Last Tuesday, I sat in my car after a client meeting and just stared at my phone for ten minutes.
We’d just presented the campaign results to a client who’d been so excited about the creative that she literally called her boss into the room to see it before we launched. Six weeks later? 247 views. Her excitement had turned into that polite smile you give when you’re trying not to look disappointed.
Meanwhile, some random TikTok of a guy making a sandwich in his kitchen had 2.3 million views.
I’ve been doing this for twelve years, and I’m genuinely confused. We’re creating better work than ever, but getting worse results than when I started. It doesn’t make sense.
You probably know exactly what I’m talking about. That moment when you refresh the dashboard hoping something changed overnight. The phone calls where you’re explaining to a client why their “investment” basically disappeared. The team meetings where everyone’s looking at analytics that might as well be blank.
Here’s what’s really messing with my head: I went to three different marketing conferences this year, and nobody’s talking about this. Everyone’s still sharing “best practices” from 2019 while their own content is bombing.
So I did something I probably should have done years ago. I spent a weekend auditing content from agencies like ours – mid-sized shops working with good clients. The results were brutal. The more professional and polished the content looked, the fewer people saw it. The more we followed the playbook, the worse we did.
It hit me that we might be solving the wrong problem entirely.
We’re obsessing over production quality while people are consuming content on their phones in line at Starbucks. We’re creating for conference rooms while our audience is scrolling in their pajamas. We’re chasing perfection in a world that rewards authenticity.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
About three months ago, we had a client emergency. Their original campaign got killed last minute, and we had 48 hours to create something completely different. No time for the usual process – just raw, honest, slightly messy content that we normally would have polished for another week.
It did 300 times better than anything we’d ever created for them. Twelve qualified leads in the first day. The client called me on a Saturday morning just to say thank you.
That’s when I realized we’ve been thinking about this all wrong.
The brands that are actually winning right now aren’t spending more money. They’re not following the rules we learned in marketing school. They’re doing something completely different that has nothing to do with budget and everything to do with human psychology.
They’ve figured out how to feel like a real conversation instead of a commercial. How to be vulnerable without being unprofessional. How to catch people off guard in the best possible way.
I started testing this approach with our other clients. Instead of asking “What’s our message?” we started asking “How do we want people to feel?” Instead of perfecting scripts, we focused on perfect timing. Instead of creating content, we started creating experiences.
The numbers changed everything. Four times more reach. Engagement rates that actually made sense. Clients who were excited to approve budgets instead of questioning them.
Look, I’m not saying throw away your brand guidelines or start filming everything on your phone. But what we’ve learned at Popart Films is that you can combine Hollywood-level storytelling with this more authentic approach. You can create content that looks cinematic but feels conversational. That’s polished but not plastic.
Our clients are seeing engagement rates five times higher than what they were getting before, and we’re doing it without doubling their budgets. Because the secret isn’t spending more – it’s understanding that in a world where everyone’s trying to look perfect, the brands that feel real are the ones people actually want to watch.
If you’re tired of creating content that disappears into the void, maybe it’s time to try a different approach. One that doesn’t require you to choose between quality and results.
