deep level?

I think the word “viral” has lost its meaning over time. We use it as an all-encompassing term for things that exist on an incredibly broad spectrum of visibility and cultural impact. We call a MrBeast video that gets billions of views viral, but we also call things viral within their respective corners of the internet, even if 99% of the populous has never heard of it. “Viral” as a term feels familiar—it’s a buzzword—so it’s easy to throw it around because most people have a very positive association with the term. But frankly, the depth of reach and the value of a view is probably a much more important metric that we like to focus on. Sure, we can call it success if we launch a “viral” campaign that generates 10B views. But then there are also projects that maybe reach 50K people on a super profound level, and that’s still success in our eyes and perhaps even more valuable.

Rachel: If I asked you to sum up how to make something go viral, what would you say?

Anthony: There’s not a hack for it. It’s a matter of taste, being aligned with zeitgeist, and being able to execute upon something that you believe people will be delighted by.

Talia: “Viral” comes as a result of people spreading a message, and people don’t spread a message without a reason. It really comes down to the psychology of speaking to your audience in a way that resonates, whether that’s making them laugh, making them care about an issue through poignant storytelling, or making something so novel they feel compelled to send it to someone they care about.

If you approach content creation with how you can make someone feel rather than just what you are objectively presenting to them on the screen, you’re tapping into the emotions that will ultimately get the content to spread (or to go “viral” for lack of a better term).

Rachel: Based on your work, I’d imagine you pitch clients some wild ideas. How do you get buy-in?

Talia: This is really at the heart of what we do, and also at the heart of what makes a client a good fit. The work we do isn’t for everyone, because in order to engineer the successes we’ve had, we have to take risks and do things that have never been done before.

Marketing teams often want data to back up an idea, a proof of concept, examples of similar things that have worked before. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to do things people have never seen, which means there’s often no proof of concept, and that can make buy-in harder. But everyone who’s ever done something revolutionary was the first to do it. If a brand wants to stand out, they have to take risks on things without an existing proof of concept.

Sometimes getting buy-in is about picking the right partners who give us that flexibility and trust. Other times it’s about grounding the foundation of an idea in something familiar, then making strategic tweaks that bring it into new territory while it still feels comfortable enough to convince the powers that be.

We literally proposed putting the words ‘kock,’ ‘dik’, and ‘pussi’ on billboards for Airlearn (they all mean innocent things in other languages). I remember pitching it on a call with the CEO, and after I finished speaking there was at least fifteen seconds of silence. I thought to myself that we’d just lost the client. Then the CEO said, “I love it. Let’s put kock in Times Square.” It came down to pitching with a great graphic and explaining exactly why it was aligned with the brief. As long as a concept speaks to the overarching brand goals, a wild idea can be justified.

Where we’d struggle to work with a client is if, even when all signs point to yes, and the idea achieves what they need and stays aligned with the brand, they still say no because it feels too out there. That probably means we’re not the right agency for them, because we’re looking to push boundaries, not make what feels safe.

Rachel: You both come from the creator world and deeply understand today’s attention ecosystem. What typically stops brands from producing the type of content that actually breaks through?

Anthony: People and brands who don’t consume modern-day culture are going to do a bad job at producing content. How are you possibly going to make the things people care about if you don’t care about it yourself? CMOs should be consuming content constantly. If you’re in charge of a brand, and you don’t feel passionately about consuming culture, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

Rachel: When I try to pull a through-line of the type of work you do, I come back to participation. You’re usually building wonder and mystery, that ultimately gets people to post about the thing you’re doing. How do you get people to participate? Especially if the participation is driven by a brand? I loved the Cash App campaign with Azzi Fudd where you sent fairy godmothers to Uconn to grant students’ wishes.

Anthony: I think participation is a great way to describe it, not only in the physical aspect, but also in the ability to share a story with your friends. Ultimately, the internet should be a place that is exciting and fun to be a part of, and that’s the internet that I came from in the late 2000s. So for us, whether the participation is showing up to a park or having excitement about contributing to a comment section on a video, participation is a great way to articulate our through-line.

Talia: For brand work to succeed, it has to be an exchange between brand and audience. Getting people to participate is a matter of integrating it into the idea from the get-go and making sure it gives way to digital or IRL participation, or both, depending on the concept.

With the UConn activation, we added things beyond just posting on Cash App’s brand page—we planted a lot of UGC, we worked with UConn students as PAs who posted on Yik Yak and got the conversation going among students. A ton of videos from the student body cropped up in response. We made a moment on campus so irresistible that people couldn’t not share it. We want to create moments where people feel like they can film something, report on it, maybe go viral themselves.

