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Marketing Brew

Katie Hicks

marketingbrew.com

Social media trends: From Grimace to…grimacing

This week seemed to be all about the beverages and nostalgia. 

Ryan Barwick

a bunch of t-shirts coming out of a phone; the TikTok logo is on one of them

Gen Z is buying and searching on TikTok, but its commerce offering isn’t a must-have for advertisers, report says

TikTok made them buy it, but probably not during a livestream.

a phone with lipstick on it and speech bubbles coming out if saying "Too expensive" and "Don't buy this product" 

‘Deinfluencing,’ defined

TikTokkers are encouraging people to think twice before buying influencer-recommended products. Some say it’s still a form of influencing.

Social Media

A cartoon image of Kristina Monllos created by Morning Brew

Kristina Monllos

Got a ton of people on the internet talking about the same thing for a day? Brands might 

. Got a ton of people talking about the same thing for weeks on end? Brands 

That’s exactly what has happened over the last two months amid the third and final season of Amazon Prime Video’s 

, an adaptation of a book series by Jenny Han that nabbed 25 million viewers in the first seven days following its premiere, according to Amazon internal data shared with Marketing Brew. The coming-of-age romance drama following Isabel “Belly” Conklin and her relationship with two brothers has been the talk of the summer on social media, with fans speculating what will come next each week, making predictions, and dissecting episodes. And 

Social media teams who spoke to Marketing Brew said the response to their show-related posts has largely been positive. So why not continue to build on the momentum? For some marketers, the show has a particular element making it ripe for conversation: there’s a team element to the show, with many fans rooting for either Conrad or Jeremiah Fisher to win over Belly’s heart and declaring themselves #TeamConrad or #TeamJeremiah.

“What really excites us in social is that fandom is a universal language, whether or not you are a fan of a baseball team or a TV show or a musician,” said Cameron Gidari, VP, social media and innovation for MLB, which has been posting about the show on its socials since August. “This show is having watch parties [where] you’re team Conrad or you’re team Jeremiah, so a lot of the instinct and the behavior is really similar to that of a sports fan.”

’s popularity—and brand placement in the series—is driving big numbers. Engagement for social content about the show’s third season is up 514% from Season 2 for Mondelez’s Swedish Fish, according to the company, and the brand’s 

 TikToks for the summer were both about the show. Meanwhile Sour Patch Kids, another Mondelez brand, has netted 12 million impressions so far this year for its show-related social content, the company said. 

Both brands were referenced in the show at the end of the second season, with each brother debating which candy she will choose—an on-the-nose metaphor for which brother Belly will ultimately end up with.

“It was a pleasant surprise to us to be featured in such a prominent way,” John Vasington, senior brand manager, candy, at Mondelez, told Marketing Brew. “Jenny is a fan of the brands, and I know has included us in the third book, so we had an idea that we’d probably at some point make an appearance in the show. But for it to happen in such an impactful way in Season 2 was a really welcome surprise.”

In the gap between seasons, social chatter tying the brands to the show didn’t slow down, said Sandra Yang, associate director of social and strategy for Dentsu Creative, Mondelez’s agency, and both brands opted to advocate for the brother tied to the brands online. For the third season, the brands became an official brand partner, with 

 of Sour Patch Kids for Team Conrad and Swedish Fish for Team Jeremiah.

“We knew this show was going to be very top of mind for Gen Z as the new season kicked off, and we wanted to be a part of it in a much more substantial way,” Vasington said.

Most brands don’t have the luxury of appearing in the show’s universe. Even so, brand social accounts big and small have recognized the value of staying up-to-date on the show.

MLB, for example, started posting about the show in mid-August after a member of its social media team who is a fan of the show pitched getting involved, Gidari said. As of late August, the social content around the show had generated 2.5 million views and 540,000 engagements.

In addition to the brand TikToks and Reels referencing episodes, brand accounts are also showing up in the comment sections of edits that fans make for the show, sometimes doing so with commentary about the episode or rooting for a particular character.

“I think why this phenomenon caught wildfire this summer, in addition to the pure escapism… [is that] it allows us to talk the way these people talk, make creative the way that they’re already seeing stuff on their own algorithms and their own platforms, like it doesn’t feel brand-y,” said Mimia Johnson, SVP of creative excellence at VaynerMedia, which created social content around the show for brands like Miralax and sparkling-water brand Bubly.

