Not just because I’ve run the benchmarks, or because I can cite you the token limits or reasoning scores. I’m a Claude girlie because when I close my laptop after a “jam session,” I feel like someone who values craft over speed, depth over efficiency, the process as much as the output.

In other words, that feeling I get from using collaborating with Claude? It’s branding.

And in a market where AI models have reached near-parity on core benchmarks (and the tech differences are now measured in percentage points) that feeling increasingly matters more than the specs. People begin to make choices based on LLM specialization, as well as the brand values they align with.

The question users ask is no longer “which AI is best?” Instead, the question is: which one do I trust? Which one feels right? And more importantly, which one am I willing (or even proud) to tell people I use?

That shift from caring about capabilities to caring about identity is rewriting everything about how AI companies approach marketing and building communities. When users are grappling with decision fatigue and (in the case of AI at large) philosophical and existential anxiety, brand becomes the biggest tie breaker.

The Cultural Context: AI’s Existential Tension Problem

To understand why AI branding matters so much right now, let’s start by taking a closer look at the unique cultural moment we’re in.

There’s a framework I keep coming back to from Jasmine Bina and her Substack, Concept Bureau. She applies sociologist Michele Gelfand’s work on tight versus loose cultures (originally associated with societal and national norms) to markets and categories.

The idea is the following: cultures, as well as verticals and industries, exist on a spectrum. Tight cultures (think finance or healthcare) have:

• Clear rules and strict enforcement
• Low tolerance for deviation
• Innovation comes from adding looseness (more choice, flexibility)

This is likely why you’ve seen the rise of relevance-forward and vibe-first marketing from fintech brands (like CashApp and their Timothee Chalamet collaboration), for example.

Conversely, loose cultures have:

• Too much choice and no consensus
• High tolerance for chaos
• Value comes from adding clarity (reducing overwhelm, narrowing options)

AI sits firmly in the loose camp.

Every new product launch feels simultaneously exciting and, let’s be honest, exhausting. Every feature announcement promises capability while deepening decision paralysis. There’s no playbook, no consensus, no shared understanding of what responsible AI use even looks like.

And beneath all this chaos sits a deeper tension: people don’t know how to feel about AI.

Not in a simple “is this good or bad” way; it’s more foundational than that. There’s no cultural script yet, no agreed-upon norms about what’s acceptable versus what crosses a line. The same behavior reads as innovative in one context and lazy in another, as efficient or as cheating, as creative augmentation or creative erosion. People are making up their own rules in real time, drawing personal boundaries that don’t match anyone else’s, and constantly second-guessing whether they’re on the right side of some invisible ethical line that hasn’t been drawn yet.

Every interaction with AI forces an existential question: am I outsourcing my thinking? Am I losing something essential? Am I becoming less creative, less capable, less me?

The technology can’t answer that. Only the brand can, and this is exactly why we come back to that feeling AI branding can create for clarity and a moral compass.

Pew Research found that 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI, up from just 37% before ChatGPT launched. Even as usage continues to grow exponentially (ChatGPT grew more than 4x year-over-year to 800 million weekly users), the anxiety is still growing right alongside it. While most people rate AI’s risks as high, worrying it will damage creativity and weaken human relationships, they keep using it anyway.

That’s the real tension brands have to navigate: adoption without trust, utility without comfort, integration without guidance. What people need is a brand that can hold the contradictions without rushing to fix them, and that’s exactly what the best AI companies have figured out how to do.

AI Branding In Three Acts

To understand why brand has become the battleground, we need to take a closer look at how we got here. The shift happened fast, less than three years from the ChatGPT launch to the brand identities crystallizing today; so here’s the rough arc:

Act I: The Feature Race (2022-2023)

ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and broke the internet: 1 million users in five days. Every week brought a new model, a new benchmark, a new “this changes everything” moment. Google scrambled to release Bard. Anthropic launched Claude. Perplexity positioned itself as the citation-friendly alternative.

The playbook was simple: ship fast, announce features, post screenshots. Capabilities were everything. Speed, token count, and benchmark performance were the metrics that mattered the most.

In other words, marketing was product velocity, while branding was an afterthought.

This worked because earlier audiences cared about what the technology could do. They wanted to know: can it code? Can it write? How many tokens? How fast? The answers about technical specs were enough, because the audience was among the innovators and early adopters.

But as AI adoption skyrocketed and the focus slowly shifted away from being innovator- and early adopter-heavy, every new feature announcement began to contribute to decision paralysis rather than solving it. In a loose culture, adding more options without adding clarity just deepens the chaos, and at this stage where more people were exposed to generative AI, the feature race risked feeding the very noise it should have been reducing.

By mid-2025, and as the early majority began adopting the technology, things began to shift. The LLM performance began to converge, with new models releasing at a higher frequency and the general delta in performance decreasing. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini could handle the same core tasks with roughly equivalent quality. The differences became marginal, measured in percentage points, not paradigm shifts, while users began focusing on individual use cases and the performance of each model within those scenarios.

At the same time, trust issues began to scale: hallucinations became memes, and job displacement fears intensified. Users began experiencing real decision paralysis, with too many options and not enough differentiation (or education, for that matter).

In short, pure capability-focused marketing stopped working.

Act II: The First Efforts (2024-early 2025)

Early 2025 was the year AI companies realized they weren’t just competing with each other anymore; they were competing with people’s fear, confusion, and decision paralysis. The early adopters had already signed up. The question was how to cross the chasm to the early majority: the pragmatists who don’t care about being first, who need proof before they commit, who trust recommendations from people like them more than they trust tech visionaries.

The problem showed up clearly in user behavior. Power users obsessed over benchmarks and context windows. But the next cohort on the adoption curve (the early majority) chose based on ~vibe~. They picked the AI that felt right, not the one with the best specs. And “felt right” meant something specific: safe, accessible, proven, permissible.

In tight-loose culture terms, companies were finally recognizing the dissonance, as well as the shift in consumer needs. But their first attempts at adding structure (and making AI feel less chaotic and more familiar) didn’t always land with the audience they were trying to reach.

Companies tried different approaches to reach that mainstream audience, and not all of them worked.

Anthropic tried abstract, conceptual billboard campaigns in 2024 (“A jetpack for your thoughts,” “Powerful, fast, or safe. Pick three.”). For people already familiar with Claude, the wordplay landed as clever. For everyone else, it created confusion about what category the product even belonged to. Instead of reducing overwhelm, the ads added to it, leading to more questions and fewer answers.

OpenAI took a different bet in February 2025, taking ChatGPT to the Super Bowl with “The Intelligence Age,” positioning AI alongside fire, the wheel, and the internet as humanity’s next great leap. For tech enthusiasts who already saw AI as inevitable progress, the ad landed. But for an audience still deciding whether to trust AI at all, framing it as historically inevitable didn’t answer their real questions: will this help me? Do people like me use it? What would people think if they knew I used this?

So, what’s the consensus? Both Anthropic and OpenAI’s campaigns were well-produced and thoughtful. But they were trying to add clarity by making AI feel important rather than making it feel approachable. The early majority didn’t need to be convinced AI mattered. They needed to be shown how to use it without feeling like they were losing themselves in the process.

Act III: The Identity Wars (late 2025+)

By mid-2025, AI companies figured out what the early majority actually needed; not just better benchmarks or feature announcements, but mental and emotional frameworks. AI adoption was becoming inevitable, but how to adopt it in a personal(ized) way wasn’t as obvious.

The pivot had two parts: make it feel human, and give people a clear framework to understand what kind of AI user each of them is, or could be.

OpenAI’s “Moments” campaign in September dropped a lot of the “revolutionary” language from their Super Bowl ad. Instead of positioning AI as historically significant, they positioned it as practically useful.

A guy doing pull-ups in a park, a couple cooking dinner, siblings planning a road trip. Shot on 35mm film with indie music from 2014, the whole thing felt warm and grainy; like home videos, not a tech demo. The message was very different from the Super Bowl ad: ChatGPT helps you live your life the way you already do, but better.

Anthropic made the same pivot with the “Keep Thinking” campaign, but provided a completely different framework.The brand showed problem-solvers at work through a 90-second film that was nostalgic and intellectual. Rather than taking the stance of “AI makes life easier,” it leaned into the “AI makes thinking better.” Claude doesn’t replace intellectual labor; it amplifies it.

And then came the physical activations. Anthropic opened a pop-up in New York’s West Village in October, taking over the Air Mail newsstand for a week. People lined up around the block for coffee and “Thinking” caps and a space to sit with actual books and pens and paper.

The activation billed itself as a “zero slop zone,” a pointed rejection of AI-generated content flooding the internet. The message was clear: we’re not adding to the noise, we’re helping you think through it.

The physical pop-up in October made the positioning tangible through books, coffee, and merch. People lined up around the block because the brand gave them a framework for understanding themselves as AI users: you’re thoughtful, you’re intentional, you care about depth over speed, and using Claude reinforces that identity; it doesn’t threaten it.

Here’s what both campaigns understood: unlike the innovators and early adopters who cared about how (well) AI worked, the early majority was struggling with what using AI said about them. So brands provided clear frameworks:

• OpenAI’s framework: You’re practical and present. ChatGPT is for everyone, for ordinary moments, for living your life better.
• Anthropic’s framework: You’re a thinker. Claude is for people who care about intellectual rigor, who want to amplify their thinking without outsourcing it.

Both frameworks clarified the human role because people weren’t just anxious about whether AI worked; they were anxious about what happens to them when AI works.

This is how you add structure to a loose culture: you don’t just reduce options, you give people a clear identity to step into. Rather than claiming “our AI is better,” you say, “Here’s who you are when you use our AI.” Each brand created a distinct territory, and with it a specific way of making sense of AI use that resolved the existential anxiety without forcing people to figure it out alone.

But frameworks can backfire when they misread what people actually need.

In the same month, Friend.com spent $1 million on the largest subway campaign in MTA history: 11,000 posters promoting a $129 AI companion necklace that listens constantly and texts you throughout the day. Within days, the ads were defaced, spreading as viral protest art across social media.

Where OpenAI and Anthropic positioned AI as enhancing what you already do, Friend.com positioned it as replacing what you’re missing. This particular framework (intentional or not, rage bait or not) triggered the exact anxiety the other brands were working to reduce. This is what happens when you misread what a loose culture needs: instead of offering clarity, you risk amplifying the fear.

Once companies figured out how to provide frameworks at scale, differentiation became the name of the new game. Now, they needed to define their distinct brand territories:

• Who exactly are we for?
• What specific tension do we resolve?
• And more importantly, what does choosing us over the competition say about you?

Different players picked different lanes. And those choices created the identities that define the market today.

The (Non-Exhaustive) AI Brand Territories Through the Social Lens

Each of the major AI companies has figured out how to add structure to the chaos, but they’ve done it in fundamentally different ways. OpenAI chose clarity through ubiquity. Anthropic chose clarity through intellectual identity.

These aren’t just positioning statements. They’re distinct frameworks for resolving the existential tension of AI use. Let’s look at how each brand built their territory.

OpenAI (ChatGPT): Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

OpenAI’s strategy is, in fancy terms, mass appeal through ubiquity. They want ChatGPT to be what Google was in the 2000s: the default AI that everyone uses without thinking twice.

A lot of this positioning is due to the brand’s first-mover advantage. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months after launch; faster than any app in history (for context, Facebook took 4.5 years, and TikTok took 9 months). As of September 2025, that number has been reported by Sam Altman himself to have reached 800 million weekly active users.

This wasn’t accidental. OpenAI made a deliberate bet on consumer-first growth: launch ChatGPT as a free product, let it go viral, build massive adoption, then monetize enterprise later. ChatGPT Enterprise didn’t launch until August 2023, nine months after the consumer product broke the internet. That consumer base was what drove brand recognition, and the widespread usage created the “everyone already uses this” perception that makes the early majority feel safe adopting.

In a loose culture where people don’t know the rules yet, “everyone’s doing it” becomes its own form of structure. If you’re anxious about whether using AI makes you lazy or less creative, seeing your coworker, your friend, and your mom all using ChatGPT provides social proof that it’s acceptable. OpenAI resolved the, “Am I wrong for using this?” question by making AI use so widespread that not using it became the outlier.

When you start with hundreds of millions of consumers, everything that follows optimizes for breadth over depth, accessibility over specialization, normalcy over exclusivity. The “Moments” campaign, which was OpenAI’s largest brand push yet, squarely aimed to normalize AI use, making it feel like something your friend would recommend rather than something to fear.

The mass appeal strategy also goes deeper than advertising and shows up most clearly in how OpenAI built their social and creator ecosystem.

The brand separated ChatGPT’s social presence from OpenAI’s parent company presence entirely:

• On LinkedIn, OpenAI (9M followers) maintains the corporate voice through company announcements, research updates, and thought leadership for enterprise and innovator technical audiences.
• ChatGPT’s Instagram (2M followers) and TikTok (1.4M followers) do something different: they lean into internet culture in the broadest sense possible. The Instagram feed is a mix of AI-generated images (colorful, surreal, deliberately AI-generated-coded), prompt recommendations, and UGC-style content that feels more like a meme account than a tech brand. ChatGPT is positioned less as sophisticated technology on these accounts and more as a helpful companion that happens to be fun.

There is also a powerful UGC flywheel and ecosystem around ChatGPT that’s not talked about enough. People use it for everything: roasting their Instagram feeds, reading their astrology charts, or even analyzing situationship text chains. The use cases are wildly diverse, deeply personal, and often absurdly specific, but that’s also the formula for viral flywheel moments that ChatGPT doesn’t even need to proactively invest in.

