Happy Thursday!

I sat down for a live interview at Social Commerce Summit talking through everything I've learned working with creators since 2017. You can listen to my full explanation of “The Hudson Method” (and why it’s called that) below.

Vendor of the Week

Q4 Summit — Q4 is won in this room.

Every Q4 plan looks clean in September. Then BFCM gets close, CPMs climb, creative starts fatiguing, a hero SKU gets tight, and three teams realize they built three different promo calendars.

The brands that win the quarter don’t avoid those problems. They pressure-test the plan before the pressure shows up.

On September 24, I’m bringing founders, CMOs, and eCommerce operators to Capitale in New York City for the Ecom Founders Q4 Summit. It’s one full day built around the decisions that will make or break the next three months.

Every session should help you make one sharper decision before October. The room brings together founders and senior operators ready to compare notes and trade what’s working.

Brand tickets are currently free after verification. They include the full day, lunch, the networking happy hour, and all of the Q4 playbooks and templates.

If you operate a brand and will be in New York City on September 24, apply for a free ticket to the Q4 Summit.

Why Your Brand Needs A Creator Army

Paying an influencer a flat fee to post and hoping for the best doesn't work anymore. The brands actually winning have built infrastructure around creators the same way they'd build a media plan, exclusivity, commission, and real ongoing management.

Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

What I pulled from this one:

1. Creators are microcultures. The more of them you can genuinely represent, whether it's a chiropractor, a dietitian, or a gamer, the more chances someone finds your product and feels like it's actually for them.

2. The Hudson Method floods the middle of the funnel. Instead of renting influencers who work with 25 other brands, you sign creators exclusively and pay them on commission. Anyone searching for your product runs into videos from every angle, which is both a sales channel and social proof at once.

3. A celebrity is an accelerant, not a savior. Feasibles needed Walmart distribution. Lemme needed real manufacturing. A famous face on a mediocre product just gets you a blurry version of that product, faster.

4. Twelve months from now, content wins the whole funnel. Top of funnel for awareness, middle for the research phase nobody talks about, bottom for the final push. Whoever owns the most content across all three owns the category.

That's all for today

If your creator strategy is still one-off gifting and hoping for a story mention, time to go back to the drawing board.

It's Thursday, and it's all downhill from here. Get some rest, drink some water, and I'll see you Sunday.

Nik