Creator Lessons from the Coconut Tree

Welcome!

To hurricane alley. At least that’s how it feels this week.

Hurricane Helene blew right through my home here in Tampa, dumping storm surge before causing significant damage North of here all the way up the East Coast.

We were lucky to be spared the brunt of it, but the reports from my friends locally and all along the East Coast are just heartbreaking. I’m hoping for the best for all those impacted by the storm.

But before we can even wring out our infrastructure, here comes another storm, predicted to take the same path and arrive this weekend. The best we can do in a situation like this is to hang onto our hats and indulge in a little content strategy.

In today’s letter:

• What “feral 25 year-olds” can teach us about content process

• Can old media help new media monetize it’s huuuuge audience?

• Format Watch: Rawwwwww

Lots to unpack, but first… a note, dear reader.

Now, let’s get into it😎

Content Takeaways from Kamala’s Memers.

I believe that you can trace the success of the last three presidents’ campaigns by their handle on tech trends. If I’m right about that, things are looking quite good for Kamala Harris this election season.

The evidence:

• Barack Obama was the first candidate to effectively use text messages.

• Donald Trump rewrote the book on social media with Twitter (now X), posting constantly and directly throughout his campaign, and from the West Wing.

• Joe Biden and his campaign figured out Zoom at a time when in person rallies were a non-starter.

In the short time that Kamala Harris has been a candidate for president, her campaign has been defined by a mastery of the meme. The coconut tree… Kamala is brat… the meme is a modern art form - like poetry, or political cartoons.

Last week the Washington Post gave a detailed account of exactly how Harris is doing it with a tiny team of what her campaign calls “feral 25-year-olds.”

Now, when I say small, I mean really small. the campaign has a digital team of 250 people and out of that we're talking, like, thirteen on the “rapid response team” that runs all the social media for the campaign.

As to the political impact of these memes, I'll leave that to the political prognosticators. Here we think about strategy and growth, which means numbers, and from that perspective, Harris has already won with this stat from the Washington Post article.

Like successful candidates before her, Harris is tapping into something bigger, something cultural. Meme culture has become a sort of proving ground for the kind of swagger and charisma that inspires fandom.

A presidential campaign is one of the most concerted marketing efforts we have in the US, so I like to look at them not just in terms of results, but in terms of process. 

This article about Harris social media strategy gave me a couple important insights into how they're getting it done:

Audience-first approach.

Campaigns naturally flinch at the idea of a 25-year-old shaping editorial decision-making for a much older, more accomplished candidate, but that is a candidate-first mindset.

In this campaign, the audience drives decision making - the teams are organized around the platforms (where the audience is), instead of around campaign priorities.

The staffers making the editorial choices are creators that live on those platforms.

In most campaigns, there is a feeling that, “we don’t react to the news, we make the news.”

(Does anybody recall how many “Infrastructure Weeks” happened during the Trump Administration?)

Here they are letting trends drive the content.

So few approvals that you could drown them in the bathtub.

That’s an old political reference, and my weekly GenX reference rolled into one. Nice work Adam👏

Layers of review and approval create tremendous friction. We’ve all seen death-by-committee show it’s ugly face in corporate projects, but here, where speed is everything, it’s an absolute death blow.

The Harris Campaign overcomes these control issues and, as a result, they can ship work fast.

People are human (breaking news).

When someone is assigned to review and approve, they want to show their value. And showing their value means weighing in. Weighing in takes time and triggers changes, which trigger more review. That’s where all the friction comes from.

And yet - the stakes are high in a campaign. It would make sense just to endure the friction for safety’s sake, right?

Wrong. Why? Because layers of approval are not a reliable way to prevent mistakes.

I do a lot of work for professionals in highly regulated industries - finance, legal firms, public companies. For these companies “it’s social media, it’s supposed to be authentic” doesn’t really cut it when one mistake can leave them staring down the barrel of a regulatory action or a lawsuit.

In 15 years, we’ve never had a single f—ck up, and one counter-intuitive thing I’ve learned is that more layers of approval actually lead to more risk. How come? Accountability.

When everyone is weighing in, no one is really clear on what their role is, and none of the approvers take ownership. What’s critical for safety is a streamlined process, where each approver knows their job is to keep the campaign safe.

Prioritization cuts through a lot of the notes that come from “taste” and “preference” that slow down the process. Worse, you wind up letting the taste of your approvers drive the content further away from the audience.

