Hey, it's Payton. 👋

"Have you seen the stuff from Quince?" my wife asked, mid-scroll.

"Is that a new rapper?"

"No. They sell sweaters and stuff, and they're good quality and cheap. They're everywhere."

Two minutes later, still scrolling: "There they are again!"

Quince's marketing is doing something right now.

Quince sells "affordable luxury" for normal people. We're talking $50 cashmere, $79 silk, bedding that looks like it belongs in a boutique hotel but ships straight from the factory to your door.

And they are Ev3rYwHeRe. TikTok hauls, Reddit deep-dive threads asking "is Quince actually legit," and every single "best things I bought this year" roundup in every newsletter my wife is subscribed to…her inbox is a newsletter graveyard.

That reach is a machine, and the machine has one weird spec.

Quince works with roughly 300 creators every month, and 72% of their best-performing content came from creators who had never posted about Quince before.

Meaning their BEST marketing comes from newbs to the brand. Not celebrities or superfans with a media kit, but actual strangers opening a box on camera and getting that first raw "wait, this is fifty dollars?" moment.

The result is 366% year-over-year growth in earned media on Instagram, and 437% on TikTok. Imagine that scale, from mailing boxes to strangers.

🤿 Dive Deeper: CreatorIQ's breakdown of the Quince creator program

✨ Fresh eyes see what familiar eyes have stopped seeing ✨ A creator six months into a brand deal has forgotten what surprised them about the product, but the person who just got the package is showing you the thing itself. In a land of AI, people’s fake eyes are sharp.

The algorithm can tell what people like, and it all feeds back into the machine.

Most creator programs optimize for loyalty, longer contracts, deeper relationships, bigger media kits. Quince built theirs on novelty.

The move: stop squeezing your longest-tenured voices for one more testimonial, and go find the person who experienced your work for the first time this month. The new client, the new member, the new reader, and ask them to tell it now, while it still surprises them, and rotate to someone new every time.

The line: Quince's version works because the delight is real and the creators paid for the realness. The counterfeit version buys the appearance of fresh discovery with things like undisclosed sponsorships, scripted "authentic" reactions, and AI-generated testimonial faces (yes, that's a product now, and yes, brands are buying it).

Novelty beats loyalty in social proof.

Ask newbs to your brand before the wonder wears off.

—Payton ✌️