You Need To Understand These 6 Shifts To Win On Social Media in 2026

Summary

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Sweat Equity – "You Need To Understand These 6 Shifts To Win On Social Media in 2026"

Podcast: Sweat Equity
Host: Marketing Examined
Episode Date: February 10, 2026
Hosts: Alex Garcia & Brian Blum

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Alex Garcia and Brian Blum break down the six fundamental shifts required to thrive on social media in 2026. With the landscape becoming more competitive and analytically demanding, they dive deep into the evolving playbook for creative, growth, and influencer marketing. Drawing from real brand examples, firsthand experience, and emerging industry trends, they offer actionable strategies and memorable insights, ideal for marketers and brands seeking to build a winning organic social presence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Organic Social as the Brand's Connective Tissue

[Timestamps: 00:00–07:55]

• The New Era of Social Media

  • Social has become more analytical and creativity-obsessed; marketers from this era rise to CMO roles by mastering culture, content, and commerce.
  • “Content becomes the connective tissue for your brand. The biggest brands in the world are starting to invest tens of millions of dollars into organic social. And that shouldn't scare you. It's actually a huge opportunity.”
    — Alex Garcia [00:08]

• Testing Grounds & the Data Center Mindset

  • Organic content is now the "testing ground" for creatives, not just an afterthought.
  • The organic team should operate as the "data center" for all performance channels, collecting winning (and losing) content, tagging it by funnel stage and customer segment.
  • “Content is the targeting… you can make a piece of content for a specific customer segment and reach that individual and, and that’s awesome, but you need to actually track those metrics.”
    — Alex Garcia [06:35]

2. Data Analysts Are the Best Creators

[Timestamps: 16:18–22:58]

• Analytics-Driven Creativity

  • Great creators in 2026 live and die by analytics rather than aesthetics alone.
  • Practical use of skip rate, average watch time, and retention graphs to iterate content.
  • “If you're going to win… you need to live and die by your analytics… you find a format that works and I'm typically looking at other formats from other other categories. I bring them over and then I test every aspect of them.”
    — Alex Garcia [17:12]
  • “When you look at the analytics, it gives you the peace of mind that something might have second legs or that maybe you can diagnose what happened in the video…”
    — Brian Blum [18:36]

• The 3x3x3 Rule for Iteration

  • One concept, three iterations, published three times, tweaking the hook, duration, visuals, and storytelling to maximize results.
  • “As a creator within a brand, as someone heading content for a brand, those are the three things that you need to be looking at day in, day out and then testing religiously to make adjustments.”
    — Alex Garcia [20:09]

3. Quality Over Quantity (Until Both Are Operationalized)

[Timestamps: 22:58–29:54]

• Deep Dive: Bad Omnis Example

  • Founder Sam obsessively tests and iterates, publishing infrequently but with massive impact (example: 1-2 videos = 50,000 followers).
  • “She’s putting all of her time and attention into one video… she has over a thousand clips that she’s like pulling through or combing through… she’s focusing on, on quality over quantity and which is smart for her because they’re a lean operation.”
    — Alex Garcia [24:04]

• Quality vs. Quantity, Ideology & Scale

  • At scale, both can coexist if the operation is dialed (e.g., Hormozi’s high-volume, high-quality approach).
  • “Don’t let that be your excuse, like, operationalize the rest of the shit. You gotta figure out the content engine first because that’s actually the number one most important thing.”
    — Brian Blum [27:47]
  • Early-stage brands: “Spray and analyze. That’s what you got to do.”
    — Alex Garcia [29:53]

4. Familiarity is the New Hook

[Timestamps: 29:54–36:17]

• Building Familiarity and Expectation

  • Repetition and set design breed quick brand recall; think series, segments, or recurring social "shows".
  • Differentiates between:
    • Signature Series: Character-driven, unique, scalable content within a brand’s channel (e.g., “Ticket to Table” by Yes Chef Supply).
    • Limited Series: E.g., Gantt's short-run thematic episodes.
    • Social Shows: Ongoing, team-driven productions, potentially living on their own channel.

• Memorable Quote:

  • “Familiarity is the new hook. All it is is using content to create a memory in somebody’s head that then says, hey, here’s what you’re going to expect from me because of these elements.”
    — Alex Garcia [33:47]

• Strategy vs. Execution:

  • “The familiarity you're talking about is more of a strategy level decision. It's like a very specific association you want to create with people.”
    — Brian Blum [35:04]

5. Creators and Influencers as Creative Directors

[Timestamps: 35:26–37:52]

• Elevate Creators’ Roles

  • Brands should enable top influencers/creators—not just brief them but let them own creative direction for series or campaigns.
  • “Look at a creator or an influencer that you work with and be like, hey, you’re very good at this thing. I’m not even going to brief you. Just… bring me a concept, bring me a campaign for approval. I'm gonna let you do your thing.”
    — Alex Garcia [36:52]
  • Example: Batman Malay’s "The Gatekeepers" for All Saints—an episodic series living on his channel, building deep affinity for the brand.

• Key Takeaway:

  • Treat influencers as creative partners for maximum authenticity and brand impact, instead of transactional, one-off content.

6. Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts

[Timestamps: 37:52–End]

• Importance of integrating these pillars into long-term strategies.
• Brian emphasizes: “It’s so much insane upside for these people, but it’s also just not always done super well. … Every brand has an opportunity to lean more into that.” [37:52]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Content as Targeting:

  • “Content is the targeting. … You can make a piece of content for a specific customer segment and reach that individual.”
    — Alex Garcia [06:35]

• On Analytics:

  • “You need to live and die by your analytics.”
    — Alex Garcia [17:13]

• On Quality:

  • “Operationalize the rest of the shit. You gotta figure out the content engine first because that's actually the number one most important thing.”
    — Brian Blum [27:47]

• On Familiarity:

  • “Familiarity is the new hook.”
    — Alex Garcia [33:47]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [00:00–07:55] – The new role of organic social, analytic testing grounds, content as connective tissue, reporting and segmentation.
• [16:18–22:58] – Data analysts as creators, key metrics, iterative creative process.
• [22:58–29:54] – Deep dive on quality vs. quantity—from lean teams to scaled content engines.
• [29:54–36:17] – Familiarity and expectation setting: signature series, limited series, social shows.
• [35:26–37:52] – Creators as creative directors, All Saints' Gatekeepers example.
• [37:52–End] – Summary and closing takeaways.

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Recap: Six Shifts to Win Social in 2026

1. Content as the Connective Tissue – Social teams become data centers for brand performance.
2. Analytics-Driven Creativity – Success in social requires analytical obsession, not just visual flair.
3. Quality over Quantity… Then Both – Start lean and focused, operationalize for scale and quality as you grow.
4. Familiarity Breeds Engagement – Repetition, series, and strong brand memory trump novel hooks alone.
5. Creators as Creative Directors – Let leading influencers own campaigns and series, not just single ads.
6. Iterate, Share and Integrate – Break down silos: align organic, email, SMS, CRO for multi-touchpoint impact.

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Final Thoughts

This episode delivers a thorough, playbook-style breakdown of 2026’s essential social media strategies. Alex and Brian blend practical, real-world advice with big-picture marketing theory, offering listeners a competitive edge as the organic social landscape grows ever more sophisticated.

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Transcript

[Alex]

The next phase of social media is going to be even harder. It's more analytical and it's creatively obsessed because it's an entirely new era with a completely different playbook. The social media marketers of this generation are now becoming the CMOs. Content becomes the connective tissue for your brand. The biggest brands in the world are starting to invest tens of millions of dollars into organic social. And that shouldn't scare you. It's actually a huge opportunity. The majority of those brands are still going to be executing like it's 2024 or 2025.

[Brian]

So now you actually have to really dial in your strategy to win versus back in the day it was less competitive, it was a lot of free attention.

[Alex]

If you watch this episode, then you're going to be ahead of all of these brands and how they execute their content strategy. Brian and I are going to walk through the key pillars you need to execute against to win on Social in 2026. So in this next phase of social media in 2026, I'm looking at five things that I'm putting into playbooks that I'm going to brands and be like, hey, like these are the things that we need to be shifting relevant to your content strategy. Because I think this next phase of social is going to be completely different than what we saw in 2025. In 2025 we saw a lot of brands starting to almost like see organic as the testing grounds for their creative team. Right. Like in the past they weren't pumping money into social. Right. Like it's relatively new for the majority of brands. I think you, you felt that on the TikTok shop side. I felt that more on the Instagram side where, yeah, like brands, a lot of these nine figure brands that you know, you can say are like the, the Cinderellas in the DTC world, et cetera. They only were paying attention to performance and all of their ops, all of their logistics were only centered around getting as much creative made for performance. Right. It was like, hey, we have to make 100 assets a month and not 200 assets a month and then three and then now you have the new essentially cycle and flywheel of tick tock shop. And it's like I heard you on a call with somebody where you're like, yeah, you need to be getting, I forgot how many videos it was like five hundred to a thousand.

[Brian]

I think it was a month is like 10,000. But I mean the thing is like it's, it's kind of the same analogy as what you see on Twitter. Will be on LinkedIn three days later. Yeah, and it's. Everyone is saying organic is the testing ground, which means, you know, two years ago that was the alpha. That was actually like something that people didn't believe. You're like, organic socials, whatever. But now I think it's kind of common knowledge, open secret that testing stuff organically is the best way to validate angles, messaging, hook styles, etc. And so it's, it is interesting what's going to happen with that shift in investment, because it used to be that there was a lot of arbitrage there. So now you actually have to really dial in your strategy to win versus back in the day. It was like if you just kind of did something that was good and saw it, it was less competitive, it was a lot of free attention.

