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 Hey Marketing Bestie, I know you didn’t ask for this, but I am going to give you my chipotle order. Don’t judge: Bowl:
Is Chipotle out? Am I cheugy? What’s your order??? Was this email forwarded to you? Sponsored by Vidu AI You: tries to make AI videos SPARKNOTES FROM THE POD 5 WAYS TO WIN SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE AI ERAJack Appleby didn't finish college. A semester short. His girlfriend's sister said "hey, you'd be good at social media." Set him up with an interview at a 15-person social firm. He got the job on the spot. Had no idea what he was doing. A year later, he's leading conference calls with Electronic Arts. One of the first hires. Making it all up. That was 2011. Facebook didn't have video yet. YouTube didn't have real-time analytics. The number "301+" was what you stared at all day waiting for view counts to update. Nobody knew what they were doing. Social strategy barely existed. Jack stayed in it for 15 years. While his peers went to brand marketing or other channels, he stayed in social. Worked on Beats by Dre. Verizon. Microsoft. Apex Legends. Started tweeting his thoughts on the industry. Not to be a creator. To find jobs. Now he runs his own consulting agency. His take on AI: It's making original thinkers MORE powerful. Not destroying social media. Slop content fails. Whether it's written by humans or AI. The algorithm rewards what resonates. Listen to the full episode here where Jack breaks down why AI police are missing the point, how Dunkin's spider donut went viral with still images, and why every brand (yes, even yours) is uniquely interesting. 1️⃣. Use AI To Scale Your Brain. Not Replace It.Jack's Take: "I can open up Claude, I can whisper flow into Claude and go like rant for 10 minutes about like, hey, I saw this happen in the industry. I want to write an essay about X, Y, and Z. Here's my thoughts on it. I just rant, rant, rant. Like, can you make some sense of this for me? And it can bake out an outline for me." Jack has severe ADHD. Runs 4 businesses at once. AI changed his life. Not because it writes FOR him. Because it structures his thoughts. He voice rants into Claude for 10 minutes. Brain dump. Ideas. Observations. Then asks it to make sense of it. Create an outline. Draft a structure. It's still HIS thinking. AI just makes it more readable. More structured. More consumable. And that's the unlock. AI isn't replacing strategists. It's helping them work faster. Think clearer. Execute better. The AI police freak out about em dashes and "delve into" phrases. But they're missing the point. AI is a better writer than you. That's GOOD. Marketing has always been written at a third-grade level because that's what people understand. AI helps you communicate better. The insecurity around AI comes from people who think writing = strategy. It's not. Strategy is WHAT to say. Writing is HOW to say it. AI helps with the HOW. You still own the WHAT. Takeaway: Build an AI workflow for ideation. Open Claude or ChatGPT. Voice rant your thoughts for 5-10 minutes about a topic, campaign, or strategy. Ask it to structure your ideas into an outline. Review. Edit. Add your specific examples and insights. Use the structured draft as your starting point. This gets your ideas out of your head faster, clearer, and more organized. AI isn't replacing your strategy. It's scaling your brain. 2️⃣. Mediocre Content Fails. Whether AI Wrote It Or Not.Jack's Take: "I'm not worried about someone who pumps out tons of slop content because I just don't think at the end of the day they're gonna succeed. Yes, it's like wasteful on the internet. Yes, we gotta scroll past it. But like mediocre content, whether it's created by AI or not, it's just not gonna perform in the algorithms anyway." There's panic about AI slop flooding social feeds. Jack's not worried. Why? Because slop has ALWAYS existed. Human slop. AI slop. Doesn't matter. The algorithm doesn't care WHO created it. It cares if people ENGAGE with it. Mediocre content written by humans gets ignored. Mediocre content written by AI gets ignored. Great content written by AI: If it resonates with people, it performs. If people learn from it or enjoy it, who cares if AI helped create it? The algorithm is the filter. Content that resonates wins. Content that doesn't loses. Before AI, there was tons of bad thought leadership. Generic posts. Template content. It didn't perform then either. AI just makes it easier to create MORE bad content. But it doesn't change the fundamental rule: Boring content fails. Original thinkers who use AI strategically. They're crushing it. Because they're using AI to scale their GOOD ideas. Not pump out empty posts. Takeaway: Stop worrying about AI slop. Focus on resonance and relevance. Ask: Does this post teach something valuable? Is it entertaining? Is it useful? If yes, post it. Doesn't matter if AI helped write it. If no, don't post it. Doesn't matter if YOU wrote it. Test your content the same way the algorithm does: Show it to 5 people in your target audience. If they engage (save, share, comment), it works. If they scroll past, it doesn't. AI or human-written is irrelevant. Resonance is everything. 