David Malkin

Supporting work · Format strategy · AI × music

Format strategy for an AI × music campaign

A feature article and a long-form interview video on AI and music had to work as one campaign arc, on a subject where audience skepticism is the default response.

Opening frame of the published mixed-media carousel: Music has survived every technology that has threatened it
The published pilot. The partnership’s first mixed static and MP4 carousel. My role: organic campaign strategy, format architecture, and contingency planning; design and production were team functions. View it live on Instagram →

The work

I led the organic campaign strategy across both assets. On AI and music the default audience response is suspicion, so the format had to meet that first rather than argue past it. I proposed the partnership’s first mixed static and MP4 carousel and grounded the choice in how comparable formats had performed for us before.

I wrote three routes through the story, each carrying a different risk: open on the fear and resolve it in the sound, run the collaboration chronologically, or follow one skeptic changing their mind. Music rights were the exposure underneath all three, so each route came with licensing terms worked out in advance and a kinetic-text version ready to ship if the rights fell through.

Around the pilot I planned the sequence that would carry it: a three-part Q&A carousel series, an X thread, a Stories takeover, and a partner seeding plan.

CHOSEN ROUTE Fear → Sound → Outcome meet the skepticism first, resolve it in the music The Timeline chronological build of the collaboration Skeptic → Believer a conversion arc told in first person Each route carried licensing contingencies and a kinetic-text fallback if music rights fell through.
Three routes, risks priced in. Recreated from the campaign proposal; route names are from the proposal document.

What shipped

The pilot went out as the partnership’s first mixed-media carousel, and it drew multiple collaboration acceptances the same day it published. Because the fallback was written before the licensing question closed, the format decision never sat on the critical path: if the rights had failed, the alternate version was already in the plan.

Attribution Strategy lead on the organic campaign; design and video production were team functions.

← All work