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I spent exactly 22 hours last week combing through all of my saved pieces of content, through all my burner accounts, through the group chats to find you the ten best pieces of content that I found this week. Some of the content's new, some of the content's old, but more so the things that I found that are just absolute gems that I think you can learn from. And so in this episode of Sweat Equity, we are going to go through all of the content. We're going to go through each piece, I'm going to break them down, I'm going to show you what you can learn from this content, what you can take and replicate from it. And then a quick side note, Brian and I are finally finished traveling. He was been in Europe, he's been doing a bunch of stuff. I've been going around the country doing a ton of productions. We're finally back. The summer is officially ended for you boys and so we're going to be getting back into it. I'm looking at a new office space that I'm like this close to pulling the trigger on and we're going to build out a six set. Super excited for. We're about to be doing the sweat equity because we're about to kick it up a few notches. But let's get right into this episode. The first piece of content that I saw is from this brand called Manana. This is a brand actually here in Austin. So one of the first things that I love about Manana and what they did so they're at, sorry, is Manana surf. And you can you find them on G? They're a brand here in Austin, built for land and sea. So they almost have like this cowboy western vibe to surfing, which I really like. But they actually just put on a master class in product launches and site wide sales, et cetera. And so, you know, I have a lot of conversation with brands about the content funnel, understanding top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of the funnel content. They did a very good job of doing top of funnel, middle funnel and bottom of the funnel content for their launch. And on top of that, they did it in what I believe is the future of product launches, which is doing these things in a sequence of either three pieces of content, six pieces of content, nine, or really just in like series of threes so that your grid from beginning to end can be an entire launch or an entire campaign. So one of the first pieces of content that I like is there was a sign that they made that said surf on it. Then they branded it with the manana. And this is a one shot video, right? Or a vignette, like depending on if you go through cut 30. We talk a lot about one shots. One shots being just like one singular shot with text on screen. If we're talking more upscale, we're talking about vignettes. These are single scene stories. This is a single scene story where there's a sign, it's that surf on it and they brand it with, with their logo on it. And this is their way of starting to tease this campaign. I love this. Then they had a rodeo that they were kind of doing and then they started teasing some hints, right? Showing Lone Star Beers. It was a carousel. It showed like a part of the board. It showed Lone Star Beers. And it just started teasing like different elements of the setting, the people, the products. Right. Which is, which is key as they go into it now they have campaign videos. They have a lot of carousels that, that are more so like almost like photo dumps. Like modern photo dumps for brands is typically like something shot on film, something shot on DSLR and then some, some like raw BTS shot for. On an iPhone. If you look at the piece of content that perform their. That performed the best for them. Sure. If I had a guess, it probably got 300, you know, 300,000 views. Is this carousel that they made, which is a good recipe for any brand. Where you look at the carousel. The carousel starts off with a beautifully composed shot where the bottom or the, the lower third of the images is three cowboys on a horse. They're all riding in. In like essentially a line. They're all holding their surfboards. And then like a lot of just open space above them. Like it's a beautiful, beautiful shot. Then if you go through the carousel, the Next is a BTS shot on iPhone. For this shot as they're like prepping for it. Then you have more. Then you have another shot of like a. Just a cat like focused on one of the cowboys holding a surfboard on the horse. A tighter shot more so focuses on the product. Which is another key thing to understand is like they didn't really even show the product like you know, close up until that third carousel. The next is a what we would call a one shot where you just see the. That sign that had surf on it. You see that and then you see the cowboys riding in front of it. Very shot on iPhone as well. Very easy shot to get. Another one is a piece of content shot on film. What I would do if I'm. You go through this and see how they did this. See how they did top of funnel, middle funnel, and bottom of the funnel content for an account that only has, you know, 34.7 thousand followers, which again, is not small by any means, but it's not the biggest account, not the biggest brand account. Like, they did an extraordinary job of going to a specific location and understanding one, how to create content at scale. You know, we, we just did multiple productions over the last three weeks and it's so easy to go into a production and be like, okay, I need to get this hero video out of, out of this. And you can spend 50, $75,000, $100,000, whatever, and you only get one hero piece of content. That is the old way of doing this. And so you want to be going into these sets or, sorry, these campaigns, looking at the set and understanding how you can take. Look at every element that's going to be part of that set or that location and build a piece of content