Brands – from media companies to restaurants – are flocking to Substack
“Substack is making everyone into writers the same way Instagram made everyone into photographers.” Emily Sundberg made this point in her Feed Me newsletter last year, and after seeing the same links rotate round a number of different Substacks we’re inclined to agree.
Substack, for the uninitiated, is a subscription-driven online media platform that allows creators to publish, and monetise, a variety of content, including newsletters, podcasts and videos, directly to their audiences.
In that same newsletter, Emily dives further into the IG-Substack comparison, saying “Substack’s mission statement is “Building a new economic engine for culture”? Which means the point of Substack — unlike Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok — is to get you to monetize your content, and/or get you to spend money on other people’s content. Creating content with the goal of making money off of it is different than creating content with the goal of getting likes, is different than creating content with the goal of being creative and connecting with other people. Seems to me, the obvious attraction of being able to monetize your taste—over putting out a probably-more-interesting letter about your actual life—is leading to a lot of very, very similar Substacks.”
Is all of the writing on the platform the same? No. Does Substack function as a way to escape the algorithm and get content that you actually want when you want it, a real direct line to the people whose taste and writing you admire? Yes. And it’s not just a place for people playing at being writers – a whole host of prominent journalists and authors use the platform. As well as the already famous people, there are even Substack celebs now, like there are famous TikTokers.
But there are so many curated roundups featuring opinions, recommendations and links that it’s very easy to come across the same content from multiple sources. And now brands are hopping on board.
Similar to the way Instagram has become a key marketing channel, brands have now cottoned on to the power of the Substack community, which includes over 5 million paid subscribers. Though the platform’s own guidelines say that it’s intended for “high quality editorial content, not conventional email marketing”, numerous brands are using Substack to connect with their audiences in a deeper, more personal and more fun way. As Rachel Karten explains in her Link in Bio newsletter, “As social media algorithms prioritize discovery over community, brands are looking for places to have a deeper, more conversational relationship with their audiences. Instagram features like Broadcast Channels and Close Friends aren’t satisfying that need…maybe Substack can?”
i-D now has a Substack, which it launched with a zine created in collaboration with the platform, and Rare Beauty, American Eagle, Hinge and Tory Burch are all on there. Restaurants on both sides of the pond are at it too, like King in NYC and Gina in London.
Are all these Substacks contributing to content overload? Much has been written about the enshittification of popular culture thanks to social media algorithms and AI, including by us. In the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch calls it “ultra-processed content. Dopamine-dense, with at best negligible informational value, at worst corrosively negative.” In his Garbage Day newsletter, Ryan Broderick unpacks ‘The Great Dumbening’, calling out tech platforms who have “created a new, much worse way of creating culture. A universe of dumbasses talking to other dumbasses, measured by numbers that don’t make sense and don’t reflect anything other than passive screen time.” That’s one way of putting it…
As Ashleigh Hatchard from social media agency Connec+s says, Substack does offer an alternative to the doomscrolling that’s so prevalent on other platforms, and the guilt that comes with that kind of screen time. It’s interesting that a big following on Substack doesn’t necessarily transition over to other social media channels, underscoring the difference between audience behaviours and consumption habits on Substack versus Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Substack may be leaning more into video itself – it’s recently launched a Substack on Film: London series – but the platform is still betting on long-form content.
We may be getting recycled hot takes and the same links sent round in multiple different Substacks but at least it’s not AI slop, at least there’s still a level of curation happening, at least we’re getting some thoughts coming from human brains and not just spat out from an LLM.
And just when you thought Substack-turation had reached peak levels, we’re only going and launching a Substack. That’s right, we’re jumping on the bandwagon, fashionably late to the party (which appears like it might be moving locations to Patreon but that’s a story for another time).
Our ‘Inside Job’ Substack will deep dive into all the things that didn’t make the cut for London On The Inside. We can promise it won’t be a list, but rather a deeper look into “industry” topics. Sign up here.
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