Step 1 of 6 · Social Media
Briefing
Brand, founder, rivals
Social Media Marketing · Hour
Your hour. Their feed.
You're taking over social for Hour, a functional wellness beverage brand in its second year with about $1.2M a year in sales. The category is crowded, the audience is skeptical, and the brand's voice today is generic. Over four drops, each a quarter-long campaign, you'll define what Hour sounds like, where it lives, who carries its message, and how it survives the inevitable crisis.
The Founder
Nadia Khoury · @nadiaonhour
Former product manager at a wellness app where she shipped a meditation feature used by 4 million people. Diagnosed with chronic insomnia in her late twenties; built Hour out of frustration with the wellness industry's pseudoscience and expensive supplement stacks.
Voice: Earnest, sometimes self-deprecating, scientifically literate but not preachy. Knows the difference between a randomized trial and a TikTok claim. Reluctantly online.
What Hour Sells
Three drinks, one evidence-first brand
Hour is a functional beverage brand for people who want the wellness category to grow up. We make drinks that work because of what's in them, not because of who's holding them.
Sleep Hour
$4.25 a can, $32 for an 8-pack
Ingredients: Magnesium glycinate, L-theanine, tart cherry
For: evidence-anchored sleep onset support
Focus Hour
$4.25 a can, $32 for an 8-pack
Ingredients: L-theanine, caffeine, lion's mane
For: sustained focus without the crash
Calm Hour
$4.25 a can, $32 for an 8-pack
Ingredients: Ashwagandha, GABA, chamomile
For: midday cortisol calm
- About $1.2M a year
- 70% direct to consumer, 30% wholesale
- 18,000 customers
- 30% of them order again each drop
- 240 advocates
- customers who talk Hour up
- 85,000 followers
- across 6 platforms
Where the voice stands today
Generic wellness: it looks like a slightly better commodity. No defined voice. Your job is to find one.
Glossary
The scored terms, at a glance
One definition for each scored term your dashboard and results use. Plain counts, such as reach, followers, new customers and revenue, mean what they say.
- Voice coherence
- How closely a drop's content pillars, signed creators and moment answers fit the voice you set, out of 100. It is earned fresh each drop, and it scales engagement, follows, what paid media buys, how many people considering Hour buy and how many customers stay.
- Sentiment
- How the audience feels about Hour, out of 100, starting at 60. It carries from drop to drop, moved by the week's moment answers and crisis, slider swings and open scars, and drifts back toward 60. It lifts how many people considering Hour buy and how many customers stay.
- Algorithm favor
- Each platform's standing with its feed, out of 100, starting at 50. Holding a platform's cadence, posting mostly in its native format, pillars that fit it and a coherent voice build it; changing the cadence costs it. It carries from drop to drop, pulled 10% of the way back toward 50, and the higher it is, the more people your posts there reach.
- Consideration
- People weighing a first order. Follows, engagements and conversion-objective paid media build it. Each drop a share of them buy, retargeting wins more of the rest, and 65% of those still considering carry into the next drop.
- Advocates
- Customers who talk Hour up, won mostly from the drop's new customers. Each one brings word-of-mouth reach in the next drop, split across your platforms, and they fade as customers do.
- Share of voice
- Your reach as a share of your market's conversation: your brand, the other brands in your market and the category's own noise, which grows louder each drop. A read-out: it does not move the rank.
- Cultural capital
- This drop's sentiment, share of voice and voice coherence, weighted 40%, 30% and 30%, out of 100. A read-out of your brand's presence in its category: it does not move the rank.
- Contribution margin
- Revenue less paid media, creator fees and content production. Your rank reads it, added up over the drops so far.
- CAC
- Customer acquisition cost: paid media and creator fees per new customer the drop won.
- ROAS
- Return on ad spend: what the drop's new customers paid, per dollar of paid media.
- Whiplash
- Moving a voice slider more than 10 points from your last drop's plan. It cuts up to 25% of the drop's reach and up to 8 points of sentiment; it never touches voice coherence.
- Scar
- What a crisis left unanswered leaves. For the next 2 drops your sentiment loses 3 points a drop and cannot climb past 85. Any answer, even a chosen silence, leaves none.
The Core Mechanic
A quarter's plan, then its launch week, live
Each drop is a quarter-long campaign. You build its plan: voice, platforms, content pillars, cadence, paid budget, creators. Then you play its launch week live, one day at a time, and the results count the whole quarter. Cultural moments land on specific days, and you choose how to react. A crisis fires in Drop 1, and in later drops when your choices invite one. Your rank is your contribution margin. Voice coherence scales every step of the funnel that earns it, and a fast, on-voice crisis response limits what a crisis costs: the day the crisis breaks earns full speed credit, a day later less, and after that none. Every day a crisis stays open it keeps spreading and costs the drop new customers.
Voice first
Three sliders (tone, stance, polish) + an archetype lock define how Hour sounds. Whiplash penalties when you drift mid-sim.
Day cursor
Moments land on days 1 to 4 and decay on a half-life: react inside the window or watch the value fade.