or pieces of content around that, which is something that they did to, to a T. You could actually look at all the different pieces of that location and build content pillars around that. The next piece of content we're going to be looking at is Jacquemus. I think I used them in the, in the last episode where I did this as well. The reason for that is brands get very, very confused and I think they, they overthink the idea of, you know, sometimes it's very easy to just throw in filler content and not think of how you can make the most out of that filler content. Right. And again, I don't even think you should have filler content. You should be understanding what are things that I can do or things that I can create that are micro moments that allow somebody to enter my world, even if it's for seven seconds. Jacquemus is one of my favorite brands right now. And overall that they do an exceptional job at this. So they have a piece of content right now that's like Jacquemus summer. Caption this tiger, send this cartoon, post it to your loved ones, regardless. Like, they, what they're doing here is they have this one shot where it's these beekeepers that are, are managing essentially in like a large group of bees. And it is a single shot, but it brings you into their world, right? It brings you into this feeling of a Jacquemus summer. And so this just doesn't. I, I use this as an example to show that you don't have to complicate every piece of Content. Not every piece of like this, the visual could tell the. The story in a way that it's like this micro story and it doesn't need to be this elaborate story that has 10 shots or 15 shots that need to be storyboarded and scripted and, and all that. This is a singular shot that brings you into Jacquemus world for seven seconds. And sometimes that's all you need to do for a piece of content. And that's all I wanted to share Relevant to. To this one from Giacomos because they do an exceptional job at this. They're trying to play into the different senses. So for this one it's, it says can you, can you guess the smell and you know there's a tractor going through cutting a bunch of the. The grass in a farm. Okay. For the next piece of content, one of my other favorite accounts is called Deer Island Golf. This also goes to show you that you can grow your account with just about any follow along series if you could find your interesting angle, gamify it and position in a way that like you have to follow along because you want to see the end result. And so Deer Island Golf does a really good job of this where it's like I'm throwing a beer at my boss every day until he guesses the right beer. And so they have, you know, they've done let me see how many episodes probably close to. Okay. They've done 10 episodes for this and each one of them has hundreds of thousands of views. They have one that has 11.5 million views and it's absolutely crushing. And, and I think there's nearly. And it's such an easy piece of content, right? And it's such an easy concept where this one girl, she has a beer, she announces what she's about to do, she gets the beer, she throws it at him, it hits him in the face. Then he sits there for a second like licks his lips and tries to guess the beer. It's wrong. Moving on to the next episode like it does it. And it has nothing to do with golf other than it's shot in front of their location. And then it's also shot by this, you know, the staff and the boss or the manager of, of the, the, the facility. And so it's an amazing and easy piece of content but is gaining so much awareness around this actual. Around the, the, the golf course. And so this is an amazing thing to understand about. Top of funnel content is. Top of funnel content doesn't need to be something that, that shows your product in depth and helps educate them. And like, has to be centered around your entire story. Like, it could be something that is just centered around your brand, right in, in a, in a more general sense where, like, here it, it just showcases the golf course because they'll do it on the golf course. It'll sometimes show like the front, It'll show some of the staff, it will show some of the beers that they have on tap, show some of like, the personality of the brand. Like, it shows all of those elements without having to communicate it directly. And it's such a simple piece of content that they can do this over and over and over again. And so when I have conversations with brands, they think top of funnel content just means like, hey, we're not pushing something. And it's like, no, you're thinking about the things that are going to be entertaining, educational or informational or inspiring to the, to the general public within your category. I had a conversation literally about this yesterday with, with somebody who's, who is looking at their content. Like, how's this not all top of funnel content? Like, nobody, none of it promotes the product, but all the, all the content and like the imagery was focused on the product. And so it's understanding that, like, you have to think about it through that lens of, okay, I'm going to create this social show. I'm going to create this series. And is this series general information or general entertainment or general inspiration for my category? If not, then it's really not going to fall into top of funnel content. Next piece of content that I saw that I really liked was this brand called Fun Boy. And so in this one, it's like this 20 foot inflatable movie screen in cut 30. We talk a lot about 1 shots, 10 shots, listicles, all of these different things that you can shoot essentially on iPhone, use just quick cuts to be able to create a really good and compelling piece of content. This video has 325,000 likes. If I had to guess, you know, that's anywhere between 5 and 10 million views. But