Transcription
What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Sweat Equity. We've got a special venue today where Wander Falling Leaves in Austin, and it's because of a very special episode.
So, most brands are like a cruise ship. They can't steer even though they see the iceberg in front of them, right? They're going into these different things and they're not doing the right initiatives to actually grow their brand. What we want to do for you is help you not be one of them. So, we're going to break down the seven macro trends that are influencing performance at big brands in 2026.
"How long did you practice that intro and when did you think about the steering?"
"Did I uh, did I nail that? Was that..."
"You nailed that? Was that straight?"
"All right, you nailed that."
"All right, so without further ado, let's get into it. Number one, nano influencers are going to take over."
"Agreed."
"This is something I've been talking about for the longest. Uh, we both work with a lot of brands that do big influencer partnerships. They do not move the needle like at all anymore. And..."
"...what has happened is the cost equation in my opinion has switched, right? So, if you could pay $5,000 for a single in-feed Reel post, we both charge similar numbers for our B2B content, I think that's a little bit different because one lead obviously equals a lot more in revenue."
"One lead could be a six-figure account."
"Totally. And that's not the case if you're selling like a $25 electrolyte pack."
"Yeah."
"Right. And so, if you're paying $5,000 for an influencer partnership, like, you know, you're going to have to really get a lot of value out of that. And instead, this nano influencer thing, which I would define as someone under 10,000 followers, is starting to emerge."
"Charles."
"Yeah, Charles got Charles got the nano."
"Yeah, he's nano."
"He's got nano many things."
"Micro nano."
"Yeah."
"Yeah, we'll leave it there. But no, and and it is actually something that's Charles is a great example of someone who shares fitness content online. And so if I'm a fitness brand, you know, he's been getting his weight in."
"Yeah."
"He's getting weight down. Yeah. Physique looking good."
"Great. And so now if it's like if you're an apparel brand, if you're a footwear brand, like you know, theoretically if you sent him some PR and you know that was really all you had to do to get the post, you don't got to pay him. He's just going to tag it on his story or maybe make an, you know, in-feed post and post about it. As long as you can get like 500 to a 1,000 of those a month, my bet for 2026 is that's going to outperform paying one singular influencer $5,000 for a single post."
"Couldn't agree more. So, there's a few ways I want to think about this. Number one, if you have a bunch of, when I say average nano influencers, what I mean is they're already, they are good at making content, but let's say they haven't been making content for as long as..."
"...right..."
"...the macro influencers."
"They're they're content creators. They're not influencers."
"Yes, there's a difference, right? Every influencer..."
"...was a nano influencer at some point."
"True."
"You know what I mean? So, remember that you you could have the next quote-unquote influencer. Now, the other thing is, so like when we look at that and then we say, 'Hey, if I can get these people who are skilled and I and I want to bet on who's going to hit a home run and I only get one pitch with the large influencer versus I get 100 pitches with the nano influencers. Who do you think I'm going to take? I might hit multiple home runs here.'"
"100%."
"You know what I'm saying? I might have a grand slam. Who who who knows what's going to happen here? Now, one prediction I have from the macro influencer uh side is if you look at BPN as an example and you look at their brand page, their brand page actually has one of the highest engagements from like a a brand side that I've seen."
"Why? They're not just going and saying, 'Hey, like, you know, F Lucy, we need one post from you.'"
"They're creating an ample amount of content on the back end of that influencer. And those creators, athletes are actual a large part of their strategy. It's a they're a content creator first."
"Yes. In their strategy. And so therefore..."
"...I sign Fawns, I sign Lucy, I sign Jake, etc. Based off their likeness, I'm able to garner millions and millions of impressions. I'm able to garner a ton of ad creative, right? I'm able to really leverage the reason you signed them in the first place, right? But from what exactly what you're talking about, would I bet the $5K on or the $10K on one singular post that's probably gonna get like..."
"...you know, uh, let's say a 100,000 impressions at at most or how 100, sorry, 100,000 views at most. No, I'm going to bet it on the hundred people that I if I got if they each average 5,000 views..."
