THE POV PRINCIPLE: HOW TO MAKE STRANGERS CARE

Morning!

It’s 18° in Manchester today. Can you believe it? I’ve been sat here moaning about English weather for the last 20 years of my life, and now I’m wearing shorts to brunch in April.

What a hypocrite. Thankfully though, I did have a marketing revelation at brunch in my shorts, and it’s time I shared it with you.

Let’s get into it!

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BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY

About three months ago, my brother Morgan decided to sign up for his first Ironman.

(He asked me if I wanted to do it, and I told him absolutely not.)

Since then, he’s been documenting the entire journey on his Instagram.

• Learning to swim properly.

• Getting in long runs.

• Weekend training recaps.

And the content has been solid, well-shot, consistent, and to be fair, the numbers haven’t been bad either. Most of his videos land somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 views.

But he’s been stuck there.

No real breakout moment. No post that really took off.

Then, on Saturday morning - mid-scoffing pancakes from 19 Cafe Bar - I had an idea. I’d recently seen this guy on Instagram who’d built a 130,000-person audience with somewhat mundane videos…

They were covering his daily life, and nothing special ever happened in them.

• He’d go to work.

• Wake up late.

• Run.

Nothing special, yet people loved them. That’s when it clicked. People loved him because he wasn’t special, he was just like them - they could relate to his life.

That’s when I realised what Morgan’s content was missing - it lacked an entry point.

Something that would give people a reason to care about what he was doing. No one cares about him or his training regimen right now. He needed something that would make them care - something they could relate to.

So I spent the rest of my day researching and finding 5 of the best methods to add reliability into your content. I’m calling these “Relatability Crutches”. Because they’re a crutch that you can rely on while you try and get your content off the ground.

Here are the 5 best I found:

(Morgan’s going to be trying 1,4, and 6 over the next few weeks.)

Crutch 1: Localisation

A girl is going viral on TikTok right now by walking every street in Brighton.

On paper, the concept sounds very… erm… unremarkable.

• She’s not telling some emotional story.

• She’s not doing anything outrageous.

• She’s not completing a challenge.

She’s literally just picking a street in Brighton, walking down it, and showing you what’s on it.

For most people, it’s not even remotely interesting.

But for one group of people, it’s impossible to scroll past.

The people who live in Brighton.

Because the second the video plays, you watch on to see if you recognise a street she walks down, or a café you’ve sat in, or a road you drive every morning.

And that’s the whole point.

One of the most powerful psychological levers in content is location, and most marketers overlook it completely.

And this method applied perfectly to Morgan’s content.

He’s sharing all of this content around his first-ever Ironman, and no one cares.

No one cares about his Ironman. No one cares about the training plan. No one cares about a swim unless you give them a reason to.

So instead of saying:

He needs to say:

Same content. Different frame.

Because the moment you anchor your content in a place, it opens up a whole new layer of relevance. You don’t need people to care about you. You just need them to care about the city, the street, or the space you’re in.

It works for brand content too.

Let’s say you’re doing an office tour. The classic title might be:

But no one cares about you, your company, or your office.

What you need to say is:

Now you’ve got interest. Because people who live in Manchester - or who’ve walked through St Peter’s Square - suddenly want to see what it looks like inside.

That’s the unlock.

Localisation gives people an entry point to care about your content before they care about your story. It’s a crutch. And when you’re building from zero, crutches like this are essential.

Most content fails not because it’s bad, but because it doesn’t give the viewer a reason to care.

Location is the simplest fix.

Crutch 2: Shared Cultural Context

Localisation is a brilliant crutch for making content relatable.

But it’s not always scalable.

Especially if you’re a brand that doesn’t just want to bring in local clients or customers. In that case, leaning too heavily on geography will hold you back. You don’t want to be boxed in as “The Manchester brand” forever.

That’s where shared cultural context becomes useful.

Instead of relying on where someone is, you draw on what they recognise — brands, habits, inside jokes, or references that are instantly familiar to your audience.

A friend of mine, Jordan Evans, runs an agency called That Converts. But he first started going viral on TikTok by rebranding high-street favourites — turning budget supermarkets into luxury labels.