if we watch this piece of content, imagine it as if they set up a tripod, a phone tripod, and then they were setting up the inflatable right in front of the pool. So the first thing is you look at the composition of this. The composition is amazing. They have the pool angled into the shot so, like, you have this beautiful aesthetic and then it starts with an action. It doesn't show, you know, someone going and setting it up or taking it out of the box. It just shows how the product unfolds, then the text above it that is used in the white space of the. The video says, this is your sign to get an inflatable movie screen for the summer. So out of the gate, you know, they posted this April 29th, setting it up. You know, they. They created this before summer, right, Right before May. And you just. You just see, like, it's an iPhone shot, and you just have multiple quick cuts. First cut is the inflatable starting to come up, then halfway up, then as it, like, expands into the full. And then you start getting a person put into it, and then they start changing the angles. But that first hook is roughly four to five shots within the first three seconds. And they're very fast cuts. And you have to think of it as, like, you kind of want to know what's going to happen. So you use those fast cuts to create that question in somebody's head and then quickly answer that question in somebody's head. Right? And fun boy, if you actually dive through their content, they do an amazing job of. Of doing this with a lot of their content. They. They use a lot of quick cuts within that first three to five seconds. Or, sorry, first three seconds. So use three to five shots to create a curiosity gap and then answer the curiosity gap and then. Then share the experience after they've gotten you hooked. It's a simple recipe, but it's a very good formula for creating engaging, engaging content. The next account that we're going to look at is called the War Kitchen. So with the War Kitchen, as I pull it up, you know, again, in cut 30, and just in. In general, like, I talk about this recently where there's another brand that we talked about in the last episode called Fireproof Coffee. They do an amazing job of creating carousels. The War Kitchen. They. They partnered with Coffee Shop, and they created a carousel that's like what your cafe, or, sorry, what your coffee order says about you. And then really. And, like, the visuals are super cool. Like, I really like the visuals. At the bottom it says, send this to a friend. It's finally time to call them out. We've granted you permission. And so they position this in a way where it's like, they're obviously going to make this funny. They're going to make it kind of like just humorous and a way for you to poke at your friends and be like, oh, you ordered the Matcha. Like, this is what that Matcha says about you. This is what your espresso says about you. And so it's made to be Shareable, which is playing into what Instagram values and is what going. What is going to be viral content. And so as you go through this one, it has like this vintage and kind of like retro feel to it. And then the orders, they all are simplistic, like beauty, like the composition is very good. A large image of the order takes up the majority of the screen headline to get your attention and then the description. But these descriptions are, are, are very humorous, right? So in Americano, you are, you're a formed espresso drinker who got sucked into the capitalist machine. Your excuse for drinking a diluted espresso is that you need more time to go, more time to sip. You act like the Americano increases your productivity, yet you're just altering, alternating between the same apps, craving for the next dopamine hit. You don't actually enjoy an Americano, yet you've never thought about the possibility of adding some milk or sugar. You'll come to the realization in about a decade or so. Like they, it's like the slander that they're adding in these is what makes it extremely shareable, but it's also a beautiful piece of content and it's easily scannable. Right now, in cut 30, we have a bunch of people doing carousels, both creators and brands. And the biggest thing I'm noticing, and the biggest thing that we're giving feedback on is the composition and the, the packaging of these carousels, right? It's not easy to follow, it's not easy to scan. Your eyes, your eyes naturally are going to look at an image and know exactly how to register all of the context and information. So as I see this, I see image, headline, text. I know exactly what is the order of importance here. I see the image, okay? That establishes the context. The matcha tells me and informs me what it is. And then I know that the text is now what I should read, that is describing what that order says about the person who orders the Matcha. They do it in a very, very clean manner, which is key to a carousel that's going to be proved be performing well. The next piece of content. Man, I don't know how to say this. I'm not even going to try to butcher this brand's name. But Inius, maybe I, I guess I am going to try Ineous. Grenadier. Grenadier. Something. Something along those lines. Essentially it's a 4x4. It kind of looks like a Land Cruiser, kind of looks like an old Defender. But anyways, the, the piece of content is amazing. So they basically, they set up a, this car in, in a studio and they let the kids go to town on this car. Right? And what I mean by that is like they had the kids climbing on the car, playing with it and essentially they turned the car into a playground. And the opening shot is just all white car, very messy with dirt on it. And the kids are in like the first shot is, is that like they're kind of going up to the car. Second shot is them climbing, hanging from the car. Third shot is relatively