"...and one of them will get a million."
"Yes. One of them's going to get a million..."
"...and it'll be like a crazy authentic peer-to-peer video rather than, 'Oh, they just paid an influencer for that.'"
"Couldn't even. So, you know, on several different fronts, this is why I think it makes sense. Number one is obviously the investment. It's going to be more cost-effective. Number two is your ability to actually organize these people. When you're working with nano influencers, sometimes they're grateful to be there. Like, you know, a lot of the time you work with a real influencer, like they're going to be someone who wants to do the content their way. They're going to be difficult to get on a meeting. Like, there's a lot of different friction points in in working with them. But if you have like I just think about these Discord communities we've built for some of these brands on TikTok shop. Like they show up to meetings, bro. Like like we'll have a Zoom call and we'll have 115 people on there listening to the required content formats and then producing those on the day that we ask them to do it, which is an absolute superpower for people. So, it's like number one, you're able to organize them and also train them and guide them to get the output that you want, which is incredibly powerful because probably every brand listening to this podcast has had some sort of bad experience with an influencer video that came out not the way they wanted it."
"100%."
"And so, with a nano influencer thing, it's so much lower stakes that of course you're going to get some bad eggs, right? There's plenty of videos that are not going to be great. You're going to get that regardless if it's a nano influencer or a macro influencer, but which one's going to cost way less to have a mistake to have a mistake, right?"
"It's really twofold. It's like number one, the investment thesis has kind of flipped. And then number two, I think the tools in the service businesses, you think about, you know, Virro, Mr. Beast clipping agency. We've always obviously seen W content rewards. There's other apps that are starting to emerge. Um, I think all of these things are going to contribute to this being like a massive, massive earning potential uh situation for regular content creators and then also that brands are going to adopt it a lot."
"Couldn't agree more. What's on your second list?"
"Number two is Meta Partnership Ads. So, this is going to get a little more in the weeds performance marketing style. Um, but we work uh directly with the Meta Israel team. So on their key account side and some inside baseball for you guys is that Meta is like heavily pushing this partnership ads thing. So they've kind of opened up their entire new like, you know, creator portal if you will where it's a lot easier now to uh you used to whitelist, right? So it's like I would run an ad for, you know, C4 from Alex Garcia's page."
"Yeah."
"That is different than this partnership ad thing and it's different because of the back-end data that's being used. So when you do a partnership ad with Alex Garcia now, it's going to like tap into your pixel, your data, all these different things and use that to influence the targeting. Um, and for whatever reason, like whether it's voodoo, black magic, or whether it's, you know, just a better tool, Meta is saying that this is causing brands to get a 30% better CPA. So generally speaking..."
"And are you seeing that on the back end?"
"It's been super effective for us. Um, I think we're running it with non uh like big influencers. So, we're running it with a bunch of like an army of nano influencers. It's basically like we're running partnership ads with all the UGC creators that we're doing it with."
"And I think like whitelisting from UGC accounts has been around for a while, but what I'm saying is this is a separate uh ad unit for brands to start adopting heavily. And I think this is in part because we're seeing this macro trend of people believe mainstream things less, whether that's the news, whether that's, you know, the the data they're seeing, like everything's kind of being questioned at the at the forefront. And that's why an ad from a brand doesn't hit the same as a TikTok shop affiliate video."
"Right. When you see an everyday person talking about a brand and a product that helps them solve a personal issue, it seems more believable. So, I think partnership ads is like Meta's response to the TikTok shop revolution. Um, and it's it's going to be really interesting."
"Does everyone have access to it or is it something that they're rolling out slowly to bigger accounts and then..."
"I think any ad account has access to it. Um, if you don't, let me know. If you're a Sweat Equity listener, I'll put you on. Send me that ad account. But, uh, I think it I think it's been rolled out to everybody. Yeah."
"I'm personally glad I don't have to be in Meta anymore."
