The Sidemen paid £10k for someone to "steal" their content

When Inside came out on Netflix, the Sidemen gave £10,000 to whoever could get the most views clipping their content.

Sounds crazy to most people. Not just letting someone ‘steal’ our content, but paying them to do it…

The team saw it as engineering omnipresence.

Their thinking: "I've seen that everywhere" is the new metric of success.

Clipping means billions in reach across platforms they're not tapping into directly.

The algorithm rules all - discovery doesn't happen through search or subscriptions anymore, it happens through hitting personalised feeds.

The stats back this up. 71% of Gen Z discovers content through clips now.

Creators like Adin Ross are spending £150,000 monthly on clipping just to get that level of reach.

Fighting the algorithm is pointless.

You have to work with it or get left behind completely.

Grace Andrews and I just broke this whole strategy down in our latest Community Service edition, along with why BuzzFeed's comeback strategy completely misses how algorithms actually work, why Apple's losing money on TV+ but winning culturally, and what the Steven Bartlett x Jimmy Fallon moment was really about.

This kind of analysis is exactly why we launched Community Service - to dig into the decisions that most industry coverage skips over.

Our weekly conversations cover the intersection of creators, brands, and media with insights you won't get anywhere else.

Real analysis from people building alongside these creators rather than just observing from the sidelines.

Link's below if you want access to the full breakdown plus everything else we're seeing in the creator economy right now.

Check it out here

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

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