STAGE 01
Preparation
The invisible work. Sleep, food, mental setup, the base you build before it matters. Where discipline lives — and where nobody's watching.
RUNE® — Social Strategy
Four pillars. One system.
This document is the settled organic content system for RUNE at v0.1. Four organic pillars, one separate paid production line, Doubt woven as a thread, product presence density-graded, an anti-pillar list that names the enemy specifically. The visual language is the same as the state mood board — this is a strategy document, not a lookbook, but they belong on the same shelf.
Sections 2 (athlete / partnership program) and 3 (channel strategy — per-channel look-and-feel, paid-vs-organic edit rules) are still open and will land here as they close.
Progress isn't a line.
The line lies.
The category sells linear progress. Real training is a scribble — doubts drop you, recoveries flatten you, comebacks jag. RUNE names all of it. Doubt is the differentiator no one else in performance nutrition will touch.
THE FOUR STAGESPreparation · Doubt · Performance · Recovery. Not a fixed sequence — a loop, jagged and uneven, walked in no fixed order.
STAGE 02
Doubt
The plateau. The bad session. The missed PB. The comeback week. The self-talk no one hears. The state no other brand in this category will name.
STAGE 03
Performance
The moment of execution. Race day. The PB attempt. The specific rep on the specific day. Where preparation cashes in — or doesn't.
STAGE 04
Recovery
The reset. Sleep, mobility, restoration, the boring-but-load-bearing work. Where you close the loop back to preparation — and start again.
Some athletes spend more time in Doubt than anywhere else. That's not failure. That's the truth. RUNE is built for all four.
The truth is what audiences actually want.
Not bravado. Not the finish-line hero shot. Not the pre-packaged winner's quote after the race. Audiences see through that — they've been trained by it for decades. What they engage with, and what makes an athlete trustable, is the honest bit: the low moments, the doubt week, the specific things someone reaches for when they're not sure they can keep turning up. That's the content nobody in performance nutrition is willing to make. It's the content RUNE is designed around.
THE QUESTIONS WE ASK ATHLETES
- How do you feel when you're down and out?
- What tools and tricks do you use to mentally prepare yourself for those lows?
- How do you keep turning up?
- How do you keep consistent when everything is telling you not to?
- What in your routine holds it together — even when you're full of doubt?
- How do you build the confidence to execute when it actually matters?
- Does that confidence come from the preparation?
That last question is where Doubt meets Preparation. Confidence in Performance isn't built in the moment — it's cashed in from work already done. That's the loop. Every stage feeds the next. RUNE is built for all four — but one of them is what we own.
SECTION 1 · THE FOUR PILLARS
Organic content architecture
Each pillar has its own voice, format, product density, and cadence weight. Doubt runs through as a thread. Product is present in every pillar but never leads (UVU reference).
PILLAR 01
Founder BTS
The founder in front of the camera. The pillar with the highest cadence, cheapest to produce, and lowest excuse for missing.
TONAL REFERENCE
Minted NY (Marcus Milione). Story-driven founder narration · moody studio light · caption overlay for hook + accessibility. High-production BTS aspiration.
NOTES
- R2 founder-reel format is the only pillar with a fully codified recipe at v0.1.
- Business-doubt content (self-talk on where the brand is going) available post-launch as a Doubt-thread carrier. Not day one.
STRAIGHT-TO-CAMERA
Upfront · direct-to-camera explainer · natural light · caption overlay. The workaday format.
EXPLAINER WITH PROP
Same setup, adding a physical prop (creatine jug) to demonstrate. Product-adjacent without selling.
ANTI-EXAMPLE
GoFuelYourself. Every anti-pillar box ticked: off-brand flat studio lighting on a set-dressed red backdrop · founder head-to-toe in branded merch with a branded bottle parked front-of-desk (product-forward staging) · single-take edit — no cuts, no hooks, no pacing shifts, dies on retention · trending sound + animated meme text · empty 'building a brand' caption. If it feels like this, kill it.
PILLAR 02
Athlete Insight
Elite athletes on-camera. Not product-education — insight into their whole performance ecosystem. RUNE is one boxed-off thing inside their bigger system, not the answer.
TONAL REFERENCE
Editorial athlete-in-environment. Boxer at his gym, contemplative, overhead fluorescent as key light. High-production stillness — this is the mode when athletes aren't speaking to camera.
NOTES
- Batch-produce with athlete access — 4-6 pieces per session, drip release.
- Nobody in performance nutrition is telling athlete stories this way. The 'boxed-off thing in a bigger system' framing is what differentiates.