ChatGPT doesn’t have to tell users what it can be for; users themselves decide what it’s for, and then create content showing other people their favorite discoveries and use cases. The brand leans into the culture of people creating content about ChatGPT rather than just content created by ChatGPT the brand.

ChatGPT’s UGC flywheel works like this:

1. User discovers an engaging or practical use case
2. User creates UGC content sharing their discovery
3. Brand amplifies the content (optional)
4. More users get inspired and share their own discoveries

To root this argument in numbers, here’s a stat to put things into context: as of this month (December 2025) there are 5.4M posts under the #chatgpt hashtag on TikTok, and all of these posts are created by the community, for the community. In other words, this is the foundational community-led growth flywheel that brands like Notion or Figma have also unlocked (which I discuss in more detail in a separate blog post).

ChatGPT’s creator and influencer strategy reinforces mass appeal. OpenAI works with creators across wildly different niches, from humor to lifestyle, productivity, relationships, and everything in between. The strategy is to show up everywhere, for everyone, in ways that feel native to each platform and each audience. Whether it’s a productivity influencer showing how ChatGPT helps with work, or a comedy creator with a parody on ChatGPT’s infamous em dashes, ChatGPT’s DTC presence covers wildly different use cases for the same tool, with a particular emphasis on normalcy.

The positioning is relentlessly broad: from a DTC perspective, ChatGPT is for everyone, for everything, for any moment in your life when you need help, ideas, or just someone to talk to. It’s not necessarily specialized or exclusive because naturally, it’s the AI you already use, whether you’re planning dinner, stalking your ex, learning a new skill, or just bored and want to see what happens when you ask it to analyze your personality based on your Spotify Wrapped.

The brand solved the early majority’s anxiety by making AI use feel completely normal, the kind of thing everyone does now, like Googling something or Venmoing someone. In other words, ChatGPT has officially unlocked the colloquial status of being a verb, and people are leaning into it.

OpenAI’s approach to adding structure in a loose culture was to make the behavior so common that it creates its own norms. When there’s no consensus on what “acceptable AI use” looks like, ubiquity itself becomes the consensus. Everyone’s doing it, so it must be okay. That’s clarity through normalization.

Anthropic (Claude): Differentiation Through Intellectual Identity

While OpenAI went broad, Anthropic went narrow. Instead of being the default AI, Claude is trying to be the AI for people who care about how they think, not just what they produce.

And the strategy is working: Anthropic’s growth trajectory is very much rooted in their initial enterprise focus and push, as the brand now boasts 32% of the enterprise AI market compared to OpenAI’s 25%. While on its own, the difference might not be striking, it’s the context that really matters: the 32% market share is a significant pivot from 2023, when OpenAI held 50% of the enterprise market share and Anthropic had just 12%. In code generation specifically, Claude dominates with 42% market share; more than double OpenAI’s 21%.Claude has just 5% of ChatGPT’s user base, but generates approximately $211 per monthly user compared to OpenAI’s $25 per weekly user; an 8x difference in monetization efficiency. Smaller audience, higher value, deliberate positioning.

Anthropic’s enterprise win is a result of a completely different go-to-market path than OpenAI. While OpenAI went consumer-first and viral, Anthropic doubled down on enterprise by building deep B2B relationships through Constitutional AI, safety frameworks, and positioning Claude as the thoughtful, responsible choice for serious work. The consumer/DTC pivot that’s picking up momentum is more recent: things like the “Keep Thinking” campaign launched in mid-2025, or the pop-ups that followed suit very quickly.

Where OpenAI addressed anxiety through “everyone’s doing it,” Anthropic resolved it through “you’re doing it the right way.” In a loose culture, that distinction matters. Some people don’t want to be like everyone else; instead, they want to feel like they’re making a more “niche,” intentional choice. Anthropic gave them that framework: using Claude doesn’t just mean you’re adopting AI, it means you’re the kind of person who cares about how AI gets used.

Their social and creator ecosystem is a great window into the brand’s strategy leading up to this point: they’re selectively catching up, targeting a narrow, high-value audience rather than chasing mass appeal.

Claude’s social presence is significantly smaller compared to ChatGPT or OpenAI’s:

• 151K Instagram followers (compared to ChatGPT’s 2M)
• 3.9K TikTok followers (compared to ChatGPT’s 1.4M)
• 188K on the Claude LinkedIn page

The hashtag post volume tells the same story, especially when it comes to the consumer-specific awareness level: #chatgpt has 5.4M posts on TikTok where #claude has only 307.5K; a 17.5x difference. That being said, and unlike OpenAI’s consumer-heavy channel mix with an emphasis on Instagram and TikTok, Anthropic and Claude have fostered a more engaged (and technical) community on X (Anthropic: 709K followers, Claude: 192K), YouTube (Anthropic: 319K followers), and Reddit.

But the gap in the numbers is not the full story: Claude and Anthropic are playing a game that’s fundamentally different from broad reach. Where OpenAI’s approach is making AI feel relatable, Anthropic’s approach drives clarity through education by giving people the practical tools and step-by-step guidance they need to feel confident and capable.

Their social content is incredibly curated, not ubiquitous. Claude’s social feed in particular is focused on helpfulness and empowerment as key themes, ranging from hands-on Claude tutorials to short-form videos that feel like journal entries where Claude is secondary to the creator’s thought process, or even series on YouTube like the AI Fluency Course that tackle more foundational AI education.

The LinkedIn and X split between Claude vs. Anthropic is strategic, too. The Anthropic parent company focuses on PR, policy, research, and B2B case studies emphasizing their enterprise dominance. The Claude product page is all about practical, actionable product education with hyper-specific scenarios, hands-on how-tos, and particular use cases.

The brand’s creator and influencer strategy follows the same logic. Claude’s Instagram feed and owned content is selectively balanced out with content co-created by creatives, technical talent, and problem-solvers across various industries. They’re people who would naturally care about depth and craft, not just productivity hacks or viral moments.

The Rick Rubin collaboration illustrates this approach very clearly. In May 2025, Anthropic partnered with the legendary music producer to create “The Way of Code,” an interactive digital book that reimagines the Tao Te Ching through “vibe coding.” The project features 81 chapters combining Taoist philosophy with modifiable visual artifacts made with Claude.

Anthropic deliberately went with a 60-year-old music producer who built his career on caring about craft over output, which happens to be the exact opposite of AI’s productivity-hacking stereotype. The brand is intentionally building a bridge with people who think AI should deepen creative practice, who reject the “10x your productivity” hustle culture, and who believe technology should make you more human rather than automate you away.

Rubin gives Anthropic (and therefore Claude) cultural credibility with that audience in a way no productivity-hacking influencer ever could.

More recently, Claude has started dipping its proverbial toe into user personas more explicitly; take this personality-forward Instagram post, for example. This is a signal of the Claude team exploring avenues to connect with the community better as they define their territory more clearly and in parallel to the general awareness levels for Claude growing, giving people language to identify with and a niche culture that ChatGPT’s mass appeal doesn’t necessarily deliver on.

When a consumer chooses Claude today, it’s not because the benchmarks are dramatically better, but because the brand provides a framework that resolves an existential tension: you can adopt AI without compromising your intellectual rigor.

The brand showed people how to be thoughtful AI users, and turns out, there’s a massive market for that.

Anthropic’s approach to adding structure in a loose culture was to create an identity for people who want to opt into something more intentional than the default. When OpenAI says “everyone’s doing it,” Anthropic says “but you’re doing it differently.” That’s clarity through differentiation; not just from other AI tools, but from the kind of AI user you might not want to be.

Perplexity: Founder-Led Growth Meets (Big) Distribution Bets

Perplexity has a lot going on. Actually, maybe too much going on, and that’s both the story and the challenge.

By September 2025, the company had raised $500 million at a $20 billion valuation, processing 780 million queries in May alone, or around 30 million daily. Korean usage more than doubled from 330,000 to over 820,000 monthly active users between January and August. The growth was real, the momentum was clear, and Perplexity had valuable strategic pieces that could add up to something coherent. The question was whether they’d figure out how to make those pieces work together.

The positioning was straightforward from the start: answers you can trust, thanks to citations. Every response included inline references, every claim was traceable, sources appeared at the top of answers rather than buried at the bottom. The company’s tagline was as simple and direct as possible: “Ask questions and trust the answers.” In a category where people don’t know what’s true, “here’s where we got this information” becomes its own form of clarity. That positioning worked: it addressed real anxiety about AI accuracy and differentiated Perplexity from ChatGPT’s hallucination problems and Google’s cluttered results.

Then there was the founder-led growth strategy. CEO Aravind Srinivas essentially was the brand in the early days. Years before founding Perplexity, Srinivas had built credibility on Twitter by breaking down complex research papers into digestible threads. He came from OpenAI, Google Brain, DeepMind (read: serious technical chops) but what made him stand out was how he communicated, making concepts accessible through clear explanation rather than dumbing them down.

That approach became how Perplexity showed up: transparent in answers, transparent in operations, real human need at the core. Srinivas’s X account and Perplexity’s X account both have 370K followers, which tells you how much the founder and the brand were equally visible in the strategy. This worked well enough to build authentic community and rapid early adoption.

By 2024, though, the company recognized that positioning alone wasn’t enough. They needed a distinct brand identity, not just differentiation. Enter the rebrand with Smith & Diction, shifting from functional positioning (citations) to philosophical territory (curiosity). The Instagram feed became the main playground for this identity’s expression, a direct attempt to give users something emotional to connect with beyond features and benefits. It was a smart move in theory: curiosity as an aspirational identity could work.

Then came the big marketing bets. Perplexity started swinging for the fences with high-profile partnerships: Lewis Hamilton’s “The Garage” content series, an interactive CR7 experience where users could ask Cristiano Ronaldo questions “in his voice” (notably, Ronaldo also joined Perplexity as an investor), an OOH push with Lee Jung-Jae for their biggest advertising push yet. These weren’t small creator partnerships; these were major celebrity plays designed to break through the noise and signal that Perplexity was playing in a different league.

Similar to Anthropic’s IRL push, Perplexity also set up shop for an in-person activation in 2025. A cafe in Seoul called Cafe Curious opened in September 2025, jumping on Korea’s explosive user growth and cafe culture. Customers came for coffee, and the AI reveal happened at the register with Pro discounts and trial QR codes. The space leaned hard into the curiosity rebrand, creating a tangible expression of the philosophical territory they were trying to claim.

Perplexity has also doubled down on a large-scale distribution play. Their $400M Snapchat integration embedded the answer engine for 943 million monthly active users. Not brand building in the traditional sense; this was access at scale.

Let’s look at the back-of-the-envelope math: if even 5% of Snapchat’s 900M+ MAU audience touched Perplexity monthly post-launch, that’s 45 million new users, a 1.5x increase over their existing base. The math was compelling: be the verification layer embedded everywhere people already search, and let distribution do the heavy lifting while brand identity catches up.

Strategic partnerships with creators and newsletters rounded out Perplexity’s growth mix. A bundle with Lenny Rachitsky’s newsletter gave paid subscribers a free year of Perplexity Pro, positioning the tool within productivity and product management circles. More partnerships like this signaled an understanding that trust transfers: if someone you already subscribe to vouches for a tool, you’re more likely to try it.

So here’s what Perplexity had by late 2025:

• Clear positioning (verification)
• Authentic founder-led momentum
• A visual rebrand to emotional territory (curiosity)
• Massive celebrity partnerships
• Experiential physical spaces
• A distribution deal that could 3x their user base
• Strategic creator collaborations

On paper, those are all the right pieces.

The challenge was that they didn’t quite click together yet. Srinivas continued operating largely in the product-update playbook on X, think: technical explanations, feature announcements, transparency about bugs and fixes. That authenticity was valuable, but it existed alongside Instagram’s aspirational curiosity aesthetic, which existed alongside Squid Game-esque ads, which existed alongside a Seoul cafe, which existed alongside the Snapchat integration news.

Each piece pointed in a slightly different direction. The celebrity partnerships were big swings, but they lived as isolated moments rather than pillars of an ongoing narrative. The curiosity rebrand was beautiful in execution but inconsistent in delivery across the day-to-day content that would actually build community and habit.

In a loose culture, this creates risk. Without a cohesive identity to anchor everything, each new initiative, no matter how smart individually, feels like starting from scratch rather than building momentum. Distribution without brand clarity just creates more touchpoints for a fragmented message. Big marketing bets without a steady content ecosystem to support them become expensive one-offs instead of compounding brand equity.

Perplexity figured out positioning, and that’s certainly not nothing. Verification addresses a real source of anxiety when it comes to AI trust, and the founder-led approach built an authentic early community. The 2024 rebrand showed they understood the gap between functional differentiation and emotional identity. All the strategic moves since then are valuable pieces. The opportunity now is making those pieces work together, finding the thread that connects transparency and curiosity and celebrity and distribution into a framework that actually resolves the chaos instead of adding to it.

Gemini: When Your Ecosystem Is Your Identity

Gemini has scale that most AI companies can only dream about. 450 million monthly active users by mid-2025, 13.5% market share in the AI chatbot space, embedded across Google Search where 2 billion users see AI Overviews monthly, built into Android, Gmail, Docs, YouTube.

We are talking about over 180 million app downloads since launch, and technical capability that outperforms GPT-4 on some benchmarks, with a 2 million token context window that’s 15.6 times larger than GPT-4’s (at least for now).

