Part 2, top takeaways for influencer advice that actually works, not generic B.S fluff

What is in here

Read this if

Huel founders on $100M journey, from solo to influencer

Read this if you sell influencer marketing to a health or supplement brand. Huel reached 100 million in revenue with no influencer programme at all, and only started one because a board member pushed them, which is both the objection you will hear and the opening. The detail on what they used instead, free t-shirts in the box, hand signed notes, staff as micro influencers, witty replies bought with engagement, is a working picture of what a word of mouth brand thinks paid creators would have to beat.

Common Thread Collective: 2026 e-commerce strategy

Brands looking to succeed in 2026 can gain insights into system integration, creative consolidation, and distribution expansion.

Kenny Salcido on Red Bull Records as cultural investment

Read it only for the ten minutes about how Red Bull actually runs its label: one or two signings a year, a four year horizon on each, three free studios, equipment instead of an advance, and a managing director whose real job is justifying the whole thing to the parent brand. The other eighty percent is a music A&R career story with nothing about beverage marketing in it.

Dr Mike on balancing medicine and YouTube

Anyone interested in how medical professionals can leverage YouTube for education and content creation, or how to balance a demanding professional career with a successful online presence, should read this.

David Herrmann on the Meta slump, Pinterest, X and account structure

A brand marketer gets an agency buyer's actual account structure, his testing budget split by channel, and his flat statement that whitelisted creator ads are his best performing format across every client he runs.

NativePath founder on growing from a paleo blog

Useful to anyone selling to a supplement brand: it shows a company that built a two million person audience with free content for years before it had a product, and it is itself a live example of a small gym podcast running a coded affiliate read that the host writes from his own clients.

AI & the Future of CX: Lean Teams, Better Workflows & New Revenue Levers - with Richpanel’s Amit RG

Read it for the two creator points, which are unusual: Meta's API stops brands moderating comments on whitelisted partnership ads at exactly the moment those ads are reaching new audiences, and Ridge is testing replies from the founder's own page. Otherwise it is the best account here of turning support headcount into a revenue line and of why attributed support revenue is not to be trusted.

Wellness Company CEO on Shield cancer prevention supplement

Short and heavily promotional, so read it as a worked example rather than as advice: it is a complete host-read endorsement with the vanity URL, promo code, discount, on-air price maths and a live conversion, plus a CEO answering a direct evidence question with no study on the product he is selling.

Alex Hormozi on building influence with content

Anyone interested in content creation, branding, and building influence should read this to learn a structured framework for their strategy.

Forbes Functions founder Cameron Forbes on events

Anyone interested in the events industry or entrepreneurship will find this interview insightful about building a career from a young age.

E060: Go-To-Market Strategy: How 9-Figure Brands Plan, Execute, and Post-Mortem Product Launches

Anyone selling a service into a nine figure DTC brand should read this for the calendar, it names how many weeks before launch a brief lands, who owns it, and exactly where influencer, affiliate and partnership ad reads sit inside a tier one campaign.

Ridge and Jones Road on AppLovin, branded search and 2025 leverage

Two large brand operators put real numbers behind claims most people only assert: what a post purchase survey says about a hyped new channel, what branded search was actually worth when it was measured twice, and why they are pulling budget out of TikTok.

Anastasia Beverly Hills founder on beauty and art

Anyone interested in the beauty industry or entrepreneurial success stories will find inspiration and insights into the art of makeup.

Ridge Wallets CEO on entrepreneurial journey

Anyone interested in entrepreneurship and the growth of a successful e-commerce brand will find this insightful.

E052: How We Set KPIs, Structure Reporting and Run Meetings to Drive Results

Anyone selling a channel into a DTC brand should read this to learn how a channel lead's number is actually set, what gets reported weekly, and why an affiliate or influencer lead is graded on comps rather than a dollar target.

Kevin Breese on waterdrop's retail expansion, ambassadors

Useful for anyone pitching a European beverage or wellness brand: it lays out their channel order, why stores exist, how the community is used to pick products, and exactly what they got from a Djokovic ambassador deal.

Maria of Rodial on her journey from Greece to banking

Anyone interested in the entrepreneurial journey of a beauty brand founder and the path from traditional finance to building a business.

E017: The Sweepstakes Tactics To Create Tentpole Moments

The only detailed account anywhere of how a nine figure DTC brand runs a giveaway as a real revenue period: the entry mechanics, the site modules, the lead quality trade, the legal administration and what four years of winners actually did.

Juice Plus CMO Gina Ghura on hero products and AI story-selling

Strong source on how a direct-sales wellness brand runs its product-development stage gate, defines and paces hero products, uses AI to script and scale success-system videos for its partner sales force, and picks platform strategy, straight from the CMO.

