This 20yr old girl is a marketing genius…

0:00And my very first tweet where I kind of announced my arrival already had like 20 likes, which is nothing, but that's a lot more than most people on X cuz most people stay in like one, two, three likes jail. But my very first tweet already had some sort of traction. We made a LinkedIn post about it and we had over I would say maybe 2,500 applications. I guess my strategy for marketing or just producing content is to just try do the opposite of what

0:29people are doing right now. How do you manage a content person? I think you just got to I think we're all sensing this. The secret to blowing up your startup is not your product, your funding, your connections. It's actually just finding the right cracked 20-year-old Tik Tocker. Meet Ununice Lie, the college student who became the CMO of a viral startup, Series, racked over 3 million impressions across LinkedIn and Twitter, created not one, not two, but three viral launch videos for Series, and is famous for, well, let's say unconventional marketing techniques. You see, Ununice didn't just go viral by accident. She's the genius behind some of the most unconventional marketing

1:06tactics you've seen. from turning Hinge conversations into Twitter content that millions of people couldn't stop talking about to hosting events during New York Tech Week that pulled in over 3,000 RSVPs. Not only that, but her personal Instagram reels have hit over 2 million views. And she's created such a buzz around startups that investors are literally sliding into her DMs, begging to help them out. So, in today's episode, we're going to go deep into the minds of the exact type of person every startup is hunting for. You'll learn the unconventional strategies that made Ununice the poster child for Gen Z marketing genius. How she built a pipeline from college campuses to tech

1:39success and most importantly how you can spot and hire the next Ununice for your own company. Let's dive in. I guess the first thing I'm curious about is how did the whole Hinge thing start? I only really joined the tech startup world this summer and Twitter X is where you have to be. It's the hub for where everyone is talking about the latest news and just sharing information, right? So, while I was working at series, we were just saying like we have to find our way onto this platform. And I actually had a really old Twitter account that I made in 2016, but I've never posted on it. And my very first

2:13tweet where I kind of announced my arrival already had like 20 likes, which is nothing, but that's a lot more than most people on X cuz most people stay in like one, two, three likes jail. But my very first tweet already had some sort of traction. So I just started off tweeting like build in public because that seemed to be the trend. But because that's the trend, no one really notices what you're doing. At this time I was in New York, right? And it was my first time being single during the summer. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to get on Hinge and have some fun with it." And in

2:42my Hinge bio for a job, it says like startup. So people would always ask like, "What kind of startup do you work at?" it because if people are very interested in these unconventional careers, right? So then I'll be playful with it. So instead of just telling them the startups, I'll be like, "Oh, the first AI social network or I'll just drop hints." This is the very first tweet that I made based off Hinge. So this person ended up searching me up and he said, "Series is cool." And as the marketing growth person, my number one priority is converting users. So I just give him a cheeky. So you're trying to

3:15become a user. And I think this tweet in particular blew off because people found the fact that I named him Jason Bracket Hinge super duper funny because I'm like reducing him to a hinge date or something like that. And I think um there's just a running joke about like you know you would do anything for users because this tweet went like pretty viral in my eyes. I actually went on a date with this guy and I physically turned him into a user. I walked him through the entire onboarding process and yeah watched him become a user right in front of me. So yeah, I didn't like

3:45want it to be too overt. So we just had a really good time. We actually talked about life and ambitions and stuff before I popped the question at the end of the day. Popped the question. The user conversion question. That's funny. Yeah. Like when you put it that way, it kind of reminds me of just the sort of like app content on short form meta where you need to hook the user with something and like tell a story basically and then at the end if you have the CTA, it's like, oh, this was an ad, but then like it doesn't really matter cuz the user enjoyed watching the

4:19video and then they got served an ad at the end, but they were entertained along the way. Do you have other formats that you feel like you kind of applied that formula to? So, one thing that my content friends and I have identified is that people do really enjoy the dayby-day format because people they're very curious, right? Like they want to see if you can actually attain your goal. So, they will follow you to follow

