People person from a small town. Working hard to better myself everyday and will take on every project I have time for.

Chris Cunningham

Head of Marketing: I need $400K for a rebrand.
CEO: What's wrong with our brand?
Head of Marketing: The agency said it feels "dated" and "doesn't reflect where we're headed as a company."

CEO: Which agency?

Head of Marketing: The one that charges $400K for rebrands.

CEO: Walk me through what $400K gets us.

Head of Marketing: A new logo, updated color palette, brand guidelines document that's 97 pages long, a new font, and a "brand story" video that we'll post on LinkedIn and get at least 2,000 views.

CEO: And that drives revenue how?

Head of Marketing: It doesn't directly, but the agency said it'll "reposition us in the market" and "signal maturity to enterprise buyers."

CEO: Have any enterprise buyers told you our brand is the problem?

Head of Marketing: No. They've told us our onboarding is confusing, our pricing page makes no sense, and they can't find a case study for their industry. None of which a new logo fixes.

CEO: So why are we talking about a rebrand?

Head of Marketing: Because... honestly? Because our competitor just did one and it looked really clean.

CEO: So we're spending $400K because someone else changed their shade of blue.

Head of Marketing: When you put it like that...

CEO: Here's what I want instead. Take $50K and fix the pricing page. Take $50K and build 5 industry-specific case studies. Take $50K and redesign onboarding. Keep the other $250K.

Head of Marketing: But the brand feels...

CEO: The brand feels fine. Revenue feels slow. Fix what customers are actually complaining about and I promise you nobody will care what shade of blue the logo is.

Head of Marketing: You're right.

CEO: I know.

PS - This is how the conversations should have gone at Jaguar, Cracker Barrel, and the other rebrands last year. Most rebrands solve an internal identity crisis, not a customer problem. If no buyer has ever told you your brand is the reason they didn't buy, the money is better spent almost anywhere else.

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social at ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

Chris  Cunningham

We spend $20k/month on content at ClickUp and get 250M+ impressions. Everyone asks me for the secret sauce, so here it is. We stopped hiring "content creators" and started hiring unemployed actors from LA...

Sounds crazy. I know. But read to the end & I promise it'll make sense.

There are literally thousands of insanely talented actors with theatre training, improv experience, and zero work. They're fighting for background roles just to pay the rent.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn/TikTok Influencers want $10k/month to recycle the same hooks everyone else uses.

Here's how I accidently tapped into the actor ecosystem...

I first found Luke when he was doing TikToks for another company. They let him go. I hired him 10 minutes after he texted me.

First month, Luke didn't even know what ClickUp was. We had to teach him what project management software does.

Now he's the face of our brand, creating videos that hit 100+ million views making fun of corporate life.

Luke worked because he could act. That was it.

So I started thinking about where else in LA I could find people like him.

The Groundlings came up in a conversation. That's the top improv group in LA where Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig trained, so I went and cherry-picked actors from their roster.

Best decision I've ever made for ClickUp's content engine.

Here's what this actually costs:
➝ Beginner actor: $60-80k/year
➝ Experienced actor: $100-130k/year
➝ Comedy writers: $100-150/hour for our Monday writer's room
➝ Background talent: $200-300/day when we need them

Compare that to "social media experts" charging $7-10k per video.

But wait, it gets better. The added bonus is that actors are actually professionals...

They show up on time.
They memorize lines.
They take direction without ego.
They're trained to entertain humans, not game algorithms.

Unlike most content creators, all actors want is consistent work and someone who believes in them.

The talent's all in LA and NYC, desperate for work, and they'll transform your content for less than you're paying that agency right now.

Thoughts?

Head of Marketing: I want to eliminate the MQL.
CEO: That's literally how we measure marketing. What are you going to report to the board?
Head of Marketing: Pipeline. Revenue. The things that actually matter.

CEO: MQLs lead to pipeline.

Head of Marketing: Do they? Last quarter we generated 4,200 MQLs. Sales accepted 600. Of those, 43 became opportunities. 9 closed. We threw a party when we hit the MQL goal. Sales missed quota by 35%.

CEO: So the problem is lead quality, not the metric.