The distribution is massive, the technology is capable, and Google’s resources are essentially unlimited.

But here’s the difference in Gemini’s brand strategy: it doesn’t have an independent identity. It has Google’s identity. And that’s both by design and by necessity.

The logo redesign in July 2025 made this explicit. Gemini shifted from its original purple-blue palette to Google’s signature gradient: the recognizable melange of red, yellow, green, and blue flowing together in the same style as the Google “G” and the rest of the products in the Google family. The visual change reinforced what was already structurally true: Gemini is part of the Google ecosystem rather than a standalone product with its own positioning. The brand language centers on “Google Magic,” which sounds appealing until you realize it doesn’t differentiate Gemini from anything else Google does. Chrome is Google magic. Search is Google magic. Maps is Google magic. So, what makes Gemini’s magic distinct from the rest of the suite?

Gemini’s answer is actually less about distinction and more about integration. Rather than trying to separate from Google, it’s trying to make Google itself smarter.

The social strategy is an example of this explicitly in play. Google operates multiple handles: @google (15.7M followers on Instagram only), @shopwithgoogle (100K+), and @googlegemini (~800K, and before you say anything, yes, the handle name itself attaches Gemini to Google). The distribution of brand effort across them reveals how AI has become the narrative thread across Google’s entire ecosystem rather than a standalone product story.

Gemini’s presence focuses on product utility: everyday use cases that are helpful, functional or delightful, showing people what Gemini can do.

But the big brand moves happen elsewhere. Take the recent Sarah Jessica Parker collaboration: SJP styling a holiday campaign using Google’s AI-powered virtual try-on tools, shot in her NYC home, framed as “shop smarter with AI,” and the AI narrative was the invisible infrastructure making the Google shopping experience better.

That’s Google’s emerging brand pattern. AI is no longer a standalone product Google is selling; rather, It’s the reason Google’s existing products just got better. Search is smarter now. Gmail drafts better now. Maps understands context now. Shopping is more personalized now. Gemini powers it all, but “Google with AI” is what users actually hear. Google is repositioning itself as an AI-first company, and Gemini is the engine enabling that transformation rather than a destination in its own right.

Google tried a standalone AI identity once: if you remember, Bard launched in March 2023 as its own product with its own name. The February 2024 rebrand to Gemini and the fast-to-follow visual integration into Google’s family solidified Google’s direct effort to integrate it into its existing product lineup. The company learned that fighting for independent identity meant competing with its own ecosystem advantage.

Instead of convincing people to adopt something new, Gemini makes what people already use significantly better. It reduces any onboarding friction. It doesn’t require any behavior change. It’s the old and familiar Google product suite, now with AI woven in.

Where OpenAI made a deliberate bet on consumer-first growth (launch ChatGPT as a standalone product, let it go viral, build massive adoption, then monetize enterprise later), and where Anthropic doubled down on enterprise-first credibility (build deep B2B relationships through Constitutional AI and safety frameworks, then pivot to consumer), Gemini went ecosystem-first because it had to. It’s baked into Search, Android, Workspace… everywhere Google already exists.

You don’t have to download Gemini separately and choose to use it of your own free will; you will stumble upon it while doing things you were already doing in Google’s universe.

That distribution advantage is real and powerful. The integration means that Gemini touches more users more frequently than almost any other AI, simply by virtue of being part of the infrastructure people already rely on. Gemini’s current identity is Google’s identity by necessity, because building something completely separate could potentially undermine the core value proposition.

This is where the tight-loose culture framework brings us to something interesting. Gemini isn’t trying to add structure to a loose culture the way OpenAI and Anthropic are. It’s trying to absorb AI functionality into Google’s existing structure, which is a different strategic play altogether. The brand doesn’t need to give people a framework for “who am I when I use this?” because the implied answer is “you’re using Google, like you always have.” For many users, that’s enough, because Google already represents trust, reliability, ubiquity, and answers to questions. The brand equity is far-reaching and well-established.

For people trying to make sense of what their AI use says about them, Gemini provides a framework that allows them to continue to be a Google user. And for a large portion of users, it’s exactly what they want: the tools they already trust, now just significantly better.

People come across Gemini naturally in Search results, in Docs, in Android. Whether those “meet-cutes” translate to intentional, repeated use or remain occasional touches is part of what makes Gemini’s game different.

The strategic question Gemini faces isn’t about execution or marketing or finding the right creator partnerships. It’s more fundamental than that: Can you build a distinct brand identity when you’re fundamentally an extension of a parent brand that already defines you so completely? OpenAI was smart about separating ChatGPT’s consumer brand from OpenAI’s corporate and research identity. Anthropic carved out clear space between Claude’s consumer presence and Anthropic’s enterprise reputation. Both created room for the product to have its own personality, its own voice, its own reason for being beyond “its part of the suite.”

Gemini is Google AI, and that means every brand decision has to serve Google’s ecosystem strategy first:

• It can’t develop an identity that contradicts or competes with Google’s broader positioning.
• It can’t take creative risks that might confuse users about what Google stands for.
• It exists to make Google’s existing products better, smarter, more capable, and not to become a destination in its own right.

This isn’t necessarily wrong as a strategy. It’s just a different game than what OpenAI or Anthropic are playing. Gemini isn’t competing to win hearts and minds through identity; it’s competing to make AI feel like a natural, inevitable extension of the Google services people already trust and use daily. The bet is on distribution over differentiation, on ubiquity through integration rather than ubiquity through adoption, on being so embedded in existing workflows that conscious choice becomes unnecessary.

In a loose culture where people need frameworks for “who am I when I use this?”, Gemini offers a distinct answer: you’re someone who doesn’t need that distinction. For users trying to construct an identity around their AI use (*cough* guilty as charged), Gemini provides a frictionless framework. You trust established infrastructure, and “I just use Google” is its own form of clarity.

That’s not opting out of identity. That’s choosing the anti-identity identity. And for a huge segment of users navigating AI’s loose culture, that’s exactly the structure they need.

And that could very much be the entire point. Maybe Gemini isn’t trying to win the identity wars at all. Maybe the strategy is to win by making identity irrelevant, to be so embedded, so default, so automatic that people stop thinking of “using Gemini” as a choice they’re making and start thinking of it as just “using Google, which happens to have really good AI now.”

If that’s the play, it’s working in terms of reach. The question is whether reach at this scale makes traditional brand identity frameworks obsolete, because Gemini does, after all, come with a significant built-in advantage. It’s not a massive leap to assume that when you’re embedded in 2 billion people’s daily workflows, you don’t need to make people identify with your brand. You just need to make their existing tools indispensable.

So… What’s the Pattern?

Remember the tight-loose culture framework from the beginning? Here’s how it played out across these brands.

In a loose culture like AI, where there are too many options, no consensus, and constant anxiety, value comes from adding structure. But structure doesn’t necessarily mean one thing. Each brand found a different way to reduce overwhelm and provide clarity:

• OpenAI: Clarity through normalization. “Everyone uses this, so it’s safe for you too.”
• Anthropic: Clarity through identity. “You’re a thoughtful person, and this tool matches who you are.”
• Perplexity: Clarity through verification (positioning clear, identity still forming). “You can verify everything… but who does that make you?”
• Gemini: Clarity through familiarity and integration. “It’s Google, but better with AI.”

All four address the loose culture tension to a certain degree, and they did it by offering different frameworks for what it means to be an AI user.

The winning brands also help people reconcile contradictions. They create space for “I use AI daily” and “I’m still creative and valuable” to coexist without one negating the other. Rather than forcing resolution, they hold the tension.

• OpenAI says, “Don’t overthink it, everyone uses this.”
• Anthropic says, “Be intentional about your choice.”
• Gemini says, “You don’t need to choose at all.”

That holding pattern is what makes people feel comfortable enough to commit.

Analog has become the primary trust-building device across the category. Shooting on film, nostalgic music, IRL activations, human touch; when you’re selling something that fundamentally unsettles people, wrapping it in familiar visual language reduces friction. It’s why OpenAI used 35mm film and indie tracks from 2014, and also why Anthropic and Perplexity leaned into physical popups.

What’s also become clear is that brand is emerging as a differentiator equivalent to product features. When Anthropic’s enterprise share skyrocketed, it wasn’t only due to model performance; Anthropic’s strong positioning on safety, systems thinking and policy contributed to their moat as an AI partner of choice. In a loose culture, the brand that provides the most resonant framework wins, even if the technology underneath is functionally similar.

The most successful brands are also deploying specific persuasion strategies. They’re creating identity resonance and giving users genuine autonomy rather than forcing them into closed ecosystems. Each brand is making strategic choices about how to win loyalty in a category where functional differences are getting smaller and smaller.

The difference is, brands getting this right are winning loyal believers, not just users. And in a loose culture, that loyalty comes from successfully answering the question: “What does using this AI say about me?”

A Few Parting Thoughts

I started this (long) piece with a half-joke, half-serious-statement: I am a Claude girlie.

As the saying goes, there is some truth to every joke, though; and this one in particular illustrates my point on the role of brand in AI as an increasingly saturated sector.

In my case, it’s not only about Constitutional AI or safety frameworks or even writing quality, though those things matter. Using Claude signals something to myself about how I want to work, how I want to think, how I want to engage with AI, and also how I like to be perceived. From my perspective, it says I care about the craft of creation, not just the output, and that I’m not trying to hack my way to productivity, I’m trying to think better.

That’s an identity I claim thanks to a brand.

This is what it looks like when a brand successfully adds structure to a loose culture. Instead of making me figure out on my own what kind of AI user I want to be, Claude gave me a framework: thoughtful, intentional, craft-focused. That clarity resolved the anxiety I didn’t even know I had about what using AI said about me.

When every company can claim their model is “the most advanced,” when benchmarks shift weekly and features get replicated within weeks, identity could soon be the only sustainable differentiator and bet left. The technology will keep converging; what won’t converge is how using it makes you feel about yourself.

The companies that win will be the ones that understand people will soon stop buying AI and will start buying the story they get to tell themselves about who they are when they use it.

The brand territories aren’t being outlined in the labs anymore. They’re being outlined in the frameworks companies provide for making sense of a fundamentally chaotic category. They’re being won by the brands that figured out how to add structure where none existed, and gave people a clear answer to the question: “Who am I when I use this?”

That’s not a technical problem. That’s a branding problem. And in a loose culture, the brand that solves it wins.

The post Brand Is the New Benchmark: How AI Companies Are Learning to Sell Identity appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Enter: community-led growth.

The marketing landscape has recently undergone a dramatic shift in which users value natural storytelling and authentic content above all else. This particular shift was inspired by the demand to hold brands accountable and has come to replace traditional ad-based acquisition strategies. Fast-growing startups and new brands entering competitive spaces have found success pivoting away from aggressive and transactional tactics and instead doubling down on creating value through community-led growth.

However, the idea of community is far from new. Humans innately need connection and desire to be a part of something bigger than themselves. As younger generations become active consumers, their values and expectations from the brands they choose to interact with have also matured. Just having a good product isn’t enough anymore.

Rather, today’s consumer places emphasis on the authenticity of a brand, the values they stand for, and what they can gain beyond their purchase. A brand that is focused on community-led growth can build an atmosphere that fosters these intentions where you’re not only focusing on the acquisition of new community members but also building a retention flywheel by turning them into loyal customers and brand advocates.

What is Community-Led Growth?

Community-led growth places value beyond the product or service and focuses on building consumer relationships, brand loyalty, trust, and advocacy. By providing opportunities to deepen consumer and brand interactions, providing educational resources, facilitating Q&As through real-time support and feedback, and producing authentic content that is aligned with the brand’s community values, businesses can build successful brand communities that fulfill acquisition and retention goals at every stage of the marketing funnel.

Community-led growth works in tandem with a product-led or sales-led growth strategy and leverages its brand community while tying back to brand objectives and goals.

Building a brand community has historically been overlooked and underutilized, viewed as a “nice to have” rather than a legitimate growth strategy. Fostering a community around your brand is something that should not be put by the wayside but rather developed from the earliest stages of launch. Instead of replacing traditional growth strategies, community-led is an additional GTM strategy that works within your current marketing mix.

Consumers today have an overwhelming amount of product options and a myriad of platforms to communicate on, which means they’re more often turning to their peers and online forums for brand recommendations. In fact, 85% of U.S. online users trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, even from strangers. When a community already thrives and exists within a certain sector or around a specific product, consumers will be more likely to gravitate toward a brand that has proven loyalty and enter the self-sustaining flywheel of community-led growth. This growth flywheel is built on brand equity and advocacy that generates growth with little to no additional cost or resourcing.

It’s easy to think, “If I build it, they will come.” You could have the best product in the world, but getting people to find it and believe in it is another battle that doesn’t come as easily. This is where community-led growth comes into play and can work with product-led growth, not replace it.

Don’t get me wrong, a community can literally be a company’s product (think Slack, Instagram, or Salesforce), but the product can also be built around the community (Peloton and at-home workouts or Glossier starting out as a beauty blog). Consumers of these brands view themselves not just as customers, but as members belonging to a community larger than themselves.

Every brand community needs to be defined individually and centered around not only the brand and audience, but also the shared values between the two. Community-led growth builds upon a successful product and harnesses the power of enthusiastic consumers. A sense of belonging is what is at the heart of community-led growth and it is the product that brings these users together.