"Yeah. I mean, just cuz like like on our end, we're not running any of the ads. Everything that works organically is then getting put in the ad account. I get to hand that off. Yeah."
"Just cuz, man, Meta is a monster of a headache, as you know."
"I'm addicted to spending money in all aspects of life. Uh, I can't help myself."
"Same."
"So, I mean..."
"Dude."
"Throwing throwing throwing."
"You know, clothes is my weakness. I was trying to put all my clothes away. This was this week. And there's like three bund like large bundles. I just don't know where it's gonna go."
"Yeah."
"I'm talking about like large, large bundles that are just like stacked on. I have no idea where this is going to go right now."
"Like you're not ready to say buy, but..."
"I'm not saying buy cuz it's should I wear actively?"
"But it's buy right now."
"No, it's it's like I'm just going to keep it in this bundle and then like I'm when I'm getting dressed, I have to go put it in the dryer to get some wrinkles out cuz I'm like..."
"So you're saying you just don't got the space?"
"I don't have the space on the clothes side. That is a If if you know me, like that is the one area I spend money."
"Totally."
"Is clothes."
"For sure."
"Clothes and shoes."
"Yeah. No, I'm I'm with you. I uh Yeah, we had some expensive dinners out in Miami and uh that was that was a guilty pleasure for sure."
"Led."
"You're a dinner guy. I Charles was telling me I didn't know that."
"I I'll you'll spend a lot on a dinner."
"I'll go three-hour dinner with anybody."
"Really? Yeah. It's like that in golf. Like I just I find those to be..."
"Golf. I understand."
"...the best places to go like meet somebody, dine, share experience. I kind of like them bringing it out. Yeah. I It's like the, you know..."
"That part's interesting."
"...there's something about your family."
"I know."
"...there's something about your childhood big."
"Yeah. Maybe we'll unpack that on a future episode. Uh, but..."
"...there's something like I'm bringing."
"Uh, so, okay. So, moving on. Number three. So, number three. And this one I'm actually super bullish on because no one's doing it right. And I'll back this up with why I think it's important. YouTube ads. So..."
"Literally never talked about. Like, why does no one care about YouTube ads?"
"I feel there's two people that talk about it. So, there's a head of growth from ironically BPN that that talks about it non-stop."
"Uhhuh."
"But just I mean, for them, it makes right so much sense, right? Like they all of their top athletes and now that I think of it, like all their top athletes have large YouTube following."
"So good."
"Right? 70 to 100, probably in the hundreds of thousands. You have Jake Dear and Lucy F that I know. That's 100 to a million."
"Yeah. And like then you have Nick's 1.7. That's a big like that's an untapped channel that most don't crack."
"No one cracks it because no one puts in. Everything is a product of the investment that you put into a channel. Like that is my biggest like central belief is like if you put money and time into something, you'll just crack it like..."
"100%."
"It's just like anything."
"And then JRB like Jones Road Beauty does..."
"Right. They do."
"...they do a good job on..."
"I had a call with bro about TikTok shop."
"With Cody. Yeah."
"Nice guy."
"He's good."
"Yeah, nice guy."
"He's a nice guy."
"Good podcast shadow marketing operators. I'll give it to him. Um, but uh, so um, YouTube ads is going to be huge. And the reason why is because obviously what we just discussed, there's like two brands crushing it. Like you would never be like, 'Oh, there's only two brands crushing Meta. There's only two brands crushing TikTok shop.' Like there's hundreds, thousands of brands and a lot of people are doing a good job on YouTube, but it's obviously not as widespread. So I think there's a lot of blue ocean opportunity to come in and be elite."
"Because it's so creator dominant. It's not brand dominant. Like I can literally can on count on both hands like the brands that I think are actually doing a good job and it's like Canyon and these are more in like health wellness but like Canyon, Salomon, BPN represent because they don't publish as much as they probably should."
"Um..."
"But you're talking organic. I'm talking paid media."
