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🪩 Volume 153 | September 23, 2026

 

My Sunday scaries this week were associated with the fact that I was no longer in my favorite city: Boston. BUT ALAS, THERE’S A JOB TO BE DONE, and that job is downloading YOU on the most important takeaways from one of the largest marketing conferences in the United States: UNBOUND.

 

 

This isn’t gonna be your traditional campaign breakdown. Instead, I’m hitting you with things I want you to ponder as you assess how you’re ending 2026 and setting up your marketing for 2027.

 

Audio companion this week will be dedicated to sharing the OTHER half of things learned through Sarah → since she went to different sessions than I did. You’ll wanna tune in!

 

 

 

- Sarah Whittle, founder of Unicorn Social and hilarious creator over on IG and LinkedIn, former Duolingo, Smosh, and Crocs. 

 

I got to sit down with Sarah (Whittle) and this is one thing she dug in on.

 

Like in 2026, yes, we all know that every social platform has to be treated differently (right??? LOL???) but the way she broke it down was very interesting to me.

 

→ For example: on YouTube, she was talking about how the BEST YouTube videos and YouTube creators in the WORLD do NOT start with the “idea” for the video: they start with the THUMBNAIL. Y’all: 90% of top-performing videos use custom thumbnails, and roughly 70% to 80% of click decisions rely on the thumbnail and title combination (source: YouTube).

 

In practice: strategy and creative MUST work together. Deciding what thumbnail would get clicked over another thumbnail and THEN creating the video, is the move for this platform.

 

→ Applied to Instagram, the thing that pushes a Reel past your own followers and out to strangers is sends. As in, someone watches your video and taps that little paper airplane thing to fire it straight into a friend's DMs. Adam Mosseri (head of IG) has repeated this for a solid year: DM shares carry 3 to 5 times more weight than likes for reaching new people, and one send does the work of roughly 15 likes in the distribution model (source: Mosseri / Instagram).

 

In PRACTICE: decide the reason someone forwards it BEFORE you hit record.

 

→ Applied to TikTok: “completion” is the name of the game. You have to hook people in the first 3 seconds. Industry analysis puts watch time and completion at an estimated 40 to 50% of the entire ranking decision, with roughly 70% completion as the bar to get pushed to a wider audience (source: TikTok for Business + 2026 retention analyses)

 

In PRACTICE: that hook better be damn good. I like to do this by recording my video, but peeling out THE most interesting part and making that the first thing people see, OR plan for the first 3 seconds to just be so attention-grabby, that people can’t keep scrolling. 

 

 

 

This session was entirely dedicated to TV/streaming ads, WHICH BY THE WAY ARE MORE ATTAINABLE AND AFFORDABLE THAN YOU MIGHT THINK—but there were nuggets in here that carry beyond TV/streaming. 

 

Starting with: AI search. Some crazy stats:

INTIMIDATING, RIGHT? Those stats quickly prompted me to have anxiety about how Brand Good TIme shows up in AI search. Lol. So what THIS MEANS is that it’s ultra important to figure out how to generate demand BEOFRE a search or AI prompt happens. 

 

Brand strength and recognizability remain ESSENTIAL over optimizing for AI clicks. Yeah, there’s a pecking order, here. And research shows that users often choose a recognizable brand even when AI recommends alternatives FIRST (so brand RECALL is a differentiator in an AEO arms race). 

 

One way to do this: TV. Other ways, that we know and love, too:
 

Out-of-home (billboards, transit, the screens you can't scroll past). OOH may actually out-punch TV at the exact thing you care about here. A study found OOH drives 2x the performance lift of broadcast and streaming TV, and 74% of people take an action on their phone after seeing a digital OOH ad, including looking the brand up (source: OAAA).

 

Podcasts. The recall king. Podcast ads land an 86% recall rate with active listeners, the highest of any ad medium, ahead of TV, radio, and social (source: Sounds Profitable, 2025). And you don't have to buy a spot to play. Guesting on the right show gets you the host's endorsement AND their audience, which is basically a recall cheat code for founders.

 

Your own audience. The newsletter sitting in an inbox every week (hi, hello, you're reading one right now). Owned channels are the BEST recall machine you've got, because every single send is another rep. Nobody has to go find you cuz ya already showed up.

 

A face people recognize. Founder-led content, posted consistently, so when the need finally surfaces, your name surfaces with it. That's the whole game on LinkedIn: be the person they already picture before they ever open the chatbot.

 

 

 

My favorite speaker ever: Jay Schwedelson. The king of “Do This, Not That.” You MIGHT know him because he’s besties with Marketing Millennials Daniel Murray, or because he puts on some of the LARGEST free virtual marketing conferences through his company, GURU Media Hub. Or if you’ve ever seen him speak, you’ll know who I’m talking about because he is absolutely hilarious, erratic, and knows how to captivate a room. 

 

 

This was the BEST session I went to, so I’ll hit you with the rapid fire info, based on REAL data because his company sends over 40K emails per year for clients across various industries and sectors, that I know you’ll actually use: 

 

 

 

Sarah's gonna walk us through the three sessions that actually rewired how SHE'S thinking.

 

Some IRL takes because I love a good marketing moment. 

 

1. Ever flown JetBlue? They’ve dethroned Spirit, IMO, with some of the best copywriting. But also RIP Spirit, lol. The screen on my seatback read “High tech. Low touch. Use your phone as a remote control for a less touch-y touch screen experience.” 

 

2. Stumbled into a Van Leeuwen for a post-dinner treat and immediately was greeted with signage that said “a life without anything good is bad” and other cute buzzphrases like “Good-good, not good-bad.”  Their whole philosophy is that happiness is healthiness and ice cream is a chronic deliverer of happiness. I AGREE. 

 

3. ALSO somehow randomly stumbled into a BOOK SIGNING as we visited my absolute favorite bookstore: Beacon Hill Books. If you’ve never been, add it to your list when you go to Boston. The author was Jenny Jackson, who wrote Pineapple Street and was also doing a book signing for her latest, The Shampoo Effect. She worked with a friend to design LINENS that matched the book’s theming and scenery (check it all out here), and we got a first hand share from her on why she chose certain icons for certain pieces. Obviously bought the $30 novel after, and had her sign it. Will let you know if it’s good???