“People don’t want to see ads. They want to see brands that act like people,” Johnson noted. “That’s why we see the brands in the comments. That’s why we see brands activating Team Jeremiah versus Team Conrad, talking about love triangles.”

Nick Mazzucco, head of social strategy at Burrell Communications, said that at a time when social media managers worry about the high stakes of internet chatter, something like this can be a low-stakes way to participate in a trend.

“It is that spark of old internet monoculture,” he told us.

, social media and brand managers said they are careful to use language like the names of the characters from the show rather than specific IP like quotes, soundbites, or even the Taylor Swift songs used in the show that could land them in hot water when creating content.

“There wasn’t a specific line in the trend that you had to use, you could really make it your own,” Katherine Blessis-Poto, social media specialist at Hannaford Supermarkets, said. “So we felt comfortable taking that risk and putting it out there.”

Some brands have an advantage by working with the show’s cast or creators to get them to be part of the content that they’re making around the show. The reigning WNBA champs, the New York Liberty, for example, hosted cast members and Han courtside; a subsequent post with the cast garnered more than 80,000 likes on Instagram, and on TikTok, content with the cast was one of the top four highest-engaged videos of August. Meanwhile, content with the cast for Barclays Center, where the Liberty plays, nabbed 8.1 million views and more than 920,000 engagements on TikTok and 3.1 million impressions on Instagram.

Shana Stephenson, the Liberty’s chief brand officer, said the partnership worked well because Liberty players are fans of the show themselves.

“Liberty center Nyara Sabally is a fan of

 Team Conrad,” Stephenson wrote in an email. “Bringing her together with the cast courtside postgame felt organic and true to who she is—and that authenticity is exactly what we aim for.”

After the show’s season finale on September 17, brands will look for more shows to, like consumers, throw themselves into.

“We’re going to continue to see that more and more as people are looking for that escapism,” Johnson said. “They’re looking for something that totally sucks them in.”

A photo collage of a poster of the Amazon show The Summer I Turned Pretty surrounded with iPhone message bubbles, reading #teamjeremiah and #teamconrad

Inside the social media frenzy around ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’

Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, MLB, the New York Liberty, and more got involved in the Amazon show. 

Lots of advertising agencies say they make short films. Often, those short films are just ads by another name—more artful ads, perhaps, but ads all the same.

Social content shop Portal A isn’t one of those agencies. This year, Portal A has been on the film-festival circuit with its first narrative short film, Five Star, directed by Kai Hasson, the agency’s executive creative director and one of its co-founders. After premiering at the RiverRun International Film Festival earlier this spring, the short, a 14-minute comedy-horror starring Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, nabbed the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Short Film at the Seattle International Film Festival, and it has continued its run at festivals like the LA Shorts International Film Festival and the Asian American International Film Festival.

 isn’t a secret ad. It’s a narrative effort that’s the latest project to come out of an internal program designed to get Portal A back to its creative roots of making “weird stuff on the internet,” Jacob Motz, the agency’s director of original projects, told Marketing Brew.

“Two or three years ago, I remember we were sitting around, and the partners were like, ‘We want to just kind of give ourselves the ability to make stuff without worrying about gatekeepers, for the sake of creativity, for the sake of innovation,’” Motz said. “We want to be able to always take risks with the content we’re making online, so we need to have a program that allows us to do that.”

To do it, in February 2023, the agency rolled out Moonshots, a creative research and development lab funded by the company with the goal of distributing creative projects regularly. 

 is its first narrative short film, although Hasson and several Portal A employees previously worked on another short film, 

, in 2019, before Moonshots was established. Other Moonshots projects have included 

,” a social series that takes an anthropological look at fashion.

Portal A is one of a number of agencies getting involved in indie production as a way to carve out some creative freedom in the industry. Others, like SRH, Six+One, and Revery, have dabbled in indie movies and documentaries, endeavors that they believe will help them experiment and stretch creatively, AdAge 

As for Portal A, “the value that we’re getting from this isn’t monetary,” Motz said. “There’s a lot of things we look at as real value. There’s culture internally at the company. People internally at the company go like, ‘Wow, we’re really, we’re taking money, and we’re putting it in creative endeavors for creative sake, and that’s fun and cool.’ And we’re also including everybody at the company to take part in it. So it becomes highly creative projects that people get to go on little adventures with.”