Marketing Operators on BFCM prep at Jones Road, Ridge and Hexclad

It is a three host e-commerce roundtable on Black Friday planning, not a founder interview, and it touches creators only in passing, so it is worth skimming only for the Q4 offer and inventory playbook.

Lemon Perfect's Yanni Hufnagel on the crisis that nearly killed it

Useful for anyone pitching a beverage founder: it is a rare blow by blow of a real product recall and packaging pivot, plus a candid account of how a celebrity investment from Beyonce actually played out versus how it looked from outside.

The Wellness Company CEO on RFK fight, semaglutide spray

Short, but it is a supplement and compounded pharmacy CEO doing three things in twelve minutes that are worth watching: taking a friendly interview to control the story on a public fight, denying a paid influencer attack campaign, and then positioning two products by naming the competing category out loud. The parasite cleanse pitch is a clean worked example of how this end of the market sizes a market, sets a trigger and removes the risk objection.

Eight Sleep's tech-driven approach to sleep improvement

Anyone interested in sleep technology and performance optimization will find this interview insightful.

Huel founders on $100M journey, from solo to influencer

Piper PE · 04 Jul 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAFFiCLSoRA

Who they pick

**1. **Huel had no proactive influencer team until very recently: Steve Bartley, now on their board after running a social media agency, said he was amazed they got this far without one. 44:43

interestingly we haven't really we very very recently just started we never really had a um a proactive influencer team Steve Bartley is now on our board his background was running a social media agency and working with influencers a lot so he's amazed that we've got to where we are today without using influen because he said they do work

**2. **The reason they finally moved is that a board member with an agency background pushed them, and they have now hired four people to do nothing but influencer. 45:02

So I think it's partly his influence that has made us look again at it and go, okay, this clearly does work for some brands. Some brands have just nearly done all influencer work, so we've looked at it and said, right, okay, we're going to go for this. We've hired four people now; they're the influencer team, and they're going to try and make it work over the coming months.

Community and advocates

**3. **Their substitute for paid influencers is customers with the product on their desk telling colleagues about it, which Julian calls daily micro influencers. 45:18

In terms of who you are influenced by, actually we do really well with people having Huel in an office and telling their friends about it. They're all sort of daily micro-influences. Then we talked about the t-shirts. People walk around with subliminal messages to others to say Huel is something to be proud of, and people want to be associated with something that's healthy fast food that's good for the world. So arguably, that's been our version of influences to date.

Common Thread Collective: 2026 e-commerce strategy

Common Thread Collective · 06 Jan 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8beYpAPcNOs

Who they pick

**4. **Sourcing creators takes time and is a relationship that needs to be built as soon as possible. 20:00

Sourcing creators is a thing that takes time. It's a relationship that you need to build, so build it as soon as you possibly can.

The brief and the content

**5. **Brands should create an equal amount of branded iterative ads and low-fi UGC video, as well as some low-fi UGC static. 18:35

We're just going to go, for every branded iterative ad that we make, we should make the same amount of UGC low-fi UGC video and do some low-fi UGC static as well in there. We may as well have it in the mix.

**6. **Brands that go hard on UGC in the first couple months will build it into their rhythm and have a better chance at winning the rest of the year. 19:14

But I think brands who go hard on that idea in the first couple months out of the year will then just build this into their rhythm and have a better chance at winning the rest of the year with these assets.

How they measure it

**7. **A UGC ad is nearly two times more likely to become a high spend winner than a standard ad. 17:25

And then connected to that is that the UGC, an individual UGC ad, is nearly two times more likely to become a high-spend winner than a standard ad.

**8. **A UGC ad is two times more likely to reach a level of scale based on spend threshold. 17:46

So this is what we define as an ad that reaches a level of scale based on the spend threshold necessary for that specific brand. So a UG UC is two times more likely to be able to get to that level and get to that output.

Who runs it

**9. **Building the muscle for UGC output requires finding team members, resourcing, and vendors. 19:06

It's going to be a muscle. You're going to need to find the team members, the resourcing, the vendors. It's going to be a muscle that needs to be worked to be able to get to that level.

Kenny Salcido on Red Bull Records as cultural investment

MUSEXPOOfficial · 16 Jan 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0g7XZDBWr8

Who they pick

**10. **The signing criterion is cultural impact, set by managing director Greg, not sales potential. 25:59

Who said, "Let's service the artists, we're in the servicing business"? That was my quote. But then Greg said, "We need to sign culturally impactful artists. Artists make a cultural impact." And I looked at him and I said, "What do you mean by cultural impact?" He's like, "We want to have our own Kendricks, our own artists," you know, and, you know, together with our

**11. **The brand backs one or two acts a year on purpose, which is the opposite of a volume influencer programme. 24:24

We sign one to two artists a year, so I'm sitting there going, why one to two artists? And he said, we're about patience and development.