In a community-led growth marketing model, your brand community remains at the center of the strategy. The means by which you communicate with your audience serves as the catalyst to building trust, receiving feedback, and improving your product, whether that’s through your content marketing, providing virtual spaces for users to aggregate, or physical live events.

These community-building efforts not only introduce new members to your community, but warm leads, build trust, and give space to retention for long-term relationships and loyalty.

Why Now?

The rise in importance of community-first thinking at this time is no surprise — there are a number of factors that have made this shift almost inevitable.

There has been a shift away from aggressive acquisition advertising towards value-based marketing.

As “growth hacking” continues to become an obsolete term and brands realize that sustainable, long-term growth is a better approach than explosive, quick growth tactics, this shift becomes even more apparent.

A successful growth strategy today looks fundamentally different from a few years ago, and it’s especially apparent with the continued influence of TikTok, the extreme repulsion consumers have developed towards promotional content, and the increased demand for quality storytelling and content that provides true value.

Ads are not the number one choice for growth anymore; there needs to be a better approach around the content that goes into the advertising strategy, the storytelling behind it, and a fairer exchange between the audience and the brand to help drive the consumer’s final decision.

Community-led growth satisfies that by fostering deeper connections between brands and users that are not simply transactional; the strategy puts the consumer at the center of the brand’s efforts, bringing them along for the entire growth journey; and it puts emphasis on delivering value through content that strives to educate or entertain first, sell second.

Consumers choose brands that they connect with based on values.

Building on the massive shift in how we perceive advertising efforts today, it’s important to note the evolution in consumers’ level of education and expectations when it comes to the brands of their choice and the platforms they use to engage with those brands.

To put this in numbers, studies have shown that 82% of shoppers choose brands with values that closely align with their own — and this alignment is make-it-or-break-it when it comes to their final decision to convert and even remain loyal. Customers now have more power than ever to make their voices heard and will easily stop supporting companies that stray from their good graces.

This puts additional pressure on brands to weave community-driven thinking into more than just a marketing strategy; it needs to seep through product growth, consumer insights, feature design, and across every touchpoint that users interact with digitally and in-person.

The downfall of third-party data has put extra pressure on brands to learn more about their ideal customers.

AI-powered search, the App Tracking Privacy (ATT) updates, the cookie-less future — these aren’t just gossip or myths anymore. We have officially moved from having conversations about these looming advertising roadblocks towards developing strategies to adapt and evolve.

This completely shifts how brands typically approach their marketing mix and growth strategy, since putting all eggs in a single basket (the basket being Google and Meta) is not a one-size-fits-all strategy anymore.

Instead, brands look to diversify their channel mix and strategically choose where to build their presence; they think about who they can reach on these new channels; they prioritize zero- and first-party data collection to build their own repositories of user information now that there are significant limitations to how data can be acquired.

And with all that said, the source of zero- and first-party data is the consumer directly — meaning that capturing their attention, showing respect for the data they share, as well as making it an equitable exchange, is the new challenge.

Community-led growth solves this by providing a user or consumer base of advocates who are naturally further down the funnel; have bought into the brand’s positioning and values; feel like participants in the brand’s growth; and willingly share data and feedback to help the brand scale.

Building brand loyalty and long-term consumer relationships have become the true North Star (especially in an economic downturn).

Differentiation is the biggest challenge in any space that’s relatively crowded, and so is retaining consumers when they have the ability to choose a more convenient alternative.This reality becomes more dire in times of a recession or an economic downturn when consumers are more frugal with where they choose to spend their dime and what they deem worthy of investment. In this climate, consumers who are concerned or strongly impacted by the downturn can be “flighty” — meaning that despite their loyalties, they’re likely to gravitate towards what looks like a better deal or “win” to them.

At its core, ​​a community-first approach can ensure goodwill and genuine trust in your brand, an immeasurable resource given the current economic environment.

Rethinking the Traditional Funnel

We have already established that community-led growth works in a self-sustaining loop, which, of course, is very different from the traditional marketing funnel the industry has used for years.

There are a few ways that community-led growth complements the traditional funnel and takes the idea of scaling a brand to a new level.

The first mode of rethinking the marketing funnel is known as the orbit model. Essentially, the orbit model enhances the funnel by creating a gravitational pull around it — and your brand becomes the center of gravity for this process.

A properly functioning community can self-sustain as it’s able to retain existing members and pull in new ones who may or may not have purchased your product. Community-led growth loops also create warm audiences and leads that are more likely to go through each funnel stage, convert, be retained, and advocate on your brand’s behalf. The benefit of acquiring new community members is that they’re already highly qualified leads and much further down the funnel before they’ve even begun.

With the brand at the center of this community-driven orbit, the community-led growth approach is not about driving the consumer towards transactions, but rather naturally attracting users to its center and keeping them in its orbit.

The second way to visualize how the community growth loop marries with the marketing funnel is by showing how it ensures that your funnel is consistently filled at the top and that brand awareness is constantly in motion without you necessarily investing extra resources into it.

It also fuels the rest of the funnel stages by ensuring better-qualified leads, higher retention and repeat customer rates, and improved ROI driven by customer loyalty and advocacy.

Community serves as a complement to the marketing performance funnel, not as a replacement. Though the community works in every part of the funnel, it begins as a powerful and sustainable top-of-funnel driver ensuring a more frictionless full-funnel journey.

Public vs. Private Brand Communities

Not all community channels are created equal. In fact, not all communities are even brand-owned. Here we have two distinct categories of Branded Channels and Unbranded Channels and within each of those categories exist Gated Channels and Public Content Channels.

Gated channels are closed/private communities that require access to join. This could be via application, credentials, paywall subscription, certification, or simply requesting to join. These are meant to provide a platform for a community to come together and establish a network internally — rather than simply have a brand-to-consumer communication pool.

Typically, these communities require additional resourcing for community management and moderation and can be considered powerful “focus groups” for a brand; additionally, these communities allow for member-to-member relationships (think: Slack workspaces, Discord servers, Facebook groups, etc.).

As a driver of community-led growth, however, your content strategy can be the cornerstone of community-building as well. Public content channels are free and open to the public for consumption and interaction. This includes social media accounts, open FAQ pages, blogs, newsletters, and educational resources.

Understanding the exact channel mix, prioritization framework, and brand tone of voice are essential to building public communities across a variety of outlets. With the major shifts towards value-based marketing discussed earlier, developing a content strategy that educates, entertains, and helps your ideal consumer is another way to build a community at the top of the funnel and fuel brand growth.

Both types of communities consist of anyone associated with your brand. This could be contributors, creators, fans, employees — anyone and everyone who interacts with or follows you on social media and/or uses your product.

Your community is your audience (and ideally consumers further down the funnel), and you want them to be loyal to you and not go to your competitors. By building a community, you’re engaging with them, sharing knowledge, and building trust, which can return tenfold in brand equity and retention.

The Difference Between Audience and Community

A brand audience and community are the same… right? The answer is not so simple, but the two are often used interchangeably.

As a starting point, your audience and community should ideally be similar. In a performance or growth strategy, a brand’s audience is built upon their buyer personas and supported by in-depth research and data. The communication happens business-to-customer across paid social, landing pages, and email campaigns.

Community — which is a broader and more encompassing term — goes beyond a simple audience but should still be built on the brand’s ideal personas to begin with. This is especially true for a community strategy with content as its primary driver, making sure that the follower base or readership you build ties directly back to your brand pillars and ideal personas with the likelihood to convert at any point.

With that said, even from a content strategy perspective, the community goes beyond lead generation. For example, a community can help a brand generate hires as much as conversions; communities also include any partnerships or relationships that allow brands to collaborate with other brands or thought leaders in a space to tap into each other’s dedicated advocates.

In other words, a community needs to be built on an audience and key personas, but its network effect goes beyond a performance-based brand-to-consumer relationship typical of brands vs. audiences.

When you think about the gated communities, the idea of a “community” compared to the audience takes on an even more elaborate meaning. Gated communities at their core are made up of member-to-member interactions and left to the actual members to self-sustain.

If you create a place for your community to engage with one another, they’ll come as their authentic, natural selves. The community space is meant to primarily address the needs of its members first and convert second. Are the members there to ask questions, learn new information, or share ideas? The forum in which you host your community should reflect this sentiment.

In turn, a brand can successfully leverage its public communities to create gated ones. Public communities across social media channels can be used for top-of-funnel acquisition and brand awareness. Once this community grows, you can further develop your community and encourage them down the funnel through the creation of private channels, community perks, product feedback, and advocacy.

A more developed and defined community can then inform your target audience based on feedback and demographics. We may think we understand who our target audience is, but the community can often further inform this definition and unlock crucial zero-party data.

Three Types of Community

Up to this point, we’ve laid the groundwork of what community-led growth is, the importance of incorporating community-first thinking into your growth strategy, and why community-building has emerged as a strong growth lever.

But before diving into the how of building a community-led growth strategy (which we know you’re all waiting for), there are three different types of communities for your brand to consider when you’re planning out your content strategy or gated community.

Community Driven by Product:

This type of community approach puts the product at the center of any discussion. Think of it as a space where members share product tips, tricks, report bugs, or submit queries to the support team; or a content strategy that centers around how-to content, tips and tricks for product use, future feature announcements, and product updates.

The users that belong to such public or gated communities seek to connect with your brand but also support each other in answering and responding to others’ questions, submitting product ideas, or using it as a place to complain.

A great example of a brand that has built a strong product-led community is Apple with its Support Platform or Notion’s TikTok account.

Community Driven by Practice:

Instead of rallying around a specific product, this community approach centers around a common interest or goal of learning in a specific field. This category encompasses educational resources within a given niche, where learning the ins and outs of a specific industry or practice, as well as supporting users in reaching professional and personal goals, is the core of the community’s efforts.

Hootsuite, SproutSocial, and Later all publish valuable resources on social media management and often include how their own products can assist in their goals.

Community Driven by Play:

Unlike product or practice-driven communities, communities driven by play engage fans of gaming, athletics, the arts, and more — in other words, personal interests and hobbies that users may have.

This community approach is meant to facilitate fans to place sporting bets, find others to play Dungeons and Dragons, or discover hacks to level up in Fortnite. Similar to the community driven by practice, communities driven by play seek to bond with the brand or fellow users over niche interests and may not be married to one singular product but rather a product genre such as AR video games, traveling, or fashion.

What do all three of these community approaches (product, practice, and play) have in common? They all allow for a connection with individuals coming together over common interests, wants, and needs. They are by no means mutually exclusive — for example, if you’re a growing SaaS startup, you may support your audience in both getting to know the product better and in how they can hit their personal or professional goals while using it.

Questions to ask yourself are:

1. What motivates your ideal personas?
2. Why are they gathering?
3. Where are they gathering?

Once you’re able to answer these questions, you’re ready to find your community, interact and engage with them, and create a self-sustaining platform that keeps members from running to your competitors.

Continue reading for a step-by-step guide on how to grow and foster your community-led growth strategy and start building bonds between consumers and your brand.

Step-by-Step Guide to Community-Led Growth

1. Find Your Platform

The first step to applying community thinking to your brand’s growth is meeting your users where they are and defining your key channels.

Similar to defining your tech stack, your community stack is equally important. The key here is to diversify your platforms to reach every type of consumer in your community.

Communities can be led by content, take place virtually, or be in-person experiences. There are many ways to create content and drive community growth, whether it’s done in-house or led by your community members.

Start with one platform (TikTok, newsletter, FAQs etc.) and add more channels without spreading your resources too thin. This will essentially allow you to move your community between platforms as your audience grows and gives you the ability to deepen relationships within your community, creating strong brand loyalty.

For a content-driven community strategy, look no further than a strong social media presence; a blog or a newsletter is a powerful starting point. The underlying logic is understanding what type of content your ideal personas prefer to consume and what format you can deliver value and meet their needs in.

If you’re thinking about creating a private community, creating a dedicated Slack channel or Facebook Group that is invite-only is a popular low-lift way to start building your community. Twitter/X even rolled out its own Communities feature for users of similar interests to gather.

Gaming communities communicate on platforms like Twitch and Discord, while other brands are hosting their communities on dedicated community platforms such as Tribe or building out their own in-house platforms like Salesforce’s Trailhead. Take a look at the community-led growth marketing stack below for ways you can start building your community — public or private.

2. Connect With Your Audience

Once you’ve chosen where to host your community, now it’s time to start connecting with your customers. As part of this step, the goal is to translate your brand identity into a strategy that will cater to your customers’ most pressing needs.

It can come in the shape of a TikTok content strategy with clear content pillars and videos that educate and entertain; a weekly newsletter that your subscribers will look forward to; or even a monthly virtual meetup for the members of your private Slack community to invite speakers to.

Building trust is essential to fostering a community — therefore, humanizing the brand is key in gaining that trust as well. A frequently used tactic is putting a face with a brand to help humanize your business. Whether that’s the CEO/founder, Social Media Manager, or a dedicated Community Manager (or showcasing company culture through UGC videos), it’s imperative people have someone to connect to.

Almost every major social media platform, including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, has Live capabilities where followers can tune in, participate in the comments, and ask questions throughout the broadcast. This was a popular way to connect during the pandemic as brands were able to host webinars and educational events as well as live shopping or product releases.

Encourage these community members to subscribe to your other channels beyond the one they’re already a part of to unlock faster growth by highlighting the additional value they can get from other touch points.