4:42this journey. Like the challenge format, I feel like people are really into that. I feel like every startup founder is looking for something like this or something like you to tell the story. Yeah. In the mindset of a founder, you're kind of just like, okay, I either need to learn how to do this myself or I need to hire a Ununice or a Rajan or like what are you supposed to do as a startup and you see the traction, you see like this works, but then you just

5:07don't know how to get into this. Honestly, everyone should give a shot. All founders should give a shot at building their own personal brand because an advice that someone once gave me is that your personal brand stays with you forever, but the company will come and go. So even as a founder, this might not be the only startup you ever do in your life. So it's really important to build your own personal brand that people can follow throughout your entire career. But big creators are really good at building your own brand, but that doesn't necessarily translate to being able to build someone else's brand. So you have to be careful of

5:39that. I feel like you were almost trained as a creator on making brand content. I've made content for a very long time because I actually have a film background. So, I did this for fun. I know how to make cinematic content, but I definitely trained myself to make content in the perspective of a company

5:57or a brand to tell their story. I feel like the tables have turned completely. It's like it used to be like, oh, you're the social media intern at a startup and you're like kind of bottom of the totem pole and now it's like the social media intern is basically the CMO. Like that's how you get distribution these days. So, from your perspective, like what makes you want to work at a startup? So, I was just always into the startup world. I was part of a startup fraternity at my school, Sigma Pi. So, I was surrounded by a lot of like like-minded people who are looking to get into the space. And

6:28while I was applying to my regular corporate internships, I was also keeping my eyes out for like startup positions. So, I would say my start at my original company was that I made a cinematic launch video for them, which helped them raise their $3 million because it went viral within the VC world. And that really gave me the leverage that I needed to look for other

6:50jobs. So after series, and I'm sure there were a lot of people trying to hire you, what was wrong with the pitches that you ignored or that you said no to? I think it's because when they reach out to me, they're not really innovating either. They're just looking to me for ideas. So I would get a lot of LinkedIn DMs saying like, "Hey Unice, can you join our team and help us come up with a viral format like the TV show you came up with?" Yes, that would be my job to help come up with that format. But I think it's very clear when a founder

7:19isn't really putting thought into how they want to approach it when they just come to you saying like, "Okay, I want my own version of a TV show." Rather than saying like, "Okay, my target audience is this and that." I think they might appreciate a campaign like this because they love watching Love Island, so let's see how we can spin up our own version of this, you know? So that kind of pitch has more thought behind the their users and I think that also reflects on the company and the

7:45products. That's actually kind of a gold nugget there. I feel like a lot of startups, they just look at virality and they're like, "Oh, I want that." But then they don't really think about it. It's a collaboration. You need to have a product and you need to have the marketing, but then you also need like a connection between the product and marketing. like there needs to be a reason why the marketing is being done for that specific product. So you recently started working at this new startup. What was that pitch like? Like what made you want to work on this

8:14project? Ser is actually built by my closest friends from Carnegie Melon. So they've seen me through my entire journey this summer. They've been watching and they've been working on their own things and I just really strongly resonate with their mission. And I think this is the best opportunity for me to be able to work with my best friends on something that I really care about. And it's so rare to be able to do that. I'm just lucky that this kind of fell into my laps. And the timing worked out pretty

8:41well for me, too. I feel like people like everyone wants to get into the mind of Gen Z. It's like what do zoomers care about? They just it's just vibes, right? Like zoomers just they just want to build cool with their friends. I feel like that's the classic line that I've been seeing for the past like couple years. Sounds like for you it's just fun. like you

8:58just want to work with your friends. It's sort of just the vibe. Yeah, I agree. I think I'm lucky to grow up in an environment where my parents support me, whatever I do. And actually, my dad had his own stint in startups back in the 2000s. He was a direct competitor with Trip.com. He grew his company to 50 employees before they ran

