SSubida Skills

Esc to close · results from all notes, skills and people

Mobile apps›Organic growth

PR and celebrity partnerships as an app growth channel (WeWard)

How WeWard grew four years with zero Meta/Google spend on a $3–5K/month PR retainer (one French TV segment gave 300K downloads in under five minutes), why the same PR failed in the US, and how an ambassador-plus-investor deal with Venus Williams changed press, hiring, CAC and retention.

Updated 2026-10-24·1 source·organic-growthprcelebrityinternational-expansionweward

PR and celebrity partnerships (WeWard)

TL;DR

  • WeWard spent nothing on Meta, Google or direct UA for four years: only organic and press.1
  • PR retainer $3–5K/month. Some months gave zero, some ~500K downloads; one good month pays for the agency “for 10 years”.12
  • A prime-time French TV segment 7–8 months after launch gave ~300K downloads in under five minutes (the app crashed).3
  • It worked in France, Italy and Spain but failed in the US even with an expensive agency. Journalists had no story about an unknown French founder.24
  • Fix for credibility: Venus Williams as ambassador and shareholder. She does TV and press, appears in onboarding and ads, and journalists answer emails.56
  • The effects (CAC down, retention/LTV up, hiring, press access) are real but hard to measure.7

Details

Why PR worked for WeWard (Yves Benchimol). The product is mass-market and sounds like a scam (“an app that pays you to walk”), so journalists tested it and found it real, which is a story. Yves had worked with the agency at his previous company. With no money, he got six months of deferred fees, and they then worked together ~5 years.38 After the TV spike, emails from users and high retention confirmed product–market fit, then ads monetisation kicked in (he cites ~100K daily users as the point where ads make money).9

Why the US was different. A mature market with less novelty, and no narrative — “one of the biggest apps in France” plus profitable earned a “so what?”. Being French was no advantage. US users and press needed local validation (an American icon or a known VC) and a more polished UX than European apps.41011

Finding the celebrity.121314

  • Criteria: well known in the US and abroad, sport/wellness values; tennis has global recognition.
  • Yves asked VCs and founders for intros. The actual pitch came from luck: Venus Williams was at the next table at a family lunch; he waited for a lull after dessert and opened with genuine admiration and his story.
  • She asked investor questions (D7 retention, LTV), asked for equity, and the deal became ambassador + investor with image rights and joint content.

Measured and claimed effects. Celebrity creative converts better and lowers CAC (the Super Bowl logic). Users seeing her in onboarding treat it as “Venus Williams’s app”, which Yves says raised retention. She posts to her own social, which brings organic installs.67

Today. WeWard now runs a full UA engine plus influencers, PR and product-led virality across 29 countries.15

Disagreements / caveats

  • Jacob Eiting notes few apps get PR to work intentionally, and that emailing journalists yourself is free. Yves’s success depended on a novel, mass-market story.16
  • One app, one celebrity; impact was not quantified. Don’t stalk celebrities — Yves’s chance meeting isn’t a repeatable tactic.

See also

Footnotes

  1. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 00:00 — Yves Benchimol ↩ ↩2

  2. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 28:17 — Yves Benchimol ↩ ↩2

  3. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 25:07 — Yves Benchimol ↩ ↩2

  4. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 29:02 — Yves Benchimol ↩ ↩2

  5. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 37:13 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  6. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 38:00 — Yves Benchimol ↩ ↩2

  7. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 38:51 — Yves Benchimol ↩ ↩2

  8. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 25:54 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  9. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 26:41 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  10. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 29:48 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  11. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 31:26 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  12. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 32:20 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  13. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 36:27 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  14. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 34:51 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  15. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 41:56 — Yves Benchimol ↩

  16. How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard @ 27:31 — Jacob Eiting ↩