All public and private communities are meant to be transferable — and all channels are meant to continuously deliver value and be complementary. This includes newsletters, blogs, and podcasts where they can continue deepening their relationship with your brand.

3. Gather Data

Public or private, your communities need to participate in conversations that go both ways. It’s a common misconception that communication flows top-down and brand-to-consumer, but the essence of community-led growth is to create a feedback loop that is self-sustainable and fuels your brand’s success.

Be a listener across public or private communities. Keep an eye on the comment section; encourage readers to respond to your newsletters with feedback; create discussion forums; ask your community for podcast episode ideas.

Discuss topics your audience is interested in, whether that’s insider tips and tricks, growth ideas or virality, or answering product-specific questions. What emerges from your community can be incredibly insightful.

Learning their frustrations, what they need to be successful with your product, the conversations and content they’re producing, and the connections they’re making — all of this can be used to fuel research to make your product or service even better. If you interact with your audience, they’ll trust you even more knowing that you’re being an active participant in their community.

Ask your community what they need help with, what they want to see out of your next product update, or how you can improve your services. Your community is the most authentic and important focus group and can provide invaluable insights as users of your product or service.

Historically, user feedback only used to come from frustrated support calls, Google reviews, or post-purchase surveys. But by listening to your community, you’ll find even more valuable data on the everyday attitude toward your business.

Tools such as Common Room are making it easier to track community data through social listening across platforms including Discord, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, and more to target top users, deepen relationships, and analyze the data and insights that come from these communities.

The better pulse you have on your growing community, the stronger your learnings will be to support future product and brand decisions with your community’s needs and interests at the forefront.

4. Expand Your Reach

Now it’s time to scale. And by scale, we mean: think big.

You have a functioning platform or content strategy and dedicated community members, so the next step is to foster new relationships, collaborations, and partnerships with thought leaders and experts within your niche.

Invite a guest on your podcast, go live with an expert on a niche topic, or invite a guest writer for your newsletter or blog. By partnering with other experts, you’re not only providing your members with new opportunities but also introducing your brand to your guests’ communities and followers, therefore expanding your reach.

When outside experts show support for what you’re doing, this creates even more buy-in for your community members and increases brand awareness among other industry experts and communities.

Bonus points if your guest returns the favor and invites you to guest host, write, or speak. Not only does this double your community reach but builds up your own rolodex of industry experts.

Building authentic relationships with community leaders can be a massive expansion lever for brands. Tapping into influencer marketing can help raise awareness and build brand credibility. Platforms such as TikTok Creator Marketplace help match brands with creators and influencers that align with their brand and sales goals.

This is also a great time to cross-promote your channels and connect the dots between your multiple communities if it applies.

5. To Offline and Beyond!

So you’ve mastered the online community; now it’s time to take things offline. Do this by hosting in-person events – or, even better, sponsoring events held by brand ambassadors.

Lululemon stores around the country hold in-person and online yoga classes that consumers and yoga enthusiasts can take part in without having to buy products.

Take your community to the next level with a brand summit, inviting your industry expert pals and employees to educate and, by proxy, generate new leads while fostering your dedicated following. Hubspot does this through their annual conference called Inbound, during which they establish themselves as leaders in the industry and bring their community together.

Though cryptocurrency holds digital value, these communities have also found success in bridging the gap between trading virtual perks to participating in in-person events. For example, Doodles created an experimental activation at SXSW where attendees were able to step into the brand’s colorful world through pastel-inspired drinks, interact with their digital assets through large screens, and even purchase custom merch.

Offering online courses is also a great way to reach users at every stage of the funnel, keep users engaged and on your platform, and educate by using your own products as examples. LinkedIn generates even more revenue through a monthly subscription to their learning platform, LinkedIn Learning, in which users learn new skills and earn badges that make them stand out in job searches.

Community-led growth isn’t just for DTC brands. From B2B to blockchain, brands are already fostering thriving communities in-person and online focused on brand awareness, educational content, value-based marketing as well as cultural stances and points of view.

Notion and Community-Led Growth

Now that you’re familiar with what community-led growth is and how to start building your brand community, it’s time to take a look at an example. The custom template platform Notion is a masterclass on how building a community can help inform the success and sustainability of your product.

Created for spreadsheet lovers, Notion relaunched in 2018 to the sound of 6,000 upvotes on Product Hunt. In 2024, the company increased annual revenue to $300 million with over 100 million active global users, while the corporate team remained relatively small. So how did they do it? The answer lies in their thriving community.

First and foremost, Notion users LOVE Notion. In fact, Notion’s current Head of Community was once a Notion fanboy with a site that was getting over 80,000 hits per month. Notion’s CRO Olivia Nottebohm met the community where they were at – first finding fans on Twitter, which then led her to Ben Lang’s site.

Together, the two built an army of brand ambassadors, or Notion Pros, that have helped the company expand globally through community events, YouTube tutorials, assisting in translating assets, and managing thriving social channels.

By encouraging user-to-user interactions, Notion has been able to better its product through community-created templates and product feedback while creating a flywheel of trusted users and ambassadors to continue building their collaborative empire.

The graph below shows examples of Notion’s community channels that serve as catalysts for community and product growth.

The TL;DR of Community-Led Growth

Now, if we haven’t made a strong-enough case for a community-led growth strategy plan, here’s your short list of why you should consider it for your brand:

1. Community-led growth supercharges your traditional performance funnel. It works in tandem with the funnel by injecting more sustainability into it through its natural loop mechanism, as well as a gravity pull that attracts new members while retaining existing ones.
2. The community offers instant product feedback. This may be the best focus group you could ask for. People on the internet don’t hold back, and if they don’t like something about your product, they’ll let you know.
3. Your community serves as ambassadors and social proof for the brand. Members of the community are more likely to refer your brand to others, while the sense of belonging won’t drive them toward your competition.
4. Your community provides networking opportunities for you and your community. Members are brought together by a shared interest (that is, your product or niche). You may find they’re adding each other on Instagram or collaborating on TikTok stitches or duets, while you’re networking by bringing in guest experts.
5. By fostering a community, you’re driving content creation and UGC. One Instagram Live can be turned into a TikTok video, podcast episode, or shared to your YouTube channel. By interacting with your community, you’re gaining access to not only the content you put out but also the content your users share.

Having a successful company takes more than a superior product or service, the best prices, or top-notch employees. Building a community around your brand is just as important to your go-to-market strategy and can work with your current product-led strategy.

But it’s not just about building your online community; the maintenance is just as important. Yes, your brand community can be self-sustaining, but if not nurtured or left unattended, it can turn into something that harms your company, not supports it.

Be patient with growing your community. These members will be some of your most loyal and highest LTV customers because they feel connected to your brand in ways your competitors cannot offer.

You cannot force a community, but you can assist in facilitating meaningful conversations, creating opportunities to learn and grow, and providing a platform to ask questions and to connect with others. Your product may be the seed, but it’s the community that helps it grow.

The post Community-Led Growth: Brand Community as a Growth Lever appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

With a potential ban of TikTok in the United States still looming, your marketing strategy may be up in the air. Although TikTok briefly went dark in the US on January 19, it returned in less than 24 hours after assurances from then-incoming President Trump that he would push off the ban. The saga continues to unfold, as potential buyers gather and the president looks to barter a deal.

From small businesses to multinational corporations, the TikTok ban could hit companies hard. TikTok Shop has produced large revenue streams for many creators and businesses, and they need to be proactive in moving their audiences to other platforms.

Let’s take a look at two big questions around how the potential ban will affect businesses, creators, and users:

1. Why ban TikTok?
2. What steps can you take to diversify your marketing channels to prepare for a potential TikTok ban?

Why Does the U.S. Government Want to Ban TikTok?

Bipartisan congressional action passed legislation in April 2024 to address the potential for the Chinese government to use TikTok as a propaganda machine on American users. Roughly half of the U.S. has a TikTok account, and almost four of 10 users under the age of 30 use TikTok to get their news.

The bill put the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, in a bind. The parent company received an ultimatum: Sell TikTok to a business not headquartered in an adversary country or the app loses access to the U.S. market. Other countries, such as India, Albania, and Nepal, already banned the popular video app (at least temporarily). Several countries have banned the app from government devices – Taiwan, Britain, France, and Australia among them.

ByteDance has several potential buyers mulling making offers, though the details remain fluid.

The ban has joined together strange bedfellows. President Trump opposes the ban (he now says the app holds a “warm spot” in his heart, after promoting a TikTok ban during his first term as president), as do the ACLU and some liberal legislators, such as Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, on the grounds of the right to free speech.

When Will the TikTok Ban Go Into Effect?

The Supreme Court ruled on January 17 to uphold the ban, clearing the way for TikTok to briefly shut down the platform in America on January 19.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the justices wrote in a unanimous opinion. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.” 

President Trump issued an executive order on January 20, his first day in office, that gave TikTok 75 days to sell the platform to a non-Chinese entity. Later, the president presented an idea for how to make a deal with ByteDance that would form a joint venture, rather than a full sale. The legality of the idea remains undecided.

“I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay] up,” he posted on Truth Social.

Where Will TikTok Users Go With TikTok Banned in the US?

If the past proves a harbinger of the future, Instagram and YouTube would benefit from TikTok’s ban. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts sit in poll position as the major competitors ready to lure in former TikTok users due to their vertical video format. Many TikTok users already utilize these platforms.

After India banned TikTok in 2020, users flocked en masse to Instagram and YouTube. Despite registering as two of America’s most-used social media platforms, active users in India for both platforms have surged to roughly double that of American users.

Let’s dive into some specifics of the platforms:

Instagram

Instagram functions more similarly to TikTok than YouTube Shorts. In terms of content shareability, Instagram has the edge, thanks to its DMs feature. We anticipate that trend-based content will start to populate on Instagram in a post-TikTok ban landscape.

Instagram is also a more brand-friendly space, allowing for balance between a polished brand presence and an unpolished, culture-driven element. It boasts roughly as many users as TikTok’s 170 million in the U.S., including 75% of people between 18 and 24.

With a combination of various asset formats (Stories, Reels, feed posts like carousels and broadcast channels), Instagram lends itself to combining discovery with fostering community more naturally. Instagram has been the most explicit in their efforts to replicate TikTok’s model, so the platform is the most likely to become the new home to the cultural momentum TikTok holds.

YouTube

YouTube has more active users, thanks in large part to its monopoly on long-form content. That base funnels directly into YouTube Shorts, paving the way for massive innate reach/viewership potential for brands to build community. The platform’s estimated user base reaches almost 240 million in the U.S. Females make up around 51% of U.S. YouTube users above 18, compared to Instagram’s roughly 55% skew.

The Shorts algorithm is very willing to give new content a chance, especially when compared to Instagram and TikTok. Additionally, YouTube aggressively pushes Shorts discovery across all real estate on the YouTube app and website (e.g., suggested videos).

YouTube also gives more flexibility for organic, whether you want to do short-form or long-form content. It also features a much more robust paid social format than Instagram, thanks to pre-roll ads on long-form content along with ads in short-form.

Last but not least, YouTube is the original social search platform, making it a powerful contender for any content that stems from search intent and SEO-driven research. This applies to both in-app and external search intent: YouTube Shorts are increasingly indexed and surfaced on the Google SERP as part of Google’s helpfulness algorithm update.

Where Can You Reach Gen Z Outside of TikTok?

In addition to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Snapchat, Gen Z has shown a penchant for Discord, Reddit, and Twitch.

While those latter platforms don’t align perfectly in terms of repurposing existing content, Gen Z feels at home on them. Our talented colleagues here at NoGood have written excellent guides for each platform that are worth your time:

• Discord Marketing: Creating a Brand Community for Gen-Z
• Reddit Marketing Guide: Strategy, Examples & Best Practices
• Twitch Marketing: What You Need to Know

The most successful companies and brands often have one channel that produces the best results, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket – TikTok faces issues today, whereas next year it could be another platform in decline or at risk.

How to Diversify Your Marketing Channels Beyond TikTok

First, look at tactics from your existing TikTok growth strategy and apply those that work on Reels and Shorts immediately. In particular, respect short attention spans – “three seconds or less” – and a more visual nature that younger users prefer with product and brand discovery. Be as relevant and fresh as possible.

Next, find your best-performing TikToks and reuse them on other social media platforms when it makes sense. Repurposing your TikToks on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat could work well, as their placements call for the same 9:16 aspect ratio that TikTok uses.

However, don’t overdo it. With users coming over from TikTok to your other platforms, you’ll want to avoid showing them the exact same content they’ve already seen. Instead, focus on net-new content and reallocating assets previously dedicated specifically to TikTok in order to further bootstrap the push and keep new users engaged. Perhaps you have a different cut of the video that garnered big engagement on TikTok that you can try out on other platforms.

Each platform has its own culture and aesthetic. You’ll need to take the content that worked best on TikTok and do more than mindlessly post it on Shorts or Reels. To help with that process, take a look at our guide on Reels vs. TikTok vs. Shorts.

Repurposing your content doesn’t end with Reels (Instagram and Facebook) and Shorts. Investigate opportunities for your 9:16 videos on X or in the LinkedIn video tab, should they make sense as educational or workplace culture fits.

How Can I Save My TikToks to Reuse Them on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.?

There are different workflows you can set up that automatically save your TikTok videos in Google Drive, for instance. Here’s one from Repurpose.io you can check out. Or, you can try a one-time download option like Tokbackup to save your TikTok videos without the watermark on them.

Another option is a site like TikTok to MP4 Converter, which lets you download individual TikTok videos by using their URL.

