Oren John's 2026 Creative Trend Predictions (HOOKS+VIRALITY+STORYTELLING)

Oren John: We're excited to talk to y'all here today about 2026. Um, I only have 15 minutes and I'm a known yapper, so I am going to get uh right into it directly. So, let's pop into, you know, I'm just gonna share my, share my entire screen. We'll see how this goes.

Oren John: All right, so, starting out, let's get in present.

Oren John: All right, so quick background. Uh, I'm at Oren Meets World on social media. I make content on Instagram and YouTube, a lot about marketing and a lot about taste and creative life. I'll talk a bit about my background in a second. It'll be relevant to why you should listen to me. But what I'm going to cover here in this presentation is a bit about me. I want to talk about 2026 hooks because uh, everyone thinks we talk about hooks too much, but we don't. It's a big part of why we're getting better uh and what people are doing to stand out. I'm going to talk about top of funnel and basically giving the algorithm more tools for organic and for paid uh to be effective. And I'm going to talk a bit about mid funnel and that's all I think, again, as a yapper, I can realistically get in for you here today.

Oren John: Um, but some quick notes, why you should listen to me. So, in addition to making content myself, uh and I started making content when I was a uh SVP of marketing at a consumer goods company because I wanted to get better at it. And that continues today where a lot of the content I make is me testing things I can apply to other places. But in addition, I also train creators in Cut 30. So we're at about 2,000 creators and brands that have been trained in this. And the nice part about training so many people and having a really active slack of folks is we actually get to see exactly what's working right now across a lot of people, which has been invaluable in getting insights to share online. Uh in addition to that, I'm the partner in a women's wear brand called Understated Leather where I've run all the meta ads for the last few years. Uh and that's a smaller one. That's one where we don't have any big budgets. We, you know, only can can spend what we make. We've scaled to about a six figure e-com uh company a month and I've been kind of working through that as well as wholesale and others and so I know a lot from there. I also worked on Gel Blaster. I was the SVP of marketing there. It was a big uh we were in Target, Walmart, Costco, as well as big online, big influencer, YouTube, large paid media spend that also had to impact retail. So thinking a lot about that and its creative strategy there. And now I work for a uh private equity firm in beauty called Anvest and uh one of our largest companies there is called Morphe. It's a cosmetic company where I am actively part of a uh extended team that works on organic social and paid social briefs, uh campaigns and everything. And so I'm in this both organic and paid every day.

Oren John: And what I'm going to focus on here today is a combo of those two things. We're going to talk about organic strategy going into 2026 and paid and where they overlap. And I want to make sure a lot of this is relevant to both since I know a lot of you are starting to look at both hand in hand. Um, so a quick note starting out. I want to talk about basically hook rate and hook rate obsession. So everyone's always, you hear this complaint like, oh, why are our views down? Why are our ads not performing? It's the algo, it's Andromeda, it's any number of excuses. And uh the answer is often, no, it's literally everyone is getting better. There's been so much enablement content, there's so many good creators, there's so many amazing editors that you're now basically competing against a bar that is raised every 60 days. And so I want to give some like actual tactics that we are using um in content on brands I work with all the time to improve hook rates because every kind of .1 second matters there. So the first is this animated titles with uh remove background. You may have seen these before, but it's pretty easy.

Oren John: I'm going to swap over here and play this. So you will see this is in Premiere or CapCut, they're just removing the background, pasting a layer over it and putting the text behind it, but it's an extremely effective hook. We see very similar stuff with content like this where instead of necessarily putting it behind it, they are animating tons of stuff kind of over and around um the content that is being put together.

Oren John: Let's see, that wasn't my actual link. This one was. Where you are seeing inside her first five seconds or so, they are covering a lot of ground visually on what's a pretty typical UGC video.

Oren John: Another tactic um that we're using a bunch in cosmetics is basically a overlay swipe. So she does a standard intro and then basically has that four grid of a mood board of a look or whatever's coming before she launches into it. It's just a good hook retention tactic.

