Hai Studio is a social-first creative agency built by digital natives: platform fluency, cultural instinct, and community insight influence every creative decision we make.
The result is work that gets talked about, shared, and followed long after the post goes live. It starts conversations, spikes reach, and turns an audience into a community that stays. That’s why brands choose Hai Studio over agencies that learned social secondhand.
Social-first means every idea starts on social instead of ending up there.
We don’t take a campaign built for another channel and resize it for the feed. We begin with how people behave on each platform, what they watch, save, share, and respond to, and build the strategy, creative, and brand identity outward from there. For Hai Studio, social is where a brand’s reputation is made, so it’s where our work begins.
Hai Studio is a full-service social media marketing agency with 3 specialized practice areas: Strategy and Consulting; Campaigns, Content and Media; and Branding. We execute at every stage of the social media marketing timeline, from launch strategy and conceptualization to execution and community engagement.
Hai Studio serves clients across a diverse range of industries including beauty and personal care, fashion, entertainment and technology, and hospitality.
Hai Studio is located in Brooklyn, NY. We operate remotely and serve clients globally, across North America, EMEA, and APAC.
Hai Studio supports three different engagement structures: project-based work for defined campaigns and initiatives, retainer agreements, and long-term partnerships for integrated brand management.
Hai (חי) is the word for life, a symbol of good fortune. For our co-founders, Sandra Ittah and Shirley Maslow, it has always been more than a symbol. It’s the principle they live by, and in 2024 it became the name of the agency they built together: The Hai Haus, now Hai Studio.
The idea behind it was simple. Plenty of brands exist online, but very few are alive. A living brand has a voice people recognize, a community that answers back, and a reason for consumers to keep showing up. So, that’s our goal: with every campaign, every piece of content, and every brand identity, Hai Studio strives to breathe life into the brands we work with, helping them flourish in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Sandra came to it from music, entertainment, and fashion. Shirley came from social impact. Between them they knew two things most agencies treat separately: how to earn attention, and how to make it mean something.
Today we’re Hai Studio, a small Brooklyn team with clients around the world. We dropped the Haus and kept the hai. The name is shorter, the work is sharper, and the principle is the same one we started with: brands shouldn’t just grow. They should thrive.
Hai Studio is a full-service social media marketing agency with 3 specialized practice areas: Strategy and Consulting; Campaigns, Content and Media; and Branding. We execute at every stage of the social media marketing timeline, from launch strategy and conceptualization to execution and community engagement.
We work out what a brand should be doing on social media and why. We cover audience and platform research, channel audits, competitive analyses, content pillars, and launch roadmaps. You leave with an effective strategy your team can act on, whether we execute it or you do.
We conceptualize, produce, and manage the work itself: campaign ideas, content series, short-form video, photography, copy, and day-to-day channel management. Every piece is built for the platform it lives on. Then we extend its reach through social-first PR placement, securing features on the social accounts, digital publications, and culture pages where audiences discover brands today.
We build brand identities that are designed to live on social media from day one. The visual system, voice and tone, and brand guidelines are consistent across every post, profile, and platform. The result is a brand people recognize in the first second of a scroll, and a strategy that creates a world people crave to participate in.
Every engagement follows the same path: listen, plan, make, learn.
We start by studying your audience and how they behave on each platform. We turn that into a strategy, bring it to life through creative, and track what happens once it’s live. What we learn feeds the next round of work, so the brand gets sharper the longer we work together, and ultimately builds a sustained and engaged audience both online and offline.
We study your audience and how they behave on each platform: what they watch, save, share, and respond to. Audience and platform research, channel audits, and competitive analyses show us where the brand stands today.
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Why the smartest thing you post this year might be something that happened in a room.
Here is a strange side effect of feeds full of AI: people want to leave the house. The more the internet fills up with things nobody made, the more a dinner, a pop-up or a folding table with free coffee starts to look like luxury.
That was the theme of a panel at Advertising Week New York last week, as reported by Marketing Dive, with Gary Vaynerchuk of VaynerX, Carla Hassan of JPMorgan Chase and Michelle Mesenburg of Target. VaynerX has a name for the balance, the “relevance barbell”: digital on one end, real life on the other, and a brand strong enough to lift both.