9:15out of money and had to sell to them. So, my dad really understands what it's like to be in a small startup. And I did get some offers from other startups which pay like two times, three times more than I'm getting paid at SER, but I think I'm still really young, right? I have all the time in the world to make as much money as I want. So when a good vibe opportunity like this comes around,

9:37I have to take it and give it a crack. And honestly, I truly believe that this can be a generational product. We're in a way trying to bring back Facebook but for our generation. The big motto that we have at Sa is that people's desires, their main drivers of motivation in life is to understand and be understood. I love the return to like wholesome social media movement. It's like definitely needed. For those of you who don't know, this interview is brought to you by Superwall, the all-in-one platform for payw wall management and

10:07revenue analytics for your mobile apps. Let's get right into it. I want to just recap the the whole like cringe saga. So, you have all these tweets that went viral and they did really well on tech Twitter. I feel like this was an interesting I guess you could call it almost like a campaign like a marketing campaign or like a content series. It wasn't just like one way where you're just making content and people are reacting to it. It was very like reflexive. you're almost like making this content and then you like see how people respond to it and then other people kind of start participating

10:39in it or they're literally trying to find you on Hinge in whatever city you're in. Like could you just kind of walk through like that whole journey of like doing the Hinge series and interacting with people on Twitter and then like the Hinge to Twitter flywheel? I think you're correct in saying that it's very reflective of the culture because none of this content is fabricated. I don't fake these conversations. These are real conversations that happen which shows that this is the real community. This is what this is what the SMX tech community

11:08looks like outside of their main domain. And like it's pretty funny, right? Like in terms of baiting, there were people who would like they'll set a trap for me. They'll ask me like, "What's your startup?" And once I respond, they're like, "Aha, I got you." And I'm like, "This is like a little bit this is so interesting." But I think people come on to hinge with the expectations that like there's probably not that much that will come out of it. So I just kind of continue on with this little campaign. I never mean to make any of these tweets maliciously. I just think it's a really

11:40fun insight into how people are acting. It's pretty funny cuz I was in New York, but I was really playing into the personification of a SF email and people really enjoyed watching that happen. That's interesting. Yeah. It's almost like a whole archetype and like character. You're yourself and you're having like actual conversations, but you definitely leaned into it. That's

12:01cool. I think you have to like you kind of have to full send the persona, right? If you only put a foot in the door, then people are going to be able to tell that okay, maybe this is not your true self and you're trying too hard, right? But if you really like put your entire brand/personality into it, the smart people can realize that, okay, this is a smart persona they're putting on. They know what they're doing and at the same time they're able to like play along

12:26with it. Yeah. The more creators I meet, the more I realize this is true. It's like you take one like one small aspect of your personality that is true. It's like truly authentic, but then you just play it up to the max. Like the difference is that on the internet you are in a crowd of like a hundred people. So you have to like play up your personality to make yourself stand out. But in person, you're having a one-to-one interaction and that's when it's easier to show who you are as a

12:53complete person. And then what was this like? What happened here with Jonathan? Like he he was building a dating product and then he found you on Hinge. Like what happened with that? He wanted to build his own dating platform, which is Cupid. And it just happened that that was when I was going viral for being on Hinge. So the natural progression is that it makes sense that I'm part of his video. So, he reached out to me asking, "Could I put you in a video?" And he also asked me for permission to use my puppy as bait because a week before this launch video came out, my dog died and I posted about

13:27it on Twitter. He asked me for permission about it. So, the reason why his video went viral is cuz one, he used a very trending topics slashperson in the video, right? Like, everyone knows me as the person lurking on Hinge. And then two, the comment that he left on my post was very outrageous. Like,

13:45you don't talk about someone's dead pet. People would comment on that and that just causes more engagement, more outrage. As much as I hate it sometimes, but outrage and absurdity causes virality. I feel like some people might see this like why would Ununice participate in this like in the whole like Twitter hinge dating meta? like he was building a product, but did he have viral posts