What they pay and the terms

**12. **The time horizon they work to for a new talent partnership is four years. 34:49

We know as managers and A&Rs, if you sign a brand new artist from the ground up, it takes four years. It takes four years to truly break and get them across the line. But you're given one single. That's what happened to Wiz. They didn't give us enough time. But even, it's even better what you said the other night, two nights ago. It

**13. **They gave one act five albums and ten records of runway before it worked. 26:15

We want to have our own Kendricks, our own artists, and together with our team, we've signed Beartooth, which we stuck by for five albums, 10 records. Now he's having his biggest moment; he's going to have a number one at radio. The Aces, which we said all the way to the Wiltern and even beyond. Blxst, which you

**14. **The brand supplies studios in three cities free of charge, to signed artists and to what he calls friends of Red Bull. 32:02

company there's three studios around the world London I'm sorry uh Paris Berlin La we don't charge our artist for that studio that studio is for our artists and Friends of Red Bull to use we did we had the same thing exactly I know you did I know you did you need it's it's part of our job we have the resources to provide the artists the tools

**15. **Where a talent does not want cash, they pay in equipment instead and leave the contract alone. 32:23

We sometimes, if an artist doesn't want an advance, we'll give them an advance in plugins and audio and stuff like that.

Dr Mike on balancing medicine and YouTube

Jon Youshaei · 18 Nov 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQBINwOmkwI

What they pay and the terms

**16. **The channel's bonus structures for creators are percentages of total revenue or specific parts of revenue, depending on the team, covering AdSense, brand deals, speaking engagements, and course sales. 36:40

Some of those bonus structures for creators think about incentivizing either percentages of total revenue or specific parts of the revenue because we have different revenue streams. Whether it's AdSense, brand deals, speaking engagements, or now the course that we're selling, because we have these different avenues, there are different incentives depending on which team you're on.

David Herrmann on the Meta slump, Pinterest, X and account structure

Marketing Operators · 07 May 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ostjzdP7y2U

Seeding and gifting

**17. **His advice for brands hurt by the Meta slump is to increase product seeding, on the understanding it pays back slowly. 21:16

The other thing that I am telling people is find a channel that is working. If there is any, for example, product seeding, increase product seeding if we have to. Yes, it's a longer game, but it's an opportunity for us in this slow season to kind of build our own other pockets of channels.

Paid amplification

**18. **Whitelisting creator accounts is the single best performing ad type across Herrmann's whole client portfolio. 50:16

Additionally, right now, across my entire portfolio, whitelisting ads have just been the best performers, no question.

**19. **Whitelisted creator ads sit in their own campaign with a twenty percent audience cap and act as both middle of funnel and prospecting. 50:46

We set the audience cap at 20% and try to treat it somewhat as a middle of funnel but also as prospecting. That has absolutely been working, and it's actually been the best performer to date.

**20. **Creator whitelisted ads can now be run through Meta shops in sub accounts, an unannounced change that used to be blocked by Commerce Manager. 50:57

So basically, you can run those two Meta shops in sub-accounts now, which has been kind of cool. Meta did not tell us that. Normally, you couldn't do that because it had to be connected to Commerce Manager.

How they measure it

**21. **The hardest thing he says about creator content is that twenty five different creators reads as one single ad to Meta. 69:17

If you look at your account, you have 25 UGC or creators talking about your product. Okay, that's one example that is treating it as one. Marketing creative diversity is more than UGC; it's a mix of stuff.

Who runs it

**22. **The creative analytics snapshot lets a brand report performance back to a creator without giving them ad account access. 2:09

So instead of needing to give somebody access to your Ad account, you can just say, "Hey, this editor or this agency or this creator, I just want to show you what your ads did and how they performed."

NativePath founder on growing from a paleo blog

Co-Movement Gym · Dr. Chad Walding · 19 Mar 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pypRgRpkqMI

Codes and affiliates

**23. **The deal carries a tracked discount code read into the episode, at fifteen percent off every order.

Only the highest quality, properly combined nutrients, all while being offered at competitive prices. Use code KO5, that's KO5, at checkout and receive 15% off each order. Lombardi Chiropractic has been Co-Movement's trusted chiropractor for the last 14 years. They have worked with hundreds of our clients, and I can confidently say they have the most knowledgeable and

**24. **The host encourages repeat and shared use of the code rather than a one-time redemption, which widens the attribution well beyond a single sale.

Use it, enjoy it. You can use it more than once, share it with family and friends, and you start feeling better tomorrow.

Podcast reads

**25. **The interview itself is a sponsorship activation: NativePath sponsors this gym's podcast and has done since the first episode.

NativePath has been a podcast sponsor of ours since day one, and it's because our clients feel amazing using their supplements.

**26. **The sponsor read is written around the host's own clients rather than the brand's claims, which is why it lands as a testimonial.

