This article examines how brands have iteratively experimented with mobile and social media. The activities of brands – including Coca-Cola, Virgin and Smirnoff – at music festivals in Australia since 2005 are used as an instructive case. The article demonstrates how these brands imagined social media, attempted to instruct consumers to use mobile devices, and used cultural events to stimulate image production tuned to the decision-making of social media algorithms. The article contributes to debate by articulating how brands are important actors in the development of algorithmic media infrastructure and devices. Accounts of algorithmic media need to examine how the analytic capacities of social and mobile media are interdependent with orchestrating the creative participation of users.