The most useful idea from the panel: VaynerX treats an event as a production day for social. Not an event with a photographer in the corner. A shoot that happens to have guests. Chase does a version of this with its branches and with events like a dinner on the court at Madison Square Garden. Target spent two days at the New Museum during New York Fashion Week showing off its design history.
We would go one step further, because it is how we think about everything: start with the post. What is the nine-second clip? What will a guest film without being asked? Then build the room around that.
Vaynerchuk’s argument was that a small event done well can beat a TV spot that millions technically saw. His example was 80 people at a dinner. Nobody has run the numbers on that, but the logic holds: eighty people who had a great night each have a phone and friends.
Here is the part that is new. Hassan said large language models take in brand videos, which shapes how a brand shows up when someone asks an AI for a recommendation. Vaynerchuk argued that brands are underspending on organic social for exactly this reason.
Your content has two audiences now: the person scrolling, and the machine that will describe you to someone later.
You don’t need Madison Square Garden. You need one thing worth photographing, because a single good visual beats ten branded banners. A reason to come that isn’t your product. Something guests can make or take home, since people post what they made. One person whose only job is capture: vertical, with sound. And a plan for the next thirty days of content, written before the doors open.
You also need permission to have one flop. The panel said as much: spend on what you believe in, and let some of it fail.
The feed rewards things that happened. So make something happen.
Source: “How marketers can fuel social, discoverability with experiences,” by Chris Kelly, Marketing Dive, October 6, 2026.
It can make the video, pick the audience and move the budget. Here is what to hand over, and what to keep.
Last week at Advertising Week, Meta showed off an assistant that can write the ad, cut the video, adjust the targeting and change the budget, all because you asked it to in a sentence. If you have ever wanted an intern who never sleeps and has read every one of your campaign reports, here it is.
Meta’s AI business assistant now holds more memory and context, so its advice can account for past quarters, seasonality and the goals you have told it about. Meta is testing a way to upload your strategy documents and brand voice guidelines, so what it makes sounds more like you. It can also act: generate creative, update targeting and move budget, all by conversation. Scheduled tasks are in testing too, for things like a recurring performance report or a warning when something looks off.
Ads Creative Studio, which launched earlier this year for selected partners, is opening to more brands. It shows what is working, and it now generates new video concepts and variations, with editing tools for hooks, audio, clip length, text overlays, captions and end scenes. In Advantage+ creative, turning existing still assets into video is now generally available. Catalog listings can become videos more easily as well.
People can buy Shopify products inside a Messenger chat through Meta’s business agent. Meta is also testing checkout inside Meta AI with Adyen, PayPal, Shopify and Stripe.
Customer Lifecycle Strategy is now open to all advertisers. It lets you set the audience focus for each campaign, so the automated recommendations stay aligned with it. Meta has also expanded its Ads MCP server, which lets third-party AI tools build and manage campaigns.
Variations. Resizing. The fourteenth cut of the same video with a different first line. Reports. Anywhere the question is “which of these works better,” the machine will answer faster than a meeting.
The idea. The voice. The decision about what your brand would never say. Uploading brand guidelines only helps if the guidelines contain a point of view.
If your brand guidelines say “friendly but professional,” that is what you will get back. So will everyone else.
And keep a hand on the budget. An assistant that can move money by conversation is convenient right up until someone phrases something loosely.
The tools are getting better at making more. Knowing what is worth making is still the job.
Source: “Meta introduces new AI-powered tools at Advertising Week,” by Andrew Hutchinson, Marketing Dive, October 8, 2026.
Six platforms, a dozen updates, and our read on which ones deserve your attention.
Advertising Week came to New York, which means every platform cleared its throat at once. Most of the announcements came down to one idea: describe what you want, and the machine will make the ad. Here is what changed, and what we would do about it.
Meta is widening the rollout of Ads Creative Studio, which points out your best-performing content, and feeding those findings to its AI business assistant, which now remembers more and can act on your behalf. You can describe an audience in a plain sentence and let the AI choose the targeting categories, then confirm or reject them. New tools turn still images and catalogs into video ads. And people can now buy products inside a Messenger chat through Meta’s AI agent.
