Bring Them In Before the Brief

Why this conversation mattered A brief can be clear, polished and built on an incomplete understanding of the audience. The team has agreed on the idea. The presentation is ready. Then someone who spends every day talking to the people you want to reach joins the project. How much can they still change? That was the question I kept returning to with Austin Null. Austin is the founder and Chief Creator Officer of We Get It. He has worked as a full-time YouTube creator and on the brand and agency side of creator marketing. His official Cannes Lions speaker biography documents more than 15 years in the field, and his 2026 session explored building a creator-led campaign. That experience matters because he understands both the responsibility of making content for an audience and the commercial decisions behind choosing a creator. He has seen the friction when a brand arrives with a finished answer and asks a creator to deliver it to a community they know much better. His approach brings creators into strategy and creative development, where their knowledge can still change the work. I think there is an important lesson here for anyone building a brand or leading a team. Expertise becomes more useful when it arrives with enough time and authority to affect the decision. Our conversation also went somewhere more personal: the years of learning, publishing, reaching out and connecting people that preceded Austin’s visible momentum. Those two threads belong together. Understanding people takes time. So does becoming someone they remember when an opportunity appears. -Emily My favorite part My favorite part was Austin’s reminder that the visible outcome leaves out much of the effort. He described two years of publishing on YouTube before reaching 4,000 subscribers. In the following year, he says that audience grew to 100,000. He also described building his agency behind the scenes and spending roughly two years having introductory conversations with people. Later, some of those connections returned with work. “These things take time.” I loved the simplicity of that line because I recognise the uncertainty behind it. In our conversation, I talked about the late nights and the questions that come with building something before there is much evidence that it is working. That is part of the work people rarely see. But Austin also added something important when I spoke about creating your own luck. Luck still plays a part. So do societal barriers and unequal responses to different people. I want to hold both ideas together. We can practise, learn, build relationships and improve our readiness. We cannot promise ourselves that effort will produce the same result, on the same timeline, for everyone. The useful question is what the effort is helping us build, and what we are learning along the way. • • • The LEAD Signals from the conversation Opportunity Signal: build relationships with room for an unexpected outcome Austin describes reaching out because he wanted to understand what someone was doing. A conversation might last half an hour. There might be no immediate next step. Much later, someone could return with work. Or he might remember that person’s expertise when another connection needed help. What interests me is the specificity of that memory. A useful conversation can leave you knowing what someone understands, what they care about and which problem they are particularly good at solving. That gives an introduction substance. For someone inside a company, the application could be a conversation with a colleague in another function before you need their approval. What are they responsible for? Where does the work get difficult? What do they wish other teams understood? Keep enough context to remember them accurately. Ask permission before making an introduction. Let the relationship have value even if it never becomes a transaction. Trust Signal: examine what the numbers leave unresolved Austin considers engagement, audience location and performance. He then looks at the storytelling and the quality of the audience conversation. A creator can meet the numerical requirements while producing something poorly matched to the brand’s purpose. He also describes looking for signs that comments might be coordinated among creators. I would treat that as a reason to investigate, rather than a reliable way to pronounce a community authentic or fake. Comments are one source of evidence. They cannot, by themselves, prove influence, identify AI or establish commercial value. The useful discipline is to connect the scorecard to the actual work. What are people responding to? What questions do they ask? Does the creator understand the situation the brand wants to enter? Can they explain why a particular piece of content worked? A number can help narrow the field. Judgment still has work to do. Momentum Signal: look for learning inside the repetition Austin’s consistency story includes asking other creators how they made an edit, proposing collaborations, reading about the industry and talking to people. Those details matter. Repeating an activity and improving through it are different things. If you are building a practice, a reputation or a business, ask what your repetitions are teaching you. Are your questions getting better? Can you describe the problem more clearly? Are people beginning to associate you with a particular kind of contribution? What evidence suggests you should change the approach? His subscriber timeline is his own account, rather than a growth formula. I take it as a reminder to examine progress over a useful period while remaining willing to adapt. • • • What Austin brought to the Cannes stage Austin describes a session with Einstein Bros. Bagels’ CMO, a parent creator and a food creator. The brief concerned on-the-go parents. He asked the creators about their experience and the content their audiences respond to, then demonstrated how those insights could inform a campaign. He is clear in our conversation that the session was prepared and rehearsed. It was a demonstration of the process, rather than an entirely spontaneous campaign build. The distinction I find useful is what the creators were being selected to contribute. Their distribution mattered, but so did their knowledge. Austin says he may bring a creator into strategic development without needing that person to publish the final content. That expands the way we think about expertise. Someone’s value can include what their ongoing relationship with an audience helps them notice. It also changes the brief. The question becomes what the team needs to learn before it decides what to make. • • • The deeper record (to make this practical for you) 1. Run an audience conversation before finalising the brief Start with a live business objective and a specific audience. Invite someone with relevant, direct experience while the recommendation can still change. Austin’s example is a brand trying to reach parents. Inside a company, you might involve a customer-support colleague, an account manager or someone who uses the process you are redesigning. Prepare three kinds of question: Experience: when does this situation occur, and what makes it difficult? Observed response: what have people actually asked, shared or responded to? Implication: which part of our current approach might need to change? Keep anecdotes and broader evidence separate. A creator’s experience can reveal a useful question without representing every parent or customer. Finish by naming one assumption to test and one decision the conversation may affect. 2. Give connection somewhere useful to go Austin’s description of the first few minutes of a meeting was another part I loved. He wants to know the person before moving into the assignment. Then he arrives with prepared questions about the work. For me, that combination is the lesson: warmth and preparation. You do not need to manufacture intimacy. Ask a question you care about, listen to the answer and respect the person’s boundaries. Then connect the conv… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe