When I first started working on the Slim Jim brand, Slim Jim was a faded 90s meat stick struggling to connect with modern audiences with 9k followers to their name. 

In 2018, we made a radical change and quit all advertising to focus exclusively on organic social media, on a mission to be the snack that cures digital boredom. 

We started off on Instagram and Twitter, but knew that we needed to take a radical approach if we were going to make an impact on TikTok. We stopped behaving like a brand, and started behaving like a creator on the platform, adopting the persona of "The CEO of Verified Comments". 

Our approach was an immediate success, leveraging the brand's reputation as an amplifier of culture and content to earn us 4.2 million followers, 8 million UGC clips, 1.6 billion organic views, and 15% average engagement rate within the first six months following launch. This was equivalent to $19 million in earned media, with zero spent on paid ads within TikTok.