Welcome back to another edition of Unthreaded.

Starting this week there's a round-up at the top of the newsletter: a few links that caught my attention recently, with my take on each.

They all happened to point in the same direction and I wanted to dig a bit more into the theme sitting underneath all three: 

More and more of the big brands are quietly rebuilding themselves to operate like media companies (and there's a lot in that for the rest of us who aren't working with Fortune 500 budgets).

So let’s talk about it.

Social platforms have quietly turned into entertainment hubs and the brands that understand this are reorganizing around that instead of fighting it. Gap recently created a chief entertainment officer role and hired a former Paramount exec into it. When a company adds a senior editorial seat like that, changes start happening inside the building long before any of it reaches the feed. (Digiday)

Campaigns were always a workaround for renting attention from someone else and that era is start to close a bit. The modern move is owning your content as an asset and controlling the distribution around it, the way a media business does. HubSpot picked up a YouTube network and OpenAI bought a business talk show, reportedly in low hundreds of millions. Moves like this serve as proof that even companies with enormous reach can't manufacture trust. They either have to buy it or build it up. (Content Marketing Institute)

Brands are starting to make serialized shows instead of ads and the budgets are smaller than you'd guess. For instance, a few of the short-form microdrama apps are outperforming traditional streaming apps like Netflix, in total app downloads, and brands like Crocs are funding actual episodic series around their products. Remember Quibi? They burned through billions on premium production and ultimately had to fold.  Microdramas win on budgets as low as $30,000, because they live where attention already is instead of asking people to come find them. (Marketing Brew)

So the argument is over. 

For a few years we debated whether a brand really needs to act like a media company. Somewhere in the midst of that the companies that took it seriously were decisive and started reorganizing around it. 

The reorganizing is happening in three different places at the same time, and once you notice one you start seeing all three.

It shows up first in who companies are hiring. 

Gap created a chief entertainment officer and put a former Paramount executive in the seat. 

Across the industry, postings for storyteller roles doubled in a year, one company offered as much as $274,000 for a head of storytelling, and Notion folded its comms, social, and influencer teams into a single storytelling function. 

Hiring is the most honest thing a company does, because it costs real money and it's slow to undo.

By the time an editorial seat shows up on the org chart, the strategy behind it has already changed (usually long before any of it reaches the public).

It shows up next on the balance sheet. 

Again, HubSpot bought a YouTube network and OpenAI bought a business talk show in the low 9 figures and we know they aren’t starved for reach.

They already command about as much distribution as anyone on the internet and they're still paying real money for editorial credibility, they couldn't generate on their own. 

If trust could be produced at scale by the companies with the most scale, those deals wouldn't make an ounce of sense. 

The fact that they happen tells you trust doesn't work that way. You either buy it or you build it the hard way.

And it starts to show up in the work itself, when brands make actual programming instead of relying on seasonal efforts. 

You will notice they build newsletters, podcasts, editorial teams, and media properties that look a lot different than traditional marketing.

And to be clear, the point I’m making here is not really about the formats.  It’s that attention works differently now.  

People don't hand it out the way they used to. They spend it carefully and trust recommendations less because everyone is overwhelmed with options. 

So if people are considering doing business with you in any capacity, much of their research happens long before they ever talk to you.

Now, you could look at examples like HubSpot and OpenAI and think this only applies to companies operating at a completely different level.

But I'd argue the opposite.

The forces driving those decisions are already showing up in businesses much smaller than theirs.

About 45 percent of buyers now begin their research inside an AI tool instead of a search bar.

Think about what that means.

The first version of your company a prospect encounters may not be your website, your sales team, or even your social channels. It may be whatever an AI model knows about you.

And the businesses with a deep body of published thinking, content, and perspective tend to get represented more accurately. On the flipside, the businesses with very little on the record often get reduced to a sentence, get confused with competitors, or just overlooked entirely.

Most won't see it happening right away though.

They'll just notice that opportunities feel harder to come by, that fewer people seem familiar with their work, or that growth isn't happening as easily as it once did.

That's why I don't think this is really a conversation about content, social media, or who bought what.

It's really about trust.

Attention has to be earned long before anyone is willing to buy and trust is still the asset that earns it.

The companies in these stories are spending their way toward that position because they can.

The rest of us have to build it.

Today’s Breakdown is the kind of thing that's easy to nod along with and then do nothing about, so here's a way to make it concrete.

This week, I want you to figure out what your one owned media engine actually is, and who owns it. 

What’s the one thing you can keep producing consistently that builds trust with the specific person you want to reach, that lives where their attention already is, and that no platform can switch off?

Copy the prompt below and paste it into Claude, or ChatGPT, or whatever you use. 

It'll interview you about your business and then help you name the engine and the simple system around it, rather than handing you a generic content plan.

If this edition got you thinking about owning your attention instead of renting it, this video is the larger system it sits inside.

I break down why posting more isn't the answer, and the simple three-part system we use with our own brand and with clients to make content actually compound. The owned engine we talked about today is the center of that system, the part no platform gets to throttle. If you want to see where it fits in the whole picture, start here.

Hear the conversations behind the lessons. Heavy on Brand is the podcast hosted by Brian Fitch where he sits down with founders, operators, and people building incredible brands to talk about what it actually takes to grow a business people remember.

Ready to build a brand that works as hard as you do? Carbon Thread is the agency behind Unthreaded. We help companies in the $1M–$50M range build brands, authority, and growth systems that actually move the needle. If you're tired of guessing and ready for a partner, let's talk.