Post Performance Report: Brands committing to human-generated content

Welcome back to Post Performance Report—a series where we compile and analyze social media posts and campaigns inspiring us, and break down what makes them so genius. We don’t just examine the flawless creative execution of every post or campaign, but the brand impact, too.

This time, we’re going to focus on the great debate of 2026, AI content. We’re living in the age of infinite creation to match the infinite scroll we’re already used to. But as content becomes easier to produce at scale, research suggests that what audiences are prioritizing is human-generated content. In fact, our Q4 2025 Pulse Survey found that this was the thing people wanted to see most from brands’ social media.

Here, we’re going to look at some of the brands that are doing it well, starting with National Rail.

National Rail creator partnership tugs on the heartstrings

Trains and tea; name me a more British, human-centered experience, I’m happy to wait!

National Rail is the main umbrella brand that sits over all Britain’s railways. Typically, the brand’s Instagram page, which has 26k followers, features images or videos of destinations that you can reach through Britain’s railway network, from London to Edinburgh and York to Newcastle, encouraging users to save these destinations as inspiration for later.

These posts are the backbone of the brand’s Instagram strategy, but a real human moment brought the train brand runaway success thanks to a collaboration with a well-known British creator to celebrate 200 years of British railways.

National Rail partnered with William Shears, who runs the “a_mug_of_life” account. The concept of William’s show is to share a cup of tea and a chat with a stranger, and this time he took that series to the train, sharing a brew with two passengers and hearing their life stories in the process.

The posts featured John and James, who shared stories from their life, including working for the railway, visiting grandchildren and childhood memories. The posts tie everything back to the unique experience of train travel and the ”conversations, chance encounters and the kind of stories you only hear when two strangers end up in the same carriage.”

The miniseries clearly resonated. National Rail’s posts typically get a few dozen engagements per post, but the two posts with these stories combined for more than 50,000 likes, to say nothing of the supportive comments they received.

The play: National Rail has a unique position in the UK of interacting with a cross-section of the whole country, with hundreds of destinations and reasons for travel. Each one of those passengers has a story to tell, and a reason for riding the train.

Not every brand will have as varied a user base as a rail company, but every one of your customers has a story to tell, a reason why your brand is a part of their life. Seek out those who are willing to tell that story, perhaps via a partnership with a content creator, and find those resonant, human moments amongst the everyday.

Airbnb goes big with Sabrina Carpenter

Neither Airbnb nor pop sensation need any introduction, but their partnership is worthy of note if we’re looking for curated human moments that stand out. The vacation rental company recently launched its Experiences, which allow locals to host travelers to get to know the part of the world they’re staying in a little better by experiencing something unique to that part of the world, from food tours to ancient ruins and cocktail bars.

To promote this launch, Airbnb partnered with a number of celebrities including, of course, Sabrina Carpenter. Carpenter hosted one session herself, while a tour of her recreated set was also offered at the end of last year.

The success of this social story relies on the element of surprise, with the singer making an unscheduled appearance at the Short n’ Sweet experience for attendees that had been learning her dances and getting a makeover from her team.

The emotion the ensuing impromptu slumber party caused resonated with social users, driving significant engagement for Airbnb. The video featuring the event has been viewed more than a million times on TikTok, and earned more than 120k engagements.

The play: If you’ve got something to shout about, do it loudly, and capture people’s real reactions.

Airbnb took a big swing to promote their new product offering with a huge name, but it was the reactions of the participants—the surprise, the screaming, the crying, the laughing, that made it meaningful. Capture those moments and build connections.

LEGO builds a showcase to highlight new sets

Requiring minute attention to detail, time-consuming, sometimes frustrating. All things that are the direct opposite of the goals of AI but could easily describe the process of building a LEGO set, and LEGO leaned into that reputation with one of its more successful social posts of the last few months.

Toward the end of the year, the brand posted a teaser for its “Jan brick drops,” which featured half a dozen meticulously designed and constructed LEGO sets including the Parisian cityscape, cherry blossom landscape and a race car in partnership with Ford.

It was the detail that captured people’s attention here, with users commenting with delight on small things they had noticed about the sets. Showcasing real-world examples of building, and consciously reveling in the time they would take to construct, can both be huge advantages in the age of infinite scroll.

