> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Eighty Five Percent of the Money, and a Feed Built to Keep You Out - URL: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/a-feed-built-to-keep-you-out/ - Published: 2026-09-12T14:16:33.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-12T14:16:33.000Z - Description: Campbell's is routing about 85 percent of working media to social and influencer. Two days later Instagram's boss said the ranked feed exists so companies and brands do not swamp it. Plus pasteable copy, the still and a five shot video. - Author: giovanni gallucci - Tags: Organic Social, Social Platforms, Brand Positioning, Retail Distribution, Consumer Trends, creator-brands *Listen to this episode of The Daily Trends Report, then use the piece below.* Campbell's told investors this month that roughly 85 percent of its working media is headed into social, influencer, e-commerce and AI-powered platforms. Two days later the head of Instagram sat on a press call in Australia and explained, without meaning to, why that money can't buy a brand account much of anything. Both are true. They don't fit together. That's the piece. ## What happened [Campbell's](https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-campbells-company/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) reported its fourth quarter on September 3\. Net sales down 8 percent to $2.137 billion, down 5 percent for the full year to $9.7 billion, organic sales off 1 percent in the quarter and 2 percent on the year. Snacks organic sales fell 6 percent for the period ended August 2\. The company is cutting its salaried workforce by about 13 percent, closing two snack plants in Hyannis, Massachusetts and Jeffersonville, Indiana, and running a $500 million cost program out to fiscal 2030\. It cut the dividend 36 percent, to 25 cents. The marketing number came off that same earnings presentation, and Peter Adams [wrote it up at Marketing Dive](https://www.marketingdive.com/news/campbells-heats-up-digital-focus-amid-marketing-reformulation/829764/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) on September 8\. Social, influencer, e-commerce and AI-enabled platforms together will account for about 85 percent of working media. CEO Mick Beekhuizen, in prepared remarks: "Let me be clear: We are not walking away from any business or brand. However, our marketing investments must work harder for us." Then September 10\. Adam Mosseri took a rare Australian press briefing, there to promote a short-form series called Algo Confessions and a feature called Your Algorithm. A Meta spokesman told reporters up front that he would not be commenting on the government's new proposal to make platforms offer a follows-only feed. Mosseri volunteered his view on chronological feeds anyway. Ange Lavoipierre [reported it for the ABC](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-10/instagram-ceo-adam-mosseri-algorithm-laws/107136992?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io). "If you go to a chronological feed, it ends up getting overwhelmed with content from companies, brands, and publishers," he said. "Creators get drowned out, and then your friends get drowned out even more." The reason he gave is the part nobody pulled out. The way to get reach in a chronological feed is to post more often, and businesses can afford to post more often than people can. He said engagement falls by as much as 50 percent without the ranking doing its job. ## Now read them in the same week The ranking isn't anti-brand out of spite. It's a volume governor. It's there to keep the accounts that can afford to post all day from owning the room, and the man who runs it said so on the record while trying to sell a transparency feature. [Instagram](https://www.linkedin.com/company/instagram/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) didn't build that governor for you. It built it for Campbell's. A hundred and fifty year old company with a content calendar, an agency and the budget to post around the clock is the exact thing the filter was designed to hold down. Which means Campbell's isn't buying reach with that 85 percent. It can't. It's buying people the ranking doesn't read as a company. That's what influencer money is once you strip the deck off it. Rent paid to somebody the filter lets through. So the thing about to get expensive in your category isn't media. It's the two or three people who already make good work about what you make. Marketing Dive reports the influencer programs will aim at driving trial on product innovations, including two new platforms under the namesake brand. That money has to land on somebody, and there aren't that many good somebodies in any one aisle. ## The correction, and it's mine The proof point going around this week is that Newsweek posted its best single day of social referral traffic in five years, it came off Threads, and the lane is wide open right now. My own overnight desk handed that to me as this week's news. I almost ran it that way. It's from March 24, 2025\. Sara Guaglione wrote it [at Digiday](https://digiday.com/media/traffic-referrals-from-threads-surge-for-some-publishers-this-year/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) eighteen months ago. The page still headlines it "since January," and the January in question was 2025. Put it back on its real date and it stops being a counterexample to Mosseri. It becomes the best evidence for him I've read. [Newsweek](https://www.linkedin.com/company/newsweek/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) won that surge by posting up to multiple times an hour. [Forbes](https://www.linkedin.com/company/forbes/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) went to at least once