Multimodal Content Hedge
Shift content investment toward images and video before multimodal AI demand peaks.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 96%
Treat the expected growth of multimodal AI as a portfolio signal rather than waiting for every technical detail to settle. As systems become better at understanding images and video, people can communicate with them through media that is faster and easier to provide than long written descriptions. Existing visual assets also become raw material for analysis, transformation, and new creative outputs. Teams should therefore shift a reasonable portion of content investment from text toward images, short-form video, and long-form video while retaining source files and descriptive metadata. The hedge is progressive, not reckless: increase visual production, monitor reuse and audience results, and accelerate only as multimodal demand becomes observable.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain when the hosts considered how rumored multimodal models would change the demand for creative assets.
Core principles
- 01Interfaces shift toward the easiest input humans can provide.
- 02Multimodal systems increase the utility of visual source material.
- 03High-quality images and video can become reusable machine inputs.
- 04A portfolio hedge begins before the platform transition is complete.
How to run it
- 1
Audit format exposure
Measure how dependent the current content portfolio is on text and where the audience already responds to visual formats.
Pro tip Separate production volume from actual engagement and reuse.
Watch out Do not assume every written asset should become a video.
- 2
Select visual-first ideas
Choose topics, demonstrations, products, or stories that images and video communicate more naturally than prose.
Pro tip Prioritize material that an AI system could later inspect, transform, or use as context.
Watch out Weak ideas do not become valuable merely by changing format.
- 3
Shift investment progressively
Move a sustainable share of resources into images, short-form video, and long-form video. Preserve the text operation that still performs.
Pro tip Increase the allocation in stages as evidence accumulates.
Watch out An aggressive pivot can overwhelm the team or degrade quality.
- 4
Preserve machine-usable assets
Store high-quality masters with transcripts, captions, descriptions, and rights information so future systems can use them effectively.
Pro tip Use consistent naming and metadata across the media library.
Watch out Compressed exports without source files sharply limit future reuse.
- 5
Compound through repurposing
Use each strong visual asset as input for clips, variants, explanations, and future AI-assisted experiences.
Pro tip Track how many useful derivatives each source asset generates.
Watch out Uncontrolled automated variants can dilute brand quality.
In the wild
A user gives a multimodal system an image of food and asks it to infer a recipe and cooking instructions. The image replaces a lengthy text-first search journey and becomes the primary interaction input.
→ Visual source material gains utility beyond its original publishing purpose.
A text-heavy company begins filming product demonstrations and producing high-quality explanatory images while retaining transcripts and masters. Those assets later support social clips, AI analysis, and interactive assistance.
→ The company enters the multimodal transition with a reusable visual library rather than starting from zero.
Common mistakes
Abandoning text completely
The hedge calls for a measured portfolio shift, not the elimination of a format that may still drive discovery and conversion.
Producing disposable visuals
Low-quality assets without masters, captions, metadata, or clear rights cannot compound effectively through future tools.
Scaling faster than quality permits
A rapid increase in volume can damage the brand if creative standards and review capacity do not scale with it.
Is it for you?
Best for
Brands and creators with strong text libraries but limited visual and video assets.
Not ideal for
Teams that would sacrifice core content quality or financial stability to chase an unvalidated format shift.
From the transcript
“the need for great images and video has never been more.”
“One hedge you can start doing right now is moving from text to image and video.”
“Short form video, long form video. It is going to pay dividends in a multimodal AI world.”
From the episode
Why Snap MyAI is the Sleeping Giant of AI Chat (#148)