Sep 3, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
Tom Cochrane is founder of Eleviam, a brand accelerator running more than forty CPG brands across Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop. Before building the agency, he put nearly five million dollars of…
Tom CochraneGuestEitan KoterHost
It happens every year, but I think in 2026 brands are feeling this particularly right.
And with the correct arm brief, and as long as you're actually figuring out your true customer avatar, their demographic, and aligning with creators that have a proven... know track record gmv it's not just follower account it's really do they match your brand and can you collaborate effectively um and there's still a lot of testing iterations and a lot of that still comes from just sheer volume of videos it's not
everyone's further with the 80 20 rule this is probably more like the 90 10 95 5 uh realistically but when you start seeing that you know the brands that are deploying this effectively are um Working with these creators and setting it up in such a way that not only are the creators well compensated, but they also are having the contractual agreements where now you have smart codes, you can go run, you have new meta creatives, you have new Google creatives.
If you set it up properly too, you have the rights to some of those videos and I have some new organic creatives for other platforms as well.
It's not just the awareness and the effect, it's also the creatives and the continued engineering of word of mouth marketing and advertising that you get.
Yes, and TikTok, as you rightly said, it's exploding very, very fast in terms of overall GMV that's been generated.
It also changes a lot because initially, in most of the niches, you could launch a product or launch a product line and grow organically, as you said, with product seeding, affiliate marketplace.
And what I see, like all over the place, you need a substantial GMV max, also advertising budget to make things happen, right? And TikTok shop as well.
The competition's gotten... fiercer across every category, in my opinion, right? Are there still opportunities to launch products? Absolutely.
And can you be scrappy and find ways to do it with a lean team and limited resources from a financial standpoint, creative standpoint, et cetera? I would say yes.
A number of emerging trends that if you capture them correctly will be incredibly powerful.
Agenic shopping, ranking for AEO, GEO, getting ChatGPT to recommend your products is also huge.
And we used to, you know, everyone's trying to stuff keywords in their titles and in their bullet points and anything they could because they could only read HTML text.
It happens every year, but I think in 2026 brands are feeling this particularly right.
And with the correct arm brief, and as long as you're actually figuring out your true customer avatar, their demographic, and aligning with creators that have a proven... know track record gmv it's not just follower account it's really do they match your brand and can you collaborate effectively um and there's still a lot of testing iterations and a lot of that still comes from just sheer volume of videos it's not
everyone's further with the 80 20 rule this is probably more like the 90 10 95 5 uh realistically but when you start seeing that you know the brands that are deploying this effectively are um Working with these creators and setting it up in such a way that not only are the creators well compensated, but they also are having the contractual agreements where now you have smart codes, you can go run, you have new meta creatives, you have new Google creatives.
If you set it up properly too, you have the rights to some of those videos and I have some new organic creatives for other platforms as well.
It's not just the awareness and the effect, it's also the creatives and the continued engineering of word of mouth marketing and advertising that you get.
Yes, and TikTok, as you rightly said, it's exploding very, very fast in terms of overall GMV that's been generated.
It also changes a lot because initially, in most of the niches, you could launch a product or launch a product line and grow organically, as you said, with product seeding, affiliate marketplace.
And what I see, like all over the place, you need a substantial GMV max, also advertising budget to make things happen, right? And TikTok shop as well.
The competition's gotten... fiercer across every category, in my opinion, right? Are there still opportunities to launch products? Absolutely.
And can you be scrappy and find ways to do it with a lean team and limited resources from a financial standpoint, creative standpoint, et cetera? I would say yes.
A number of emerging trends that if you capture them correctly will be incredibly powerful.
Agenic shopping, ranking for AEO, GEO, getting ChatGPT to recommend your products is also huge.
And we used to, you know, everyone's trying to stuff keywords in their titles and in their bullet points and anything they could because they could only read HTML text.
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