Hey everyone,
Last month, I asked you to help name this newsletter. So welcome to The Joli Debrief! Huge thanks to Lani from Turtle Bay for the idea; a £100 voucher is coming your way!
But you didn’t think the giveaways would stop there, did you? 🤔 I’ve convinced Mike and Jamie to let me do something seriously cool next month 👀
The giveaway ties into a project that’s taken over my last couple of weeks: relaunching Joli Ad Studio 🚀. Since joining Joli, I realised we’d soft-launched this really cool feature last year, and the customers using it are loving the results, but I want more brands to discover what it can do! In a nutshell, alongside gifted collaborations, Joli also helps brands get professional UGC for ads in 7 days. More on that later…
The Ad Studio project has been keeping me busy, so I’m especially excited to sit down and write this edition for you, pumpkin spice latte in hand, obvs.
And as always, here’s a little glimpse of what I’ve been up to recently: above is a picture of me living my best life at the Uber Eats Restaurant of the Year Awards last week. Shout-out to Jinseon Korean BBQ for winning! I’m now figuring out how to make a Joli team trip to Coventry happen 😂
Now, let’s dive into what’s been happening in the world of hospitality and social media.
Top creator content from September
Joe’s video for Kolamba deserves the top spot this month. The quality was great, the edit kept things moving, and his voiceover was clear and engaging. Plus, the price offer appeared on screen straight away, giving viewers a reason to pay attention.
It reached over 23K views and drew plenty of comments from people in Joe’s community who wanted to visit.
When writing your next brief, give creators the key details people need to make a decision, like an offer or what makes your brand different from competitors. Then let them show the experience in their own style.
Foodie couple Raquel and Tom hooked their audience with a date-night spot in Brighton. Their Reel did really well, with 17K views and 662 likes.
But what really caught my eye was that the same video got around 1,000 views, 10 likes and no comments on TikTok. So why did it land on Instagram and not TikTok?
Raquel and Tom have built an engaged Brighton audience on Instagram, where their Reels often get around 20K views. A local date-night recommendation is relevant to their followers.
What can brands learn from this? When approving a creator for a local campaign, look at who engages with their content, not just the production quality or follower count. An active audience in the right city can be more valuable than a larger audience elsewhere.
Nicole’s TikTok promoting Six by Nico’s murder-mystery tasting experience really brought their unique concept to life. The video had snappy, high-quality footage, great lighting and a variety of shots that kept it interesting to watch.
The idea behind the campaign gave her plenty to work with, too. A murder-mystery tasting experience is something a creator can get excited about and tell a story around. Comments like “So cool. How much is this?” and “How do I book?” suggest viewers wanted to know more.
Deep dive: the power of giving creators something to talk about
Six by Nico isn’t the only brand giving creators an experience rather than just a menu. I’ve noticed many brands getting reach are giving influencers much more than a new item to promote.
- Pret launched its new Warm Ciabattas around getting people away from their desks for lunch, with a Soho activation and paid content from corporate lifestyle creators whose audiences closely match their London 9–5 customer.
- Driscoll’s turned a raspberry campaign into a real-life sweet shop in Soho, tapping into the 3pm sweet-treat moment and giving creators an actual experience to visit and share.
- PerfectTed went even bigger for its fifth birthday, creating a giant birthday cake installation on the South Bank with free matcha, cake and goodie bags to launch its new Birthday Cake Matcha. Instead of just sending creators the new flavour, they created a birthday party worth talking about.
The lesson is something we all love: storytelling is king. These brands thought beyond what they wanted people to try and built stories around when you’d have it, why you’d want it, and what makes the experience worth talking about.
But you don’t need to spend thousands of pounds on an activation to do this. It can be as simple as changing the brief from “come and try our new Sunday roast” to “take us on your perfect autumn Sunday. Film your favourite local walk followed by a roast that feels earned.”
Clays are flying with UGC for Christmas bookings 🚀
I have to give a shout-out to the team at Clays, who have been absolutely flying with their UGC content.
They’ve really leaned into UGC for paid ads, recognising that the content that works organically can also be some of the strongest creative to put paid spend behind. I think we’re going to see a lot more hospitality brands doing this over Christmas and into next year.
Clays have been making the most of Joli Ad Studio to create UGC specifically for paid ads. They upload a detailed brief, we match them with professional UGC creators, and they can give feedback through edit rounds until they have content that feels authentic, engaging and on-brand, without feeling like an ad.
Social Media Manager Amy from Clays said:
“We want UGC to feel authentic and creator-led, while still making sure the finished product works for the Clays brand and our paid media requirements.”
And it’s working. Clays have found UGC consistently outperforms other content formats, with creator content now a key part of both their organic and paid strategy. They’ve seen a positive impact on website traffic and booking conversions, while also giving their paid team far more creative to test.
That lines up with what we’re hearing from paid media experts too. Across hospitality campaigns, creator-led ads are seeing 7% higher CTR, 13% lower CPC and 2.3x more watch time than polished brand video.*
If you want to see what creator-led ads could do for your brand, book a demo and I’ll show you how Ad Studio works 👀
*Source: Jack Edge from Edgey
Instagram’s new creative assistant has entered the chat 🤖
And speaking of figuring out what makes content work… Instagram is bringing an AI creative assistant to Edits, its video-editing app.
It uses your Instagram performance data to offer personalised suggestions. You can ask why one Reel did better than another, get ideas for content and stronger hooks, or ask for help with scripts and captions. Potentially quite handy when you’re staring at your insights, wondering what to do next 😂
I’m curious to see how useful the suggestions are, or whether it’ll just be AI slop 😬
That’s it for this issue! I hope you enjoyed the read.
Follow us on LinkedIn for more social media news, hot takes and Joli product updates.
Speak soon, Izzy & the Joli team 💛
