My role: Campaign strategy, budget, creator guidelines, creative brief, creator selection, contracting, execution and reporting.
Platforms: TikTok, Instagram Reels
ChapStick launched a brand refresh in 2026 with no dedicated influencer budget. A new logo usually gets a polite press release and a few sponsored posts that people scroll right past. The real risk was indifference, not criticism.
I carved out budget for the launch. Instead of spreading it across a roster of creators, I put all of it behind one: Emily Zugay, whose whole format is deadpan satire of brand logos.
The pitch was simple: let the internet's most famous logo critic introduce our new logo.
That was a hard sell internally, because it meant handing a rebrand to someone known for mockery. My argument was that her audience comes to her specifically for opinions about logos. A rebrand in her feed isn't an ad interrupting the content. It is the content. That made the placement native rather than a stunt, and made it far more likely to be watched, shared and talked about than a straight announcement from a lifestyle creator.
I wrote a brief called "Rise to the Occasion," built around the single biggest design change in the rebrand: the new "Rise" wordmark, which tilts the logo upward. Instead of asking Emily to announce the refresh, I gave her the change itself as the joke.
The brief works as a comedy structure with a clear arc:
I paired the script with visual references to set the comedic register, including an "acute angle / a cute angel" meme, a kissy-face selfie and a stairway into the clouds.
Every beat does brand work while it lands a joke. The audience walks away knowing the logo changed, what it used to look like, and that the new one points up, which is the whole idea behind the rebrand. The "worse" alternatives also echo the brand's own logo-misuse rules, so the bit teaches the guidelines by breaking them.
The brief was specific enough to guarantee the message landed, and open enough for Emily to make it hers. I framed it as a thought starter and invited her to exaggerate, go off-script and bring her own flavor. The structure protected the brand; the freedom protected the comedy.
The content ran as one TikTok video and one Instagram Reel.
In the first 48 hours, with no paid amplification:
Total views 7.27M
Unique reach 4.81M
Engagements 87.7K
Emv $219.4K
Return on spend (EMV) ~18:1
The two posts reached nearly 5 million people in two days on organic distribution alone. TikTok drove most of it, with 4.8M views and 75K engagements from a single video.
The audience was also the one the rebrand needed most. About 81% of viewers were 18–34, and more than half were 18–24, a young audience that a 145-year-old brand doesn't reach by default.
