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Quiet product placement

A creator shows their day, has breakfast, quickly scans it with the app, and moves on. Followers copy big creators anyway, so watching one use the app does the work a pitch would. The aim was four videos a month, so viewers saw the same creator using it four times.

One creator, Jessie from the Mormon Wives, showed the app once and never again. A video like hers brought a couple of hundred promo code uses, sometimes thousands.

How creators were pitched

Creators like this suit the first-photo feature, because taking a picture of food to log calories looks natural on camera and slips into a video without a script. The pitch to creators was to keep making their normal videos and sneak the app in, since a creator handed a word-for-word script hates it.

The app also had to appear in the first 15 seconds, one of the team's biggest rules. The goal behind all of it was to turn Cal AI into a trend like HYROX, the app everyone uses and not only people in fitness.

Why does watching a creator use something persuade?

Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl described parasocial interaction in 1956, meaning the one-sided bond viewers form with media figures. People in that bond treat the figure like a familiar acquaintance. What the figure uses or recommends then carries the weight of a friend's habit. Repeated viewing strengthens the bond.

Why do scripted ads feel off to viewers?

The persuasion knowledge model, proposed by Marian Friestad and Peter Wright in 1994, holds that people recognize persuasion attempts and adjust their response to them. Once a viewer spots a script, they weigh it as an ad instead of taking it as an organic moment. A meal scanned in passing gives them little to notice. The model has since been applied widely to studies of sponsored content.

How does HYROX keep races comparable?

HYROX is a fitness racing format that began in Germany in 2017, founded by Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste. Every race alternates eight one-kilometer runs with eight workout stations. The sequence of stations is the same in every city. That sameness lets athletes compare times worldwide.

More from The Superwall Podcast

Business & StartupsSaturation made videos more profitableShowing an app to the same audience again and again made each influencer video pay better over time, even as more creators posted it.
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