Weekly Format Mining
Study one external format each week and adapt its mechanics to your audience
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
Weekly format mining separates a piece of media’s structural mechanics from its subject matter. A creator studies content from entertainment, sports, ecommerce, consumer media, or another industry and identifies a reusable format—for example, a host standing before a screen and commenting on examples. The team records that pattern in a swipe file, explains why it captures attention, and adapts it to its own audience, expertise, and brand standards. Campbell used the exercise to help talented content consumers who did not initially understand SaaS contribute new ideas. The weekly cadence makes outside inspiration a dependable part of production, while adaptation prevents the method from becoming literal copying.
Origin
Campbell assigned ProfitWell creators who lacked SaaS experience to find a format every week and bring outside media mechanics into the company. Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain.
Core principles
- 01Formats can travel between industries even when subject matter cannot
- 02Frequent content consumers possess useful pattern knowledge
- 03Adaptation is not identical copying
- 04A swipe file turns inspiration into a repeatable input
How to run it
- 1
Scan outside the category
Look at media the team genuinely consumes across entertainment, ecommerce, sports, news, and other industries.
Pro tip Prioritize creators with strong awareness of current formats.
Watch out Searching only direct competitors reproduces category conventions.
- 2
Extract the format
Describe the underlying structure without relying on the original topic, personalities, or jokes.
Pro tip Express it as a reusable sequence of actions or roles.
Watch out If the description contains only surface styling, the mechanism has not been extracted.
- 3
Record the pattern
Add the source, structural description, attention mechanism, and possible applications to a swipe file.
Pro tip Tag entries by format, channel, tone, and production complexity.
Watch out An unorganized collection of links is difficult to reuse.
- 4
Adapt for the audience
Replace the original subject and execution with material suited to the target customer and verbal brand.
Pro tip Preserve the attention mechanism while changing the expression.
Watch out Copying too literally creates ethical and brand risks.
- 5
Test and retain learning
Run a bounded experiment and document whether the adapted format improved attention or understanding.
Pro tip Keep unsuccessful formats in the file with notes on why they failed.
Watch out Do not declare a format universally bad after one weak execution.
In the wild
Campbell described extracting the structure of a presenter standing before a screen and commenting on material. ProfitWell could apply that structure to SaaS analysis without reproducing the original comedy show.
→ An entertainment format becomes a differentiated educational format for a B2B audience.
A software company studies product-unboxing videos, then creates a recurring series that opens and evaluates real onboarding flows step by step rather than copying the source’s branding or script.
→ The team imports a familiar attention pattern into a specialist market.
Common mistakes
Copying instead of adapting
Reproducing another creator’s expression, jokes, or branding is not legitimate format transfer.
Mining only direct competitors
This narrows the pool to formats the audience already sees throughout the category.
Saving links without analysis
A swipe file becomes useful only when it records the transferable mechanism and possible applications.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for teams hiring creators from outside their market or trying to escape formulaic B2B content.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for teams that will copy source material, jokes, or visual identity without meaningful transformation.
From the transcript
“What I told them is your job is every week, find a format.”
“having swipe files for content, I think is also really valuable because a lot of our ideas, they're just from different industries that we like…”
“And we're also not gonna like copy and paste it. We're gonna, we're gonna, you know, make it make it our own.”
From the episode
Growing Your Brand Through Inbound Media with Patrick Campbell
Patrick Campbell