For brands, connecting with diverse audiences in resonant ways requires sustained community building. More than ever, that starts with giving more power to the people in those communities.  That’s what experts at Social Media Week 2026 said onstage Thursday. 

“Brands can’t own culture—even if they want to, they can’t. People own [culture], and actually, people own brands, because at the end of the day, we are buying, we are consuming, we are the audience, so we make the decisions at the end of the day,” said Alejandra Salazar, founder and CEO of the women-led creative agency Croing. “So when a brand really wants to be part of the community and participate in the culture, what they need to try to do is get themselves immersed into that culture.”

And the fast track for brands to become part of a specific culture or community, Salazar said, is to lean on the experts: the creative people and leaders shaping that space. “But [marketing decision-makers] need to care enough to then listen to you and understand what you’re saying.”

One of the voices shaping culture within the deaf community—and far beyond it—is Jackie Gonzalez, a deaf content creator with 1.9 million Instagram followers, known for her viral lip-reading videos of celebrities. She echoed Salazar’s emphasis on leaning into and trusting key voices within specific communities. “Take a step back and just let the culture be, let whoever you’re bringing on be one voice for that culture, allow them to have input.” 

Gonzales believes brands need to partner with their creators. In her experience, Gonzalez said, it can be difficult to navigate brand partnerships when brands are overly prescriptive, whether by trying to dictate to her how to behave as a deaf person or demanding a specific number of brand mentions within a video. In those kinds of negotiations, she said, “the best I can do is say, ‘okay, well, in my experience, that may come off like this,’ and then, it’s up to the brand to take that and decide what they want to do next.”

Brands should feel empowered to embrace specific cultures, but in a way that is well-meaning and authentic to their own ethos, said Joy Ogunneye, global innovation and brand comms lead at Aveeno Face, Sun and Hair. 

“We can smell when [a brand] is trying to create culture, and so it’s important for brands to ensure that it’s in line with who they are as a brand,” she said, adding that “it’s a fine line” between investing in a culture to appropriate or extract from it and investing out of a genuine commitment to “make a difference.”

Brands are rethinking the traditional social media playbook, trading reach for credibility as they look to crack Reddit.

The shift comes as the 21-year-old platform draws renewed interest from marketers, driven by a mix of user growth, ad demand, and its growing role in shaping how content surfaces in search and AI-generated answers.

Onstage at ADWEEK’S Social Media Week, Reddit’s global head of insights Rob Gaige laid out how brands like Netflix, Dove, Nike, and Philadelphia Cream Cheese are finding traction, often by doing less. 

“If you post more than three times a week, your brand sentiment falls off a cliff,” Gaige said, citing internal research. “Reddit was never built around the people you know. It was built around what people say.”

That distinction is forcing brands to rethink how they show up. Unlike other platforms, Reddit doesn’t reward follower graphs or algorithmic reach.

“It all starts at zero,” Gaige said. “It is not about who’s following you. It is about how good your contribution is to the community.”

Credit where it’s due

Philadelphia Cream Cheese offered one example of how brands are adapting to those norms. When a user known as “ChiveLord” went viral for documenting daily attempts to perfect chopped chives, the instinct on other platforms might have been to replicate the trend.

Instead, the brand took a lighter approach, referencing the moment in an ad: “Some heroes chop chives every day until Reddit says they’re perfect. We whip ours into cream cheese.”

“If you were a brand like Philadelphia Cream Cheese, you might have said, ‘I’m going to chop chives too, and I’m going to show how great we are at chopping chives.’ That’s not how it works on Reddit,” Gaige said. “Instead, you acknowledge what they did.” 

Brands are welcome here

Other brands are leaning into Reddit’s participatory nature. According to Gage, 81% of Reddit’s roughly 121 million daily active users say they enjoy when brands engage in conversation.

When Netflix relaunched Unsolved Mysteries, it shared unused footage and case files directly with Reddit users, inviting them to investigate further.

“They said, ‘Here are the files. Let’s see what you can do with it,’” Gaige said. Rather than pushing viewers to watch the show, Netflix gave fans material to engage with—tapping into the platform’s tendency toward collaboration and investigation.

Despite its authority in fitness, Nike avoids positioning itself as the expert in Reddit threads, instead prompting users with questions like, “What are your best training tips?” and “What would be your advice if you’re getting back into running?”

The goal, Gaige said, is to “let the community be the hero.”

Dove has pushed even further, incorporating both positive and negative Reddit commentary into its campaigns—an approach that reflects the platform’s openness to debate.