3️⃣. Do Your Product Homework Before Creating Content.Jack's Take: "The homework is always is how do people perceive your product and how are they gonna use your product to make their lives better? Or in the case of a video game, far more fun." Jack ran social for Apex Legends. A massive video game launch. Before they created a single post, they did homework. How do people perceive battle royale games? What are they looking for in gameplay? How do they talk about guns, characters, maps? They didn't just post "hey, new game launching." They created content that matched how players actually engage with games. 60 kills in 60 seconds video. Showed guns (which weren't in the last game). Made it exciting. Made people WANT to play. They didn't explain the game. They SHOWED the game in a way that made you feel something. That only works if you understand your audience first. How do they perceive your product? What language do they use? What problems are they trying to solve? What gets them excited? You can't create resonant content without knowing the answers. Takeaway: Before creating any social campaign, do the homework. Pull 50 customer reviews. Read support tickets. Check Reddit/forums where your audience hangs out. Note: How they describe your product. What words they use. What problems they're trying to solve. What gets them excited. Build a "customer language doc" with their actual phrases. Use THEIR language in your content. Not your internal jargon. Content resonates when it sounds like the audience, not the brand. 4️⃣. Make The Brand Compelling. Don't Just Tie To Trends.Jack's Take: "I genuinely believe every brand is uniquely interesting and that like our jobs are to bring the brands to life and to build like culture around our brands, not to always tie into other brands or tie into other cultural moments." Jack's marketing hill to die on: Every brand is uniquely interesting. Even boring B2B SaaS. Even industrial manufacturing. Even tax software. Your job isn't to make your brand relevant by tying it to whatever trend is hot that day. Your job is to make the BRAND ITSELF compelling. Dunkin's spider donut campaign. They didn't tie it to a trend. They gave the DONUT a personality. Still images with text. The donut became a character. Low budget. High concept. Viral. Adobe's "Man with a Van" campaign. Found hand-written signs on bulletin boards. Redesigned them in Photoshop. Put them back up. Showed Adobe's value in a real-world context. Not tied to a trend. Tied to the PRODUCT. The trap you dont want to fall in: Thinking you need to jump on every trend to stay relevant. The reality: Brands that build their own culture WIN. Brands that chase trends lose their identity. Takeaway: Stop asking "what trend can we tie into?" Start asking "what's uniquely interesting about our brand?" List: 3 things only YOUR product does. 3 stories only YOUR customers have. 3 insights only YOUR team knows. Build content around THOSE. Not around what's trending on TikTok. Test it: Create one trend-based post and one brand-based post. Track engagement. Brand-based will perform better with YOUR audience. Because it's authentic to who you are. 5️⃣. Every Post Should Make People Want Your Product. Not Just Say "Buy It."Jack's Take: "I'm not like sure I might have to put up like buy my products here every once in a while, but like really we're trying to make original content that's compelling that makes you naturally want to buy the product. Like, they shouldn't be antithetical to one another. Every post we make should service that in some way." There's a weird split in social right now. Fun content over here. Sales content over there. Jack thinks that's backwards. Every post should make people want your product. Not by saying "BUY NOW." By showing the product in a compelling way. Dunkin's spider donut content didn't say "go buy the donut." It made the donut A CHARACTER. People went and bought it because they wanted to be part of the moment. Apex Legends didn't say "download the game." They showed SICK GAMEPLAY. Made you want to experience it. Captain Crunch did a morning routine trend. Had the mascot eating Captain Crunch. It was funny. It was on trend. And it made you think about the product. The goal isn't to separate "content" from "selling." The goal is to make content SO GOOD that selling happens naturally. Takeaway: Audit your last 10 posts. How many directly said "buy/download/sign up"? How many made people WANT your product without asking? If it's 8 buy posts and 2 compelling posts, flip it. Create content that: Shows your product solving a problem. Shows people using your product in cool ways. Shows behind-the-scenes of how it's made. Shows the impact it has on real users. Make the customer/product the hero of interesting stories. Not the CTA of boring posts. Track: Engagement rate on "buy now" posts vs compelling product posts. Compelling wins every time. Sponsored by Vibe.co I think people get scared of this channel for 1 really good reason. IN A MEME  What is your favorite meal to have on repeat? I need ideas. Reply and let me know Your friend, Daniel | |||||||||||
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