Creator content for brands is fundamentally shifting from transactional production to performance-based creator partnerships.
A lot of what we’re getting into today isn’t completely new. What is new is the volume, scale, and impact this model is having on brands small and large.
And I think brands that figure this out early can build a serious advantage over competitors still treating UGC like one-off production.
The Current State of UGC
The “old” model (aka what is currently most popular today) looks something like:
Hire creator.
Pay flat fee.
Receive asset(s).
Edit it.
Run it.
Hope it works.
In this instance there are three major variables that determine the ROI of running a creator program like this:
How good your Creative Strategist is.
How good the Creator you’re working with is.
How good your editor is.
It’s expensive, tedious, requires tons of coordination, and all three of those things get exponentially harder to manage with more scale.
However, the silent problem in this system is creator incentive.
Their incentive is the same whether you spend $200 on their ad, $200k, or never even publish it.
Why would they go above and beyond on volume or quality, when in reality they can go work with 10 other brands in the time it takes for you to publish the final version in your ad account?
So what I’m trying to nail down is, UGC in its current, mainstream form is inherently just transactional.
But, there’s a new model that is taking both startups and legacy brands alike to new heights of growth.
The Hudson Method
A brand called Comfrt took all DTC Marketing Nerds (guilty 🙋🏽♂️) by storm when their numbers started coming out.
They did $16M Year 1, $170M Year 2, and eventually, they’re now projecting for a $1B year.
The founder, Hudson, has broken down his playbook several times, and it has been coined “The Hudson Method”
Use TikTok / TikTok Shop to discover creators with potential.
Identify the creators and content that show signal.
Build relationships with those creators.
Take their content to Meta, Snapchat, and other paid channels.
Continue compensating them as that content performs. (commission on sales or ad spend)
This playbook is getting standardized quickly with entire agencies being built (and acquired) that can do this well. So to say this is going to be a standard part of marketing as we know it is an understatement.
What’s important about this isn’t just “Wow TikTok Shop is amazing”, which was my initial reaction when all of this first came out.
It’s that TikTok served two purposes for Hudson at Comfrt:
It can function as a creator discovery engine.
It builds the real asset: a network of creators you develop.
That network, as Hudson describes:
“They’re the marketing officers. They’re the ones that are driving their own styles of content now.”
Watch Hudson talk about how central their success is to the machine they’ve built.
However, the issue with this method is that for most brands, it’s an expensive task to build the team that can run this well at scale.
Or at least it has been, and several companies are working to systemize this for brands and marketing teams.
Meet Lukas Pakter (and Trybe)
Hudson mentored Lukas Pakter on the model at his apparel brand, Haus.
Lukas says it helped Haus go from $200K a month to $4M a month in 12 months. (Source)
As the system scaled, Lukas started looking for ways to make it easier to operate and said this in an interview:
”We’re like, why only make that accessible for ecom? Why limit that to just one channel?”
Pre-Trybe, he had a team of five people managing the process to get to roughly 400 ads/month.
Then, Trybe was born, which he describes as “TikTok Shop for UGC”.
Now with Trybe, he’s been able to manage 3,000 new creator ads/month himself in ~2 hours/day.
The core mechanics of the platform are:
Creators submit ads to brands.
Brands run those ads through paid media.
Creator compensation can be tied to the revenue/performance generated.
It consolidated the handoffs, organization, performance tracking, payouts, and more into one platform.
But easier operations aren’t actually the biggest unlock.
The bigger unlock is what better economics allow you to do with the creators themselves.
How Brands Are Approaching Trybe and The Hudson Method
There are two broad ways I’d think about going from no scaled creator program to building a real creator army.
For Bigger Brands
For brands with capital to spend on making their creator program worth it, there’s a pretty sound strategy that Lukas shares.
“Find people that are worth investing in. Invest the time, money, energy to get them good.”
He approaches it like talent development:
Find creators that are motivated, want the opportunity, and very importantly: fit the ideal customer/creator profile.
Actively make them better with product education, briefs and examples, sales training and more.
Ongoing feedback, group calls, and 1:1 calls.
He even goes as far as buying equipment for them!
Commission plus retainers to deepen the financial investment in your creators.
Take the cream of the crop to higher retainers to help train other creators.
On the latter he goes as far to say “if they leave you after 6 months, you’ve now funded your competition in a way”, because a creator that leaves your brand, is likely going to stay within the niche that they are well versed in. (aka your niche, at another brand.)
You need to show through both financials and effort that you’re invested in these creators.
For Smaller Brands
For smaller brands without a ton of capital, I’d lean more Hudson-ish, but only if there’s enough demand and strong enough economics for creators to realistically earn meaningful upside.
Set a dedicated # of samples to send each month.
Seed out to creators via Trybe.
Commission-only.
Start building relationships and adding retainers for the top performers.
Begin executing the full “Lukas Method” above when you have the capital.
What’s important to note is that you’re not spending all this time and money just to get more content, it’s:
More content.
From creators that know the brand better.
Who have a TON of incentive to improve, for your brand.
Whose knowledge compounds over time.
A freelancer can memorize your brief, but a long-term creator can learn your customer, product, objections, angles, creative language, and what actually sells.
Now multiply that accumulated knowledge across 50 or 100 creators.
Why This All Matters
Obviously, this still requires execution.
Getting 50 ads from Trybe next month doesn’t mean you suddenly have 50 winners. You still have to choose creators carefully, give useful feedback, and build a system that helps them improve.
Performance-based pay also only works when creators have a real shot at earning upside without being held financially responsible for parts of the funnel they can’t control: the offer, site conversion rate, media buying, inventory, etc.
But the reality is that performance creative requires more volume, more perspectives, more creators, and more iteration.
The transactional UGC model becomes increasingly awkward under those demands.
Meanwhile, brands now have the infrastructure to build a creator network where:
Creators can participate in upside
Creator skill compounds
Relationships deepen
Content volume scales
Creator knowledge stays closer to the brand
So creator development starts looking less like “content sourcing” and more like building a real business function.
UGC is moving from paying creators to make ads, to building creators who get paid when the ads work. For brands dependent on paid social, that’s going to become harder and harder to ignore.
And we haven’t even talked about the halo effects on Amazon, Retail, etc.
I’ll save that rant for another day.
Peace and Love,
Travis