Our read: use the tools to find what is working, not to decide what to say.
A machine can resize a good idea a hundred ways. It still needs the idea.
Instagram is testing an opt-in setting that puts Reels in the Home feed, with sound on by default. It is a test, and people can switch back. Separately, the Edits app can now design carousels.
Our read: sound on by default is the detail to watch. If it sticks, the first second of audio matters as much as the first frame. And a design tool for carousels tells you Instagram still rates them. So do we.
Threads introduced Gems, a badge for posts with a strong perspective, good discussion or originality. An automated system hands them out. The badge does nothing else, and you can take it off.
Our read: you can’t brief your way to one, which is the point. Have an opinion.
X launched X Lift, an AI tool that reads your website and writes ad campaigns from it. It is also introducing liveness checks: if an account looks like a bot, the owner verifies with phone biometrics or a short selfie video. Pass and you’re back in. Fail and the account stays locked. Grok can now read and analyze posts too, which makes it a social listening tool of sorts.
Our read: find out who on your team could pass a selfie check for the brand account, before the day it matters.
Brands can now put spend behind posts that users have already made, reaching people who are already interested in that content. Users can opt out.
Our read: this is the kind of UGC we like. Real, already posted, already working. (We have thoughts on the other kind.)
Reddit expanded its lead generation tools as it pushes further into B2B, with deeper connections to CRM systems and new ways to optimize for leads.
Our read: if you sell to businesses and have been ignoring Reddit, the people you want are already there, asking each other what to buy.
The platforms are getting very good at production and distribution. Taste, voice and a reason to care are still on you.
Source: PR Daily’s weekly roundup of social media updates, by Allison Carter, October 13, 2026.
The rise, the fall, and the oddly hopeful third act of the person holding the product.
There was a time, not long ago, when a stranger with good lighting could hold up a serum and you would simply buy it. No questions. She had a nice kitchen. She seemed hydrated. That was the whole pitch, and it worked.
The first influencers were not selling so much as oversharing. They posted the outfit, the breakup, the bad haircut, and somewhere in the middle of all that they mentioned a mascara. The mention worked because it wasn’t the point. Brands noticed, as brands do, and arrived with contracts.
For a while everyone was happy. The audience got a friend with taste. The friend got paid. The brand got a sale it could trace to one face.
Then the feed filled up. Every post was an ad, every ad was “obsessed,” and the word lost its meaning somewhere around the fourth discount code of the day. The audience learned to spot a brief from across the room: the product held at chin height, the caption that reads like legal approved it, the sudden passion for a meal kit.
Nobody cancelled the influencer. People just stopped believing her, which is quieter and worse.
The influencer didn’t die. The job split in two. On one side are the people with real expertise or a real point of view: the esthetician, the line cook, the person who reviews every public bathroom in their city. They have smaller audiences and far more trust. On the other side are the brands themselves, which have finally worked out that they are allowed to have a personality too.
Stop buying reach and start borrowing belief. Choose people who would plausibly use the thing without being paid. Give them room to say it their way, including the part they don’t love. Sign them for a season instead of a post, because trust is mostly repetition. And build a voice of your own, so you aren’t renting someone else’s forever.
The influencer isn’t over. The era of believing anyone holding a product is. It was time.
UGC was meant to be the honest alternative to advertising. Then advertising found it. Here is when it still works, and when it really doesn’t.
You know the video. A woman in a parked car, phone propped on the dash, tells you she “wasn’t going to share this.” She shares it. She shares it in the same three beats as the last forty women in parked cars, because all of them were sent the same brief.
User-generated content was supposed to be the opposite of an ad: a real customer, unprompted, pleased. It still can be. But a lot of what gets called UGC now is an ad wearing a hoodie.
It works when the person has a reason to be talking. They bought it, they used it, something happened. The detail gives it away: the exact stain it lifted, the aunt who asked what perfume that was. Specifics are hard to fake, and nobody thinks to script them.
It works when it looks like the platform it lives on. Slightly too long. Bad audio in one spot. A dog walks through.
And it works when the product does something you can see. Before and after. Open and pour. If the result is visible, a stranger with a phone is the best narrator you could ask for.