Oren John: Um and then another one is you're seeing all these creator tools where people are doing transitions, etcetera, things like that are now becoming more and more in a brand toolkit where you're like, can we have our UGC creators do this? Can we have our editor take what they filmed um and do it as well?

Oren John: Popping back to this presentation. Uh and then one that I want to talk about that I I love that we did all holiday is this format switch. I didn't have a link for this because his is kind of extended, but basically, it starts as a green screen, the content where they're floating on screen and then goes into a standard tutorial. So basically he shows this look he's going to do and then gives the tutorial of how to do it. But if you are uh looking at how am I going to improve my ad performance, how am I going to improve my organic performance, 90% of the time it comes down to how does the first three seconds of the video do? And these are some pretty concrete tactics for you to use inside of that, all of which um are are doable in CapCut uh and and apps like that.

Oren John: But the second thing to talk about here is that retention obsession. So I think what what the brands I'm working with and what I see a ton of brands doing in 2026 is basically enabling their teams with slightly more production. And that doesn't mean huge expensive things, but you've probably seen a lot of conversation around sets. And that goes into setting or AI hooks are similar. And I'm going to explain a bit of what this means. But basically, if you've been making the same content or your UGC creators are always in their same apartment or in it's like a similar place, that isn't enough to to stand out. Like how do you get, you know, more attention from it, no matter how good your video concept is, how do you add things to it to just improve it? And then how do you do that affordably? So one we're seeing a lot is AI hooks, not full AI videos. There's obviously been a blitz of people talking about AI UGC or AI this. Uh we test everything. That does not work super well in a lot of these ad accounts. What does work is the first couple seconds. Um an example, Revolve did a whole grip of these um AI ads in different places. These ads, organic posts, but they didn't do the right thing in my opinion. They made these and then that was it. That was the extent of the content. But a video of Revolve as the Hollywood sign that leads into something else is an awesome hook. And a way I would think about that purely for paid if you, you know, in organic it's a a little bit of a different game. And then second is setting. This is something uh a real concentration with brands among UGC next year is, hey, can we actually, if we're getting six videos or 10 videos done by a creator for our brand, for ads or for organic, can we also get them a day at a luxury hotel? Can we book them a set on PeerSpace where they can shoot? What can we do to elevate it? This is a influencer ad from L'Occitane where she is pretty famous, but you don't even see her face for the first five seconds. It is all amazing shots of this overhead inside like a luxury hotel. And again, that is something where if you're spending, let's say $200 a video for five UGC videos, then you want to basically add another six on top of that to give them a nice rental space or some production that may pay dividend and actually trying to get a winning asset. Similar thing I'm talking about, uh we're doing this with brands I work with right now is getting like shelves and closets and this opaque one is great because you can kind of see and then it opens and you do a reveal and that's an awesome hook and you can have products on there. But people are basically using one key item like under $500, they can make a recurring part of their content narrative. Same thing with little objects like bags. Uh we just used in this butter themed campaign I was working on, we used the Frasier butter bag. It's like 200 bucks, but it's kind of an it bag and it really elevates the video when people notice it or talk about it. And so all those things where if you're doing a what's in my bag or an unboxing or an open reveal, what are some of those items you can look at in realistic budget or borrow, etcetera, that elevate those assets?