[Alex]

And so I think the bigger shift that we're going to see here and that you need to be looking again like the new alpha is going to be that content becomes the connective tissue for your brand. I read something a long time ago that was basically, the social media marketers of this generation are now becoming the CMOs of the biggest companies in this because they understand culture, they understand content, they understand commerce. Right. They understand how all three elements essentially intersect. And, and the best brands are built at that intersection. And so the, the, essentially the looking at the next phase, it's looking at your social team and being like, our social team is now going to be seen as the data center for all other performance channels, meaning organic team, which there is a separation. I'm not going to name names, but on a comment on Twitter, somebody talked about like a head of. It was like a head of Crater perform or no creator partnerships. And they saw head of creative partnerships the same as organic. Because I commented, I was like, like, also you need a head of organic as like a big, you know, individual hire in 2026. Like, no, like, that's the same as the creator part. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Like, that's wild. It's, it's wildly different. Like, creator partnerships is not what you entirely own. Like, you brief somebody, they publish the content, but you don't own every aspect of that content, meaning you don't own how they represent your brand to every degree.

[Brian]

I also think it's borderline disrespectful is the wrong word. But you're not appreciating how much work actually goes into a competent head of creator partnerships versus a competent head of organic. Like, yes, there should be two roles that work together. But in a world where you are leveraging creator partnerships at scale, that person should have a full plate. Like their entire day should be structured around getting more quality content at scale from all the creators you're working with. And you should be having seamless processes for sending out an instant checkout form. Like there's this tool, influencer gift form for example that like if you send to creators you don't have to use a spreadsheet.

[Alex]

Nice.

[Brian]

Like that's in itself. Right. Is a Shopify app. Like the head of creator partnerships should be focusing on finding like new processes that will work like that all the time. They should be working on having a brief that's going to get more of a hit rate from the content that you're like sampling for. So and then the heart of organic, I mean that person should be razor focused on getting more attention.

[Alex]

Yes. That individual is operating and obsessed with the things that you own. Publish how that looks, how you're perceived in, in the world. And so tying it all together 100 and so. But now the shift that I, I'm saying, hey, if you really want to win, if you want everything to be cohesive, every touch point to be cohesive, you got to look at the organic team as the data center. And what does that actually look like? It looks like having all of your winning content and even your, your, your losing content put into a report. That report is then going to be able to say, hey, here's how we can package this for X channel. And I'll, you know, give down or I'll give examples for that as well. But essentially putting this report that's like whether it's a bi weekly basis or a monthly basis where it's again very, very good report breaking down the top content, then it's going to be categorized by top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of the funnel content because those assets are going to be packaged differently for different channels. Then you're going to have it tagged for specific customers or products. Right. If you have different customer segments and you need to have like hey, we made this content for this customer segment. Content is the targeting. Right. Like you and I have talked about that over and over again where you can make a piece of content for a specific customer segment and reach that individual and, and that's awesome, but you need to actually track those metrics. You know, we have a brand that we're working with right now where they have two completely different customer segments. Like there is a, an overlap. Right. It's in the exercise world or health and performance World, there's an overlap, but they are two different individuals. And so you can't look at customer segment A and Customer segment B. Publish a piece of content for customer segment B and think it's going to perform the same as customer segment A when all you've ever done is create a customer. You know, create a content for customer.

[Brian]

Segment B and reevaluate the stakes as well. One of those segments might be a lot bigger and so you might want a bigger outcome out of that piece of content. You also might want to produce more of that specific type of content. 100%, if you have 70% of your customer base is, you know, women who, you know, take Pilates and the other 30% is women who do yoga. It's like you should probably readjust your expectations for the performance of the Pilates content. For sure. If you're a supplement brand trying to say, like, go the extra mile in your Pilates class, like it's more of a strength based whatever it is, right? Like, you know, then that should hopefully perform and you should invest in it accordingly. But content definitely does the targeting. I mean, it's kind of insane. Like when you make a video, I mean, we both make like a brand breakdown, right? Always reaches the brand, they always see it every time. Even if that thing flops, you know what I mean? Which flops happen? We've discussed.

[Alex]

They're happening.

[Brian]

Yeah, Flops, flops, they're happening.

[Alex]

I also think there's some shifts in the, in the algo, but that, that'll derail this whole combo, certainly.

[Brian]

But yeah, get into it.

[Alex]

So the last element of it is like, what does it actually look like? What should you do is you should repackage everything properly for different channels. And so what, I mean, you know, we can, we can look at this from a brand example where even if you have a top of funnel piece of content, let's take Flamingo State. Flamingo Estate has, or they don't have this type of, this content. I do think they should do it. They send out every, every Friday they send out Letters from the Garden. It's a newsletter that's like curated by the founder about everything that's happened in Flamingo State. Let's imagine that was a content piece. No different than like Gant has postcards from Pulia. Let's imagine a world where Flamingo Estate had Letters from the Garden. It's a series, let's say it's their top performing series, right. As a brand they already do this, but they should be then packaging that into an email newsletter, Right. I think email newsletters for brands are actually huge and huge opportunity and a huge miss for the brands that aren't doing it because it's something that consumers would want but typically don't get. Brands are always putting out, hey, there's this discount, this sale, this new product and never really putting things out from the POV of the brand. Right. Bandit does a really good job of this fling. Flamingo State does a really good job of this BPN does a good job.