“You’ve got to let Redditors have both sides of the story. That’s also what helps LLMs (large language models)—they like seeing a well-balanced positive and negative, they’re more likely to cite those posts and comments,” Gaige said. 

Elias Weiss Friedman started The Dogist Instagram account in 2013 to photograph dogs on the streets of New York as a passion project. Today, he’s expanded from photography to video and platforms like YouTube, photographing about 50,000 dogs.

The success of The Dogist is a result of Friedman leaning into his niche. Shortly after starting the account, The Dogist started getting press. Within a year, Friedman scored a book deal and hit 1 million followers. The Dogist now has more than 10 million social media followers.

“Whatever it is you like about the world—even if it seems a bit obscure—follow that, and you’ll find your people,” Friedman said on stage at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week. 

Scaling your passion

Friedman grew up wanting to be an artist and had a darkroom in his house. He liked the idea of having a gallery but struggled with how to scale it. Instead, he started the account just as Instagram was starting to gain traction as a platform for photos, effectively creating a “virtual gallery.”

“I just had a feeling that it would work, and I think I was ready,” he said.

Plus, dogs made for authentic and candid subjects. And in photographing the dogs, Friedman found that dog owners were more likely to open up, too. 

“[Dogs] have no sense of ego, and I feel like that rubs off on people as well,” Friedman said. “There’s something about being able to talk freely and share something real, fun, and identifiable with other people in the world.”

Today, Friedman sees The Dogist as the rare example of authentic content that doesn’t change. He also keeps himself from chasing new social trends by maintaining control of the content.

“I have a team of people who help me with everything and they have a lot of great ideas, but ultimately I feel like I’m still in the driver’s seat,” Friedman said. 

Expanding to new platforms

Now, Friedman is growing The Dogist beyond its Instagram roots to YouTube. He’s also producing more content that features himself as opposed to being the one filming.

On YouTube, The Dogist has a series called Dogs With Elias Weiss Friedman where he walks around with celebrities and personalities like Kane Brown and Zooey Deschanel.

The switch to putting himself in front of the camera reflects how creators are increasingly turning themselves into brands on TikTok and Instagram.

“I sort of had to get out of my comfort zone, and I had to face myself in a way—that was a bit scary at first,” Friedman said. “One of the mantras I’ve been telling myself recently is if I’m having fun, then you’re having fun.”

Friedman is also experimenting with cooking videos as well as nutrition and wellness content about dogs.

“I’ve learned all about the trends and themes of the stories people tell me—unconditional love, they don’t judge you, a lot of other things,” he said. “But [now I’m] getting to know about dogs, their health, where they come from, and instincts.”

This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.

When the news media startup Caliber first launched in October 2022, I was initially skeptical.

Originally called The News Movement, the brand embraced a commercial and editorial strategy that knowingly ran counter to the prevailing wisdom of the time. 

Rather than shepherding social audiences toward owned-and-operated websites, it was content to meet them where they were, deploying vertical video that met followers in their feeds. It eschewed any form of subscription revenue, offered no newsletters, and barely produced any written material.

Three-and-a-half years later, the company has evolved, though only a bit. 

The News Movement launched a holding company, called Caliber, to house its growing portfolio of media brands, which now includes The Recount, the lifestyle newsletter Capsule, and its creative studio Caliber Collective. 

One of its cofounders, Will Lewis, also left the company to become the chief executive of The Washington Post, a departure that felt like inauspicious at the time but now appears to have been a blessing in disguise, given his uninspiring tenure at the publisher.

But other than that, the core mission of Caliber remains unchanged. 

The media brand believes that traditional news organizations have for too long worked to bend consumers to their legacy modes of output, rather than create content that people actually want to consume. 

That creed made Caliber an early and fervent adopter of vertical video, which has become ubiquitous in the years since its launch. Now, nearly every major news outlet has a dedicated tab on its app devoted to scrollable video, a concept Caliber embraced from the outset. It might have taken a while, in other words, but eventually the industry caught up to Caliber.

So when Ramin Beheshti, the cofounder and CEO of the company, invited me to their office in Flatiron to demo an early version of its new vertical video app, SaySo, I tried to be less skeptical this time around.

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The product, which Beheshti teased last fall, presents users with a daily Digest, a collection of vertical videos designed to surface content tailored to the interests of users. A separate Explore page allows users to find new creators on their own accord. 

At launch, only 30 or so creators are participating in SaySo, a small number but one that reflects an important element of the product, which is that all of its content creators are vetted by Caliber.

