Why Are So Many DTC Brands Using Their Founders as Influencers? | by Disha Shah | Oct, 2023

Is this a sustainable practice or a passing fad?

The founder-influencer approach isn’t a new concept. Many founders have been (mostly unknowingly) playing the influencer’s role for years.

In fact, Emily Weiss, the founder of the beauty brand Glossier, was one of the first few founders to do this. She used her personal account on Instagram to make company announcements.

What’s even more surprising is that 8–10 years ago, Instagram was only a plain photo-sharing platform — influencing wasn’t even a thing.

Yet Emily’s content resonated with her audience, and she won their support.

In this 2015 Instagram post, Emily asks her audience for their face cleanser preferences. It’s incredible to watch her community respond to her requests!

Like her, many DTC founders are using their social media presence today to not just talk about their product. But also to discuss what the brand stands for its values, mission, and so much more.

When founders become influencers, it naturally helps them connect with their customers — and understand their pain points.

But it’s uncommon how the founder-influencer approach also fetches these two core benefits:

1. Reduced Paid Marketing Expenses:

Today, influencer marketing is the fastest way to get your product in front of your ideal audience.

Bonus: if the influencer has high credibility, this visibility swiftly turns into sales.

That said, influencer marketing is pretty expensive.

According to Semrush, a mega influencer charges approximately $5,497 per post across channels, and a macro influencer charges $4,992 per post across channels.

But every penny counts when a DTC brand is on a shoestring budget. And with tight budgets, running an expensive influencer marketing campaign may not be the best way forward.

That’s when a brand can optimize its founder’s personal brand.

Let’s say the founder has a moderate following on social media.

Each time the founder shows up in an Instagram reel, TikTok clip, YouTube video, or podcast and shares content relevant to their offering, it plummets their and the product’s organic reach.

With each new content piece, the audience slowly feels, “This person knows why and what they’re selling. Maybe their product is worth checking out. It could be good.”

This exercise is indeed a long shot. But it slowly warms up the audience to buy the product.

The said approach certainly worked for Monica Grohne, the founder of Marea Wellness.

Monica fought a gruesome battle against PMS. When even the most promising medicines failed, she upped her nutrition levels. This lifestyle change remarkably worked to ease her PMS.

She realized like her, many other women battled PMS. Solely inspired to help them, Monica launched Marea Wellness, a holistic nutrition brand.

In 2 years, Monica built both:

How?

By sharing raw, personal stories about her painful combat with PMS and disrupted hormonal cycles.

Her vulnerability, incredible storytelling, and simple lifestyle tips struck a heartfelt chord among her followers.

The result?

Monica organically won her audience’s supreme trust in her product. Not just that, this trust helped Monica’s brand record a whopping revenue of 50k each month — without paid ads.

A remarkable feat for a homegrown brand!

Monica’s brand-building story is an inspiring example of how leveraging the founder-influencer approach solves two core purposes:

• Reduced cost of customer acquisition.
• Eliminate the brand’s reliance on external factors such as influencers.

2. Increases Authenticity and Brand Resonance:

The U.S. alone has 1,10,000–120,000 DTC brands.

In this crowded DTC ecosphere, how can your DTC brand stand out?

Ans: By showcasing authenticity.

But how?

Let’s look at it this way:

A founder is the birth-giver of the product. No one better than the founder understands the product. Also, no one better than the founder understands how it can help their audience.

The founder is the bridge between the audience’s pain and the product (the solution).

Now, imagine the founder capitalizes on this leverage and shows up in front of their audience. They passionately speak about the product’s why, how, and when.

Every pain point of the audience is addressed, and every benefit of the product is emphasized.

The audience believes the product is the answer to their problem, so much so that they’re convinced to buy the product.

When a founder creates this effortless sense of authenticity, a sense of relatability, the audience starts to feel an integral part of the founder’s mission.

That’s exactly what happened with Nadya Okamoto, a GenZ icon and an activist.

Her mission? To destigmatize menstrual cycles. In fact, Nadya ventured into multiple service projects to positively transform the period narrative, too.

As she worked more in the menstruation arena, she studied that most period pads took 500–800 years to decompose. Because they were loaded with plastic.

What she also noticed was most brands termed periods as ‘Bad time of the month’ or ‘This too shall pass.’ The messaging reeked of fear and embarrassment.

This sense of inadequacy and the market gap inspired her to build her period care brand. Thus marked the birth of August, a menstrual brand that was both gender-inclusive and kind to the planet.

Nadya extensively uses Instagram and posts pictures showing off her tampon.

But why?

To diffuse the ‘hush-hush’ around periods. And also to educate her audience about using planet-friendly pads.

How has this strategy helped her?

Because of her bold content, Nadya’s Instagram community raves for both her product and the meaningful work she’s putting in to create positive noise about menstruation.

Even the most successful influencer may not be able to create this kind of resonance that Nadya created.

Perhaps because an influencer has not lived the product’s backstory that the founder has. That’s what makes a founder-influencer approach powerful!