the same thing. Like continue to play, play on the car. They're just in different locations. And then it, it uses contrast almost like Apple versus PC to have like this little girl looking at, let's, let's call it just like a, like a Toyota RAV4 or something. Like just to throw out an example looking at a car kind of like. So like what am I supposed to do here? Like I don't know what I'm supposed to do with, with this car. And, and then it cuts back to the kids playing on. Let's call it like the defender look alike. And it says the proof is in the playground. Right? So they took that, that phrase of the proof is in the pudding and changed it into the proof is in the playground, insinuating that this car is a playground for kids. If you have kids look at this car and you should see that this is a could a good time for your kids. And then the copy on the video is Kids don't care about heated seats. Right. It's an amazing piece of content. It illustrates everything that you need to know about like that this car is made for a family that you would. That like the, with all the important context are that you would need to know that this, this is a car built for a family without really having to say say much. Whereas you watch a lot of car commercials now and it's talking about the heated seats and the X, Y, Z and all of these things relevant to the car that don't really communicate to the mom like that or the dad that hey, this is a car that your family's going to have a ton of fun in. This is a playground for, for your kids. And it's shot very simple. Again, like it's, it's just shot camera on a tripod, probably station or static aiming at the car. Cars in a studio. Kids are playing on the car. Of course there's, there's different cuts and whatnot. And then it just transitions between this and the competitor. I love the use of contrast here. It really is like a modern way of kind of doing an Apple verse PC. Okay. The next piece of content is. I'm sure this isn't one that's, you know, net new to, to a lot of people. I just think it's such a good format and I almost want to give you something to brainstorm about. So it's called Career ladder. He's done 200 and something odd, you know, episodes for this. But he stands up on a, a ladder, contestants come up and it's essentially like can this. They put a timer. I think it's two or three minutes. In two or three minutes, the interviewee or the host has to ask, ask the person like questions about their job to try to guess their job. The idea here is like they took something from tv, right? They took a game show and they said, hey, we're going to recreate this, the format of a game show on social. And it's done in a way where you always know what you're going to expect from this when. Which is something that's so important when we're talking about series and more. So social shows. Series and social shows are different social shows, something that you're going to repeat very, very, very often. A series could be something that you bring in seasonally. And with something like this Career Ladder, I now imagine if I'm indeed I'm going to, I think his name is Max. I'm going to Max. And I'm trying to purchase this and make this indeed show, you know, and, and I want brands to think about through that lens of how can I create something that's top of funnel like this, that's relevant to jobs and relevant to the job market in hiring that isn't pushing my product but communicates what we are and what we're about subconsciously. You don't need to say things directly all the time. You need to get people into the funnel and you do that through the content like this. And then eventually you have the opportunity to create bottom of the funnel content and be more direct. But the way that you increase the size of your bottom of the funnel is by doing top of funnel content. So imagine a world where indeed created this concept. They use this format. They this was their show. That would be an interesting thing that would also differentiate them from all the other other like brands like an indeed that are really probably creating the same kind of content on LinkedIn. And so it's an interesting exercise to think about and look at creators within a category, within similar categories and think about, hey, what brand could do this because the more you're going to be able to like you kind of do that exercise by yourself, the more you're going to realize if you're building a brand, how you can create a series that is going to, that is going to complement what your offer is, what your product does and career ladder is amazing. Amazing example of like what if indeed did this? You know, like if, if indeed did this, this would be a home run hint and then or home run hint. And when you do this and you're getting millions and millions of views, you're then becoming the go to resource when like if I've put out multi 260 episodes as this guy has and I own indeed and friends are consuming this content and they need to look for a job but they've been consuming this indeed's gonna be the first thing that pops into mind, right. Chances are they've been consuming all this content and like that layer of trust has been built through all of the content. And so that's another benefit when you're, when we're looking at this top of funnel content, the next brand I want to look at, I've talked about them a lot, they do a lot of amazing things, is nude project. But the, the thing that I want to break down about this video specifically is the simplicity of the video. Don't get me wrong, what he does in the video is, you know, hard to pull off. It's like a, it's a, an amazing creative thing that they did in one of the retail spots. But there's elements of the video that make it very, very genius in my opinion for a very simple video that you don't need to