Brands: please stop paying influencers…
One of our creators generated over 200 million views for this AI App
Top videos hit 30 million views and the account grew to 130k+ followers on TikTok starting from zero
This is what I mean when I say "brand influencers"
Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the power of influencers, but I'd like to propose a different way to approach this
We build a small army of in-house influencers for brands instead of paying $10k - 20k per post to rent attention from third-party influencers
You only pay for performance along the way and at the end you have a fully grown influencer that built their entire audience in your niche because they only posted branded content
Long-term vision: we come in and prove the model works with real results, then we build out the entire system and infrastructure around it, and eventually we hand off both the system and the influencers to the brand so they own the asset
IMO this is fundamentally different from the purely performance marketplace model where brands work with 50 creators who post once or twice and disappear
We focus on 5 creators with concentrated attention which means quicker follower growth and an actual continued relationship between the brand and the creators instead of a rotating door of freelancers
Do people still pay for influencers???
Just talked to a health / supplement brand who used to spend $10k-$20k PER POST with influencers and got LITTLE TO NO results
I think it was a health influencer with only 100k followers from what they told me
We signed them and now they're spending it with us (less than $20k per post lol)
I'm still amazed at how many companies are paying these horrendous prices for basically just theoretical exposure and a "brand play"
So we realized there's a gap in the market
What we're doing is employing and building in-house influencers for brands
Our creators start off with completely brand new accounts that are specifically made for the brand and their campaign, ONLY posting content that leads back to the brand and is branded to the company
Below is an example of an acc that reached 150k+ followers
Through our virality and creative strategy we still reach millions of people for cheap and we build up massive followings IN NICHE at the end
You get the best of both worlds: 1: paying per performance all the way from zero to 200 or even 300,000 followers 2: you get the reach and trust in a specific audience that you wanted from the start
@JackGrayEcom@conortrains@jforjacob just crossed 13k creators atm. I don't know what happened either, but our creators seem to skew towards the early or mid 30s on average, whereas I know that other communities, they're very young...
There was this huge buzz around the $105 million cash exit of Skio, solo founded by @icon (”biggest acquisition in the space to date”)
But what many people don't know is that Kennan also founded a little company called ICON They are famous for making UGC ads but maybe people don't know that they are actually also making ads with real human UGC creators
When I connected with the Head of Creators at ICON, he mentioned that they were barely breaking even
But from what I saw from Kennan (I agree with @FedotOff90 on this) I think he's an incredible operator and is going to crush it here as well, which is why I am especially honored to be part of this journey (teaser)
So who would have guessed ;) we are actually placing our creators into their premium tier as we speak
Very attractive to us and our creators as they need a consistent pipeline of quality creators to fulfill those campaigns
Looking forward to where this journey goes and rooting for the guys and gals at ICON
I like to call my shots in advance: I think this is going to be a major player in the UGC platform space
Referpulse is a new platform built specifically for connecting creators with app and tech brand campaigns
I connected personally with the founder @DerekCurtis_ and we are the ONLY agency that is supplying ALL of the creators on the platform
What I hear from a lot of brands is that when they're doing creator marketing, their tracking is unreliable or non-existent, and I think that's a huge no-no in the space
So I'm very happy that Derek's team has built an amazing tracking system, like literally when I'm telling you the best that I've ever seen 🙌🙌
There are so few male UGC creators out there
Any good one should easily be earning >$15k/m if they find even a few good brands to work with
I would refer any decent male UGC creator to my entire network instantly
Startups: this is how you market with creators
@Cheaterbuster__ is an AI company / app that grew to thousand of users, completely bootstrapped, SIMPLY through creator marketing
Safe to say they have absolutely crushed it with this approach
I'm very happy to announce that we just officially partnered with them and have already placed a couple of our creators into their campaigns successfully!
ONE of our creators ALONE has generated them 200M+ views up until this point, vids reaching up to 30M views
as you can tell, it went so well that we're now expanding our placement program…
This is unreleased as of now to the public but we're getting a little sneak peek here of what is to come 👀
New ChatGPT competitor about to drop??!