These creators, whose followings range from 200,000 to 4 million, do not yet create content exclusively for SaySo; instead, when they are distributing their vertical videos, they can upload them to SaySo as another point of distribution. While the number of categories covered will expand, at launch most of the content deals with politics, climate, lifestyle, and urban planning.

Critically, the Digest product presents users with a finite number of videos—for me, it was around 12 per day. The point, per Beheshti, is not to keep users glued to their phones, but to inform them quickly and in an accessible fashion with news content from trustworthy sources. (Notably, the endless scroll itself has lately come under legal scrutiny, following landmark legal cases against Meta and Google in recent weeks.)

SaySo has no immediate monetization plans; while it focuses on fine-tuning its product and growing its audience, it will probably not generate any revenue this year. 

When it does come time to flip the revenue switch, the primary product will likely resemble a freemium model, with users paying for additional features, like more Digests or enhanced access to creators. Rather than traditional display or native advertising, certain product features might be underwritten by sponsors, similar to the Apartment Therapy model.

The concept behind the product is compelling enough, but adoption will likely still be challenging. Most people only use around six apps on a daily basis, Beheshti admitted, so spurring user uptick will present its own set of hurdles. Caliber has a small advantage in that it can use its other brands, including TNM, The Recount, and Capsule, to promote SaySo, but its ability to amass users will largely depend on the degree to which its creators promote it.

The creator base, which the company aims to grow to 100 by the end of the year, will be incentivized to promote SaySo because it offers them a share of the revenue generated, according to Beheshti. While platforms like TikTok and Instagram are great for exposure, they typically offer meager payouts to all but their most popular creators, an oversight that SaySo hopes to use to its advantage.

Regardless of its success, the launch of SaySo shows Caliber is doubling down on its core thesis, which holds that companies need to serve content in the ways their audiences prefer to consume it. If leaning into vertical video was the first iteration of that, then this deeper embrace of creators is the natural step in that evolution.

Of course, Caliber is not completely alone in its effort to work more closely with creators. Across the media ecosystem, news brands have been reassessing their relationships to renegade newsgatherers. 

Some, like the Vox Media Podcast Network, have built creator networks that complement their core businesses. Others, like Morning Brew, have experimented with turning their corporate staff into talent, while outlets like Wired, Bloomberg, and The New York Times have worked to treat their reporters more like talent, hiring on-camera coaches and launching franchises attached to top attractions. 

But few have so openly welcomed external creators into their company as Caliber will with SaySo. 

The product represents the latest new boundary to have been crossed, with news media now openly directing their audiences to consume content from independent creators. It is a platform play, obviously, so there is an editorial distinction between The Recount, for instance, and SaySo, but consumers are unlikely to be so discerning.

In 2025, I argued that the overarching media trend of the year was the creator-ification of media companies, that in the future the media ecosystem would become indistinguishable from a constellation of creator collectives. We are still several years away from that point, but products like SaySo affirm to me that it is our end destination. 

Consumer trust and affinity for individuals is orders of magnitude higher than it is for institutions, but operating as an individual creator requires that the entrepreneur hold a variety of roles at the same time: producer of content, along with salesman, marketer, insurance haggler, landlord, etc. Few creators want to take on all of those mundane responsibilities, which is why media companies will persist, if only as infrastructure for the creators themselves.

With SaySo, Caliber is betting that the creator model of media will eventually supplant the nameless, faceless monolith that has defined media for decades. Even the Economist is putting its reporters on camera, if you needed any more proof. The question is not whether or not Caliber is right about this prediction, but whether or not it is right about the timeframe. 

Talking Heds

A Banner Day for the Gazette: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of the oldest newspapers in America, was set to shutter next month after more than two centuries in operation. But on Tuesday, the nonprofit organization behind The Baltimore Banner announced it had acquired the Post-Gazette, granting the Pittsburgh institution a stay of execution. Immediate reception to the news has been, understandably, positive, but some significant questions remain outstanding. The Post-Gazette was shuttered, in part, after a protracted labor dispute between its union and its ownership, but The Baltimore Banner is not a union shop. Baltimore Banner president and CEO Bob Cohn told me that he plans to “follow the wishes of the newsroom,” so time will tell. Relatedly, The Banner itself has not yet achieved breakeven financial status, now in its fourth year of operation, and is financing the tie-up via a $30 million infusion from the philanthropist behind its nonprofit. Naturally I hope for the best, but neither publisher is out of the woods just yet.