INTERVIEW FORMAT
Michael Vick in the locker room · athlete in their environment · caption overlay. Netflix Untold-style. The format we want.
ATHLETE AT VENUE
Athlete at training venue (speedskating rink) with Dutch caption. Format ✓ · but literally sitting on the product bag = the ON anti-pattern we must strip when we adopt this.
QUIET MOMENT
Athlete alone in empty stadium seats · minimalist composition · muted green. The atmospheric counterpoint to the interview format — B-roll from Craft/Ritual could carry this register.
PILLAR 03
The Coach
The pillar that carries the master frame. Category-truth, direct, opinionated. Multi-voice — the founding team plus rotating specialists.
TONAL REFERENCE
Story-format BTS · people huddled around a whiteboard, real thinking-in-progress · warm office, real work. The brains-at-work energy The Coach carries — coach-voice starts with actual working-out-loud, not lecturing.
NOTES
- Signature sub-mechanic: blurred comparative posts — competitor product blurred + short quote + RUNE spec contrast. Framing = brand-origin story ('here's why we made ours this way') not category attack. Max 1-2 / month. Home flexes between The Coach and Founder BTS depending on framing.
- No named series. No locked template. The mechanic is the ownable thing, not a weekly slot.
SUPERMARKET REACTIVE
Upfront in the supermarket aisle · direct-to-camera · Dutch caption. Textbook match for the reactive-variant format spec'd for The Coach — walk the aisle, answer the comment, category context does the visual work.
COMPARATIVE FORMAT
Upfront magnesium vs generic 'laxeermiddel' · side-by-side spec breakdown with annotations. Exact template for RUNE's comparative mechanic. Deviation: Upfront shows the competitor product openly; RUNE's spec is to blur (option 2 from Q1d).
WHITEBOARD DEVICE
Hand-drawn whiteboard sketch. Not content — a graphic device to layer into Coach explainers (thinking-out-loud diagrams, sketch overlays over talking heads, blackboard-style typography).
PILLAR 04
Craft / Ritual
The quiet, cinematic pillar. Founder absent by design. Also the production engine for the state-tagged B-roll library that visually enriches every other pillar.
TONAL REFERENCE
UVU. Cinematic film grade, brand wordmark saturated over muted photography. The mode.
NOTES
- Production model: Oisin + athletes, monthly-ish, founder-shot on planned scene/shot list. Emphasis on capturing raw footage volume.
- B-roll library is state-tagged (Doubt / Effort / Focus / Recovery) in edit — deliberate trade for shoot-day volume.
- Cross-pillar utility: one shoot day produces atmospheric material for Athlete Insight cutaways, The Coach visual filler, and Founder BTS environmental context. One shoot → four pillars.
- Equipment (planned): DJI Osmo Pocket 3, subject to media-agency consult.
- This pillar keeps RUNE from reading as 'the founder's personal Instagram' — non-founder-fronted content matters.
FORMAT EXAMPLE
Cinematic top-down · warm recovery moment · tactile skin, water, quiet
PRODUCT IN CONTEXT
Gel in vest pocket · product as kit item · never the hero of the frame
STYLE REFERENCE
Cyclist visor detail · tactile close-crop · quiet aesthetic
SEPARATE PRODUCTION LINE
Performance Creative — the paid conversion line
NOT A PILLAR · PAID ONLY
Performance Creative
Paid conversion sits entirely outside the four organic pillars. Different production line, different edit rules, different team ownership. Product-forward statics, ingredient callouts, direct offer + CTA. Runs from the Meta ad-batch workflow. Never posted to the organic feed.
Paid amplification of organic content is allowed for aspirational / brand-building purposes — less CTA, less pricing, sometimes no product visible at all. But converting-intent content is always Performance Creative territory.
~20–25% brand / aspirational
~75–80% conversion / lower funnel
RARE PUNCTUATION
Product-hero statement posts — clean pack shots on moody backgrounds, ~1 in 20 organic posts. Not a pillar; brand punctuation. Precedent: Nike swoosh-only posts, Rapha silent product features. Rarity is the whole point — category peers do these constantly and they mean nothing. RUNE does them rarely and they land.
SYSTEM THREADS
Two threads run through every pillar
Doubt and product presence are not silo'd into their own pillars — they're woven through the four, graded per pillar's job.
