In the last issue, I told you about my perfect-on-paper date. Checked all the boxes. No spark.

But not one of the 55,000 people who read this newsletter asked, “What happened? Did you ever hear from him again?”

I think it’s because you already know what happens when there’s no spark. Both people feel it. I didn’t need to tell you.

But when it comes to influencer marketing, for some reason, we don’t admit to ourselves that these influencers we’re chasing? There’s no spark.

When you’re stuck hiring the same type of creator over and over again — producing the same content, in the same category, with the same audience — your brand starts to lose its magic.

Most of the time, we overfit to the point of a dead end. Scaling gets harder, content gets same-y, and performance goes meh.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to a new framework: we call it storyfitting.

If overfitting happens when your criteria get too narrow, storyfitting happens when your criteria start matching the story you want to tell.

And to do that, you need to look at creators differently. You want to find the moments, the mirrors, and the unexpected that can bring your brand back to life.

Lens #1: Look for the moments

People don’t wake up thinking, “I should really buy some direct-to-consumer athleisure today.” 

What usually happens is they put on the leggings they’ve been wearing for months, do a squat, and hear the unmistakable sound of fabric tearing.  

Then they think, “Great, now I need a new pair.”

Those real-life moments — the ones that trigger someone to start looking for a product— are called category entry points. It is these category entry points that every brand wants to be associated with and remembered. (In this case, when leggings surrender to the fabric gods.) 

Some other examples: 

• A protein bar brand's trigger moment might be, “I don’t have time to eat between Zoom calls.”
  

• For a skincare brand? “I want to look alive for my friend’s wedding this August.”

• For a bedding brand: “I want my bed to feel like my hotel from the holiday I just got back from.”

The mistake I see us make in influencer marketing is assuming that the only relevant creators are those squarely in our brand’s product category. We sell makeup. We want beauty creators. We sell running shoes, and we look for runners.

But focusing only on your product category limits your reach and growth.

When you start exploring the moments that trigger a person to want your product, your pool of potential influencers opens up. 

Let’s say you sell sleep supplements. Instead of only hiring wellness creators who already talk about melatonin and magnesium, you could also work with:

• Parenting creators who talk about bedtime routines for exhausted moms
  

• Fitness coaches who talk about recovery after training
  

• Mental health creators who talk about managing anxiety at night

Each of these creators shows up in a different moment when your product might become relevant. And each one introduces your brand to a fresh audience. The best part is you’re not always competing for attention in the same, saturated niche everyone else is targeting.

It gives you a more diverse pool of creators to choose from and lets you tell your story in ways your competitors might not. 

Lens #2: Find mirrors, not just matches

Products don’t just solve problems. They also help people express who they are — or who they want to be.

That’s why this second lens of storyfitting is all about identity.

Instead of asking, “Does this creator’s content match our category?”, you ask: “Does this creator reflect the kind of person our customer wants to be?”

Two creators can look identical on paper. They may be the same age, have the same audience size, and use the same platform, but speak to completely different identities.

In marketing circles, there’s the classic comparison between Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne to make this point: demographically, they’re similar, but their identities — and what they represent — couldn’t be more different.

Take a fitness brand, for example. You might find two creators in their twenties with big TikTok followings. Demographically, they’re the same. Performance-wise, they’re the same.

But one is an elite, disciplined athlete chasing personal bests. The other is a corporate girly “just trying to move my body and have fun.” 

If you’ve only been partnering with professional athletes, the second creator unlocks a whole new audience: the casual, everyday person doing their “stupid mental health walk”. 

This helps you move beyond The Obvious Creators™ and broaden your niche.

When Loop Earplugs' partnerships started hitting my FYP, I noticed they were focused on concert-goers. But there are only so many creators in that niche before you saturate it, right?

After some time, they had expanded that identity to include neurodivergent creators (people with noise sensitivities), moms, and office workers (people managing noisy environments).

If you only look for one identity closely related to your niche, like “We’re a beauty brand, so we can only work with makeup artists”, you’ll struggle to scale your influencer program. 

Exploring different identities gives you more options for finding creators who resonate with your customers and can tell a different kind of story about your product. 

Lens #3: Look for the unexpected

Then, we have the wildcards. The creators with a signature content style. 

Think Logan “the cucumber guy” Moffitt, or the “How long does it actually take” gal, or Sylvanian drama. 

Some creators have such a distinct format that their audience instantly knows what to expect from them. Because of that, the audience stops, watches, and stays engaged every time.

Take Logan “the cucumber guy”, known for his TikTok videos making cucumber salads. He’s not a lifestyle influencer in the traditional sense. He’s not a beauty creator. Not a haircare expert. But brands like Flamingo (body hair removal) and K18 (haircare) partnered with him anyway.

They didn’t force him to break his flow. Instead, they let their products appear naturally within the world he had already built and create the kind of video his audience already loved.

That’s what I call “hiring for format”: finding creators who already know how to hold their audience’s attention and trusting them to bring your product into that style in their own way.

These creators may not live in your product category, they may not be who your audience wants to be, or use your product in trigger moments, but their signature content style captures audiences' attention and gives your brand a fresh new face. 

Have you ever hired a creator outside your niche who totally overperformed? I’d love to hear the story. Reply and tell me how they were a misfit and what happened. 👀

See you next time!
Eleni Zoe xx
Brand @ Modash. Say hi on LinkedIn or visit Modash.

The Out of Office Haul

Yes, I read your automatic out-of-office replies. It's become a weird ritual for me, so I thought I’d share it with all of you.

A kajillion of you are on annual leave for the summer. Seriously. Every second OOO just says: “See you in two weeks!” Very few of you, tragically, included the juicy details I live on.

But some of you did. And you are legends.

• One of you was at The King’s Trust Awards. (Do we have a winner in our circle?)

• Another was in Terschelling without a laptop. (But with plenty of sunscreen.)

• Someone’s currently eating too many gyros in Greece.

• At least one of you is blissfully not checking emails at all. (We’re all a little jealous of this one.)

• Somewhere out there, a field is hosting a reader at the ABR Festival. (Not sure if that’s the Adventure Bike Rider Festival or the Alternative Brains Rule Festival, but I support both.)

• And yes: someone got married! (Congrats!)

• My favorite out-of-office this week?

  "I’m currently testing my superpower of being in two places at once. Spoiler: It’s not going well."