At the same time, having narrative short films under an agency’s belt could also come in handy when pitching marketers. As Marketing Brew has 

, brands like Bilt, Tower 28, Oatly, and Bratz are all creating their own short scripted projects for their social channels.

“More than ever, being able to sharpen your craft and be able to tell stories in a short-form way is where the future is headed regardless,” Motz said. “In 10 years, I feel like the vast majority of people are going to be experiencing scripted in shorter formats.”

Update 09/03/25: Kai Hasson's title has been updated.

Screenshots from the trailer for Five Star, a horror movie short film.

Why one agency made an indie short film

Portal A wanted to get back to its creative roots and make stuff without “worrying about gatekeepers,” its director of original projects told us.

Dave Mead, chief marketing officer and co-founder of the Austin, Texas-based sparkling mineral water brand Rambler, thought he had landed on the perfect social video idea.

The plan was to outfit an old Jeep with the water brand’s logo and current tagline (“Chug Life”) and send it soaring off of a cliff in Glacier View, Alaska, as part of an annual Fourth of July car launch, recording the whole thing for social media. The hope was to make something entertaining enough to gain enough attention online and grow the brand’s social following while boosting brand awareness as Rambler moves into more markets nationally.

Leading up to the event, Mead said, he was feeling nervous about what might go wrong.

“I had butterflies because we only get one chance,” Mead told Marketing Brew. “What if there’s a clog in the fuel line? What if it dies and it just coasts over that thing and then just rolls down and is anticlimactic? Everybody launching a car there has the same dream and the same vision of launching their car farther [than] anybody.”

The Jeep didn’t end up going farther than anyone else’s car that day, and it didn’t end up soaring over the cliff at all. Instead, the car veered left and drove straight into two trees, taking them down—and, with them, Rambler’s carefully laid social content plans.

“I just thought, ‘I cannot believe we just spent months planning and preparing and spent all this money getting up here, and I have no car launch,’” Mead said.

The team didn’t linger on the failure for long—when they returned to Texas, they pivoted to sending water as part of relief efforts for the July 4th floods in Kerr County, Texas. After a few weeks passed, though, the team revisited the footage and tried to figure out if anything was salvageable.

Instead of chucking it altogether, Rambler’s marketing team ended up releasing the failed car-launch video. To do so, Rambler partnered with a viral fail video page, Send It, which has nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram, to spin the brand’s marketing failure into the social moment Mead wanted.

The team eventually recognized “that we were sitting on some gold,” Mead said. “There were 38 cars launched, 37 of them were successful, and they’re all the same. They’re all similar. Ours was unlike anyone else’s.”

Rambler is primarily focused on event sponsorship to get its cans of sparkling water into the hands of potential customers, and it’s using the moment to boost digital marketing efforts like it had initially planned—with some additional changes. Rambler paired a giveaway with the release of the car-launch video, offering those who like, follow, tag friends, and share the video a chance to win a free trip to Alaska for two and $500 worth of gear from Send It—to help boost interest in the spot.

“The intention was to go create some wild content, but not just let it live in our feed,” Mead said. “We’re gonna go create something cool, something wild, that people are gonna want to see, and that’s going to increase our following.”

Screenshots from Rambler Austin's Instagram of a car falling of a cliff and a station wagon on a forest road.

What happens when your social stunt goes terribly wrong?

Water brand Rambler wanted a viral car-launch video, but had to pivot after the car veered off course.

Jasmine Sheena

Ever made fun of a video online? It very well could have been one from Dhar Mann Studios.

The video entertainment company, which is named after its founder, has been lampooned online for its sometimes 

 videos showing characters in different situations facing life lessons. One 21-minute video from earlier this year, which is tagged as an #inspirational #shortfilm on YouTube, depicts a toxic boyfriend apparently learning how to be okay with his girlfriend dressing how she wants. Cringe aside, the YouTube channel has grown to have just shy of 26 million subscribers.

