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.

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.³⁴
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).⁷⁸⁹

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):³⁴¹⁰

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.⁵¹¹¹²

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:⁶¹³

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.¹⁴¹⁵

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).¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

Disagreements / caveats

Sarah Levinger warns against volume for its own sake (Brand reality — production capacity, true creative cost and team alignment); these teams run very high volume but stress quality per creator.
Numbers are self-reported by in-house teams at two DTC brands.

Building a UGC engine — emotional personas, sourcing, creator deals, relationships

Building a UGC engine

TL;DR

Details

Disagreements / caveats

See also

Building a UGC engine — emotional personas, sourcing, creator deals, relationships

Building a UGC engine

TL;DR

Details

Disagreements / caveats

See also

Footnotes