Head of Marketing: The metric creates the quality problem. My team is incentivized to get someone to download a PDF. That's it. The moment they download, we've "won." What happens after that is sales' problem.

CEO: So change what counts as an MQL.

Head of Marketing: I've redefined it 4 times in 2 years. Every time, we game it. Marketing always hits the number. Pipeline never moves. Because we're not optimizing for a buying signal.

CEO: What do you want to measure instead?

Head of Marketing: Opportunities sourced by marketing, pipeline dollars, and closed revenue with marketing attribution. Things my team can't game by running another ebook campaign.

CEO: Sales is going to say they don't have enough leads.

Head of Marketing: Sales says that now. They have 4,200 MQLs and they're complaining because 90% of them are garbage. They don't want more leads. They want better ones. They've told me this directly.

CEO: The board is used to seeing MQL numbers.

Head of Marketing: The board is used to seeing a number go up while revenue stays flat. They're going to ask why eventually. I'd rather explain the change now than explain the failure later.

CEO: What happens to the demand gen team?

Head of Marketing: They'll stop optimizing for form fills and start optimizing for qualified meetings. When we give them a different target I'm confident they will hit it. Half of them have told me privately they're relieved.

CEO: If pipeline drops...

Head of Marketing: If pipeline drops I'll bring the MQL back. But when sales starts hitting quota because they're finally getting leads who actually want to talk to them, you'll forget MQLs existed.

CEO: One quarter.

Head of Marketing: When the sales team stops ignoring our leads and starts thanking us for them, you'll give me four.

PS - MQLs measure marketing activity. Pipeline measures marketing effectiveness. One makes your team feel good. The other makes your company money. Choose.

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

If you're not testing AI video right now, you're already behind.

I say that as probably the biggest believer in human-made content you'll find in this space. I bet on it every day. In how I think about marketing, how I build campaigns, how I hire.

But I never stop testing AI. Not because I think it's going to replace what we do. Because I need to know where it's at.

So when Luma reached out to test their agents, I said yes immediately. I had to check it out!

Here's what I kept running into on projects before this: you start with a clear vision, the project moves through people and tools and revisions, and somewhere in all of that the original idea gets quietly diluted. 

Not because anyone dropped the ball. Just because every handoff loses a little something.

By the time you see the final cut, it technically checks every box. But it doesn't feel like the thing you had in your head at the start.

What I noticed with Luma: the context carries. Every step forward, the brief is still there. The thing you're building at the end still looks like the idea you had at the beginning.

I still work with human talent. That's not changing. But I've been using Luma more than I expected for developing ideas early and keeping things consistent across projects that touch a lot of hands.

I've tested a lot of AI video. Luma is the one I kept coming back to.

Dive into AI with Luma today: https://lnkd.in/gmz3dkQe

#LumaPartner

Head of Marketing: I'm shutting down our marketing automation sequences.
CEO: We have 23 active nurture tracks. That's 18 months of work..
Head of Marketing: 18 months of work that generates a 0.3% click rate. Our "engaged" leads are opening emails and immediately archiving them.

CEO: Nurture sequences warm up leads.

Head of Marketing: They used to. When inboxes weren't flooded with 47 other companies doing the exact same thing. Now our carefully crafted "Day 3" email sits between a competitor's "Day 3" email and a cold pitch from someone selling intent data.

CEO: So write better emails.

Head of Marketing: We rewrote them twice. A/B tested subject lines for 6 months. Hired a conversion copywriter. Open rates went up 8%. Pipeline from email went up zero because the problem isn't the writing. It's that nobody asked for 14 emails.

CEO: What's the alternative?

Head of Marketing: One email when they download something. One email when they hit pricing. A human follow-up from sales when intent signals say they're actually shopping. That's it. Three touches with actual relevance instead of 23 touches on a timer.

CEO: The ops team spent months building these workflows.

Head of Marketing: The ops team is spending 20 hours a week maintaining workflows that generate nothing. I talked to them. They'd rather build one system that works than babysit 23 that don't.

CEO: Our competitors have sophisticated automation.

Head of Marketing: Our competitors are sending the same "just checking in" email on Day 7 that we are. The buyer who gets 5 of those a week from different vendors isn't nurtured. They're annoyed.