A lot of people have their very first experience with virality providing coverage on something else, whether it’s filming a concert, clipping a YouTube video, or posting a reaction to a clever marketing campaign. The fact that the discussion and participation can reach similar heights of visibility as the source material is exciting, and it encourages audiences to participate even more.

Rachel: You spend a lot of time on the platforms. Have you noticed any shifts lately?

Anthony: I think the biggest shift is that people are becoming much more attuned to content that’s clearly engineered to perform metrics-wise rather than made because someone genuinely cared about the idea. Generative AI has accelerated that, because people are surrounded by so much manufactured content now that they’re getting better at recognizing it. So you’re seeing a real backlash toward creators who feel more like businesses than people, because once it becomes obvious that something is optimized primarily for virality and monetization, audiences check out emotionally even if they still click.

Rachel: What do you love about social media?

Anthony: It allows me to pay creative people and those younger than myself. It also allows me to delight people through satellites and a bunch of wires in the ground, which is really a crazy thought.

Talia: I am who I am today because of social media. My creativity was shaped by it from the time I was eleven or twelve, posting on Tumblr and making secret photography Instagram accounts.

I love how social media, in its current form, democratizes entertainment. A random kid in their bedroom in a small, one-horse town can have an idea, pick up a phone, and make something that speaks to a lot of people. It’s leveling the playing field so new stories get told and creative minds get discovered in ways that weren’t possible.

I’ll acknowledge that social media comes with its fair share of issues, but it’s been revolutionary for entertainment, and it’ll be the single most influential force on the way we consume entertainment for the foreseeable future.

Rachel: What do you hate about social media?

Anthony: It’s become commodified. There’s always so much money to be made within it, and therefore it’s become opportunistic. I also have noticed that a lot of bad actors have come into this space specifically over the past seven years.

Talia: One thing I hate about social media—and this is also what makes our work hard—is that it puts performance, quantified, on display for everyone to see, and that has a psychological impact on both audiences and creators.

Netflix can put out a show, and the general public never has to know the viewership numbers; the viewer thus goes into watching it with an open mind. The closest equivalent to the display of success (or failure) for a Netflix series is probably something like Rotten Tomatoes. But on social media, when you make content, your failure or success is on direct display in the form of a like count and a view count that everyone watching can see. People are subconsciously influenced by the social proof of seeing likes on a page. It’s like a laugh track in a sitcom, an indication of ‘you’re supposed to laugh here.’ A high like count tells people ‘you’ll probably like this too,’ and that’s why it gets pushed out further to more people. What I hate is that we’re encouraged to make things that yield vanity metrics. That takes a lot of the art and soul out of making content.

Rachel: Look into your crystal ball. What’s next in the world of brand social?

Anthony: Providing real value to real people. There are a lot of bots on the internet, and there’s lots of views to go around; but making a real community of people that trust you, learn from you, and are entertained by you is something you can’t fake.

Talia: I can never say for certain what’s next. We’ve gone through a lot of waves. Usually trends or cultural moments are pioneered by individuals and have a life cycle until they become overplayed. We saw that with lookalike competitions; hilarious and novel for the first few, but then it’s like, ‘okay, we get it.’

Something that I foresee coming into play a lot more frequently is brands playing in spaces where they “don’t belong.” I mean, A24 just opened up a restaurant in the West Village. But the most prominent example here is brands operating more like film studios. Once everyone picks up on the fact that people just want to be entertained, and positive brand association is an easy byproduct of that, brands will make huge investments into storytelling and distribution. It feels dystopian, but I wouldn’t rule out brands making original feature films that are layups for exclusive product integrations. We’re probably closer to that than we think.

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Trial Reels allows accounts to test video performance with non-followers. The posts are shared into feeds without showing up on the account’s grid. When it was first announced in late 2024, lots of brands immediately experimented. But from my conversations at the time, it seemed like social marketers used the feature a few times, saw middling success, and sort of forgot about it.

Not all brands ditched Trial Reels though.

Lately I’ve been hearing whispers from social marketers about how impactful the tool is when used properly. That if you put together a testing strategy, it can be an essential part of the posting process. For today’s newsletter, I talked to brands, agencies, and the platform itself to learn more about what’s working. One marketer shared with me, “We regularly see 10x to 100x differences in performance outcomes between video variations.” Another said, “What wins [in Trial Reels] shapes how we make everything else.”

Below you’ll find:

• What a Trial Reels strategy looks like

• The four types of Trial Reels tactics

• Why one agency calls the tool the “Second Chance Machine”

• Best practices that Instagram shared with me

• The reason non-follower testing is important right now

You’ll also find three post formats to try this week, @jeremyfindsai on if more platforms should adopt LinkedIn’s AI Slop button, inside The Booker Prizes’ longlist social rollout, and more.

Read more

I recently sat down with writer for an episode on ICYMI, Slate's podcast about internet culture. In it, we talked about the growing number of brands that are hiding ads in fake skits. Storytime videos masquerading as regular TikToks—all secretly trying to sell you something. No #sponsored disclosure to be found. It made our heads spin.

For today’s newsletter, I asked Kate to go down the “UGC creator” rabbit hole. Is this some legal gray area? Does the FTC care? Does it even work? She watched videos about bad bosses, toxic mother-in-laws, and “Spicy Cubes” to find out.

A lot of bad bosses get captured on TikTok. They’re caught red-handed, through covert footage of Zoom meetings in which they’re penalizing employees for leaving their camera off or logging on late. The videos themselves often reach millions of views, accumulating thousands of comments from concerned users. In one case, a manager even suggested their newly-pregnant employee quit. “Discrimination!!!!!!!!” reads one comment. “Sue them!”

“Omg I need to look into this!!!” the employee, who goes by @caroline.career, replied. But she won’t, because this video, and the many that look and sound just like it, are not real. They’re ads, scripted skits that have been contracted out to content creators who post them on dedicated accounts. If any of the millions of viewers clicked into the actual profiles, they’d see hundreds of videos almost identical to the one they just saw, and bios with nothing but maybe an affiliate code and link to whatever they’re really meant to be selling.

For Caroline, it’s Sprout, an AI program that generates resumes and cover letters, and auto-applies for roles. Customers who sign up through Caroline’s link get 15% off, and Caroline can get 30% commission. That’s in addition to the up to $2,000 she can make per video, according to the details provided on Sprout’s website (neither Caroline nor Sprout returned a request for interview).

There are a number of words for these types of creators, depending on who you ask. Sometimes they’re “affiliates” or “ambassadors,” but a creator I spoke to, who we’ve anonymized for privacy reasons, prefers “UGC creator.” She applied to become a creator for an AI interview coaching service because it was a way to make money without much experience, and now earns anywhere from $10 to $100 in base pay per video, with bonuses if her content hits certain milestones, like 500K views.

The content made by these creators isn’t just job-related, although that genre does incredibly well. There’s videos for AI notetaking services like SummaryAI and Granola, another account dedicated to WhoLeft, an app that tracks people who unfollow you on Instagram. One video for Sherlock, a platform for reverse-image searching potential romantic partners, got 25M views. There’s also videos for brands like Spicy Cubes—gummies that claim to act as aphrodisiacs—in which the product is a passing mention buried three quarters of the way into a two minute story about a toxic mother-in-law. “FOR EVERYONE ASKING ME ABOUT SPICY CUBES” the creator’s bio reads, with presumably an affiliate link to the website that may earn her a 25% commission.

But “UGC” isn’t quite the right word for these either, since the content is not from actual users, or made by paid contractors and then posted from the brand’s account. Nor are any of the creators in the aforementioned videos your typical influencer posting sponsored videos on their personal channels. The former comes directly from the brand, the latter is clearly marked as sponsored. These in-between videos for some reason slip under the radar without any kind of #ad disclosure at all, perhaps occupying some kind of gray area.

“Not a gray area at all,” Robert Freund, a lawyer who advises brands, agencies, and creators, emphatically tells me. “There’s no argument that this is not advertising.”

The proliferation of these videos isn’t surprising. Per Vulture’s “The Feed Is Fake” piece back in May, so much of what we see online got there thanks to undisclosed marketing campaigns, and not just for products or musical artists, but even opinions. Brands need to find their own ways to compete, and some that employ these more covert methods seem to find far more success with them than they do posting from their own accounts.

Summary AI, for instance, has just over 15K followers on the official brand account, with their in-house videos typically getting views in the low thousands. The account @.wfhgirl, however, which posts endless workplace skits pointing people to the app, often gets tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of views on her videos, although it’s unclear how that might translate into sales (“My job isn’t really to see or get the memberships,” the earlier creator I spoke to tells me about her videos for the AI interview coach. “It’s more just creating the content and getting it out there.”).

These creators also have the ability to battle it out in the comments, something that would normally reflect badly if it was coming from the brand itself. The creator I spoke with says she’s sometimes encouraged to respond in the comments to maximize engagement. “They like it when you’re kind of rage baiting the people,” she says of certain companies. “So then people can go in the comments and argue.” The comments are also a space where the creators can more convincingly name the brand without sounding like an ad, while also potentially taking advantage of TikTok’s “blue text” feature that identifies search terms and links them to TikTok search results.

