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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

Earlier this year, Andrew Downing, director of social media at Cava, tasked his team with coming up with a show for social media after seeing other creators and brands 

 and sensing an opportunity in the unscripted reality space.

“We were seeing some of these [social series] that resemble old TV shows,” he said, noting that series like 

, which tours the dirty and often bizarrely decorated rooms of men in New York, resembles MTV’s 

where single contestants’ rooms were inspected by potential dates. “I told people to go research some old reality shows and see how we can spin that into a social show.”

About 15 ideas later, the Cava team landed on 

, a six-episode, weekly Instagram dating series hosted by creator and stand-up comedian Daniela Mora. In each episode, created with the Very Online Agency, two contestants build each other a Cava bowl while answering questions about each other and ultimately deciding whether or not they are, in fact, “bowlmates.”

Season 1 has now officially wrapped, and Downing says the brand’s bet on love has paid off enough to start planning Season 2.

“This is just an expansion of the Cavaverse and trying to figure out other touch points that we know people are interested in,” Downing said.

 lives on its own Instagram account separate from the official Cava brand account, which has more than 300,000 followers. While 

 1,000+ followers may pale in comparison, Downing said it was a conscious decision to game the Instagram algorithm as it pushes content to non-followers. A separate account also provides an easy way for viewers to watch all the episodes in succession without other, non-

Starting fresh on any new account can make it harder to get eyeballs, but Downing said that the first two videos received more than 300,000 views without any paid media, which“outperformed [his team’s] wildest dreams.” The number of inquiries the brand has received from viewers asking to be on the show as contestants, he said, has been another unexpected indicator of success.

“We can actually tally the amount of DMs we get now asking us to be on the show,” Downing said. “That was something we never even thought of.”

 to take note of the fact that many young people are looking for love off of the dating apps, but being part of people’s potential love stories can have other positive effects. Many of the contestants on the show have noted that they’ve never tried Cava before, which Downing said wasn’t intentional but has shown the brand the potential of reaching new customers through this method.

is designed to encourage word-of-mouth and organic discovery, and Downing said it was important to get the right host to help boost awareness. Mora, a Bronx-born comedian who has more than 320,000 followers on Instagram, was Cava’s first choice.

“We knew that we wanted a comedian to riff between two people, just in case, for whatever reason, the conversation stalled,” he said. “[Mora’s] online presence and the content she shares about dating and real-life, Gen Z stuff definitely factored in.”

The final episode of Season 1 premiered this week, with almost every episode ending in an agreed-upon bowlmance, and Season 2 is now putting out casting calls for New Yorkers.

According to Downing, Cava’s decision to continue with Season 2 was based on the level of engagement in the show’s comments and DMs. He said he’s excited about the potential of using the series to release holiday content or to promote things like new menu items in future seasons. A “Where are they now?” segment with couples from Season 1 is also not out of the question.

“Anything that is a trope in a reality show or in dating content, we’re very well aware of it and we’re always thinking, ‘Oh, could we do that? Could we do this?’” he said. “I think it would be a really fun addition.”

screenshots from Cava's Instagram series, "Bowlmates."

How Cava is building brand love (and real love) on Instagram

Andrew Downing, director of social media at Cava, shared the strategy behind the brand’s newest social series, “Bowlmates.”

In 2023, Instagram unveiled broadcast channels, a feature for creators to “engage directly with their followers at scale” through what is essentially a one-sided group chat, offering channel owners the chance to take polls, gather photo responses, and share updates with those who opt in. In the last two years, brands have also begun using the feature, but many are still exploring the most effective ways to do so.

, and Béis, have operated broadcast channels for a while, while others, like 818 Spirits and Tony’s Chocolonely, began using them more recently. Marketers say the channels are a powerful way to reach engaged customers, solicit feedback, and offer exclusive insights and deals, but the feature could still use some improvements—and some brand channels have gone dark in the meantime.

“When we went into it, we were like, ‘This is very much a test,’” Amanda Tedesco, director of social media at Shake Shack, said. “We’re still kind of in that place.”

Shake Shack created its broadcast channel a year ago to draw attention to its Innovation Kitchen, where it tests and develops new menu items, and to connect with fans, Tedesco told us.

“[The culinary team is] always ideating and coming up with these cool culinary innovations,” she said. “We thought, ‘Maybe there’s something there for the broadcast channel.’”

The channel now has nearly 4,000 members, and Shake Shack’s social team often collaborates with its consumer insights team and uses the Poll feature to gather input on decisions like what to name the restaurant chain’s next burger or which cheese-fry innovation looks most appetizing. The brand has even offered some channel members the chance to come to the Innovation Kitchen to try new menu items and share feedback.

Cava launched its broadcast channel, Tzatziki Town Hall, last year and now has about 2,400 members. Andy Rebhun, Cava’s chief marketing and experience officer, told us the brand most recently used the broadcast channel to help collect customer photos of the 

 it released in August. It has also used the channel to generate social content, like asking members to build the social team’s 

, solicit input on new chip flavors, and offer exclusive access to new menu items.