CEO: Marketing automation is industry standard.

Head of Marketing: So was gating everything and measuring MQLs. Industry standard isn't working standard. The companies growing fastest right now are the ones whose emails you actually recognize because you only get one when it matters.

CEO: What happens to all those leads in the sequences?

Head of Marketing: If they're real buyers, sales reaches out based on intent. If they're not, we stop pretending a 14-email sequence will change that. We can't automate our way to trust.

CEO: If conversion drops...

Head of Marketing: If conversion drops I'll rebuild every sequence personally. But when our emails start getting replies instead of archives because people know when we reach out it actually means something, you'll wonder why we ever tried to automate relationships.

CEO: One quarter.

Head of Marketing: Deal.

PS - Marketing automation promised scale. It delivered spam. The best nurture sequence is a reputation so good that when you do email someone, they actually want to read it.

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

I've never seen a brand struggle to hit 1M+ monthly impressions when they applied ALL of these principles to social media (bookmark this for later):

- Post 5x per week minimum without fail. Most brands quit after week 3. Consistency IS the algorithm hack everyone's looking for.

- Every piece of content must pass the Rule of 3. Does it add value? Educate? Make them laugh? If not, don't post it.

- Short-form content first, repurpose second. Test on TikTok/Reels, then adapt winners for YouTube Shorts and LinkedIn.

- Set an audacious goal publicly and update weekly progress. Build in public, especially when you miss. Vulnerability drives 3x more engagement than winning.

- Create characters people can relate to. Our IT guy with a lisp got 6,000 shares because he was human, not a product demo. B2B buyers share content that makes them feel something.

- Test everything for 60 days before killing it. Most marketers quit at 30 days, right before the algorithm figures out your audience. Get real data, then either 10x it or move on.

- Build machines around winners. Test → find what works → systematize → hand off → find the next thing. Your job is building systems, not being the talent.

- Know your ICP so well you can predict what makes them stop scrolling. Not demographics. Psychographics. What keeps them up at 2 AM? Answer that and you own their feed.

- Make content about work itself, not just your product. Own the humor in meetings, deadlines, office culture. That's the biggest whitespace in B2B nobody dominates.

- Break the pattern of what they expect to see. If your content could work for any brand with a logo swap, start over.

- Cap video budgets at $3K-$15K even with more money. Some of our best content came when we were broke. Constraints force creativity. High production screams "ad."

- Build 12 internal influencers, not just your founder. One person can't carry your entire brand forever.

- Track impressions first, conversions second. You can't convert people who never see you.

- Platform-specific content, not lazy reposts. What works on TikTok dies on LinkedIn. Adapt the idea, don't copy-paste.

- Engage with every comment in the first 60 minutes. The algorithm watches how you react to your audience. Comments are free distribution.

- Test ridiculous ideas that don't make sense. Our most random D-tier concepts have become some of our best A-tier performers. The market tells you what works.

- Never celebrate one viral hit. Going viral once is luck. Monthly is a system. Build the system, not the post.

The brands hitting 1M+ aren't smarter, they just stopped overthinking and started shipping.

What am I missing?

PS - I'm Chris Cunningham and I run social media marketing for ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

Head of Marketing: I'm cutting our Google Ads budget in half.
CEO: Paid search is our highest-converting channel. Why would you touch it?
Head of Marketing: Because 70% of that budget is bidding on our own name..

We're paying Google $18K a month so people who already want us can find us.

CEO: If we don't bid on our brand name, competitors will.

Head of Marketing: They already do. We tested turning off branded search for 2 weeks last quarter. Want to know what happened to demo requests? Nothing. Literally nothing changed. People who typed our name into Google still clicked our organic result. We just stopped paying for the click.

CEO: That's risky. What if we lose share to competitors?

Head of Marketing: We ran the math. In the 2 weeks we paused branded search, competitors picked up just 4% of those clicks, and none of them converted because those people were already looking for us. They clicked back.

CEO: What about non-branded search? That's real demand capture.

