Accessible excellence

A mantra (and a matrix) for creating timeless content

In just a few years’ time, Complex Media’s Hot Ones YouTube series has leapfrogged every late night and daytime talk show to become one of the buzziest promotional circuit stops on the internet.

In a format dominated by fake laughs, boring anecdotes, softball questions and cheesy skits, Hot Ones has to deconstructed the overdone “celebrity interview” by pulling back the curtain on the work, intelligence and love that goes into the crafts of filmmaking, music and social media.

And for my money, it’s one of the best examples of a simple premise executed exceptionally in media right now.

The show is also a good framework for the content traits I think brands should be focusing on if they want to get meaningful attention in 2023:

• One good idea: The show’s abstract is succinct: Guests answer 10 questions about themselves, their careers and their philosophies on life and work while eating increasingly 10 increasingly spicy chicken wings. The simplicity of this lightweight structure lets the content that fills that structure shine.
  
  This follows a pattern I’ve noticed in almost all of my favorite pieces of content I’ve produced in my career: I’ve never regretted simplifying, but I’ve always regretted complicating. An overstuffed abstract or convoluted concept makes it more harder to get buy-in from stakeholders and audience—and doesn’t leave any room for the actual content to breathe.

• Obsessive focus on the details: A nerdy commitment to quality creates a competitive moat, because most people who try to imitate will only do so on the surface level, and won’t put in the necessary work in the margins to actually build a cult following.
  
  In theory, the Hot Ones format is easily replicable, but the show’s secret sauce is host Sean Evans’ and his team’s insane research ethic—to the point where Evans now has a borderline cult reputation among followers of the show for pulling deep-cut references to his guests’ upbringing, early jobs, childhood bands, student films and forgotten projects.
  
  In the hands of a less skilled host, such questions might come off as showy or esoteric, but on Hot Ones, the obsessive attention to sussing out unique anecdotes and insights come from a genuine care for the guest—an interest that is reciprocated with appreciation. (Just see one of many compilations guest reactions to the impressiveness of Evans’ questions.)

• Timely but timeless: Most social media content flops today because it prioritizes being trendy and “of the moment” without ever having a firm center, a personality, a point of view. Timeless content creates moments by having quality as its North Star.
  
  Hot Ones episodes hold up over time because they aren’t the standard shill piece for whatever movie or album the guest has coming out.
  
  Sean and team also excel at booking zeitgeist-y guests who are 1) a few years away from being a household name, 2) prominent figures in niche entertainment subgenres, or 3) historically guarded celebrities you wouldn’t expect to slam chicken wings for entertainment. This creates a rewatchability and meme potential that legacy promotional circuit stops (the Fallons and the Kimmels of the world) don’t have.

• Consistency: Each episode of Hot Ones opens and closes the exact same way, making it really easy and cozy to settle into an episode; you don’t have to contend with jarring format changes week-to-week.
  
  This consistency allows the the real meat and entertainment of each episode—seeing how each guest’s composure disintegrate as they get to the first sauce hot enough to throw them off their line—to shine through. From that first breakdown until the end of the episode, it’s all jazz. The guest reactions push the boundaries of the format but never break it.
  
  The lesson here? Consistency makes the deviations, unexpected reactions and the subversions of format infinitely more interesting and stark in contrast.

• Humor: Hot Ones episodes have a lived-in, “instant classic” quality almost as soon as they air, and it’s largely because of just how damn fun they are to watch.
  
  Too much brand content is taken entirely too seriously, and we forget that helping people laugh, relax and be entertained is one of the most powerful things we do to leave an imprint.

Why am I talking about this?

As I come up on a new year, my desire to follow the Hot Ones model myself in the context of writing this newsletter—to simplify, obsess over quality, publish timeless words to the internet, and do it with humor—is higher than usual.

I find myself wanting to dive into the challenge of building something with my own two hands. I want to see if my ideas about what makes good content can hold an audience.

But since starting normal copy, I’ve struggled to put my finger on the exact goal for 1) what I want to accomplish for myself in writing this newsletter and 2) what I want the experience, vibe and end product of this newsletter to look like for you, the reader.

I haven’t yet been able to do so in a way I’ve been satisfied with, so I’ve procrastinated. I’ve started and stopped on at least a dozen article drafts. I’ve rewritten my “About” page seven times.

I’ve been on the hunt for my own simple premise, executed exceptionally.

So as I asked myself, “What do I want this newsletter to be?”, dissecting what makes Hot Ones so good (as I’ve done above) has helped me unlock some key tenets for this newsletter—and as I think about my own project’s mission statement, I’m drawn to a quote from Daniel Kaluuya’s recent Hot One’s appearance:

Sean Evans: “How do you think of the balance between a film’s high-minded thesis, and then just the basic North Star of entertaining people first and foremost?”

Daniel Kaluuya: “I had this term ‘accessible excellence,’ because I thought a lot of excellence is inaccessible…I cared about the quality of the film first. What did it want to say? What does the director want to say? Did they have a soul to it? Was it accessible? Was it excellent? I think you can have both. You can reach an audience and have the high level of craft. Either-or didn’t satisfy me.”

At its core, accessible excellence is about establishing an extremely quality bar, while never forgetting that content is meant to be consumed by the masses, not tenderly set in a trophy case to be admired from afar.

As Kaluuya goes on to talk about, all content falls somewhere on a four-quadrant matrix. And the most memorable and impactful content—that is, accessible excellence—sits at the top right quadrant:

This is the kind of content I want to make: Stuff that is simple and special. Stuff that is accessible and excellent.

For Hot Ones, accessible excellence looks like hiding a masterclass in research and interviewing skills inside a Trojan horse of a sadistic culinary gauntlet.

For Loom, accessible excellence is having a bit of absurd physical product fun with the clear-eyed belief that “meetings suck and you should cancel them.”

For a recent MSCHF shoe drop, accessible excellence looked like going to market with a combo only a 9-year-old could come up with in their wildest dreams: What if we turned a Gobstopper into a skate shoe?

So that’s my mission for 2023: Simple and special. As I continue the process of building normal copy, you’ll see me experiment with what accessible excellence looks like here, with tweaks to format, recurring segments, and messaging along the way until I find my own special sauce.

And I’m excited to have you along for the ride.

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One last thought…

With the viral explosion of chatGPT these last few weeks, I’ve been having an existential crisis doing a lot of thinking about how the future of content writing will change, and whether things like original thought, personality, and subject matter expertise will really even matter as AI writing tools get us closer and closer to “Eh, that’s good enough.”

In such tool-rich environment, it can be hard to not feel like the bottom is falling out on my chosen craft, and I’m eventually going to be optimized and automated out of creating interesting content.

That was before I reminded myself of arguably the best exchange ever in a Marvel movie:

”Here is the technology. I’ve asked you to simply make it smaller.”

”Okay, sir, that’s what we’re trying to do. But honestly, it’s impossible.”

”TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!”

…

”I’m sorry, I’m not Tony Stark.”

People (and machines) can copy all they want.

But only you can do what you can do.

Be good, friends

- Seth