None of these companies returned my request for interview, and without concrete data it’s hard to say how directly these accounts’ success translates to their own. What is clear is that the absence of an ad disclosure gives them an edge with audiences, but that might be a problem with regulators. While the Federal Trade Commission would not comment on the practice broadly, when approached about this genre of marketing, they pointed me to a section from their endorsement guide, which contains a number of stipulations seemingly being flouted.

At the very least, these videos should be clearly and conspicuously disclosing the relevant connection—whether that’s spoken, text on the video, through a paid partnership tag, or starting the caption with #ad. While many of these accounts have affiliate links in their bios, they are not clearly labeled as such, and just as many accounts have no bio at all, presumably hoping their videos raise brand awareness enough for a customer to go searching for it themselves. But even if these videos did properly disclose themselves as ads, that doesn’t account for the other issue: they’re skits, not real experiences. “The FTC requires that endorsements and testimonials reflect the honest beliefs of the person giving the endorsement or testimonial,” Freund says. “You can still have an unlawful piece of content that discloses that there is a connection if the person is appearing to be a customer of the advertiser when they aren’t actually a customer.”

And yet most of these videos remain untouched, although some, like the 25M-views Sherlock video, have community footnotes identifying them as undisclosed ads. “The more agencies and brands see others doing it, they just assume it’s okay,” Freund says of their ubiquity. It’s not that they’re taking advantage of any kind of legal loophole, but instead are being obscured by the sheer volume of other content online and, at first glance, passing as organic—for now.

“Why have I seen like 4 people across the internet do this exact thing,” one comment on @caroline.career’s pregnancy video reads.

“guys yall know its a skit right,” reads another.

“People,” one begs. “This is just a promo for Sprout.” Now that comment might be UGC.

One more thing

Rachel here. I hope you enjoyed Kate’s deep dive. Is your head spinning now too? You can follow more of her work by subscribing to Embedded.

While I usually cover smart uses of social media, stories like the above are just as important to the work we do. Algorithmic feeds have, to some degree, provided cover for brands to treat FTC laws as suggestions. The result is that marketers feel like they can create their own ethical boundaries. That’s not how advertising should work.

Deceptive practices are a slow rot to the ecosystem we all post within. Consumers are scrolling with more skepticism than ever. What does that do to social media in the long term?

I’m curious to hear what you all think. Leave your thoughts in the comments or join us in the Link in Bio Discord.

Finally, there are new roles on the Link in Bio Job Board. Check out the latest from Function Health, Sonos, and Tombras here.

If you enjoy free essays like this one, you can upgrade to a paid Link in Bio subscription. You’ll get weekly strategy newsletters and quarterly trend reports, along with access to the Discord community.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you for making this newsletter possible!

I’m usually in the middle of something when I email myself, so the note reads like a cryptic clue for someone to decode later. That person is me, and it takes more time than I’d like to admit to put together what the hell I was trying to say. A recent one is just the word “Emeril”. At 10:42 pm on a Friday I sent “Where is the FTC?”. “Scree time on SC account” took me a while to figure out, but then I remembered I want to talk to the duo behind the account ScreenTime, who used to run the Talking Talk Tuah podcast.

Below is an email I sent myself when I saw Hannah Berner’s smile was going viral after a masseter botox mishap. I thought maybe a makeup brand could sponsor her.

I never ended up including it in the newsletter, but I am glad to see that CeraVe made the move. This weekend, she posted a smile update sponsored by the brand’s healing lip balm ointment. It has almost 3M views across platforms. This video complimenting the ad has 400K views.

Some of my best newsletter ideas come when I finally stop thinking about the newsletter. This is my imperfect process at capturing them. Now if only I could remember what I meant when I sent the two words “running list” to myself…

Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:

• How @ThisIsSpotify is using data storytelling for social content

• This new creator account with 80M views is run by a media company

• I talked to Denny’s about their viral NVIDIA tweet

• Four post formats to try this week

• Are Times Square billboards the new brand deals?

Read more

The best campaigns right now realize that a hero asset isn’t enough. It’s a series of posts that create a pattern recognition. As Link in Bio contributor Matthew Stasoff put it in this essay, “As audiences stop consuming content in linear ways, brands will need to find ways to reach them in non-linear ways. Diverse touch points that find connection points. On-ramps bring people in—no matter where in the campaign rollout they tune in—and make them want to stay awhile.”

