Alfie Dickens - Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI

It's kind of like the case study in our space, and, like, you would think, you know, the, the person who's able to scale the creator program, uh, maybe they've done some, like, crazy marketing agency before or scaled a bunch of other creators.

But, like, you kind of just started from scratch.

So, like, did you just have your own theories? For how to scale it, or were you just go with your gut? Like, along the different stages of scale, like, how did you, um, actually...

Like, where did you get the, the knowledge, I guess?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question.

I think what helped was working with Jake and Zach.

Jake and Zach had, like, a game plan, and, uh, we really just tried to stick to it.

You know, we had Calai's golden moment, which was the picture-taking feature.

So you take your picture, show the app that way, and we just tried to find influencers that could seamlessly get that into their videos.

And if they could do that, that meant that they could showcase the app without really pushing it.

So that was kind of, like, our goal.

But starting from scratch, we just reached out to a lot of influencers.

We had some marketing assistants that did it, and then they would basically book a call with me once it got handed off.

And I wrote, like, a script that I would kind of say on every single call.

Um, I just would try and get to know the creator, 'cause it's all about building relationships really.

So I'd get to know them and then talk to them about a deal and kind of, you know, say, "We don't really want this to be, like, a super heavy ad.

We just want you to seamlessly get the app in." And creators love the sound of that, 'cause the worst thing they can do is be handed a script and, and you be like, "All right, you have to say this word for word." Um, none of them want that, so we kind of sold it on the, on the sense of, "Look, you guys keep doing what you're doing and just try and sneak our app in there," and, and that's kind of how we grew.

Would you say that the relationships with creators are, like, basically the secret sauce of Calai's influencer marketing success? Or...

I mean, it sounds like there's also, like, the essential ingredients, like, which were you have the, the cal- like, the scan feature, and naturally that will just look good on camera on, on UGC.

So it makes for good hooks, and then, like, if you get creators to make videos that at least have that, then there- there's sort of like a baseline level of virality potential.

But then on top of that, was there anything else? Like, I'm curious what you think the secret sauce was.

Uh, it seems like relationships might be one of them.

I'd say kind of everything you've mentioned, really.

Um, the seamless integrations, the, the golden moment of Calai, which was just that you can now track calories with a picture.

We were, we were the first app to do that, and I think that's, like, a viral moment in itself.