In the past year, DMS has undergone something of an internal makeover. In September, the company hired Sean Atkins, a Discovery and MTV alum, to serve as CEO; earlier this year, more industry heavyweights came aboard to help run the show, including Toni Gray, a MrBeast and Fremantle vet, who joined as head of production.

The hires are part of a broader move from DMS to scale at a moment where YouTube and creators are aiming to get footholds in high-production entertainment.

“Our goal is to be the No. 1 creator of positive content in the world,” Atkins told Marketing Brew.

Atkins says that DMS is looking to enter a new chapter, expanding its content from its version of inspirational content into different genres, including horror. It’s also considering new formats, such as vertical videos and podcasts, as well as additional distribution methods: DMS debuted a FAST channel partnership with Samsung TV Plus in May.

“As our audience wants more experiences, wants more content, how do we super-serve that need in what format? What genre might that be?” he said.

While DMS plans to continue emphasizing positivity and universal human themes, Atkins said, there will likely be more experimentation done on DMS’s channels with new types of content throughout the end of the year.

The play is to further personalize content for its audience across platforms; Dhar Mann and DMS have said its audience is roughly 145 million followers. (Across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, accounts for Dhar Mann and Dhar Mann Studios have more than 124 million followers.) The studio puts out a breakneck five scripted episodes each week, and it already tailors its content to some degree depending on the platform that content is distributed on. For example, its Facebook content tends to be more “soapy,” which Atkins said is geared toward moms, while its TikTok videos often feature clips geared toward teens.

The company makes content primarily for YouTube and Facebook, he said, but clips are shared across social platforms to generate audience interest.

“We have two platform-focused studios that make content primarily for that premiere on that platform, and then it gets cross-pollinated across all the other platforms,” Atkins said. “Something that is made for YouTube will ultimately also have a life on Facebook and Snapchat and TikTok and Spotify and all that.”

Right now, DMS relies on organic advertising to distribute the videos it makes, and Atkins said the company does buy paid ads for “experimentation.” Relying on the company’s large audience can benefit algorithmic distribution on various platforms.

Atkins likened DMS’s approach to those of the cable networks he previously worked at.

“It’s not that MTV or Discovery wouldn’t do paid media, but the majority of the lift was done on on-air promotion to get the audience to view something,” he said. “It’s the same thing for most digital creators.”

As it grows, DMS is exploring branded content, and Atkins said that Dhar Mann himself attended Cannes Lions for the first time this year. As it considers more brand work, Atkins said the aim is to ink select, long-term brand partnerships that make sense for the brand’s audience.

Part of DMS’s planned growth spurt isn’t just hiring execs and branching into branded content. The company is also exploring the possibility to acquire other creator-led businesses, Atkins said. To that end, he told us, it’s working with the talent agency CAA and has plans to work with the company’s merchant bank, CAA Evolution, as a way to potentially facilitate acquisitions.

As it evaluates potential acquisition targets, DMS execs are evaluating creators’ interest in scaling as well as their existing audience overlap with that of DMS. Eventually, Atkins would like DMS’s original and acquired channels to “all speak to a Middle America.”

YouTube creator and entrepreneur Dhar Mann at YouTube's Brandcast event in 2025

Dhar Mann Studios is just one creator outpost coming for Hollywood

The studio, once lampooned online for cringey output, is laying the groundwork for more ambitious projects.

This story is the second in a series exploring how brands craft standout social media strategies. If you’d like to chat about how your brand is approaching social, Katie Hicks wants to hear about it. Reach out to her at hicks@morningbrew.com.

If you recently became acquainted with Amtrak’s social media presence through a 

 reminiscent of old monster truck rally ads, you’re not alone.

The national passenger railroad is upgrading its trains, stations, and infrastructure and entering a “modern era of rail,” according to Jessica Davidson, VP of digital and brand management at Amtrak, so it was only natural for the brand to take a fresh approach to social media.

“We’re this storied brand, and we’re modernizing,” Davidson told us. “As we move forward to increase ridership, we recognize all the things that we do in our strategy need to break through.”

Last year, Amtrak set an all-time ridership record of 32.8 million, and Davidson said its sights are now set on attracting prospective younger riders as part of a goal to reach 66 million riders by 2040. So far, what seems to be getting zillennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha to stop scrolling (and perhaps consider taking the train) is content that Naleen Camara, senior social media specialist at Amtrak, calls “brain-rotty,” or posts that one might not expect from a legacy brand. Camara said the recent attention on the account, though, has been a long time coming.

