Should you hire a Creator as the face of your Brand

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In 2025, organic content will only become more important. The hard question is - do you hire a creator? Leverage the founder as the face of the brand? Examples. Breakdowns. Thoughts. All below.

Next week we’re hosting a workshop covering how to fill up your funnel with organic content. It’s free, you can join here.

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Why You Need Marketing Partnerships

The days of crazy ROI from Facebook ads are over. Affiliates, influencers, and referral partners are now your best chance to have a true performance channel for your business.

The next question is how?

Doing this stuff yourself at the scale you need is damn near impossible. It’s too much to manage. That’s why you need tooling.

Impact.com is your answer to unlocking those channels.

• Affiliate contract management and performance monitoring & analytics

• A marketplace to facilitate affiliates and influencers

• Customer referral tooling that takes out the guesswork and gets you printing

Don’t make the mistake of going on your own or using one of these other platforms. Brands like Uber, TikTok, Adidas, and more have already vetted impact.com.

You know you need a content strategy.

But who should be the face?

• Content creator; or

• Founder

Here’s a quick breakdown of brands that went in either direction.

Front Line Founders

As a Founder, you have an unfair advantage in telling a story that only you can tell.

And that’s how you should think about your content strategy.

Why did you create the brand? Share your obsession.

The founder of Bare Performance Nutrition, Nick Bare, is the face of his brand.

His primary content strategy is showcasing the day-to-day process and behind-the-scenes of his training, passion for nutrition, and why he created the brand.

And he just so happens to fuel his performance with BPN products.

Build Out Loud

Mid-Day Squares is a chocolate brand that reached $36 million in revenue in 5 years. Their Founding Team creates content like a reality show.

They bring you into the brutally unfiltered moments of building a business.

From legal battles to product launch failures and warehouse break-ins, the 3 founders take turns (paired with a videographer) to show the milestones and mishaps of their business on social media.

Only 5-10% of their content is product-focused.

But not every founder wants to be in front of a camera.

There are two ways you can have a creator-led brand.

#1 Creator as the Face of the Platform:

When Olipop hired an agency to handle their TikTok account, they felt the brand DNA got lost.

So they found an up and coming creator named Sarah Crane who took over the Olipop TikTok account.

She became the face of the TikTok and grew to nearly ~325k followers.

#2 Creator as the Face of the Brand

A hot-off-the-press example is Ryan Trahan, the now Chief Creative Officer of the better-for-you candy startup JOYRIDE.

JOYRIDE was founded in 2022, but they re-launched in 2024 with Ryan at the center.

In one week, they sold 8x sales projections and completely sold out of stock.

Creators are masters at storytelling. Their 5-minute “re-launch” video is higher quality than most Super Bowl commercials.

With Ryan Trahan's 15M YouTube subs, they got their story and product out to more people than even UGC could achieve.

But here’s the potential rub.

It’s hard to maintain a relationship with a creator who knows how to grow an audience.

Which is why you have to think about what will sustain a long-term relationship.

Ryan Trahan is an investor in JOYRIDE and contributes to their product development.

Marques Brownlee’s partnership with Ridge spans deeper than tech influencer. He is the brands Chief Creative Partner and helps with R&D as a board member.

Athletic Greens is a long-term sponsor of Tim Ferriss & Andrew Huberman’s podcasts. But Tim Ferris is also an early investor and Huberman is a medical advisor.

So whether you go the Founder or hired-creator route, you need two things:

1. Good storytelling

2. Storytellers that are in it for the long haul.

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