"No, no, but those brands like so Canyon does uh do a lot on YouTube. Salomon, I'm not sure if they do a lot on YouTube, but like I know Canyon does because they have an organic piece of content that they do that's like Dream Bike Build. And so it's like a literally like a movie where they put together a a bike and that gets millions of views every time and then they retarget on the back end. But I don't think people know as well how good you can target on YouTube."
"It's insane."
"Like you could like if somebody searches Wander House in Austin, you could target them with a video of Yes. of this exact house as an example, right? Like you can get so insanely targeted with that."
"100%. So it that was going to be kind of my next point is that..."
"No, no, no. It's perfect. It's perfect segue because YouTube via Google obviously owned by owned by Google and YouTube as a data source is like insane. They know everything about your watching preferences. Just think about how tailored your YouTube homepage is. Like there's always something on there that they know you're going to click on. But the other user behavior that's happening right now is YouTube has now flipped Netflix by a good amount for the number one place that people are spending their attention in the United States. Yes. The number one streaming source, if you will."
"And just think about if you had the ability to run pre-roll on Netflix..."
"...which I'm sure you can. Like I think they like released an ad unit somehow, but like you have the ability to run pre-roll. you just take the crazy hook, you know, format that exists in short form and apply it because obviously people can skip after 5 seconds. And so it's like you just need to apply those same hook principles, you know, tease, tension, conflict, resolution and put it in there."
"YouTube's also one of the interesting places where you can make the hook specific to what you target, right? So like if the meat of the of the video is similar, right? But you're you want to target a specific keyword, then you could include that keyword in the hook. And so it's one of those places where filming 10 hooks, 15 hooks could make sense because you could get so detailed in your targeting that you can make the first 5 seconds specific to the video that they're going to watch because that's another thing. You could target videos that people are watching."
"Right? Like I don't think you all understand how So if somebody's watching a how to build out my content calendar and you're a content calendar software, Yeah. you can target the person that's watching that video."
"Or your Notion. Yeah. Right. And you're saying, you know, we're going to target everyone that has because it's keyword-based just like Google. Yeah. So, you're going to target everyone that like searches for a keyword content calendar and then you just advertise a lead magnet for that content calendar. And I mean, some SaaS companies do this, okay, I think, but..."
"You know..."
"...uh, not like the ad creative is terrible."
"Right. Which is a huge opportunity to take like consumer-level, you know, eye for ad. You know all the ones you're talking about like on the SaaS side cuz I, you know, obviously I get hit with them at the Monday..."
"YouTube Premium."
"I did. I had my card switched."
"Oh, okay."
"Two months ago and like it's what I'm still in. I haven't fully changed all my cards on everything and so I've been experiencing my, you know, my..."
"Most us [ __ ] I've ever heard. It's like that's just you and me in a nutshell."
"Yeah. It's just like I don't want to..."
"Dealing with it for no reason."
"Yeah. Exactly. It's like I can handle all that in 30 minutes, but it's like the the annoying minuscule things that you have to do."
"All right, what's four? Let's keep going."
"I really like three, by the way."
"Um, high AOV TikTok shop products."
"Cool. This is all you."
"Yeah, TikTok shop just had an absolutely unbelievable November. And..."
"I saw your tweet or your LinkedIn or something."
"Man, the tweet did nothing, but the LinkedIn went crazy. It's weird."
"I think the way you tweeted it, I think how you tweet has to change. Yeah, YouTube has..."
"I think it needs to be like more..."
"So lazy."
"...like bold in how you would talk in person. You vanilified it a bit."
"I'll get spicy on LinkedIn every now and then, but I think Twitter's where you you'd move numbers."
"I've been saying. Yeah. Um, anyway, so uh, high OV TikTok Shop products. So TikTok shop had eight brands do over $10 million in November, which is like unprecedented. Like the previous record for a month was 12 and they had QVC did 28.5."
"Wow."