Sporting at The Journal: The Wall Street Journal announced on Wednesday the launch of a new event, The Next Sports Economy, which will debut in July. The move is the latest in a series of experiential launches from the Dow Jones property, but its subject matter is particularly telling. The business of sports has grown perhaps without parallel in recent years: Franchises are now asset classes for private equity firms, the 12-figure price tag of distribution rights are threatening to bankrupt broadcasters, and domestic leagues are increasingly eyeing global expansion. Against this backdrop, The Journal has been relatively conservative in its coverage of the space, ceding the territory instead to upstarts like Front Office Sports, on3, and Sportico. Amongst industry insiders, though, there has long been speculation that The Journal will simply buy its way into the beat by snapping up one of these outlets, but such a likelihood now seems less certain given its decision to establish a tentpole franchise of its own. 

A YouTuber Becomes a Media Co. (EXCLUSIVE): On Friday, the YouTube creator Jesse “Jesser” Riedel launched a new parent company, called JesserCo., whose aim is to house an expanding stable of brands that currently includes a media business and apparel line. The expansion is notable because it offers yet another template for how a YouTube creator might become a media brand. Through his videos and apparel, Riedel reaches more than 45 million followers, has more than 10 billion views, employs 45 full-time staff profitably, and is bringing in at least $20 million in revenue—a healthier business than many traditional media operations—and last month, he signed a deal with Tubi to create original content for the streaming service. Depending on how JesserCo. weathers this expansion, expect to see many more such startups in the near future.

Soccer Outlet Scores World Cup Splash (EXCLUSIVE): You might not have heard, but the World Cup is coming to America this summer. Just about every media company on the continent has a plan to capitalize on the moment, but one—a roll-up of international soccer brands that operates as Footballco.—has a particularly ambitious vision. The company, whose North American business is helmed by the former revenue leader at Bustle Digital Group, Jason Wagenheim, is launching a two-week activation in Brooklyn, called House of Goal, which will see the brand take over an Industry City location and schedule round-the-clock programming for its projected 200,000 visitors. The event hopes to generate a seven-figure revenue and dramatically boost brand awareness of Footballco., whose U.S. outpost only launched two years ago but is on pace to bring in around 20% of its projected $100 million in annual revenue. 

Food52 Vet Goes Mule (SCOOP): The former CEO of Food52, Erika Ayers Badan, launched a new media venture this week, called Mule Media. The company, which combined with likeminded brands The Local Mom Network and Work Like a Girl, aims to foster a community for women at all stages of their career. The name, which reads somewhat unflatteringly at first glance, is a nod to the intelligence and pragmatism of mules, according to its website. Badan stepped away from Food52 after it was acquired out of bankruptcy in February by America’s Test Kitchen, a turnaround job she took after shepherding Barstool Sports through a multimillion-dollar exit. Mule Media joins a competitive space, competing against ventures like She Media, Female Quotient, and theSkimm, to name a few, but it would be unwise to count her out.

Pulled Quotes

“Virtually all of the time, most Americans are mad at you about the economy and there’s little you can do about it.”
Semafor’s Ben Smith, on the paradox of American politics
READ MORE

“No one buys hate merch. No one goes to a show if they hate you. No one supports your next venture if they’re not on your side”
Jomboy Media founder Jimmy O’Brien, on why positive media makes money
READ MORE

“I was thinking about the degree to which the voice of an author is really fiction, because there’s all this editing and moving stuff around, and so you end up with a document that bears little relation to the actual conversation.”
Novelist Ben Lerner, on his idea for a misremembered interview to act as the basis of his book
READ MORE

“What’s stopping Netflix, which wants more events, to get [Sunday Night Football] for 18 straight weeks?”
MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson, on streamers eating the live sports market
READ MORE

Quote/Unquote

Andrew Burmon is the founder of the newsletter Upper Middle, a highly original exploration of the psyches and lifestyles of a specific swath of American professionals, whom he refers to as Oat Milk Elites. I met Andrew at a dinner hosted by 1440 last fall, subscribed to his newsletter, and have been following his work since then. 

The newsletter, which launched in September 2024, has around 140,000 subscribers and monetizes its readership, in part, by inviting them to participate in surveys, the results of which are shared in editorial projects and, of course, with the partnering brands. He built the email and website using Claude Code and this week unveiled a sweeping redesign of both products.

Before creating Upper Middle, Burmon helped launch a number of brands in the Bustle Digital Group portfolio, including Inverse and Fatherly. He now lives in rural Litchfield County with his wife and young son.

This interview has been edited.

Mark Stenberg: Where did the idea for Upper Middle come from?

