HomeBlog for TikTok Industry InsightsInfluencer marketing success storiesHow Crumbl Built a Frictionless Influencer Marketing System That Drives Viral Growth

How Crumbl Built a Frictionless Influencer Marketing System That Drives Viral Growth

If you run a business today, you know how hard it is to stay consistently relevant online. Getting people to talk about you once is easy. Getting them to talk about you every week, without burning money on production, feels almost impossible.

Yet Crumbl has pulled it off.

And the secret behind their success isn’t a single viral video or a lucky TikTok moment. It’s the fact that Crumbl built its entire brand around making content creation effortless.

Once you understand that, the whole strategy becomes clear.

Let’s take a closer look at how Crumbl mixed the right ingredients for social growth, and how those same tactics can work for your brand.

 and talk about how you can borrow these ideas for your own brand.

A Bite Into Crumbl’s Beginnings

Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley started Crumbl in 2017 with a straightforward idea: make a great cookie and make the experience feel enjoyable to share. From the beginning, customers treated it as more than a quick dessert stop. They showed up with friends, opened the pink boxes together, compared flavours, and turned it into something they talked about afterward.

Once Crumbl saw that pattern, it began shaping an online presence that made it even easier for creators and customers to join the conversation.

The Influencer Marketing Recipe Behind Crumbl’s Rapid Social Growth

Crumbl’s online presence looks simple, but it is designed with intention. The way the product appears on camera, the layout of their visuals, and the consistency of their brand assets all remove effort from the creator. When creators do not need to adjust angles or lighting to get a good shot, they post more.

“Instagrammable” Packaging Designed to POP on the Camera

Take their packaging sign as an example. Crumbl’s pink box is recognisable and easy to frame. The cookies sit in a neat row. The entire setup suits an unboxing video without extra styling. The product itself is visually decorative, with heaps of cream and toppings. Now imagine a single break straight down the middle of a cookie. A pull-apart shot. A close-up of a topping. Each of these simple actions creates content that looks intentional without requiring extra steps.

This approach makes UGC natural. It does not ask the creator to work harder. It gives them something that fits social media’s visual style without requiring any rearrangement. 

For brands studying this, the lesson is direct. Remove barriers. Make your product visually interesting. When the visual experience is intuitive, creators show up more often.

Weekly Flavor Drops That Keep Creators Posting

Once Crumbl made the product easy to film, the brand turned to something much simpler: giving people a reason to post every week. Instead of chasing big viral moments, Crumbl aimed to create a predictable content rhythm that creators could rely on.

Crumbl did this by building a ritual around its weekly flavour drops. On Sundays, the brand shares a small preview of the new menu, which is often enough to kick-start conversation and set the tone for the week’s content.

By Monday, the floodgates open. Review videos appear first, followed by ranking clips, group taste tests, and those satisfying ASMR cookie pulls. Each format comes from a different corner of TikTok culture, yet Crumbl fits seamlessly into all of them without changing its product or message.

Review creators love Crumbl because the rotating flavours give them something new to talk about each week. ASMR creators lean into the soft, gooey textures, while mukbang creators like the oversized cookies that fill the frame.

 

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A post shared by coco 🌶️ (@cocoeatzfood)

That is why the loop stays active even when interest in one sub-trend dips. 

And yet for all that content to stay discoverable, Crumbl needed a way to collect everything creators were posting. That’s where their hashtag system becomes essential.

A Hashtag System That Turns Chaos Into Discoverability

Most brands build campaigns that burn out after the first wave. Crumbl avoids that by tying its message to creator behaviour rather than isolated trends. The menu changes. The tone of the content does not.

 #crumblreview and  #crumbllineup act as containers for all of this. Crumbl keeps the content easy to find without forcing it into one style. The hashtag holds polished videos and casual clips in the same space. 

And once creators know where to post, the next factor that keeps the loop moving is how the brand shows up in that space.

Brand Behaviour That Fuels Continuous UGC

Crumbl reinforces the UGC loop by staying active. It responds quickly and treats each post as a touchpoint. Early brand activity often triggers more engagement from viewers. And for creators, a reply from the brand makes the effort feel valued.

It also reposts UGC with intention. Each repost increases the creator’s incentive to make more content, while giving Crumbl a steady supply of native videos that match the platform’s tone. For most brands, this is the fastest path to a content library that grows without growing the budget.

For brands that want to build a similar loop, the focus should be on behaviour, not trends. Create one predictable moment. Build one shared hashtag. Engage early. Keep the barrier to entry low. These are the building blocks of a content ecosystem that lasts longer than any one campaign. 

Spark Ads Helped Them Scale What Already Worked

Once Crumbl had a strong organic content loop, it used TikTok Spark Ads, a.k.a paid media boosting to scale it. And this is where the strategy really shows its strength: Crumbl didn’t use paid ads to rescue weak content. It used them to amplify clips that were already performing on their own.

Crumbl promoted UGC clips. Short reviews. Behind-the-scenes shots. These videos blend into the platform and do not feel out of place. That is why paid media boosting fits this strategy. 

The results show how strong the foundation was. 