Yeah, we've had a lot of clients take your collagen, and for myself included, my knees always feel a lot better. So it does work, and I'll continue to supplement that.

**27. **The host tells a story from Wednesday night about a client who said he was peeing less, absorbing the water and felt fuller with more energy, proof a brand cannot write for itself.

It's hysterical. Wednesday night, we had a client here. Same thing, it's the same story over and over. He's like, "Oh, I'm peeing way less. I'm absorbing the water. I feel fuller. I've got more energy."

**28. **The host frames what pulled him to the brand as product quality, and specifically the contrast with contamination stories in other supplements.

The one thing that drew me to your supplements years ago was the quality. I read these articles with arsenic found in protein powders.

AI & the Future of CX: Lean Teams, Better Workflows & New Revenue Levers - with Richpanel’s Amit RG

Marketing Operators · Amit RG · 11 Nov 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OeUJ3B7jdc

Paid amplification

**29. **Hexclad cannot moderate comments on partnership ads the way it can on ads from its own brand page. 58:38

The software we use, you can't comment on partnership ads the same way that you can comment on an ad from the Hexclad branded page.

**30. **Amit says the limitation is Meta's, because whitelisted ads do not expose comment inputs through the API. 59:32

That's a limitation by Meta, where the API limits you. If you do whitelisted ads, you don't get API inputs. That's why your software is not able to do it.

**31. **Rolain calls it a hole in the platform precisely because partnership ads reach new audiences and generate new questions. 59:45

Especially when so many brands are increasingly running more partnership ads that generally get a lot of new engagement and new questions because inherently they're reaching new audiences. It seems like a big hole that you can't do software for.

Who runs it

**32. **Their workaround is a manual workflow linking out to every partnership ad, running in parallel to the brand ads that pull straight into Amplify. 58:46

So, we're starting to figure out more of a manual workflow where we're linking out to every single partnership ad that we make, and that's in parallel to just the from-brand stuff that pulls right into Amplify.

**33. **Handing the creator the information to answer their own comments never actually works in practice. 58:59

But we're trying to give the actual creator the information they need to respond to these comments, but it just never happens, as you would imagine.

Wellness Company CEO on Shield cancer prevention supplement

John Fredericks Media · Peter Gillooly · 16 Feb 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23XOPhFpVa0

Codes and affiliates

**34. **The host does the price maths on air: $69, 10% off with Godzilla brings it to about $60, a month supply, so about $2 a day.

And it's affordable. It's $69, 10% off with Godzilla. It's like 60 bucks. Lasts you for a month. So it's like $2 a day or something like that.

What the ads may claim

**35. **The host takes two tablets a day and says it took six to eight weeks to feel it, a harder sell than a claim and probably more persuasive.

These are my testosterone tablets. I take two a day with a full glass of water when I get up. Energy is back. It takes about six, seven weeks. This is not like one day, right? It takes about six, seven, eight weeks, but I'm feeling better.

Podcast reads

**36. **This is a host-read endorsement running on a personalised vanity URL and a named promo code, which is the whole media model on display.

And then you don't have it. And then you say, "Well, I need it, but it's too late." No. Get it now. Just go to twwc.health/godzilla promo code Godzilla. You're going to get 10% off and you're good to go. Joining me now, CEO of the wellness company, Peter Galuli.

**37. **The host is a Mars subscriber on auto-refill and shows two jars on camera during the read, which makes it land as personal use rather than an ad.

In fact, I just got today in the mail my two jars of Mars right here, baby. Right. I got them right here. I was running out, but no, I get an automatic refill.

**38. **A second product is sold through a bus tour story: he popped it out and got Zpac and antibiotics, so the read carries a use case rather than a claim.

Medical emergency wellness kit. Had it on the bus. Popped it out. Got Zpac, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, antibiotics. Everything is here. There's a guidebook. This is like the greatest invention ever made. Every single family should have one.

**39. **The host converts live on air, which is the strongest form of the endorsement and is explicitly staged as a decision made during the interview.

Well, I'm going to start taking it. I'm going to order it today when I get off the air because I need to have it. I want to get some for an as well. So, you kind of sold me on it here because

Alex Hormozi on building influence with content

Alex Hormozi · 10 Sep 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW04CvHKvMo

Who they pick

**40. **With a $150,000 monthly marketing budget, a director wants 100 new creators a week. 158:36

Micah, I have $150,000 marketing budget a month. Okay. 30% budget is what works. 20% iteration. Cool. Love that. Okay. My director said 100 new creators a week. Love it.

**41. **For a new beauty brand in North America, it is suggested to focus on B2C through micro sellers and affiliates. 167:25

Starting a beauty brand. If someone in North America, do you suggest I focus on BOC through micro sellers and affiliates, or focus on B2B?

