Who's That Creator? #1

Connecting Creatives & Cultivating Conversations

Author

Jacob Wallach
April 15, 2024

Check Out Our First Creator Interview Below!

My new motto for Social4TheWin Events:

Connecting Creatives & Cultivating Conversations. Because that’s what it’s all about - bringing together incredible people who have unique perspectives on social media and the creator economy to think differently than the approach they normally take.

🎟️🎟️Upcoming Events🎟️🎟️:

We’re hosting our event at an incredible production studio in Soho this Thursday from 6:30 - 9:00. Beverages will be provided, we have a photographer taking pictures, and some of the biggest creators in NYC are planning to join us!

We have 65+ RSVPs so far and the venue capacity is roughly 90. If you RSVP please attend as space is limited. I’ve pulled out all the stops for our best event so far and it would be amazing if you could make it!

If you’ve already RSVP’d you’ll get an update with more details in a few hours!

Future Events on the Calendar🗓️🗓️:

Please sign up early for priority access to our events in May & June!

Who’s That Creator?

14M Followers across social media

It’s Vincent Gao!

He is most notably one of the biggest pranksters on social media, but at his core Vincent is an entertainer. I spoke with Vincent for over an hour about his background, his journey as a creator, and his goals for the future. While I could write a short dissertation on Vincent I plan to keep these breakdowns short, sweet, and to the point. I’d highly recommend you read through this, but if you just want the golden nuggets - click here.

Inspiration to Become a Creator

The OG Vine, creators like Logan Paul, David Dobrik, & King Bach inspired me. They sparked my interest in making videos, despite my limited access to technology at the time. Growing up I had a flip phone and mainly watched Vine on my parents’ phones for about an hour each day. It wasn’t until later that I was able to make content.

Challenges of Early Content Creation

Creating content in the early days was incredibly challenging. I was still figuring out what I even wanted to create. I reviewed other creators’ content and tried to replicate what I thought drove their success, but it didn't work. After about six months and having made six different accounts my TikTok finally blew up. I realized I didn’t need to copy people, I should do my own thing and lean into pranking content. Once I had some initial traction I just kept the ball rolling and it took off from there.

Approach to Monetization and Community

I prioritize adding value to my audience and maintaining my authenticity. Monetization will naturally follow if I stay true to my values and connect with my audience. The last thing I want is to be known as a sell-out. Working with a brand that isn’t for me or saying things that aren’t true to who I am and what my community expects of me is the last thing I’ll ever do.

Scaling & Evolving as a Creator

A while back I realized if I wanted to scale I couldn’t do it alone. The team I have today and continue to build is instrumental to my growth as a creator.

The Team:

  • I have videographers in different states and some that travel with me.

  • Video editors clip and style content for each platform.

    • They repurpose my evergreen content across platforms and continuously throughout the year.

  • New manager to scale brand partnerships & think big picture.

    • I didn’t have the right pricing for content and I’m learning that I can charge significantly more than I previously thought.

The Structure:

  • I run my team like a flat organization.

  • Each person does their role and I respect their ability to get the job done.

  • At this point, I trust them to share content how I want. I never micromanage and don’t need to review most things.

Long-term Vision and Differentiation

There are a few things I want to do in the future:

  • I want to create movies & tv shows rather than just being a mainstream influencer.

  • I focus on originality and not just follower count. I’m aiming to create content that aligns with my broader creative ambitions.

  • I want to film never-before-seen pieces of content.

  • Maybe buy a Bugatti.

  • Build my brand #ShopYAWAWE.

  • My main goal is to help my community. My family, my friends, the people I care about.

Already prepping for the Bugatti lifestyle.

Here are links to his social media and brand if you want to see more of his content!

🪙The Golden Nuggets🪙

If you want to hear more of Vincent’s story, check out what’s above. But here are a few things that Vincent said that truly resonated with me as a creator and entrepreneur.

  • Invest back into yourself & your content: I look at my content as a sandbox. Every time I invest in myself I add more sand to play and scale with. Sometimes the color of the sand is different too and adds new depth and dimension to what I can build.

  • Fall in love with the content you make: I don’t have a set plan when I film content. If I’m in a location and I want to film content I do it. I love what I’m making and I have so much fun doing it.

  • Don’t Sell Out: My community is everything to me. They’re growing up with me and I want them to continue to watch me 20 years from now. If you sell out, that’s what they’ll remember. So find opportunities where you don’t need to do that.

  • “Make plans or be planned”: Go out and build your company or platform. Everyone should be making some sort of content. If you stay in the 9-5 grind your plans are made for you, but as a creator and entrepreneur, you get to decide what you do.