“I like to think we’ve been funny for a while,” Camara told us. “People are really just starting to take notice.”

One of the earliest instances of Amtrak playing around with humor, Camera said, was in 2023 when the brand 

 what it described as conductor “fan art” inspired by anime and, in response to the social comments, proceeded to 

 who the man could be for a social campaign.

“A lot of our fans were like, ‘Oh my God, that looks like this conductor on this train or this conductor in this station,’ so we were like, ‘Okay, let’s make a whole story out of it,’” Camara said.

It’s an approach that is indicative of the brand’s larger social strategy. “We’ve really tried to listen to our audience and really respond to what they resonate with,” she told us.

Overall, experimental content has been key to Amtrak’s online strategy, to the point where Camara’s internal team of three and agency partners at Little Buddy schedule regular brainstorms to develop “out-there content” and identify trends they could participate in.

“We really love utilizing sounds and songs online that you wouldn’t typically associate with a travel brand,” Camara said. “It’s fun, and it makes us more personable.”

Tapping into nostalgia has also been a winning strategy, Davidson said, as evidenced by its “traintacular” monster-truck video, which has amassed more than 500,000 likes across TikTok and Instagram. The intent behind the post, according to Davidson, was to reach audiences that may be open to train travel—and she’s already seen comments from people who said they’ve become inspired to give Amtrak a shot.

Since that video went live the last week of June, Davidson said Amtrak has gained more than 60,000 followers across social channels and has seen more than 500,000 shares on that post alone. Past content has also seen a boost as audiences have gone back into the account’s archives and engaged with prior posts, Camara said.

“It’s a testament to how consistent we have been with this,” she said.

While silly content can be fun to make, there are also broader brand communication needs to consider. Camara said Amtrak takes an “infotainment” approach to social media overall, balancing tips, tricks, and promotions for train travel with more “kooky and chaotic” content.

“We have a very large audience, and people respond to messages differently,” Davidson added. “Having that variety in content is really important for us.”

With the brand’s legacy in mind, Camara recognizes that sometimes a trend can be too wacky and will only participate if it makes sense for Amtrak. Another video, in which Amtrak asked viewers to share with someone who “needs to touch grass,” made sense as part of the brand’s “chaotic, brain-rot” content and ended up performing well, Camara said, even if there was a risk that the message could be seen as rude. The plan, she said, is to continue building on that series.

“It truly hits when you’re looking through the comment section and somebody’s telling you, ‘I had to double-check to make sure this was Amtrak,’ instead of some random person making this video on our behalf,” Camara said.

With Amtrak’s new NextGen Acela trains scheduled to enter service soon, Davidson said the brand is preparing an infotainment strategy to let people know about the new fleet in both a fun and informative way.

“We’re in a place where creativity is celebrated,” she said. “We’re willing to put ourselves out there.”

stills from Amtrak's social media posts, including an anime-style conductor and a video to send to "someone who needs to touch grass," on a collage of mobile phone screens

Behind Amtrak’s ‘chaotic brain rot’ social strategy

The passenger railroad balances humor with informative posts to cater to a wide range of potential customers, an exec told us.  

It wasn’t long ago that a new app asked users to BeReal. Now, that same platform is hoping to BeRelevant again.

The app, in which users post one front-facing and back-facing photo per day, peaked in popularity around 2022. After it was acquired by French mobile games publisher Voodoo last year, Voodoo has been quietly building what Ben Moore, managing director of US operations, describes as “BeReal 2.0,” fixing bugs and UI issues while adding features like video and chat in the hopes of enticing a new set of users.

“We’ve been able to prevent churn, patch stability, we’re seeing new users come to the platform for the first time, and the OG users that have been loyal from 2021 [and] 2022 are still around,” Moore told Marketing Brew. In April of this year, the platform 

 it had around 40 million monthly active users. (Instagram, for comparison, had more than 2 billion monthly active users as of January, according to Sensor Tower data 

As BeReal has courted new users, it’s also been courting advertisers in the US since April, when it first introduced sponsored content on the platform. So far, that strategy has included making a debut appearance at Cannes Lions, where BeReal hosted a party for nearly 500 attendees and left with the plan to return next year with an “even bigger presence,” Moore said.

