Your competition is last Sunday’s show.

Some venture firms are now hiring filmmakers. Not marketing staff: people who make the kind of shows you’d binge on a Sunday.

The logic is simple. AI made content close to free, so there’s an endless pile of it, and people stopped watching things just because a company posted them. They watch what’s good. The feed doesn’t sort by industry. Your post about last quarter sits between a comedian, a cooking show and someone’s dog.

What a good show has that a post doesn’t

In 2009, Heineken had girlfriends, bosses and professors talk roughly a thousand AC Milan fans into a classical concert on the night Milan played Real Madrid. Fifteen minutes in, the concert turned out to be fake, and the fans watched the whole match on a big screen in the hall. People watched that film to the end because it had a setup, someone to feel for, and a payoff worth waiting for.

Most company posts skip all three. They open with the product and hope people stay.

Borrow the structure

–Setup: start with a situation, not a pitch.

–Someone to feel for: a customer, someone on your team, or you.

–Payoff: hold something back until the end, and make it worth the wait.

Forty seconds is enough for all three. You’re not trying to beat Netflix, only to be worth the slot.

Heineken’s campaign is other brands’ work, not ours.

Be the obvious choice, not another copy.