Doubt
RUNE's differentiator territory. Woven through, not standalone.
| Athlete Insight | elite athletes' doubt-management tools, comeback stories, psychological preparation |
|---|---|
| The Coach | commentary on category dishonesty about doubt — 'no bad days' marketing, the linear-progress lie |
| Craft / Ritual | the visual state of doubt — dawn fog, lone runner, empty stadium. No copy, just image |
| Founder BTS | deferred to post-launch. Business-doubt angle available as a founder self-talk carrier later, not day one |
Product density
Product is present in every pillar. Never leads. UVU-style.
| Craft / Ritual | High |
|---|---|
| Athlete Insight | Medium |
| Founder BTS | Medium-low |
| The Coach | Low, situational |
GUARDRAILS
What RUNE refuses to make
The category defaults are strong. The anti-pillar list gives every producer a clear reject filter.
Anti-pillar list
- Cheap TikTok trends / dances — unless a trend genuinely fits substantively
- Anything AI-looking, un-edited, or off the cinematic look — no fake film simulation, no obvious template energy
- Trying-hard funny / dad-joke energy — the Optimum Nutrition big-brand trap — safe + trying to be relatable = cringey. Reject filter: 'is this dad-joke-cringey? If yes, kill.'
- Safe / forgettable / scroll-past content — anti-boring is the check against 'professional' tipping into 'sterile'
VOICE
How RUNE speaks on-camera
The RUNE voice
Authentic and real. Coach voice, no theatre. A great coach who pushes you to get more out of yourself — and doesn't take itself too seriously about performance.
Risk-taking permitted when substantive. Coach comparative content, Doubt-honest confessions, category-critical takes. Never provocative for its own sake.
Anti-boring. The check against "professional" turning into "sterile."
The named enemy
The Optimum Nutrition trap — safe + trying to be relatable = cringey. Big brands playing it safe and trying to be funny, ending up like your dad trying to make a joke.
Reject filter: "Is this dad-joke-cringey? If yes, kill."
Naming the enemy publicly sharpens every content decision that comes after.
CADENCE + OPS
Weight and deprioritisation order
Not a quota, a compass. The founder-plus-editor team can't hit rigid weekly counts — but they can prioritise clearly.
Weight per pillar
- Founder BTS — heaviest. Backbone. Cheapest to produce.
- Athlete Insight — medium. Batch when athletes are available.
- The Coach — situational. Post when there's something to say.
- Craft / Ritual — lower cadence, higher care per finished piece.
If overwhelmed, deprioritise in this order
- Craft / Ritual
- The Coach
- Athlete Insight
- Never miss Founder BTS. It's the metabolism of the whole system.
TEAM + PRODUCTION MODEL
Who makes this
Core team
- Oisin — founder. Voice / face of Founder BTS, in The Coach rotation, prompter for Athlete Insight, shooter for Craft / Ritual B-roll days.
- Geoff Mullan — co-founder. In The Coach rotation. Lane vs Oisin's still to be defined (potentially: Oisin = brand voice / coaching / formulation, Geoff = business / commercial / partnerships / ops).
- Outsourced video editor — handles editing across all pillars. Enables Craft / Ritual to run without founder in the edit chair.
The B-roll library model
Craft / Ritual shoot days generate a state-tagged raw B-roll library. Same footage feeds:
- Finished Craft / Ritual pillar pieces
- Athlete Insight visual cutaways
- The Coach environmental filler
- Founder BTS environmental context
One shoot day → four pillars. This is the small-team playbook: shoot broadly, tag well, reuse everywhere.
SECTIONS 2 + 3 · OPEN
Still to be built
These sections will land in this document as they close. Same interview format, same voice.
SECTION 2 · TO BE INTERVIEWED
Athlete / Partnership Program
Two distinct streams already flagged: the ambassador program (ongoing structured partnerships — code, revenue share, product allowance, monthly content) versus Ireland event / record support (one-off application-based nutritional support in exchange for content rights + testimonial). These need pinning down: program terms, application flow, page copy, athlete criteria, content rights.
SECTION 3 · TO BE INTERVIEWED
Channel Strategy
Per-channel look-and-feel spec — how content lives on Instagram (grid / stories / reels) vs TikTok, plus how paid ad content differs from organic within each channel. Pillar × channel matrix, cadence per channel, edit rules per pillar per surface.
DESIGN DELIVERABLE
Lookbook website page
This document is the internal working version. Once Sections 2 + 3 close, the whole strategy compresses into a Lookbook-style page on runenutrition.com — visual, tight, shareable with partners / freelancers / potential collaborators. Reference: the current Lookbook page style, to be reviewed before design starts.