How to Save Your TikToks Without Watermarks

TikTok has a built-in feature you can use to save TikToks without a watermark, but you’ll need to do so before you publish the video. Before posting, click on “More options” toward the bottom of the screen and make sure “Save posts without watermark” is enabled.

User Data Access: In anticipation of the shutdown, TikTok plans to provide users with a pop-up notification directing them to a website where they can download their data.

How Can You Convince Your TikTok Followers to Join You on Instagram, YouTube, and Elsewhere?

Get the word out now – offer other platforms where you’re active. Don’t spam your followers, but you can avoid losing your audience should the TikTok ban take place by trying the following:

1. Add a link to your other key social media platforms in your bio.
2. Mention your other social media handles in your TikToks.
3. Create specific TikToks highlighting the value prop of your content on Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms – if the content is different, explain how.
4. Use direct language – “Follow me on…”
5. Consider special offers that require users to follow you on other platforms.

TikTok clearly doesn’t want users to jump ship, so you’ll need to use tact and discretion with the above prompts. Some creators have resorted to “mouthing” the name of the platform where they want their users to follow them. Whatever tactic you utilize, don’t wait.

Social Media Has Big Shoes to Fill in TikTok’s Wake

No matter what happens in terms of the ban’s enforcement, content marketing practices developed on TikTok will continue to emanate across different platforms (potentially more so with TikTok users migrating over). Before TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels didn’t exist. The app has modernized and pioneered short-form content, and its competitors will attempt to capitalize on the gap in the market left in its wake.

How do you feel about a TikTok ban? Let us know in the comment section, and thank you for reading!

Additional FAQs on the TikTok Ban

The post Preparing for a TikTok Ban: Diversifying Your Social Channels appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

But there is one particular wristable that has been quickly climbing up the ranks in the hierarchy of modern wearables, and that’s the WHOOP band.

This sporty bracelet isn’t just a fashion statement for people who are really (I mean, really) into optimizing every aspect of their health. It’s a fitness tracker that doubles down on the promise of improving physical performance through personalized data insights.

This focus was very intentional: with the wearable device market heating up, the purpose and use of the data they collect is the most important differentiator — and WHOOP decided to double down on quality data dedicated to improving athletic performance.

As it stands today, WHOOP is valued at $3.6 billion, with a quickly expanding user base. So, how did they swoop in and build a strong foundation in a space where Apple, Fitbit, or Nike used to dominate? Let’s take a closer look.

A Quick Stroll Down Memory Lane

WHOOP’s story starts in 2012. Will Ahmed, a young student athlete on the squash team at Harvard University, was actively looking to improve his health but felt like he was lacking the right data and insights to reach his peak performance.

Not unlike a lot of athletes, he struggled to strike a balance between training volume and recovery to achieve the best possible results. This personal experience of struggle is exactly what sparked his idea to develop WHOOP.

Ahmed enlisted two fellow Harvard students to bring his vision to life: John Capodilupo, who brought the software development expertise to the table, and Aurelian Nicolae, whose materials science experience could drive the hardware strategy. Together, they set out to build a wristable that took personal health insights beyond the conventional heart rate and step count measurement. Instead, WHOOP set out to focus on metrics that helped track recovery, strain, and sleep — the three pillars Ahmed considered foundational for performance improvements.

Developed by an athlete, for athletes, WHOOP stood out from competition thanks to its precise, targeted focus on a core audience persona. Unlike other wearables designed with casual users in mind, WHOOP was clearly designed for elite athletes who required precision in the insights they got.

This key differentiation set the tone for everything WHOOP’s marketing strategy would achieve in the years to come.

It’s important to also note how the timing of WHOOP’s emergence has contributed to the brand’s rapid growth.

For one, the global fitness tracker/wellness market has evolved steadily over the course of WHOOP’s lifespan, reaching $60.9B in valuation in 2024 alone. This number is projected to reach $192 billion by 2030, building on the growing public awareness of the value of health management and optimization. With the tech getting more advanced and the public focusing on mental and physical wellbeing increasingly more after the COVID-19 pandemic, wearable technology has seen exponentially increased demand and will continue to grow well into the next decade.

5 Marketing Strategies from WHOOP’s Playbook

If you look closely, WHOOP’s marketing strategy can be broken down into 5 key moves. Let’s explore the roles each of these intentional choices played in bringing WHOOP to the coveted “industry underdog” title.

1. Get Specific on Your Ideal Customer Profile

If you couldn’t tell by the not-so-subtle foreshadowing earlier in this article, WHOOP cut through the noise in the wearable market by focusing on a very specific persona: the elite athlete. The brand’s strategy from day one has relied on the fact that the data the product provides is not average, and it’s okay if it’s not meant for the average consumer.

WHOOP successfully avoided the biggest trap most startups fall into within the first 5 years of operation — losing focus, attempting to solve for every need the consumer might have, and spreading themselves thin as a result.

However, an intentional decision like this also meant that for a young startup, it could come at a cost. Going after an athlete audience so early in their growth journey meant forgoing the resources to educate the non-athlete audience on the benefits and value of good sleep and recovery. Instead, they would focus on pro athletes who would crave any and all insights into their athletic performance — and this is where they were successfully able to stand up to bigger brands like Fitbit, Apple, or Nike that had expanded their reach to the mainstream consumer at that point.

Even though the move was risky, WHOOP did manage to build a community of power users ranging from Michael Phelps to Christiano Ronaldo.

2. Align Your Brand with the Right Spokespeople

Now here’s the tricky part: if you choose elite athletes as your core audience, how do you partner with them on the record if they have exclusive contracts with the said legacy brands?

WHOOP played the long game here by zeroing in on delivering real value to star athletes and providing the exact insights they sought to improve their performance. Between 2012 and 2016, WHOOP worked on direct relationships with respected athletes, using the time to deepen their insights and quality of data — so much so that they successfully became the official wearables of record for MLB and NFL players, as well as the Navy SEALs.

WHOOP didn’t have to pay millions for official endorsements; the wearable easily got spotlight attention through media coverage of big-name players and athletes by simply becoming their indispensable wearable during training and on the court (or pitch, or ring, or pool…).

By showing up on the wrists of tier-1 players, WHOOP gained natural credibility without the promotional aid of official brand deals or ad campaigns. This set WHOOP up for success in 2015 when it officially became available to the public.

3. Develop a Breakout Content Strategy

WHOOP’s focus as a brand doesn’t just show up through the product they’ve created — it also drives the story they tell through their content strategy. The biggest lesson you can learn from WHOOP is to treat your brand as a media company, and produce and distribute content that covers a wide variety of platforms, formats, and strategies.

From its social media presence to its proprietary podcast, WHOOP clearly speaks to a performance-driven audience, and they speak as an authority in everything health optimization.

Their social media presence, for example, has very clear content pillars that showcase an editorial strategy that delivers value beyond the product:

• WHOOP = authority: from data-backed analyses of popular health trends to user data patterns, WHOOP educates the end consumer on better choices to reach their peak potential.
• WHOOP = credible: through owned and earned coverage, WHOOP populates major feeds with content that features familiar faces of athletes that have cult followings, from Christiano Ronaldo to Aryna Sabalenka.
• WHOOP = relatable: the brand also has a strong pulse on how their users interact with the product, expertly tapping into relatable scenarios and experiences that foster a sense of community and togetherness between customers.

“The WHOOP Podcast,” which is also distributed in bite-sized cuts across their socials, takes deeper dives into the science behind strain, recovery, and stress. WHOOP is by no means a faceless brand: in addition to star guests on the WHOOP podcast and socials, Will Ahmed has also become an active participant in the brand’s content, sharing his own experiences, WHOOP’s story, and the team behind the product as well.

4. Data: The Secret Sauce

WHOOP’s magic offering has always been its data: in-depth insights, actionable recommendations, and personalized snapshots of performance. It’s this data-driven focus that landed them the first milestone relationships early in their growth journey; now, it’s a) the biggest selling point and b) a major pillar in their content strategy that showcases WHOOP in action.

If you take a close look at the brand’s content strategy, a large portion of their social content incorporates proprietary data stories that either translate interesting insights into captivating stories or provide educational (read: non-transactional) value to both WHOOP users and colder audiences.

This approach is strategic in many ways, but mainly because data is the currency that WHOOP trades in as a brand, and the Spotify Wrapped-esque approach to content generation allows for the granularity of WHOOP’s insights to speak for themselves.

The data stories the brand shares reflect the wide range of depth and timeliness WHOOP provides, from evergreen data insights and studies (e.g., how generations stack up) to trendy topic breakdowns (e.g., sober October).

5. Get the Pricing Structure Right

There are a few things about WHOOP’s pricing strategy that make the brand stand out from their competitors.

First and foremost, WHOOP provides the hardware for free in contrast to any other player in the market. The band is included in the membership purchase, but there is no additional cost for the hardware itself — which is unlike other wearables on the market.

The second factor here, as you’ve probably guessed, is WHOOP’s subscription-based model that they deliberately switched to in 2018. Unlike most wearables that rely on a one-time hardware purchase, WHOOP gives the hardware away for free and charges users a monthly subscription fee for access to its analytics platform.

This standout approach has two major benefits.

First, WHOOP has lowered the barrier to entry for users who might hesitate to spend several hundred dollars on a fitness tracker from the get-go. It allows people to take advantage of what WHOOP has to offer without a heavy commitment cost upfront, making the product more sticky, the decision to join WHOOP easier, and the user LTV higher.

Second, it emphasizes WHOOP’s positioning as a data company first, and not a hardware company. WHOOP’s biggest advantage has always been the precision of its data — and for the performance-driven audience they focus on, the degree of data accuracy and depth is much more important than the hardware itself. In their own words, the team behind WHOOP believes the band should be “cool and invisible.”

The result is a more engaged community alongside a steady revenue stream.

Closing Thoughts

WHOOP is a strong contender to continue scaling and (potentially) dominating the wearables market — and the brand is still in its early stages of growth despite the major wins it has scored. As of 2022, the brand is more accessible through retail partnerships like Best Buy in the US; WHOOP has also introduced a B2B enterprise offering, diversifying their model beyond B2C.

Here’s a checklist of the key moves that have brought WHOOP so far over the last decade and will likely continue to drive the brand’s growth in the future.

• Niche down with your audience before scaling up → You can’t win if you try to be everything for everyone.
• Treat your business like a media company → Content is king, so make sure you create and distribute content consistent with your positioning.
• Align with the best to become the best → Be very intentional about who your power users will be.
• Think about non-transactional value → From your content to your product quality or pricing strategy, show that you care.

The post WHOOP Marketing Strategy: The Wellness Tracker Startup Path to Rapid Growth appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Striking this balance between the right and the left brain to combine creativity with proven tactics is what makes a design agency successful at branding. In an overcrowded space where agencies are in a constant fight to prove whose designs are cooler, more intricate, and more beautiful, it’s the ones that are creative and strategic at the same time that win.

Especially for DTC brands, discovering the sweet spot between being efficient while also being loved by consumers is the perpetual challenge — and having an expert partner along the way who can be trusted to develop or refine brand identity is critical to ensuring long-term success.

So, who are these agencies that can help a DTC brand enhance its story and visual identity in a relevant and relatable way, all while continuing to grow? We’ve compiled a list of agencies around the world that have helped some of the most iconic brands become who they are today.

Here are our top design companies for DTC brands in 2025

1. NoGood
2. Day Job
3. Bullish
4. Wolff Olins
5. Gander
6. Red Antler
7. Preacher
8. Pentagram
9. Huge
10. Harper+Scott
11. Mekanism
12. Bulletproof NYC
13. Together
14. ArtVersion

1. NoGood

At NoGood, we embrace a distinctive method known as performance branding to empower our clients to achieve sustainable and compounding growth. Our success stems from a multitude of experiments, all rooted in a cohesive and impactful brand narrative. What sets us apart is our disruptive approach to client collaboration. Unlike the conventional agency model, we assign dedicated squads that seamlessly integrate with each client’s marketing team.

These squads comprise a broad range of professionals, spanning creative designers, data analysts, and growth strategists. With their deep knowledge and expertise, they propel our clients’ long-term growth and ensure constant progress toward their objectives.

Office Location: New York, NY

Year Founded: 2017

Team Size: 50 – 100 employees

Key Services: SMM, Search Engine Optimization, CRO, SEM, Social Ads, Content Marketing, Email Marketing Strategies, Video, and SMS Marketing, DTC Marketing

Industries Served: SaaS, Healthcare, Fintech, B2B, Consumer, Crypto

Case Studies: View all case studies.

2. Day Job

When you first land on Day Job’s website, there’s a moment of confusion and nostalgia. Suddenly, you’re looking at a page from the 90s, with pixelated images and an old-time, text-heavy Microsoft interface. And yet, as reminiscent of the past as Day Job’s website is, its work is as millennial-focused as it gets — buzzworthy, creative, and always relevant.

For Day Job, it’s all about the details — they don’t just create brands but rather end-to-end worlds where the experience at any touchpoint is consistent and immersive. The California-based agency is the brains behind the airy, dreamy aura of Recess.

The cannabis-infused drink that floats, quite literally, on every digital platform consistently lives and breathes the ease and levitation it promises. The agency has also crafted the tropical, pink vibe of Cha Cha Matcha and the quirky yet authentic feel of Fly by Jing.