"So that's a new record. Like it really just feels to me that this platform is maturing, which if you're a long-term bull on social commerce, like that makes a lot of sense. Like similar to Amazon in the early days, like you were only getting trinkets, discounts, whatever. And then it turned into this platform that, you know, you were ordering based on how quickly you could get it. Just your general buying behavior as a consumer. You're used to buying on there. There's a lot of trust and I do think that that is starting to happen on TikTok shop and what we're going to see is that high AOV products. Uh, Shark Ninja is a perfect example. Like they have been selling their vacuum for like $150, $200. Like they're selling like a, you know, knife set for like $300. Like there's a lot of different things that are being sold right now at a higher AOV, which this is traditionally a uh lower AOV platform, right? It's typically under $60. I do think this is category dependent. Um, if you're, you know, the most expensive creatine gummy in the world, probably screwed. But like what it told me is that customers are not necessarily looking for uh low AOVs. They're looking for deals, right? And so how do you show a deal that makes sense with your margin profile is probably how you get your high AOV TikTok shot product to move. Like Shark Ninja was like they had uh their product was on Walmart.com, Target.com, Amazon and on all three of those sites it was $229. What they did is they listed it on TikTok shop for $300 and then they discounted it down to $200."
"M."
"So they showed a unique offer on TikTok which was $30 cheaper than it was anywhere else so that affiliates could use the language it's a TikTok shop exclusive deal."
"But the offer was not actually as steep as described, right? They were saying it was $100 off and actually it's 30."
"It's enough to, you know..."
"...trick your average..."
"...Ruth in Ohio, you know."
"Shout out Ruth, powering this US economy on her back. Um, but uh, so I I think that's going to be a major trend we're going to see is is a lot more brands are going to see Shark Ninja and QVC success and say, 'We need to pour some money into this channel.'"
"Do you think consumer behavior is also changing on the channel?"
"Massively. How?"
"Absolutely. I I think people are trusting it more. When it first came out, it was all Chinese trinkets."
"Yeah."
"And now it's Ninja. Like obviously if it's an official Ninja store with thousands of verified reviews, this stuff is so intuitive actually when you start to just say it out loud, it's like, 'Oh, I just saw an extremely compelling TikTok about a product that I want. I can just buy it in the platform with a deal.'"
"Like it's not that crazy, right? Like..."
"Versus, you know, where else are you combining discovery with the conversion endpoint? Like Amazon doesn't have discovery like that. You have to build awareness elsewhere and then they have to go through the process of clicking into Amazon and then finding the product after searching it. But when they search it, they see Ninja's six competitors on a sponsored ad. And so there's like friction in that process versus if you just see the Ninja product on TikTok shop with an offer, you make that impulse buy because the video was good. So, I think this presents an insane opportunity for both content creators and brands because as long as you put together that cohesive strategy, then, you know, you can pretty much sell at any..."
"Back to the nano influencers. You have your nano influencers down."
"And it's all volume. I mean, every single one of these brands had, you know, around like 30,000 videos posted in November."
"Wow."
"How many How many creators probably to to do that?"
"Uh, anywhere from like 7 to 16 in the top 10."
"Wait, 7 to 16? What? 7,000 creators on the low end to 16,000 creators on the high end. Okay. So, like..."
"Seven. You said seven and it's like it could have been 700. It could have been six. You know what I'm saying?"
"Yeah. 7,000. Yeah."
"Wow."
"7,000 creators on the low end."
"And mostly all on affiliate deals."
"Yeah. I mean, I I would absolutely."
"Yeah."
"Like I I mean, maybe like maybe 200 on retainers or something. I I doubt it."
"Um..."
"I also think it's just part of how like the platform's going to mature, right? You know, we've been buying on Instagram for a while now, but we didn't invest."
"I actually I've gone through I've gone through the peaks and the valleys with TikTok shop, and I'm so back on just like this is so obvious that it's where it's going."
"It's it it it's people are only spending more time on there. They're only spending more time on their phones. Like, this rejection of social media has not really happened yet. I don't see it happening in 2026. Sora failed like that. Sora is not taking away any attention from TikTok. IG is not shipping better features to take attention away from TikTok. It's not getting banned. So like what is the counter to this not becoming an Amazon-esque buying platform?"