Oren John: So moving out of the hook conversation, I want to talk about the content funnel. Let me let me check real quick how I'm doing on time. All right, we're doing great. I'll go about the content funnel and what that means for brands and for ad accounts. So, everyone in marketing knows the traditional marketing funnel that you want to attract awareness up top and you want to get down to sales at the bottom. Well, content works the same way. And back to that initial question where people are like, hey, we're not getting enough sales from our social media. We're not getting enough views. Uh we're not getting enough of an audience to scale on meta. A lot of this comes down to your top of funnel. What are you doing purely to get attention at the top of it? And the conversation that um I have a lot that a lot of brands have a hard time wrapping their head around is that all that really matters at the top is virality and views. Organic top of funnel has one goal for the like the right users, who your right consumer is, seeing it at scale, as many of the right person. It doesn't even have to do with your brand. It doesn't necessarily have to have the product in it. It's about getting them inside the algorithm both for ads and for organic. Let me explain. So first for organic, that top of funnel is extra crucial because basically, as all of you know, if you scroll Instagram or TikTok, if you like a video from somebody, you get shown more of it. And if you follow someone, a bunch goes on your feed right away from that person. We're all aware that's how that works. So from a funnel perspective, say that there was a skit about my brand that didn't really mention my product, was lightly related, but it got a million views. What happens is a lot more people than normal like that and then all of a sudden, they're shown your mid funnel content, one of your other recent performing videos that is probably not like that. It's probably a more product focused video, something you made that's more educational or value driven or more about your brand. And all of a sudden, a certain number of those people graduate down. But you cannot improve the number of people that enter the middle without putting stuff on top. And so a few ways that are standing out for this, one is just more creative organic assets where people are actually doing things um like like more artful things or play or I did a video today on my Instagram where I show people like Rains who made games out of their products or Meshki who's doing like they have their models playing tennis in their dresses. It's creative organic clips that are kind of more built for virality. Another method people are doing are these social shows. So Built has a show called Roomies. Alexis Bittar is a jewelry brand who has recurring characters who do it. This is a brand called Loewe House uh who does this where they basically are entertaining on their main feed. And people are wearing their products. For instance, the Loewe House glasses are always kind of prominent on screen, but that is really the only connection point to the brand besides building the brand lore. But it brings in way more views and content than their other stuff and is part of that top of funnel. So lots of brands are talking about how do they contract people for social shows, how do they get more creative with the organic? And that doesn't always mean more budget, but what it does mean is acting and trying to validate more uh ideas.

Oren John: And with that top of funnel, mid funnel is changing as well. A huge conversation we all had over the last year was about value content, right? You're either providing value or you're entertaining. How do you educate people about how to use your product? How do you um like make sure that they want to bookmark the content you have? That was a huge topic on organic especially this last year. But that's shifted, especially over the last few months to where that is very commodified right now. If you're just giving a tip or showing how to do something, it's only going so far. The new mid funnel is really expert storytelling, often with people involved to be able to do it right, not always. A few examples there.

Oren John: So this is a resale bag company and they have a creator who does these very well edited videos about what happened at fashion week, the history behind a specific Chanel bag, whatever it is, but she is providing real deep storytelling about the things that they sell. And that is their kind of middle of funnel, sometimes top of funnel content.

Oren John: Another example here is this kind of viral paint brand where he is explaining and showing how they mix it, what goes on, the thought process behind the color, uh and they do very large views basically inside their facility with it on set, showing the mixing, talking about the process, but it's a story around it, not just it's this paint and it looks good combined with these two furniture items.

Oren John: Perhaps the best example and arguably the kickstarter of this is this guy Ken Sakata, an excellent creator where he has a clothing brand, um where he makes really immaculately thought through clothes. And he then talks about all the core topics. This one's about Tom Ford and Tom Ford finding his vision, but he educates super highly and uses that as kind of the credibility that builds the brand underneath. But I like to show this because this style of video is becoming very popular with a slight production of the person, they're in a nice environment. They're showcasing lots of images uh like on top of it. They're basically telling a narrative without it, but it's not the hardest thing to edit. It's, you know, straightforward enough if you just requires a good story and a good personality. And that is the new value tips driven content of what we had kind of last year. And let me pop back over to here and stop sharing for a second and then we can we can chat here for a moment.