The play: Don’t be ashamed to showcase the slow.

Whataburger keeps it simple with the social media apology trend

Human-generated content doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, its simplicity and lack of polish is ironically what can make it stand out in the age of hyper-professional looking AI content.

Whataburger leaned into that as it joined the apology trend and apologized for some of the problems it has caused its customers. This trend takes and accelerates the “Notes app apology” that was common in the days of character limits on social networks, as well as the standard corporate apology template, and playfully reimagines it for a branded humblebrag.

Here, Whataburger apologized for “11p.m. drives triggered by a single photo of melty cheese,” “entire calendars rearranged the moment we brought back a fan-favorite sandwich” and much more.

One advantage of this kind of posting is that it prompted the community to join the conversation, sharing other things for which people in the comments jokingly felt that the brand should apologize, which drove further engagement and brand awareness.

Good human-generated content begets further human-generated content and community engagement, and Whataburger’s post here is a great example of that.

The play: Sometimes keeping it simple is the best way. You don’t have to jump on every trend but if you do, make it meaningful and unique to your brand. Whataburger does that here by catering to its products and the experiences it knows its customers talk about, with a specificity that makes those customers feel seen and appreciated. You can stay up to date with opportunities like this by integrating social intelligence into your content research and planning process.

Dublin Airport highlights everyday stories

Highlighting the everyday stories, with a seasonal twist. That was the strategy for Dublin Airport as it featured a real family welcoming their daughter and grandchildren back from Australia to celebrate Christmas.

Opening with the story of the daughter having lived in Australia for 14 years, the eventual reunion and excitement of the grandchildren visiting Ireland for the first time creates a human moment for the audience, evoking that familiar feeling of going home for the holidays.

There’s nothing fancy about this storytelling, even if it is a bit more complex than Whataburger’s efforts. All the emotion comes from a story we’ve heard since the dawn of time. It’s nothing new, but it hits hard, as the music swells and the family greets each other.

Dublin Airport acts as the facilitator here rather than the protagonist, showcasing the stories of those who pass through its walls and bringing families together for the holidays.

The play: Similar to the National Rail example, this is an example of highlighting the right stories at the right time. Seasonal messages often resonate, and emotional stories like this one can have a multiplying impact on their success.

Your brand doesn’t have to be the hero of the story, being the glue that binds people together can be equally powerful.

Jetstar Australia revels in the absurd with its lying challenge

Social media trends can be a little more extravagant than a simple text apology post, as proven by Jetstar Australia.

At the back end of last year, a lying challenge went viral on TikTok and Instagram in which two people each had to convince the other they were holding a certain object behind a divider, and each had to ask the other questions to figure out who was lying. Meanwhile the audience knows the whole time.

Jetstar Australia capitalized on this trend with a successful social video in which one employee claimed (truthfully) that they were holding a soccer ball behind the divider, while another claimed they were holding a pencil while in fact (farcically) holding a whole entire airplane.

The short skit involved both employees guessing incorrectly about the other’s truthfulness, and ends in the reveal of the aircraft to much amusement from both participants.

Viewers reveled in the absurdism of the post and matched the brand’s energy, offering their own examples of things that obviously didn’t match, including offering up a whole airport as a pencil case and nebulae as paperclips.

This video was a huge success story for the brand, with upward of 8 million views and more than half a million likes, compared with the four-figure views its posts normally get. In fact, it was so successful that it’s now pinned to the top of the brand’s page.

The play: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. There aren’t many companies that can boast an international jet as part of their marketing campaigns, but every company has something unique to them. Incorporate that uniqueness into your social strategy, and don’t be afraid to get a little silly with it!

Embrace the human, unpolished content

That concludes this month’s installment of the PPR. Stay tuned for next month’s edition, where we’ll feature the brands going all in on microcommunities. In the meantime, remember these key takeaways:

 

Speaking of trends, a big one we’re seeing at the beginning of 2026 is the rise of brands producing episodic content as part of their social strategy, which you can read more about here.

And if you see a social post or campaign that deserves to be highlighted, tag us @sproutsocial and use #PostPerformanceReport to have your idea included in a future article.