"Yep."
"And if so, what would you be able what would you do to start on Amazon in 2015 to be early on Amazon?"
"Yeah."
"Before everyone made it so competitive. So that's kind of my..."
"You just wrote your landing page copy for Noble."
"Uh, if you care..."
"...for taste makers or hit factory [ __ ] y'all."
"You need to reply to the comments, bro."
"I do. I think I owe people money. Right."
"I think I might have promised some cash."
"You promised $25 a person."
"Which I got you. I'm I got you. If that's you, I got you."
"So 50 times 25. So you you owe a significant amount of money."
"Is that Is that a rack?"
"It's more. It's more than..."
"50 * 25."
"It's more than a rack."
"It's like 1250."
"No."
"50 times 20."
"Yeah, it's 1250. Yeah."
"All right, I got y'all. I got y'all. Um, okay. Number two. Uh, or number five."
"Number five."
"Number two."
"I don't know, bro. I'm throwing off. I got to I got to sell at 1250 now. You know what I'm saying? I got sellers. Um, so experiential marketing."
"Like..."
"Yes."
"Got to be something you're doing."
"Yes."
"You know, you simply cannot afford to not be in person. I think a lot of people are doing this in a sense of like, 'Oh, we'll just show it to the farmers market. Oh, we'll just be present at this event. We'll have a presence at this event.' And it's like, if your everyday dose, like why do you not have a pop-up coffee shop in Venice Beach, right? Like own the actual experience rather than just having a street team there."
"And um a couple of brands did this really well, like Good Wipes, I remember, was one that I talked about before."
"What was their event, bro? Bro..."
"What was their fame?"
"So, so good. Put me on."
"Let me tell you. Let me tell you because this was actually OD. So, at a at a concert at some sort of music festival..."
"What's everyone's worst nightmare?"
"...you got to go drop a deuce at the concert, right? You got to use that porta potty."
"Yeah, use the porta potty, bro."
"Right. No one wants to do it."
"And then you're scared it might get tipped."
"I've never done it. Praise the Lord. Okay. Never had to go through that experience."
"I've never used a porta potty."
"I've never had to."
"I've never gone. Number two, number two at a concert. Okay."
"Okay."
"Quickly want to move on. Yeah. Just, you know, I know we're in your ears right now, Sweat Equity listeners. So..."
"Good Wipes, uh, they sponsored porta-potties at a music festival. And when they sponsored the porta-potties, they made them like super super bougie. So, they made it like an incredible first-class experience. All presented by Good Wipes, right? And..."
"That's sick. They showed up in a way that was authentic and integrated into the event."
"...but they solved a pain point while also inserting their brand and their value props there. So that's one example. I think Pierce Sport did this with their hydration station at, you know, whatever a marathon."
"Marathon, I think it was."
"Yeah. And so it's it's it's little things like that where you are finding a way to have a brand experience at an event where you're solving a tangible problem for people. This is how I'm even thinking about like you can't have the best content and then no life for like that content to come to life. You know what I'm saying? Like no other moment having content is doing things."
"Yes. Right."
"It's like the content is now kind of like the bridge to then go experience the thing. Like Bandit put on like this amazing like futuristic campaign for like the Chicago Marathon and then they recreated like that feeling of the campaign at a pop-up store."
"Mhm."
"You know what I'm saying? Like I don't had some sick thing where they were going through a wind tunnel. have to do that."
"And people are really desperate for these events. I I do think that people want a reason to go do something on the weekend. Um, that is not just go drink and so brands in the same way that we say like brands have an opportunity to become TV and run social shows and be an entertainment experience, you also have an opportunity to do something where you are now on someone's agenda, giving them a reason to get out the house and something to be excited about like an event to go to."
"But don't just show up and pass out product. Like make it an integrated experience. Go that next direction. Like what if everyday dose or rice super coffee or like all these different brands like..."
