Mobile Data Trends, Employee Content, and Burger King’s Open Line

Trends

What the Latest Mobile Data Tells Us About Social Media Habits

Sensor Tower, a mobile analytics firm described as Nielsen for apps, recently released its annual State of Mobile report, offering a detailed look at how people are spending time across social, streaming, gaming, and shopping platforms. One of the clearest takeaways: attention is consolidating around video, and not always where brands expect. Across all age groups and genders, YouTube now captures the most time spent on apps, yet it remains underutilized by many brands, despite the opportunity to repurpose both short-form content through Shorts and longer-form storytelling.

Meanwhile, while TikTok continues to lead overall social media engagement globally, Instagram is increasingly driven by Reels, which account for nearly half (46%) of time spent on the platform, reinforcing that short-form video remains the core format audiences engage with. The report also highlights the rapid rise of short-form “drama” apps like ReelShort and DramaBox, which are outperforming traditional streaming platforms in some international markets, demonstrating how audiences are gravitating toward faster, more digestible, and often AI-generated storytelling that aligns with shrinking attention spans. The report serves as a great resource for better understanding how people are engaging with different platforms, and can provide hints for what types of content will likely resonate with audiences as we move through 2026.

Employee-Generated Content Is Having Its Moment

Employee Generated Content (EGC) isn’t new, but it’s gaining traction because people are continuing to seek out and respond to content that feels unpolished, fun, and genuinely enthusiastic. EGC works best when it highlights the people behind the brand or those who truly care about their work, and when they get proper credit. In many cases, it even outperforms traditional, highly produced brand content.

The “Staples Baddie” on TikTok illustrates organic EGC: a Staples employee recently started sharing content about her job and favourite products, completely on her own, without brand intervention. Staples supports her through gifting and partnership discussions but doesn’t direct the content. The results speak for themselves: her videos from the past month have outperformed all of Staples’ social content from 2025, and the comments show real impact, with people sharing stories and even heading in-store to check out products. A more structured example comes from the National Gallery of Art, where the gallery’s marketing team tapped one of their curators to share her expertise using Gen Z slang and unexpected humour. The videos are funny, memorable, and consistently outperform other posts, proving that the right person telling the right story authentically resonates. There’s no single playbook for EGC, but the takeaway is clear: when brands give employees space to show up as themselves, with passion, personality, and a little less polish, audiences notice and engage.

Industry News

Burger King Is Opening the Door to Unfiltered Customer Conversations

Burger King is taking an unusually direct approach to customer feedback by having its president literally hand out his phone number. Tom Curtis, president of Burger King in the U.S. and Canada, recently invited customers to call or text him with their “honest, unfiltered feedback” on everything from the menu to the restaurant experience to brand campaigns. He’s committed several hours each day over the next few weeks to personally responding, with the goal of having real conversations and using those insights to help shape where the brand goes next. It’s undeniably a bold PR move, but it also reflects a broader shift toward transparency, giving customers direct access to leadership in a way that feels unusually human for a brand of this scale.

What makes this especially interesting is what it represents. By opening the door to real, unfiltered conversations, Burger King is leaning into something simple: people want to feel heard. Whether every suggestion leads to change or not, the act of listening, and doing so publicly, builds goodwill and reminds customers that their opinions matter. At a time when most brand interactions are carefully managed, this kind of openness stands out. It’s a good reminder that sometimes the most meaningful engagement doesn’t come from a polished campaign, but from creating space for real conversations.