Head of Marketing: Non-branded is where it gets worse. Our cost per demo from non-branded search is $2,400. Our cost per demo from organic LinkedIn content is $340. And the LinkedIn demos close at 2x the rate because those people actually engaged with our thinking before they ever hit a landing page.

CEO: Search captures intent.

Head of Marketing: Search captures someone Googling a generic term. LinkedIn builds intent before they ever search. Those are fundamentally different buyers. One is comparison shopping. The other already trusts us.

CEO: The demand gen team lives and dies by paid search metrics.

Head of Marketing: The demand gen team has been optimizing cost-per-click for 3 years while our actual pipeline comes from channels they don't even track. I showed them the data last week. They didn't argue. They asked why nobody told them sooner.

CEO: If demo volume drops..

Head of Marketing: If demo volume drops because we stopped paying Google to serve ads to people who were already clicking our organic link, we have a brand problem, not a media buying problem.

CEO: One quarter.

Head of Marketing: When cost per acquisition drops 40% and demo quality goes up, you'll cut the other half yourself.

CEO: Don't get ahead of yourself.

PS - Paying Google to capture demand you already created is the most expensive habit in B2B marketing. The best brands don't buy clicks. They earn them.

I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social media at ClickUp.

Follow me for more actionable marketing tips & tricks.

$20K → $3.4M in pipeline.
That’s what one SaaS generated last quarter with Creator-Led Growth.

At ClickUp, we run creator partnerships internally.
So I know how powerful this channel can be.
But I also know how hard it is to execute properly.

Most SaaS teams think it’s:
Find creators → sponsor posts → done.
It’s not.

The companies scaling this channel treat it like infrastructure.
The SaaS behind that $3.4M didn’t just activate creators.
They partnered with a specialized CLG team that had already refined the system across 70+ SaaS and 2,000+ sponsored LinkedIn posts.

Because doing this well requires:
– Precision creator selection (not just big names)
– Post-level performance pattern recognition
– Systematic amplification via Thought Leader Ads
– Structured warm outbound targeting engaged ICP accounts
– Tight feedback loops across all three layers

Miss one layer and it becomes brand awareness.
Connect all three and it becomes pipeline.

That’s how they hit:
→ 321,000 impressions
→ 4,000+ clicks
→ 302 qualified leads
→ 1.58% CTR (vs ~0.4% on standard LinkedIn Ads)
→ $40 CPL (vs $100+ on Google)

Can you build this internally?
Yes.
Can most SaaS execute it consistently without prior reps and pattern recognition?
Very hard.

That’s why more and more B2B companies are partnering with specialized CLG operators instead of trying to figure it out from scratch.

If you want to know who’s actually running this for 70+ SaaS companies today,

💬 Comment “CLG”.

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Founding Member ClickUp / Marketing

Soulja Boy taught me my first lesson in viral marketing.

Growing up, I was obsessed with ringtones. I had to have the coolest one.

The second “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” dropped, 678-999-8212, I had it within 24 hours.

That’s when I first discovered Soulja Boy.

He was one of the first artists to jump on ringtones and completely take over.

Then he put his actual phone number in the song.

Millions of people called it.

It was a product demo disguised as a chorus.

Simple. Memorable. Completely ahead of its time.

So when I saw Bland use Soulja Boy to market their voice AI platform, I immediately got it.

Bland automates phone calls with AI that sounds indistinguishable from a real human.

Sales calls. Support. Outbound at scale.

And they got Soulja Boy, the guy who literally turned a phone number into a cultural moment, to front their campaign.

That’s not a celebrity deal.

That’s brand alignment.

When the marketing is that good, you have to give it a try.

That’s my rule.

Signing up to test Bland this week.

I’m Chris Cunningham. I run social at ClickUp. Follow along for B2B marketing takes as I build in public, right here on LinkedIn.

#BlandAIPartner

Bland

Making slides is stressful. Look at me. I lost all my hair trying to make them on my own haha.

In all seriousness, Gamma is a game changer for slides. I don't know why anyone would start from scratch when you have everything they offer:

- AI-generated structure and content, stunning templates
- One-click design themes
- Interactive elements 
- Real-time collaboration
- The ability to publish or present straight from the browser.

