“Make our brand famous.”
That’s Morgan Selzer’s marketing anthem. And she knows a thing or two about how to do it.
As former Chief Content Officer at mental wellness unicorn Headspace, she led a collaboration with Sesame Street that resulted in 45M+ YouTube views, 6M+ podcast downloads, a 6-book deal with Penguin Random House, and an Emmy nomination. Today, she acts as Canva’s Global Head of Content Partnerships and helps brands and media platforms looking to land in that sweet spot “where strategy meets cultural clout.”
“For a lot of people, the goal is for your brand to be a household name,” she says. “Like Xerox, or Uber—those brand names that become verbs. But I think the more interesting question is one tier down from that.” She asks:
How do you spark conversations about your brand, without making people feel advertised to?
As marketing gets more crowded, cultural capital can be a tremendous differentiator.
Here’s how to get a taste of the glamorous life.
Key takeaways: The 3 things you need to know about expanding your content ecosystem
- It’s faster to collaborate on audience-building through partnerships than to grow an audience from scratch on your own.
- If your content feels like a sales pitch, no one will talk about it. You want your audience to walk away entertained, educated, or both.
- Cultural relevance comes from studying what captures attention broadly—trending formats, virtual content, pop culture—not just analyzing competitors.
Owned content gets you crickets
Content is no longer a numbers game.
Anyone has the tools to churn out endless AI slop content. The brands that rise to the top will be the ones who meet audiences where they already are—and create content worth talking about.
“When I talk about making your brand famous, I mean: how can you use this democratization of content to tell your brand story, to stand for something, and to make marketing go beyond being very transaction,” says Morgan.
Standing out in a crowded space also means getting creative about reach.
Many brands believe they must build their own audiences on their own channels in order to build deep relationships. As a result, marketing teams spend hours posting on company social accounts, creating their own YouTube channels, or building email lists from scratch—and then have, like, four likes to show for it.
As organic reach on brand channels rapidly approaches zero, the biggest opportunities won’t come out of building your own small audience. They’ll come from accessing existing large audiences where your customers already spend time, through strategic partnership and distribution strategies that go beyond your owned channels.
How to expand your brand reach
Borrow big audiences
Instead of building your audience from scratch, follow attention. Go where they already are.
In practice, this means identifying where your target audience already spends their time and then pursuing partnerships that give you access to those existing spaces. Especially when you have limited resources, partnerships can take you much further than you could go on your own.
“This is why we see so many interesting collabs happening right now—they allow your brand to show up in another brand’s ecosystem,” says Morgan. “As you partner with influencers, creators, and talent, use their channels to speak about your brand.”
When you redefine your content ecosystem beyond your own channels, your marketing universe suddenly gets a lot larger.
For example, when Headspace and Sesame Street collaborated on a series of mindfulness videos for children and their parents, Morgan didn’t hesitate to choose what platform to post on.
“Sesame Street asked me, ‘Do you want it on your channel or ours?’ and I said, ‘Obviously I want it on yours!’” Families were already spending time on the Sesame Street YouTube page, and putting Headspace’s content on that platform resulted in millions more views than they could have achieved alone.“
The fastest path to fame is appearing where millions already look, not convincing millions to look somewhere new.
🧠 Mindset shift: Stop thinking like a marketer trying to own everything, start thinking like a content creator trying to reach everyone. Ask yourself: "Where does my audience already have habits and attention?" Then show up there, even if you don't own the channel.
Hone your cultural awareness
An essential part of creating campaigns people like is…understanding what people like.
Morgan recommends every campaign start with a survey of the cultural landscape. Her process involves answering questions like:
- What are the popular songs, TV shows, and movies of the moment?
- Who are the popular creators right now?
- What video formats, memes, and trends are taking the zeitgeist by storm?
- How can I adapt these ideas for my own brand story?
“For example, say everyone you know is watching the same documentary right now, centered around social impact. That might make me think: what are the values that my brand stands for? How can we storytell around that?”
She also recommends explicitly building time to discover trends and get inspired into your process.
(So procrastinators, rejoice—we’re about to link bed rotting to hitting your KPIs.)
“Spend 30 minutes reading a magazine or scrolling through TikTok,” Morgan recommends. “Then at the end, identify 3 different seeds of ideas you got from that time.”
🧠 Mindset shift: Cultural awareness can be learned like any other skill. If you’re in the business of getting people’s attention, build honing that awareness into your own development process.
Offer value freely
No one likes getting the hard sell. As Morgan explains:
There’s a fine line to walk between branded content that is entertaining, informative, and helpful to people, and branded content that just makes people feel like they’re being marketed to.
“And if you do too much of the latter, you’re going to get a lot of unsubscribes,” she adds.
When you prioritize entertainment and educational value over promotional messaging, you create more positive associations for your audience—and over time, they trust you more.
For example, at Headspace, Morgan’s team created a series called “Sunday Scaries.” Every Sunday, they published free meditations that were designed to help listeners with anxiety about going into the work week. As the series gained traction, it grew from something Headspace exclusively published on social to a fully produced podcast with an exclusive Spotify deal.
“There was nothing in the messaging for that project that explicitly said, download Headspace,” Morgan explains. “It was just a useful piece of content that met the moment for a lot of people.”
But over time, listeners who enjoyed the Sunday Scaries content became more likely to try out other meditations on Headspace.
🧠 Mindset shift: Every piece of content should pass this test: Does someone walk away either entertained or having learned something new? If the only takeaway is "this brand wants me to buy something," that content isn’t going to spark any interesting conversation.
Access-focused marketing
Organic reach on owned brand channels continues to decline, with algorithms prioritizing individual creators over corporate accounts.
As old performance marketing strategies go stale, leading marketers are shifting from “building audiences” to “accessing audiences,” leveraging strategic partnerships and collaborations to build cultural cachet.
“It’s really, really difficult to make your brand famous on your own smaller channels,” says Morgan. “But you can take your branding to a whole new level by storytelling on other people’s platforms.
⚒️ Partnership evaluation tool
How can you find the right partners for you? Download our process doc for identifying and evaluating potential partnerships, including an LLM prompt to copy-paste for partner ideation and our scorecard for force ranking potential opportunities.
She adds, “There’s a trend now of brands helping fund content like documentaries, or making their own podcasts, and I think there’s never been a time for brands to think about those strategies.”
When you meet audiences where they already exist, you stop rolling the boulder uphill—and start letting gravity work in your favor.
FAQ: How to make your brand famous
How do I come up with culturally relevant marketing campaign ideas?
Block out time dedicated to “cultural research”—whether that’s flipping through a magazine, scrolling through Instagram, reading through newsletters, or listening to music (The Life of a Showgirl, anyone?).
At the end, write down three seeds of ideas you gleaned from your session in an ongoing ideas/inspiration doc, and refer back to it regularly during brainstorming sessions. (BTW, this is literally how Taylor Swift wrote “The Fate of Ophelia.”)
What social media channels are getting the most attention right now?
Social media algorithms are prioritizing individual creators over corporate accounts. They also favor content that generates genuine engagement (saves, shares, and meaningful comments) over passive consumption (such as views or likes).
How do you measure whether your brand is culturally relevant?
The metrics that matter for cultural relevance are: saves (people want to reference this again later), shares (people think other people should see this too), comments with substance (people are discussing your content, not just emoji reacting). Media mentions and partnership interest are also signals worth watching. The important thing is moving beyond impressions, follower counts, and downloads.
Where should I post co-branded content?
Post on whichever channels have the largest audience of your ICP. Even if the eyeballs aren’t explicitly on your own website/social channels/emails, they’re still on you.