Today I am talking with Mojo Supermarket, the agency that has been helping Burger King tell their “There’s A New King And It’s You” story on social media. Before the commercial even aired on March 15th, the brand was planting seeds online. They gave customers the president Tom’s phone number for feedback and documented it—this video got 100K likes. The audience was warmed up by the time the spot ran. Since then, the brand has been sharing docu-style customer spotlights (one commenter wrote, “This is the kind of content we want from brands…love it! Keep up the good work social team! 🙌”) and more videos with Tom, who has become a bit of an influencer himself. They even have impressed customers sharing the improved burger on Reddit.

As social media has moved towards entertainment media, I’m seeing more brands try to gamify attention at all costs. But I think it’s important to make sure the thing you’re going viral for actually serves your brand and your audience. It’s easy to lose sight of that. Burger King’s campaign feels about as close as you can get to the middle of the venn diagram between “entertaining” and “brand building”. The proof is in the numbers. According to Marketing Dive, “Burger King U.S. in Q1 saw comparable sales grow 5.8%, outpacing RBI sales growth of 3.2% and reversing a 1.1% decline during the same period in 2025”.

Below I talk to Mo Said, founder and creative director of Mojo Supermarket, about why too many campaigns are based on a “fantastical reality”, how to build a reactive social process, and the role listening plays in the creative process.

Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and Mojo Supermarket?

Mo Said: Mojo Supermarket is a creative agency that builds big brands on the internet. I used to work at big brand creative agencies that didn’t understand social, and social agencies that didn’t understand brand building. So we built something in the middle. Currently we’re the social AOR for TikTok, Burger King, we’re running the Doordash World Cup campaign, etc.

Rachel: I just got back from Cannes Lions, where I enjoyed reading the case study of the “There’s A New King and It’s You” Burger King campaign. Your agency has specifically been helping bring it to life on social media. Can you take me into your process for translating a big, overarching campaign into actually-engaging social moments?

Mo: When we joined the team, Burger King and their creative agency BarkleyOKRP were getting ready to execute a campaign that put guests at the center of the brand. But it was more than a campaign—they were focused on actually listening to the guests, improving the product and experience, and then telling the story of that. They described it as a potentially yearslong documentary of elevating the guest experience. And we thought that’s a pretty great strategy to take to social.

To kick off the campaign, Tom, the President of Buger King, was going to give out his phone number and take calls from real Americans. Listen to them. Get their feedback. We all thought…how many calls is he possibly going to take, you know?

But Tom exceeded everyone’s expectations. He was taking phone calls on his commute, on his lunch break, on nights and weekends. He cares so much. So we were like okay, we’ve got hundreds of phone calls. And a lot of them were pretty like…real. A guy passes by a Burger King on his way home, and the sign is broken. A kid who wants to one day own a franchise. A bunch of people who said the fries aren’t hot enough. And Tom genuinely wants to do something about all of those, not for content but because it’s the right thing. And what you’re seeing is the documentary of that.

Rachel: And what do you think agencies or teams get wrong when bringing campaigns to life on social media?

Mo: I think brand agencies get stuck on a “line” or a tightly wound idea that only works for one video, one moment, one script. And social agencies just spray and pray a bunch of unrelated ideas to hope something goes “viral”. Neither is right.

You need a brand strategy “Burger King is committed to improving the guest experience” and then tell that in a more episodic way. Each video is a proof point of a larger idea that forms in your head with the culmination of the work. It’s not a line to remember, it’s a personality and a point of view.

Rachel: Let’s talk about the bite heard around the world from a competitor’s CEO. You couldn’t have had better timing. Can you describe what that reactive moment looked like on your end? You already had that footage from the campaign, correct?

Mo: Yeah, our partners at BarkleyOKRP had already shot this beautiful commercial for the Oscars that included Tom, the president of Burger King.

So when the moment happened, and it was time to respond, we didn’t want to invent a joke. We went through the footage and found this real moment of Tom eating a Whopper and posted it. Nothing was staged, he’s really just that guy. He likes Whoppers. And the internet noticed that.

Rachel: What did the numbers look like on that moment?

Mo: 3.3B Impressions. 27M+ Views. 4.5M Engagements. +7.2B Earned Impressions. 3rd highest sales week in Burger King history.

Rachel: Do you have a process for coming up with reactive social media moments? Can you share any frameworks or brainstorming techniques your agency utilizes?

Mo: I think the most important thing is to have a locked brand narrative that you’re trying to convey. And then have a reactive strategy. What kind of stuff do we react to, what do we say, and, most importantly, what kind of stuff do we not react to. We revisit this strategy with our clients often, changing it, shaping it based on which ideas felt true to us and which didn’t. So when the moment comes, everyone in the room is 100% sure of what to reply to and how.

Rachel: I’ve loved how this campaign has taken shape on social media in more sustained ways. For example, docu-style guest videos like this one, which are so wholesome and remind me of what I call “Mister Rogers Marketing“. Can you talk to me about this series?

Mo: Modern marketing is often trying to show you this fantastical reality. But Burger King is real. It’s part of real American families. People have real stories and emotions about this brand. You’ve been to BK with your grandpa, or your daughter, or your high school friend.

And I think people are looking for that. Something real. Something meaningful. And this is as real as it gets. Real guests with real stories about their Burger King. So instead of cinematic scripted series, we decided to shoot it like a local documentary.

Rachel: What’s been cool to see is how product-focused the virality is. I see a viral video, and then on Reddit people are actually sharing the new burger recipe and showing that improvements are being made. How do you think about the overall ecosystem you’re creating on social media? And that some of the most impactful posts aren’t going to even come from the brand account?

Mo: Marketing used to be the art of telling a story to your audience. Now it’s the art of you and your fans creating a story together. The fans told Burger King that the Whopper was often smushed. That’s why, amongst many other improvements, the Whopper now comes in a box. You can’t have that two way conversation without listening.

It’s funny. Every marketing department in the world is in a board room trying to figure out how to get people talking. And the answer is so dumb simple…listen. If you actually listen, your closest fans will tell you what they’re interested in. And then go do that. If you do, they’ll go crazy for you.

Rachel: Let’s go broad. What is the hardest part about working in social media right now?

Mo: I think the most interesting thing is that people are coming at it from these two worlds. The careful, considered, strategized, planned, gun-shy, precious social media world. And then there’s this spray and pray, gamified, quick joke, trigger hungry, almost needy social media world. The best work today has the best parts of both. And there’s just not that many people in the world who think like that. So the hardest part is finding talent.

Rachel: Look into your crystal ball. What does the future of social media look like?

Mo: You don’t have to look into a crystal ball. You can just look at my 14-year-old nephew’s attention habits. It’s YouTube. It’s reading.

In five years that kid is 19. In ten years he’s 24.

So I’d bet on YouTube. Substack. Gaming. More considered. More creative. More craft. And in the world of AI, where everyone is suddenly an artist. The real artists. The real creatives. They’re going to be the ones that will really resonate.

What I’m scrolling

@SpotifyNews rebranded to @ThisIsSpotify. I am intrigued by how these comms-based accounts are pivoting for the entertainment era of social media. More on that in Tuesday’s newsletter.

Comedian Mary Beth Barone is promoting her new comedy special with skits about the marketing for it. It’s part of a growing trend of campaigns that make the marketing…the marketing. Like Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme Zoom call and Charli xcx’s press tour bit to promote The Moment. Now when will a brand make fun of the marketing as marketing?

Instagram forgot to include the best part of their carousel audio update. If you didn’t ever add music in the first place you can now retroactively select a song for your post.

I love Aritzia’s new campaign with Juilliard students. “This season, we’re celebrating our new partnership with The Juilliard School, a world leader in performing arts education. Through this ongoing initiative, we aim to support the next generation of artists and their mission to cultivate excellence, and drive impact through service in the arts.” Very good!

The Miami Heat accidentally posted (then deleted) a scheduled YouTube livestream titled “LeBron James Introductory Press Conference”. I feel bad!

The fake influencers selling wellness on your feed. “The New York Times found hundreds of A.I.-generated doctors, healers and wellness influencers on social media touting the health benefits of supplements to American consumers.” Another stark reminder that just because you’re not getting served AI videos, doesn’t mean they aren’t everywhere on social media right now.

Speaking of AI videos, Meta rolled out a very “optimistic” AI campaign today. I couldn’t help myself and left a comment. Here’s what I wrote: “generative ai images and videos are going to be the reason people leave this platform in droves. we’ll all remember this video when it happens. it causes people to approach all posts (ai or not) with skepticism. they do not believe what they see! that is bad for your business! engagement numbers are not enjoyment numbers. and to be clear, i love instagram and care deeply about the future of it! but i have yet to see ai make the improvements this ad promises.”

There are new roles on the Link in Bio Job Board. Check out the latest from Sphere, Microsoft, and Fielding here.

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In response to my posts about the similarities, 360i clarified what happened.