The channel, Rebhun said, “allows secret information and news to get to [members] first.”

Abby Davison, communications manager, North America, at Tony’s Chocolonely, told us the brand has used its broadcast channel, which it launched last month, to get feedback on its products. After the brand planned to rename its Dark Milk Chocolate Pretzel Toffee bar (a decision made because US-based consumers “did not understand what dark milk chocolate” meant, Davison said), the brand headed to its broadcast channel to ask followers what they might rename it if it were up to them.

“It was a great place to get that feedback, and that’s something that we’re bringing to the product and innovation team, like, ‘Hey, this is what our deep fans and community would call it,’” she said.

Kathleen Braine, CMO of 818 Spirits, said the brand created its broadcast channel last month in an effort to reach both superfans and more passive consumers. She likes the ability to interact with customers, which can be missing in traditional SMS and email marketing, and plans to use the channel to assess demand for certain products and variations.

“We’re constantly getting DMs and comments about, ‘When does this launch?’ ‘How can I find this hat?’ ‘How can I get tickets to Outpost next year?’” Braine said. “We thought it made a ton of sense to just put our community all in one place.”

Beyond communicating directly with customers, marketers are using broadcast channels to reward them. So far, 818 has used its broadcast channel to give away a YSL bag with a 

 and share RSVP info for a tailgate event in Dallas for last Saturday’s Texas vs. Oklahoma game.

Tedesco said the broadcast channel allows Shake Shack to increase the value of its giveaways compared to those on its main Instagram page. “We can afford to give a bigger prize because it’s a smaller group, but also they appreciate it more,” she said.

For Tony’s Chocolonely, Davis said the broadcast channel can create “digital VIP opportunities” for fans through giveaways and in-person events where they can meet other fans and company executives.

There’s still room for improvement, marketers said, and Tedesco hopes Meta will add more analytics to broadcast channels. “Right now, it’s very manual to go through and see our top-performing posts,” she said. “Getting to see a little bit more of our followers and the breakdown of where they are would be super helpful for us.”

As brands experiment with new ways of engaging with customers on Instagram, Tedesco said finding the right channel comes down to finding what works best for a brand’s niche.

“Those are big considerations when there’s already so many social channels to stay abreast on,” she said. “It’s the lift and what you want to get out of it and what you want to give your community in return.”

four mobile phones with multicolored speech balloons coming out of them are held by four arms, reaching from outide of the frame

How brands are maximizing Instagram’s broadcast channels

Brands like Shake Shack and Tony’s Chocolonely continue to experiment with the feature, where marketers can engage with and collect feedback from brand superfans.

A US TikTok, it seems, is actually coming.

The sale of TikTok’s US operations was made nearly official Thursday via an executive order from President Trump, executing the terms of the divest-or-ban law that required TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to cede control of the app’s domestic operations to US-based owners or be shut down. The sale will now likely undergo 

 from both the US and Chinese governments to make it a sure thing.

If approved, a group of investors including Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Rupert Murdoch will oversee a company overseeing TikTok’s US operations, which the White House valued around $

 retain less than 20% stock in the new company. The timing of the new app’s launch is not yet clear.

The announcement is the pinnacle of a yearslong effort and national security panic that began when President Trump 

 TikTok in 2020. Congress then introduced the divest-or-ban bill that passed in 2024 with bipartisan support, was 

 into law by President Biden, and was upheld by the Supreme Court. Since taking office, President Trump has delayed implementation of the law four times via legally questionable executive orders, during which time ByteDance and the Chinese government seemed averse to a sale as multiple 

 from the US threw their hats in the ring. On Thursday, Trump said he got the “

” from Chinese President Xi Jinping, making the sale possible.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 Six Americans will reportedly sit on the board to control TikTok, with 

 from ByteDance. Under the terms of the deal, US-based users’ data will be stored in the US and overseen by Oracle, which already oversees TikTok’s US user data on its US-based servers. Ellison, who co-founded Oracle, is on track to 

 of various media companies, including CBS, Paramount, and now TikTok, this year.

 A new algorithm for US users is reportedly on the horizon as part of the deal, which, according to 

, will be “retrained and continuously monitored to ensure that US content is free from any outside manipulation,” though it’s not yet clear what that will look like.

 of the TikTok app was in the works, some expressed concerns about censorship and the impact of a platform ecosystem detached from the rest of the world. While White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that US users will still be able to watch and share content with global audiences, for marketers, it raises questions around audience reach and scale, as well as what global campaigns or TikTok Shop sales could look like. 

 have also expressed anxiety about the fate of their roles.

Should users, creators, and TikTok staffers react negatively to the American version of the app once it comes to fruition, it will be a matter of watching where they go next. For competitors, it could be a Reel opportunity in the Short(s) term.

Tiktok logo displayed in front of US, China flags

Trump orders sale of TikTok to US investors

The yearslong effort to get TikTok under US-based ownership seems to be over—but what comes next?

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