Streamlining the process protects the brand from this death by a thousand notes AND it keeps things safe. Witness the Harris campaign:

The result of the Harris rapid-response strategy, which prioritizes audience, ownership, and streamlined approvals is what I would call a spontaneous content production model… which I am obviously “pro.”

Note to self: The creator economy is still show business

One of the things we keep an eye out for here is how creators are monetizing audiences.

Dhar Mann has amassed well over 11 Billion views on YouTube by reinventing the afterschool special for the web.

His dramatized morality plays are targeted at young adults, and deal with timely topics like COVID 19 hoarders, bullying, and Karens. All that’s missing is a “The more you know...” graphic and these puppies could be on NBC in the 80s.

Mann’s studio just announced some big moves that caught my eye, bringing old media talent to the studio’s business-building efforts.

Less than six years after it launched on Youtube, this creator studio is bringing in an old media executive to run the business and deepening its ties with CAA.

There are many new approaches to building business from audience, like CPG products, community, marketplaces, even SaaS businesses. But I think this makes sense… old media models are highly efficient at monetizing audience.

After this announcement, CEO Atkins immediately launched an agency inside of the company to help other creators leverage their IP for more revenue opportunities on Youtube.

That’s interesting, but I’m even more interested in the CAA piece of this.

The big agencies have become a focal point of both innovation and consolidation in the entertainment industry over the past few years. The big power-broker moves by super-agents like Ari Emmanuel have forced us to rethink that word… “entertainment” can now mean anything from Sports to tech, to brands, to influencers, to, yes, good old Hollywood movies.

“At CAA, the studio is aiming to expand into live events, merchandising, publishing, and new brand partnerships.” …We’ll be watching👀

Finally on this topic, I just want to highlight this pull-quote as a brief reminder that old media expertise does usually come with at least a small side of douche:

Format Watch

One of my favorite things about new platforms, new tech, and new business models is that they lead to new formats. New ways to do a very old thing: entertain, inform, and inspire.

Here I write a lot about expectations, and these formats are like a shorthand way of setting expectations. They often originate with trends or quirks of a platform, and morph into a genre of online content in their own right.

Formats aren’t new (3 camera sit-com anyone?) but they are more fluid and flexible online. Creators also build on each others’ ideas by stretching and rethinking formats in their own work.

More to the point, these can be super helpful to folks trying to create content for their business. Harnessing the power of formats will make your content more relatable, easier, and more fun’s

That’s why we’re starting a new series where we break down a format each week.

So, for our first edition, it’s time for…

Format name: Raw

Description: It’s pretty accurately named. It’s just raw footage. You film it, you upload it. Period. Hence its other name “no-edit.” These can be very long and are completely unscripted, more like a video chat than a video.

Example: Fitness Creator Sam Sulek is probably the best known no-edit creator. Here’s an example.

Platform: These are popping off literally everywhere (LinkedIn included… hello, 3 minute walk around the office vids) but the most common place for them is the most common place for video in general… YouTube. That’s also the place where you can post really long videos and these can be 30 minutes to 1:30 easy.

What’s it good for?: Leveling up your authenticity and intimacy with your audience. Taylor Lorenz did a solid piece in Rolling Stone about it…

Why is it trending?  Zoom, FaceTime, Twitch streamers, we’re now used to seeing people more this way - raw, stream of consciousness. There is a familiarity to it.

How can it help me?

1. If you’re creating content for your business, you are a thought leader. You are selling what you’re great at in order to build audience and credibility. With no-edit, there are no frills, no tricks, no writers, no second chances. You earn instant credibility.

2. The process described in that quote is way, way easier than editing a video, and can be cheaper too. When we’re creating content in a business context we’re always looking at how we can reduce friction between an idea and our audience. This format is very low on friction.

In the end, this all comes down to a business decision. Creating highly-produced, packaged videos is expensive in both time and money.

Your prompt: Try one of these, just give it a go. I’d recommend you film yourself while you’re doing something (driving in the car, walking the dog, doing dishes, grilling meat, you know, something…). Don’t cheat and do some editing. You still want to use the packaging you would normally use on your platform (thumbnail, title, etc) but keep it raw.

Give it a go… be like the Harris social media team - try some spontaneous content and see where it gets you. And then write me and let me know how it went.😎.

Until next time… be spontaneous.

🦋, ae