Whatnot: The Live Shopping Marketplace

Whatnot is a live shopping app where people auction off everything from sneakers to sports cards in real time. Imagine eBay if it were built for TikTok. It’s fast, creator-driven, and blew up on the App Store while I was there.

I joined the team during a critical growth phase to help scale its paid social efforts. What follows is how we turned underperforming content into a campaign that helped drive the app to #1.

CHALLENGE: Whatnot wanted to scale its paid social program quickly, but early UGC campaigns from our community of sellers weren’t delivering. Engagement was low, performance lagged, and the creative felt off…our sellers simply weren’t content creators.

INSIGHT: After reviewing performance data, I was reminded of a key learning from my time producing organic content for Jack In The Box…relying on actual influencers and micro-influencers to carry content creation was an automatic way into authenticity for a brand’s message. So I pitched a pivot in creative strategy, proposing we source influencer content to use in paid placements. Not soon after, one creator's unpaid TikTok went viral. The “unlock” had arrived: we didn’t need to force content creation…we needed to boost what was already working.

ACTION: We had our game plan — use creator insights and performance testing to shape narrative formats and visual hooks that better aligned with product flow and in-app behavior. For our creator-led efforts, I scraped TikTok daily to find the right micro influencers, negotiated usage rights, and with the help of Airtable AI built a lean, repeatable process for bringing that content into our media strategy. As demand grew, I pushed to form a smaller working group to speed content approvals and increase output without losing quality. Using Airtable AI, I tracked over 100 creator touchpoints to keep things organized and moving.

OUTCOME: The new strategy helped scale the campaign from $0 to $6M in paid spend within four months. Multiple posts went viral, and the Whatnot app climbed to #1 in the App Store’s Top Free Apps category and #2 in Shopping. Our new influencer workflow became the foundation for future paid creative efforts.