Oren John: Uh and so the the key thing I want to have everyone take away from this is that in this next year, that organic and paid are more tied together than ever. How do you generate that top of funnel awareness? How can you run both assets across? And to the point of that last slide, how do you develop personalities that have more credibility in ads? So for instance, you will see that um if you see a creator or an influencer who makes content for a brand, they run that same stuff as an ad, they're leveraging that influencer's credibility. Now, for brands who are able to put their own personality on there or develop a recurring character of, hey, we have our this UGC person we use them every month. If they're creating that organic content and they're creating ad creative and it's going to the same targeting audience, it's going to improve its efficacy. And it has to be thought about with in that same story framework. And so if you want to take away anything from this, and if I want to highlight the top things I talked about here, it's that hooks are still more important than ever and you need tactics. You need to say, what are we going to apply to these hooks this month or at this content session or at this shoot to make it better? And then same thing with retention, how are we basically putting things within our budgetary framework to make this work? How are we framing organic to like actually get real top of funnel that we can use for targeting, um that we can use to bring more people in? And then how can we use personalities within that to then establish credibility and make sure that all of our assets perform better when those people are used and build kind of real relationships. With that, um, that's the end of my rant. I think we're like 12 minutes of of 15 minutes in.

Evan Lee: Everybody, you got to show love in the chat. Oren came up, absolutely crushed it. Oren, I think we have time for one question if you're down. So one of the...

Oren John: Yeah, I was reading through...

Evan Lee: Go ahead.

Oren John: I was reading through one. Someone asked about... I'm not talking about services business. I work mostly on products, but I imagine some other people are. I saw that come in. But yeah, Evan, if you have a question, rip it and I'll I'll take it.

Evan Lee: That was the exact one that I was going to rip in all honesty. Like there was a question related to uh specifically like B2B. So we're talking specifically on the product end.

Oren John: Yeah, I mean this is also the exact same thing. I will point out the things I called out where I was like, hey, you you should buy a shelf or whatever may not apply as much, but can you establish a person or credibility there? Can that expert tell stories about what the B2B industry is? I use an example of Vanta the other day because Vanta is hiring a head of storytelling. If you don't know Vanta, they do the dullest shit in the world. They're selling like SOC 2 compliance to like companies to be able to like, oh, we want to get a government contract, we have to check these 45 boxes, right? Well, look, if their core social media feed was, they're it's like a cybersecurity thriller or it's like ASMR coding videos with like showing off the desktop setups of their top nerds. If it was Damon John explaining SOC 2 compliance, not even him, that's like would require a bigger budget, but like if it's someone interesting who's taking those topics and workshopping it, those same ideas apply of developing that personality, building that top of funnel to target against. Um, always B2B and services think all this cool stuff doesn't apply to them when in fact, if you just do it in a B minus level, you're so far above who you're competing with that you're going to smash.

Evan Lee: Oren, man, I love it. I'm going to throw one more at you before we get you out of here. So the question that comes to mind for me is like, you bang off hooks and concepts just like at the snap of your fingers. For anyone who's tuning in and just getting started, how can they start to train their minds to think in this way?

Oren John: Yeah, and so uh I'm a big frameworks person. I like to look at everything and be like, why did it work? Can I break it down? And I spend a lot of time doing those breakdowns. So for instance, um, I have dedicated scrolling. I think this is a good thing for everyone to do. I work in beauty, like I mentioned before. Beauty doesn't come in my feed. I have two 30 minute blocks where all I do is scroll beauty focused accounts. I take a lot of those top performing videos in my bookmarks and then I go like, what happened in the first three seconds? What did they do to retain? And then kind of make a little framework from that where it's like, oh, it's like a mood board wipe. And that's the only difference. So okay, that's a thing we can test. And so I think it comes down to um setting that time because every strategist thinks that they can just scroll and when they're on social media, they're helping, but like it's really not if you're not like I need 10 bookmarks by the end of this with a framework. Um probably the best advice I have.

Evan Lee: I love it. I can speak from first hand, everyone. I took Oren's course, Cut 30. It's a banger. So if you haven't had a chance, check it out. Join the next cohort. Oren, you're the man. Really appreciate you joining us.