Codes and affiliates

**42. **The speaker suggests paying aggressive affiliate commissions to TikTokers for jewelry, as jewelry likely has good margins. 61:38

Number two, I'll bet you with jewelry probably have very good margins with it. Um, and you could probably pay really aggressive uh, affiliate commissions to any other Tik Tockers who will repost your stuff.

**43. **An affiliate partner might be willing to put money behind an influencer's ads if the influencer consistently generates significant sales, such as $50,000 a month. 82:27

They don't have to do it for everybody. They can say that it's something that they unlock after you do, hey, if you make us $50,000 a month and you have a larger gaining following, we'll put money behind ads.

How they measure it

**44. **The speaker advises an influencer to ask their affiliate partners if they will install the influencer's pixel on their page to improve ad attribution. 80:30

I would just ask, I'd be like, "Hey, I want to spend money to advertise your product. Can you install my pixel on your page?"

**45. **An influencer can suggest that their affiliate partner clone the product page and install only the influencer's pixel on that cloned page to avoid data sharing concerns. 80:50

You can have them clone the page, right? So you're not getting their data or anything like that. Just clone the page and make it Karen's page, right? So GLP1/carin or whatever. That page is only for you. Then you install only your pixel on that page. That way, you're not using their data or anything like that. They'll probably be far more likely to do that with you.

Forbes Functions founder Cameron Forbes on events

Starting Small · 20 Jun 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htrgcaP1GlQ

Who they pick

**46. **People are trusting influencers less and less. 20:19

There's the 818 bar, the Revolve Festival, and all these different brand activations and pop-ups. I think people have just realized in the last few years that event marketing is a great way to get your consumers involved, and I think people are trusting influencers less and less.

E060: Go-To-Market Strategy: How 9-Figure Brands Plan, Execute, and Post-Mortem Product Launches

Marketing Operators · 28 May 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeuL6I05S-g

Who they pick

**47. **Ridge timed two creator partnerships, Steven Shapiro and MKBHD, to the launch date of the power bank, and the partnership strategy is its own section on the board. 51:35

We have videos linked in here, so we'll watch some of those. We had a partnership strategy, which is linked here. Steven Shapiro and MKBHD were timed with the launch of the product. Then paid search, just talking through the strategy. We're going through this on a call, channel by channel, saying whether there's an opportunity to launch this in search, shopping, display, YouTube campaigns, things like that.

Paid amplification

**48. **Ridge does partnership ad reads for tier one launches and there is a standing partner ad read doc for it. 22:36

We have, if we're partnering with everyday.com, we're typically doing partnership ad reads for tier one. So we get the partner ad read doc.

The brief and the content

**49. **Jones Road tiers a launch separately per channel, so the same product can be an A for paid social and a B for influencer. 57:28

So we even have a slide where we tier it by channel, because for some launches maybe it's an A for paid social, but for influencer it's a B.

**50. **They run an embargo, giving influencers and press the product early, and the brief tells the whole company what that teasing plan is. 57:39

So, hey, this is our teasing strategy or our announcement strategy. We gave it to influencers early or press early or something like that, just so people know.

How they measure it

**51. **The Hexclad marketing summary gives affiliates and influencer their own rows alongside email, SMS and paid social, and the head of growth comments on every row. 32:34

It's like email, SMS is its own row, paid socials its own row, affiliates its own row, influencer. So I'm basically making comments across every single channel.

**52. **Hexclad's planned funnel board puts influencer posts and affiliate content at the top of the funnel alongside ads and publisher articles. 65:40

So, visually speaking, at the top you have your ads, you have your influencer posts, you have your affiliate content, publisher articles. A little bit lower, you have your emails.

Ridge and Jones Road on AppLovin, branded search and 2025 leverage

Marketing Operators · 14 Jan 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPm6OalMwXo

Seeding and gifting

**53. **Ridge has seeded hundreds of products for TikTok creators and has never seen it produce anything. 69:19

We haven't done products eating very well. In the sense that we've never seen success. We've seeded hundreds of products, but it hasn't gained traction in the way that you'd want.

How they measure it

**54. **YouTube partnerships are tracked as their own click source alongside the paid platforms in their attribution tool. 31:05

We know deterministically that if someone clicks through, we're tracking in Northbeam that that user is the exact same way between Meta and Snap and TikTok and YouTube partnerships. If we're clicking through from there, or TV if we're clicking through from there.

Anastasia Beverly Hills founder on beauty and art

SheerLuxe · 12 Feb 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMg3FPlO9c

Community and advocates

**55. **The brand uses education to teach consumers about makeup, similar to how they educated them about eyebrows. 22:28

We will use education to teach them that you don't. Before, I remember even with eyebrows, I used to have clients that would come with a picture of a celebrity and say, "I want these eyebrows." Like, "I want Jennifer Lopez eyebrows too, but I don't have her natural eyebrow or her bone structure." Okay, we need to do something that is best for you.

