Phlur — clean fragrance brand, most people outside beauty Twitter haven't heard of them. They went from zero to $150 million and got acquired this year. What's wild is they built it entirely through emotional storytelling — their founder tied the launch of their first scent to her divorce, and it went viral because it felt real. No big ad budget, just content built for TikTok from day one. They worked with 3,800 creators and no single video drove it — it was pure distributed word of mouth. That's the kind of content strategy I find fascinating

Pacing over speed — I'd rather hold a shot one beat longer than cut too fast. I use sound design a lot, small audio cues that guide attention before the visual does. And I'm big on the first three seconds having a visual hook that doesn't need audio to work, because most people are watching muted.

The hyper-speed jump cut with trending audio that every brand account uses right now — it stopped feeling energetic and started feeling lazy. Everyone's editing at the viewer instead of actually telling a story. I'm more drawn to editing that uses silence and pacing as tools, where the cut means something