[Brian]

Of this Know your lane if you're going to do the email newsletter because friend of the pod Wander, one thing when I was talking with their CMO Kyle, he said we have an incredible open rate on our newsletter because what they're always doing is saying check out these new deals on Wander. If you're someone subscribed to their newsletter, you're very likely looking to pounce on a great opportunity to get into a villa. Right. And so they understand that email is a great channel for them and they are able to leverage that and get like a lot of additional bottom funnel eyeballs and that ultimately leads to like some of their unused inventory getting booked. I think about, you know, like one of my clients is, well, clients is loose term these days, but one of my clients is this guy, Spiral Bible Alex. And you know, he would obviously not say like here's the most recent deals on my products for his email newsletter. But he's in the faith niche. Yeah. And so some sort of like faith based commentary in his newsletter would be incredible. Right. Like using current events and tying it to a Bible verse and then looping that back to like. And by the way, you could have journaled about this in your spiral Bible. That's a great use of a newsletter that he's probably not really.

[Alex]

And it's not even to say that you can't have your product, your products in your content like in your newsletter. It's not that you can't push it and evaluate the goals 100%.

[Brian]

Is it, is it engagement and affinity or is it conversion? Because pretty much every brand during the whole like we're going to focus on meta ads one day, click ROAS era, which was probably what, I don't know, like 2017-2024. Now everyone's kind of waking up to brand affinity and brand building and like the LTV that that bring lifetime value that brings you of that customer. And so yeah, if you're going to send a bunch of email campaigns and the only metric you're judging it by is you know, one month revenue on your email channel, that's probably not going to be great. But if you have a holistic three month, six month, nine month plan, like I'm going to send this email every single Friday for nine months and then I'm going to bet that the openers of those emails are going to have a better LTV vs non openers then you know, I think that's a good goal for it.

[Alex]

The takeaway from this is.

[Brian]

Work with.

[Alex]

Your organic team every single week, every other week, every month to look at all your top performing content and then have a meeting where you work with the email team, SMS team, the CRO team or the individuals doing those things. You know, most brands have probably, you know, one individual wearing multiple hats to say hey, here's how we're going to basically build a funnel off of this piece of content or here's how we're going to create multiple touch points that build off of this piece of content. Because what you'll see is the content that is getting them into your funnel or aware of you is going to be your top performing content or sorry, top, oh yeah, even top performing content across SMS email. Because the data is there, right? All of the data is saying hey, this person shares this, they save this, they engage with this, they comment on this. You're the people that love you want more of this. So therefore take it and now turn it into conversion focused copy, right? The the same five reasons why that works on on social maybe for Farmer's Dog is going to be an amazing email for you to to send the.

[Brian]

The customer and an amazing, I mean dude, the, the tools at your disposal right now. I mean you could use these AI video generation tools to basically take that email transcript prompt, you know, Nano Banana or whatever it is to like create kind of like a minute and a half video demonstrating this with narration from 11 laps. Like there's so many different ways to reproduce this content. But the thing that to me what people like have you ever used the Shop app and it recommends all the brands that you've shopped from on Shopify. It kind of keeps on accident though.

[Alex]

It's weird. It's like only been one of those things where because I'll use Shop because.

[Brian]

It'S so, so convenient the tracking of a product, right?

[Alex]

But then it's like explore more or.

[Brian]

Whatever and it'll just show all the people you've ever sort of ordered from which sort of almost creates this personality map, right? This is, this is like your, your preferences map of all the different brands that you ever shop from before. And when I, When I saw that the other day, all I could think about was like, it is interesting how these brands have sort of created my personality and my, like, archetype and avatar. Like, I'm. I'm definitely a very specific combination of all of these different things, from the luggage brand, from the apparel brands, to the supplements that I'm getting off of this app. And each one of those brands has an opportunity to engage me in a different way. But I'm. I'm kind of already opted into their overall universe. And I think that's an appreciation for where people are going in modern times, is we're all shifting away from live sports, from live events. Like, did you even watch the Grammys last night?

[Alex]

Like, no, I didn't know what's going on, dude.

[Brian]

Yeah. Like, you only saw it because there was, like, random, you know, clips, sponsored posts. Right. Like the industry was putting out. And so we're shifting towards, like a hyper, personalized, hyper segmented world where brands and connection with brands and the affinity of those is something that I think people really want to lean into. Like, Like, I. I want to opt into Flamingo estate stuff. I want to connect more with the founder of that business and kind of have him tell me what my talking points for the weekend are going to be. You know what I'm saying? Hit me with the, like, the. I haven't formed my opinions until the all in podcast. I was like, I need that Letters from the Garden so that when I'm going out, I'm like, hey, bro, did you know, like, this is how tomatoes grow in a subtropical climate? Like, I need that type of information from him.

[Alex]

Pickup lines.

[Brian]

Yeah, I just.

[Alex]

A quick pause within this episode. So there's this, like, sweat equity contract that if you ever listen to any of our episodes that you kind of signed and you didn't know you signed, which basically says, if you're going to watch our content, please, like, and subscribe. The reason for that is Brian and I have this mission of trying to hit 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year. We haven't decided what the consequence is yet, but it's not going to be a good one. So please, if you're listening to this, you like this, please just hit the subscribe, help us get to that number, and we'll publish more episodes. We're going to get more guests, and eventually we're going to drop merch. So please. You see, Jason's getting cooked right now on Twitter.

[Brian]

Jason who?

[Alex]

Okay. Whatever his last name is.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. He's always getting cooked.

[Alex]

No, because he's in files.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. And we're gonna have to bleep that out because YouTube.

[Alex]

Oh, true, true, true.

[Brian]

Yeah, no, I mean, maybe we leave it in.

[Alex]

And dude, Peter, Tia too.

[Brian]

Yeah, I saw that.

[Alex]

That one was rough.

[Brian]

You saw the email?

[Alex]

I saw the email.

[Brian]

I lost it. Look, I. It's all good, you know, it's. It was objectively kind of a funny email. It's not.

[Alex]

It's not funny. It's object. It's funny because of. It's. It's not funny. Like the situation's not funny. It's. What he said is just so ridiculous. 100, like you're a grown man.

[Brian]

It's also just the unmasking of like, this dude is so serious all the time, so professional. And then he's. He's just wilding in the, in the dms.

[Alex]

It's just wild.

[Brian]

Yeah, we see if we keep that one, see if we can.

[Alex]

The number two element that you need to focus on to win on Social 2026, the data analyst will become the best creator. And I don't think people ever really think about that. They think of the art side of it, right? Having the best visuals, having the best aesthetics, having the best, like angles and lenses and all those elements. But I truly believe that if you're going to win, especially because of, like I said in the, in the last one, all these brands are going to be creating content. More creators are coming, are getting onto the platform. There's things like your course that you're going to launch, like cut 30, that are basically telling people how to win and then they go win and it's going to get harder to win. So for you, if you want to become the 1% of the great content, you need to live and die by your analytics. I'm going to give two examples of this. The first one was Everyday Better Club. I talked about them, I think two or three weeks ago. The reason they have videos that have million 10 million 20, and I think upwards of 30 million views on social is because, you know, I got on a call with him and he was like, all I do is look at analytics. He's like, I find a format that works and I'm typically looking at other formats from other other categories. I bring them over and then I test every aspect of them. Length, I test, I test the text, I test the opening shot, the different types of shots I'm going to use. And so he tests all of this in Trial reels. And then when he has the winners, he narrows it down and he's like, he starts combining layers from all of the analytics of like, okay, I'm looking at my skip rate, I'm looking my average watch time. I look at my retention graphic. When you came in here a second ago, you were talking about like your hook rate is at 70% on this video, like it's going to go viral. You're looking at all the analytics to basically say, okay, like, like this hook is good. Noted. Let me now move, you know, like I can bring that over even more.

[Brian]

Practical example of that. And because I think especially in short form and content, it moves so fast. And so when you're posting organically, you're going to have a lot of tendency to want to pull back and be like, oh, this, this video flopped. This video didn't work. This video, this concept is dead right? And so when you look at the analytics, it gives you the peace of mind that something might have second second legs or that maybe you can diagnose what happened in the video because there was promising things somewhere in the analytics. So to your point, I had a video I posted last night. I don't know what's been going on with Instagram, but it's like the, the videos are having a slower takeoff time. And initially, you know, I think it had maybe 60 likes and 50 minutes or something like that. It was, it was at that pace and all I was thinking about at the time was just like, damn, like this is going to flop. Get not a bunch of views. But I checked the analytics. The hook rate was really strong. So was the watch time. And so instead of, you know, taking it down, I just kind of let it ride. Now it's probably going to pop off. And conversely, there could have been a situation where I looked at it and the watch time was bad, but the hook rate was good. That would have told me, well, I'm just losing people from the 7 to 15 second mark. And so maybe I need to re, maybe I do take the video down and cut something or like reintroduce an open loop during that time that will keep people's attention for longer. Maybe I front load some of the information and the value that's later in the video. So it's identifying those trigger points of what to change and also being able to just hang in there and be like, okay, maybe this video has legs a couple of weeks from now because I don't know about your experience, I'm seeing a ton of content from like November randomly. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's. It seems like all the algorithms are recycling a lot of viral stuff from previous months, and that's across everything. So it's just a weird place right now. But you have to be able to be fluent in the analytics to even see that stuff and not make a lot of critical mistakes.