**56. **Consumers can now become good at makeup and brows by watching videos and practicing, thanks to the power of Instagram. 23:22

I think that now, because of the power of Instagram, anyone can be good at their makeup. Anyone can be good at their brows once they've given themselves that time to learn. Like you were saying earlier about brows, it's so important. You watch the video, this is the customer, what they did. Yeah, they watch videos, not only mine but everybody else's, the people that they followed, and they practice and they start learning, doing makeup. It's amazing.

Ridge Wallets CEO on entrepreneurial journey

LegendsNLeaders · Shawn · 04 Apr 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQb0EF9e9Hk

Who they pick

**57. **The company has sponsored 4,000 individual creators since 2020. 16:13

So, we actually invested heavier in Meta throughout 2020, throughout 2021, 2022, and 2023. But now we're back to just diversification. We're trying to spend money on every single ad platform. We have a big influencer marketing budget. We have a partnership, and since 2020 we've sponsored 4,000 individual creators. So,

**58. **The creator has been helpful in product creation and design. 21:04

Has he helped you with creative work and building new wallets and designs? Has it really been pretty helpful? Oh, totally. That's probably where we've spent the most time together, on the product creation front. There are just products he wants to bring to market, and we're using our resources.

How they measure it

**59. **Successful ad reads typically achieve 5 seconds of watch time, while most ads are skipped within 3 seconds. 19:31

We spend millions of dollars to get our message, and a successful ad read is when people watch 5 seconds of it. That would be good. Most people do not watch 5 seconds of an ad. They watch 3 seconds, maybe a thumb stop, and then they skip right over it.

Celebrities and athletes

**60. **The partnership with Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) was initiated by a tweet and aims to learn how to create more compelling content. 18:48

Yeah, I tweeted at him. That’s how it got done. The power of the internet, man. Look, the creator economy is such a buzzword from last year or two years ago. But this ties into the whole creating content piece. So, we did that to learn how to make creative and make content better that people actually want to enjoy.

E052: How We Set KPIs, Structure Reporting and Run Meetings to Drive Results

Marketing Operators · Conor McDonald · 25 Mar 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VCbS07OgX4

How they measure it

**61. **The example used for who deserves access to company revenue data is the affiliate lead, whose core KPI is growing affiliate revenue. 10:53

If you're the affiliate lead and your core KPI is growing affiliate revenue, you should be able to look at our total revenue and make some sort of connection between what you're doing and how that's contributing to the topline revenue numbers.

Who runs it

**62. **A UGC style ad takes the same time to make whichever category it is for, so a small category eats creative capacity that a big one would put ten times the spend behind. 44:41

A user-generated content style ad for an apron is probably going to take just as much time to make as the same style of ad for cookware, but we might put 10x the spend behind it.

**63. **Influencer is named as a channel that does not need a daily pacing target, unlike total revenue, and can just be split evenly across the period. 73:28

For influencer, you don't need to do that. So it depends on how you want to go with pacing. You could just split it into four.

**64. **HexClad's affiliate lead currently never hears the paid media or retention reporting, and closing that gap is the big change he says they need to make. 77:46

But I don't think we're doing a good enough job of bringing all the marketing channel leads together and having that happen with the affiliate, the paid media, and the retention. That's the big pivot I think we need to make because I think it's really important for everyone to know that.

Kevin Breese on waterdrop's retail expansion, ambassadors

Retail Reality Show · 13 Mar 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xoqmw62ZUVA

Celebrities and athletes

**65. **Novak Djokovic became a brand ambassador just over a year before this recording, brought in on a shared anti-plastic mission in tennis rather than as a pure endorsement. 16:15

Very big community. Quite interestingly, a lot of people love our brand, and actually no more so than Novak Djokovic, who we brought on board just over a year ago now. Tennis, as we've all seen, is incredibly driven by plastic bottles across many of the tournaments. Novak, as an incredibly important sportsman in all of our worlds,

**66. **The ambassador roster is athletes rather than social creators, and includes an international ski champion alongside Djokovic. 16:50

He became our ambassador together with another number of sporting people, including Pusher, the International ski Champion.

**67. **The flagship ambassador activation was a physical stunt: they built a tennis court in Times Square and had Djokovic play children on it, and Kevin says people still talk to them because of it. 17:44

Coming to see Norvak, something like when you just have a bit of a head wobble. We built a tennis court in Times Square, one of the busiest places in the world. And so we've done it. Wow, great, great marketing. Yeah, and lots of people talk to us because of it. We love what we do. We would love working with our

**68. **The Djokovic relationship went past ambassadorship into a co-created product, an electrolyte performance drop under his own name, sold on pre-order ahead of launch. 18:54

CA by No Jovic is a product that Noak has introduced, which we have worked with him on to bring out his own Micrite Performance Drop.