Drop in an idea. It builds the whole thing. Structure, design, flow, and done. I actually enjoy presenting again.

Trying to get the hair back with surgery. But at least my slides look amazing 😉

👉 Go try Gamma
#gammapartner

Last month we hit 250M+ impressions across all our social media channels. Now, they want me to hit 300M+, and I know they'll want even more after that. What would YOU do in my position? I'm thinking:

(1) Double down on micro-influencers (the HR skits are working, but we need more angles)

(2) Revamp our YouTube strategy (our short-form is crushing it, but our long-form needs work)

(3) Create more middle-funnel product content (everyone knows ClickUp exists now - we need content that makes you want to USE us)

I've been running social here long enough to know I have blind spots.

What would you do in my position?

Give me something specific like a format, a creator type, a funnel stage, a platform you'd test. Whatever you'd actually run if this was your budget and your problem.

Not looking for "post more reels." I've heard it.

I've been 50/50 on LinkedIn video for the better part of a year. Here's my honest case for and against - and I'd genuinely like someone to settle it for me. The case for:

LinkedIn's algorithm has been pushing video hard. End of 2024 was kind of crazy. I got 2M+ impressions on multiple videos, but then that tanked off completely. I don't think the quality was there anyway.

Then, engagement rates on our tests in 2025 were solid enough. And for B2B, the audience quality here is better than anywhere else we run.

The case against: the production lift is real, the organic reach ceiling feels way lower than short-form on other platforms, and I'm not convinced LinkedIn users are coming here to watch videos - yet.

At ClickUp's content volume, a half-committed bet is basically the same as no bet. If we go in on LinkedIn video, we go in. And I haven't been able to justify that call with the data we have so far.

What would you do?

Especially curious from anyone running video at scale in B2B - what made you commit, what does your format look like, and has it moved anything that actually matters?

Let's see what you got!

PS - I'm Chris Cunningham - I run social at ClickUp.

Follow me for more B2B marketing tips as I build in public here on LinkedIn.

I'm a marketer. Not a developer.

And last week I built my own influencer marketing platform.

I've been vocal about how bad the existing tools are. CreatorIQ, Aspire Software, GRIN (My LEAST favorite). 

None of them are good. I've spent real budget on all of them and been disappointed every time.

So I opened Lovable, talked to it like a friend, and built Track Your Dollars.

I'm a huge fan of Elena Verna so when Lovable gave me credits to test the platform, I jumped at it. What I pulled off in a single night would've taken a developer weeks just a while ago.

If you see a problem in your day-to-day right now, just try it vibe coding.

Talk to it. Tell it what you hate. What you want. Build the thing.

What a time to be alive.

#LovablePartner

A lot of deals are being decided before the second sales call ever happens.

Not because sales reps are doing something wrong.

Because buying behavior has changed.

What actually happens now looks more like this:

Someone takes your first call. They leave the meeting. Then they send your product around internally.

Slack threads. Internal docs. Side conversations with people you've never met.

By the time you show up to the next call, 80% of the decision is already formed.

Which means this matters a lot more than most teams realize.

The companies doing this well are giving buyers something they can explore and share internally.

Interactive demos. Short product walkthroughs. Something they can pass around the buying group.

One thing I thought was interesting, Consensus actually shows you who watched the demo, what parts they focused on, and who it got forwarded to.

Those hidden stakeholders? They're viewing demos 88 hours sooner than your primary contact.

And the numbers are kind of wild.

Bazaarvoice shortened their SMB sales cycle by 33%. Stibo Systems cut buying cycle time by 76%. Oracle scaled presales 20% without adding headcount.

This is where B2B sales is already going. 

The deal is being won or lost between meetings. Most teams just don't know it yet.

#ConsensusPartner

AJ Eckstein

Sales Strategy Analyst ($XXB Tech/Media Client)

Founder @ Creator Match 🧩 Scaling Creator Marketing for B2B, SaaS, & AI Brands | Fast Company Journalist | LinkedIn Learning Instructor (150K+ students) | TEDx & Keynote Speaker

Founder @ Creator Match 🧩 #1 tech-enabled agency building & scaling Creator programs for B2B/SaaS/AI Brands.