Crumbl reached 22 million people. Their follower count grew by more than 1500 percent in two months. They hit their goal of one million followers, raised the target to two million, and hit that as well. Their channel now sits far beyond that (6.4M).

For brands that want to follow this approach, House of Marketers offers a paid media boosting service designed specifically to scale high-performing UGC without disrupting its authenticity. And if you are deciding between ad platforms, our  TikTok Ads vs. Instagram Ads guide breaks it down clearly.

How Crumbl Converts Creator Interest Into a Real Collaboration

Instead of relying on scattered DMs or inconsistent outreach, Crumbl built a simple intake system that channels creator interest into organised, predictable partnerships.

For marketers, there are a few clear takeaways:

Create one clear entry point for creators

Instead of spreading information across social posts, emails, or scattered DMs, a landing page or form gives you one reliable place where creators can understand the opportunity and apply. It keeps everything organised and reduces back-and-forth.

Source: Crumbl

Set expectations upfront

Your page can outline the type of content you prefer, the tone that works for your brand, and any requirements you have. Creators appreciate clarity. When expectations are clear from the start, you receive better, more relevant applications.

Use a small application to filter interest

A short form can help you understand who’s applying without overwhelming them. This doesn’t need to be elaborate — name, handle, niche, and a link to recent content is usually enough.

crumbl collaboration inquiry form

Let creators come to you

A landing page lets you capture inbound interest. You may still do outreach, but you’ll also start receiving applications from creators who know your brand and want to work with you. 

A creator landing page doesn’t need to be flashy or heavily optimised. It just needs to exist and stay consistent with your brand. Over time, it becomes a reliable tool for bringing structure to your influencer program.

If you want help with influencer collaborations, the team at House of Marketers can support in creating your influencer marketing strategy so your brand can grow with clarity and consistency.

A Look at Crumbl’s Celebrity & Brand Collaborations 

Crumbl doesn’t stay in one lane when it comes to influencer partnerships. Their collaborations move through different corners of the internet. Be it TikTok creators, beauty brands, musicians, or even film releases, it keeps itself visible in places most dessert brands never reach. 

It works because each partnership feels naturally tied to a moment people are already paying attention to.

Take their Dove x Crumbl collaboration. Dove’s body-care line pulled inspiration from cookie scents like Strawberry Crumb Cake and Confetti Cake. It tapped into a feeling we all know too well, the moment you smell a lotion and wish it were something you could take a bite of. Dove’s products sold out quickly at Walmart, introduced Dove and Crumbl to a wave of new customers, and generated billions of impressions through a social-first rollout. Crumbl didn’t have to enter the beauty market. They simply lent their scents and let the partnership do the rest.

They’ve repeated this approach with cultural moments as well.
When Olivia Rodrigo was on the GUTS Tour, Crumbl dropped a themed cookie that matched the album’s vibe. 

 

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A post shared by livies hq ❤️ (@livieshq)

When Kylie Jenner teased a new beauty launch, Crumbl released a limited 6-pack tied to Kylie Cosmetics. 

@janemukbangs trying Kylie Jenner’s Crumbl Cookies 💋🍪💗 #kyliejenner #kyliecosmetics #crumblcookies #mukbang #review #fypシ゚viral @Kylie Jenner @Kylie Cosmetics @Crumbl Cookies ♬ original sound – janemukbangs 😚

And when the new Beetlejuice film was gearing up for release, it introduced “The Afterlife Cake,” turning a movie moment into a flavour experience people could try and share.

What makes these partnerships effective is that they extend Crumbl’s existing content system. 

What Marketers Can Learn from Crumbl

You don’t need celebrity deals to follow the same logic. What matters is how you structure your partnerships.

Understand influencer tiers

Not every campaign needs a famous face.  Micro-creators often bring stronger trust. Mid-tier creators can deliver consistent engagement. Larger creators offer reach. Crumbl works across all three, and that variety keeps their brand present in different communities rather than relying on one type of influencer.

Move where culture is already moving

Crumbl didn’t create the hype around GUTS, Kylie Cosmetics, or Beetlejuice. It recognised the energy around those moments and added something that fit. Smaller brands can do the same with local events, seasonal shifts, or rising voices in their category.

Make the collaboration easy to understand

Each Crumbl partnership has a clear hook. It’s either a flavour, a theme, a scent, or a visual. When an idea is simple, creators know how to film it, and audiences know how to interpret it. Clarity makes content spread faster.

Keep your base engaged while reaching new audiences

Big collaborations bring new people in. Weekly drops and creator reviews keep your existing audience excited. It’s the combination that builds long-term momentum.

The Takeaway

Crumbl wins because it removes friction at every step — from filming to reviewing to amplifying. When your brand builds a system that makes content effortless, visibility stops being luck. It becomes a predictable engine you control.

If you want to build a structure similar to Crumbl’s, one that blends creator partnerships and paid media boosting, House of Marketers can help you shape that foundation and support your brand as it grows. 

At House of Marketers,we build these systems every day. From d’Alba’s global skincare growth to Invoice Fly’s 70K+ downloads and NN Insurance’s 6.9M video views, our campaigns prove how structured influencer systems deliver consistent ROI and lasting results.

Contact us for a free consultation and proposal today!


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