Crisis fires
Drop 1 always brings a crisis; later drops bring one only when your plan invites it. Answer it the day it breaks, in Hour's voice, for the most credit. Leave it unanswered and it scars.
Voice Archetypes
Pick one. Hour will be it for the whole sim.
Your first plan locks the archetype for the rest of the simulation. From Drop 2 on, each slider can move up to 10 points a drop before whiplash hits. Pick the one you can defend with content for four drops, not the one that sounds most fun.
The Sage
e.g. Oura, The Ordinary, LMNT
Authority through knowledge. Educates the category. Wellness brand voice anchored in expertise and data. Its pillars fit YouTube best.
The Jester
e.g. Duolingo, Scrub Daddy, Taco Bell
Plays. Trolls the category. Wins through delight and bit-density. Its pillars fit TikTok best.
The Outlaw
e.g. Liquid Death, Oatly, Death Wish Coffee
Rejects the category's rules. Wins through contrarian thesis. The Liquid Death pattern: irreverent, anti-establishment, polarizing. Its pillars fit TikTok best.
The Caregiver
e.g. Rare Beauty, Dove, Bombas
Earned trust through service. Wins through community and consistent kindness. Its pillars fit Instagram best. Best for wellness brands that mean it.
The Platform Map
Pick 2 primary, up to 2 secondary
Six platforms, each with its own native format and audience. Two primaries done well beat four done thin. A moment that lives on a platform outside your two primaries earns you less.
TikTok
Short video
32.0k baseline followers
Reels
38.0k baseline followers
YouTube
Shorts
6.5k baseline followers
X
Text post
4.5k baseline followers
Text post
2.5k baseline followers
Image post
1.5k baseline followers
How Reach Becomes Revenue
The funnel
Reach
organic, paid and earned
Engagement
likes, saves, shares
Follow
audience growth
Consideration
people weighing a first order
Purchase
new customers and reorders
Voice coherence scales every step: what paid media buys, the engagement and follows your posts earn, how many people considering Hour buy and how many customers stay. A campaign at 90 voice coherence on half the budget out-earns one at 60 on the full budget. This is the lesson the simulation is built to teach.
The Four Drops Ahead
Four campaigns, one voice
Each drop is a quarter-long campaign: you file its plan, then play its launch week live, one day at a time, before the deadline. Your next drop's budget follows the campaign: this drop's budget plus 50% of what its new customers paid beyond its paid media, creator fees and production, or less 25% of a shortfall, held between 80% and 150% of your starting budget.
Drop 1
Define the voice
Three cultural moments.
A crisis about Nadia comes to every brand, and it is the drop's one crisis: no creator brings a backlash in Drop 1.
Drop 2
Stack the moments
Five cultural moments.
A crisis comes only if you sign a creator with the backlash badge: that creator's controversy breaks in your week, with your sponsored post in every quote.
Drop 3
Hold the voice at scale
Five cultural moments.
A marketing creator's teardown of Hour comes if your Drop 2 reach beat at least 70% of the other brands in your market (the top two of five) while your Drop 2 voice coherence was under 70. If that crisis does not come, signing a creator with the backlash badge brings the creator backlash instead.
Drop 4
Defend and harvest
Six cultural moments, the most of any drop.
A 'selling out' backlash from long-time fans comes if your Drop 3 plan put at least 15 more points of its budget into paid media than Drop 2 did, while spending at least 10% less on content production. If that crisis does not come, signing a creator with the backlash badge brings the creator backlash instead.
Who You're Up Against
The category
Cleanwater
weak socialCategory incumbent, slick packaging, big retail footprint, weak social.
Threat: Retail wins; social shows up as press releases. Easy to out-voice on TikTok and Instagram.
RAW Ritual
mid socialLuxury-grocery wellness, $$$ price point, aspirational lifestyle.
Threat: Steals the aesthetic-conscious customer if Hour photographs as cheap.
Loud Inc.
strong socialIrreverent, rule-breaking voice with no functional claim: pure brand.
Threat: Owns the contrarian voice play. If Hour goes outlaw, must out-irreverent them.
Sleep Drink Co
weak socialDirect competitor on sleep sub-line. Lower price, weaker brand, more retail.
Threat: Price floor pressure on Sleep Hour. Wins on price-sensitive segments.
Your Scoreboard
One number ranks you
Every brand in your market is ranked on one number, and your Simulation Score grades your play out of 200 points.
Your rank
Ranked by contribution margin to date: revenue less paid media, creator fees and production. Voice coherence breaks a tie. A brand that has run only the starter plan ranks below every brand that has run a plan of its own.
Completion, up to 80 points
Each drop's plan submitted on time earns 20, and a late one 17. A missed drop earns none, whatever plan ran in its place.
Performance, up to 120 points
Where your contribution margin ranks in your market, with a bounded review of the quality of your decisions.
Voice coherence, sentiment and the funnel drive the revenue; paid media, creator fees and production come off it. Share of voice and cultural capital are read-outs of where Hour stands in its category, and neither moves the rank.