Oops, we started the next trend.

Sorry, I had to run out for cigarettes for the last few weeks, but don’t worry…

DADDY’S HOME.

You thought making the Kalshi video in my underwear was bad?

Well, after a few weeks of crashing out, growing a mullet, and neglecting my family (I do not recommend at least one of these), three new viral videos were born.

And on Thursday, they all dropped within a few hours of each other.

One for Grok (everyone’s favorite, family-friendly LLM)

One for Popeyes (McD’s been real silent since this dropped)

It’s since led to some hilarious fan-responses (like this Five Guys one)

This will be the start of a new trend of diss tracks from one major brand to another.

One for Kalshi (I know that Christians LOVE when I mix Jesus and gambling but Matthew 27:35 serves as my defense here…)

This email would be far too long if I did a BTS thread for each one in here, but if you wish to know how I made each one, click the links above and it will take you to the full breakdown for each spot.

Some new tips that I’ll highlight here are how the Grok 4 video was made using an entirely image-to-video workflow (I made it before Veo 3 came out).

I’d highly suggest using something like Figma if you're gonna do an image-to-video based workflow (and collaborate with multiple people)

The other HUGE tip is how we script content:

I’m sharing the active shotlist we used while building the ad.

It changed a bit from the original concept, but you can see the core idea in this Google doc.

Exporting Veo 3 clips as GIFs helped us convey the vision to the Kalshi team. 👇🏼

I’ll can’t tell yet if sharing all of this is the smartest thing or the dumbest thing 😅

On one hand, I’m essentially giving away our entire playbook for creating ads to our competitors and brands.

But even with hundreds of employees, I couldn’t serve 1% of the demand out there for AI content—there’s more than enough clients to go around.

And…this may sound crazy, but I want brands to create content in-house. There will be such a demand for daily content that agencies will struggle to keep up with the pace.

I don’t see any world in which 90% of all advertising will be generated within 2 years.

Quarterly campaigns will become monthly campaigns and then weekly campaigns (and then near-daily campaigns).

It’s insane to me why agencies, brands and filmmakers aren’t going all in on this as early as possible to reap the rewards.

The current paradigm is that brands are spending 6-7 figures on cinematic garbage that barely gets any views.

But now, 21-year-old AI TikTok creators are doing meme content for brands, getting millions of views and driving MASSIVE traffic for brands (for a fraction of the traditional cost).

To the brands that follow my newsletter, if you want to get into AI video, here’s what I would recommend:

Work with a top AI agency like ours to create an initial viral mega video. Use it to test the ROI of an AI video and how it compares with traditional video content.

Then start experimenting with weekly/bi-weekly content. This can be done either teaching an in-house team member AI video, message random viral AI tiktok accounts to see if they can do brand integrations, or work with an agency.

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll explore different types of videos at various scale/scope/length and will keep you posted with metrics, analytics, etc.

The future of advertising will be:

ENTERTAIN FIRST.

BRANDING SECOND.

Consumers still aren’t fully bought into AI yet. If you try to be too “authentic” in the tone of your AI videos (like a Dove commercial), it will not go over as well as something unhinged like an Old Spice commercial.

Which is why we’ve built our entire agency around this model of comedy-first content.

At our agency, you’re either a top-tier comedy writer (former Comedy Central / Fallon / Funny or Die, etc.) or you’re a world-class ad director.

There are very few other roles that we’re hiring for.

To our writers, we teach them the constraints that we’re working within, and we try and seek out “AI-curious” directors that have been making ads for 10+ years and want to learn our process.

We’d do better in sales if I told you we have some super secret process that we’ve hoarded all to ourselves…but I’m sharing almost every part of our workflow in these posts.

I’m not even directing all of our videos anymore (I love working with people far more talented than me, like Theo and Dawit from our recent two projects), but the one thing that we’re finding is that the moat is attention.

Just because you can pair a good writer with a good director, doesn’t mean that you’re going to make a viral ad.

You need to understand:

• The constraints of AI

• What AI content is crushing in the market on a given week

• How to format/package and distribute your videos.

One of the things we’re building right now is a viral dashboard for tracking all the top viral AI videos of the week, and then we use that to inform our writing process.

I’ll keep you posted on how that works out.

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. I’m still figuring a lot of this out in between 90-hour work weeks. Pardon if they’re a little underbaked or rough around the edges.

I’ll try not to have another 3-week gap with my following email, but I only post when I have something new to show or say.

One HUGE FAVOR you could do for me is just let me know who you are so I can tailor content a bit more towards the biggest segments of my readers.

Alternatively, feel free to respond to this email with what type of content you want to hear from me about!

And one last thing… I soft-launched a studio last week called Genre.ai!

I’ll be sharing more information about our studio in the coming weeks, but we’re assembling a team of insane writers and directors.

www.genre.ai 

If you are a talented writer or director, please reach out and send your best work.

And if you’re a brand, hit us up! We’d love to see how we can help you with viral videos.

As always, here to help!

Stay in touch via my socials!

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