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I’m still mad Across The Spider-Verse didn’t win Best Animated Film. That movie is truly perfect—should’ve been up for Best Picture as well, imo.

You don’t need a movie rant from me, though. Let’s talk about

• How your brand can use Twitter replies to make content

• This crazy new OpenAI text-to-video tool

• The latest on the TikTok ban (sigh).

—Jack Appleby

How OpenAI used Twitter replies to show off their new product (and how your brand can, too).

We’re gonna talk about AI today, but not in the way you think.

I just happen to love how an AI company used an internal influencer, Twitter, and audience participation to announce their new product. Any brand in any industry could use these tactics, even if your new thing doesn’t make podcasting golden retrievers… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

You know OpenAI as the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, two of the most used artificial intelligence tools out there. On February 15, they announced their new product, Sora: a generative AI text-to-video tool. Type in a prompt, the program will spit out a video. A really, really cool video.

Their reveal had a strong announcement tweet that went viral on its own, but I want to turn your attention to how their CEO used his following to accentuate the news.

OpenAI let Twitter replies create their product videos

Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI. He’s an industry celebrity with 2.7 million Twitter followers, nearly as much as @OpenAI’s 3.3 million.

Just a few minutes after the official announcement tweet, Sam tweeted to his audience, asking them to submit text ideas to show off Sora’s video capabilities.

Asking the audience to pitch their own ideas is a perfect strategy here. By letting Twitter randos pitch their own ideas, OpenAI can show they’re not cherrypicking brand safe promo videos or doctoring anything, but that their tool actually does what they claim.

Clearly the curious were anxious to participate. Altman’s tweet earned 15,000 replies & 7 million impressions as onlookers waited for their Sora creations.

Then Sam started tweeting the results, and wow.

The videos are gorgeous and I encourage you to awe at each and every one—right after we talk about the tactical social strategy. See how Sam used Twitter’s quote retweet from the user replies to share the Sora videos? It’s simple & super effective.

• The quote retweet surfaces the original Sora prompt to audiences

• It triggers the audience to reply with more ideas

• Sam doesn’t add any extra copy, letting the reply + video do the talking

Okay, now we can take another look at my personal favorite.

Are you seeing these engagement numbers? Every single one went viral, and rightfully so. How about something a little more weird?

It’s pretty impressive stuff, and I’m amped to get deeper into AI. But *snaps fingers* let’s focus again, because your brand can use this strategy!

What brands can learn from the Sora announcement

If you’ve got a new product (especially a digital one), creating social proof through social engagement is an especially clever way to validate what you’re selling.

• An analytics company could offer live queries on Twitter!

• A fitness brand could re-post users doing their workouts!

• A new video game could quote retweet user’s created characters!

And even if your product doesn’t have that immediate Twitter-to-product offering, you can always encourage engagement in other ways—letting fans name the flavor, sending special product to the first 100 people who reply a certain way, or asking for selfies with the current version of your product that’s ready for upgrade.

Always good to involve the audience when ya can.

My newsletter is more strategy and how-to, but I think it’s important you keep up with business and social media news—so many features changing in this space. How about the Bay Area Times for that need?

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Social Cues

The Caitlin Clark Effect (Night Light)

A good read from Mr. Beat’s manager on the dominance of our favorite women’s basketball player + how it’s affecting viewership, revenue, and name / image / likeness conversations in women’s sports.

Has TikTok Growth collapsed? (Business Insider)

Bet you didn’t expect to read these numbers. Some interesting theories here as to why people are spending less time on TikTok than before (though I think it’s TikTok Shop, tbh).

Will congress ban TikTok? The Latest. (Rolling Stone)

IDK, man, it’s changing by the hour and I’m sorta checking myself out of the discourse until we see what happens.