BeReal has also recently rolled out cost-per-click-based insertion orders and paid amplification on organic posts. There are also new sections of the app, like Nearby, where users can see public posts from people around them as well as a feed called Friends of Friends that displays content from followers’ followers, both of which also offer new places for brands to advertise, Moore said.

Even with new features, the question remains whether BeReal can carve out a lasting space beside its endless-scroll competition—or whether the appetite for a slower, more intentional online experience is indeed growing.

When BeReal first took off, it didn’t take long for brands like Chipotle and American Eagle to start experimenting with the platform, offering 

 to brand superfans. At the time, there were some limits to how many followers an account could have, but that’s no longer the case, Moore said, meaning brands have an opportunity today to reach more organic users than they did in years past.

Despite BeReal’s dedicated user base, downloads of the app have 

 50% in the last year, according to Sensor Tower data cited by Business Insider, and some existing users have 

 about the introduction of in-feed and takeover ads to the platform. Combined with posting limits that don’t exist on other social media platforms, some advertisers may wonder what the value proposition of the BeReal audience is.

Moore said the platform’s biggest selling point is a more intentional way to engage with younger customers. “BeReal is not a platform for reach, unlike Instagram, TikTok or even Snapchat,” Moore said. “It’s more about engaging or talking to Gen Z in a meaningful way.”

According to Moore, who previously worked at TikTok, about 70% of BeReal users post every day, driven in part by the knowledge that in order to see other posts on the app, they must post first.

“That translates into a level of engagement that is so much better than on TikTok, Insta, and Snap,” he said.

BeReal has already worked with advertisers like Levi’s, Nike, and Amazon, and Moore said top-performing brand content has tended to look much like the organic content brands were posting years ago, including behind-the-scenes looks, limited offerings, and creator content. Putting Gen Z faces behind (and in front of) the camera has also proven to be a campaign booster, he noted, whether it’s a brand community manager or a creator partner.

“Whenever [a brand] can work with a creator that produces a piece of content that they can utilize for paid amplification on BeReal, they are going to see ultimately greater results for their campaigns,” he said.

In general, Moore said he’s noticed a “resurgence” in the number of content creators, specifically micro-influencers, on BeReal.

“They want to show that there isn’t a big team behind this, that they’re doing everything themselves,” he said. “They know that BeReal can be the place for that.”

What BeReal might lack in reach, it is hoping to make up for in stability and safety, Moore said. In addition to benefiting from the 

 of competitor platforms like TikTok, he said, mounting concerns over the mental health impact of social media have led to increased inbounds for BeReal.

“The fact that we don’t want to keep users scrolling endlessly on the app, that we just want them to open up the app, check in on their friends or the people they care about, and go back to living their best life, resonates really well,” Moore said, adding that it “also translates into business reach.”

With time on the platform intentionally limited, Moore said Voodoo is looking at offline opportunities to engage BeReal users in places like college campuses, where it hopes to re-create the success it saw among student interest during the “golden, viral years” of BeReal.

Since joining the BeReal team, Moore said many people have told him that they see it as “the healthy social platform for the next generation.” Whether that can translate into long-term business results is yet to be seen, though Moore seems optimistic.

“We intend to stay, we’re going to keep growing,” he said. “We’re going to keep doing everything we can to make sure that people find value in utilizing BeReal.”

three mobile phone screens featuring brand posts on BeReal and the BeReal logo

Inside BeReal’s comeback strategy

The once-a-day photo-sharing app, which went viral in 2022, is under new management and courting advertisers. 

Jennimai Nguyen

In the weeks leading up to the premiere of Season 33 of 

 last September, Anna Delvey’s casting set the internet aflame.

While the fake heiress and convicted felon’s controversial dancing debut drummed up fresh interest in the decades-old show at the season’s start, it may have been her pro partner’s internet savvy that helped carry engagement in the season to record-breaking levels.

That pro partner is Ezra Sosa, a 24-year-old ballroom dancer that joined the 

 cast as a troupe member in 2021 before being promoted to a pro dancer partnered with contestants in 2024. Delvey was his first ever celebrity partner, and while there was great fanfare, it was short-lived: the duo was the first pair to be eliminated. But their short run gave way to a long tail of viral moments on both TV and phone screens, and even after the pair was voted out, Sosa’s TikTok account became a go-to destination for newer fans to engage with the show.

