The Annual Playbook: How I Turned a Seasonal Spike into a Repeatable Growth Machine
OVERVIEW
Every year, 1 Second Everyday , a video journaling app, gets a natural lift in downloads around New Year's. People make resolutions. Some of them find the app and word of mouth generates a spike.
That lift existed before I got there. What didn't exist was a strategy to pour fuel on it.
In 2019, I launched 1SE's TikTok from scratch. On pure instinct, I filmed a duet with a creator who had posted a simple video saying she wanted to record one second of her life every day. That one duet broke open the floodgates — and what followed was six years of turning that moment into a repeatable, scalable system.
MISSION
A seasonal spike is not a strategy. My goal was to take an organic, word-of-mouth moment and build something intentional around it. I wanted to make a content system that showed up at exactly the right time, pulled people through the download funnel, and got bigger every year because the formula was built to compound.
PLAN
Year one was instinct. Years two through six were a machine.
The core insight was that the New Year download lift wasn't random. It was driven by aspiration. People wanted to do something meaningful with the coming year and just needed someone to show them how. If I could meet that feeling at exactly the right moment with exactly the right content, I could turn passive curiosity into downloads.
I built a content pipeline designed to move people through every stage: awareness, consideration, and activation. The formula had four phases — spark the trend, drive the download, onboard the new user, and keep them going. Every piece of content had a job.
EXECUTION
In the first year, I spotted a creator organically talking about recording one second every day and filmed a duet on the spot. The timing was right, the format was native to the platform, and the downloads followed immediately. I then created content every day through the New Year window — tutorials, reminders to record, and inspiration to keep going — to shepherd that first wave of new users through the experience.
In year two, I took everything I learned and systematized it. I created the "thank me later" format — a text-over-face video telling people to start recording one second every day on January 1st, with instructions built directly into the caption: save this video, set your reminders. Thousands of creators around the world copied it word for word. We hit number one in the App Store across multiple countries, including the US.
From there, the formula became the foundation. Each year I refined it — adding ambassador content from the Un1t to amplify reach, layering in new formats while protecting what worked, and extending the content window to capture more of the pre-New Year consideration phase.
RESULTS
2019/2020 — first year on TikTok, +819% download spike over the prior December
2020/2021 — "thank me later" format launched, +3,829% spike, +146% YoY growth, #1 in the App Store in the US and multiple countries
2021/2022: 124,336 → 1,043,170 +739% spike
2022/2023 — +1,962% spike, sustained the system through platform volatility
2025/2026 — +1,451% spike, +100% YoY growth, the strongest year-over-year rebound in the data set
100% organic growth across all years except the most recent campaign( I led paid ads optimized for subscription conversions as well)
Note: download spike percentages reflect December baseline to January peak.
SOCIAL ACCOUNTS