---
title: Building a UGC engine — emotional personas, sourcing, creator deals, relationships
slug: ugc-engine-personas-and-creator-deals
summary: Tushy's four pillars for a scalable UGC program (personas by emotional trigger incl. "white space" personas, sourcing from founders/employees/customers/TikTok Shop, percent vs flat-fee vs retainer deals — 10–15% not 5%, relationship management), plus Caraway's 1,000-live-ads team structure.
domain: marketing
tags: [ad-creative, ugc, creator-programs, personas, influencer-marketing, meta-ads]
related: [partnership-ads-and-creator-selection, ugc-creator-briefs, customer-research-for-ads, founder-ads, holiday-sale-ugc-creative, influencer-deal-pricing-rpm-and-flat-rates, ugc-creator-recruiting-and-pay]
sources: [yt:FcI1R-oz-EI]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Building a UGC engine

## TL;DR
- Treat creative as a **supply chain**: brands that go from idea to execution with speed *and* quality win.[^1]
- Four pillars: **personas → sourcing + deals → briefs → relationship management**.[^2]
- Define personas by **emotional trigger**, not "male 35–44 who goes to Lifetime Fitness"; find creators who *live* the persona instead of briefing someone to talk about it.[^3][^4]
- Cheapest first creators: **founders, employees, existing customers**, TikTok Shop content.[^5]
- Percent-of-spend/GMV deals need **10–15%** to attract good creators; 5% gets poor quality.[^6]

## Details
**Scale reference.** Tushy partnered with **1,000+ creators in 12 months**; 30–40% of Meta spend runs through UGC (~30% whitelisting/partnership ads, ~10% mashups on the brand account). Caraway: **1,000+ live UGC ads**, **100–200 launches/month**, blended ROAS **2.2x+** (2026).[^7][^8][^9]

**Pillar 1 — personas (Tushy examples).** Mine your CRM for existing personas and double down; also attack **consumer white spaces** for incremental customers. Name them for fun (team rallies around them):[^3][^4][^10]
- *Sustainability Champion* — evergreen; source creators who already live that ethos.
- *Renovator Rachel* — practical upgrade, installs in 10 minutes, pays for itself via less toilet paper.
- *Manly Martin* (male skeptic) — Bachelor in Paradise's Brendan in a skit where being clean makes him more attractive to his girlfriend.
Root briefs in motivators, barriers, underlying emotions.

**Pillar 2 — sourcing.**[^5][^11][^12]
- *Founders*: whitelist from personal Instagram — costs nothing; Tushy uses two co-founders for different demographics.
- *Employees (EGC)*: Tushy's social manager appears in paid ads (drank bidet water to prove it's clean); a separate alias account "@bidetgirls" for her and roommates feeds partnership ads. In-house creator will be "one of the hottest roles".
- *Customers*: watch tags/mentions (tools like Outer Signal); one customer's organic skit turned out to come from a **1.5M-follower** account.
- *TikTok Shop*: lower cost per asset, port content to Meta.

**Deal structures:**[^6][^13]
| Deal | When | Watch out |
|---|---|---|
| % of ad spend or GMV | little budget, de-risk, creator has skin in the game | 5% attracts low quality; 10–15% visibly better |
| Flat fee (e.g. $2,000) | finance wants predictability | some work, some don't |
| Retainer | proven roster creators who deliver fast and hit | mature programs mix all three |

**Pillar 4 — relationships.** Respond promptly — a creator study (cited by Jarelle) found **43%** most want faster replies or a clear no. Build a community (Discord/WhatsApp), share launches, add leaderboards/prizes (Tushy plans a Japan trip for its top creator). Use AI (Tribe, Runeth) for sourcing and deal flow, never as a bot talking to roster creators.[^14][^15]

**Team structure.** Tushy: head of growth + growth marketing manager pass persona needs from the ad account to the creator-partnership manager, who sources via Tribe/Runeth; influencer people should sit "shoulder to shoulder" with growth. Caraway: performance creative (briefs, concepts, QA) + paid media (fatigue, gaps) + an influencer team split by follower tier (seeding, super-influencers, standard UGC).[^16][^17][^18]

## Disagreements / caveats
- Sarah Levinger warns against volume for its own sake ([[brand-reality-capacity-and-alignment]]); these teams run very high volume but stress quality per creator.
- Numbers are self-reported by in-house teams at two DTC brands.

## See also
- [[ugc-creator-briefs]] · [[partnership-ads-and-creator-selection]]
- [[ugc-creator-recruiting-and-pay]] — organic app UGC pay models
- [[people/jarelle-tushy]] · [[people/janae-lavander]]

[^1]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 01:34 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^2]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 04:36 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^3]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 06:07 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^4]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 07:41 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^5]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 10:44 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^6]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 15:44 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^7]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 00:00 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^8]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 19:14 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^9]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 25:19 — Janae Lavander
[^10]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 09:40 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^11]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 13:08 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^12]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 14:40 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^13]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 17:10 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^14]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 21:53 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^15]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 20:46 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^16]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 49:17 — Jarelle (Tushy)
[^17]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 26:51 — Janae Lavander
[^18]: yt:FcI1R-oz-EI @ 50:11 — Janae Lavander