Do you prefer brand awareness or performance? What is your preferred marketing channel? In this series, we get to know past Insider Summit attendees and ask about their preferences.

Nate Levinson, Managing Director, Head of Social, Crossmedia:

• Influencers as a Channel or Influencers as the Strategy: Shameless plug for my last MediaPost contribution. Influencers as strategy! The strategy that many plans should be built around.
• Control Every Detail or Trust Creators’ Voice: Trust creators’ voice! Sure, there are important brand guidelines to consider, but best to let the pros be pros.
• Brand Guidelines First or Platform-Native Content First: As the Head of Social at an agency with many FinServ clients, I’m required to say everything must be Brand Safe first. But once that box is checked, platform-native content all the way.
• Short-Form Content or Long-Form Storytelling: Depends on the platform! Short-Form is king on Meta, but we’ve seen lots of success on TikTok and LinkedIn with longer form content.
• UGC-Style Ads or Polished Brand Content: UGC and it’s not particularly close to me. Time for brands to stop trying to be Don Draper and meet the moment. That means more UGC!
• Data-Driven Strategy or Intuition-Led Creativity: Common sense matters, but data-driven strategy all the way. Everything needs a vibe check and the human element is important, but data > intuition.
• Separate Budgets or Unified Media Planning: Unified media planning. No brainer. We aren’t working toward channel goals for our clients, we’re working toward business goals.

If you’re interested in submitting content for future editions, please reach out to our Managing Editor, Barbie Romero at Barbie@MediaPost.com.