"You know, Mñana on a Saturday morning has an insane line out the door uh on their Sunset location. What if they just did a pop-up right next to Mñana? They're like, 'Don't wait in line. Come here.'"
"Yeah. Um, so number six is uh an overall shift from performance to brand marketing. So this is another investment thing that I think is going to drastically change because I can't tell you every brand owner I talk about is like my medic is shed, right? And it's very simple. You have a funnel. You have squeezed the bottom of the you squeeze uh you squeeze the bottom of the toothpaste uh bottle out as much as you can and there's nothing left in that bottle, right? Naturally, you would have to fill the top of it. That is brand marketing in a nutshell and people are not directing dollars to it whatsoever. So..."
"They're starting to and it's funny because you listen to Sean from Ridge saying if the number one thing that you should invest in right now is organic..."
"...and in brand marketing. I don't know if you saw that and then it..."
"Yeah. And then the amount of brands that like I had a conversation today, $100 million brand, you would know them, most everyone here would know them. They just have s they've scaled and survived off paid and they're like, 'Paid is how you win fast. Organic and brand is how you win in the future.'"
"Yes."
"And like the people that do care and it was just like back then you can win very easily and fast on on if you had a good product and you put out good ads, you could win, bro. You could scale very, very fast and like how do you not get around the fact of look, we just went from 1 million to 5 million, 5 million to 10 million. It's like, of course you're going to do that."
"100%."
"But now we're living in an era where people are buying the brands very specifically that they're very aligned with on a from a brand side, right? And that takes a heavy investment to be like, okay, we have to we have to..."
"...pour a lot of money into things that we can't measure all the time."
"You know, like you could be investing in organic with the hopes of driving retail and you don't really know it's working, but you know when it's working. You get what I'm saying? There there is no very clear connection between this and that, even if that is performing a significantly better, right? And so I'm there with you a million percent that..."
"[snorts]"
"...um, the shift from performance to brand marketing is the new performance marketing."
"Yeah, it is because what it's going to do is it's going to influence the overall performance of your your emails, of your SMS campaigns. Like people are going to want to hear from you. It's that simple. Like I'm ignoring emails from brands that I don't want to hear from."
"Yes."
"And then if you're going to invest in brand marketing and building that relationship with me, I'm probably going to want to open your email."
"Yes."
"And so I mean, I think that is like a huge thing that people need to start grounding themselves in is look, this isn't going to show up with a direct correlation between, you know, it's a 5x ROAS if I invest in brand marketing. Where it is going to show up is what your baseline revenue metrics are, which is organic search, SMS signups, email signups, open rates of those two channels. And from there, it's like, what does that do? If you boost those things by 20%. If you get 20% more organic search hits, if you get 15% better open rates on your SMS, just keep your conversion rate the same, it's going to make a huge, you know, difference in your business."
"But at the same time, you know, it's kind of scary because you're just putting money into the abyss, right? And so, like, that is I feel like kind of the the challenge."
"It is. And the way I described it because the calls on like, how would you describe brand marketing? And I was like, brand marketing is not having to convince someone to buy something."
"Right?"
"It really is not. When I love a brand, it is. Thank you. When I love a brand, bro, I don't look at the price. I don't read the copy on the landing page. I don't look at the details. I just buy."
"Right?"
"I huh?"
"How much does that have?"
"No idea."
"I can't tell you any of this. The AOV pants I got on, the jeans, I got no idea."
"It doesn't matter."
"Right. The brand loyalty and affinity has been built to a level where like cool, if I could afford the thing, I'm gonna buy the thing and I'm not and I don't care."
"Like and and that's fine, but you need to get to that level. AOD has invested purely in brand before they start investing in paid."
"Yeah."
"And when I get hit with paid, I'm like, 'Oh, bet.' Like I didn't know y'all dropped your winner collection. So that's like..."
"Well, and and they also do they do the email..."