When the script is doing the talking. “Okay, so I have to tell you about” is not a personality.
When the person has no relationship with the product, and you can tell from how they hold it.
When the brand polishes it. Color grading UGC is like ironing jeans.
When the product needs explaining more than showing. A testimonial can’t carry a complicated idea. That job belongs to your own content.
Audiences forgive an ad. They don’t forgive being handled.
Send the product, not the script. Ask one question (what surprised you?) and let them answer the way they talk. Keep the take with the flaw in it. And if you’re paying, say so plainly.
Three posts a week is not a strategy. Neither is “be more authentic.”
We say this with love: the document you’re calling a social media strategy is probably a calendar. It has dates. It has “Motivation Monday.” It has a row for a platform nobody has opened since the document was made.
A calendar tells you when. A strategy tells you why anyone would care, which is the harder question, and the one most brands skip.
The campaign was made for a billboard, or a TV spot, or a deck, and social got the leftovers, cropped to fit. People can tell. An idea built for the feed behaves differently from one resized for it.
Scroll your last nine posts. If every one is about the product, the founder or the award, you have a brochure. People follow accounts that give them something: a laugh, a tip, the feeling of being in on it.
You don’t need to be on every platform. You need to be very good where your people already are, and absent everywhere else without guilt.
A follower count is the number that looks best in a meeting and tells you the least. Saves, shares, replies and the comment that says “this is so me” are the ones that mean something landed.
A calendar tells you when. A strategy tells you why anyone would care.
Who you’re for, in enough detail to picture their phone. What you give them that they’d miss if you stopped. Three or four things you talk about, and the many you don’t. A point of view on your category. A plan for what happens after someone comments. Then, last, the calendar.
You have about as long as it takes to blink twice. Here is what to do with it.
A hook is not a trick. It’s a promise: stay, and you’ll get this. The first line of a video does the job a headline used to do, with less time and a thumb already moving. These five keep working because they’re built on how people behave, which changes far more slowly than any algorithm.
“I’ve been doing this wrong for ten years.” Admitting something lowers the viewer’s guard, and makes them check whether they’re guilty too.
“Three things I’d never buy as a pastry chef.” The number tells people how long this will take. The credential tells them why to listen. Together they’re hard to scroll past.
“Hot take: the viral one is worse.” It has to be an opinion you really hold and can defend in the comments, because the comments will come.
Start where it gets good. “So the caterer has just walked out.” Context can arrive later. Curiosity can’t.
No words at all. A cake in a sink. A sofa on a roof. Let the question form by itself, then answer it.
Each one opens a gap between what the viewer knows and what they now want to know. The only rule is that you close it. A hook that doesn’t pay off works exactly once, and then people remember your name for the wrong reason.
A hook is a promise. Stay, and you’ll get this.
“Wait for it.” “You won’t believe this.” “Stop scrolling.” If you have to ask, it isn’t a hook.
Everyone is doomscrolling. Your video has to be the one thing in the feed that feels like a break from it.
It’s 11:40 p.m. You opened the app to check one thing. You have since watched a man restore a rusted cleaver, a stranger’s wedding speech, and a recipe you will never make. You aren’t enjoying this, exactly. You also aren’t stopping.
That is who you’re making content for. Not an “audience.” A tired person with a moving thumb, half looking for a reason to stay and half looking for a reason to put the phone down.
The feed has a tempo: fast cut, loud music, big text. After forty of those, the thing that stands out is the opposite. A still shot. Someone talking quietly. Three seconds of nothing. Contrast stops a scroll faster than volume does.
People stop for people. A face in the first frame, looking into the lens, does more than any graphic.
Plenty of people are watching next to someone who is asleep. Put the first line on screen, large, and make sure the first frame makes sense in silence.
Something should already be happening when the video begins. A hand reaching, a door opening, a pour.
The doomscroll is mostly dread and noise. A video that is calm, useful or properly funny feels like relief, and relief is what gets saved and sent to a friend.
Contrast stops a scroll faster than volume does.
Stopping is step one. The next line has to reward it, and so does the one after that.
You aren’t competing with other brands. You’re competing with everything, including sleep. Make the thing worth staying up for.