an hour and its Threads referrals ran up 711 percent year to date. A publisher who wouldn't be named was posting hundreds of times a day. That's the volume advantage Mosseri described, running wide open on a surface nobody had gotten around to governing yet. Two more things in that piece are worth carrying out. Even at the peak of the surge, Chartbeat had Threads at under 1 percent of publisher referral traffic in aggregate, and social was under 10 percent of Newsweek's own mix. The spike was real and small at the same time. And Jess Awtry, the Newsweek audience executive who won the thing, said this on her way out the door: "I also don't want to fall into the same traps that we all fell into in 2018." The one holding the trophy told a reporter she wasn't going to build on it. I'm not telling you Threads is open today and I'm not telling you it's closed. The only evidence I could actually read is a year and a half old, so I won't pretend otherwise. Somebody should go look with fresh numbers. ## The other door easing shut [Kroger](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kroger/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) reported its second quarter [on September 11](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/09/11/kroger-kr-q2-2026-earnings-call-transcript/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io). Retail media revenue up 24 percent in the quarter, with media's contribution to gross margin up 88 basis points. The store charges you to get on the shelf and charges you again to be findable on it, and the second number is climbing faster than anybody's velocity. Stack the week up. The feed is governed. The shelf is metered and getting pricier. The biggest buyer in your aisle just moved most of its media money onto the same handful of people you were planning to work with next spring. Three sets of financials, one week, all pointing the same direction. The only surface nobody is metering is the audience you own outright. That isn't a slogan. It's what's left after you cross off the other three. ## What to run this week Campbell's has budget arriving faster than fluency. It just cut the marketing org by 13 percent and now has to make native social with what's left, through an agency, then legal, then brand review. You have a head start measured in review cycles. Here's how to spend it. ### Copy you can paste today Post this from the brand account, as plain text, no graphic. Fill the brackets and don't polish it. *"\[NAME\] has run our \[kettle / fill line / roaster\] for \[X\] years. This morning she caught a batch that was off before the meter did. I asked her how. She said it smelled wrong. That's our whole quality system, standing there in a hairnet, and there's no software that replaces it. If you've ever wondered who actually makes the \[PRODUCT\] you buy, it's her."* Then sit in the replies for an hour and answer every one in that person's voice, same day, no committee. Speed is the single thing a nine hundred person marketing org can't buy back. ### The still Shoot the maker, not the product. Waist up, at their station, mid task, looking at their hands instead of the lens. Available light off whatever window or bay door you already have, no ring light, no white sweep. Let the room be a working room: the scuffed table, the tape on the floor, the dented mug. Shoot it horizontally and crop down, so you get a feed version and a website version out of one frame. One rule. If it could have been shot in any facility in America, you shot it wrong. ### The video, 20 to 30 seconds, five shots 1. **0:00 to 0:04.** Hands only, doing the actual step. No face, no logo, no music yet. Audio is the room. 2. **0:04 to 0:11.** Pull back to the maker at the station. They say their name, their job, and how long they've done it. One take, don't script it. 3. **0:11 to 0:19.** They answer one question on camera: what do you catch that a machine doesn't? Let them ramble. The usable eight seconds are in there. 4. **0:19 to 0:25.** Cutaway to the thing they described. The off batch, the seal that isn't right, the color that's a shade wrong. 5. **0:25 to 0:30.** Back on them, they say what happens to that batch. End on the answer, not on a card. No end slate, no logo sting. Caption it with the question from shot three. Post it to the feed and keep the raw vertical for stories. ### The free move, and it's the one that matters most Open a spreadsheet. List every creator who has made something good about your category in the last six months without being paid for it. Rank them by whether they've actually bought the product. Then go turn the top two into a six month agreement this quarter, at a number that feels a hair generous today. A rate that feels generous in September looks cheap by spring once a company that just freed up $500 million starts shopping the same aisle. That isn't a marketing expense. That's buying early. ## The show This piece is the extension of today's briefing. The show is where the desk gets read out loud, the article is where it gets turned into something you can ship, and the post is what you actually do with it. Subscribe on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-trends-report/id1896763846?i=1000785549310&ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) or [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033jcZwbZNGKpeUTRJvt1J?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) and it's waiting before you open the laptop. If you make food or drink and you've got people showing up in your comments with nobody home to turn that into an actual fanbase, that's the part I fix. Come find me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/galluccinet?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io).