Andrew Burmon: It came from two directions: First, the experience of working in media and the minor ego death that had been my career. The other: My wife is an ER doctor and epidemiologist, so she suffered through Covid in a real way. That prompted me to look around at my friends, many of whom are lawyers or similar professionals, whose careers were not going the way they had envisioned, largely because the economy has been restructured around financialization and the very rich. So I had the idea of: How do we talk to that experience?

Mark: You monetize it, in part, through surveys. How does that work?

Andrew: When you sign up for Upper Middle, you are prompted to sign up for Upper Middle Research. You can make money taking surveys there, which aims to create a culture of survey-taking and data-sharing that informs the whole project. A lot of what I’m trying to do is explain water to a fish, taking this group of urban, well-educated, W-2 employees to step back, think critically about their life experience, and try to understand why they feel the way that they do.

Mark: How much revenue does that generate?

Andrew: Six figures. March was my first month over $40,000. My goal for the year is to top $400,000 and put all of that back into the business.

Mark: You run this entirely on your own, but the design is highly stylized. How do you do that?

Andrew: I use Beehiiv to deliver my emails, but I built an AI wrapper on top of it that helps me move a lot faster. For that I used Claude Code. So instead of entering everything free-form into Beehiiv, I basically fill out a form and it generates the newsletter for me. 

Mark: Every week the newsletter feels very original. Where do you get your ideas from, or do you take inspiration from any other newsletters?

Andrew: In a previous life I was the editor of Spy for Penske—this was not Graydon Carter’s Spy, but still. I think there used to be a lot of publications that were aimed at an effete audience that, frankly, were unapologetic about it; they were having fun with it. I think a lot of media people started to feel that that was unacceptable, and maybe over-indexed on afflicting the comfortable. I think it is important to empathize with people that entered into their personal and professional lives expecting one thing, got something different, and are squaring that with the huge internalized expectations they have for themselves.

Mark: What is the end goal for Upper Middle?

Andrew: I think there are two sides. The first is the basic media side, which is the hope that I grow this to over 500,000 subscribers. North of that, we start to get into the land of the dream. After that, once you have a community of people and the data to prove they are leading similar lives, you can serve them in different ways. In those lines of business the margins are much better, so long term I think I will orient that way.

Crisis communications authority Molly McPherson has been called in to handle no shortage of corporate fiascos. But while the brands vary, the incidents all have one thing in common: The first move is generally a sign of how well things will turn out. Or not.

“If your first instinct is to blame, you’re not going to get through it,” said McPherson at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week summit on Wednesday. A crisis signals that “the public is feeling an emotion about [your brand]. You have to tap into that emotion.”

All too often, however, brands fail to do that—and pay the price.

McPherson cited a few examples of crises handled well, such as American Airlines’ rapid and sympathetic response to the midair collision in Washington, D.C. in January. But a gaffe can just as easily escalate, too. Here are three recent disasters McPherson cited, how the brands managed them, and how they could have done better.

The language barrier that really mattered

On March 22, and Air Canada Express flight collided with a truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport. The accident killed both pilots, one of whom was from Coteau-du-Lac in French-speaking Quebec. But when Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau issued his on-camera condolences, his only French consisted of “bonjour” and “merci.” The public was outraged.

Canada’s Official Languages Act designates both English and French as the country’s official languages, making the oversight baffling—though not to McPherson. 

“I see this all the time with senior leadership, when they don’t think the public is even worth the time. The biggest driver of a crisis is contempt, and that’s what happened here,” said McPherson, who pointed out that public sentiment should always inform every response. (Plus, in this case, a simple teleprompter could have prevented the debacle entirely.)

But the carrier has taken its licks and seems to have recalibrated. In its search for a new chief executive, Air Canada’s board promised it “will consider a number of performance criteria … including the ability to communicate in French.

Confusing DEI with a marketing strategy

Long before the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests spurred brands to get inclusive in a hurry, retail giant Target had made diversity, equity, and inclusion its corporate mission, notching a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index as early as 2009. But last year, amid pressure from the White House and far-right activists, a host of blue-chip companies dropped DEI like a hot potato.

The problem with that move, McPherson said, is that it made years of commitments look hollow, especially in the case of Target, which cited an “evolving external landscape” as its reasoning for the retreat. But that decision prompted a boycott by Black consumers that did real damage to the company.

“DEI is not a tactic—it’s the infrastructure that builds the foundation of your company,” McPherson said. “You do not do it because of what the media thinks, or what your followers think; you do it because it’s the right thing. What Target lost there is opportunity.”

