"Partnerships with creators used to be difficult with endless back-and-forths and manual payouts. Icon's built-in workflows and automation make the process faster, hassle-free, and efficient." – TJ Ferrara, Co-Founder of BUBS Naturals
About the company
BUBS Naturals is a rapidly growing health & wellness brand dedicated to providing scientifically backed supplements made from sustainably sourced ingredients. Created by professional athletes and Navy SEALs, BUBS Naturals empowers people to live fuller, more vibrant lives.
The problem
BUBS Naturals needed to rapidly accelerate A/B testing for influencer ads
Social proof is crucial for a hypergrowth brand like BUBS Naturals. However, partnering with creators to produce authentic, engaging content was proving more challenging than expected.
As BUBS began ramping up its influencer campaigns, Co-Founder TJ Ferrara found himself in a convoluted and frustratingly slow content creation cycle. On average, he would spend a month building a successful partnership with a new creator and working with them to produce a video.
After painfully slow back-and-forth communication on copy hooks and scripts, the results often still missed the mark due to minor issues cropping up like bad lighting and poor audio quality.
Critically, the lengthy nature of this creative process held him back from rapidly A/B testing and iterating on content assets to improve conversion rates. He knew there had to be a faster, more efficient way to create impactful influencer content using AI. That’s when TJ discovered Icon.
“Seeing the outcome and ROI of a single video takes weeks. If it resonates with the audience, we can scale the ad. If it doesn’t, we’re forced back to another 30-day cycle of iteration. This was really putting the brakes on our growth as a brand.”
The solution
Partnering with Icon helped TJ and his team transform BUBS’ approach to influencer ad A/B tests and creator partnerships, leading to faster and more impactful results on every piece of the brand’s content. He ascribes this success to four primary aspects of the Icon platform.
Benefit #1 – 100x faster content creation cycles
Before onboarding with Icon, TJ would spend up to two months creating and testing a single video with his brand’s target audience. Now, he can accomplish this task in just three days.
Thanks to Icon’s AI-driven marketplace and AI-powered video generation tools, TJ can easily find influencers who fit his brand criteria and get started. This means he can jump into A/B testing different scripts almost instantly. Best of all, he doesn’t need to worry about creator approvals, payouts, or contracts – Icon handles it for him with their built-in AI likeness licensing.
With Icon’s streamlined workflow, TJ is not only testing on week one, but he also gets access to campaign analytics that empower him to make quick, data-driven decisions across channels.
Benefit #2 – Granular A/B tests for influencer ads
Using Icon, TJ has unlocked a level of testing control that would be impossible to achieve alone. With the platform’s AI-powered engine, he can try out different hooks, scripts, and even creators to identify the perfect combination that resonates with his audience and fine-tune his strategy.
Having virtually unlimited A/B testing opportunities has also allowed BUBS to tap into new and often unexpected market segments. For instance, TJ recently partnered with Fred, a 22-year-old student outside their typically older demographic. Once his team tested out a few scripts, the conversions on Fred’s ads skyrocketed, putting BUBS on the radar of an entirely new audience.
Benefit #3 – Built-in creator whitelisting capabilities
Building deep relationships that lead to creators genuinely promoting directly on their accounts has been historically tough for BUBS. That’s why they were thrilled to start whitelisting with Icon.
After onboarding, TJ has been able to expand his brand’s influencer outreach through Icon’s creator marketplace without dealing with the headaches that typically come with whitelisting.
Benefit #4 – Accelerated results at a fraction of the cost
Like many fast-growing brands, TJ had become all too familiar with the risk of negative-ROI influencer partnerships and ineffective allocation of a fixed account budget. Icon completely eliminated these issues from the get-go. Instead of paying $20K for a video, TJ allocates a fraction of this to Icon’s rapid production and A/B testing that generates immediate ROI.
In turn, these results feed into optimization of his ad spend and campaign strategy. The final outcome is lower total cost, as well as progressively lower CPAs and higher conversion rates.
“With Icon, BUBS is now A/B testing and iterating right out of the gate – while also whitelisting and experimenting with creators at a faster pace than ever. In short, Icon put us on a completely new path that we had never imagined was possible.”
The results
BUBS Naturals improved conversion rates by 50% after deploying Icon
With Icon, BUBS Naturals was able to ramp up A/B testing across their influencer ad campaigns and dramatically improve performance – saving time, effort, and significant capital resources in the process. Here’s a look at the results they’ve achieved so far after onboarding with Icon:
- 100x faster A/B testing cycles
- 100x cheaper with AI-generated videos
- 50% ad performance improvement
Looking ahead, BUBS plans to continue doubling down on their influencer strategy with Icon. On a final note, TJ is particularly excited to work with a team that’s truly invested in their customers’ success – and has a notable track record of working with fast-growing brands in the ecosystem.