"Right? Where it's like, 'Hey, our winter collection just dropped.' And I've actually called out..."
"I know you did. You did on Twitter."
"I called them out. I was like, 'Y'all be sending too many emails.' Because I think that's the private equity group being like, 'Let's squeeze squeeze the tube.'"
"Um, all right, last one is uh live shopping. So uh, I'm sure you saw, but Skims just did a massive live shopping experience. Skims."
"Yep."
"There's always a capstone moment. There's always a moment where someone who has immense visibility, takes action in overall trend. I think Kim K doing this is honestly going to catapult the live shopping stuff forward a lot. Before it was Jeffree Star, Kevin Hart, whatever. But her being the brand, the face of the brand, her jumping on and doing a live show with Snoop Dogg, with like Martha Stewart. I think like all this crazy stuff..."
"I think we're going to see a huge investment into live shopping experiences in 2026."
"And it's going to start converting a lot better as well."
"I think we're just going to see a huge investment in live..."
"...as a whole. Live shopping and and brands just investing in going live."
"Which is sick. Honestly."
"It's very sick. I mean, I don't Have you seen Justin Bieber's been going live for like five hours a day? And..."
"Isn't he like Tw It's Twitch or..."
"Who has Twitch? And then you know when I was talking about BPN in like a predictions episode with Tatum?"
"You know there was last You don't probably follow BPN like that, but did you see the last man standing race and like did you see all the buzz around it and how crazy it was?"
"Yeah."
"The reason that happened is because it went live and it literally they went live for the start of every uh lap and the end of every lap and it started at like a few hundred people watching. Uh..."
"...to then by the end of it, there was 30, 40,000 people watching the lives because..."
"Buildup is crazy."
"...they got to see everything that unfolded in those like two days or like day and a half for that race, which was a crazy story."
"Which then was the perfect bridge to holy [ __ ] I can't wait for the full documentary for all the things I didn't see to be able to see those things. Yeah."
"Right. In the documentary..."
"There's a brand that I won't name because..."
"...we like them kind of where they then did an athletic competition like very, very similar after somewhat same race format. Crickets. Why? There was no live component where like you could give a [ __ ] about the people performing."
"Were they on the same playing field as BPN would you say?"
"From a revenue perspective? Yes."
"But not from a like influencer maybe or similar..."
"Similar."
"Yeah. So they just execution was just not there."
"No. You know, it's like you just didn't feel any, bro. Like I didn't know who these two kids were. By the end of it, I'm like over here rooting like for one of them to win."
"Yeah. And and now I watch the doc and I'm like, I'm a fan, you know, not even because I care about ultramarathon running or marathons, just because of the fact that I saw it happen live, which now like connects me to it and and increases the interest level to a bar that wouldn't happen via recap content, which is actually a video I filmed while I was here. I was like, 'Rec we're done with recap content. Like it's live. We're going live.'"
"Yeah."
"Um..."
"Recap content comes from the live, right? Like the re it's like you have to you have to have something during a before, during, after. Yeah. If you don't have before, during, after, then you're literally just selling yourself so short. That's what drives me crazy..."
"...is like..."
"...brands will put all this money into this stuff and then just not take advantage of it, you know, and you have an opportunity to put 30 pieces of content out there and you did six."
"Yeah."
"Why? Just because you know that W2 marketer on your team just didn't really want to put in the time. Couldn't agree more."
"So..."
"Agree more."
"Yeah."
"I gotta take this meeting that um that's on this chair."
"All right, if y'all liked that episode, uh, we're going to be breaking down every single one of those trends in a much more in-depth way on a follow-up series. So, that was nano influencers, Meta Partnership Ads, YouTube Ads, high AOV TikTok shop products, experiential marketing, brand instead of performance marketing, and last live shopping. So, the next few episodes that we'll be doing deep dives into each one of those things and how you can take advantage of that trend in 2026. So, if you liked the video, please like, subscribe, leave a comment. It helps us a lot to bring you more content like this. And we'll see y'all next week. All right, peace."