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We recently celebrated the 52nd weekly edition of our “How to Build Brands and Influence People” (HBBIP) newsletter. For those keeping track at home, this officially marks One Full Year of HBBIP! Technically, according to things like “the calendar” and “the linear nature of time,” we launched on September 17, 2023, meaning that we already blew right past our birthday. But Christmas fell on a Monday last year, so we skipped that week, meaning that only now do we have a year’s worth of HBBIP content. Which calls for a celebration!
To commemorate the year that was, I thought we could take a trip down memory lane, highlighting some of my favorite moments from the first 52 weeks of HBBIP. Don’t worry—this won’t just be a clip show. I’ll also include learnings and key takeaways aggregated over previous editions of this newsletter, coming away with some broad trends about what I’m seeing drive momentum within the creator economy. Finally, I’ll leverage those learnings into a forecast for the next 52 editions of HBBIP, and share a little more about how I plan to make this newsletter better than ever.
Hey, that’s me!
All the way back in HBBIP Volume 1, I had this to say about the newsletter’s goals:
“It’s our hope that in time, this newsletter will become your go-to source for data and insights on major trends within the wide, wonderful, wild world of the Creator Economy.
If you’re obsessed with the world of digital content creators—one of the most important shifts in modern marketing—then this newsletter is for you. If you work at an older brand that’s looking to grow into a social (media) butterfly, then this newsletter is for you. If you’re just a fan of creators and their product recs, artistry, trendjacking, dog videos, storytelling, dances, comedy, dog videos, travel ideas, workouts, breaking news, meaningful human connection, or honestly really just dog videos—then this newsletter is for you.”
One year later, I can’t say whether I’ve become your go-to source, though I certainly hope so. But I will posit that I’ve done a pretty good job of covering the brands, creators, and stories that are powering growth across the creator economy.
Take one of the first big stories I covered: RHODE Skin’s blockbuster campaign with Krispy Kreme back in August 2023. I profiled this campaign all the way back in HBBIP No. 2, and it’s still one of our most-opened emails, as well as a personal favorite of mine. This was where I first realized Lesson No. 1: The Power of Cross-Vertical Campaigns.
Some of the most successful brands and initiatives I’ve seen over the past year involve two brands from different verticals teaming up for a collaboration that’s more than the sum of its parts. Whether it’s Erewhon and Balenciaga, H&M and Rabanne, or Liquid Death and just about anybody (e.l.f., Yeti, who knows what’s next), creators and consumers go nuts for these unexpected, imaginative mash-ups. RHODE and Krispy Kreme is the first time I can recall seeing this trend play out so starkly, but it certainly hasn’t been the last.
Clearly, RHODE had benefited from the HBBIP Bump: since the brand was featured in this newsletter, it ascended to our No. 1 brand by Earned Media Value (EMV) on CreatorIQ’s skincare leaderboard. If we look at the last 13 months, it shows no signs of slowing down:
That spike, by the way, is what happens when your A-list founder gives birth. Maybe I should follow suit—it would be big for the newsletter.
If contemplating me giving birth isn’t really your thing, consider another of our most popular editions, chronicling the savvy creator marketing strategy of beloved chicken finger emporium Raising Cane’s. In HBBIP No. 11, launched just in time for Thanksgiving, I talked turkey (well, chicken, but close enough) about Raising Cane’s impressive activations, which roped in everyone from Post Malone to Jerry Jones (or at least his Dallas Cowboys, though I’m guessing that Mr. Jones is also a fan).
Raising Cane’s provided further proof of Lesson No. 2: The Rise of Food & Beverage Brands.
Coming into my newsletter-writing career, I hadn’t had a chance to explore as much of the F&B space as I would have liked. I figured that these brands would be playing catch-up with this whole creator marketing thing—instead, they’re setting the pace. Some of my favorite stories (and, incidentally, our top-performing newsletters) include Pizza Hut & Taco Bell, Jersey Mike’s & Blue Bottle Coffee, and McDonald’s vs. Starbucks. The sophistication and variation of these brands’ creator strategies has really impressed me, making for one of my biggest learnings.
And Raising Cane’s is at the forefront of that trend. After I first wrote about them in late 2023, Raising Cane’s has not only maintained its standing, but improved upon it. Check out the brand’s expanding impressions count over the last 13 months:
I don’t want to say that *I’m* the reason for all those impressions, but I also don’t want to not say it, you know? Anyway, I am once again asking for you to please send me some chicken fingers, Mr. Cane.