Quite simply if you love what you do and you invest your time, money, and effort into it what you’re doing is worth it. But you have to love what you do. Creative fatigue can set in, but if you inherently love your process, your craft, and building on your vision then it will inevitably be worth the hustle and struggle.

You might be thinking as well - what is Yawawe? Vincent said the actual meaning doesn’t matter, it’s a brand name & it’s a lifestyle. But thankfully we have Urban Dictionary for that. The Definition of Yawawe!

🔥🔥Brand Hot Take🔥🔥

😝🌈Skittles🌈😝

First off - what did Skittles do wrong? And why is Jacob sharing any insight on this brand?

Background: Let’s get this straight. I love Skittles. I love what it stands for. I love the joy that it brings. I love the wacky and ridiculous commercials I grew up on in the early 2000s. But why aren’t we seeing that on social media?

I have a long history with Mars, especially Skittles. During my time at TikTok Mars was my biggest client. I worked on almost every candy and pet (yup Mar’s owns many pet brands) brand that the company owns. Funny enough I also worked on Hershey’s for a long time and would tell people I was the Willy Wonka of TikTok… minus the hat, cane, and you don’t want to see me doing a summersault. It’s not pretty, I promise.

So Tell Me Again Why Skittles Is Not Tasting The Rainbow?

Skittles Success on Social Media?

Skittles has so much brand love that it’s impossible to think that they’re not succeeding, but what does success look like when you’re already a worldwide brand and with a household name that everyone knows:

  • Is it 1M followers on each social channel?

  • Is it getting a viral video?

  • Is it a $2.0+ ROAS (return on ad spend) when spending $1M+ on an ad campaign?

Some brands would kill for these stats on TikTok! But Skittles could be doing much better!

Skittles had a TikTok from April Fools about a Skittles deodorant that did great:

  • 4.5M views

  • 289K likes

  • 9K comments

  • 29K saves

  • 95K favorites

  • An engagement rate of 9.38%

But that’s just one Tiktok. What’s next? One 5M view TikTok doesn’t make a brand or social media strategy. Unless they plan to build out Skittles’ beauty products as a consistent joke this TikTok is it.

To be fair Skittles’ also has great sentiment, but we already knew that.:

The potential is there. The brand love is there. The opportunity to build brands for potential content is there in spades. However, the lack of strategy and consistency in content development falls short of what this brand could be. That is my problem with Skittles.

Even taking a basic concept that they’ve used before like “This Initial Owes You Skittles!” and could give you 26 pieces of content if you do every letter of the alphabet.

Three Ways To Drive Success:

Three things immediately jump out to me from a basic assessment of Skittles on TikTok that I think could change their trajectory.

  1. Build organic content tentpoles: Develop low-lift content styles that you can develop that are already synonymous with your brand. The first that comes to mind is Skittles Touch. While Skittles did a partnership with The McFarlands back in 2021, why aren’t we seeing a character on the Skittles TikTok page, even an office worker who goes about their day/life with an extreme case of the Skittles Touch? If they develop 3 core ideas and then slightly differentiate the content to take into account relevant topics they will find success.

  2. Bridge The Creator Gap: When you’re a brand like Skittles people talk. Whether good or bad conversations are being had about this brand. Skittles has campaigns going on a few times a year, but outside of those campaigns what do they do with creators? Creators like Parkerseidel, Shelby & Dylan, and many others are already creating content for the brand. Bring them in to the fold. Beauty brands do an amazing job at this, but why don’t Food & Bev companies build communities at scale that love their product for events, scalable partnerships, and great content?

  3. Make Fun of Freeze-Dried: Many small companies are selling freeze-dried Skittles. It’s funny how Skittles hasn’t created this product or even mentioned that these DTC brands are ripping them off. Of the top 25 Skittles videos in the past 3 months 5 of them are directly mentioning these freeze-dried non-skittles Skittles.

Creator with 10K followers

11.4M views wild

Astro Candy Bursts

  • 62K sold

  • $10.50 price

  • $650K in sales

Product Reviews

Almost entirely strong sentiment about the quality and quantity of the product.

Skittles is playing in easy mode. A DTC brand or company without the brand name would probably not succeed with this strategy. But if Skittles can lean into each of these components it creates a more well-rounded content, creative, and distribution strategy that I believe can make them more successful.

What’s in Store For Next Time?

Your voice matters to us. Have a story to share? Want to suggest a topic for our next newsletter? You can respond directly to the email and it will get to Jacob! Or you can submit a form under each of these to help us build out topics that would be worthwhile for this newsletter!

Thanks again and I hope to see you at our event this Thursday!

Best,

Jacob

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