Life updates are in order…. This week, half of HYPER moves to Amsterdam! Clayton is taking the fam to Europe, and we’re excited to be able to have HYPER document some of the new perspectives and brand building he sees across the pond, balanced with what Oren sees in Southern California.

Then today, Oren leaves to China visiting factories in Guangzhou and Xiamen for 10 days- preparing to make a lot more content about what to ask for to get interesting things made. If you’ve got any questions about the factory and production conversation beyond the basics, tap in on X and we’ll cover the questions we can here or on Youtube.

This week, we’re trying something a bit different.

We’re giving everyone an “exercise” you can do for your brand around Brand Narrative. We’ve included the outline, graphics and a full walk through video of how we work on crafting brand narrative and content around them we use in brand workshops that you can read through and run for yourself.

Let us know what you think!

Sports Social

Last week Oren made a video about sports and community, highlighting some trends we see coming  in the space, inspired by our friends at Death to Stock.   Sports and fitness are a massive driving cultural force this summer, between the takeoff of running, the hype surrounding the Olympics, and a massive increase in general personal aesthetics being driven online and in person.

A few of our future predictions:

- run club mania will expand to more niche and pickup sports (we're already seeing this in paddleboarding and pickleball clubs near us)

- many more brands will launch fictional sports franchises to build garments around and even take it into sponsorships or collaborative leagues

- savvy brands and creators will start as trainers and hosts for fitness events, and then transition this into facilitation real life salon events and collaborative workshops on health for niche communities

DTS recently released two social trends reports on Sports Social, going into not just what they're seeing in the zeitgeist, but also looking at actionable steps brands and creators can take to get involved. You can get those reports for free here, and don’t miss the next DTS trend report, dropping in 3 days.

In addition, they've released this new “Deep Spa” imagery collection, available along with their full library with unlimited use licenses starting at $15/m. 

Prices are increasing next month, so this is a good time to make the jump, and you can use code HYPER2 for a 17.8% discount for the year!

Sign up here to get access!

_{This segment is in partnership with DTS.}

Brand Narrative via Content

We do what's called a “brand narrative exercise” in in person workshops with brands small and large.

In a few hours we dive into questions about what kind of content should brands create, what kind of stories can they tell, how can a creator or team member fit into a bigger brand story, and then finish with a written out content plan

Today we’re gonna to break down the foundations of this exercise so you can run it yourself for your brand, as a service for your agency, or with teams you work with. We’ve included context, diagrams, and a 30 minute video walkthough.

This exercise is around summarizing modern brands into “tv shows” as a framework for content and scheduling. It works because it’s how we’re trained to consumer content, and since we live in an omni-channel world. Consumers experience different social media, retail, product in-hand etc and the through-lines and ideas of narrative carry through.

A few examples

You can take the “brand as tv” concept very literally and build a brand as tv

Midday Squares does it almost like a reality show
https://www.tiktok.com/@middaysquares?lang=en

Alexis Bittar creates a fictional narrative
https://www.instagram.com/alexisbittar/reels/?hl=en

This car dealership cosplays The Office online
https://www.tiktok.com/@mohawkchevrolet?lang=en

Or it can feel more like a production across multiple peoples and account that is promotional but ad-hoc conceptual versus fully scripted like Broken planet
who features skits with a recurring cast of creators on their main https://www.instagram.com/brokenplanet/

and then separate social tie-in’s from both of their founders 

The exercise itself

The brand story exercise is about identifying

• what is happening with my brand

• where we can document those events and create content

• who are the characters involved in our brand story

Part 1: Mapping Brand Story Elements

a) Plot: What is the story of your brand

• List all events related to the brand (product launches, trade shows, yearly off-sites, influencer meetups, etc.)

• Think of additional narratives that don’t have an event that you want to get across (introduction of a core idea, positioning of your product in a different way - a different end state to your perception or sales than exists today)

• Identify which events are worthy of content creation

b) Plot Devices: What is happening that our customers could become invested in?

• Consider drama, narrative connections, recurring ideas, or fictional elements

• Think about how to connect events and create emotional engagement

• List out all the events and narratives from section A and mark them as a “story (a story told as a story)”, “vignette (a story told in documented action)”, “throughline (something that carries across multiple content pieces as an idea)” or “campaign (a creative visual presentation over multiple media)” (and feel free to add other categories)

c) Sets: look at where your content is placed/filmed (and think about what you could do to improve it visually)

• Identify locations for content creation (office spaces, factories, trade shows, influencer houses, etc.)

• Consider both permanent and one-off set pieces

d) Characters: define your full list of potential characters

• Team members who create content (founders, designers, sales team, etc.)

• Community members (customers, fans)

• Allies (collaborating companies, influencers, brand ambassadors)

• Opponents (competitors or conceptual enemies the brand is positioning against)

Then once you have that framework of plot, sets and characters, you can work in a narrative content plan around your big yearly initiatives, ongoing marquee content, and ongoing weekly execution.

This is loosely adopted from a similar framework for ad creation that I believe is originally from Born Social, but reinvented specifically to make a social content plan.

Part 2: Creating a Narrative Content Plan

a) Year Anchors:

• Identify 1-2 major events per year that will generate the most attention - your biggest launches, brand events, etc

b) Seasonal Plan:

• Break down content into seasons — use seasonality of your product, launches of collections, traditional seasonal themes etc to put a throughout line together of 2-6 “seasons” within each year you can thematically connect.

• Identify key stories to tell within each season, a full list of objectives you want to get across, and ideas you have that would help build your brand and promote sales

c) Weekly Plan:

• Develop recurring series ideas you can be releasing weekly or month

• Plan special content pieces from your key stories

• Build a plan to maintain ongoing content

  • pillars - recurring content types that do well for you

  • trends/experiments - spaces to allow you to adapt to new content styles and expiments

3. Distribution Considerations: For each content piece of content you have from all the above, consider:

• Plot connection - where does it fit in to your story

• Character involvement - who should be in the piece, can you use your extended community you’ve mapped out

• Set usage - places you’ll shoot

• Target networks for distribution - is this on all networks, some, repurposed or repackaged in any way, promoted on stories, attached to your newsletters, does it also go on your website, in packaging, on merchandise, in physical locations. Italicized because this often ends up a longer convo of expanding the brand narrative beyond content.

• Required assets (long-form, short-form, written, video, etc.)

4. To-do List: From this list of content, begin to map out next steps for scripting and scheduling, establish accountability and action items.

Oren overviews the full exercise here in a 30m video:

and it’s cool to see brands acting on the info already!

Tactics + Accountability

For brands and creators looking to dial in content like the above with an accountability group… the next Cut30 30 day content bootcamp starts 8.13
https://cut30.co/

Want to see exactly what you can expect? Take it from Jason who was in our our last run!

art__swet

View more on Instagram

Of Note

How to think about optimizing ad creative:

Iterating on ROAS (return on ad spend) and having the modern marketing conversation with finance

Big Parmesan enters the sponsorship conversation

Fun inflatable merch for summer from Poppi and La Croix

Sleeper excellent Olympics creative from Rimowa

Some thoughts on AI wearables, AI design in general and prepping for Oren’s overseas trip:

Hyper Reports

Check out our market reports. We spend many hours researching markets, categories, and brands & products within the consumer space so you don’t have to.

• How to Source Blanks 101 — HERE — a guide to finding and producing your own merch

• Reports on Running, Golf, and Tennis — HERE — a guide to each sport, the market opportunities, and how to launch your own brand

Inquiries? Shoot us a note here: [email protected]

We’d love to chat!

Oren & Clayton ❤️ you