Just one week after I talked about Raising Cane’s—I was really hitting my stride around then—I touched on one of the signature creator marketing moments of the past few years: the absolute viral frenzy touched off by a car fire and a water bottle. I’m referring, of course, to Stanley. As I put it at the time:
“Here we have all the necessary ingredients for a smash-hit, feel-good story: a misfortune overcome, a brand being a great sport, a drink kept perfectly icy. [But] Danielle’s video, and the associated campaign, were only possible because of the great strides Stanley had already taken to become the internet’s second-favorite tumbler—or even its favorite, if you’re counting all the vowels. It’s one of the more impressive examples of successful creator marketing that I’ve seen during my 7+ years of research, and a lesson for other brands to follow.”
I’m including this example because I believe that it indicates Lesson No. 3: The Work Comes Before the Viral Moment. This is one of the most important, but less heralded, principles of creator marketing. Viral success happens overnight, but it takes years of effort to get in the position to capitalize on those moments. Stanley not only swiftly responded to a once-in-a-lifetime marketing chance—the brand also painstakingly built a creator community over years of trial and error. It was all that groundwork that made the brand’s time in the sun possible, which is a lesson that other brands ought to heed.
And while that time in the sun hasn’t quite been matched since, it reset the brand’s baseline by introducing Stanley to a wider audience, and kicking off a water bottle craze that hasn’t yet abated. (I covered it about a month ago, so you know it’s still a hot topic.)
As you’ll recall from the initial hype surrounding Stanley’s viral moment, everything started on TikTok. In fact, that’s a perfect segue to Lesson No. 4: Everything Starts on TikTok…Sometimes. Because while it’s generally true that contemporary brands owe a lot of their growth to TikTok, it’s also true that rules—as you might have heard once or twice before—are meant to be broken.
“Much of the brand’s momentum stems from TikTok” is a sentence I’ve written some version of in nearly every newsletter to date. When I’m beginning my investigation into a brand, TikTok is typically the first place I look. While Instagram still accounts for a majority of most brands’ EMV, TikTok usually sparks larger growth rates across key metrics, and can even contribute a plurality of brands’ impressions and engagements. But not every brand follows this pattern.
Enter Red Bull. In further confirmation of Lesson No. 2 (the one about Food & Beverage brands), Red Bull enjoys one of the largest and most impactful creator communities amongst all the brands that CIQ tracks.
There aren’t many brands that average more than 5.0k creators posting about them per month. You might think, with such a community size, that Red Bull was all the rage on a viral-friendly platform like TikTok. But the truth is that Red Bull has one of creator marketing’s OG platforms to thank for its success: YouTube. Even Meta is getting in on the game! What is this, 2013?
Let’s go to what I said back in January:
“Because many of Red Bull’s top content streams maintain notable popularity on YouTube and Facebook, these platforms drove a pronounced percentage of the brand’s total. Out of Red Bull’s $305.7M EMV, YouTube and Facebook accounted for a respective $30.8M EMV (roughly 10%) and $18.7M EMV (roughly 6%).
This might not seem like a lot, but there are two notable things here:
Let that be a reminder to all the Gen Z’ers who are surely reading this: there’s more than one way to go viral, kids.
Speaking of Gen Z, it wouldn’t be a proper celebration of HBBIP’s signature moments from its first year if I didn’t give a shout out to the newsletter’s unsung heroes: the White Fox Baddies!
Faithful readers will recall that right around Coachella season earlier this year, various bus-stop ads went up in my neighborhood in LA. These ads featured ‘coming attraction’ style posters of, as I put it at the time, “women in various festival outfits. These women aren’t smiling, and don’t appear to be having a great time—they are, after all, Baddies—but the outfits are neat.”
These ads were the reason I was made aware of White Fox Boutique in the first place, but I was gaining this knowledge alongside plenty of others:
There are a lot of things that this community growth could point to, all of which would be fine takeaways to craft into Lesson No. 5. But to me, more than what White Fox Boutique’s success says about the creator economy, I’m drawn to this example for what it says about the ubiquity of creator-driven brands in the world at large. More and more often, these companies are transcending the digital realm and achieving mainstream success on non-social channels. After all, it doesn’t get more mainstream than an ad at a bus stop.
So I guess that one takeaway, and quite possibly my favorite, is this—Lesson No. 5: Creator Marketing Stories Are All Around Us. If I’m ever worried about making a deadline or running out of ideas, all I have to do is walk outside, and I’m bound to see an example of a brand using creator marketing to reach new heights. As I enter Year Two, I couldn’t be happier about the wealth of examples I can draw from. They might not all be my Baddies, but I’m sure they’re still pretty good.
All that brings me to what’s next for your favorite newsletter and mine. Don’t worry: the stories you know and love aren’t going anywhere. We’re just making a few refinements, including but not limited to:
So there you have it, folks: one year on the books, many more to come. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me in this endeavor so far—it’s a joy to write this series, and a true highlight for me every week. I hope the same is true for you. I can’t wait for us to continue our journey together, but for now, as always, thank you so much for reading.
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