Target’s new CEO Michael Fiddelke, appointed in February, has met with Black activists including Women’s March co-organizer Tamika Mallory, and reportedly conceded that the company had lost the community’s trust. 

When ‘laughable’ photos aren’t funny

Earlier this month, New York Post gossip section Page Six got its hands on photos of Dianna Russini, a reporter for The New York Times’ The Athletic, hanging out at an Arizona resort with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel. The problem? The pair were shown holding hands, embracing, and lounging by a hot tub in bathing suits.

“That is not a scandal story about two people possibly having an affair—it’s a brand story, it’s a trust story,” McPherson said. “It’s about the New England Patriots, and it’s about The New York Times.”

But the crisis responses from the organizations were very different.

Russini resigned shortly after the Times began an investigation—just the appearance of impropriety is a violation of the paper’s code of conduct—but The Athletic editor Steven Ginsberg stated that the paper “has taken the matter seriously from the moment we learned about it.”

And the Patriots? Executive VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf skirted the matter by stating that Vrabel’s involvement with the team was “business as usual.” Vrabel himself was dismissive. “These photos show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable,” he told the Post. “This doesn’t deserve any further response.”

Except that it does, McPherson said. Russini “needed to resign because she breached ethical standards, and now the New England Patriots as a brand have a problem,” she said.

“Vrabel said it’s laughable that anyone would think anything was there. Well, here we are a week later, and she resigned, so obviously the joke is on them. When the brand loses trust, that’s when you’re in crisis.”

Men’s grooming brand Manscape had a problem. It was really good at balls humor—but not much else. And as the company expanded further into the personal care space with hair and beard care products, it was stuck in a nether-region niche of its own making.

Onstage at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week, Jori Evans, Manscaped social media director, and Michael Miller, Consiglieri founder and head of creative, shared how the balls-trimmer brand broke out of its pigeon hole on social without abandoning its roots.

Manscaped was a beta tester for Clamor, an AI tool created by Consiglieri to help brands understand social chatter in real time. The tool connects to all social platforms that a brand has a presence on, and analyzes how people are interacting on each platform. Then, the tool gives content suggestions for each channel.

“It’ll just be brutally honest with you,” Miller said. The tool tells marketers when to stop interacting on certain subject matters or topics, and where to lean in, he said. “It understands sarcasm. It understands the emojis that understand when you’re saying saying something is bad, and you really mean that it’s good.”

After Manscaped launched its “Send Face Pics Instead” campaign last year, Evans used Clamor to keep close tabs on how the messaging was landing with fans.

“I really do attribute a lot of the success of ‘Send Face Pics’ to using Clamor,” Evans said. “We did a Super Bowl commercial, and this did better than the Super Bowl,” Evans said.

Letting Clamor do the work of scanning and analyzing social has freed Evans up to spend more time on the creative and less time scrolling, she said.

“It hasn’t totally taken me offline by any means, but it’s given me a lot more space as a two-person, organic social team to create better work and better creative that’s more impactful for the brand,” she said.

It’s also made it easier for Evans to advocate for more social spend.

“Pre-Clamor, not that much money thrown at social. Post-Clamor, it makes the case much more quickly,” Evans said. “I’m starting to get more budget and putting things behind me, because I’m able to prove it out much faster with organic social.”

Evans added that Manscaped isn’t using AI-generated content on social media. This year’s Super Bowl ad featured animated balls of pubic hair, which some viewers may have assumed were created using AI. To reinforce that the ad was made by humans, Evans sent behind-the-scenes clippings to meme pages and clipping agencies explaining that the ad was made by humans.

“It changed the sentiment of our Super Bowl commercial almost instantaneously once we released that content,” Evans said.

Subway Takes, the Instagram account where people share their hot takes while riding the New York City Subway, has grown to more than 2 million followers and booked A-list celebrity guests like Cate Blanchett and Jason Bateman. 

And host Kareem Rahma isn’t changing the show’s premise or format, no matter how big it gets.

“I’ve been always pushing against changing the show, against any new variation of it,” he said on stage at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week in New York. “I’ve always been very aggressive about trying to keep the DNA of the show to be mostly independent comedians, independent writers, independent filmmakers, independent models, independent whatever, with a couple of bonafide celebrities.”

To him, that’s authentic to who you might see riding the subway in New York: “You can go on the subway and see Ethan Hawke. Sometimes famous people take the subway.” 

It’s this commitment to authenticity that has made Subway Takes a breakout social media success. Rahma only books guests he finds interesting—people he would want to grab a beer with. His bar for good content is, is he entertained? 