Now between seasons, Sosa is managing a budding personal brand while still representing 

’s newly modernized image—a perception that he says is a result of both his work on social and the show’s clever casting efforts.

“They’re like, ‘Okay, we have a convicted felon. Okay, let’s give her to the twink who has a good social media presence. Let’s go. Let’s make the most out of this,’” Sosa told Marketing Brew. “What a lot of the pros really started to get into this season was bringing that awareness to the show. We brought people to the show, but they stayed to watch the show. It came hand in hand. If the show wasn’t good, we wouldn’t have the fan base.”

’s most recent season, Sosa had about 70,000 TikTok followers and 90,000 Instagram followers. Today, those numbers have jumped to about 571,000 and 272,000, respectively, with an average engagement rate of 100 million views per month, a result that he credited to strategic posting, he said.

For those previously unaware of him or his role on the show, Sosa might have popped up on feeds for a clip filmed after his and Delvey’s elimination, where she was asked what she learned from her experience on the show. Delvey deadpanned “nothing” —and a meme was born instantly. Sosa took the moment and ran with it: he got a 

 mashing up Delvey’s line delivery with the chorus of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing,” and incorporated the moment into several of Delvey’s appearances in 

Beng in on the joke is key to his social media presence, he said, and it’s something that he believes sets him apart and helped lay the groundwork for how the show puts social media to use.

“When I joined the show, I was posting TikToks, and [the other pros were] like, ‘We don’t want to do TikTok,’ so I’m like, ‘Wait a couple years. Just give it a little bit. [The show is] going to get into it, I promise you,” he said. “And now we’re all doing TikToks.”

Sosa’s posts gave fans access to their favorite stars beyond what aired on TV, and later in the season, it became more official when he was tasked with cohosting a 

-official TikTok Live during the Instant Dance Challenge’s ad breaks. The challenge involved the remaining couples coming up with an entire routine in the minutes between the live broadcast, and the TikTok Live showed fans more of the process against the backdrop of Sosa’s commentary.

 had done a livestream, but Sosa said previous versions had been on YouTube. The TikTok version, which Sosa described as “wildly successful,” reassured him that his online activity was not only approved, but encouraged.

“I knew what I was posting was not the norm,” he said. “So when they told me that, I was like, ‘Wait, maybe they’re appreciating my social media presence.’”

The show has plenty else to appreciate. During Season 33, fan voting records were broken several times over, peaking at 32 million votes during the finale, and 6.4 million people tuned in to watch the finale, the show’s highest Live+Same Day viewership since 2020. Much of that growth was in the 18–49 demographic, where viewership was up 70% YoY, per 

Where does Sosa go from here? He’s gearing up for Season 34, which will premiere in September and includes conservationist Robert Irwin and social media star Alix Earle among the celebrity dance partners. Before then, he is balancing the show’s recent live tour, making appearances during Pride, and bolstering his social presence that’s increasingly featured brand deals. (Recent collabs include Skittles, beauty brand Sol de Janeiro, juice brand Naked, and allergy medicine Allegra.)

Even with a wide range of partnerships, Sosa says he is strategic about how and when he posts brand deals, and he prides himself on being easy to work with.

“I’ll never double-post a brand deal,” he said. “I have to make sure that it’s sandwiched in between a video that I know will go viral, because my job, when I’m getting these brand deals, [is] to make sure that I can get it to as many people as possible.”

Sosa said he knows that as he grows his personal brand, people engage most with content related to 

, which means he is tasked with playing the dual roles of influencer and reality TV star. That delineation can be blurry, he said, but he also views it as giving him a bit of an edge.

“We are very recognizable people, but we’re not, like, A-list,” he said. “I’m not like, freaking Jay-Z up in this. I’m just shaking my booty cheeks on national television.”

Ezra Sosa headshot surrounded by screenshots from his TikTok account.

How Ezra Sosa’s personal brand helped modernize ‘Dancing with the Stars’ 

The TikTok and competition-TV star pumped out behind-the-scenes content during the show’s most recent season, which broke viewership and voting engagement records.