Every student takes over social for Hour — a founder-led functional-wellness beverage in its second year, with a $2.4M run-rate and a generic voice. Four rounds to decide what it sounds like, where it lives, who carries the message, and how it survives the inevitable crisis.
Maps to your syllabus
Anyone can post more. The simulation rewards saying the same thing, in the same voice, across every platform and every round. Brand voice is a compounding asset — it accrues when held and decays the moment a student chases a trend off-archetype. Students don’t learn voice coherence from a slide; they learn it watching their own reach multiplier rise and fall with it.
Learning outcomes
Commit to a voice archetype
Choose among Sage, Jester, Outlaw, Caregiver — and defend it with four rounds of content, not one clever launch.
Engineer voice coherence
Tone, stance, polish — held steady across every post and platform. A 90-coherence campaign at half budget beats 60 at full.
Run platform & creator strategy
Two primary platforms, the right creators for the archetype, pillars that fit. Spreading thin loses to investing deep.
Manage moments & crisis
Ride cultural moments in-window; answer the inevitable crisis fast and on-voice. Speed × fit × quality decides cut or scar.
Each round runs the same loop — set the voice, pick platforms and pillars, choose creators, split the paid budget — then watch a compressed seven-day week play out, moments and a crisis included. What changes is what carries over: coherence banked early lets you move fast on a moment later; a crisis fumbled in one round scars sentiment into the next.
Lock the Archetype
Pick one of four archetypes — Sage, Jester, Outlaw, Caregiver — and it is locked for the whole sim. Set the voice sliders, platforms, and pillars. Then Nadia posts something off-brand on her personal account, and you learn what on-voice actually costs.
Case study this round
Duolingo · the Jester voice and coherence as a moat
Partner & Commit
Hire up to three creators to carry the message — judged on voice fit and controversy risk, not follower count. Then a partner’s problematic past surfaces, and the fit you screened for decides whether it cuts.
Case study this round
Liquid Death · the Outlaw archetype and brand stake
Ride the Window
Cultural moments drop on specific days and decay on a half-life — react in-window or watch the value evaporate. The coherence you banked is what lets you move fast. Then a critical TikTok goes viral.
Case study this round
Stanley · moment marketing and brand readiness
Convert Advocates
Turn reach into a community that retains and refers — there is no round after this. Then long-time fans accuse Hour of selling out, and the trust you banked decides whether it holds.
Case study this round
Rare Beauty · community-led growth, the Caregiver playbook
Reach becomes revenue through a five-step funnel — and voice coherence isn’t a step, it’s the multiplier on all of them. A 90-coherence campaign at half the budget outperforms a 60-coherence campaign at full. Students who can name where their funnel leaks stop buying reach they can’t convert and start fixing the step that’s actually broken.
What students actually see
The funnel is laid out in the briefing, its levers are the tabs of the decision form, and the results reveal replays every round step-by-step — so when conversion stalls, students can locate the leak instead of just seeing a smaller number.
Reach
How many feeds does Hour land in?
In-game levers: Platform mix · posting cadence · algorithm favor · paid awareness
Engagement
Do they stop, react, save, share?
In-game levers: Content pillars · creator fit · voice coherence
Follow
Does the audience actually grow?
In-game levers: Native-format fit · consistency · moment wins
Consideration
Do they click through to the DTC site?
In-game levers: Conversion content · paid conversion · retargeting
Purchase & advocacy
Do they buy, retain, and refer?
In-game levers: Community pillars · sentiment · advocate reach
Every round produces a content plan and a performance reveal you can review in the instructor dashboard — reach, voice coherence, sentiment, the moment scorecard, and the crisis recap. Case-study answers are submitted alongside and auto-graded against your answer key.
Voice · platforms · pillars
Jester voice, locked in R1. TikTok + Instagram primary. Pillars: skits, trend-jacking, UGC reposts. Three creators, all archetype-matched. $28k paid, weighted to awareness.
Archetype
Jester
Primary
TikTok · IG
Paid
$28k
What the reveal surfaces
“The skit pillar carried TikTok — three posts drove 71% of reach. One creator’s controversy clipped sentiment a couple points; the archetype-matched picks absorbed it. Coherence at 70 is what multiplied the paid spend.”
The fastest way to evaluate the module is to take a guided tour of Round 1 — same brief, same creator marketplace, same decision form, same results reveal your students see, prepopulated with sample inputs so you can click through and read the reveal without grading your own work. We recommend doing it before assigning.
Already adopted? Open the instructor dashboard →
Course wizard
Roster size auto-allocates one Hour brand per student.
Individual play
Every student runs their own brand against the same category.
Four case studies
Duolingo, Liquid Death, Stanley, Rare Beauty — auto-graded against your answer key.
Canvas-ready CSV
Export the full gradebook on demand.