The actual playbook for scaling brands
Nike gave Michael Jordan a royalty on every Air Jordan sale, and the line did more than $100 million in its first year and $7 billion in 2024.
Founder · September 16, 2026 · 2 min read
Communities
A Skool community page we mocked up for Shippo's affiliate creators, with Shippo's real offer and its own creators' sponsor reads:
PR box
Olipop sold 5,000 PR boxes on Amazon for 5 cents each:
A creator's video of a gifted numbered Chipotle fork passed 1 million views:
Celebrity exit
Diageo paid $700 million for George Clooney's Casamigos, plus up to $300 million more:
e.l.f. Beauty paid Hailey Bieber $600 million in cash and $200 million in its own shares for Rhode:
Inclusive launch
Fenty Beauty launched 40 shades of foundation and made $100 million in its first 40 days:
Aerie's #AerieREAL campaign of unretouched photos grew sales 20% in fiscal 2015:
Old Navy's BODEQUALITY campaign, every body size in the ad, got 117% higher customer acquisition:
Pop-up tour
RYZE took a coffee truck to 7 pop-up events across New York and got 8.8 million views:
Ambassador exam
Seed made 1,700 people pass a course before they could promote it, against 36,000 Instagram followers:
Creator Discord
Tabs Chocolate made $11M in 18 months with close to no paid ads, running a Discord where its creators share hooks and briefs:
Paid cohort
Sephora Squad reportedly pays creators $5,000 to $50,000 for a 12 month term, and got 30,000 applications in 2021:
College creators
Feastables had college creators hand more than one hundred thousand bars to students, and the content got over 26 million impressions:
Own event
Gymshark brought its athletes to its own stand, and a 300 pound a day business took 30,000 pounds in 30 minutes:
Celsius held a celebrity pickleball tournament at David Dobrik's LA home, and says it got more than 3 billion media impressions:
Name stunt
IHOP teased a new name, IHOb, to launch its burgers, and its CMO said it sold four times more burgers:
Fan contest
Lay's paid $1,000,000 for a fan's flavor idea and got more than 700,000 submissions:
Doritos picked a fan-made ad from thousands of entries and gave it $1,000,000 and a first quarter Super Bowl slot:
Royalty
Nike gave Michael Jordan a royalty on every Air Jordan sale, and the line did more than $100 million in its first year and $7 billion in 2024:
LEGO Ideas gives a fan whose set gets made 1% of its net sales, and has 3.43 million members:
Creator founders
Neutonic was founded by two creators, James Smith and Chris Williamson, and has sold more than 7.5 million cans:
