Creators are at the core of Morning Brew Inc.’s business. We aim to build thoughtful, sustainable relationships with our creators, and invest deeply in their long-term success. As one of the most recognizable faces on Morning Brew’s social channel, Macy Gilliam has earned hundreds of millions of views and industry acclaim for her business news coverage. Inspired by her previous coverage of the world of niche businesses, Macy launched her new series Out There in 2025. With shortform and longform components distributed across Morning Brew’s social channels, each episode features Macy taking a hands-on look at the world of business and the business of the world.
Around the time of Out There’s launch, a wave of headlines covered two trends – an increased interest in trade school among Gen Z, and private equity’s interest in rolling up blue-collar businesses, like small plumbing operations. The newsiness of these conversations meant it was the perfect time for Macy to roll up her sleeves (literally) and show viewers what the world of plumbing looked like in 2025.
Out There videos require lots of pre-production, and this particular video took weeks of coordination. Macy identified all the key players she needed to make her video the best it could be, and got to work on multiple field shoots. Macy reached out to Berk Trade School to sit in on classes, interview students and instructors, and tour facilities. After the trade school instructors put Macy through her paces, she spent a day working alongside a real plumber in Queens. Once she’d gotten her plumbing training done, Macy headed from unfinished basements to the boardroom of Alpine Investors, a private equity firm to pitch her (fictional) plumbing business to a real investor.
All of this would be impressive enough on its own, but this story wouldn’t be an Out There video without Macy’s signature wit throughout the piece. She’s cracking jokes throughout, and ends the video with a comedy sketch that perfectly ties the video’s themes together. That funny business doesn’t just exist for its own sake – studies show that young people are more likely to remember and share news that’s delivered with humor, and a staggering 77% of the Morning Brew audience expresses a preference for comedic content. Incorporating comedy into Out There keeps Macy’s voice at the forefront of the video and meets audience demand more effectively.
Once we’d made a great video, we needed to ensure it’d reach wide audiences. We carefully plan the titles and thumbnails for every Out There video from the moment pre-production begins, and Macy captured dozens of shots of her in the field for our designers to use when creating thumbnails. We used YouTube’s A/B/C testing feature to find the winning title and thumbnail combination, bringing as many viewers in the door as possible. Macy also created two custom shortform videos for Morning Brew’s social channels, linking to the longform video where possible using features like X replies, Instagram Story links, and LinkedIn comments.
The video has earned over 1.4 million organic views to date, 9X more views than the average video on Morning Brew’s YouTube channel. The video also accrued over 7.9 million minutes of watch time – audiences didn’t just click in to watch, they stuck around to engage with the whole story. The video was a hit with both new and existing audiences, bringing 14K new subscribers into the channel.
The video’s thumbnail didn’t just drive on-platform click-through – it was so eye-catching, it actually became a meme on platforms like X, further evidence of Macy’s impact to drive digital conversation and bring business news stories to wide audiences.