[Alex]

Couldn't agree more. And so I think there's three essentially segments of every video or sorry, metrics that people should be looking at to then change different segments within each video. So you skip rate your average watch time and then the retention graph as a creator, as a creator within a brand, as someone heading content for a brand, doesn't matter. Those are the three things that you need to be looking at day in, day out and then testing religiously to make adjustments to your video to make them perform better and better and better. And so I like to have that rule of. It's like the three by three by three. Have one concept, test it three times, make three iterations to that piece of content, publish it three times essentially, and every single time with that, you can make an iteration to. If, okay, if my skip rate is bad, then I need to work on my hooks. What are the things that I could test for my hook? Am I changing the angle, the aesthetic, the action, what I say, the title, whatever you, you can adjust those things. Okay, I got the hook right now it's above 60%, right? Or no, sorry, my skip rate's below 50%. Awesome. My average watch time is that it's now crashing at 12 seconds. I need to get it up to 15, 20. What do I do now? Okay, you need to work on your storytelling if it is, if it is a dialogue heavy video. Because, you know, I wanted to have this hot take over the weekend where a lot of, like, I hope we don't, you know, I hope people don't see us in this. Like, content gurus take the same best practices from talking head videos and think that they apply to brands. The majority of brands aren't making talking head videos. You only can rely on visuals, right? And so at the same time, like, if, you know, we talk about a title hook in a, in a verbal hook, a lot of brands are only doing a visual hook because they're, you know, like Jacquemus or maybe that's not a great example. But like, actually it is. In some cases they have a verbal.

[Brian]

Hook and they're extreme, right? I mean, that's another thing. Like their visuals are very extreme. You don't Need a title hook when you just put the most insane shit ever in front of.

[Alex]

But it's like, it's like Louis Vuitton probably 10% of their content. And I don't, I've actually never even really paid attention to their content. Like 10% of their content has dialogue. So you have to understand, okay, if I am going to leverage a title hook, it has to be on brand and it's not going to be like just the native in platform. So I have to like, you have to be so into the analytics to. If all I have to leverage is my visuals, which is the reality for the majority of brands, then I have to look at these analytics to be able to make the adjustments. Now when you look at smaller brands, like brands kind of going like 0 to 5 play into title hook, visual hook, verbal hook, because their, their budgets are smaller, you know what I'm saying? So like they're making the content that's shot on iPhone. They're not playing the same game as a, you know, as a luxury brand or a brand that even wants to be positioned as luxury and publishing like the, the higher produced content that still gets million plus views, right? And so like it's, it's. These are the things that as a.

[Brian]

Ignore your lane 100% but as you.

[Alex]

You'Re in your lane, the best way for you to, to own that lane and be first place in that lane is to look at all the data, to look at the things that you have to be adjusting on a daily basis, right? And so this even bleeds into my third element where I think in 2026 you need to focus on quality over quantity. And I'll give you one of my favorite examples. Friend of the pod, Sam from Bad Omnis, bro, they have 160, maybe 70,000 followers and they've published maybe 30 times. The reason for that is she's a data analyst. Like she is testing everything religiously and trial reels and then bringing it over. And you know, she sometimes take her a month, two months to make one video. She sent me screenshots earlier, maybe today or yesterday and I, and I'll ask if we can post them up here. But she was sending me screenshots of these videos, right? One of them got like one point something. Another one got maybe 2 or 3 million views. It drove 50,000 followers for them. One video, ridiculous numbers. But you look at that and it's like she's putting all of her time and attention into one video. And so she's, when she's talking to me about putting together this video. She's like, I will publish it when I know it feels right. That means the script and the visuals. So before a video goes out, she has over a thousand clips that she's like pulling through or combing through right to then pull in the best ones. And then the script. She's like, sometimes I'm working on this for, for weeks and I'm adjusting it for weeks. She's publishing a few, like a few iterations of the video on trial reels and then she's pulling over the best one than to the, to the main feed. But she's focusing on, on quality over quantity and which is smart for her because they're a lean operation. You know, they, I think they did a million in revenue last year, first year in business, which is amazing. But at the same time they're like, hey, like every time we publish a video piece of content, we need it to be the best, best piece of content. So I'm gonna make it the best buy, even if it's the only piece of content I publish in the last two months. Now the inverse of that is focus on quality over quantity until quantity and quality can be operationalized. Yeah, you can get to a point where both exist, but it's operationalized and it's dialed. We're getting to that point with the brands that we work with where we're producing these social shows. They're performing very well, but the operations take like 45 days to kind of.

[Brian]

I mean that's, that's a sprint. I, I think one maybe hesitation I can almost hear the listener having right now from that bad hombre story is how can I run the rest of my business if I'm religiously obsessing with this much effort into a singular video versus the spray and pray method and more. So just the element of I, I mean bad Om is very storytelling driven, very founder led, content driven. They're really good at narratives. And I think I just know that people have this blocker in their head. They think content takes so long. I've got all these other things to worry about and it's a total reframe of priorities in your business to really think this way. That, that, that's the truth of it is you either ideologically think that content is the most important thing you can invest in or don't. Because it kind of brings me back to the hormozi stuff. I mean if we're going to be talking gurus, that's guru. That's, that's the apex Guru, Right, that's guru Number one, two and three over Gary Vee. He's so much bigger than Gary Vee. At this point, I feel like Hormozi laps. Gary Vee is my take.

[Alex]

Hot take.

[Brian]

I mean, just check the numbers. I feel like he's inside or I just feel like he's printing way more money than Gary Vee. I don't know what Vayner X is doing in revenue. Maybe, what, 150 million? That'd be huge.

[Alex]

No, no, no. Vayner does hundreds. Yeah, hundreds.

[Brian]

Hormozi did like 125 in a weekend, though.

[Alex]

One video or whatever.

