From 8k to 210k followers in nine months.
- Creator partnerships, Content and short-form video, Paid social
- 2025
- Instagram, TikTok
The challenge
Tidewater made good swimwear and posted like a catalog: flat lays, product codes, and a link in bio. It had 8,000 followers, most of them friends of the founders.
Every spring launch went out to the same small audience and sold through slowly. Paid ads using the catalog shots cost more each season.
Our approach
We stopped showing the product and started showing the water. Twelve creators who actually swim, from open-water clubs to lifeguards, filmed what a suit looks like after forty laps.
The studio cut each shoot into a dozen short videos. The ones that held attention organically became the ads, so the paid budget only backed work that had already proved itself.
The work
Results
210k
Followers, up from 8k
4.1M
Views on the launch series
38%
Of online sales from social, up from 6%
“We asked for more followers. They asked what a follower was worth to us. That question paid for the whole retainer.”