Maria of Rodial on her journey from Greece to banking

Starting Small · Maria Hatzistefanis · 04 Oct 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxZhPDH7dtI

Seeding and gifting

**69. **The brand sent products to agents, publicists, makeup artists, and stylists in the celebrity world, hoping they would give the products to their clients. 19:15

The celebrity world, that means agents, publicists, makeup artists, stylists. So, what we were doing was sending tons of products to those people, hoping they would give it to one of their clients. That's how some of the celebrities would mention it in one of the press interviews. What we were lucky with was that, let's

An association nobody bought

**70. **Influencers began buying and using the banana low lighter in their tutorials without being sent the product. 27:45

And suddenly we got influencers buying it. We weren't even sending it to them, and they started using it in tutorials and talking about it.

E017: The Sweepstakes Tactics To Create Tentpole Moments

Marketing Operators · 23 Jul 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSgVjuh3i6Y

Who they pick

**71. **HexClad plans to use the restaurants owned by the influencers it works with as the prize itself. 14:29

We have a bunch of influencers that we work with who have restaurants out there, so we're going to take them to all these dinners at these wonderful restaurants.

**72. **The winner herself becomes a content creator for the brand after the fact. 56:08

We'll do that whole thing. We'll interview them a little bit, get some details, get where they're going. The woman last year created some additional content for us. She actually came, picked up the truck in LA, drove it up to Yos, and then road-tripped back to Michigan, which sounded like an absolute epic summer. She created some content along the way.

How they measure it

**73. **Influencer giveaway email and SMS captures get piped into their CDP so a revenue number can be attached to them. 34:55

Sometimes we're doing more influencer giveaways and email captures, event email and SMS capture. We'll pump that into Daasity so we can actually assign a revenue number.

Celebrities and athletes

**74. **Star power like Gordon Ramsay is the substitute for social proof when a brand has no previous winners to show. 58:42

If it's high production, if the experience is good, if it's been thoughtful, that's where, if you throw Gordon in it, I think that's all you need. Nobody will ever need to have won before.

**75. **Ridge merchandises bonus entries against its Marques Brownlee co-branded products. 24:58

We'll also have additional entries available on our Marquez Brownlee products. So, all of a sudden, we can offer these exclusive limited edition products where you're earning bonus entries.

An association nobody bought

**76. **The gold plated Cybertruck prize came from YouTuber Jerry Rig Everything publicly asking on Twitter if anyone in Salt Lake City had one, not from an outbound partnership pitch. 12:11

A very popular YouTuber named Jerry Rig Everything tweeted, and he said, "Hey, does anybody in Salt Lake City have a Cybertruck that I could do a project with?"

Juice Plus CMO Gina Ghura on hero products and AI story-selling

Keeppunching with Kerry Daigle · 17 Jul 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFwqTU0YQYs

The brief and the content

**77. **Juice Plus builds AI-generated "success system" videos so partners have a ready-made system to start conversations with prospects, freeing up their limited time for the human connection and community-building parts of the business instead of repetitive explaining. 38:25

We build these success systems so that it really helps wellness entrepreneurs to be more intuitive, to have more autopilot in terms of how they initiate their journeys with prospects, whether they're customers or partners. You've got a whole system that's ready to go. While we can do a lot of the content pieces, Neil is creating an incredible system that will require minimal effort from partners and wellness entrepreneurs, but it leaves you the time to do the really important stuff, which is the human connection, the community building, the things that are emotionally connecting us to customers and prospective partners.

Community and advocates

**78. **Ghura says partners function as Juice Plus's first customers, and their honest feedback on new products is what actually tells the company whether something will succeed, with everything the company has launched so far exceeding expectations. 33:53

I would say it's the partners because you are our first customers. And you are amazing because of what you think and feel about our brand. You're always so good at trying what we have. We get such great, honest feedback from our partners that really tells us whether something would be good or bad. We're very, very fortunate because everything we've done has exceeded our expectations.

**79. **Juice Plus deliberately withholds most new products from partners until live events so it can surprise and delight them in person, treating that reveal as a reason for partners to show up. 21:33

We love to surprise and delight partners at events. We want to give them a reason to come and find out the latest. But we do engage with certain key health care professionals who can give us really good insight into whether a product is viable.

Marketing Operators on BFCM prep at Jones Road, Ridge and Hexclad

Marketing Operators · 29 Oct 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQKt9-MR-fE

Who they pick

**80. **Their advice to a service business is to hire a college creator to be the face of the brand's Instagram. 68:39

Yeah, get, go hire a college creator to kind of be the face of your Instagram page or something like that. Yeah, could be cool.