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Yesterday I spoke at Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Summit. During my prep for the panel, I went down a deep dive of how hotels and travel companies are using social media. Many felt stuck in the old era. Posts that think they are owed attention instead of trying to earn attention. One photoshoot, rolled out over a month. Reels that are more focused on brand guidelines than entertaining. I always tell clients, what’s the point of demanding your logo be at the beginning of a video if no one sees the post in the first place?

Of course, I came across some great examples too. Like how the Ritz Paris follows the “your brand’s ordinary is your audience’s extraordinary” framework to a tee—creating short vignettes that show the care they pour into each guest experience. Then there’s the content studio helping Tulsa tell its story through serialized videos, taking the “ethos of a PBS show” and applying it to a destination. I recently received a pitch that SkyBeach Resort in St. Petersburg is working on a microdrama.

One great example I shared on the stage is the subject of today’s newsletter. In the lead up to the Norway vs England World Cup game, the Norwegian Air social team extended a bet to the British Airways social team. Publicly. The caption of the post reads, “If Norway wins, you have to switch to our logo on Instagram on Sunday (one day). And vice versa. Deal?🤝.” It racked up 324K likes. What ensued was a friendly airline rivalry that lasted a week and garnered over 25M views. One person wrote that they don’t watch soccer but they “watched this match just to see who won the bet!”

The final post from the stunt is the social team sitting down to do the Netflix documentary trend with “The social media team preparing to tell the story behind the Norwegian x British Airways bet.” Well, today they are telling that story to Link in Bio. Below I talked to Nora Berntzen, Social Media Specialist at Norwegian, about how it all came together.

Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me a little bit about your role at Norwegian?

Nora Berntzen: I’m a Social Media Specialist, which means I work across pretty much everything organic social. I create content, help shape our strategy, and have a particular responsibility for community management. A lot of my day is spent making sure we’re not just posting content, but actually having conversations with people.

Rachel: How would you describe the overall social strategy for Norwegian?

Nora: Norwegian has always been a brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s something we try to reflect across our social channels. Of course, there are certain boxes every airline has to tick—destination inspiration, travel tips, aviation content—but we’re also always looking for opportunities to join conversations people are already having. Newsjacking and cultural moments are a big part of how we think about social.

Rachel: Going into the World Cup, what was your plan? And how did it evolve?

Nora: Like any major event, the World Cup sparked a lot of brainstorming. Normally we’d find a fun angle around “fly with us to the cup,” but this year was trickier since we don’t fly to any of the host countries.

That said, Norway had qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, so we knew we wanted to celebrate that moment. We created a few football-related posts that performed well, but we didn’t have a grand campaign planned.

Rachel: Let’s talk about the British Airways rivalry. Take me into what the planning process looked like for that! Had you talked to their social team before making the initial bet video?

Nora: Calling it a planning process might be generous...It took about 30 minutes from the initial idea to publishing the first post, and British Airways had no idea we were doing it. That was pretty much how we worked throughout the campaign. We reacted quickly, built on whatever happened next, and didn’t overthink it.

An example is our posts with a tiny teacup. My colleague Emilie and I were filming something completely different at Oslo Airport when we realized we should probably create a follow-up to the bet. The only stereotypically British thing I could think of was tea, so we ran into an airport shop, borrowed the fanciest teacup we could find, convinced a cabin crew member to pose with it, and had the whole thing shot within half an hour.

The only content we actually planned in advance was the outcome of the bet. We created both a winning and a losing version beforehand so we could publish immediately after the final whistle.

Rachel: At what point did you get in touch and make it an actual thing?

Nora: British Airways commented on our very first post with a cheeky “Don’t make bets you can’t win 😉,” so we knew they’d seen it, but we still weren’t sure whether they’d actually accept.

We tried reaching them through comments, Instagram DMs, email, and LinkedIn, but they stayed completely silent. Looking back, I think that was a brilliant move because the anticipation just kept growing in the comments. And BA later confirmed that was their strategy.

Rachel: How did this post of the two social teams exchanging logos IRL come together?

Nora: The day before the match, my colleague Emilie flew to London to hopefully hand over our logo on a memory stick at British Airways’ headquarters, without them knowing. We posted about it on Instagram Stories, and British Airways quickly responded, and put a team together to welcome her with open arms. We shook hands with them on camera, and the bet was on!

Rachel: What did the approval process on your team’s end look like for making it happen?

Nora: We checked in with Norwegian’s Marketing Director, who has the final say on anything involving our logo. His response was: What’s the worst thing that could happen? So we went for it.

Rachel: The logo change created such good “stakes” to build audience investment. What did it feel like actually changing your logo?