[Brian]

Yeah. So, I mean, but back to the meat of it is Hormozi has just this general philosophy. He's like, look, if I just put out so much volume that I can't fail, then, you know, how can someone out compete me? And look what it's done for him. Look at what all these brands who are content LED are doing. They're disrupting every single industry, every single space is the number one most surefire way to get your brand in front of the right people is to invest in content and marketing as a distribution engine, an eyeball getting engine. And so, yeah, like my argument though.

[Alex]

Is he's operationalized it well, but maybe they're.

[Brian]

Maybe they're bogged down in products delays or shipping delays or their P and L sucks or whatever it is. And my, My argument is agreeing with you right now that, like, basically don't let that be your excuse, like, operationalize the rest of the shit. You got to figure out the content engine first because that's actually the number one most important thing. You're a brand. Your job is to get eyeballs on your product. And the only way to do that in 2026 is through content.

[Alex]

What I should have prefaced with is I still believe in. You have to test religiously. Yeah, right. And at a very high volume. Now, what I am saying is when you've started to build, and I should have started with this, when you, when you start building some kind of level of affinity or of an audience, don't continue to spray and pray. Double down on quality. Double down on saying, okay, if my series, good content versus bad content is, you know, my thing, then how do I make it the best? Good content versus bad content? You know, is it researching and finding the things that no one else is going to see? Is it like filming parts here, like in. In office, at my house, whatever? Like, you know, I'm just making shit up at this Point. But what are you going to do that's going to make it a 10 out of 10 piece? Because a lot of times people will be like, just ship it and ship the 5 out of 10 piece. But the thing that makes it could be. Could make it 10 out of 10. Could be the difference between 100,000 views and 2 million views.

[Brian]

My concern is analysis paralysis for the most people because when I talk to.

[Alex]

I don't, I don't disagree at all.

[Brian]

You know, when I talk to a person who wants to get into this stuff, man, they're always saying, what do I make? What do I make? What do I make? What do I make?

[Alex]

You're talking about. And that individual should be testing is what I'm saying.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex]

I'm talking about like you, me, whoever else, or even brands that have winning.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Alex]

Have winning pillars and have winning formats.

[Brian]

Yes.

[Alex]

Those people should be like, how do we make this 10 out of 10?

[Brian]

And. And I totally agree with you in. My only caveat would be to the people who don't. Haven't already started this or are like kind of in the early stages is it's not necessarily spray and pray, but like, it is just important to publish above all else.

[Alex]

Spray and analyze simply.

[Brian]

Yeah, spray and analyze.

[Alex]

Spray and analyze.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Alex]

That's what you got to do. The fourth element is familiarity, is the new hook. Okay. And I think there's nothing more important going into 20, 26 other than repetition. Again, when you find something that wins, adding in these rep. Repetitive elements. So the set design, the little elements that make this unique to you. The hook, how the, the first three seconds, the first frame, how you turn every. All of those elements and then expectation setting, which is more so relative to the theme of the content. Now, I've been talking, obviously I've been talking, you know, at a high volume about social shows. Right.

[Brian]

Have you?

[Alex]

Yeah. Someone commented on a video I was like talking about so much about social shows, like, do you sell them or something? I was like, yeah, bro. Yes, we produce them, obviously.

[Brian]

No, it's just my passion.

[Alex]

I do, I love them. But at the same time. Yeah.

[Brian]

I mean, I would argue what your, Your level of talking about social shows has probably created a situation where if other people start talking about social shows, they'd be like, they got that from Alex.

[Alex]

Did you have to.

[Brian]

Which is kind of the goal. Right. You have to like, there's your continuity, there's your, you know, association example right there.

[Alex]

There's essentially three levels to it. This I've never discussed. There Is level one.

[Brian]

It's gonna hook.

[Alex]

Yeah, there's level one, which is the signature series. A signature series is what Bad Ombudis is doing, right? This is day one of the doing X I talk about yes, Chef Supply. They have a. A signature series called Ticket to Table. So if someone places an order.

[Brian]

Who's this?

[Alex]

Yes, Chef Supply. It's like a.

[Brian]

That the Jack's dining room guy.

[Alex]

He, like, really famous influencer guy.

[Brian]

Yeah, bro.

[Alex]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian]

He.

[Alex]