Office Location: Los Angeles, CA

Year Founded: 2018

Team Size: 2 – 10 employees

Key Services: Brand Strategy, Website Design, Brand Messaging, Digital Advertising Strategies, Print

Industries Served: Food and Beverage, Mental Health Services

Case Studies: View all case studies.

3. Bullish

Bullish is not your average agency: it’s a combination of an investment firm and a brand studio. Their input in developing remarkable brands doesn’t just end with their ideation and creation. Bullish goes as far as becoming an investor in brands with high potential, directly partaking in the growth and development of each brand from identity to business goals and success. Some of the New York-based agency’s select early-stage consumer investments include Casper, Care/of, Hu, Peloton, and Warby Parker.

Office Location: New York, NY

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: 11 – 50 employees

Key Services: Growth, Strategy, Creative Design

Industries Served: Tech, Beverage, Fashion

Case Studies: View all case studies.

4. Wolff Olins

When it comes to developing dynamic brands, Wolff Olins integrates technology with design to create dimensionality and bring brands to life. At its core, Wolff Olins considers a brand identity beyond a static visual appearance. Instead, the agency crafts multidimensional brand personalities that breathe, move, and engage consumers at new and interactive levels. From TikTok’s 3D logo and Uber’s most recent U shape to Google’s four-color spiraling G, the designs Wolff Olins produces successfully launch brands into the digital-forward world that customers live in today.

Office Location: London, UK

Year Founded: 1965

Team Size: 51 – 200 employees

Key Services: Product Design, Experience Design, Branding, Digital Strategy

Industries Served: Automotive, Tech, Social Media Marketing

Case Studies: View all case studies.

5. Gander

There are certain DTC brands that take over their industries by storm, and suddenly, the market doesn’t look the same anymore. Some of the brands that Gander, a Brooklyn-based creative shop, has created are Banza and Magic Spoon — and neither the pasta nor the cereal markets have been the same since these brands launched.

What makes Gander’s work stand out is its ability to craft brand stories that offer a new and fresh twist on a traditional market space. At the same time, Gander’s brands have a system of powerful, distinctive color schemes and illustrations that make the brands instantly recognizable and one of their kind. Gander’s brands live and breathe beyond the digital space and deliver the same dose of unique experiences in real life, from packaging to social media.

Office Location: Brooklyn, New York

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: 2 – 10 employees

Key Services: Graphic Design Services, Packaging, Illustration, Web Design, Web Development

Industries Served: Food and Beverage

Case Studies: View all case studies.

6. Red Antler

Red Antler is among the most respected agencies known for their ability to develop promising early-stage companies into established and well-recognized brands. The expert team at Red Antler was behind the initiative to transform Casper, a mattress company, into a symbol for good rest and a lifestyle brand with a deep connection to its customers — a complete departure from the traditional, showroom-centric, and technical-jargon-heavy mattress industry.

The agency was also behind the “Designed to Be Deleted” positioning for Hinge — a refreshing change from the rest of the industry that often failed to establish true connections between people in a hyper-digital environment.

Office Location: Brooklyn, New York

Year Founded: 2007

Team Size: 51 – 200 employees

Key Services: Product Design, Brand-led Marketing, Digital Experience, Art Direction & Content, Brand System, Project Management

Industries Served: Beauty, Fashion, Home Goods, Finances, Entertainment

Case Studies: View all case studies.

7. Preacher

From bigger names like Netflix to smaller, thriving brands like Harry’s, the companies that come to Preacher all share the same unique feel, blending the traditional with the novel to give brands an air of authenticity while helping them adapt to the changing consumer preferences. If you’re in New York and notice the StreetEasy ads in the subways, then you’ll immediately get a sense of Preacher’s ability to seamlessly fuse old and new.

The posters look hand-drawn, almost New Yorker-style; they feature references to such original New York experiences as a doorman or shoebox apartments, yet it all comes together to highlight how the technology aggregates the most qualified housing options in the city.

Office Location: Austin, Texas

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: 11 – 50 employees

Key Services: Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Digital, Experiential, Design

Industries Served: Music, Alcoholic Beverages, Entertainment, Real Estate

Case Studies: View all case studies.

8. Pentagram

Sometimes, branding is as symbolic and intricate as creating art. Modern art, if you will. The strongest quality that sets Pentagram apart from all other agencies is the fact that all the work they create looks as if it belongs in MOMA or the Tate — no matter what industry their company comes from, from finance to healthcare or entertainment.

Pentagram’s name captures the nature of the agency’s work: it’s at the intersection of architecture, design, and science. Have you noticed the women walking out of yoga studios holding Lululemon bags covered in bold, powerful typography? The diverse typeface covering Lululemon bags and shop windows is Pentagram’s visualization of the brand’s manifesto of movement and mindfulness. 

If you happened to walk the High Line since its reopening during the pandemic, you might have noticed the green dots evenly distributed across the promenade space. Pentagram’s thoughtful design tackles the challenge of social distancing while revisiting areas beloved by New Yorkers.

Office Location: New York, NY, with offices around the world

Year Founded: 1972

Team Size: 51 – 200 employees

Key Services: Brand Identity, Environmental Graphics, Book Design, Data-Driven Insights for Design, Film and Motion Graphics

Industries Served: Financial Services, Education, Entertainment, Arts & Culture, Fashion & Beauty, Food & Drink, Healthcare, Hospitality, Real Estate, Technology

Case Studies: View all case studies.

9. Huge

What sets the Brooklyn-based agency apart is its user-centric approach to branding — and its work is geared towards building strong relationships between its clients’ brands and their respective customers. If there’s such a thing as planning experiential dates for two people to connect deeply, Huge does exactly that. Among their notable designs is Android’s brand-new look.

Huge reimagined the iconic waving green robot that everyone recognizes the Google product by, stripping the brand from all excessive details and making the overall brand experience simpler, more accessible, more welcoming, playful, and more curious.

Have you heard of FOGO? Not FOMO, not YOLO — FOGO, or “Fear Of Getting Old,” a concept introduced by Huge as part of the “GetOld.com” initiative that aimed to rejuvenate Pfizer’s image while reversing the negative perceptions of aging. The initiative wasn’t simply a limited campaign — it was the start of a large-scale movement that created a community of followers who believed the message resonated with their thoughts and feelings.

Office Location: Brooklyn, New York

Year Founded: 1999

Team Size: 1,001 – 5000 employees

Key Services: User Experience Design, User Relationship Management, Innovation Strategy, Social Media, Web and Mobile App Design, Branding & Brand Experience, Business Consulting

Industries Served: N/A

Case Studies: N/A

10. Harper+Scott

Harper+Scott is a leading creative design agency that has worked with familiar brands like Sephora and FedEx. They specialize in private label and custom retail, and they can assist brands with merchandise, gifts, influencer mailings, and more. Their approach is highly personalizable to ensure that your brand gets exactly what it needs. In their own words, if you can dream it, they can make it.

Office Location: New York, NY

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: 51 – 200 employees

Key Services: Gifts with Purchase, Influencer Mailers, Packaging & Print, Branded Merchandise, Private Label, Promotional Products, Retail, Custom Products, Creative Design, Product Marketing

Industries Served: Food & Beverage, Beauty, Entertainment

Case Studies: View all case studies.

11. Mekanism

Mekanism is a creative design agency that works toward building iconic brands with a mixture of “soul and science.” They strive to build a foundation for each brand that will enable them to be culturally relevant for a long time and fuel sustainable growth.

The team at Mekanism takes a holistic approach to ensure every aspect of your brand has been thought through and strategized. After creative ideation and production, Mekanism works closely with brands to monitor and analyze performance as well as building social and media campaigns. They have an in-house team of digital designers that relies on a tech stack to build new, innovative relationships between brands and their audiences.

Office Location: San Francisco, CA

Year Founded: 2003

Team Size: 51 – 200 employees

Key Services: Integrated Advertising Campaigns, Digital Design & Development, Creative & Brand Strategy, Social Media Marketing, Digital Influencer Networks

Industries Served: Entertainment, Dating Services, Travel, Food & Beverage, Financial Services

Case Studies: View all case studies.

12. Bulletproof NYC

Bulletproof NYC is an independent brand agency, using the team’s creativity to drive global reach for their brand partners. They work with a wide variety of clients, of all sizes and across industries. Bulletproof doesn’t want to design run-of-the-mill brands; they want to defy convention with big, bold ideas.

The team at Bulletproof NYC has built a culture of “hustle and heart.” They’re dedicated with fiery entrepreneurial energy, and they bring a sense of passion to the work they do. At Bulletproof, you’ll find a team working to become as knowledgeable about and dedicated to your brand as you are.

Office Location: London, UK

Year Founded: 1998

Team Size: 201 – 500 employees

Key Services: Brand Strategy, Packaging Design, Film & Motion Design, 3D Environments, Brand Architecture, Brand Guardianship, Photography, Messaging, Brand Campaigns

Industries Served: Food & Beverage, Travel, Sports & Entertainment

Case Studies: View all case studies.

13. Together

Together is a design agency that provides comprehensive branding services, supporting your brand design through identity creation, visual creative, web design, and web development. They begin by determining the story of your brand, and then they start adding additional details to build out a well-rounded identity that you can share through your website and other social campaigns.

Their brand design approach is digital first, and Together emphasizes the importance of a great website in terms of capturing your audience’s attention and bringing them into the fold. Together’s brand design goes beyond colors, typography, icons, and logos and extends to the full web ecosystem of your site.

Office Location: London, UK

Year Founded: 2018

Team Size: 11 – 50 employees

Key Services: Branding, Product Design, UX/UI Design, Web Development, Web Design

Industries Served: Technology, eCommerce

Case Studies: View all case studies.

14. ArtVersion

ArtVersion specializes in graphic design for both branding and website development. They work with clients on rebranding and other digital marketing initiatives. They’ve worked with familiar clients such as Cartier, Morgan Stanley, Volvo, and Hilton, and they have a wide range of experience across industries,

ArtVersion is made up of a collaborative team of people in different specialties – designers, developers, and strategists. They have experts on hand to work with brands throughout every stage of the brand development and design journey. They work closely with client teams from concept inception to execution to ensure all creative work contributes to an impactful and cohesive user experience.

Office Location: Chicago, IL

Year Founded: 1999

Team Size: 11 – 50 employees

Key Services: Web Design, Web Development, Graphic Design, Branding, UX/UI Design, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy

Industries Served: Financial Services, Hospitality & Leisure, Manufacturing, Medical, Arts & Entertainment

Case Studies: View all case studies.

Choose the Right Agency for Your Brand

As you’ve seen, it’s not enough to craft eye-catching brand assets. It’s about creating a brand ecosystem that pulls the audience into the brand’s world through a compelling, relatable story that’s consistent across all design elements across many digital touchpoints.

Especially for DTC brands, it’s crucial to establish a strong initial connection with consumers through powerful designs and visuals to build long-term relationships that foster consumer loyalty and championship.

Let us know in the comments what agencies and brands have stood out to you the most, and get in touch with us for performance branding solutions that will help your business achieve sustainable compounding growth!

Start creating high-converting brand assets with an expert team.

FAQs

The post 14 Best Design Agencies for DTC Brands in 2025 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Influencer marketing has helped brands navigate the changing landscape of building brand awareness in the ever-competitive social media arena. Having an influencer on your side is essentially like having a fast pass in Disney World; getting to the front of the line and cutting through the noise is what it’s all about. 

Here’s what to look out for when choosing an influencer marketing agency:

1. Do they know your industry inside out?
2. Can they show off some impressive wins?
3. Are their influencer connections top-notch?
4. What cool tech tools do they use?
5. Will they be upfront about how things are going?
6. Can they cook up creative campaign ideas?
7. Do they ‘get’ your brand’s vibe?
8. Can they keep up as your brand grows?

The Leading Influencer Marketing Agencies in 2025:

1. NoGood
2. The Influencer Marketing Factory
3. Obviously
4. Carusele
5. Open Influence
6. IMA Agency
7. Fanbytes
8. Pulse Advertising
9. Socially Powerful
10. The Goat Agency
11. Influence Nation
12. August United
13. GoFish Digital
14. Viral Nation
15. Billion Dollar Boy
16. Zorka Agency
17. The Motherhood
18. Ubiquitous
19. The Shelf
20. Moburst
21. Hypefactory
22. InBeat
23. TopRank Marketing
24. Team Epiphany

1. NoGood

Description: At NoGood, we design and run customized influencer campaigns that target communities authentically, driving revenue and user growth. We specialize in helping startups of nearly every size, vertical, and business model grow by building services around insights and first-hand learnings. Through hyper-targeted influencer marketing campaigns, we drive community-led growth for your brand. 

We are connected with a vast network of influencers and knows what it takes to methodically help brands grow from one stage to the next holistically through influencer marketing. Our team provides trackable and scalable insights that help any company walk away with a deeper understanding of what works and what’s next.

Office Location: New York City, Los Angeles, Miami

Year Founded: 2017

Team Size: 50 – 100

Key Services: Performance marketing, Content Creation, Community-led growth, Influencer Marketing, Social media management SEO, Ad Creative, Attribution Reporting

Industries Served: B2B, SaaS, Consumer, Fintech, Healthcare, AI, Crypto

Case studies: Invisibly, Bytedance, Rivet, Merlin, Iovera, Exparel, Steer, Fratelli

Noteworthy Campaign: We launched and scaled JVN Hair to become one of the fastest-growing hair brands in the nation. The JVN X NoGood campaign won an award for best creator-led and performance beauty campaign in 2022.