Nora: Obviously, we were disappointed that Norway lost. But the reaction to the logo swap completely blew us away.

The match finished around 2 a.m. our time, and I stayed up until 4:30 a.m. replying to comments. After four hours of sleep, I woke up to more than 20,000 new comments. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I basically spent the rest of the day in bed with my phone and laptop, trying to keep up with the conversation.

Rachel: Turning the viral moment into a promotion is really smart. Are you able to share how it performed?

Nora: I am able to say that we were very happy with the performance of the sale.

Rachel: Overall, how did content shared around the World Cup perform for the airline?

Nora: Overall, the World Cup bet became record breaking for us. Across the campaign we generated 25M views, over 1.5M reactions/likes, and 55K comments, while also seeing significant growth in both followers and brand awareness. And you could add even more to these numbers if you combine the results of our other World Cup-themed posts. But I haven’t come that far yet, haha.

Rachel: What did you learn from this stunt? Any advice you’d give brands that want to try something similar?

Nora: I think people have become incredibly good at spotting when brands are genuinely enjoying themselves versus trying too hard to “go viral.” We never set out thinking this would become a global story, we simply had a cheeky idea and committed to it.

As someone who is responsible for community management, I will never underestimate the value of it. But I think many others did before this campaign. The original post might have started it all, but the comments are where the campaign really came to life. Some of the funniest moments weren’t planned or created by us, they happened because we kept responding and building on what the audience gave us. And luckily, the audience had a good sense of humor!

What I’m scrolling

Sprout Social to cut 20% of workforce as AI-fueled tech layoffs continue. According to the Very Online Survey this year, around 30% of social marketers use the tool. Sending support to the ~260 employees who are impacted.

Everyone is talking about Hailey Bieber in this Gap ad, but I am more focused on the voiceover. It’s so good! Commenters are speculating that it’s Chad Michael Murray...

Threads, Meta’s ‘Twitter killer,’ finds its people. Great piece from The New York Times. “The percentage of users who come to Threads independently, and not through promotions on Instagram or Facebook, is increasing, Meta said, without revealing numbers.”

Kathryn Turner, Director of Product Development at M&S Food, has accumulated 7.8M views across 12 videos. I wrote about her first viral video, which now has 1.5M views, back in May. I have never seen an official M&S Food TikTok video on my FYP, meanwhile every new Kathryn video is in my feed waiting for me. It’s a good case study for the type of habitual viewing that can come from “side quest” accounts that have a throughline of familiarity.

Phoebe Bridgers performed on The Tonight Show with a band of children. Reminds me a bit of Maison Margiela’s Spring/Summer 2026 show at Paris Fashion Week where an orchestra of kids performed.

X tweaked their algorithm to show more content from mutuals. The feedback from users is overwhelmingly positive.

I loved Ali Kriegsman’s investigation into how Phia is generating roughly $1M per month on ShopMy. “Does this $1M a month in “no source” revenue on that card reflect something…else? Is it not Phia’s own affiliate activity at all, but instead, ShopMy creators’ redirected commission, recorded on a ledger? And if so, for how long?”

Meta removes controversial AI feature on Instagram after backlash. Good to know that public pressure still works!

Consumers are sick and tired of hearing about AI all the time. “78% of consumers believe AI makes ads ‘feel less authentic’; the same amount said they find brands ‘cringey’ when over-using AI.” Mood.

I am the target audience for this video of a physical therapist breaking down the posture of a Minion.

There are new roles on the Link in Bio Job Board. Check out the latest from Google, No Kid Hungry, and Dove here.

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This isn’t your usual graphs and stats trend report. Think of this like the scribbled notepad version of the trends you’ll eventually end up seeing in six months. It’s like getting early access. A little bit of science and a lot of gut.

The Brand Social Trend Report: Q2 2026 covers topics like:

• The group chat KPI

• My Meta conspiracy theory

• Social AEO confusion

• Rethinking TikTok

• “Kalshi Hell”

• Creator economy inflation

• Stunt accounts

The report features sharp insights from people like Naleen Camara at Amtrak, Sarah Whittle at Unicorn Social, Yosub Kim at Figma, Zach Schiffman at New York Magazine, Dakota Rae Lowe at Recreation, Carmen Vicente at Slate, Kelly Gordon at Night Ventures, Dejaih Smith at Jeopardy, Andrew Downing at CAVA, and Sydni Myers at National Gallery of Art.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your free subscription, this is a good one to do it for. You’ll also get access to the Link in Bio Discord, which has been described as “an essential place to be for anyone managing social media.”

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