Alright, I need your help. I need ideas for future issues of Future Social. And I wanna hear your ideas! What could I write that’s most helpful to you? What social campaign did you recently see or work on that deserves some ink? Gimme all of it—you can reply directly to this email with your ideas & pitches!

But until then, let’s talk about

• How a brand earned billions of impressions… through trolling

• My predictions for social media management in 2026

• The new Instagram tabs layout

—Jack Appleby

Social Media Manager Jobs are about to change forever… and I wrote about it!

I worked with Hootsuite to write a deep guide on how…

• 🔥 AI will actually make your job easier

• 🔍 Why captions now matter for SEO

• 🎥 Why you gotta repurpose content

• 📊 Why data fluency is now a job requirement

• 💡 And how to tell the difference between a real trend and pure hype

Whether you’re building your first brand account or leading a global team, this one’ll help you work smarter, not harder. Read the full piece here!

Loveee that Hootsuite tapped me for this one—you can tell they love to help us social pros learn, and I loved partnering with them!

LeBron and Hennessy trolled their way to billions of impressions… but was it a good move?

LeBron’s my GOAT. Yeah, he can be a little corny at times, but that’s the most innocent sin an all-timer can have. The guy can laugh at himself! That’s so rare from a superstar.

It’s also why he could turn what’s probably his one career regret into the most viral single brand social media post of the year.

Let’s dig into The Decision 2.0, the bait-and-switch social moment from LeBron and Hennessy that earned hundreds of millions of views, insane media coverage, entire TV segments, and a whole lot of eye rolls.

The Viral Teaser

Quick flashback to 2010. After starting his career in Cleveland, LeBron hosted a live TV event called The Decision to announce he’d take his talents to South Beach. It went viral when viral wasn’t even a word yet. It also triggered his hometown to burn their James jerseys—Bron didn’t think through how eventizing the moment would alienate an entire city & state (it turned out okay, he came back and brought ‘em a championship in 2016).

But now LeBron’s a 40 year old Laker. He’s quite literally the oldest player in the NBA. He’s achieved what many believed were his two biggest goals: becoming the all-time NBA points leader, and playing alongside his son, Bronny. We’ve all wondered when he might hang it up.

So when James posted on Instagram about “The Second Decision,” it was pandemonium.

Everyone immediately guessed was that he’d announce his retirement, as speculated by every single sports outlet ever. The single post earned 33 million views on LeBron’s Instagram and likely billions of impressions in earned media coverage (hell, my own speculation pulled almost 400k views). The post didn’t have #ad anywhere (which we’ll get to in a bit), so many figured it couldn’t be some cornball teaser ad (they figured wrong).

The reveal… was an ad.

But just a day later, we got this silliness: LeBron’s “decision” to take his talents to… Hennessy VSOP.

His reveal Instagram post parodied the original Decision… until he started spinning a Hennessy bottle on his finger, spun a record, poured a cocktail, and smiled bigger and bigger at the ridiculousness of it all. Considering he probably got a colossal bag for allowing a brand to build a campaign around The Decision, I’d smile if I was him, too.

But I audibly groaned. I groaned just now writing about the groan. I don’t feel like grabbing a thesaurus, so I’ll just keep calling it corny. But… it’s also probably brilliant, and it definitely worked, even if I hate bait & switch ideas.

Is virality worth intentionally tricking your audience?

Pretty much every hoops fan I know boo’ed the final reveal. It was anticlimactic clickbait, intentionally designed to mislead consumers & LeBron fans into watching a liquor ad.

It goes against every fiber of my being to purposefully fool consumers—I fundamentally believe tricking people isn’t good for any brand. But in this case, I genuinely cannot think of a way that Hennessy could’ve gotten more eyeballs on their product, so I gotta shrug and call it a success.

Please God don’t let your takeaway be “any press is good press.” Hennessy wasn’t risking pissing people off—they risked some cringe (which they definitely got). The juice was worth the squeeze a million times over.

Wait… wasn’t that first teaser an #ad?

I’m snitching a little here, but I’m a little confused by the legality of the teaser content. If LeBron was paid to post the teaser (which he obviously was), that should’ve been clearly labeled as an #ad to meet FTC guidelines for influencer content.

Yes, it would’ve ruined the whole campaign if they revealed it was an ad… but that’s the whole point of the law. We as marketers aren’t supposed to trick consumers, especially when it comes to celebrity endorsements.

I’m not sure how they got away with not disclosing that first teaser as an ad, and I’m sure my old ad agency peers are throwing tomatoes at me for this take, but I reallyyy wonder if holding back the Hennessy sponsorship was above board…

What can your brand take away from all this?

We’ve all worked for brands that play it safe. Brands that won’t risk anything and kill every idea with an ounce of creativity. And those brands simply never get seen.

The biggest ideas are the ones that win. The crazy ideas that everyone in the brainstorm calls crazy. In a wildly oversaturated social media sphere, you gotta bring awesome ideas to the table to stand out. That’s why Hennessy won here.

Social Cues

There are so many social big thinkers out there, writing all kinds of amazing strategies, analysis, and breakdowns. All ships rise with the tide, so here are a few reads from other places I think you could learn from.

Twitter is trying to fix posts with links (Nikita Bier)

Elon made it clear he doesn’t want people leaving Twitter to read articles, but new Twitter Head Of Product Nikita Bier just shared a preview of a new Twitter feature, allowing you to read articles in platform while still showing the like / comment / retweet buttons. That could be colossal for journalists to come back to the bird app.

Instagram launches tabs scrolling (Adam Mosseri)

So much content, so little time. IG introduced a new way for you to navigate the app, focusing more on Reels consumption and DMs. My brain breaks every time a UI changes, so it’ll take me a month to figure out if I like this one.

Instagram announces Rings winners (Fast Company)

I’m still deciding what to think about this new IG awards program. The nature of it all is probably good, but we know how hyper exclusive anything 30 under 30ish gets, and the rich tend to get richer. Until I can figure out my feelings, here’s the list of winners—I’m curious what you think.