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6/12
Alex Garcia
June 25, 2025
Content every brand should make… Over the next few months this will be the theme. For context, I’ve worked in social since 2015 - when asking a brand for a $1,000 budget was a lot of money. Now, brands will spend 7-figures on their social team. Ten years later, I’ve helped brands add millions of followers and generate billions of views. I’ve seen and tested nearly everything that works and doesn’t work. And so this week I’m breaking down a content format that’s working and you need to take advantage of.
And a big thank you to Insense for partnering with us and letting us create media for a livin’.
In partnership with Insense
Seeding Campaigns That Actually Run Themselves
If you're doing $1M+ and still juggling creator outreach, product shipment logistics, and UGC follow-ups… why?
Product seeding campaigns that run themselves? That’s how Victoria Beckham Beauty, Bones Coffee, Flo Health, and UCA Lingerie scale UGC without killing team bandwidth.
Insense handles:
End-to-end creator sourcing and creator comms
Product shipment at scale
Creative strategy + briefing + UGC delivery
You get licensed content from creators who actually follow the brief — and it’s all done for you. Get up to 20% off managed services — offer ends June 20.Get the report.
One-Shot Video
A one-shot video is just that. A 3-8 second clip (sometimes longer depending on the action). Typically no cuts. Sometimes soft zooms. But overall very simple and very effective. And you probably see them every time you scroll without realizing.
For example - this is a one shot video:
But two key points about one-shot videos:
These can be shot on your iPhone or cinema camera (and everything in-between) and still be successful.
There are layers to good, great, and the best one shot videos (all achievable with iPhone - not androids lol).
Low Production To High Production
The production level doesn’t matter in regards to the success of the video. The production level, more so depends on the type of brand you are, the brand’s lore, and perception.
Chances are a high-end luxury menswear brand wouldn’t shoot on an iPhone but a scrappy menswear line dropping their first collection would. And that’s fine.
But you want to pick your weapon of choice based on the perception you want to create and your price point. Obv there are always exceptions to the rule.
The Good, To Great, To The Best Layers
The Good - Either an amazing visual or amazing text on screen.
The Great - Combination of both a great visual and great text.
The Best - 10/10 visual, text, and sound design (plus other components like the aesthetic, action, and angles).
I always stress to brands, you can invest $100k into a production and create a movie-masterpiece level of content - but if you can’t get someone’s attention then it doesn’t matter.
So, consistently storyboard, find inspo, test, iterate, and religiously look at the “view rate past 3 seconds” to see if your hooks are getting better and better.
The Best Part About One Shots
Scalability and accessibility to effectiveness ratio. Yeah, that’s some sh*t I made up.
But seriously, they’re easy to produce, anyone can create them, and when they work - they WORK.
And you can use them across the entire content funnel.
And The Best One Shots Are…
Inspirational
Aspirational
Motivational
Educational
Entertaining
Relatable
Or a combo of the above.
For example, you can have an aspirational video/visual with a relatable text on screen which is a formula for shareability.
And if you’re a brand a highly recommend testing one shots in your strategy asap and paying attention to them when you scroll.
I personally have an entire swipe file of one shots saved on IG + TikTok and I’m always breaking down why it works and I’ll share some of my favorites below.
Until next time,
Alex G