We are trusted by the world’s most innovative tech Brands (i.e. Anthropic/Claude, Notion, Zapier, HubSpot, Teachable, Wix, beehiiv, BetterHelp, Framer, and more), as well as the most influential B2B Creators.

[Creator Match Services]
→ Tech-enabled brand-side agency (done-for-you service): We run some of the largest and most creative B2B  Creator campaigns in the world, handling end-to-end strategy to execution.

[Our Story]
This journey started as a LinkedIn Creator struggling to monetize. I was laughed at in creator communities as no one took LinkedIn seriously. But I realized I wasn’t alone as I found a community of underserved, underpaid, and underappreciated LinkedIn Creators just like me (and maybe just like YOU).

So I did what any rational person would do. 

I quit my comfortable Fortune 500 management consulting job to go all-in on solving this pain point! And then Creator Match was born!

I’m on a mission to help Brands crush results with innovative campaigns and get B2B Creators PAID!

**For Brands/Agencies/Creators 👉 Get matched at creatormatch.com**

Outside of being a busy Founder, I also:
📰 Write for Fast Company (work/life section)
🎤 Speak at events/conferences around the world
🚀 Launched 3 LinkedIn Learning Courses (150,000+ learners)
🌎 Travel and explore: surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking
🥇 Compete in endurance sports (Marathons, Ultramarathons, Triathlons)

Follow me for daily content on being a young founder (building in public), LinkedIn growth and monetization tips, brand deals, B2B creator/influencer marketing strategies, and more.

Message me if you’d like to chat about Creator Match (Brands & Creators), speaking at your event/conference, and sponsorship opportunities.

Founder

- We are the go-to career platform to knock out the competition and advance past the final round interview.
- Learn from Recruiters, Hiring Managers, and Career Experts.

AJ Eckstein 🧩

last year I attended SXSW with 1 team member... this year, 10 more 🤯 

And I'm speaking at 3 events while I'm here. 
1 official. 2 unofficial. All about B2B creator marketing.

The official session: "How B2B Creators Are Driving the Next $100M Wave"

B2B creators are quietly building the next $100M wave in the creator economy. These "professional creators" aren't chasing trends. They're trusted experts turning LinkedIn, newsletters, and podcasts into engines for influence and revenue.

This panel brings together leading voices from both sides of the ecosystem (brand and creator) to explore how creators are transforming B2B go-to-market strategies, reshaping brand trust, and unlocking new ways to drive growth in high-consideration industries.

I will be moderating a panel with:
→ Fiona Turko (influencer marketing at Gamma, ex-Zapier)
→ Will McTighe (Founder & LinkedIn Creator, 440,000 followers)
→ Dedrick Boyington-Warmack (influencer marketing at Gusto, ex-Fiverr)

Btw this is the ONLY official B2B session at SXSW!!

+ I'll also be speaking at 2 other events, Creator Gold and B2B Haus.

Come join us: https://lnkd.in/g9fER-8u

PS - We're also hosting our FIRST EVER company offsite the same week of SXSW. Renting a villa with 3 houses that fits 26 ppl. 2 pools. Movie theater.

Lmk if you need the list to the most exclusive events of sxsw ;)

Dust off the boots, we're heading to austin!! 🤠 

***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

Creator Marketing for Tech Brands | Founder @ Creator Match 🧩 | Fast Company Journalist | LinkedIn Learning Instructor (200K+ students) | TEDx & Keynote Speaker

Dear Pod Creators,

This is the 4th call this week with a brand running a LinkedIn creator campaign that explicitly said "no pod creators."

Let that sink in.

If you're in a content mill where everyone comments "great post" on demand, if you use automated commenting via AI/bots, if you have 100 comments in 1 minute of posting...

You're not building an audience. You're building a facade.

And brands are starting to notice.

It's no longer about reach.
It's about the RIGHT reach.

Engagement that comes from real people who actually care about what you say is worth 10x a thousand fake comments.

So yes, brands are now reviewing comment quality when doing creator sourcing.

💬 Are you building real influence - or just the appearance of it?

***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

Notion was the first real "hell YES" we got for this crazy LinkedIn Creator Marketing concept...