14:09or anything before this? Before the Cupidly launched, he had maybe two or three thousand followers, but he's been like an early engager in my tweets, I guess. I didn't really mind it too much. And in general, I separate my personal feelings from my online persona quite well. So, first of all, I thought it was a pretty interesting concept. And, you know, the pitch is pretty good, right? like, "Okay, I'm making this video that you're going to be a part of, and I think it'll go viral, so that benefits both of us." And I just am not really afraid of the backlash, I guess. So, I was able to

14:43just say, "Yeah, sure. I don't mind being a part of your launch video." I feel like this is a good lesson in almost like borrowing clout. Like, if you see someone going viral and you're like FOMOing and you're like, "Oh, how do I do that?" The lesson here is you can just be part of it. you were going viral for this niche and he had been studying you reply guying on your Twitter and he recognized that oh I could just collab and that'll help both of us you know this video got like 1.5 million views tagged you in like the center of the tweet so you got more

15:14attention from this and the door startup did as well everyone kind of won from this if it makes sense for these two parties to collab then I think you'll do very well as opposed to you just see someone with a lot of clout out and you have nothing to do with them, but you want to borrow their clout, it's just not going

15:30to have the same effect at all. Okay, let's talk about reels. So, your initial reels were sort of more classic like vertical video and I think you sort of like had this cinematic style, but I feel like you're starting to switch up the style a little bit. Do you think horizontal video on like a vertical video platforms is actually like the new thing? So, if you scroll down and click

15:53onto, let's say the one with the camera. This was just like a minute and a half video of me talking. It doesn't have that many likes. It only has 35,000 views, but it actually converted to, I think, between like 200 or 250 followers, which is actually a very high conversion rate for Instagram. I think the reason why this did really well is because it's different, right? Like, everyone is making vertical videos with loud text and these like really rage baity hooks. So when they finally see a less edited video that's a horizontal format and it's just, you know, a minute 30 seconds of someone just talking about

16:28their lives, the people realize that, okay, this is something different and this might be something that I want to follow along. I guess my strategy for marketing or just producing content is to just try do the opposite of what people are doing right now. But, you know, still maintain some of the methods that are guaranteed to work. I do still have my hooks, but the format of the content itself is the opposite of what's

16:54popular right now. Yeah. Like you still have hooks in a lot of these videos, but then the style of the overall video is like calm. But I feel like once people kind of catch on to the calmness and it's like, "Oh, wait. Actually, this is like a real human. It's kind of authentic." That's the original retention editing, right? It's just like normal authentic content where they feel like they're connecting with the person. Are there any other styles that you feel like are what's the next meta like besides the the calm meta is almost a prediction in itself. It's not quite become like the full mainstream yet, but

17:26any other trends you're like looking out for? I'm really curious to see how the attention economy trend will continue. A lot of these social media interns are going back to school. So, how are these startups going to sustain these loud and crazy campaigns? So, that's something I'm like keeping track of. Like maybe Cle will be the only people doing it. I feel like the whole team is young, so

17:46they're able to like continue with that. But these other startups that hire younger people, I'm I'm curious how they're going to keep up with it. I guess some trends that I see emerging like gorilla marketing tactics, right? Like there's this summer a lot of people have been gifting each other donuts, gifting each other doormats and it's like a very sweet way of gaining exposure. Everyone's going to post about this kind act that you do and that gets

18:10your name out there. That's classic actually. That makes so much sense. I guess that's always been a thing in sales. Like I feel like a lot of like enterprise sales people like understand this concept of like oh you got to give your clients gifts and stuff but I feel like that whole tactic is amplified by social media and it's like well documented in like psychology right so I study decision science so something we talk about a lot is social proof and if one person post about it everyone's just going to follow along for example when I did the series Hampton's campaign I had a bunch of