Seeding and gifting

**81. **They credit David protein's launch to heavy gifting and seeding, which put a lot of people talking about it before it shipped. 10:44

They gifted to a lot of people, so a lot of people were talking about it on the timeline. I'm even seeing them all over TikTok Shop already. They hit it pretty hard at the gate, it seems like. I think it was a really, really good launch.

How they measure it

**82. **In the sponsor read they describe cutting ad performance by which messaging themes are working across different influencers, which is how they think about creative reporting. 1:43

Winning combinations help you instantly answer complex business questions like what ad concepts work best for specific product lines, what messaging themes are working across different influencers, and what angles, hooks, and concepts are working best across all ad formats.

Celebrities and athletes

**83. **Erewhon is described as running a lot of influencer collaborations, with named collab smoothies including a Hailey Bieber one and a Vacation one. 6:08

So yeah, they're known for these collab smoothies, which are awesome. Wait, like Vacation, the Sun brand? Yeah, yeah, they do a lot of collabs, a lot of influencer collabs.

Who moved the category

**84. **They point at Nutter Butter's TikTok as a legacy CPG brand getting a revival from deliberately strange creator-style content. 69:21

The one I've been thinking about recently a lot is Nutter Butter. I don't know if you guys follow the Nutter Butter TikTok page, but they are doing some just way out there content and getting a bit of a revival from it.

Lemon Perfect's Yanni Hufnagel on the crisis that nearly killed it

Strong New York · 25 Jun 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FgOWV9eWqQ

Celebrities and athletes

**85. **Yanni Hufnagel said Beyonce first showed up connected to Lemon Perfect when a bottle appeared behind her in an Instagram carousel from her limo at a pre-Oscars party, without her holding it up herself. 40:51

Beyonce invested in Lemon Perfect, and that was an incredible moment for us. There was an Instagram carousel where there was a bottle of Lemon Perfect in her limo behind her. It wasn't like she held up the bottle, but there was a dragon fruit mango Lemon Perfect in the cup holder of the limousine that she was getting out of.

**86. **Yanni Hufnagel said the Beyonce investment deal had no requirement for her to post about it on her own channels, since the announcement came from Lemon Perfect itself, which limited the reach of the news. 43:30

Part of it was the way that the deal was structured. There was no requirement for her to post on her own channels, right? It was our announcement. So the reach of that was somewhat limited.

**87. **Yanni Hufnagel said that today the first thing that comes up when you Google Lemon Perfect is that Beyonce is an investor, which he said adds credibility to the brand's story. 44:06

You Google Lemon Perfect today, and the first thing that comes up is that Beyonce's an investor. So it just adds credibility to the story. She's a friend of Lemon Perfect, and we're thrilled that she's a part of it.

**88. **Yanni Hufnagel pointed to the protein brand Slate, whose founder Manny credits Dana White as one of its biggest strategic partners and investors, as an example of a strategic partner doing wonders for a brand. 42:33

We had the guys from Slate on. Yeah, I think they're good. Manny's an incredible guy. And I think he always says one of the biggest strategic partners and investors they've had has been Dana White. Yeah. He's done wonders for that brand.

**89. **Yanni Hufnagel cited a friend's Philadelphia based t-shirt lifestyle brand that fitness influencer and health coach Bedros Keuilian helped move the needle for, as another example of a strategic influencer partner. 43:01

A friend of mine's got an incredible brand in um Philly. It's more of a t-shirt kind of lifestyle brand, but Bedros Koulian, you know him? Yeah. So, he's a big uh um kind of influencer uh health coach type guy... he's he's helped them really move the needle as well with like their brand.

The Wellness Company CEO on RFK fight, semaglutide spray

CDM · Peter Gillooly · 19 May 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMGKuRhAU_s

Fits none of the categories

**90. **The dispute accuses his company of using influencers to attack Means because Dr Victory lost the nomination, the reputational risk side of creator marketing rather than media buying.

I take a call from Cali and uh he proceeds to be hysterical for about 15 minutes about how uh the wellness company is in his words, you know, allegedly orchestrating a smear campaign against him and his sister because uh presumably Dr. Victory did not get the nomination.

Eight Sleep's tech-driven approach to sleep improvement

Startup to Storefront · 18 Feb 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHg0ZZgj6E

Celebrities and athletes

**91. **The company partnered with F1 driver Charles Leclerc because he had used their product for years, is interested in technology and AI, and cares about health due to his father's cancer. 21:36

Well, Charles is very unique. First, Charles had our product for many years and we didn't even know. Then I had the chance to meet him one year ago, and I told him our vision. He is super into technology; he's like an expert. It's incredible. When we meet, we just talk about the latest AI innovations. It's super wow, that's amazing.

We just had lunch last week, and we literally spent two hours at lunch talking about AI innovation and the future revolution. Then he really cares about health. It's public that he lost his dad because of cancer, so the whole part of body scanning and all that we do in health resonated immediately really well with him.