And I still think about how different everything would look if that yes never came.

Our first pitch was embarrassingly simple — find a handful of B2B Creators to share "How I use Notion to scale my business." 

Creator Match 🧩 barely existed. I was figuring it out in real time.

But one person took a chance on us anyway: Danielle Ito

Danielle runs influencer marketing at one of the most creative companies on the planet — and she's the kind of person who responds to Slack messages at 10 PM, speaks on stages all over the world, cares deeply about creators and partners, and somehow laughs at my terrible dad jokes on KO calls.

I'm supposed to call her a client. But she's really just a good friend.

Because of her early bet on us, we:
→ Literally broke the algorithm with the "Notion Faces" campaign
→ Paid out millions of $$ to LinkedIn Creators
→ Built something I genuinely couldn't have imagined a year before

I still think about December in Argentina 🇦🇷 — reviewing 55 Creator drafts with Danielle and Tara Knight 🧩 over Christmas week — not knowing we were about to launch what became the largest Creator campaign in LinkedIn history.

A year later, I'm still grateful for that first yes.

The ones who bet on you early? You don't forget them.

P.S. Danielle is building out her dream team at Notion and is hiring an Influencer Marketing Manager. If you know someone who'd thrive in this role, send them here → https://lnkd.in/giVcT8eb

Trust me - It's not every day that one of the best companies out there (with the best team) is hiring for their influencer team!! Go apply :)

🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

apologies in advance if your marketing/social team calls in "sick" today...

Creator Match 🧩 hosted our 3rd Marketer's Dinner of the year, this time in the best city in the world (Austin, Texas) 🤠 .

Marketers from Miro, Expedia Group, ManyChat, Airtable, and GoDaddy joined.

But this one was different. Not because Sarah Gav ordered a mushroom margarita with smoke and cotton candy, or that we celebrated Danielle Stapleton's birthday with 5 sparklers and s'more desserts...

But we ditched the rectangular tables and imported a round table into "The Guest House" in downtown Austin, because some conversations deserve to feel like a council of chaos.

We kicked things off with one question: "What's your craziest hot take on creator marketing right now?" 

And oh, they delivered:
🤖 Creator content will be an AI search play (AEO) over CPM/conversion play
🔧 AI/productivity creators are getting too $$ - brands should source creators in unexpected creator categories to find arbitrage (ie. welding creators)
📹 YouTube is about to be THE channel for tech brands
🤝 Long-term creator partnerships > one off posts
🎥 EGC will have a major moment (even outside just LinkedIn)
🎪 IRL brand trips are coming for B2B the same way they took over B2C TikTok
🎤 More tech companies will host their own single-day conferences (ie. ManyChat's Instagram Summit and Miro's Canvas)
🏈 The Mr. Beast x Salesforce Super Bowl spot was "bad" — but crushed its actual goal of pulling Gen Alpha away from Discord and into Slack

Some things were said that will never leave that room 👀

But my favorite part? Everyone was exchanging numbers, talking about having each other over for lunch at the office, wanting to jump on podcast episodes together, chatting co-branding opportunities, nerding out about AI and creator strategy, and so much more.

That's exactly why we do this.

If you're an in-house marketer, you can't exactly cold-call another marketing team for a strategy chat. That's where we come in. 

As a brand-side agency, it's our job to be the glue between brands. To create the room where those conversations can actually happen.

And we're going to keep building that room all over the world (as we've done these dinners in LA, SF, NYC, London and more).

PS - I was able to convince Ido Mart (CMO of ManyChat) to be his plus one for his C-suite offsite next week in Napa 🍷 

Tag someone who needs to be at the next one 👇  

The CM world tour continues: LA tomorrow, Thailand Saturday 🌎

***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

this company staged a fake parade with a band, gave away a Porsche 911, and hosted a boxing match in a park... all for a product launch??

Yep - it's as WILD as it sounds.

Every company is raising millions (if not billions), and launching another AI product. Brands are only able to stand out from the noise with unique marketing campaigns.

Enter the era of "stunt marketing". 

Wispr Flow, the AI-powered dictation app, just launched on Android, opening the door to 4 billion new users. And they didn't announce it with a press release. They took over the streets of San Francisco with something to remember...