overcomplicate things, but you have to figure out how to make simple things interesting. And so the first thing is this guy Bruno, he's walking up to the camera with a coin and he says this coin, this coin is one of the coolest things I've ever created. Let me show you why. Come, come, come. And so he walks up to the camera, he talks directly to the camera. He's like, come, come, come. And so he runs across the street, he's like, okay, we're the brand new flagship store. This is crazy. Come through. It's a little chaotic. Within five seconds there's so much going on. He hits you with this hook, he's telling you to follow along. Creates a curiosity gap. Takes, introduces that, that they're at a new store which creates more curiosity of I wonder what the new store looks like here. I can't show you much of it, right? So he's like, kind of teasing the store, and he walks up to the counter. He's like, but first things first. We go to the counter and he. He says, like, hey, I want to buy. I think, like, I want to buy coffee, whatever. And then he uses the process of the coin. It's like one singular shot telling this entire story. He buys something, and he's like, okay, you now give me this coin. This coin is going to be entered right here. And it turns this entire story into experience. If you pay attention to the. To this. It's one single shot. There is no cuts, but the use of action and curiosity gaps and cliffhangers throughout this piece of content makes it an amazing and engaging piece of content. Because the whole time there's like, I'm giving you information, but I'm withholding information. And I'm revealing that information, and then I'm introducing more information, but I'm not giving you all of it. And so therefore, you need to keep watching. And it's like this little dance that continues to go on with. With the viewer's mind of, damn, I need to see what's next. I need to see what's next. I need to see what's next. But all in the same video and nude project does an amazing job of doing this consecutive or consistently in their content. The next one we're going to look at, the ninth one is City of Marion Libraries. This is one of my favorite pieces of content. So this is like a narrative storytelling, narrative format where they introduce a narrator and then there's a character who's like, breaking the fourth wall. And so Denise is one of the. The individuals that is, like, works at the library. And it says, you know, starts off with, this is Denise. Denise has been working at the library for 115, 50 years. And then she kind of breaks, like, the fourth wall and is like, really? And so it's like this whole story and way of introducing your characters through a narrative format that is just different and, like, add something new and unique to. To content versus, like, the typical vo. Like, this is Denise. And Denise has been doing xyz, but it's like, you know, somebody from the team doing it. It's like you're adding in this narrator that will almost be like in a movie, but doing it, adding it to a social piece of content so that they're the one introducing the character. This could be an entire series that. That is getting produced overall. And the last piece of content we're going to be looking at it's from the Ritz Paris. So this is a simple piece of content. It's a simple format. Again, the thing that I love here is that there's curiosity gaps getting created visually through this. So if we refresh this, it opens up with an elevator opening and a guy holding a dessert. As soon as that starts to close, the next one opens. And part of it is like, as something is getting closed and shut down and that information closes and you. We're not getting that information anymore. New information is revealed. That new information is another curiosity gap because you're wondering what is about to. What you're about to see as that one closes. You get another curiosity gap as the next one opens. And so all they did was shoot this vertically, and then they shot this in a way where you can, you can put all four pieces of content together to make one piece of content. Right? And so this is an easy way. There's a lot of fashion brands doing this. This was posted in February of this year. A lot of brands have done this since. But there's a lot of ways to do this in different formats where it's not just using an elevator. Right. Like, let's think a little bit outside the box. You could use. If you want to do a lookbook, you can, you can have some. Four different people going down an escalator, right at the same time or at different times. Somebody goes through. As somebody finishes going through, someone goes through on this one. And like, you could do all sorts of different things. You could do it with print printers. You could do four overhead shots of printers. One goes, one thing gets printed and it gets pulled as another starts to get printed. Like, you could just kind of think about, okay, where are all these. These areas that I could recreate something like this, this overarching idea, but do it in my own way that I'm not just replicating and copying what others are doing. So that's a wrap on all the content. I hope you enjoyed this. I'm gonna keep doing this. I'm probably gonna start doing this as a short form series as well, because I, I like this idea of just breaking down content, finding interesting content and, and showing it to you guys. But hope you guys appreciate this episode. I'll probably continue doing this. And then as we, we get a studio, as we build out that studio, me and Brian are going to have some, some heat that we're going to be dropping in the next few weeks. Bear with us as we just get that finalized and, and figured out and built out, because that's another element for it. But appreciate you guys tune into the next episode. We'll see you next week.