“My filter is, am I having fun? If I’m being entertained, then I am successful,” he said. 

That often means turning down celebrities or creators, even if they are famous or have big follower counts. Recently, for instance, Rahma turned down a pitch from DJ Tiesto because he’s not interested in EDM.

He has a similar barometer for measuring success. Rather than falling into the “data trap” of metrics, which can “suppress creativity and innovation,” he stays focused on what motivates him creatively. 

“Cultural relevance is really what you’re looking for in success,” said Reza Izad, co-founder and co-CEO of Underscore Talent, which reps Rahma. “Are people sharing it? Are people engaging with it?” 

Brands make ‘everything possible’ 

Staying true to the show’s brand is especially important when engaging with other brands. But Rahma said he was never hesitant about bringing advertisers into Subway Takes. When he started, he was self-funding production at about $2,000 an episode. 

“I wouldn’t be able to make the show without funding from brands, and I wouldn’t be able to then take some of that money and invest in new shows,” he said. “The brand component of it makes everything possible.”

But according to Izad, keeping a “rigid structure” is key to successful collaborations. 

He described the way brands can engage with Subway Takes as “very, very specific”: they can integrate with the show’s “100% agree/disagree” format or co-develop a new content series with Rahma.

A recent example is a partnership with Papa John’s for the launch of a new sandwich. The video leaned into the show’s hot take format, with the question being whether or not it’s OK to eat on the subway. Rahma was involved in the creative process, casting comedian and former Subway Takes guest Zach Schiffman. It worked because of “the brand being easy, trusting us, wanting to work with us,” Rahma said.

Rahma also co-created a series with UPS called Business Trips, which riffs on the format of his other show, Keep the Meter Running, in which New York City cab drivers take Rahma to their favorite restaurants. This time, he drives around in a UPS truck to local businesses.

“[UPS] cast the drivers and chose the small businesses, but I produced it with my crew,” he said. “They didn’t make me change my equipment or anything, and that’s why it ended up working out.”

For the most part, Rahma said he has had great experiences working with brands, but they can miss the mark if they think of creator collaborations as small or one-off investments. “It’s either do it or don’t do it,” he said. “Don’t do it halfway.” 

“It happens from time to time when people commit to things that they wish they didn’t, and so our job is to navigate through all that,” Izad added. 

But at the end of the day, creators that want to be successful, both financially and culturally, have to embrace brand involvement. 

“I always tell [creators], ‘Brands are the only people who have money. No one has money anymore. Just respond to brands,’” Rahma said.

Nearly two months after its Legendary February, NBC Sports is still digesting all the accomplishments from the 17 days of sports coverage featuring Super Bowl LX, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, and NBA All-Star Weekend.

During Tuesday’s program at ADWEEK’s Social Media Week, Justin Karp, vp of social media at NBC Sports, spoke engagingly on the Main Stage about the lessons his team learned from one of the events NBC covered during Legendary February: the Winter Olympics.

“Our mantra all Games long was that our target audience was anybody with a smartphone,” said Karp.

He spoke about how their executive and marketing leadership group empowered them to do things differently, telling them to tear up the playbook and find new, fresh, and engaging ways to connect with long-time and new fans of the Olympics.

“Start the conversation, lead the conversation, and keep it going 24-7,” Karp added.

With events airing live during the day, NBC decided to treat the 8 p.m. ET recap like a feature film. This gave Karp and his team the ability to treat the Olympics not only as a sporting event, but as a cultural event, finding relatable content that could build enough enthusiasm to keep people going all the time.

“Our social content strategy complemented the competition through context, celebrity, culture,” Karp said. He added that this strategy enabled his team to turn incredible moments into a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week stream of fandom.

Their work revolved around three pillars during the two-week event: the first being that the Olympics are the pinnacle of competition, and you should be watching it. Second, the Olympics are fun, and their content and strategy should reflect that. Finally, the Olympics are a cultural moment that just happens to be sports, which means bringing in as many people as possible so that they can be part of the moment.

Despite being one of the final sessions of the day, Karp had a nearly full room, with an attentive audience eager to hear about the three insights his social media team gained after the Olympics:

NBC’s three social insights include:

1. Everything published could be someone’s first exposure to your brand. It needs to be engaging enough to capture the audience.
2. Don’t get caught off guard by a predictable event. Prepare in advance and respond quickly to all expected outcomes.
3. Give your creators the guardrails, letting them know the boundaries within which they can operate, and then let them fly.