2. The Influencer Marketing Factory

Description: The Influencer Marketing Factory is one of the top global influencer marketing agencies that help brands get in front of Gen Z & Millennials on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Its team supports brands and companies sets KPIs, identifies the right influencers, works on creativity, manages contracts and deliverables, and takes care of reposting and digital ROI analysis.

Office Location: New York & Miami

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: 50+

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: Music, Apps, Toys, eCommerce, Beauty

Case studies: View all case studies.

3. Obviously

Description: Obviously is a full-service influencer marketing agency that guides clients through every step of the process and tailors each campaign to brand needs. With a database of 400,000 influencers across several major channels, they can create innovative marketing packages of any size or complexity. They handle all aspects of the influencer marketing experience including communication, product shipment, and analysis.

Office Location: New York, Paris, San Francisco

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: 50 -200

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: RCPG, E-Commerce, Fashion

Case studies: View all case studies. 

4. Carusele

Description: Carusele is an influencer agency that provides either full-service program management or support services for in-house teams to connect brands and consumers through authentic content.

Carusele understands the problem with most influencer marketing models is the lack of ability to generate and measure real business results, so their approach uses real-time data to optimize programs daily in an effort to generate the most efficient results. These programs provide competitive pay-per-click advertising and drive a measurable sales lift for clients. The agency won Shorty Awards Small Agency of the Year in 2017.

Office Location: Cary, NC

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: 11-50

Key Services: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Industries Served: E-Commerce, CPG

Case studies: N/A

5. Open Influence

Description: Open Influence unlocks creative and strategic insights that elevate campaigns with best-in-class content, resulting in brand experiences that celebrate individual creativity. This team believes in real humans loving real humans. They produce contagious creativity that sticks with consumers long after they’ve scrolled away. They act as an extension of your team, ensuring that all parties remain aligned and are committed to the purpose.

Office Location: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London, Milan, Hong Kong

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: ~10

Key Services: Creative & Strategy, Creator Discovery, Campaign Management, Content Syndication, Brand Safety, Analysis & Reporting, Paid Social Support

Industries Served: CPG, Financial and Insurance, Travel

Case studies: View all case studies.

6. IMA Agency

Description: IMA Agency, formerly known as Fashiolista Agency, executes effective strategies based on brand DNA. They hand pick the right influencers every time for conversion-led campaigns. With 10 years of experience, this team has developed countless campaigns over a variety of countries with hands-on execution, underpinned by in-depth reporting. They also can call their in-house production team and performance marketers when needed, as an added perk.

Office Location: Amsterdam

Year Founded: 2010

Team Size: ~30

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: SaaS, E-Commerce, CPG

Case studies: View all case studies.

7. Pulse Advertising

Description: Pulse Advertising is an influencer marketing agency recognized for its data-driven approach and partnerships with major social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Google. They focus on crafting authentic content through influencer collaborations to effectively engage target audiences and drive measurable results. Their team of experts seamlessly blends influencer marketing with paid social strategies, helping brands maximize their reach and engagement across various social media platforms. 

Pulse specializes in identifying and collaborating with influencers who authentically align with a brand’s values and target audience. They focus on creating genuine, engaging content that resonates with consumers, fostering trust and driving conversions. Their campaigns are meticulously planned, executed, and optimized using advanced analytics tools to ensure maximum ROI for their clients.

Office Location: Hamberg, Germany

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: 100-250

Key Services: Influencer Marketing, Paid Social Advertising, Social Media Management, Social Media Consulting

Industries Served: Beauty, B2B, B2C, Technology

Case Studies: View all case studies

8. Socially Powerful

Description: Socially Powerful is a global, award-winning social and influencer marketing agency that combines technology-driven strategies with creative expertise to deliver impactful campaigns for brands worldwide. They pride themselves on their ability to cut through social media noise, create authentic relationships, and craft multi-dimensional social marketing narratives that resonate with target audiences across various platforms.

The agency leverages advanced data analytics and proprietary tools to identify trends, measure impact, and optimize campaigns in real time. This data-driven methodology is seamlessly integrated with a deep understanding of social media dynamics and consumer behavior, enabling the creation of campaigns that not only capture attention but also drive meaningful engagement and conversions.

Their expertise extends across a wide range of social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and emerging channels. This versatility enables Socially Powerful to craft multi-dimensional narratives that engage audiences where they are most active and receptive. Their campaigns are known for their authenticity and ability to seamlessly integrate brand messages into organic, influencer-driven content that feels native to each platform.

Office Location: London, NYC

Year Founded: 2017

Team Size: 50+

Key Services: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Paid Social Advertising, Community Management, Social Media Video Production, Social Commerce, Content Creation, Campaign Strategy and Execution

Industries Served: Fashion and Beauty, Technology, Gaming, Lifestyle, Consumer Goods, Entertainment, Travel and Hospitality

Case Studies: View all case studies

9. The Goat Agency

Description: The Goat Agency is a leading social media and influencer marketing agency, with it’s headquarters in London and strategic offices in New York and Singapore. The Goat Agency has established a truly global presence, enabling it to execute campaigns that resonate across diverse cultural landscapes.

The agency takes full-funnel marketing approach, focusing on designing campaigns that guide consumers through the entire purchase journey, from discovery to conversion. This holistic strategy has proven particularly effective in driving measurable ROI for clients across various industries.

The Goat Agency is known for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in social media marketing. They frequently incorporate emerging technologies and platforms into their campaigns, staying ahead of trends and helping their clients maintain a competitive edge. From leveraging augmented reality features on Instagram to creating viral challenges on TikTok, the agency consistently demonstrates its ability to innovate and adapt.

Office Location: London, UK

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: 400+

Key Services: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Strategy, Paid Social Advertising, Content Production, Social Media Management, Creative Strategy, Campaign Analytics and Reporting, Global Campaign Execution

Industries Served: Beauty and Fashion, Technology, Gaming, Automotive, FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods), Retail, Entertainment, Travel, Finance, Apps and Software

Case Studies: View all case studies

10. Fanbytes

Description: Fanbytes has one priority and that is helping brands reach Gen Z audiences. The U.K. based agency utilizes their proprietary analytics platform to create end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns with an emphasis on actionable metrics including expected clicks, installs, and branded engagement. Fanbytes sticks to where 13-25 year-olds congregate: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube. Their two-pronged strategy of organic and paid social campaigns guarantees reach and engagement.

Office Location: London

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: ~10

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: SaaS, CPG, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

11. NeoReach

Description: Data is at the heart of everything NeoReach does, including developing an algorithm that has created a database of over 3 million influencers and a new method for calculating ROI, which they call Influencer Media Value (IMV). This metric is specific to influencer campaigns and sponsored posts and is better suited to large companies that also regularly spend money on traditional print and broadcast advertising channels.

Office Location: Los Angeles, CA

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: 50+

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: SaaS, CPG, DTC, B2B

Case studies: N/A

12. August United

Description: At August United, we offer a comprehensive suite of services as a full-service influencer agency. Our offerings include strategy development, activation planning, network expansion, and content creation. We believe that in a world of homogeneity, influencers can serve as a powerful catalyst for creating waves of influence across a diverse range of communities. By combining eye-catching social media strategies with nimble execution, we have been able to deliver outstanding results for numerous clients.

Office Location: Tempe, Arizona

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: 11-50

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: CPG, SaaS

Case studies: N/A

13. Go Fish Digital

Description: Go Fish promises to increase brand awareness and engagement by forming and growing ongoing relationships with influencers across a variety of niches.  Along with influencer marketing, this team specializes in SEO, online reputation management, and conversion rate optimization for both local and national businesses. 

Office Location: North Carolina & Virginia

Year Founded: 2005

Team Size: 50+

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: SaaS

Case studies: View all case studies.

14. Viral Nation

Description: Viral Nation helps both influencers develop their business, and maintains relationships with a collection of companies and brands to secure ideal partnerships for every social campaign. Their award-winning, full-service campaigns go beyond the post, with paid boosting, whitelisting, retargeting, and experiential capabilities.

Office Location: Canada

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: ~20

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: Saas, CPG

Case studies: View all case studies. 

15. Billion Dollar Boy

Description: Billion Dollar Boy is a unique creative agency that has over 50+ employees and works across London, New York, and New Orleans. The agency has worked with some of the premier brands in categories including beauty, fashion, retail, lifestyle, consumer goods, food and beverage, and automotive. Their work has reached 38 countries, and the company believes in diversity and inclusivity in influencer marketing.

Office Location: London, New York & New Orleans

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: ~20

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2C, E-commerce, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

16. Zorka Agency

Description: Founded in 2014, Zorka brings brands and creators together to make native and entertaining content with a focus on enticing emotional connections. They work on any platform and have strong direct relationships with influencers. Having influencers on speed-dial provides the best prices, speedy asset creation, and streamlines communication.

Zorka has a strong client base with some of the fastest-growing and private companies in the world. They excel in creating content and influencer campaigns that are fun, exclusive, and scalable.

Office Location: N/A

Year Founded: 2014

Team Size: ~15

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: E-commerce, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

17. The Motherhood

Description: The Motherhood agency has been around for more than a decade and is one of the earliest agencies to implement influencer marketing. This influencer marketing agency delivers exceptional work. The agency connects brands with their most important audiences through strong influencer campaigns. The campaigns are smart, fresh, and strategically positioned to reach the most people and drive engagement.

Office Location: N/A

Year Founded: 2006

Team Size: ~10

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2C, E-Commerce

Case studies: View all case studies. 

18. Ubiquitous

Description: A group of marketing executives, social media pros, developers, and influencers, Ubiquitous is a full-service influencer marketing agency that improves its clients’ social media presence through creator-led organic content. Using predictive analytics and machine learning through their unique strategy, the agency solves any influencer marketing challenges. Whether it’s brand awareness or developing an incredible growth strategy, Ubiquitous will be there for you.

Office Location: N/A

Year Founded: 2020

Team Size: ~10

Key Services: TikTok Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2B, B2C, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

19. The Shelf

Description: Solving critical business goals for their customers including those of reaching target audiences and achieving conversions, The Shelf is a full-funnel influencer marketing agency pioneering in data-driven influencer marketing. By creating authentic and relatable stories through their choice of influencers, the agency helps its customers reach their targeted audiences. The Shelf differentiates itself from its competitors through its innovative technology that discovers and indexes millions of influencers for campaign success.

Office Location: Atlanta, GA

Year Founded: 2011

Team Size: ~50

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2B, B2C, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

20. Moburst

Description: Moburst has over a decade of helping companies achieve hypergrowth and category domination. Moburst partners with influencers with industry expertise that help elevate your brand. Their team streamlines the creative process to make their marketing services more affordable while driving incredible results. They provide a connection between brands and creators by adding a personal touch to relationships and brand marketing.

Office Location: New York

Year Founded: 2013

Team Size: ~20

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2B, B2C, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

21. Hypefactory

Description: HypeFactory is a one-stop influencer marketing company that meets any advertising objectives. To find the finest influencers for their clients, the agency developed the HypeAuditor tool. Additionally, they choose from millions of influencers using cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies to identify the perfect match for business goals.

HypeFactory employs thorough and precise data to locate the influencers most appropriate for any marketing initiative. They track several different metrics, including channel and audience quality scores. Before executing their intended course of action, they use a wide range of unusual factors to choose the appropriate audience.

Office Location: Cyprus

Year Founded: 2017

Team Size: ~15

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2B, B2C. DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

22. InBeat

Description: They assist well-known international businesses like New Balance, Nordstrom, and Disney in achieving their business objectives by working with more than 25,000 micro-influencers on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Brands will be able to benefit from their extensive network of influencers as well as their internal social media expertise and technology.

One of the major advantages of working with inBeat is that any campaign will be given an internal creative director. They can develop a distinctive angle that will highlight the brand and content. inBeat prioritizes micro and nano influencers with tight-knit communities, helping brands foster more genuine connections with their target audiences.

Office Location: Los Angeles

Year Founded: 2015

Team Size: N/A

Key Services: Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, UGC, Micro-influencer marketing, Social ads

Industries Served: B2B, B2C, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

23. TopRank Marketing

Description: TopRank Marketing was founded in 2001 and is an expert in B2B influencer marketing. They have a competitive network and knowledge to drive effective strategies. Tap into an established community of experts in every industry. TopRanks employs strategies to attract qualified audiences that are action-oriented so you can crush your campaign goals. If you need a customized approach to grow your brand with influencer marketing, TopRank Marketing could be your trusted growth partner.

Office Location: Minnesota

Year Founded: 2001

Team Size: 2

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2B, B2C, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

24. Team Epiphany

Description: In its ten years of business, the New York and Portland-based company has been able to land quite a few well-known clientele. Moet & Chandon, Heineken, Cadillac, HPNOTIQ, Nike, Hennessy, JBL, HBO, and Tanqueray are a few of these. According to them, they are focused on magnifying influence and utilizing the networks that generate it. They represent themselves as developing specialist marketing that is ready for mass adoption. They concentrate on creative services, brand strategy, experiential marketing (such as pop-up shops and special events), social media, influencer engagement, and public relations.

Office Location: New York

Year Founded: 2005

Team Size: ~10

Key Services: Influencer Marketing

Industries Served: B2B, B2C, DTC

Case studies: View all case studies.

FAQs: Influencer Marketing Agencies

If you need help refreshing your influencer marketing strategy, connect with one of our marketing experts.

The post 24 Leading Influencer Marketing Agencies in 2025 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.