We just signed an AI company that raised $200M from institutional investors and is already turning over $1B+ per day in volume
The following is INSIDER info, which is why they shall remain anonymous:
They're building a general intelligence LLM (direct competitor to CHATGPT and CLAUDE) and launching to the public in 20 weeks
The marketing challenge they brought to us: they ran a successful B2B beta with hedge funds that proved the technology works, but now they're going mass market and need to build massive awareness and FOMO before the public launch
Their existing strategy was PR (tier one publications like WSJ and BBC) plus amplification through large social media theme pages, but they had NO top-of-funnel content strategy to actually drive waitlist signups
They tried influencer marketing in a previous campaign and spent $16k to get 6k signups, but the content wasn't optimized (just a link in bio 😵💫)
Now we have 20 weeks to build some hype!!
Just locked in another partnership with a good friend and mentor of mine
He runs a multi 7 figure agency making $500k a month, works with companies like Nike and Adidas, and has run ads on the Super Bowl
He's now launching a new software (think Bento but better) and we're his exclusive creator supplier for the early access launch
Our creators are getting first access to the platform, including the EXCLUSIVE database of 1,000 verified brand contacts (all brands his agency has personally worked with)
After the testing phase wraps, our creators get prime placement in the paid campaigns with those same brands, managed by us
We're sourcing 5 creators for this initial batch
This is the kind of deal flow that comes from the network we've been building
Note to self: everybody will try to rip you off when you become big enough...
This is one of my creators in one of our campaigns and somebody from Temu is stealing our videos to use them to sell their products lol
This founder generated 1 billion+ views with clipping 👇👇
@chrismadden_ is a serial entrepreneur who runs two content marketing agencies and got his start clipping the @theallinpod without permission, grew the account to 450K followers, then turned it into the official account
He now runs clipping agencies for VCs like @HarryStebbings (@20VC) and the team behind @BG2Pod
His second agency uses AI voice cloning to create content without ever turning on a camera, averaging 1M views per month across platforms
I sat down with him to break down how to operationalize content production for founders in 2026
Watch the full pod here: https://t.co/3iCoFmW6HU
In case you don't know (which I doubt), @getPoppyAI is an AI platform founded by 2 incredible founders that grew to $100M valuation within 12 months
They grew via influencer affiliate marketing: collaborating with influencers who have niche audiences, giving them the tool subscription for free, and paying considerable commission for each sale (especially Annual and Recurring)
This is how their affiliates were able to make up to $35,000 a month (check screenshots)
So why pivot now to working with us?
I pitched it to them like this: what if instead of approaching influencers you can get the same amount of impressions and conversions with creators building niche audiences that will buy your product organically
If we can hold a certain conversion percentage, paying commission on every sale or paying CPM is essentially the same, just now we can get way more accounts that grow organic audiences
To be transparent: we are pushing their tool to our community of 12,000 creators as well
Not because I like the money (although I do like money) but because I believe in the tool and use it personally within the agency
This also connects with how we work: with AI tools and apps especially, we require all of our creators to use the app itself before they become part of our campaign with the brand
This increases commitment by a huge percentage and gives the creator a possibility to ideate organically and come up with REAL USE CASES because they are REALLY USING the tool
I think this is without question the best ad that I've ever seen https://t.co/drxBlanfwK
For those who missed this absolute piece of art: this was made by @contentrewards, the biggest clipping and UGC marketplace on @whop
WHOP built Content Rewards, then handed it off to a dedicated team to run in late 2024, they've been scaling ever since and I am talking to them right now
Here's the insider info their Head of Brands told me last month:
They posted THAT ONE piece of content and got an even bigger wave of inbound than they were already seeing (highly recommend checking this out btw, really well made ad, not joking)
We're talking 500 brands a week booking calls with their sales team
And 99.9% of those brands are asking for UGC
Companies like @Replit and https://t.co/Z7O2uCmm7I are coming through their pipeline with no creators to fulfill it
We're cooking up something big with them, the magnitudes of which have not been seen by the industry yet
Right now we are onboarding our own creators onto their Content Rewards campaigns first, then once we've run those campaigns we'll scale from there
I believe we're one of the first, if not THE FIRST agency to run purely UGC CPM campaigns (not clipping) and partner with them o.o