Karp concluded his session, noting that the company has already moved on to the next big thing: There are 833 days until the opening ceremony of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

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The inbox, once dismissed as a digital graveyard, is having a moment.

At ADWEEK’s Social Media Week 2026, a panel of brand and media executives argued that the newsletter renaissance is less a nostalgia play than a direct response to the broken state of social platforms.

Speaking to an audience of social media practitioners in a discussion moderated by content strategist Lauren Finney Harden; Rare Beauty chief marketing officer Ashley Murphy; Betches co-founder and chief brand officer Sami Sage; and Gen Z expert and UTA executive Shaina Zafar discussed the merits of email and why this relic of the early internet has come to dominate tastemaking.

“Something that we were always given as advice, as we were growing Betches over the past decade and a half, was that having your own owned-and-operated audience was the gold standard,” said Sage, whose media brand Betches now operates three newsletters with roughly 667,000 subscribers. “That’s really what you want.”

All three marketers extolled the virtues of traditional social media, but the conversation kept returning to a recent rupture in its utility. Now that feeds are largely governed by an omnipotent algorithm, followers mean little and content delivery is unpredictable. As a result, most social platforms are still valuable for discovery, but they offer little in the way of reliable distribution or depth of connection.

The panelists also shared their thoughts on newsletter content strategy, which, in a departure from the more manicured presentations of most social media marketing, rewards stripped-down, behind-the-scenes content.

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For instance, Rare Beauty’s newsletter, Rare Beauty Secrets, is a vehicle for unpolished storytelling that audiences cannot get on Instagram or TikTok; recent editions have explored niche topics like accessible packaging design and the engineering behind a foundation’s pump mechanism. 

The brand learned a valuable lesson early, according to Finney Harden: Tutorial-style content flopped, while raw iPhone footage generated outsized engagement.

“Do not treat newsletters as a sales channel,” Murphy said. “It’s really about relationships.”

Zafar, who oversees UTA’s Gen Z practice and writes her own newsletter, framed the shift in broader cultural terms: Audiences are actively seeking spaces that feel chosen rather than algorithmically assigned. 

“Mini viral,” Zafar said, “is just sharing an article you love with your friends in a group chat. That’s where culture is.”

The panelists broadly agreed that the durability of newsletters as a channel comes down to consistency, point of view, and resisting the urge to repurpose social content from other platforms wholesale. 

In an automated media environment, the human voice is the moat.

Creativity and AI can properly co-exist for brands as long as the right tools are implemented, according to Higgsfield AI’s Mahi de Silva.

The co-founder and chief strategy officer of Higgsfield AI spoke to ADWEEK’s COO, Zoë Ruderman, during a Social Media Week session in New York on Tuesday, where he said his company is focused on democratizing content creation.

“We’re an AI studio, a platform made by creators for creators,” de Silva said. He added, “It’s anything and everything you want to create in multimedia. Images, audio, video, all come together with point-and-click, drag-and-drop ease of use.”

Calling today’s current AI environment the “access era,” de Silva says the only limits to a brand’s creative execution are one’s imagination with his studio’s AI capabilities. And it’s paying off on the bottom line.

For example, the executive pointed out that Eight Sleep, a digital-first brand, achieved substantial cost savings by using the platform.

According to de Silva, Eight Sleep used to spend roughly $30,000 over a three-week period to build an app. As a result of working with Higgsfield AI, the company can now do that work in a day or so for less than $1,000.

“What that frees up is ideation, experimentation, iteration,” he said. “Really understanding what works and what doesn’t work at a tiny fraction of the cost, not just the monetary cost, but the time cost of being able to reach your target audience.”

De Silva acknowledged that not all brands are ready to openly embrace the benefits of multimedia AI in creative campaign building and execution. The exec said several brands used Higgsfield AI’s tools for this year’s Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, but those brand names aren’t public.

“Maybe find him backstage, and he’ll tell you,” Ruderman joked.

Regarding companies he can name, de Silva said that beverage maker Coca-Cola was one of the brands that uses their tools. He believes that by 2027, as AI multimedia tools and companies become more commonplace, more brands will be more comfortable acknowledging and embracing AI.

Towards the end of the session, the former Snapchat executive spoke about the deluge of AI slop and its negative implications, saying that one way brands could overcome this is by recognizing the power of creativity and storytelling with positive use of AI tools.

“If you can harness these tools and your creativity to tell stories and find people where you want them to be or to take them where you want to take them, I think that’s going to be a huge inspiration,” de Silva said.

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