In my last post, I argued that compliance teams are now in the media business. The question I keep getting back is a fair one: Great. So what does that actually mean for me?

Start seeing compliance training in everything. Here's what's in my inspiration file right now.

The Super Bowl

Every February, the most expensive 30-second television commercials are a masterclass in what great storytelling can do with little time.

What strikes me isn't the production budgets — it's the discipline. Every one of those spots has to establish a world, create an emotional connection, and deliver a message in under a minute. We've started using them as a reference library when we design videos.

For each video, I ask: what's the emotional hook? What does this need to make someone feel in the first five seconds? What's the surprising element? I recently built an anti-bribery video inspired by the Levi's Backstory: Behind Every Original commercial — same energy, similar music, same swagger, and repetition. Just about bribery, not behinds.

Gen Z Professionals

There's a self-declared Gen Z teacher on Instagram who teaches his students to read with music. Watch it once, and you'll understand immediately what I mean when I say something is happening with this generation of professionals.

There are hashtags: #genzteacher, #genzdoctor, #genzlawyer. An entire cohort of young professionals has figured out that you can be genuinely credible and also deeply, unashamedly casual — and funny. Gen Z doctors break down a complex diagnosis the way your smartest friend would explain it over coffee — no white coat energy, no jargon, just clarity and a little irreverence. What they all understand, instinctively and structurally, is that authority doesn't come from formality. It comes from being genuinely useful, and fast. They're not performing expertise. They're sharing it.

This matters for compliance training specifically because this generation isn't just on social media — they're in your workforce. As of 2024, Gen Z officially outnumbered Baby Boomers in the U.S. workforce for the first time, and they're expected to account for 27% of the workforce by 2026. Millennials and Gen Z together are projected to make up roughly 74% of the global workforce by 2030. They are your audience, and they grew up watching people explain things well, quickly, without pretending it was harder than it is. Compliance training that performs seriousness as a proxy for credibility is going to feel, to this audience, like exactly the kind of content they've learned to scroll past.

Love on the Spectrum

I'm a little obsessed with the interview format in Love on the Spectrum — and in documentary filmmaking more broadly — one person, centered in frame, speaking with the full weight of the camera on them.

The show follows autistic adults navigating dating, and what makes it genuinely moving — and genuinely useful as a reference point — is that its subjects communicate without the usual social scaffolding the rest of us rely on. No deflection, no performance, no careful management of how they're coming across. They just say what they mean, because that's how they experience the world. It clarifies how much energy most people spend not saying what they mean.

Compliance training could learn something from both.

From the format: There's something that happens when a person is placed in front of a camera with no desk, no PowerPoint, no visual noise — and just asked to talk. When it works, it creates a kind of intimacy you don't expect from a training video. You feel like you're being told something true. That's a format compliance training almost never uses, because compliance training almost never trusts its speakers that much.

From the spirit of the show: The most effective ethics communication isn't a policy. It's a person saying "this is what I actually believe, and here's why it matters" — without hedging, without legal padding. We've started writing scenario characters in that spirit, people who actually say what they're thinking, because that's where the ethical tension lives.

Video Podcasts

Video podcasts are no longer a niche format. YouTube now has more than 1 billion monthly podcast viewers and has paid creators up to $300,000 to film their podcasts for the platform. Netflix is bringing over 30 video podcasts to its platform in 2026. Seventy-two percent of podcast listeners say they prefer shows with video. People want to see the conversation — the eye contact, the pause before an answer, the genuine laughter.

We've started building this way because it does something a produced course almost can't: it feels like a conversation you stumbled into, not a training you were assigned. We're currently developing a Code of Conduct course in this format.

The Influencer Model

I keep coming back to creators who have built audiences around really specific expertise — and what I notice is the format as much as anything: a talking head over B-roll, a question from a follower answered on the spot, a reaction that's completely unguarded. It's loose. It's direct. It feels like someone decided to just tell you something true, right now.

Compliance training tends to start with the policy, not the person. Those creators earn your attention before they try to teach you anything — by being real, specific, and a little unfiltered. Compliance training almost always assumes it already has learners' attention. It usually doesn't.

See What We're Building

We're building with all of this in mind — and some of it is already done. If you want to see what we've been making, we'd love to show you. Contact us at hello@rethinkcompliance.com