The Porsche challenge
→ They put a $250k car on the line for anyone who could make their voice AI produce a single mistake. When your product survives that, you don't need a press release.

The Apple Store stunt
→ A brass band, a boxing match between an Apple-branded fighter and a Wispr Flow-branded fighter, and signs roasting Siri, all on Apple's doorstep. Positioning doesn't get more literal than that. And it's so easy to remember.

The viral loop
→ The CEO shared in his announcement post that he's giving away 6 months of Wispr Flow Pro for free if you like/repost/comment. Every person who wanted the deal became a distributor of the launch.

The deeper lesson: most tech launches fail not because the product is bad, but because they treat launch as an "announcement" rather than a "moment."

💬 What did you think of this wild launch?

Honored that Creator Match 🧩 could support this campaign launch, including flying out our very own YouTube Strategy Lead Joshua Gabay 🧩 to be boots on the ground in SF to activate even more creators, and helping run LinkedIn and YouTube campaigns. 

And big congrats to the Wispr team like Tanay Victoria Daniel Arpit Das on a killer campaign launch!

***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

a logo means nothing, until it stands for something...

The goal was never just to build a brand. It was a badge people are proud to carry.

Funny thing is on the outside Creator Match 🧩 is "just an agency."

But ask anyone in our world and they'll tell you it's something different.

We built something that didn't exist. Nobody had made it their mission to help creators monetize on LinkedIn and in B2B spaces. Nobody was helping Tech brands run creator marketing. 

So we did. Call it a "match" made in heaven lol.

1.5 years later - hundreds of creators, millions $$$ paid out, many incredible brand campaigns run, and a community so strong it's dangerous.

And there's NOTHING better feeling than getting a Creator their FIRST brand deal, showing them that it's possible.

The green puzzle piece 🧩 is how we show up online. And we're building it into something people want to be part of, not just work with.

We get tons of DMs from candidates who want to join to add the emoji to their linkedin headline lol.

Like the beehiiv bee 🐝. People don't add that to their LinkedIn because they have to. They do it because they're proud to be in the ecosystem.

Your logo is just art unless it has a mission behind it. Build something bigger, and focus on the impact.

💬 What other logos make you feel something?

S/o these awesome comments on Emily Huffer 🧩's job announcement post!

***
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

Creators below: Alina Franzman Yanni Pappas Sophie Miller Enara Roy

the ripple effects of what you build don't always find their way back to you... 

Sometimes they do, and when they do, you remember why the LinkedIn Creator Community is like nothing else.

We hit 10,000 followers on our LinkedIn company page for Creator Match 🧩 this week, and while that might sound like a vanity metric, what followed was anything but.

A creator (Sharon J.) slid into our DMs with a gift (see below) and a message I'll never forget:

***
"I’ve been following Creator Match for a while, but last year something really personal shifted for me when you were part of the The Wishly Group Creator Scholarship. Winning that scholarship genuinely changed my life as a creator. I’ve actually been documenting my before and after since that moment.

You probably don’t see the ripple effects of that decision every day, but it meant everything to me.

After winning, I had a session with Tara Knight 🧩. Her advice pushed me to post more, something I was honestly overthinking for months. That one push created momentum I didn’t have before. I’m so grateful.

When I saw Creator Match hit 10K+ organically on LinkedIn, I had to create something. It just felt right. I built a small interactive piece using Canva and Figma, nothing official, just a tribute from a creator who really believes in what you’re building. Thank you for building something that truly supports creators."

***
I'm sharing this because this biz has been hard. Really hard. Growing pains. No sleep. Too much travel. Wayyyy too much coffee. Living out of a suitcase for weeks at a time. A team that's grown to nearly 30 people, which is incredible...  but high stress to make this work for them

There are days you wonder if you're getting it right. If the pace is sustainable. If it's all adding up to something worth fighting for.

Then a message like this lands in your inbox.
And you remember it is. Keep building. 

Show up for your community, and they will return the favor ;) 

-
🔔 Follow me AJ Eckstein 🧩 for more content on entrepreneurship, B2B Creator Marketing, and Brand strategies

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