18:40interns race for a spot in the TV show and you know I I don't think students really like to post on LinkedIn but once I had like one or two people posting about it everyone became really comfortable posting about it too. So then like two days we had over a hundred interns post a banner writing a whole paragraph about um how excited they are to be part of this journey like what

19:04entrepreneurship means to them. Yeah, LinkedIn is so unsaturated. I feel like people love to make fun of LinkedIn, but if people are making fun of the content on a platform, that's a good thing. Like that means that the content is bad, so you can just make good content and stand out on the platform. I think LinkedIn is such a undervalued channel for students at least. I think this summer we've definitely seen a lot of students learning to take advantage of it, but it's still relatively uncharted territories and I think it's so beneficial to just start building a brand on LinkedIn. I would say the highest value followers you can have are

19:39probably LinkedIn followers. That makes sense. I mean, that's where the money is. You know, it's valuable. It's worth learning. This kind of reminds me of Monad. If you look into this, they release these like cards and you have to claim it with your Twitter account, but not everyone has one. So, then you have to get an invite from someone who nominates you. Was there an element to that with this as well where you have to get an invite or did you

20:01like hand select the interns? We hand selected them. We made a LinkedIn post about it and a LinkedIn job and we had over I would say maybe 2,500 applications. Oh wow. And I just personally texted a lot of them inviting them to join the series race. So initially it was 12, but then there's just so many applications that you just did 100. Is that like what No, no, no. So, the show did only have 12 interns. But in my head, I was like, that would be such a waste to just pick

20:3112 people and just continue on with it. So, why don't we make it a little competition, right? Like, use all the channels that you can have. We had a bunch of people sign up for it. I think we had 150 people join the race to the Hamptons and then one of the final challenges for the race was to invite as many people as you can. The first place person actually invited 120 people in one day. I just thought like just use all the opportunities you can get to increase exposure and that's just

20:58through being a bit creative with it. Let's reverse it and like actually what would your parting words be to startup founders that want to get good at social media or find a cracked college student who's good at social media. When looking for them, just look at the potential, right? See their ability to turn a boring topic into an engaging story, right? like they don't have to have a million followers right off the bat because if they have the skills to tell a story, they're going to be able to bring in the attention and cult

21:30following that you need. I think that's a common question that I get a lot from founders actually. It's like how do you manage a content person? Are you supposed to be prescriptive so that you know that the content is actually and the marketing is actually getting results? Do you have KPIs? You have metrics or do you just let them do their own thing and sort of outsource the creativity? What's your perspective on that? Like is there a middle ground

21:52or is it one or the other? I think it depends on the creator. Like if they're like a seasoned creator, right? Like they've built accounts from the ground up before. I think you just got to trust them, right? Cuz the more you prescribe them like a formula, the more you prescribe them things to do, the less creative they feel. Like creative burnout is very real, especially for content creators because it's quite hard to milk out so many

22:12stories from a singular concept, right? So if you put more pressure on them, they're not going to be able to execute as well as they're able to. It's just like virality is a very interesting thing, right? It's part strategy, part luck, right? So at least in my perspective, I think the KPIs that you can set would be like they're going to have to be more qualitative than quantitative because you can't set like a okay, this particular video has to get a million likes. No one can ever guarantee that. Even a content creator with a million followers, right? But what you can say is like okay video has

22:44to be able to talk about the brand identity of this company and the information that users take away from it should be XYZ and then from there you guys work together to build the quality of the videos. You can only really get your quantitative KPIs once you have some data points. That makes sense. So kind of like have your marketing person understand what the goals are and like who the user is, who the market is, and then from there kind of just let

23:10them let them cook. Yeah. Basically, let them cook. You got to trust them. You got to trust them. Okay. Thanks so much. This is really great. I learned a lot. Thank you. If you like that episode, this is the Super Wall podcast. It's a mobile apps podcast about growth tactics and distribution hacks. So, there's more episodes on this channel if you want to check them