He owns, like, multiple things underneath the umbrella. Yeah, Chef Supply is one of them. Got it. They have a series called Ticket to Table where somebody places an order at one of these restaurants, they show the entire process from, like, this guy that's mic'd up of again, Ticket to Table. It's very well. Yeah, right. The difference between signature series in a social show is a signature series isn't something that's going to live on a separate channel. A social show is something that you're going to test on the main channel and eventually is going to live on an external channel or, sorry, account. Right. Signature series is just part of your content pillars. There's a clear, like, differentiation between the two. And so signature series is typically something that's character driven, is scalable, and then is unique to you. Like, those are the three elements. Right? Ticket to Table is unique to yes Chef because it's around the. The different chefs that they have in house, their menu, their experience, etc. Right? It's character driven because it's. The chef is the one or the main character in it. It's scalable because they have hundreds of items on their menu. Right? Like, they can. They can do it for everything that's on their menu. Right? So signature series is the. Is level one. Level two is a limited series. This is the brands that are doing like four to five episodes of a thing or a, you know, four to five episodes of a concept specifically. And publishing that out on the Cow Gantt, I think, is the best at this. They have postcards from Polia. They have their. Their fashion lessons. They have postcards from other areas as well. But they have. They basically drop everything in like, these four to five, maybe six episode iterations, which is so different than a social show. Right? Everyone look at that and be like, hey, this is a social show. No, they have elements of a social show where, again, repetitive, a repetitive thing, a specific concept, the same characters, whatever, but they're doing four to five episodes around one idea. Okay? And then there's the social show. That's level three. Social show. Is, hey, I'm going to build a creative team around this concept or this idea, and I'm going to scale this onto a different account and I'm going to publish as many, you know, one episode a week, two episodes a week, doesn't matter. All of those are centered around the idea of familiarity. The idea of I see the first frame and because of the repetition of the content and the repetition of the elements within the content, I know exactly what I'm going to expect from that piece of content. I can watch one episode of Ticket to Table, see Ticket to Table, episode number two, and know exactly what I'm going to get from that. I could see one episode of Postcards from Pullia, see the second one show up on my feed. I know exactly what I'm going to get from that. I could see Subway Takes or Roomies pop up on my feed, watch one episode. Exactly what I'm going to get from episode two. Repetition, expectations, expectation, setting. Create the familiarity and familiarity. All it is is memory you get. I'm saying all it is is using content to create a memory in somebody's head that then says, hey, here's what you're going to expect from me because of these elements. And so I think familiarity is the new hook. Of course, as you get to that stage, you have to get again, meticulous about what you're making. The actual hook so that you get someone and hook them in. To be able to get them to, to consume episode number one or episode.

[Brian]

Seven is like execution versus strategy, you know, like you're talking about, like execution would be like, okay, we're going to a B test, like a verbal hook. We're going to be test, you know, like action or something like that. But the familiarity you're talking about is more of a strategy level decision. It's like a very specific association you want to create with people. Like, you've done this with some of your sets. Like everything you just mentioned the Subway Takes thing. Like if Subway Takes guy did a video in Central park or in Washington Square, it would legitimately feel like a, like new episode.

[Alex]

You know, I would feel like a whole new show.

[Brian]

It would be weird, right? And so, you know, that's just one element where it's like, that's a strategy level decision for him at the concept level where he says, okay, we're going to have a unique, you know, new viewpoint rather than like our art standard.

[Alex]

Now, the last thing to win is as a brand. If you have winning creators or influencers, either a leverage your creative team to work with them. Or B, basically place the influencer or the creator as a creative director within different ideas and within your content strategy and allow them to develop their own series, their own campaigns, et cetera. One of my favorite examples of this is this guy, Batman Malay, and All Saints came to him with essentially let you do your thing. You're great at creating these skits and almost these. These concepts that should and feel like they exist in movies will allow you to do your thing. And so he created a concept called the Gatekeepers and he published four or five episodes of the Gatekeepers. And the Gatekeepers is literally feels like. Or it's.

[Brian]

It's.

[Alex]

Sorry. The Gatekeepers is an episodic limited series where it's him playing four or five different roles and they're playing like a game of poker and then they're playing XYZ thing. Right? But it's something that lives on his page, feels cohesive with his content, but extends and essentially builds a bridge to All Saints. But All States isn't the person. All Saints is giving him the budget. Right. All Saints is like, go do the thing. Make something that of course will complement our brand and who we are, what we stand for, all of those things. But at the same time, you run it, you're the creative director. And I think this is so important to look at a creator or an influencer that you work with and be like, hey, you're very good at this thing. I'm not even going to brief you. Just, you know, bring me a concept, bring me a campaign for approval. But I'm gonna let you do your thing. I'm gonna give you your budget and build a campaign for this product, this line, this supplement, this, you know, doesn't matter the product and you overall let them do their thing and they just come to you with a concept and approve it. You're gonna pay for premium for it. But the brand recognition, the brand affinity and, and that you're going to get from this is going to be 10 times what you're going to get from having somebody just like create one of those videos or a photo where they're just smiling, holding your. Your product like most brand or most influencers do. So that is my last one. If you work with creators, you work with influencers, you have to. You have to almost like position them as a creative director within your brand and allow them to create these campaigns or these series or on behalf of you collab with the main account, build that bridge and affinity from them to you.

[Brian]

Beautiful. No notes except for. I hope this reaches the right D2C. Darlings. A lot of the things that you're talking about, man, it's. It's so much insane upside for these people, but, like, it's also just not always done super well. You know, I think a lot of them, like, think about these things, but then necessarily don't put the most resources into it, because inherently, fashion is a very creative industry, and so those people are going to naturally be better at content esthetics that capture attention, et cetera. But every brand has an opportunity to, you know, lean more into that. I mean, so, yeah, I love it. I think this is, like, a super helpful guide, and, you know, people definitely get a lot of value out of it.