The format was simple: what if Greggs was a five-star bakery? What if Aldi looked like a Soho House brand?

At the time, I didn’t fully get why it was working. The videos were clever, sure. But the real reason they took off wasn’t the visuals. It was Greggs.

Everyone in the UK knows Greggs. There’s already an emotional association there - cheap sausage rolls, £1 steak bake. You don’t need to explain it. The culture is already built in.

So when you reference something like Greggs or Aldi, the audience doesn’t need context. They already have an opinion. And now they’re curious to see how you reinterpret something they know.

It works across industries too.

If you run a personal brand agency, you could write:

If you work in branding:

If you’re in PR:

You’re not creating content from scratch - you’re building on something that already lives rent-free in the culture.

Crutch 3: Life Phase

One of the more overlooked ways to build relatability into your content is by grounding it in a specific phase of life.

Someone building a career in their twenties is thinking about different things than someone running a team in their forties with two kids at home.

And when your content reflects that, it gets attention.

For example:

• “What I learnt managing a marketing team while raising toddlers”

• “Building a personal brand while working full-time at an agency”

• “What focus actually looks like when you’ve got three back-to-back pitch meetings and a school run at 3:15”

You’re not creating content about parenting. Or freelancing. Or burnout.
You’re just adding relatable context.

You can do this through a brand perspective too.

You don’t need to write “day in the life of a married mum in marketing” - but if your campaign features people who look like your audience, sound like your audience, and live like your audience, it lands with your audience.

So if you’re stuck on how to make your content feel more relevant, don’t just think about job titles or demographics. Think about where your audience is in their life.

Then meet them there.

Crutch 4: Their Job Role

Job title might seem like the driest possible crutch, but people naturally gravitate towards content that reflects their working reality.

A broad tip about “growing your brand” might get a glance. But reframe it as “how brand managers are adapting to TikTok-first strategies” and suddenly it feels sharper. It’s more specific. It’s clear who it’s for.

Semrush are a perfect example of how to do this well.

They produce content that speaks directly to what it feels like to be in the job. They post about campaign pressure, SEO frustrations, analytics challenges, and the day-to-day grind of delivering results in a marketing role.

It’s not all product-led content. In fact, much of it doesn’t mention their tool at all.

But the point is clear. The content feels like it was created by marketers, not just aimed at them. And that distinction matters.

Because when people see their own experience reflected back at them, they instantly start to relate and feel like the brand understands them.

That’s what gives your content weight.

So when you’re publishing from your brand account, ask yourself:

Are we creating content that reflects how our audience sees themselves?

Because when you make it clear who a piece of content is for, it’s far more likely to land with the people who need it most.

Crutch 5: Contextual POVs

One of the most powerful ways to make your content relatable is to reflect a moment your audience is actively living through.

This is where POV-style content comes into its own.

You’ve seen it everywhere. Posts and videos that start with:

• “POV: You’ve just graduated and you’ve no idea what you’re doing”

• “POV: You’re a few years into your career and it’s not what you thought it would be”

• “POV: You’re trying to build something on your own for the first time”

It works not because of the format, but because it taps into shared headspace.

From a brand or business perspective, this doesn’t mean you need to start every post with “POV”. But the thinking behind it is useful.

So instead of writing:

Write:

Instead of:

Try:

You’re not just offering advice. You’re showing the audience you understand the exact phase they’re in, and what it feels like to be there.

 🌱 THE GREENHOUSE

Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:

• How I’d destroy Simon Squibbs brand. (See here)

• Best OOH campaign this week. (See here)

• Book recs by Sam Parr. (See here)

TL;DR

1. Localisation

2. Shared Cultural Context

3. Life Phase

4. Their Job Role

5. Contextual POVs

Most content doesn’t flop because it’s bad. It flops because it doesn’t give people a reason to care.

‘Relatable Crutches’ are my new favourite way of doing just that - hopefully you find them useful too.

If you did find this playbook useful, share it with a friend or colleague :)

Until next Sunday.

— Niall

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